Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

Can I start by saying I’m a pretty big Final Fantasy fan, especially of Final Fantasy VII which first appeared on the original PlayStation all those years ago.

Setting

Crisis Core is set before the original Final Fantasy VII and you play as a SOLDIER 2nd Class called Zack Fair. Zack is directly subordinate to a SOLDIER 1st Class called Angael who happens to be best friends with another 1st called Genesis and another called Sephiroth. I’m sure that is a name that many will be familiar with. Without spoiling anything, Genesis, Angael and Sephiroth are all considered to be pretty much the best of the best of SOLDIER (which is the military arm of the Shinra Corporation and features heavily in the Final Fantasy VII universe).

Graphics and sound

The first thing that impressed me with Crisis Core were the gorgeous pre-rendered sequences that are at least on par with the fairly recent Final Fantasy VII Advent Children CG movie and copies the visual style used in the film perfectly. Now while the quality of the graphics in the game itself is obviously nowhere near that of the cut scenes it is still of an extremely high standard, I’d go out on a limb and say it probably looks better then 90% of what you might find on the PS2; excellent character models, decent backgrounds, awesome spell and attack animations I mean it really is a treat for the senses. The audio is of a similar quality, with memorable Final Fantasy VII pieces subtlety remixed but instantly recognisable. As well as the great soundtrack, the voice acting is of a good quality and there is plenty of dialogue in there. It looks and sounds wonderful and is really pushing the already 4 year old PSP, partly I’m sure thanks to the recent update changing the PSP CPU speed from 222MHz to 333MHz, which is quite a sizeable jump. The only other game that is truly at this standard visually is God of War Chains of Olympus which should give some idea of how truly amazing Crisis Core looks.

The battle system

The battle system is a kind of semi active semi turn based affair, more similar to Kingdom Hearts than the original Final Fantasy VII, in fact it is most similar to Knight of the Old Republic without the long queuing system. You retain control of Zack for the most part and are free to run around willy nilly during fights should you wish. Depending on what materia you have equipped you can cast spells or use melee attacks during combat which is all fairly standard fare. What is new is the DMW (stands for Digital Mind Wave) which is supposed to represent the mood of the Zack. Basically the DMW is a gambling reel affair and is responsible for levelling up Zack, his materia, limit breaks and summons. I won’t go into great detail about it but it is an interesting addition to the combat.

Side missions

While Crisis Core is an RPG and as such is a good length it also features side missions that can be done in just a few minutes and there are literally hundreds of these to unlock. Far from being just a side attraction these missions can be used for levelling up, getting new materia, new items etc.

Conclusion

Crisis Core is simply awesome in my opinion. If you are a Final Fantasy VII fan it is an essential purchase as it fills in a lot of back story for the original game, but it is also a great game in its own right. The PSP is seeing something of a renaissance of sorts at the moment with Crisis Core, God of War, Patapon and Wipeout Pulse all being excellent recent games, there really hasn’t been a better time to own the little system. Even if you don’t like the Final Fantasy games in particular but are looking for a good RPG, this is certainly worth a look.

As a side note Crisis Core is not yet available in the EU, but with the PSP being region-free importing from the US is no problem.