Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: PSP
Release Date: March 25th, 2008
MSRP: $39.99
Average Used Price: $9.00

I’ve only played about 20 or 25 hours of this game, so I’m not going to comment too hard on the story. You play as Zack Fair, who in the original game was only seen in a few cutscenes, doing his thing as a member of Shinra Electric Power Company’s SOLDER commando unit. You meet a few of the FFVII cast, some early (like Sephiroth), and some very late (like Cloud). The characters all seem pretty well written; it’s obvious some attention was paid to the facts of FFVII, and care was taken to make sure that characters acted like they should before the games, rather than being consistent with their end-game or Advent Children personas. Sephiroth, normally my least favorite character, comes off as more of a suave, cool bad-ass that he’s obviously intended to be. Cloud comes off as a competent, if weak, member of the security forces, Areith maintains her kinda silly, out-of-it demeanor, and even Yuffie (who makes a couple of cameos as a young girl in this game) comes off as a more likable character than her AC or FFVII counterpart. As for the actual plot, we all know how that ends, but most of the plot of the game is original stuff dealing with how Zack got to be the way he is. The original content added here works very well, at least what I’ve seen, and all-in-all, I’d say it’s pretty good. Definitely more than serviceable.

Let’s start the gamplay review by talking about the battle system for a bit. If I had to use the cliche A meets B formula, I’d say it’s Kingdom Hearts meets Final Fantasy XI. You run around on the field, hitting X to attack or use magic, L and R to move through the battle menu, square to dodge, and triangle to guard. Like KH, having good reaction time, or dodging right, can let you avoid pretty much any attack. The only attacks that are unavoidable at any distance are the limit breaks; everything else you can run around like a fool and it’ll miss. Now, you may notice I haven’t mentioned anything about summons, limits, or assists. That’s because everything that’s not a special skill, regular attack, item, or magic spell is based on the outcome of a slot machine going in the top-left corner of the screen. And when I say everything, I mean everything: Limits, summons, assists, materia’s level up, ZACK’S level up, and some random status effects that can make the fights easier. While everything’s not technically totally random, in the sense that there’s an understandable mechanic behind it, it’s still easy to feel that everything is entirely random and simply happening without your control.

My biggest complaint are the missions. It’s not even a case of “pretty much” every mission being the same. Literally (in the dictionary sense of the word) every mission is “Go from starting area to ending area and fight a monster on the field”. No variance, no subtle changes, nothing. Every mission involves you taking the pointy end of your sword and sticking it in the fleshy bits of enemies. While I get that SOLDER is a commando team, and thus focuses mainly on battle, some kind of variety would have been nice. Even just something like an escort mission, or something. However, something about them still makes me stay up until 2 AM slashing at bugs and ostriches, so who’s the fool here?

My only other big complaints involve the battle system, or battling in general. The first is simply how long it takes to go in to and come out of combat. Unlike Kingdom Hearts, where you move seamlessly between wandering-around-mode and hitting-heartless-with-a-keyblade mode, there’s a 5 to 7 second transition into combat, as you hear some chick say “Activating Combat Mode”. Then, after you finish off everyone, you get to hear her say “Conflict Resolved” as there’s another 5 to 7 second transition out of combat mode. The only real problem with this is that missions don’t scale to your level. Thus, you could be going back to a mission you missed earlier, and end up being so crazy over-leveled for it that all combat is resolved in one or two swings of your sword. This leaves you in the situation of having the transitions between the two states take longer than the actual combat! A better situation would have been an Earthbound/Mother 2 situation, where trivial combat is resolved instantly.

Second is the way they place the encounters. Basically, the way it works is that there’s a zone on the map that you can’t see. Step in it, and combat activates. Obviously, you won’t enter battle if, say, you end combat in that area, thus preventing the infinite loop. However, it is possible to leave that area during combat (the area that activates combat and the area you’re allowed to go while fighting do not perfectly overlap). Thus, it’s possible to end combat outside of the combat activation area, then start moving to where you were going to complete the mission, only to end up back in the exact same encounter. This can also frustrate getting chests. If there’s two or three chests in a room, and the combat zone is in the middle of the room, it’s possible to fight the same guys three, four, or five times, if you’re unlucky. It almost makes me pine for the days of random encounters.

My second-to-last complaint is that every garbage enemy is infinitely stun-lockable. That is to say, they flinch long enough from each sword hit that you can go from one combo to the next without allowing them sufficient time to snap off an attack.  This is also true if you use the Assault Twister and Assault Twister + Attack Materia, which hit enemies on all sides of you. Thus, the only real trouble you ever get into are enemies that don’t flinch (mostly bosses), and enemies that don’t crowd around you so you can hit them all with Assault Twister. Add into that the fact that most mission “bosses” are these same garbage enemies, most of the time, and you can see why this is a problem.

The last complaint is just that everything on the screen looks so similar, and is so damn small. Your status effect display only shows one at a time, making it difficult to tell if you still have Barrier or MBarrier in effect, for example. Often times, I end up forgetting that it died out, or getting slammed by a boss’s attack because I’m trying to figure out if it’s still active. In addition, every item in the in-battle item menu has the same generic dark blue potion bottle icon, making it impossible to quickly determine what’s what. Would it have been so hard to, say, make the healing items light blue, the MP items purple, etc., rather than having it all the same color? I can’t tell you how many times I accidentally used an Elixir rather than a Soma, or a Phoenix Down rather than a Remedy, just because they were next to each other and share the same icon. Same goes for offensive spells, which all share the same dark green Materia icon, defensive spells, which all share the same light green Materia icon, and special attacks, which all share the same yellow Materia icon. A little differentiation would have made the whole thing a lot easier.

Despite all that, I suppose the best indication of what I really think about this game is the simple fact that I’ve put over 20 hours into it. The game does a lot of things right: it gets rid of the lame armor and weapons having slots for Materia mechanic the first game had, the combat’s a lot of fun, even if it’s a bit lame at times, and the characters are genuinely likable. If you’re aching for a decent RPG type game on the PSP, or just want to have a continuation of the storyline of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core is a great pick. It’s something most PSP owners should get, but not something that you should get the system just to own. The flaws are just too glaring, and detract too much, for this to be a system-mover.

Final Thoughts:

Pros:

• Simple, (mostly) intuitive, and very satisfying battle system
• Interesting characters
• No need to equip Materia on weapons and accessories
• Easy to understand mission system

Cons:

• Infinite stun-lock
• All missions basically the same
• Battle system still largely not as good as even original Kingdom Hearts
• Too much left up to random chance

Final Verdict:

Rating: ★★★½☆