I just can't seem to get out of Midgar

I wanted to play Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core for so long, but then again, who wouldn’t want to revisit the world of Final Fantasy 7. Advent Children was disappointing to many, Dirge of Cerberus was complete trash, and of course Before Crisis was never going to be released in the US. So hopefully, Crisis Core would be the game that we were all looking for. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a friend’s PSP to play this game. I had already listened to the soundtrack and was extremely impressed. Many songs contained were Final Fantasy 7 songs remixed to rock, and they sounded amazing. Upon turning on the PSP and loading the game, I was blown away. The graphics in game and in video looked incredible on the PSP screen. The in game graphics were on par with those of the PS2. The battle system was relatively simple yet fun. Voice acting was superb. I also think they synced the mouth movement with the voices because I saw no deviation. Everything about the game screamed awesome.

However, as I got into the game, it started getting repetitive. Unfortunately, the story was written by the same writer of Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus, Tetsuya Nomura. While he is an amazing character designer, I feel like the stories for the past games and movies either make no sense or are complete trash. Crisis Core felt the same way. Don’t take this as a bad review for the game, because the game is still somewhat fun. However, the story is fairly short, and the optional missions become repetitive and boring. Also, the battle system isn’t really challenging at all.

Final summary, this game is amazing for being reintroduced into the world of Final Fantasy 7. Being re-submersed into the familiar locations of Midgar, Nibelheim, and more was such a rewarding experience. Also seeing Cloud, Zack, and Aeris (Aerith?) in 3D and voiced was great. Square shows that they’re able to push a system to its limits with the beautiful graphics within this game. However, the story seems somewhat lacking, and there really isn’t too much to the actual gameplay. I have to say though, I really enjoyed seeing the good guy side of Sephiroth in this game.