Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

++ Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for PSP ++

Good points: Nice graphics, in a Japanese-cartoon style.

Bad points:...

* On opening the game, you find there are 20 (yes TWENTY) pages of instructions needed to explain it.

* Astonishingly bad game play! Having just finished God of War: Chains of Olympus I am used to exciting battles with multiple enemies/monsters, where you can freely move about and select which monster to hit next, and enjoy a real challenge of working out how to beat them before dying. That just doesn't happen in this game! A group of enemies turns up, there's a pause, the game stops to pointlessly tell you that you are "entering combat mode", then it targets each enemy in turn *for you*, while all the others pretty much stand around and wait their turn to be killed (like a bad Jean-Claude van Damme film!). To use a different move / magic etc, you have to use the PSP's shoulder buttons to cycle through a range of options before you can use one. Is this 1989 or 2009? I have never seen such a clumsy, wooden, fighting experience in a PSP game.

* Infuriating (and bad) music *all the time* that *can't be turned off*. Have you ever heard of a game where there is no "Music volume" and "SFX volume" settings? The cheesy guitar track rapidly drove me nuts!

* If you lose a mission you are taken back to the beginning... but then have to sit through the same lengthy cut scene before you can have another go. Grrrr! There is no skip button to let you jump past it, so there you sit for ages waiting and waiting for another go.

* Ridiculous and unfathomable numbers / statistics everywhere. So you're in the middle of a 'battle' and then the screen suddenly changes to a full screen that chooses a random number by itself. So if there was even a tiny bit of excitement left during a battle, it's ruined by these numbers popping up constantly.

I had high hopes for this game, but it shows a complete lack of understanding for involving and visceral game play. Any style or excitement it might have had has been ruined by the clumsy mechanics of the game - and the geek who thought it would be funny to spoil the game by popping up numbers everywhere in the middle of battle. This so far the worst game I have bought.

I am a Final Fantasy Nut! Always were, always will be, if it wasn't for the fact that Final Fantasy 13 has now been annouced for dual release date with the xBox 360 and PS3, i would have purchased a PS3 simply to buy that one game.

That being said, you could imagine my reaction when they said that a prequal to the best Final Fantasy game ever was coming out!

I bought this game and loved every second of it, at first I was worried about the combat system, the turn based system from Final Fantasy VII has been ditched for a real time system, ie: you can move your character around and attack when you like, and so can the enemies. But this system works very well.

Having Sephiroth on your side for the majority of the game is just COOL! And you find out the origins of the Buster Sword! (Cloud's HUGE sword from Final Fantasy VII).

Its a real nostalgia fest for hardcore FF7 lovers as some locations are from FF7 but redone with lovely graphics. The same can be said for a few CGI scenes, redone BUT with vocals!

All in all IF you like FF7 then BUY this game. If you have never played FF7, play that 1st, that way you will truley appreciate this fantastic game.