Crisis Bore
By Tania on January 30th, 10 under RPG, PSP, , ,
I tried. I really tried. I knew I was in for a fanservice-fest. Because what else could a prequel to the most famous Final Fantasy game be? Knowing this, I armed myself with a heavy dose of lenience before inserting the Crisis Core UMD into my PSP. But lenience can only take you so far when the developers are clearly not making any efforts to meet you halfway.
So much is wrong with this game that I’m not sure where to start. Perhaps the gameplay: FF has nudged the boundaries of its RPG classification over time (eg. FFT, FFX-2, Revenant Wings), but Crisis Core takes it a step further. You control a single character in real-time, complete with dodging and blocking. You still have a semblance of menu; however, scrolling through it, and especially through the Item submenu, can make you lose precious seconds, which is sometimes the difference between life and death. This is where “RPG” and “action” start disagreeing.
Then you have the strange animal that is the DMW (Digital Mind Wave) reel. It includes numbers and portraits of characters that matter to Zack or summons, thus basing his fighting abilities on his emotions. You can’t control it directly, which is clever, as it mirrors the randomness of emotions, but doesn’t work that well with the battle structure, as it tends to disrupt the flow of combat. Pictures aligning trigger a Limit Break, while numbers aligning may add temporary stat boosts, level up your materia or yourself. So yes, levelling up is, essentially, random. It can happen twice in one battle or not happen for ages. The odds eventually even out, but it’s annoying to see a Limit Break pop up when you’re one hit away from dispatching an easy enemy. Especially if it happens to be a summoning sequence: they are extremely long, albeit skippable. They also include Ifrit in disturbingly tiny, WRONG briefs. I’ll spare your eyes by not posting a picture.
But the gameplay issues pale by comparison with the storyline and characters. This game must’ve been written by drunken monkeys. The plot can’t decide whether to reference FFVII at every turn or to vaguely attempt to do something new. Events are disjointed and awkward, and one plot point is a direct rehash of Hojo’s involvement with Sephiroth. It feels like a bad remake, cheapens the original plot (and this is coming from someone who isn’t a rabid Sephiroth fangirl), and does no credit to the developers’ imagination. And let’s not even talk about the LSD trip that is the final stretch of the game (eating hair? seriously?) or the nonsensicality of the final dungeon.
Characters…Oh, man. The biggest offender has got to be Genesis, probably one of the worst villains in the whole FF series. “I’m gonna wear RED leather instead of black, spew crappy poetry every time I show up, do all that misunderstood emo shit, shove apples in people’s faces and hope I come across as a tormented badass! :O” And no, before you ask, it doesn’t work. But hey, Angeal is almost as bad. Which may be a shame, because he did have a few promising aspects at the beginning. But as soon as the story kicked in, he deflated like a giant balloon and became mired in some incomprehensible soul-searching, or whatever it was. Needless to say, I promptly lost interest and just proceeded to laugh at the homoerotic innuendoes he was involved in (“Hey Zack, come fly with me, and I’ll let you handle my GIANT SWORD”).
Lazard, the director of SOLDIER, is another example. There’s an interesting storyline twist about him, but then he peters out like a wet firecracker. You also have Cissnei, the Turk: cute as a button, interesting potential…never goes anywhere. But worse than both of those, you have Aeris (and no, I will *not* call her Aerith). I’m pretty sure everyone knows how much I hate her by now, but Crisis Core made it worse by giving her a severe case of the Rikku. You know, losing 90% of your brain and wearing skimpier clothing to “hype up” your image? In every scene featuring her, Aeris acted like an idiot. In a strappy dress and platform shoes.
The only characters I was even remotely interested in were Zack himself—even though I usually don’t like the happy-go-lucky kind—and Tseng, more in line with the stern, silent, slightly menacing type I tend to favour. He’s actually quite the looker too, unlike the bunch of Lego-like pixels he was in FFVII. His development didn’t go anywhere either, but at least he had more presence than any of the other Turks.
Rounding up the issues: firstly, the extreme repetitiveness of the 300 optional missions. They’re meant to represent the everyday work of SOLDIER, but did 99% of the environments need to be recycled? And did they really need to put Yuffie in there (who was already an annoying brat back then)? The perk is that it’s the only way to obtain good items and eventually leads to the optional über-boss. But apart from that…*snores* There are also completely mindless minigames, like the sniping gauntlet (Pentazemin please?), mixing perfume or building flower carts for Aeris (and I really wish I were kidding), slicing missiles (yes, slicing) or counting objects through keyholes.
Secondly, the materia fusion system. Playing alchemist is a good idea, but the rules are simply mind-boggling. Especially because they involve invisible data: some materia are “better” than others and will thus be prioritized in the fusion process (ie. the end product will probably not be what you’re gunning for). But of course, you have no way of figuring this out except trial and error or a FAQ. Way to go there, champs.
Thirdly, the music. Yes, the FFVII universe has a steampunk vibe. But FFVII’s score did perfectly well without screechy guitars and rock arrangements. There’s only one truly lovely tune I remember: the one in Aeris’ church. The rest? “Woo, another tacky guitar riff.”
And last but not least, the ending. I knew—just as anybody who’s played FFVII knew—what would happen. It would've been a bold choice for an ending...if they’d managed to pull it off. I get all the stuff meant to tug at your heart-strings (eg. gradually disappearing DMW images, Aeris’ premonitory gaze at the sky cutting to Zack’s eye, etc.), I get the tragedy of the moment. But maybe because the rest of the game was bad, maybe because the ending sequence became choppier as it progressed, maybe because you had to mindlessly slaughter grunts while waiting for the requisite DMW sequence to trigger, maybe because Zack’s voice actor bungled his delivery, maybe because of the incredibly cheesy intervention by Angeal…I don’t know, but I felt that what could’ve been a true tear-jerker was simply overloaded with emotional SFX. Like they were trying too hard.
Perhaps this could be said of the game as a whole? I not sure whether they were trying too hard throughout or not trying hard enough up until the ending, when they decided to pull out all the stops. But what it comes down to is this: underwhelming on all fronts. Don’t let the fanboys fool you.
