Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion

• Genre: Action RPG
• Time Played: 23 Hours, 51 Minutes
• Too Short/Long: It's complicated. If you just plow through the story, probably too short. If you aim to complete most or all of the missions, too long.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Also complicated, I am pleased with fleshing out of certain characters and certain aspects of gameplay.
• Why I played: I had been meaning to go back to Crisis Core for a long time. I played it on PSP and didn't quite get through it, though I think I got further in the story than I realized, I probably just got too caught up in the side missions.
• Recommend to others: Hard to say. I wouldn't say it's essential if you're a fan of FF7. I wouldn't recommend it as your intro to FF7. But if you specifically want to see Zack fleshed out as a character, then yes, I would recommend it.

Crisis Core is an okay game that is just a few small missteps from being a great game. It has a fun system that just kinda offers random bonuses but provide little story sequences and allow you to use special moves. I think that it's kind of divisive, but I don't think it's bad. 

The combat is overall pretty fun. I do think it would be a significant improvement to allow you to switch between your loadouts in battle and if your default MP and AP were much higher. These would give you way more options - which you were limited by it being a PSP game at the time. L/R shouldn't have been a Materia, they should have been a switch between loadout, that way instead of having a loadout of 6, you could switch between maybe 3 loadouts of 4 in battle, doubling your options. Also maybe you have a dedicated passive materia slot so you don't take up all your button options.

I can just picture it so clearly, and even though combat was one of the things I enjoyed about this game it would have been SUCH a significant improvement I can't stop imagining it. That said, even though combat was fun... the game is such a grind. There are not random encounters, or overworld enemy locations, but instead, invisible triggers. I find these mostly unavoidable in story and mostly avoidable in missions. Either way, there are FAR too many of them, and the fact that they reset after you walk out of them is just the worst. Imagine accidently stepping the wrong direction so you're instantly back in a battle 2 seconds after you beat it. This method I think actually creates far more battles than even random encounters and it's just too much. At least with how close some of these triggers are.

In missions, as I said, not as bad because you can mostly hug the walls of the levels, the very generic used over and over again mission levels. The side missions in this game are just too overwhelming. I imagine the idea when this was created was a game you would take on the go since it's for PSP, something you'd play a couple simple levels on the train, each day, for awhile. I did, I think, well over a hundred and I only did a third of them. There are 300 side missions. That is too goddamn many side missions. Especially since they generally suck and are just the same nonsense over and over again. And the vast majority of them have no story or npc relevance outside the little blurb on mission select "Ehhh monsters are attacking and a squad was wiped out, prevent them from doing more damage or something idk" and your whole ass reward for this is an armlet that you already have 5 of that was under leveled equipment half the game ago. There is little to not real incentive to do these other than to get to the ones that are potentially better or do them all? The side mission thing is pretty much just set up terribly. They could have easily trimmed it down to 100 more rewarding missions that had more relevance.

Or, they could have just had a handful of these sidemissions and fleshed out the story a bit more pre-Nibelheim. The game pretty much starts you off right in the drama of everything, there could have been a bit more preamble of Zack's rising through the ranks and building relationships. The pacing was definitely not the best aspect of the story.

The Genesis stuff sucks and Genesis sucks and goddamn if anyone likes this mother fucker outside of thinking he's hot you might need to do some self-reflection. He's a terrible character and just exists to ride the coat tails of 2006 Gackt's popularity. Even when talking normally around him, Genesis can't help but speaking only in quotes of Loveless, which is a fake made up play from FF7 that had like ONE line or normal person speak written out before Crisis Core, and that line isn't even used in the Crisis Core. So the new lines of the acts or whatever which are specifically written for Genesis' appearance JUST SO HAPPEN to conveniently work out for the situation in which he is speaking to someone. He is absolutely insufferable. Imagine you knew someone who could literally only speak in quotes of A SINGLE play, not even an entire author's work. It would be unfair to say Shakespearean for instance, because it would be only from Hamlet or some bullshit. Genesis sucks. And I of all people should like him, he has a red coat.

Angeal is fine. I guess. But he should have just been Zack's dad. Zack has parents, normal parents. But Angeal is literally everything a father-figure should be to Zack. He LOOKS like Zack. He's Zack's mentor. He's Zack's hero. He helped Zack form is morals, mantras, and dreams. This man is Zack's very mold of man. The Buster Sword, one of the most iconic weapons in all of video games is ORIGINALLY from Angeal. The sword was forged by ANGEAL'S FATHER. Most those who played FF7 know Cloud inherited the sword from Zack, but the fact Zack got the sword from Angeal was made up for Crisis Core. So Cloud's hand-me-down is just Zack's hand-me-down from SOME RANDOM DUDE.

Obviously Angeal's not JUST "some random dude" but goddamn, in the grand scheme of it, he absolutely is. The Buster Sword could have been Zack's family heirloom, forged by his grand father, handed down from his father. Or made by his mother for his father and handed down to him. Either way would have been way better. And maybe I wouldn't be so damn set on this if Angeal doesn't look EXACTLY what you would think Zack's father looks like. Zack doesn't even mention his parents other than once or twice and it's like, as a whole "My parents" not my mom or dad, he never says anything specific about them. He tried to visit them before the end but that doesn't even pan out

It's just such a misteps, it drives me nuts.

Anyway, the ending, ultimately, even though I knew exactly what was going to happen as I believe most people who played or experienced Final Fantasy 7 media do and could tell exactly when it was about to happen, had me bawling. Real ugly crying where your face spasms and contorts. They did that shit too well. Or maybe I'm just too passionate about Final Fantasy 7. This is probably the post I ramble on most about my feelings toward story and character rather than mechanics and general experience, but I feel the need to vent, and I know it'll come up in the future when discussing this game.