or the uninformed, Crisis Core is a prequel to Final Fantasy VII, one of the most successful games available on the original PlayStation and a game which finally brought the series into
3D land.
You play as Zack, your typical Final Fantasy protagonist who has funny hair and likes slicing things up with a sword. Zack is a SOLDIER, initially 2nd Class but with dreams of becoming 1st like his hero, Angeal. Both of these characters are just two of the many beautiful people who work for SOLDIER (who obviously have a “No Uggos” hiring policy, unlike Pixel Hunt!) and together they weave a delicate story of adventure and betrayal.
Being a handheld game, your typical FF gameplay has been slightly streamlined for gamers on the go. Instead of having a party of characters at your command, you’re stuck
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with just Zack, while other characters follow you through scenarios and then disappear when it’s time for battle.
SWORD SLASHING
Fighting is also different to your standard FF fare. Battles are still random and inconvenient but turn-based fighting has been thrown out the window. In Crisis Core you are free to run around slashing your sword at whoever you wish during battle; you also select magic and items on the fly by using the shoulder buttons.
During every encounter a system called the Digital Mind Wave ticks over. As you meet important people in the game (many from FF7), their faces are added to the DMW which is like a poker machine with rotating reels of characters. If three of the same characters line up, you are awarded with a power-up move that will either severely damage your enemy or give Zack
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some sort of health/power charge. The DMW is also your only way to level up (by snagging triple 7’s) – there’s no EXP system, so in some ways the random battles can often feel a bit pointless.
GENOCIDE
When you get bored or stuck on the main story chapters, there are a heap of other missions available at save points. These usually involve running around a small map and killing everything you find. It is highly recommended that you attempt a fair chunk of these missions as soon as you can in order to ‘level up’ Zack, so that he actually stands some chance of being able to hurt some of the harder bosses in battle. Many times I found myself killed by one-hit kills simply because Zack wasn’t strong enough, so I had to spend a few hours in the extra missions to bulk up.
On the subject of dying often, you must
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remember to save whenever you see a save point, as when you die you are returned to the title screen and have to reload your game. Redoing tasks and battles you failed to save after is bad enough, but you also have to sit through all the non-skippable conversations and cut scenes again. Thankfully, save points
are plentiful.
Final Fantasy Fans will lap this game up. There’s a lot of story and dialogue to sit through but you don’t have to have played FF7 to understand what is going on. The game does have it’s annoyances but thankfully they are not game breaking and you will find the experience long lasting and enjoyable.
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