Crisis of Conscience
Is Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII awesome because of nostalgia, or awesome because it's just good? Either way, it's plain awesome.
Published: April 20, 2008
There can be no discussion of Final Fantasy VII (or, really, any Square Enix game) without mentioning their unquestionable talent at making things, well, pretty. It's not just in the CG (and there are some absolutely killer pre-rendered bits that do both the original game's CG and the newer Advent Children CG movie more than enough justice); there's an approach to all of the visuals that is head and shoulders above what just about everyone has been able to do on the PSP. Ready at Dawn killed it with God of War: Chains of Olympus, but on a pure technical, point-for-point breakdown, I have to admit that Crisis Core wowed me a little more.
That we can even make comparisons like that means that the PSP is finally coming into its own and making good on the idea of a portable PlayStation, with all the graphical bells and whistles that come with it. And Crisis Core doesn't pull any punches in the visuals department. Chracters are animated beautifully with tons of range and variety, and, in a nice departure from the original game, transition between them smoothly. The texture work and effects, the monster designs, the load times, the updates to the characters themselves and their models -- all of it just looks stunning.
Of course, if the graphics are held in high esteem for most Square games, Final Fantasy VII's sound -- or at least the music -- is considered the stuff of legend. And hey, I'll admit it: I think the soundtrack is the best Nobuo Uematsu has ever done. Much like Yasunori Mitsuda's work on Chrono Cross, it's not just that there are some absolutely great songs, but rather that there are so many, and even the less powerful ones, rather by sheer repetition or because they really did have some kind of magic, stuck with me.
To hear a rather respectful chunk of them re-arranged just enough to fit with the newer stuff, which was good but didn't really stay memorable after the game was over, shows just how much care was taken in borrowing elements from the original game without outright copying and pasting them in. The effects, on the other hand, were more or less copied in, but all the little confirmation and selection chimes just wouldn't have worked were they grossly different from the original, and I personally loved 'em.
I loved just about everything in Crisis Core. I loved the characters, I loved that the storyline was somehow still fresh despite me knowing exactly what was going to happen. I loved just revisiting some key areas from the original game, but re-done in absolutely stunning 3D that at times put even the original pre-rendered backgrounds to shame. I'm not quite sure if I love all these things because I love Final Fantasy VII so much or if they're honestly good, but for me and so many other people that will buy this game, the two are, really, inseparable.
Perhaps the only thing I didn't love was that it showed a full, proper remake for the PS3 would apparently be in very, very good hands. And that little teaser at the very end of the game that could be construed a couple different ways only made it worse, you Squenix jerks. Too bad I "have" to tell everyone that owns a PSP that they need to buy this game. That means, you, person still reading this. Go go go!