Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII arriving March 25. But will it live up to the hype?

This week, Square Enix announed that the western localization of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII will ship on March 24. Predictably, this news has English-speaking fanboys everywhere staring longingly at their PSPs and marking off the days remaining on their calendars. While everyone goes crazy waiting for March to arrive, we thought it might be prudent to take a less fanatical approach and find out what people who have played the Japanese version think of the game, to see if it is worthy of our unrequited adulation. Turns out it (mostly) lives up to the hype, so you fanboys can keep your wall-sized calendars and felt markers handy. However, despite all the praise heaped on the game by these early reviewers, it does not come without caveats: RPG veterans should be aware that the game is not meant to be an epic follow-up to FFVII, but rather an original, action-oriented spinoff.

A few English speaking publications have done us all a favor and imported copies of the Japanese title for the benefit of non-japanese speaking readers. Here are some excerpts from their reviews:

“From the quality of its FMV cutscenes to the finely detailed and richly textured in-game environments and character animations, Crisis Core is technically flawless. And for players who are hoping for a nostalgia trip, Crisis Core delivers by revisiting many of FFVII’s locations, in glorious PSP-vision. It’s like seeing FFVII ’s world with new eyes.”
–Computer and Video Games

“Living up to their reputation, Square Enix pumps out incredibly impressive graphics from the PSP with Crisis Core. The game offers graphics of such high quality that it puts many PlayStation 2 games to shame. The character models are beautifully rendered and intricately designed. Environments are meticulously detailed and rich with an amazing amount of variety. The occasional CG movies are also uncanny in visual aesthetics, presenting beautiful full motion videos that at some points surpass even the work of Advent Children. It would be no stretch to say that Crisis Core is the best looking game on the PSP.”
– RPGfan

This writer, as well as a number of lucky staff members at IGN, cannot say enough about how good the graphics look in this game. Of course, looks aren´t everything. What are they saying about the gameplay?

“Although it’s not on the same scale as Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core is no lightweight. The main track of Zack’s quest can be seen in about 12 hours, but there are hundreds of peripheral missions to extend playtime significantly. Crucially, there’s no downtime - no dawdling - and the battle system never becomes tiresome. The result is all the quality and depth of FFVII coupled with PSP’s unique accessibility and immediacy.”
–Computer and Video Games

“The genius of Crisis Core’s design is not readily apparent to a die hard FF fan, looking for more of the same. No, indeed the game plays more like Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, or Monster Hunter than a regular Final Fantasy game. While the game has a linear story mode, it is in fact not the central focus of the game. The mission structure makes it easy to achieve a task in just 10 minutes while on the train, or a few minutes during lunchtime at work. The game was designed from the ground up as a handheld game, instead of just being an epic RPG on a handheld.”
–High Dynamic Range Lying

Although these early reviewers are enthusiastic about the game´s presentation, story and fidelity to the Final Fantasy legacy, they do find some niggling annoyances with the game. Firstly, almost all reviewers noted the short length of the game´s main story mode. Most have reported getting from 12 to 15 hours of gameplay from the title, much less than your typical epic Final Fantasy release. With the newer games requiring players to quit their jobs and clear seveal months from their schedules in order to play them, this may or may not be such a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Some reviewers also took issue wih the battle system, which relies heavily on random spins of the ´digital mind wave´ wheel to assign limit breaks.

“As soon as a command is issued, Zack will cease listening to the player’s commands and initiate the action. For magic, he will stop in place and cast the spell, and for physical abilities, Zack will run up to the targeted enemy to execute the command. In the time between the beginning of the command execution and the end of the spell/attack animation, Zack will be uncontrollable–which can be somewhat of a bother at certain times.”
–RPGfan

“Crisis Core’s main storyline takes a maximum of 15 hours to complete, and those who haven’t had enough can tackle the hundreds of side quests available whenever they’re at a save point. These missions, however, are severely lacking in variety, with all of them involving finding an enemy, killing it, and moving on to the next mission. Additionally, a large number of the harder missions contain random encounters that can kill Zack in one hit, causing unbelievable amounts of frustration.”
–RPGfan

Thanks: [RPGfan] [High Dynamic Range Lying] and [CVG]