Game Review: "Crisis Core: FFVII" (PSP)

Alright, now this is a game that I was looking forward to for a long time so if you're expecting an unbiased, objective review you had best go look elsewhere. As a part of the "Compilation of Final Fantasy 7", I was fully expecting to forgive some level of deficiency in the gameplay so long as it looked good and was an engaging continuation of the FF7 storyline. I put on my fanboy glasses when I'm playing these games; the rosy lenses that allow me to be more forgiving just because it indulges my nostalgia a bit rather than the super-critical pair that drive me to critique every facet of the game more harshly than I normally would. I wore those rosy glasses playing "Dirge of Cerberus" and overlooked its gameplay issues and still managed to enjoy myself. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn't really need my rosy glasses. By it's own merits "Crisis Core" is a great game with some flaws and probably the best entry from the "Compilation" to hit US shores.

"Crisis Core" serves as a prequel to "Final Fantasy 7" and is set 6 or 7 years before the start of the game. The story starts with SOLDIER 2nd Class, Zack Fair and his participation in ending a war between the Shinra Electric Power Company and the country/city/province of Wutai over Shinra's plans to build a mako reactor in the area. If you read over the last sentence and are left scratching your head, my advice to you is to stop reading right here and don't really plan on picking up this game. On the one hand, Square-Enix does a good job of introducing the different characters in the game and giving you enough information that even someone new to FF7 would be able to follow along and probably even enjoy it. However, the plot of "Crisis Core" explores in great detail the history behind one of the big plot twists in "Final Fantasy 7". Anyone who hasn't played FF7 by now and has grown up as a gamer on the PS2 and Xbox is unlikely to go back and play through the admittedly clunky graphics of a 10 year old PS1 game, but it is my sincere suggestion that you play through that game first so that the effect of the plot twist is not diluted by, "I knew that already. So what's the big deal?" If you have played FF7, then you know how "Crisis Core" ends, but the great part of the story is that it shows several familiar characters in a different time, with different personalities. A genial, not-crazy Sephiroth is certainly a welcome change, as is a Cloud who doesn't spend half his time and energy brooding about something or other. Related to this, the cinematics in this game are gorgeous and i was surprised that the PSP could do stuff like this. The FMV sequences easily look as good as the FF7 movie "Advent Children" that came out a year or two ago and the in game graphics are roughly equal to many titles that I could point to on the PS2. This is maybe not a fair comparison since the PSP screen is so small compared to your average TV, but that's just the feeling that I got. At any rate, the game looks great.

Now however much I praise the plot or characters of "Crisis Core", if the gameplay is boring or broken there are going to be few people who will play it long enough to see that plot. I would describe "Crisis Core" as an action-RPG, where battles happen in real time and you are free to move about the battle area and dodge and even block enemy attacks. Being an RPG, I would divide the game into three parts: cinematics and story sequences, running around interacting with the environment for puzzles or info and opening chests, and battle. Puzzles are generally of the "Go find this and bring it here" variety, but there aren't many of these and the game is mostly a linear walk from area to area and battle to battle. While in battle, the shoulder buttons allow you to move the cursor on the command menu at the bottom of the screen to select regular attacks, magic, or items. The game auto-locks on enemies in the general direction that you point the joystick and if you are able to get behind and flank your enemy, you can score critical hits that do more damage than usual. The last facet of the battle system is the DMW gauge, a slot-machine like mechanic in the corner of the screen that determines what kind of buffs you get in battle, when you can level up your character or your materia, and when you can unleash your limit breaks or summons, powerful attacks or spells that can really help turn the tide of a difficult battle. I have a couple of minor quibbles about aspects of the battle system, but I will reserve most of my ire for the DMW gauge for one simple reason: you can't control it. At all. It is completely random. Now if it just controlled the summons or limit breaks, I could deal with it. It just means that I have to set up my tactics and equipment without relying on any super attacks, but if they occur then it's a great boon. It's the fact that it controls when you level up that really bugs me. Now I said it's completely random, but as far as your character level goes that's not entirely true. Behind the scenes the game keeps track of how much EXP you've accumulated and how much is needed for your next level (it doesn't display any of this information to you however). The greater the difference between your current EXP and the threshold for your next level is, the greater the chance the DMW will level you up, but I know of no such mechanic when it comes to leveling your materia. And when you're trying to level up materia so that you can create more powerful ones, having to engage in countless battles and just crossing your fingers is a little bit tedious. Not a huge flaw, but it is definitely an annoying feature, at least to me.

I finished the game in something like 10-12 hours, but I could easily have gone much longer because the majority of the game's playtime isn't in the main storyline. As you progress through the game you unlock missions that you can run at any time from a save point and there are a LOT of missions. Maybe a hundred or more? I only completed half of them before I got tired of it, but as a result my level was high enough that the final boss was something of a pushover. There is absolutely no variation in the missions though: they all involve walking down one of five or six environments, fighting in random battles the whole way, and finishing with a kind of boss fight at the end. They don't contribute to the story in any real way. The only reason for doing them is to gain levels and equipment. Completionists may be able to take it all the way and fight the strongest boss in the game (available once you've completed ALL of the other missions) but that made the game seem way too much like work for me.

One last point I want to comment on is the music in the game. The score is done by Takeharu Ishimoto and although he reuses and arranges several themes from FF7 (originally done by Nobuo Uematsu), most of the music in the game is original. The arranged themes are all great, reflecting the quality of Uematsu's work, but the original themes for the game are more of a mixed bag. A lot of the tracks seem to basically be variations on the same melody and a lot of the others are a kind of generic sounding "hard rock" type sound with heavy guitars and bass rhythm. The battle music especially falls into the latter category and while it does well enough, it does get fairly old after awhile. Overall, it's an ok soundtrack but I've definitely heard better.

Well, this post has run on fairly long so I won't add too much more here. I'll just reiterate the position I took in the first two paragraphs: "Crisis Core" is a great game and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoyed "Final Fantasy 7". If you've never played the original, you will probably still enjoy "Crisis Core", but I would still recommend that you go dig out a PS1 or PS1 emulator and play through FF7 first.

-ZK

Manga Impressions: Kurohime

Before I go much further, I want to explain something first really quick. Both here and in my "Mnemosyne" post I titled the entry as an "Impression." What this means to me is that it's a series that I haven't watched or read all the way, or even most of the way through. For the record, I'll use "First Impressions" if I've only read one volume or only seen 2 or 3 episodes of a standard 13 or 26 episode series, "Impressions" if I've gone past the first impressions but haven't gotten much further than halfway, and "Reviews" if I've seen most or all of the series. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let's move on to "Kurohime."

The setting for the series is some kind of hybrid between a medieval fantasy world and the wild west: there are villagers living in thatched roof cottages, castles and knights next to gunslingers, gunslinging bandits, and old covered wagons out of an old western. Magicians in this world skip the traditional wands, staves, and scrolls in favor of guns with magic bullets that they craft (apparently on the spot) to have a variety of effects from healing to summoning stone golems and the like. In this world, the most powerful magician was a beautiful and buxom witch named Kurohime who challenged the gods and was punished for her arrogance: she was sealed into the form of a child with her powers suitably weakened and she would remain in this form until released by the power of love. The child, named Himeko, is a selfish, obnoxious and arrogant brat (apparently not that much different from before) who seems to constantly forget the limitations of her current form and is constantly in trouble. Enter her protector: Zero the gunslinger. As a boy 10 years ago, he was saved from death by Kurohime and fell in love with her on the spot and dedicated himself to the path of the righteous gunslinger that he saw in her at the time. He carries four guns, is crazy fast and accurate with them, but refuses to kill and instead chooses to disarm his opponents en masse. The last recurring character is Onimaru, a large man who apparently used to follow and love Kurohime 10 years ago, but was just being used and cast aside. He seeks revenge for this betrayal (and the tatoo on his back that says "dog" that Kurohime left him with) and has formed a personal army of bounty hunters for this task, but he's really more of a comical character who still pines for Kurohime somewhat.

At least up through volume 4, most of the chapters follow one of two outlines: 1) Onimaru and his gang chase Zero and Himeko and corner them, Zero puts himself on the line to protect Himeko, Himeko temporarily turns into Kurohime and saves the day or; 2) Zero and Himeko travel around looking for someone who can break her curse, happen upon Baddie-of-the-week who is misusing their magic for evil, Himeko's plans to run are foiled by Zero's sense of justice, then Zero puts himself on the line to protect Himeko who transforms into Kurohime and saves the day. Sometimes they mix it up and have Onimaru chase them and then they stumble on the bad guy. I apologize if I sound a little bit harsh, but frankly this series hasn't done much to impress me so far. The artwork is pleasant, if a little bit on the generic side, but it's just how mind-numbingly repetitive the story's been so far that really gets me. Now this is apparently a Shonen Jump series, so I understand that it's supposed to take awhile to build up your characters and flesh them out, but this is kind of ridiculous. Kurohime has something resembling character development finally start in volume 4, but it's a revelation that seems fairly obvious. Zero on the other hand is so predictable that it's almost annoying. In every chapter it seems, he makes some comment about how his guns are devoted to justice, he never hesitates to try and help some hapless bystander, and his devotion to Himeko, despite her being apparently completely contrary to the image he's idolized for the last 10 years is almost befuddling. But that's all he is. Seriously, by the end of volume 4 that is all there is to this guy. Since he has the same reaction every time a certain situation comes up, and since the types of situations never really change, there's never a chance to explore who he is or why. Maybe that's intentional but if so, you need to at least lay hooks or foreshadowing that there is something deeper behind the dull and cheerful surface. Something that will make you just kind of raise an eyebrow the first time you read it, but in time you come back and go, "So that's what that meant." Then at least there is some kind of trail that suggested that you knew where you were going with the character all along and didn't just suddenly change something to make him more interesting. *steps off soapbox*

With all my griping, you might think I hate "Kurohime," but that isn't the case. There's a reason that I try to read three or four volumes into a series before I abandon it. Even though I'm not particularly impressed by the way the series has started out, developments near the end of volume 4 have intrigued me enough that I will stay tuned to see if anything good comes out of it. This is not a great series and I doubt it ever will be, but it may yet become something entertaining. If you like shonen manga with tall, buxom ladies (the servants of the death god all look like a cross between a succubus and the Witchblade) you might want to check out "Kurohime." Just lower your expectations accordingly. Agree? Disagree? Got suggestions for improvement? Leave a comment please.

Age does NOT make everything better...

I was poking around the Xbox Live Marketplace the other day, and on a whim I decided to download the first episode of "Voltron: Defender of the Universe." I had watched a handful of episodes years ago as a kid and since the video was free, I figured "Why not?"

Where should I begin? This show is so bad it almost blew my mind. I've never seen the original anime (apparently called King of Beasts Golion according to Wikipedia) but I can only hope that it wasn't as retarded or poorly written as its English counterpart. I won't use the word "translation" because it seems large sections of the story were entirely rewritten for some reason. But the voice acting is just terrible; it reminds me a lot of the old Godzilla movie dubs where the actors ham it up, there's dialog in places where it doesn't seem like anyone is talking, and occasionally lines just seem to be thrown in because there were lip flaps there and the writers couldn't think of something that made sense. For example, the evil King Zarkon is gloating to his minions about his apparent victory and conquest of the galaxy when the camera cuts to his advisor's cat, then back to him. What does King Zarkon say? "Kitty is excited." I'm serious. The music and the sound effects are equally bad, invoking the worst aspects of the 1980's preoccupation with the synthesizer. And there are some places where sound effects make sense (like say, a building collapsing on enemy troops), but its eerily silent. Just the goofy synth music playing in the background.

As far as the animation itself, it looks to have been fairly low budget and roughly comparable to stuff from the same time frame. In a way, I give it a pass as far as animation quality just due to its age. If something new came out with the weird pacing and screen wipes and some of the awkward motion animations, I'd toss it out in a heartbeat. The only thing I can attribute it to is nostalgia and if I condemn the animation quality in Voltron, I have to condemn most of the cartoons from my childhood and I'm not quite ready to do that. I still have a stubborn, almost quixotic hope that one day, one of these series will live up to the image I have of it in my memory. But yeah. Unless you have a high tolerance for shitty acting or get a kick out of watching terrible dubs, stay FAR away from Voltron: Defender of the Universe. If you have fond memories of the show, stay even further away.

Anime Impressions: "Mnemosyne"

Well here's my first review post, but it's actually less of a "Review" and more of a "General Impressions" I suppose. Mnemosyne is a 6 episode OAV coming out in Japan and as of this posting, the first three episodes have been fansubbed into English. Each episode runs about 45 minutes including the opening and ending credits. Without giving too much away, the series follows Asougi Rin and her partner Mimi as they work as private investigators, but the two of them are immortal. They can be killed, but they possess extraordinary healing capabilites such that they always get back up eventually, although how long that takes seems to depend on their injuries.

For the most part the show plays out like a supernatural detective story and each episode is mostly a self contained mystery. A good portion of each episode follows the main characters as they sleuth around the city looking for clues using a combination of old fashioned footwork and techniques out of a spy movie. But beyond the individual stories is the larger mystery of why the girls are immortal and what enemies they have working in the background. This where most of the supernatural aspects of the show come in and so far each episode has built on the one before it and added a little bit more to the larger picture.

Mnemosyne is definitely a mature show and it takes itself seriously, so don't expect to see any super-deformed shenanigans or people getting punched through walls for comedic effect. The way the show uses violence and sexuality reminds me of an American R-rated drama. The violence is relatively realistic (by anime standards) in terms of what is physically possible and how much blood the human body contains and is used effectively to convey what is at stake for the characters and to heighten the tension. There is one scene that shows the aftermath of a torture session in the first episode that made me cringe just a bit, but it's nothing especially gory or explicit. The sexuality is similarly used, but geared a bit more to engaging the male interest as it takes the form of some shots of various bare nipples and the whole series has a noticeable "yuri" vibe, but I don't think it necessarily detracts anything from the series, with one exception that left me scratching my head as to what reason plot wise it was included at all.

Overall, I highly recommend watching this series if you're a fan of supernatural mysteries with a mature flavor. It's clearly building toward something, but I'll have to wait and see whether the payoff lives up to what it's potential. Agree? Disagree? Got suggestions for improved writing? Leave a comment.

"Never push the little, red button."

Well I'm not sure what I had in mind in terms of a posting schedule when I started this, but I'm pretty sure I've already broken it. Been spending most of my free time lately playing Smash Bros. Brawl on the Wii, trying to unlock characters and stages by playing through the single player SSE mode. It's kind of interesting what they were trying to do and I can appreciate it, but I don't think the game works very well as a side scrolling platformer. It's just kind of ... tedious. Of course, it's still a more interesting way of unlocking extras than "Complete 450 Vs. matches."

But that's enough of my excuses, Now I want to give a quick introduction of what I think I'll be posting in the future: short reviews of anime, video games, or whatever else happens to catch my interest at the time. Yes I do watch a fair amount of anime, both Region 1 DVDs and fansubs, and from time to time I will post short little impressions of a series I've seen (good or bad) or, if I'm feeling especially bold, a longer, more in-depth review. Having said that I'm not here to critique anime as art or to give numeric scores to shows. I'm not sophisticated or cultured enough for that. I will do a quick rundown of the setup, and then talk about what I did or didn't like about the show while trying to avoid spoilers. However, sometimes a particular gripe of mine is attachced to a specific event in the plot and I will bring up the context for that gripe. Should only happen in the longer review posts though and I'll try to place spoiler warnings at the head so you know what you're getting into. Don't have much else right now, but expect the first, quick review to go up in the next few days.

Thanks for stopping by.

-ZK

"The goggles! They do nothing!"

Hmm.... Never too late to jump on a bandwagon I suppose. This is just a test post for me to see what this thing looks like and a placeholder while I try to figure out something worth writing about.