Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

by Square Enix

• Complete the FINAL FANTASY VII experience and reunite with the most recognized RPG characters created by world-renowned character designer Tetsuya Nomura
• Witness stunning graphics, inspiring visuals, and gorgeous CG cut scenes coupled with top-notch voice acting in a 16:9 widescreen presentation, made possible by the PSP system hardware
• Innovative D.M.W (Digital Mind Wave) system enhances the action-packed, engaging, real-time battle system, allowing players to unleash special attacks or call upon iconic Final Fantasy summons
• Take on challenges with the all-new “Hard Mode” developed exclusively for the North American audiences
• Acquire unique accessories made available through 300 side missions to further enrich the gameplay experience

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0014X7SQ6
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches ; 3.2 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: March 25, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (189 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,075 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #4 in Video Games > Sony PSP > Games > Role-Playing

Product Description

Edition: Standard

Seven years prior to the events of FINAL FANTASY VII — The Shinra Company is rapidly increasing its influence through its monopoly on mako energy and military might. With the burgeoning city of Midgar as its base and symbol of prosperity, Shinra is on the verge of establishing absolute dominance over the world. SOLDIER is a group of skilled combat operatives within Shinra. The elite within the group — those strong enough to be deemed SOLDIER 1st Class — are respected and idolized by the citizenry. Zack is a young SOLDIER 2nd Class who aspires to become a 1st. He spends his days carrying out assignments under the guidance of his 1st Class mentor, Angeal. During an operation in Wutai, a large number of SOLDIER members, led by 1st Class operative Genesis, go missing. The severity of the situation prompts Shinra executives to deploy even more SOLDIER operatives in hopes of bringing an end to the war with Wutai—and conducting an investigation into the mass desertion. The ones assigned to the mission are Zack, Angeal, and the 1st Class hero who is known the world over as Sephiroth... What truths lie behind Genesis's disappearance? What secrets bind the three SOLDIER 1st Class operatives? For Zack, a cruel and fateful struggle awaits...

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 108 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Prequel April 24, 2008

By G. Lindquist

Edition:Standard

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

I can't believe I am the first after weeks of this game being released to make a review!

Nonetheless, here we go.

This game is amazing for a portable game. The graphics and sound are just far above what you expect when you think portable gaming and they actually tied the story to the original well too.

Gameplay: The Gameplay is top notch. Not only do you explore towns, talk to NPCs and have the Final Fantasy experience you would expect, but there are also side missions that act as a quick fix incase you don't have enough time to actually focus on the story. You can play these whenever you find a save point and they serve as a nice way to get you some extra potions and experience. Interactivity is similar to what you would find in the classic game as far as finding items by exploring the environment and seeing unique sights because you were curious enough to explore every nook and cranny. There are even side missions like having professor hogo making you face huge monsters in an attempt to kill you because you disturbed him. The Story is what shines the most in this game, and it is by far one of the most engrossing stories of the series.

Graphics: This game seriously looks like the first Kingdom hearts on the PS2. Their facial expressions and animations are the best you can find on a portable system to date. This game could be ported to the PS2 and considered to have gorgeous graphics. The CG scenes are on par with Advent Children.

Sound: The Voice acting is actually pretty good, and the music from Final Fantasy VII that was redone for the game isn't bad either, but the new music to the game is pretty forgettable. I honestly can't stand the shinra building's theme, which feels like it is 10 seconds long and just set to loop.... This is one of the game's biggest strengths and downfalls at the same time.

Replay Value: You could speed through the story and still expect hours upon hours to be spent doing side missions. The story itself takes a good amount of time to beat. Expect to invest maybe 30 hours into this game.

This game is a fantastic deal. Expect to have a blast with it and you wont be disappointed.

SPECIAL NOTE: There are some things to this game that you might want to take into consideration. I started playing this game on my old PSP then early into it bought the new model. The difference is HUGE. The load times on the new PSP are cut not only in half, but takes the load time from up to 18 seconds at some points to maybe 3-4 tops. There is also a very low amount of blur when Zack is running around on the screen on the new one compared to the old one. The new screen is brighter, higher refresh rate and the load time on the new one is way shorter. The new PSP is almost a must for this game otherwise load times will destroy the experience. Read more ›

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Crisis Core May 5, 2008

By T. Paslay VINE™ VOICE

Edition:Standard

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

Since the other review is very lengthy, and covers pretty much everything, I'll keep this short and sweet. If you're a fan of the Final Fantasy series (particularly VII) then you should buy this game. If you don't have a PSP, this game is worth buying one for. I didn't have a PSP, this game came out, I bought a PSP to play it, I am extremely happy with my decision. I do recommend playing through Final Fantasy VII first as you will appreciate the characters, environments, and cameos a little more. If you do happen to play this first, I can almost guarantee you'll be shopping for a copy of VII when you're done.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular May 30, 2008

By N. Durham HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Edition:Standard

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

I was never too fond of RPG's when I was younger, no matter how much I loved video games. Final Fantasy VII changed that, along with how I looked at the genre, as I, like many others, became addicted to the game's emotional storyline and well-rounded characters. Since then, we have seen a number of tie-ins, spin-offs, and even feature films based on the Final Fantasy VII universe, and now, Crisis Core has finally arrived. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is a prequel to the game, where you play as Cloud's old friend and partner Zack, and uncover secrets and revelations that are full of surprises, and lead up to the events of Final Fantasy VII. First off, the game is is simply gorgeous to look at. Not just the cut-scenes, which themselves are beautiful and stunning, but even the in-game graphics look great, making this undoubtedly the best looking RPG to hit the PSP, and the game's voice acting is even better. The game's combat system is also worth mentioning because it isn't quite turn based, and isn't quite real time. Instead, it is a fast moving system that is quite fun in itself, even if it may come off as a bit too easy for some. Leveling up and performing Limit Breaks is now determined by the slot machine-esque DMW system, which is a fun little twist as well. There are familiar characters abound as well: Cloud, Aerith, Tifa, and of course, Sephiroth. The game's story wonderfully weaves into FFVII mythology, and offers some new perspectives on Zack and Sephiroth, and those respects alone, Crisis Core is worth picking up. All in all, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is a stunning achievement that is an absolute essential addition to your PSP library, and needless to say, if you love everything Final Fantasy VII and you own a PSP, you have to pick up Crisis Core.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Critical review, includes the good and the bad September 6, 2008

By Dan

Edition:Standard

Fun: 4.0 out of 5 stars   

First off I will just say I loved the game, but there are a few areas I'm going to note on in my review that could have used a bit of work. So don't think this is any sort of hate-bashing review, because it isn't.

First I will cover the scales. 1 is the worst, 10 is the best

Story: 10 - Accurate and informative. Takes you back and reveals the FF7 history
Battle System: 6 - I will explain this in detail below as to why it is a 6
Game Mechanics: 8 - Decent convenience factors added such as stores and missions from the main menu
Replay Value: 5 to 8, situational based - Will explain below
Graphics & Visuals: 10 - Top notch for a hand held
Game flow: 8 - This is how often you actually get to play the game without being interrupted by cut scenes or movies
Mini-games: 7 - Some are enjoyable, others are very tedious after a while
Over-all: 8.5 - Extremely enjoyable, has a few faults, but none detract too much from the overall enjoyment.
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Further Explanations of above noted sections, note these are going to be the faults I found, that doesn't mean this game is bad, it just means it has these faults as any game has a few:

Battle system-

You may be asking why I rated this so low, well... while the non turn-based elements that they incorporated into this game are good in theory, in practice they are a bit cumbersome in places. The first place they missed a bit here, was the DMW system. Now you might be thinking, "Yes, I have read about how people don't like the system". The problem is, it is not that I don't like the system, I just think that they could have polished a few elements with it. I will name these polish points as "smudges"....

First smudge - 'phase modulations', you will on countless occasions run into a situation where you are JUST about to finish off the last monster and end a battle when you get forced into one of these phase modulations. Sure it's cool the first few times to finish off the monster with a cool attack, but after this happens 20+ times it will start to irritate you because you just want to kill that last monster and move on. A lot of the times when this happens you will get either a useless result out of it, No result, or a longer attack that finishes off the monster but was a waste of time since you were just about to deal the killing blow with your sword. The useless result factor comes into play when you get a buff to an element that was already maxed/buffed before the phase modulation. They also on occasion added flashing images while the DMW is spinning the middle image. These images cannot be bypassed after seeing them a first time, which wastes even more of your time. This also leads into my next area to cover.

Smudge two, Phase Modulation Attacks - Aside from not being able to skip the aforementioned images the attacks that come from the DMW also cannot be skipped. The summon attacks you get can be skipped, however only certain ones. Why SE (Square-enix) chose to punish the player like this by making them watch the same attacks over and over without the option to bypass them after the first few times is beyond me. It just adds even more wasted time to what could have otherwise been a good idea, if only they added an option to skip these after the first time it would have been MUCH better. Do you as a player honestly -WANT- to sit through the same 5-10sec long attack sequence over 50 times throughout the game? I didn't either. You can also land a 'late' phase modulation attack which will occur after you've killed all the monsters. That means you will have to watch the sequence anyway, even after the battle should have ended.

That is it for the things that could have been fixed with the DMW, the next aspect that didn't seem to work quite as well as it could have, would be the pace of the battles being too fast to actually execute needed commands. You will be left running and dodging just so you can use a healing item, or curative spell. It isn't hard to scroll over to items or a spell, but with the speed of the battles and the constant attacks coming from the monsters it makes it very difficult to pull off. Far more difficult that it needs to be. This adds to the 'cumbersome' factor that I mentioned above.

Replay Value elements mentioned above:

This game has replay value, that I won't deny, however depending on how you played the first time through it could either have great replay value, or almost none at all. If you went through the game the first time just to see the story and play the game casually then the second play-through with the New Game+ will be enjoyable. However, if you spent time getting levels, powerful items, and doing all the missions then your second play through will be so easy that most replay value will be taken out. The only remaining value at that point would be to watch the story a second time. While this is enjoyable the rest of the game will have almost all of the challenge removed. I don't recommend a New Game+ if you went through and made your character a powerhouse. If you fit this category then you will get more replay value if you simply start the game over from scratch.

Finally, I am going to cover missions. Since this is one of the major side-quests/mini-games in CC. This is also why that section only received a 7. Mission, these were a GREAT idea, HOWEVER, poorly implemented. Why do I feel these were poorly implemented? I feel SE wasted far too much time working on the quantity of missions, but didn't spend as much time working on their quality. As you play through them you will notice there are only about 10-15 maps total that get recycled over and over again in different ways. There are some places where dialogue is also recycled. However there are very few missions where you actually get dialogue, and only one mission where you get dialogue scenes in every sub-mission. The lack of dialogue adds to the fact that they didn't have any real storyline added to the missions. It was pretty much just: Accept mission, collect items in a recycled map, find and fight mission objective boss/monsters, rinse and repeat. After the first 150 or so missions of doing exactly what I just mentioned it will get painfully tedious. All tedium could have been removed had they just cut the missions in half, to say 150, and used the rest of the time adding quality to them. In other words, adding storyline or making a larger selection of maps. Personally I don't care if they recycled the maps, but I wish they added some sort of storyline to missions so that they weren't just the same exact thing repeated over and over again x300. In fact, after the 153rd or so mission I started to get more enjoyment out of reading the Shinra briefs you get when selecting the mission than doing the missions themselves.

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Phew! Now with all of that out of the way (Sorry I am long winded) I'll get to the actual review since I covered a lot of things above this might be shorter than the above areas.

CC, being the prequel to the very famous FF7 delivers what I consider to be a KO punch as a game. The storyline does not disappoint you, if you were playing this game in hopes to learn what happened before FF7 then you will not be disappointed. The flow of the story I felt was very smooth and well organized. From the development of bonds such as you will see Cloud and Zack form, to Sephiroth's descent into insanity. All of this in recognizable locations from FF7 that have been redone in stunningly beautiful graphics. The game starts out right away grabbing you firmly with a great action movie sequence done in what can only be described as PS3 quality graphics. I was shocked at just how detailed and realistic this was for a hand-held system. The real-time graphics (what you see when you are running around fighting, etc) are not as high quality as the movie sequences, but they are still amazing. The movies give the graphics a 10, while the real-time graphics get an 8. They are still visually amazing for a hand-held system.

CC has also added something new to familiar elements such as materia. They have added what they call a materia fusion system. While I found this system to be a bit more confusing that it needs to be you can easily find information about it online and it adds a bit of an interesting twist and gives you something to work toward in strengthening a certain materia with specific stats. If you just wish to experiment it will provide plenty of that. However if you plan to seriously work on it then I'd highly suggest reading up on it because it is very difficult to figure some things out on your own.

Phoenix downs in this game have also received a slight change in functionality. Since you are the only one that will be fighting monsters and bosses instead of using it on a fallen comrade you either use it on yourself during battle, or out of battle. What this then does is give you a buff called "raise" that does not go away until you die. When you die this buff instantly revives you with full HP. Very helpful for certain bosses, what this basically means is, if you have enough phoenix downs you can survive indefinitely as long as you always keep one active on yourself.

The battle system, as mentioned above, goes off of the new DMW system. Which is something like a slot machine. Most of which consists of random results and overall not one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game. Adds a bit too much of a clunky and at times very interrupting element to the game. It is also incorporated into how you level up. Now, while I was not overly thrilled with how you level up in this game, I've learned that it is far from random. The level up system goes based off of what would seem like random DMW spins, but there is still hidden EXP that comes into play. When you get a certain amount of EXP over what you need for your level the DMW will have a 100% chance to hit the level up spin. This was confirmed when I was cursed and fought for about an hour, then after the curse wore off leveled up 5 times in a row.

I didn't much care for the "Activating Combat Mode" and "Conflict Resolved" messages before and after every battle. Had they given you the option to enable or disable these then it would have been alright. The problem here is that after these messages happen for the 500th time they will start to either get stuck in your head, give you a headache, or just become -really- irritating.

CC brings back an old element that you might have seen in other games you may have played. The ability to break the traditional 9999 values that we've been accustomed to, with the use of special accessories and materia fusion. With the right items you can get your HP to 99,999, and your MP and AP to 9999. Furthermore you have the ability to do upwards of 99,999 damage with a single attack. It all depends on what you have equipped and what abilities you use.

In CC you get two combat bars other than your HP. The other two would be your MP, and your AP. MP should be self-explanatory, it is used to cast magic spells. Your AP is used for special attack materia, one such example is an attack materia that has you spin in a circle and attack all enemies around you in a 360 degree strike. There are many many other different types of attack materia that do all sorts of things, but you'll have to find out for yourself.

The musical score in this game has been mixed up a bit. There is old and recognizable themes, some that have been revamped, and others that have not been. This is mixed with a all new musical score that personally I found to be enjoyable. I am one for nostalgia, so I personally would have liked to see more of the old FF7 music in this game, but that's just me.

So what this all boils down to is a very solid game, it has a few places where it could have been improved upon, some places where painful tedium could have been removed, and a few irritating elements that could have either been redone, or completely removed. However no game is going to be perfect in every aspect, this one makes up for the few issues with a compelling and immersive storyline, an overall nostalgic feel, high quality and breath-taking graphics, and a cast of enjoyable characters, new and old. I highly recommend this to anyone, as it is one of the best games for the PSP. Read more ›