Crisis Core was a project evidently designed to milk as much of one of Square's most successful stories as possible, but it must be given credit that the work behind it has led it to have its own rather strong identity, in spite of the HUGE problems it carries on its shoulders.
As someone very wise said, the original Final Fantasy 7 was a "goofy game, with serious moments," and it is evident that in some ways the writing of Crisis Core similarly tends toward some kind of compromise between moments of levity, elements of comedy, and serious themes, but the whole thing is really too unbalanced toward a story that takes itself too much, too seriously without any real depth, with one-dimensional characters and ridiculous dialogue at the limit of the bearable.
Leaving that aside, the real great strength of Crisis Core is the combat system: a very good compromise was built between the structure of a turn-based jrpg and classic action that works very well, stimulating both some strategic thinking and management of timing and execution of attacks properly; the gameplay is really fun and keeps you wanting more, but here the problems begin: while the huge catalog of side quests works very well as an additional challenge and provides the game with excellent longevity, as well as an absolutely adequate level of challenge, the balancing against the main quest seemed quite problematic to me, since even with 25/30% of side quests completed every enemy and boss in the story is obliterated without the slightest difficulty.
The result is that the main story ends up being really disconnected with the game itself, as much of the time is spent finding out what crazy new challenges can be found among the quests and farming useful equipment to complete the more difficult ones, and I personally found myself very unwilling to have to sit through another 10 minutes of an anime guy with angel wings reading existentialist phrases from a book before getting stomped by a giant chocobo.
I can't punish this game too much because I really enjoyed trying out original combinations of materias and abilities to always be rewarded in some way by the game once I got through the more difficult quests, but the fundamental problems with this project are really too many to not leave me with a sense of bitterness, particularly thinking about a story and franchise I am very attached to.
Nomura io ti voglio prendere a sberle fosse l'ultima cosa che faccio in questa mia vita da culo
As someone very wise said, the original Final Fantasy 7 was a "goofy game, with serious moments," and it is evident that in some ways the writing of Crisis Core similarly tends toward some kind of compromise between moments of levity, elements of comedy, and serious themes, but the whole thing is really too unbalanced toward a story that takes itself too much, too seriously without any real depth, with one-dimensional characters and ridiculous dialogue at the limit of the bearable.
Leaving that aside, the real great strength of Crisis Core is the combat system: a very good compromise was built between the structure of a turn-based jrpg and classic action that works very well, stimulating both some strategic thinking and management of timing and execution of attacks properly; the gameplay is really fun and keeps you wanting more, but here the problems begin: while the huge catalog of side quests works very well as an additional challenge and provides the game with excellent longevity, as well as an absolutely adequate level of challenge, the balancing against the main quest seemed quite problematic to me, since even with 25/30% of side quests completed every enemy and boss in the story is obliterated without the slightest difficulty.
The result is that the main story ends up being really disconnected with the game itself, as much of the time is spent finding out what crazy new challenges can be found among the quests and farming useful equipment to complete the more difficult ones, and I personally found myself very unwilling to have to sit through another 10 minutes of an anime guy with angel wings reading existentialist phrases from a book before getting stomped by a giant chocobo.
I can't punish this game too much because I really enjoyed trying out original combinations of materias and abilities to always be rewarded in some way by the game once I got through the more difficult quests, but the fundamental problems with this project are really too many to not leave me with a sense of bitterness, particularly thinking about a story and franchise I am very attached to.
Nomura io ti voglio prendere a sberle fosse l'ultima cosa che faccio in questa mia vita da culo