A game comprised of cool moments surrounded by a sea of things that get worse the more I think about them, with constant attempts to expand upon the world of Final Fantasy VII only serving to lessen the sense of wonder felt from it all. There were definitely elements that kept me hooked from start to finish, but it was often a bit of an uphill battle, as if I was being dragged along by the promise of something amazing waiting for me at the end, and while I cannot deny the fact that I did end up getting that with the ending, I struggle to say that the journey to that point was an especially fulfilling one. Everything this game does just feels a bit weird in general, with ideas that don't mesh together especially well, but don't carry enough charming incongruency to define the experience as anything other than stilted and unsatisfying.
The writing is where I feel especially conflicted, because while I love Zack's character, and will inherently appreciate the game on some level whenever Sephiroth is on screen, things come apart at the seams in most other areas. Crisis Core's narrative falls into the pretty common prequel trappings of attempting to explain and contextualise a lot of concepts from the original in ways that ultimately remove some of the magic that was present. Most unique elements from the original are now presented as something that there are actually multiple of instead, things that have totally existed before this one shown example. The best parts of this game's story are also just the parts that were already established as events in the original Final Fantasy VII, with most of the purely new ideas in this being a bit insufferable, even when taking into account that I normally love the sense of earnest campiness that this game embodies. The game's brevity unfortunately makes its pacing feel rather strange in particular, as it feels as if the game is attempting to reach a sense of scope and spectacle far greater than its short runtime properly allows, making the majority of the plot points feel very shallow and rushed through, never being given enough time to fully breathe and develop, being left feeling more like sketches of interesting ideas that never fully see fruition.
Of course, there are some bits that I just wholeheartedly dislike as well. Aerith's writing feels especially egregious in this game, removing all personality she had and boiling her existence down to someone who spends the entire game fawning over Zack and generally feeling strangely dumb and childish, not even in a way that a child would typically act though, she's just written so flatly that everything surrounding her also becomes less compelling. Genesis also sucks, he's fun at first but by the end of the game, his routine of reading out another passage from LOVELESS and tying it back into the events that are currently occurring is just tiresome. With all that said though, the ending of the game definitely is as good as people say, it feels like the rest of the game was built around that final sequence and the payoff was powerful enough to emotionally hit me even when I was becoming thoroughly disinterested with almost everything that was happening beforehand.
Unfortunately, the gameplay is where Crisis Core fumbles the most, being painfully tedious while also carrying a lot of prominent flaws that were exacerbated the longer the game went on. In theory, I think that the way the gameplay of this is kinda neat, bringing a more prominent real-time aspect into the Final Fantasy combat system, being halfway between an action rpg and a turn-based one, but the way it's handled left a lot to be desired. Everything that Zack does feels sluggish, with attacks being slow, blocking only being an option if you're not midway into another animation, and rolling being a very hit-or-miss mechanic. A lot of enemies have attacks that feel as if the intent was for the player to time a roll to dodge them, but the animations just don't line up in a way that will allow you to escape taking damage regardless, with the bigger, flashy combos always just being better to walk away from and not engage with the patterns in any way beyond knowing when a combo starts and when it ends. This puts the game in a position where each encounter will either feel fun to fight but look pretty boring, or vice versa, either sacrificing spectacle or enjoyment with interacting with the game mechanics.
The DMW system also really doesn't do it for me either, with the constant slot machine in the top left of the UI being a really unsatisfying way of handling level-ups and temporary buffs during combat. While it's clear that the DMW is not entirely random in the way it functions, anything provided to the player through this still doesn't quite feel as engaging or exciting as it should, due to the presentation of these upgrades still making it feel like luck. While it's clear that a big part of the game is to capitalise on the moments that you're powered up by this system to use your tools to their fullest potential, having such a pivotal element of the game be entirely out of your control feels pretty bad. I hate the way that the limits will also make the game halt its momentum and make you watch the DMW coming to a stop every time as well, it got tiring very early on and by the end could only be described as maddening. Bonuses being handed up via luck feels bad regardless of which difficulty the game is played on, since it either feels so easy that the DMW just feels as if it's handing you the win, or so tedious and frustrating that a lot of your victories will feel more due to luck than anything to do with you actually playing well. The side quests definitely contribute to the fact that the difficulty balancing is extremely off, since doing even a small portion of them will still be enough to put you in a position where you feel practically unstoppable in the main story. Unfortunately, the rewards you get from a lot of these is pretty essential to make full use of the combat system, since this is how the player can ultimately be given a lot of additional items and materia to give them the more interesting combat tools, making these side quests in an awkward position where they simultaneously provide the player with the means of more deeply experimenting with the game's systems, while also leaving them in a position where doing so it practically pointless since you'll be destroying everything anyway.
This game just didn't hit the way I was expecting it to, despite having so much that by all rights, normally would be up my alley. Crisis Core made me understand why Zack is such a beloved character, and gave me more Sephiroth, but beyond that, this just felt empty. Interacting with the game's systems was consistently unsatisfying, combat felt limp, half of the cast was a bore at best, and its focus on painfully repetitive side quests affected the main game's experience to such an extent that I'd say to just skip the vast majority of them if not that this is also the way to unlock more stuff to actually add a bit more complexity to the moment to moment gameplay. On the positive side of things, I at least now feel like I almost know enough FF7 stuff to get the most out of the remake.
The writing is where I feel especially conflicted, because while I love Zack's character, and will inherently appreciate the game on some level whenever Sephiroth is on screen, things come apart at the seams in most other areas. Crisis Core's narrative falls into the pretty common prequel trappings of attempting to explain and contextualise a lot of concepts from the original in ways that ultimately remove some of the magic that was present. Most unique elements from the original are now presented as something that there are actually multiple of instead, things that have totally existed before this one shown example. The best parts of this game's story are also just the parts that were already established as events in the original Final Fantasy VII, with most of the purely new ideas in this being a bit insufferable, even when taking into account that I normally love the sense of earnest campiness that this game embodies. The game's brevity unfortunately makes its pacing feel rather strange in particular, as it feels as if the game is attempting to reach a sense of scope and spectacle far greater than its short runtime properly allows, making the majority of the plot points feel very shallow and rushed through, never being given enough time to fully breathe and develop, being left feeling more like sketches of interesting ideas that never fully see fruition.
Of course, there are some bits that I just wholeheartedly dislike as well. Aerith's writing feels especially egregious in this game, removing all personality she had and boiling her existence down to someone who spends the entire game fawning over Zack and generally feeling strangely dumb and childish, not even in a way that a child would typically act though, she's just written so flatly that everything surrounding her also becomes less compelling. Genesis also sucks, he's fun at first but by the end of the game, his routine of reading out another passage from LOVELESS and tying it back into the events that are currently occurring is just tiresome. With all that said though, the ending of the game definitely is as good as people say, it feels like the rest of the game was built around that final sequence and the payoff was powerful enough to emotionally hit me even when I was becoming thoroughly disinterested with almost everything that was happening beforehand.
Unfortunately, the gameplay is where Crisis Core fumbles the most, being painfully tedious while also carrying a lot of prominent flaws that were exacerbated the longer the game went on. In theory, I think that the way the gameplay of this is kinda neat, bringing a more prominent real-time aspect into the Final Fantasy combat system, being halfway between an action rpg and a turn-based one, but the way it's handled left a lot to be desired. Everything that Zack does feels sluggish, with attacks being slow, blocking only being an option if you're not midway into another animation, and rolling being a very hit-or-miss mechanic. A lot of enemies have attacks that feel as if the intent was for the player to time a roll to dodge them, but the animations just don't line up in a way that will allow you to escape taking damage regardless, with the bigger, flashy combos always just being better to walk away from and not engage with the patterns in any way beyond knowing when a combo starts and when it ends. This puts the game in a position where each encounter will either feel fun to fight but look pretty boring, or vice versa, either sacrificing spectacle or enjoyment with interacting with the game mechanics.
The DMW system also really doesn't do it for me either, with the constant slot machine in the top left of the UI being a really unsatisfying way of handling level-ups and temporary buffs during combat. While it's clear that the DMW is not entirely random in the way it functions, anything provided to the player through this still doesn't quite feel as engaging or exciting as it should, due to the presentation of these upgrades still making it feel like luck. While it's clear that a big part of the game is to capitalise on the moments that you're powered up by this system to use your tools to their fullest potential, having such a pivotal element of the game be entirely out of your control feels pretty bad. I hate the way that the limits will also make the game halt its momentum and make you watch the DMW coming to a stop every time as well, it got tiring very early on and by the end could only be described as maddening. Bonuses being handed up via luck feels bad regardless of which difficulty the game is played on, since it either feels so easy that the DMW just feels as if it's handing you the win, or so tedious and frustrating that a lot of your victories will feel more due to luck than anything to do with you actually playing well. The side quests definitely contribute to the fact that the difficulty balancing is extremely off, since doing even a small portion of them will still be enough to put you in a position where you feel practically unstoppable in the main story. Unfortunately, the rewards you get from a lot of these is pretty essential to make full use of the combat system, since this is how the player can ultimately be given a lot of additional items and materia to give them the more interesting combat tools, making these side quests in an awkward position where they simultaneously provide the player with the means of more deeply experimenting with the game's systems, while also leaving them in a position where doing so it practically pointless since you'll be destroying everything anyway.
This game just didn't hit the way I was expecting it to, despite having so much that by all rights, normally would be up my alley. Crisis Core made me understand why Zack is such a beloved character, and gave me more Sephiroth, but beyond that, this just felt empty. Interacting with the game's systems was consistently unsatisfying, combat felt limp, half of the cast was a bore at best, and its focus on painfully repetitive side quests affected the main game's experience to such an extent that I'd say to just skip the vast majority of them if not that this is also the way to unlock more stuff to actually add a bit more complexity to the moment to moment gameplay. On the positive side of things, I at least now feel like I almost know enough FF7 stuff to get the most out of the remake.