The fresh twist you’ll read about on the back of the box for this particular Final Fantasy is the Digital Mind Wave system (DMW), an elaborate name for what essentially consists of slot reels appearing during battles to either imbue you with temporary power boosts, trigger a special move, or summon a magical beasty. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s appeal is incredibly limited… In the early stages of the game when all of the potential slot combinations result in powerful attack sequences you’ll find the randomly triggered DMW will often answer your prayers by helping you out of a tight scrape, but when the potential outcomes of the DMW diversify you’ll more often than you’d like find yourself having to wait 15 seconds for the game to gift you with a healing spell that you quite simply don’t need…
Genesis: Gets on your tits after a few hours, but has excellent hair.
It’s understandable, but I also can’t help but criticise the developer’s apparent fear of trying anything new. So many of the places and characters you encounter you’ll know from the original, which if anything over time just makes the world feel smaller. On top of this there’s also a huge amount of references and jokes made about people or places from FFVII, which led me to increasingly believe that there were few events in FFVII that hadn’t in some way been influenced by Zack. It’s hard to understate just how ludicrous it all feels at times, clearly highlighting the extent to which the game’s apparent purpose was to pamper rabid fanboys rather than adding to the FFVII heritage. Aside from this somewhat grating aspect there’s little to criticize in terms of the storyline’s progression, when it’s on form it’s every bit as epic and compelling as you’d expect it to be and boasts some truly incredible prerendered cutscenes. Particularly notable is a rather lengthy fight scene featuring Sephiroth which takes place on Junon’s giant cannon, which I can quite happily describe as being utterly jaw-dropping. Often you’ll find yourself forgetting you’re playing on a portable system, the whole experience rarely dropping the torch of home console sheen.
Mmmm... Midgar.
Other aspects of the game seem to have been more keenly geared towards the PSP’s portable nature: Crisis Core quickly points you in the direction of optional missions you can take part in for extra items and experience, something I was glad of in the early stages of the game where I admit I often found myself struggling a little with the combat difficulty. The difficulty level of each mission is clearly labelled, these labels changing as you grow more powerful (i.e. ‘Normal’ missions if not taken on will over time be reclassified as ‘Easy’ then ‘Very Easy’). These missions last no longer than a few minutes, making them absolutely perfect for playing on a handheld system when travelling short distances. On paper this sounds to be the perfect handheld RPG: Deep and epic when you’ve got the time, shallow and simple when you’ve got ten minutes to spare. Unfortunately I found out the hard way that if you spend too long playing missions rather than progressing with the main story then you’ll quickly break the balance of the game, finding a large chunk of the story-based fights incredibly easy from that point onwards. What confuses me most however is the encouragement the game gives you to take part in these missions - you unlock them in bunches of 4 or 5 and there seem to be bloody hundreds of the things (300, apparently) - playing too many of these missions at any stage will permanantly reduce the difficulty of the game. As mentioned earlier however, if you choose not to take on these missions a huge number quickly become ‘Very Easy’ by which point they simply become an absolute chore, which leaves me utterly bewildered as to when should be a good time to take these missions on…
