Once the difficulty level starts to slip the combat system begins to show cracks, losing much of its charm; strategic spell usage and retreating quickly being replaced repetitive attack button hammering and occasional dodging. For comparisons sake, imagine the combat system from the start of Kingdom Hearts but without the subsequent progression. To make matters worse it’s at about this point in the game where the materia synthesis system opens up, letting you combine different pieces to fuse more powerful magic to equip Zack with. The system is everything you’d expect, but when you’re easily dispatching most enemies without using any skills or magic it’s hard to see any reason to get excited about working towards more powerful items; if anything I chose to avoid them to prevent the difficulty curve from slipping any further… Unbalanced power also totally undermines the DMW system, as often the special attacks summoned are little more powerful than a normal combo. Once the sweet spot of combat difficulty has passed you by it’s hard not to resent the DMW system for wasting your time by breaking up the action. Overall enjoyment of the game once you’ve hit this point isn’t helped when Zack seems more concerned about helping Aerith make a flower cart than say, taking down a highly dangerous rogue agent. Not that it’s his job or anything… Again though, I realise this boils down to a split of opinion: If going on dates with Aerith doesn’t sound as unpleasant and cringeworthy as it really, really isthen you’ll probably find nothing bad to say about this game.
Don’t know who this is? Don’t buy Crisis Core.
The more I play Crisis Core the more I can’t help but feel that for too long down the line its developers didn’t quite know what they wanted it to be. The pick up and play mission mode and the traditional story progression just don’t seem to fit, it feels as if they were indecisive about which direction to focus on and ended up throwing them both together in a manner that feels rushed. The result is a game with a difficulty curve which as far as I can tell assumes that mission mode doesn’t even exist, which before long contorts a simple but satisfying combat system into a rather dull button masher with more pointless facets of customization than you can shake a four-slotted stick at.
As you’ve probably gathered by now there’s an awful lot that Crisis Core doesn’t manage to get right, although much of this is most likely the result of the development team being understandably indecisive when dealing with what is for many the most precious franchise in the world. Often it feels they were afraid to try and change anything that might cause offense to the extent that they kept elements that didn’t actually fit. Some of the obvious examples of this are a magic system that doesn’t suit one-man combat terribly well and a world to explore that feels a flavour of familiar that verges on stagnant. For the first few hours seeing well known faces and places is a nostalgic treat, but before too long you just feel like a tourist being shown around a Squaresoft museum. It’s certainly by no means a bad game, but nothing about Crisis Core feels new or fresh. It’s fun and nostalgic, just don’t expect it to expand upon the FFVII universe in any way whatsover.
Whilst it does have its undeniable charms, first and foremost Crisis Core is designed to be fan service: Whilst the weight of the FFVII hallmark gives the game an undeniable sense of gravity, at times it feels as if it also smothers it.
