Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII [PSP/2007]

System Played: PlayStation Portable

Year Released: 2007

Year Reviewed: 2016

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII serves as a prequel to the celebrated entry in Square’s long running RPG series, part of the “Compilation of Final Fantasy VII” project along with the likes of Dirge of Cerberus and Advent Children.


Set during the war between Shinra and Wutai, you play as Zack (Cloud’s buddy/ subject of his schizophrenic obsession?!), a brash, young and enthusiastic member of Soldier who dreams of obtaining the rank of 1st Class.

Current Soldier 1st Class and poetry quoting plonker, Genesis (again modeled after J-pop emo, Gackt), has gone rogue with a bunch of other defectors, and along with your thrifty mentor and lover of honor, Angeal, you’re tasked to go stop them ...Who wouldn’t want to work for Shinra!?!

Along the way, you’ll meet Cloud, Aeris (Aerith), Sephiroth and other familiar faces from FFVII, leading up to that memorable trip to Nibelheim and a not so happy ending.


Crisis Core has a lot of the elements but isn’t strictly a traditional JRPG. There’s no overworld map as such, and while there are times when you’ll need to walk around and talk to people, they feel a bit tacked on.

Between missions, where you’re dispatched off to separate areas, you can wander around the Shinra building or Midgar’s Sectors 8 and 5 (the slums), but nobody you meet has anything very interesting to say.


Missions are quite linear, “run down these corridors” type affairs, frequently interrupted by battles, as has become the Final Fantasy formula in recent years.

Combat encounters are less random than usual, instead being ‘zone based’, kicking in when you enter a defined (but invisible to you) zone. Enemies then ‘appear’, and you fight them where you stand rather than it transitioning to another screen.

A lot of the time you can still tell where the zones are, as a corridor will get wider up ahead for no other reason. Sometimes you can avoid encounters just by skirting close to the walls and so avoid crossing the invisible line into the combat area.

I don’t think this is an especially good system. Sometimes you’ll have a fight, walk forward a bit or turn around, and it will initiate again instantly, since you must have edged out of and back into the bounding box.


Actual combat is a mix of real time and menu-driven commands. It’s not the most strategic combat system ever, but has a fast pace.

Materia returns as a device for equipping different magics and combat abilities (as well as various defensive and stat buffs).

With the L and R shoulder buttons, you’re able to cycle through commands, such as your basic attack, various Materia, items, etc. and then press X to confirm.

This scrolling isn’t always practical, as you need to do it in realtime while enemies are potentially attacking you (worst when you’re looking for a specific item, and have to go down a whole list). To avoid this, you have guard (Triangle) and dodge (Square) manoeuvres, which when timed right, can evade damage.

Mostly you’re just tapping away at X with normal attacks, usually against multiple enemies, and it auto-locks onto the nearest one for you.


Another large element of combat is the (stupidly named) "Digital Mind Wave", or DMW for short.

Basically it’s a set of slot machine reels which spin during combat, funded by SP (Soldier Points) which you acquire by defeating enemies.

When the reels match up, you’re granted various beneficial effects, such as stat buffs, special attacks (limit breaks), summons, etc. or Level Up’s for Zack and your Materia, depending on the combination.

There’s an element of randomness to it that I don’t think I like. You may not level up for ages, or you might land a bunch in a short period of time. More than that though, it’s just constantly interrupting you with little cutscenes every time the reels match.


The core story game isn’t that lengthy but is padded out by a long list of side missions, accessed via save points.

They’re all combat missions, where you’re dispatched to enclosed little corridor/cave/etc. areas, and have to endure a bunch of encounters as you make your way to a mini-boss at the end (who is usually just the same enemy type you’ve just fought xx times getting here).

The side missions are good for gaining new Materia, items and levelling up, but the trouble is that they’re incredibly repetitive and have zero variety to speak of. It’s just the same 4 or so environments you play in over and over, with just slightly different layouts, and there is barely any enemy variety either.

Getting through all the side missions might take 30 hours, but it’s like 30 hours of the same thing repeated. After a good 10 hours, I couldn’t be bothered anymore. It’s pure quantity over quality.

Focus too heavily on these side missions and you completely ruin the balance of the main game too, able to kill any enemies (even bosses) in a single hit due to being severely over-levelled.


The highlight of Crisis Core is the production values, with some great looking cutscenes (in the style of Advent Children) and quite a hard rockin’ soundtrack.

There’s also lots of voice over, but it saddens me to say that, despite some poignant moments, the story and script is mostly pretty bad. And everybody is very thin?

The structure and design of the game isn’t great either. It doesn’t feel like a consistent world, as you’re transported off to these disparate locations on missions, and then back to Midgar where there isn’t much to do. Combat is shallow and the side missions are blatant padding which just muck up the difficulty balance of the main game.

I’m always grateful for more Final Fantasy VII but this one falls a little short.

6/10