How much is too much of a good thing? Well, if you're a Final Fantasy VII fan, you're about to find out. Advent Children, FFVII: Before Crisis, Dirge of Cerberus for the PS2, Dirge of Cerberus on the mobile phone, cameos in Kingdom Hearts II, and a special edition of the Advent Children DVD...seriously, how much more could you possibly want?
I consider myself a fan of the game. It's not the best FF of all time, but it's in my personal top 2, and it is one of the more enjoyable RPGs I've ever played, and a very important one. It also holds a special place in my heart, as it was the first big game I'd ever worked on. That all being said, I think my desire for all things Final Fantasy VII peaked after watching the Advent Children movie once. Sure, it looked nice, and it was cool to see the old gang get back together for a fight. Unfortunately, this wasn't a movie about any of the characters other than Cloud and Sephiroth. The entire movie is basically Cloud running around making sure nobody else gets any XP. In the end I believe the movie's message (It's totally acceptable to beat the crap out of emo teenage pseudo-goth Sephiroth cosplayers.) was fine, but the route it took to get there was unacceptably long-winded and over the top.
Then I decided to take a gander at Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. I figured, it was an action game, it'd have to go by much quicker, and maybe the change of genre would bring a little life back to the material. What I ended up with was an 8-hour Tetsuya Nomura self-love fest.
Story
It's been 3 years since Meteorfall, or for those of you who aren't hip to the new terminology the game world has created to enable easy self-referencing, it's been 3 years since the events of Final Fantasy VII took place. (It is 1 year after the events from the Advent Children movie.) All of a sudden people have started disappearing, and these crazy troops have started appearing.
Wouldn't you know it? It all has to do with the Shina-ra Power Corporation. The Chairman had, for some reason, commissioned a special unit of troops even more secretive than S.O.L.D.I.E.R., the Turks, and all the other secret troop regiments in FFVII. They were named Deep Ground, and their purpose was to kill with even less hesitation than the other regiments. If that wasn't enough, there was a splinter group of these folks known as the Tsviet who are rumored to be more deadly than the rest of the Deep Ground soldiers combined.
Vincent is informed of all this by Reeve, the Commissioner of a group called the WRO, who are effectively like the UN or something. Reeve and Cait Sith (the embodiment of my least favorite story arc from FFVII) assist you and give you the information to keep Vincent apprised of the situation. Once again, it's time to save the planet...for the 3rd time in 3 years.
Gameplay
The game plays like your standard 3rd person shooter. The only real exception is probably that Vincent gets a double jump and he can customize his weaponry a little bit differently than you can in the next 3rd person shooter over on the shelf.
X jumps and double jumps. Square allows you to crouch, and the O button does melee attacks. For the most part, though, you're just going to be using L2 to switch between your weapons and R1 to shoot your gun, while occasionally hitting L1 to use your magic attack, or using your Limit Break item to turn into Chaos.
Along the way, you'll pick up extra guns for Vincent's arsenal. You can configure these, a la Parasite Eve, to give your guns different effects. You can attach Fire Materia so your gun has a special fire attack, or give the gun a machine gun stock so that it fires more rapidly. Customize your gun to fit your shooting style, or make sure you've got a variety of weapons so you're versatile.
Every once in a while you'll see a little glowing multicolored rectangle. Shoot it, and you'll be able to access a cutscene in the movie theater. (You know, as opposed to just encountering that cutscene in the game, and having it be unlocked.)
You'll basically jump, dash, and shoot your way from cutscene to cutscene occasionally encountering a boss or a mini-game in between. I can't really say the game mechanics are awful, they're just very vanilla.
At the end of each level, you'll be given given a grade and the choice of levelling up Vincent or turning his EXP into cold, hard gil. Seeing as how there was money aplenty littered throughout the level, I never chose this option, but it's there if you want it.
Graphics
There are problems with the clipping all over the place, the enemies recycle very quickly, and there's slowdown in a lot of the later levels. That being said, you visit a fair number of different locales, and the cutscenes do look pretty nice. I say the graphics average out over the whole, but there's a lot of peaks and valleys that comprise that average.
Audio
If you liked the US dub of Spike from Cowboy Bebop, you're in luck. Vincent's done by the same actor, and he does the same voice for Vincent. I wish Yuffie was done better, but that's mainly a fault of the writing and dialogue rather than the actress not being up to snuff. The rest of the cast, minus Rosa the Crimson don't sound awful.
The background music is a lot of the familiar themes from FFVII, only remixed, and most of it is pretty good stuff. Even the Gackt tracks aren't bad, and they're included in-game in their original Japanese. The sound effects aren't bad, either.
Gripes
Uh...this was not a story that needed telling. It feels like all these post-FFVII additions to the storyline only serve as fan service to people who liked one particular character, and if anything they really really pull down the world of Final Fantasy VII down.
Both Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus have a boss character thought to be dead who gets brought back to life. Seriously, Nomura, what the hell? You created new characters to fill the void, only a really awful storyteller then needs to fall back on a second crutch and revive dead characters to bridge the new story and the old.
But, it appears that Nomura is just a really awful storyteller. The tidbits of information surrounding Vincent's past are encased in a story where the threat to the planet is even greater than the threats faced in Final Fantasy VII AND Advent Children, yet Vincent has to effectively defeat them by himself. When the others do show up in "Dirgerus" to help Vincent out, Cloud and co. can neither defeat any of the 4 bosses they face, nor can they complete their assigned missions. All this despite the fact that just a year ago in the timeline, Vincent couldn't kill a damn thing.
Where are my extras? All I get is a stupid 2 minute clip of Gackt. Where are the modes where I can play through the game as another character? I figured Yuffie would be unlockable since she figures prominently in some of the story...nope. Barret's got a freaking gun grafted to his arm, you wouldn't even have to change the core game. But no...the only character you'll ever get to control is Cait Sith. That's called “no replay value”.
Overall
People used to complain about Hironobu Sakaguchi being too arrogant, and forcing his visions upon the world when really, that's not what people were playing the games for. Too much Sakaguchi is how Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within got made. Now that he's gone, Square is having to deal with too much Nomura. If the most recent incarnation of Musashi and Dirge of Cerberus are an indication of what he's going to do with his reign, I say it's time for his reign to end. Yeah, the guy can add extraneous belts to a costume like nobody else, but his storytelling's about as subtle and layered as the nutritional information on a canned ham.
If you're a fan of Final Fantasy VII, do yourself a favor, pretend that this doesn't exist and hope that if a remake ever does happen, that it gets done under the care of someone else.
