CRISIS CORE! For a week I have done little beyond play Crisis Core. It was spring break and the weather was lousy.
I shall review this game, but not score it. This is pure information without any editorial spin.
Combat system (90% of the game):
Imagine the FF7 ATB system without all those menus. ..well, with only one of those sub menus, and even less control over your Limit Breaks. Selecting Item gets you a list of the whole 10 combat-usable items in the game, but everything else is selected by simply using the shoulder buttons.
The arrows and the joystick control movement, and the X button causes your character to perform the action selected using the shoulder buttons. If you select Item, the menu changes and you can select from it, but the game still doesn't pause. That's right, Item Pause is gone. It wasn't me.
Since there's only one character in the "party" you wouldn't be able to save your overdrives anyway, so they go off as soon as you earn them. The game makes you invulnerable right before this happens and waits for any pending strikes to hit, so you aren't dropped back into the driver's seat in front of a Dark Firaga, that you would have otherwise avoided. If you go into Limit Verge, but don't actually get a Break, then you do get dropped back into the meat grinder.
Leveling up and materia growth are now tied to overdrives, appearently to to add another dimension to those old school "Beat the game under level 15, without using any materia or changing your equipment, and only use items outside of battle" challenges.
A Paper Mario-esque block/dodge system has been added. Holding block halves physical damage from the front arc, but rolling negates damage for a brief instant, and allows you to move in a quick burst, however rolling takes a whole half a second to recover from, so it can be over used or misused, in addition to requiring good timing. Some attacks can be evaded by simply running a good serpentine pattern, but the small battle maps make this a bit chancy.
You have much greater control over the precise positioning of your character. Where you are standing actually matters, because strikes from behind are now also, automatic critical hits, and you can dodge many attacks by moving out of the blast radius or the potential target area, before the charge time is up. Don't think this is anything like FFT though because things happen in essentially real time, and it's always your turn.
Even battles that used to consist entirely of pushing X until all those weaklings are dead are improved, since you can now dodge(scoring kills, without getting hit in between, nets you additional Soldier Points, which are essentially XP), and maneuver to a more advantageous position (sword slashes have an area of effect sweep, so you can group up your targets and keep them all staggered).
Character Progression: Character progression comes through using Limit Breaks, which come from fighting long battles and having SP. Every time you Limit Verge(which happens automatically, every few minutes of sustained combat, if you have any SP to consume, and represents a chance of one of you limit breaks going off), you have a chance of gaining a level or leveling up one of your materia. This chance actually increases when your roll a limit break.
If you run out of SP you can no longer limit verge. If that happens, kill some weak organic targets in a kill-combo, and you'll be back in business. The Curse status also stops the wheels of character progression and super moves from turning.
If you combo kill your enemies with any degree of consistency, your SP level will generally rise much faster than you can expend it. Enemies that take that long to kill are usually worth massive piles of SP. Barring that, after a certain plot point, you may convert spare materia into SP, instead of discarding it.
Instead of turning your extra materia into SP you can consume that extra SP by fusing materia. Materia fusion generally only increaces the stat bonus' provided by a materia, but some combinations will generate higher grade materia. i.e. two fires or a thunder and a blizzard will form a fira, and fusing an elemental attack with a status attack will yield the dark version of that elemental attack. Most of the better spells can only be got this way, and fusing mastered stat boosting materia is the only way to get ones that give considerable stat boosts. However, the potent materia that enhance the frequency of your limit breaks can appearently, only be bought from the "Research Department QMC+", and summon materia are actually rare "Items" simply add addtional overdrives to your Limit Verges if you have them in your inventory.
Story:
The story is overall less predictable than one normally expects from a prequel. Yes, most of the flashbacks in FF7 happen, and a few of them happen exactly the way Cloud remembers them, but an additional plot has been added, so players of the original game will have new things to see. Some familiar characters have been brought back to make cameos or star in side quests, including Tifa Lockheart, Cloud Strife, the Turks , the evil Doctor Hojo and the great SOLDIER hero Sephiroth, but most of the original cast is merely mentioned, occasionally by name. Familiar locations abound, and Zack's quests and missions will take him to a variety of familiar places, though we don't get to see much of many of them.
The main cast is about equal parts old and new characters. Soldiers 1st Class Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth and their leader Director Lazard, are the major faces of the game, until Aerith (that's how their spelling it this time)and Cloud are introduced. Other than that the majority of the characters Zack meets are genaric villagers, or Shin-Ra SOLDIER or Security Operatives in face concealing uniforms. The Turks, particularly Tseng, get an allotment of camera time, and introduce a new face in the form of Cissnei, a new girl, who I gather has some relevance in another installment.
