Final Fantasy VII: Dirge if Cerberus - Completed

This game came with allot of hype for me, even though I have never played more then two hours of Final Fantasy VII, I did watch parts of advent children and know mostly who the characters are. The first thing anyone should keep in mind is that this is NOT AN RPG, it is an action shooter. You play Vince Valentine, a man with Chaos instilled into his body. He is also the character Matt Toth forgot to find his first time through FF7 (good job Matt).

First of the CGI is pure awesome the same quality as Advent children. Which is almost bad for the game when you switch back the playable graphics which are good, but completely sub par to the CGI. This game also has FFX syndrome, where in parts it’s almost like watching a movie rather then playing a game. But for the over all experience of the game to me the movie likeness was an asset.

The story was great, feeding you small pieces of information here and there and leading you to believe certain things and there’s a small twist that throws your perception off. It kept me entertained through the hours of play the game provides. I don’t know how linear the story is with FF7 or the other final fantasy’s for a true fan it may not be as fulfilling.

The game play was in honesty the weakest part of this game. I started out with aiming on semi-auto. You get the cursor near them and it will turn red, you fire and it hits them. Being fairly deficient at analog stick aiming this proved to be very frustrating. Matt suggested I try auto aim which essentially points towards the enemy and begs you to fire since it is locked on your target. You may think well that’s a cheap way to play the game and yes it is the easier way to play. But think about it for a moment I am simulating a person who has super human reflexes and skills with a gun. I am going play auto mode because it simulates the true abilities of the character. Once on auto mode the game was much more fun and flowed at a normal pace. The boss battles were fairly easy with lock on and fire then dodge, lock on fire and dodge. To me there could have been more to this, many games use the concept of bosses that have phases. Blow a piece of armor off here and then there and so fourth. Which to me gives a better sense of the battle and the power of the boss. More so then running in circles and not taking your finger off the trigger.

One of the concepts with in the game I liked was the weapon system. You have your base weapon and modify it many different ways to your liking the custom screen. This is a new concept to me and I enjoyed the tinkering aspect of it. Making a change firing a few shots and seeing if the damage increases or if the rate of fire made that much more of a difference. This defiantly was a bonus to the game play.

I give this game 8 out of 10. I am sure others will disagree with me. However CGI graphics and story cannot make up for bland game play. The game play level of difficulty should not be based on the players ability to aim. Also I think that $50 is a bit much to spend. I think $30 range I would have been more fulfilled with my purchase. Hey I am cheap what can I say.

Targets Destroyed: 1233
Accuracy Rate: 43%
Damage Sustained: 115347
Critical Hits: 464
Kill chains: 815
Iteams Used: 167
Magic Casted: 111
Mako Collected: 75%
Times KO'd: 3
Time Expired: 9 hours 15 minutes 23 seconds