Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus review

10 years ago, I was on a downer. I’d got my prized possession, a PlayStation, yet couldn’t find a game that justified this ‘next generation’ (the 3D generation) of gaming. I rented game after game trying to find the massive step up in gameplay or quality, and despite the great games available, it took me a while to realise that the graphical step up didn’t necessarily make the games play much better, especially since most developers were just finding their feet in what works. I finally came to the conclusion that ‘Next Gen’ didn’t necessarily mean that everything would be better, and that disappointed me.

Then, at the pit of my despair came along Final Fantasy VII.

Salvation

Renewing my belief in the future of gaming, the ridiculously in depth story, rich strategic gameplay, many minigames and beautiful graphics showed me, and a lot of other gamers why this was the game to own. Now we have some kind of a sequel, which follows on three years after the first game, and a year after Advent Children, the CGI movie released last year.

As you can imagine, there is a large mythology surrounding the game, not least because of the original that would take the whole review for me to get close to explaining the plot of. Suffice to say, you’ll be missing out on an amazing experience if you don’t start with Final Fantasy VII and in some ways this game sidesteps many of these plot points to dive into the new things. Unfortunately, since so much of Dirge of Cerberus is focussed on story, without a grounding in the FFVII universe, your experience will suffer.

We all love Valentine

The actual gameplay is a departure from the Square RPG we are all (hopefully) used to, as it seems to take a closer bearing to Devil May Cry, as a 3rd person action adventure title. You’ll spend most of your time as Vincent Valentine, the seemingly vampiric bonus character from the original, linearly traversing the various well designed and varied locales, shooting enemies with an ever-growing choice of customisable weapons (up to three equipped at a time, with a special treat extra gun for the final level) and clawing at any that get too close to you.

While the lack of much freeform action makes the game almost identical on repeat play-throughs, the weapons customising keeps you interested, allowing you to assign different materia (magical abilities) and accessories to alter your statistics to each piece of firepower.

Between each stage you have the chance to upgrade your own skills and RPG-esque statistics dependant on your performance, helpfully broken down into simple sections scoring how much magic you cast, damage you sustained or even your general accuracy to grade you for the level.

Undoubtedly your skills will improve as you play the game, not least because of a decent training scenario for you to optionally begin on, but also because you will be causing more damage and receiving less. Naturally, in the style of Square Enix games, your enemies will grow in strength with you, making it less of a bonus when you get a little more powerful, but a necessity to survive and keep up with your competition.

What was that big white fluffy thing anyway?

At one moment, you take control of another character, Cait Sith in a more stealthy ‘do not get caught’ section that seems tacked on and very pointless to let us know that something else is going on at the same time. Perhaps adding another minute of cinematics to the hours already available was considered overkill.

Yes, you heard me right, in-between each level is minutes of story expanding cinematic wonder to delight a FFVII fan and bore anyone unfamiliar to the recurring characters, stunning revelations and lifestream ramblings. Some seem to go on for over 15 minutes, which seems like a treat if you are rabidly absorbing every inch of the world, and a stressful yet skippable delay if you are tired and waiting for it to end before going to bed.

Worthy of being told, the story expands on Vincent’s past, parents, and links to the mysterious force of ‘Chaos’ that seems to oppose Omega (yes, a Weapon). Unfortunately, it takes a long time before you feel that your actions are directly relevant to the overall story arc, rather than the micro-mission style of trying to protect civilians for your own sense of well-being or escorting a child that happens to know how to get into a warehouse that may be necessary to enter.

That said, once you do realise your destiny in saving the world, and the colossal implications of the events taking place, the game seems to hold its attention to the exciting but perhaps a little easy conclusion.

What’s in my way?

As a 3D action adventure with a jump button (and indeed double jump), it seems only natural that certain aspects of movement are restricted.

Climbing ladders, while having animations that link up with the actual rungs (it’s 2007, shouldn’t this kind of thing be standard by now?) is devastatingly slow, and even though the game prevents you from falling off the edge of cliffs for many forgiving reasons, certain barriers and cover cannot be vaulted over despite jumping well over twice as high as you would imagine. This only serves to highlight the linear control that SquareEnix have forced upon us.

Fortunately however, in the trend of other ‘Final Fantasy’s, there are plenty of boss battles to sink your teeth into. From giant mechanical robots to seemingly invincible members of a secret Shinra organisation, the Tsviets, boss battles are always dramatic, exciting and perhaps less thrillingly almost always beatable by instigating a limit break and slashing away in close combat until the enemy keels over.

These limit breaks are brought about by using an item imaginatively called a ‘Limit Breaker’. Potions, Phoenix Downs and other classics to the series make a welcome return, but are activated mid-game by scrolling through them all with the left d-pad arrow, and using the selected item with a right d-pad touch. Certainly using the buttons to their full extent, it seems unfortunate how difficult it is to find exactly the item you are looking for, and use it in time to help you in the midst of a sprawling battle.

Another helping hand

Shops (that look like large jukeboxes) litter the world that you will be exploring, giving you regular chances to buy more healing materials, upgrade your guns (with enough gil, the Final Fantasy VII currency), but it threatens to become a game of constantly returning to the closest shop to replenish your health at some points where you feel the odds to be quite harshly stacked against you.

Plenty of variety naturally can’t help but revisit Midgar, and even starts in the suspiciously named town, Kalm, and just reinforces the fact that the game builds on such a well established franchise that it can’t help but both please and disappoint.

The scale of the game is pitiful in comparison to the original (though not to other games of the genre – my first play through took 11 hours on normal difficulty), but it brings back such great memories that it is hard not to forgive each of the slight faults that crop up through the game.

There are no where near as many secret extras to keep a gamer entertained after playing through, although shooting hidden ‘memory capsules’ around the levels unlocks the cinematics to rewatch, and gives another reason to keep playing for a completist. After the credits roll, (and potentially a secret ending,) an element of satisfaction will creep into your heart, safe in the knowledge that Final Fantasy VII was sufficiently different to avoid its memory being destroyed, and Dirge of Cerberus brings enough to the genre for a fan of the original to enjoy visiting Gaia once more. Plus those difficult extra missions unlocked one by one after finishing the main game are certainly going to keep me occupied at least until Final Fantasy XII appears in the UK.

See you in a couple of weeks for that gem of a release.