Fans of the long-running Final Fantasy Franchise have without a doubt already heard of Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core for the Sony PSP. For the rest of you, please understand that this latest installment is part of a series of games that has had several spin-offs and prequels to an extent that no other video game franchise has seen. Crisis Core follows the story of Zack, a Soldier 1st Class, who is essentially a new character for this game (He was included in some secret scenes from Final Fantasy 7).
The battle system for Crisis Core is closer to that of your typical “hack and slash” type of game. You have six materia (magic stones) slots that you can equip different types of stones in, each different stone influences what attacks Zack has available to him. These attacks range from different elements to special attacks, such as jump and aerial assault. Beyond the aforementioned attacks, there is really nothing much else to the basic battle system.
One key addition to the battle system is that of the DMW wheel (think of a slot machine). This interesting new twist has the potential to randomly activate different effects, such as temporary invincibility, no MP cost, all critical attacks and so forth. Limit Breaks, which are special attacks that have the potential to inflict excessive amounts of damage, are also activated in this way. Other then these few things, the battle system is somewhat lacking, which makes me somewhat sad.
The whole premise of Crisis Core is to show the real story behind Shinra (the mighty world leading company in FF7) and the main villain of the whole series, Sephiroth. This story fills in some blanks that the original game left unanswered, but unfortunately creates more questions than answers. For any fan of the FF7 universe, this game is a must, but if you are not a fan, you might want to rent it first. This is not to say that the game is bad, because it is nowhere close.
