Thoughts on Crisis Core

Currently in Earphones: E.S. Posthumus' Cartographer

So, I finished playing the newest addition to the many armed monster that is Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core for the PSP. It was both better and worse than I thought, to the extent that follows.

The characters are genuinely like-able and fleshed out, enough back story is given so that their actions are reasonable. There's still a small amount that doesn't make sense, such as why Lazard did what he did, but it's not bad overall.

Now, this may be some Lost in Translation or Values Dissonance thing, but I found myself rooting for supporting characters that weren't part of the main drama. My prime example is Kunsel. This fellow is Zack's buddy from the very beginning, a SOLDIER 2nd Class with a good sense of humor and genuine likeability. The only real interaction you, as the player, get with him (aside from a few cutscenes) is through the Mail system. I found it to be a rather brilliant kind of immersion, as letters to Zack come wherever and whenever he happens to be (some depending on the plot, of course), and from all sorts of folk. There are the usual company bulletins and letters from the boss, but you'll also get little notes from the other characters depending on what's going on.

Kunsels occasional missives are, in my opinion, the best thing about the game. They literally are little "Hey how are you?"s that I could imagine a good friend sending, talking about this or that and thoughts on the goings on that really made me connect with the character. The warmth and humor that came from them made me seriously start to question just why it was Cloud, of all people, whom Zack got so buddy-buddy with. Looking back, I really can't remember any scene which shows Cloud and Zack connecting in any sort of way that made me think "Yeah, these guys are definitely gonna be good friends."

Once again, there may be something in the values dissonance that I'm missing here, but the writing just seemed to completely swerve about. I felt like I was supposed to find out how all the relationships in FFVII proper came about, and instead, it all feels like it came about purely by chance. When the last scene between Zack and Cloud happened, it never felt like this was the logical conclusion based on how the two came to be friends. It felt like "Hey, you who I only know a small amount about, who has gone on a grand total of two missions with me, and who has spent the last 1/4 of the game completely comatose while I've saved your ass, shall be my LIVING LEGACY!"

And then you've got this wonderfully sympathetic character of Kunsel, whos last missive is along the lines of "Hey, I know you're not dead like they say, old buddy, and you must be in a crapload of trouble, but I'm here for ya!" who's not even spared a second thought. I felt much the same way about the two romantic roles of Cissnei and Aeris (I REFUSE to spell it with a "-th," and still maintain that it sounds like one has a lisp). Aeris is the established g/f of Zack as of FFVII proper and Advent Children, and to be fair, there is some chemistry between them. I just found the wonderful tension between Zack and Cissnei at the end of Crisis Core to be far more compelling. If it wasn't for the japanese cultural thing about first kisses, I wouldn't have been surprised to see those two be a little more intimate (before Zack ran for his life, that is).

The rest is all well and good, great production values and a good combat engine. Sephiroth's Face Heel Turn is still kind of...odd. I guess he never really thought about his origins too hard, because that's all it took to throw him off the deep-end. Well, considering his back story, I can kinda see why. An additional point of interest, if you've gotten your hands on the rest of the proliferating spin off media for FFVII, you'll have seen the same 3 or 4 big scenes from the plot proper at least that many times in all their various incarnations. For those of you worried about whether Crisis Core takes as much liberties with re-arrainging the canon as Last Order did, fear not. It's more or less verbatim from FFVII proper.

Oh, and there's an "epic poem" called LOVELESS (what is the Japanese fascination with ALL CAPS, I wonder?) that's less in line with Homer and more in line with Hildegard of Bingen (read, crazy mystic rambling). You have been warned.


Enough, More Later.
- James