Xebek\’s Blog

Story:

The story was probably the most appealing part of this game. Not that it was anything innovative or anything, it is really for if you are a Final Fantasy VII fan, and Vincent in particular. I thought it did a good job describing what exactly the relationship was between him and Lucrecia, as well as how he became what he was. It did a much better job then I though in plot twists. There was the deal with Shelke when she first became a good guy, and then a huge one which was probably the main surprised in this was that Weiss was Hojo. That surprised the hell out of me but was an interesting story choice and wasn’t’ too far out there, they didn’t have to stretch that much to explain it or anything, and him being Weiss closes any open ends on that part with him and Vincent.

Basically how it ended up was Vincent was able to resolve within himself the feeling he had with Lucrecia. Shelke, since she had Lucrecia’s data, helped him get through what he was feeling and portrayed his memories to him, allowing Vincent to understand more about Lucrecia and therefore get some kind of resolve at the end.

Sound:

The sound wasn’t anything spectacular. I did like the themes by Gackt which I heard in one of the trailers and it was playing during one of the boss levels near the end as well as the ending sequence and credits if I recall. Aside form that there wasn’t anything too memorable which was a little disappointing for a Final Fantasy game but it was a bit different, still better music wouldn’t have hurt. Not to say I disliked the themes they played, but it was the only music I even remember from this game.

Graphics:

The graphics were ok. During the FMV sequences it was amazing, some of the better FMV graphics in all the Final Fantasys. During the normal movie sequences and the gameplay it was ok, there have been some better graphics in non FMV sequences but this wasn’t bad or anything.

Gameplay:

Although a lot of people downgrade this for the gameplay, it seems to be because they are trying to make this game into something it’s not. People compare it to other RPGs that have the four people attacking in a party and so on, and they compare it to first person shooters. Well its not either one of those, it’s an action THIRD person shooter game and in that sense I think it does a pretty good job. Just a little ways into the game and I had three separate guns and I didn’t just use only one of them, there was one for long range, one for medium to close range, and one for quick fire close range. The gun customization was also very deep, being able to upgrade individual parts of the gun and mismatch them however way you wanted to. You could turn the machine gun into an auto sniper if you wanted to and bought the right parts. When I play though this again, I’m going to try even harder to buy more things to make the guns more useful in different situations, not just the normal guns you might find. Although in the last level it really didn’t matter as you were given a godlike weapon that none of your other ones could match, up until then it was fun and I’m going to try and make more weapons.

The melee part was ok near the beginning. You could easily do a three hit combo and early on it was good enough damage to kill a single person with a full combo. Now that’s not saying it was easy because mostly all the enemies had guns and you fighting melee, but if you found yourself in that situation it was a good alternative. Even near the middle when the three combo just knocked them to the floor with one hit left in them, a follow up gunshot was cool but near the end you would have to end up doing like 4 full combos on a guy to kill them and the melee option kind of died out even with some attachments to guns that were supposed to increase melee strength.

Overall:

Overall I thought this was a pretty good game. Not the best I’ve played or anything, but its not nearly as bad, I think, as what some people have been saying about it. As long as you don’t try to make it out to be something it’s not I think you can have a lot of fun with it. The storyline is an extension on a character and not something completely innovative by itself. If you take that into account I think then overall this game is exactly what it is supposed to be, and not bad at all. The new characters are great, and we get a really good detail into the background of Vincent and what his past really was like.