Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus Review

I don’t know where to start with this game. It has beautiful graphics, great gameplay, and excellent videos and cutscenes. Unfortunately, it lacks most where I like games most, the story. The story doesn’t lack in the tradition sense though. Let me explain:

Most third person action adventure shooter lack back story and have poorly written, predicable plot devices. This game however is all back story for the first two and a half hours of video, action for an hour, and poor and predicable dialogue for the last hour and a half. Sadly, there are that many videos in these games.

I call this more than one game because I felt that it was. For the first quarter of the game, it seems like a true Final Fantasy, despite the genre switch. It’s intelligent, it’s full of real feeling characters and it’s just great. After that though, it turned into a generic Devil May Cry shooter with less combos that leaves you feeling like your controller is enjoying it more than you are. After it’s done introducing the story, it turns into a giant, mindless shooter where you’re running around slaughtering everyone with the odd “Save the WRO members” side mission that if you fail it doesn’t really matter because the fights are so easy anyway that you don’t need the experience and gold you would get from it. The only part where it becomes intelligent is when it’s showing back story, which we’ve all seen before if we beat Final Fantasy VII with Vincent in our party. This is granted that it isn’t one of the scenes trying to shove the words “Chaos, Omega, and Lifestream” into every sentence. We get it already. If you didn’t get Vincent, you should go beat your head against a wall for failing at Final Fantasy puzzle solving and having a general lack of yearning for knowledge. It does get back to a Final Fantasy game in the last level or two and ending video where things aren’t bat-shit crazy with a giant man walking around with a tank cannon. Has this really what gaming has come to. “OH MY GOD! HE’S GOT A TANK CANNON! HE MUST BE COOL!”

Though, despite the problems with the story and a bit of repetativity in the gameplay, it’s a fun game. The controls are solid, the camera works with you quite well, and shooting shit is fun. I would have liked to play as some of the other characters though. You get every character from Final Fantasy VII in the game, but you can’t take control of Barret and enjoy a rip-roaring good time shooting up a bunch of guard wolves and Shinra executives.

Overall it’s not a bad game. The ‘cream-in-your-pants’ graphics and half decent beginning and end make up for the disappointing writing and sub-par gameplay. Plus, I like being able to shoot great big fireballs from large, tri-barreled rifles.

It’s worth renting, and if you’re a die-hard fan, owning. But, if you’ve not played Final Fantasy VII (That’s seven if you haven’t figured it out yet), and haven’t seen the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, I’d take a miss, because you won’t have a fucking clue what’s going on.