Dirge of Cerebus – Final Fantasy VII
FFVII makes a triumphant return. At least, a secret character does.
Tags: Dirge of Cerebus - Final Fantasy VII Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Michael Hanning on Sep 19th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Dirge of Cerebus - Final Fantasy VII (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Role-Playing | No | ||
 |
Final Fantasy VII is a game that needs absolutely no introduction. One of the most influential games of all time, it redefined an industry, broke open the doors for a new genre and introduced a generation to the idea that games could be used to tell a truly great story. The flip side, of course, is that the game never saw fit to really end that story. Whoops. Nearly ten years later we’re finally getting some epilogues, and Vincent Valentine has been chosen to headline the direct sequel. Unfortunately when Square Enix chose to revive a story from 1997 it looks like they brought some gameplay problems from the year along for the ride.
Taking place three years after the events of Final Fantasy VII, Dirge of Cerberus begins with Vincent being moody in the town of Kalm in the middle of a celebration. Without warning the townspeople are attacked by a mysterious paramilitary organization that kidnaps or kills the population before Vincent starts shooting back. A lot. From there the story tracks Vincent’s battle against the mysterious Deepground soldiers, a story that sheds light on his own dark past and the secret experiments that created him. The story never quite reaches the breadth and grandeur of the first game, but it doesn’t have to. It’s Vincent’s personal story and it provides answers and closure for one of the fan-favorite character. The new characters may not resonate like the old ones, but when you’re measuring against FFVII you’ve already set that bar impossibly high.
 |
To get it out of the way, yes, the game is gorgeous beyond belief. The CGI cutscenes go beyond anything else on the PlayStation 2 to date (making you wish they weren’t used so sparingly). Vincent and the cast are animated with so much attention to detail you can see the individual strands of hair on Yuffie or count the number of metal bits that make up into Vincent’s pointy shoes. There are plenty of supporting characters hanging around, but they almost all conform to one of two or three looks without variation (squads of WRO soldiers may well be quintuplets). Stages get plenty of detail but are confined to corridors for most of playtime. Even the more expansive environments are still pretty linear, which is a real shame. You haven’t seen the train graveyard in Midgar until you’ve had a running gunfight with a gang of jetpack soldiers in it, the way all derelict trains are meant to be used.
 |
Unfortunately, Dirge of Cerberus is a pretty linear and you’ll be seeing most of Midgar one hallway at a time. Even outdoor areas fall prey to this – you can see to the horizon, but an invisible wall just over that next rock is going to keep you from going there. That holds true for a surprisingly large amount of the game. Invisible walls are going to keep you from leaping over obstacles, exploring where you’d like to go, or diverging from the path in the slightest. You won’t even use the highly-detailed map for most of the game because there’s just no point. If there are only two doors leading out of a room and you walked in one of them it’s not too hard to figure out where you’re headed next. There’s only one chance in the entire game to simply walk around a location to talk to people and check it out and even then the environments, while gorgeous, aren’t interactive at all.. With such a rich world as Final Fantasy VII’s it’s really just too bad that you don’t get to explore it. What’s left to you is almost entirely the combat.
 |
Rather than the team-based RPG combat, Dirge of Cerberus sees Vincent Valentine single-handedly performing in a 3rd-person shooter with references to his RPG past. The materia system is all but vanished, replaced by a series of interchangeable gun parts that you can pay to upgrade. You can also customize each gun by mixing and matching parts, but it’s all actually pretty straightforward. The rifle gets the long barrel and the scope, the machine gun gets the short barrel and a power boost, et cetera. There are still plenty of items, but mostly the restore your HP or MP. HP is still tied to a number, but acts like a health gauge in any other action shooter title. You can use spells, of course, but they’re little more than glorified grenades.
Another area where Dirge of Cerberus suffers is in how immobile Vincent is. Cutscenes have him bouncing off of walls, making dramatic leaps into mid-air and engaging in the sort of acrobatics that would put Dante to shame. He becomes considerably less mobile once control is given to the player. He doesn’t even have so much as Max Payne’s sideways leap or…anything. Not one single move to dodge the hails of gunfire that you’re going to be exposed to from the beginning. Get familiar with the inventory controls because you’re going to be using a whole heck of a lot of potions to compensate.
 |
Although Vincent can be stiff to control, the nearly nonexistent enemy AI softens that blow. They have a position to stand in and fire at you and by god they’re not moving from it. Some enemies are brawlers who have to get close to injure you, these ones will charge straight at you until they’re close enough to hit. They don’t exhibit any real tactical mien, making combat a pretty straightforward affair. The difficulty comes in the sheer volume of enemies that you must face and how much health some of them have– boss fights are especially bad for this. It may be easy to hit Azul the Cerulean, but you’re going to have to hit him a few hundred times before he goes down.
 |
There are some extremely notable perks to Dirge of Cerberus that help gloss over the problems. The always-amazing voice actor Steve Blum (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo) gives Vincent layers of personality and character that wouldn’t exist without him. The vocal cast of Advent Children reprise their roles for Dirge of Cerberus and even the newcomers do their best with the monologue-heavy script. It occasionally veers to melodrama, but given the subject matter maybe that isn’t so bad. There are also plenty of extras that can be unlocked, including bonus missions for extra challenge. Replay value may be limited by the fact that once you’ve done everything, well, you’ve done everything. There just isn’t enough exploration to justify playing it through a second time to check everything out again.
There’s actually a pretty simple litmus test to see if this is the game for you – did you enjoy Advent Children? If you said yes, seeing your favorite characters in action once again and unraveling the next piece of such an epic story are going to be more than worth your time. If you really have no interesting the characters and didn’t like FFVII in the first place, Dirge’s outdated gameplay and weak enemy AI are going to be turn-offs for you. There are plenty of third-person shooters on the market that don’t require you to have invested forty hours in an RPG to understand the story in the first place. If it’s the Final Fantasy fan that brings you, Dirge of Cerberus is going to scratch that itch for you with verve.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ It's Final Fantasy VII + It looks absolutely stunning + Top-notch vocal cast + Highly-customizable weapons |
6.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Linear stages. - Vincent doesn't manuever well. - Very monologue-heavy script. |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| It all comes down to how much you liked Final Fantasy VII and how badly you want to see the story continue. Fans can easily overlook the flaws, non-fans can find more robust 3rd-person shooters out there. | |
[ Post the first comment | View related posts ]
Tags: Dirge of Cerebus - Final Fantasy VII
Posted by Michael Hanning on Sep 19th, 2006 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
