It’s hard to remember back, but I think my playstation experience begins with Crash Bandicoot, and then Jet Moto 2 some months later, and then, by accident, Final Fantasy VII. If I recall correctly, it was given to me as a gift by people who didn’t know anything about me–other than that I had a playstation, obviously. It taught me that video games could make you cry, if you let them. That they could weigh you down, emotionally. It taught me things about rendered boobs. Full disclosure: Final Fantasy VII made me a serious gamer.

There were whispers about Crisis Core. I can still hear them if I close my eyes and put my ear to the clay… There was a period of ambiguous Square Enix PR, a bubble of anti-information that pointed towards either a port of VII or some kind of FFVII-II. It didn’t last very long–Square Enix announced their plans to produce a series of Final Fantasy VII titles as sort of an anniversary. As they were released, one by one consumed by the angry fires of diehard fans, it became apparent that the direction of the FFVII universe was not entirely under control. It was easy to retreat to the sanctity of the source material, but by this point the old game was noticeably awkward and, just sort of weird; a wobbly protoform embodying many qualities the RPG genre would never revisit. With each failure, the pressure placed upon Crisis Core grew ever stronger. Could this action/rpg hybrid, this portable THING, give me the service I desperately needed?

Crisis Core is a tricky deal. On the one hand, it’s a brilliantly executed experience with probably twenty-five to thirty hours of content that faithfully and comfortably expands upon the events of the original without trying to trump its climax. The active battle system and its use of materia, the subsequent fusing of that materia, and even the DMW are all strengths. But for all its innovation, it cuts the wrong corners. And those corners bleed for it.

The pace, if you’re used to Final Fantasy games, is nearly perfect. Zack, peppy, squat-making protagonist follows a more or less compelling cast of characters through beautifully rendered locals of the game’s forbearer. Grinding (if you can call it that) and boss battles are evenly distributed throughout the game, and there’s a real sense of urgency. I stutter a little while talking about the grinding in this game because the way combat is initiated is not through random encounters, like every Final Fantasy game ever. Picture a hallway that runs through two square rooms. The rooms are both empty, save for smaller, invisible squares in the centre of each. That invisible square is an enemy trigger. Every time you step into it, a battle will begin. This design choice becomes really opaque after a few hours. Around seventy per cent of the environments in Crisis Core are designed to accommodate trigger squares, and they can be easily avoided. Grinding only exists in the sense that you are, indeed, crawling through levels, devouring foes with your blade. The illusion of random battles can be maintained by never turning back, and closing your eyes.

Thankfully, the ba’zillion missions that the game allows you to begin unlocking almost immediately provide an alternative to grinding, period. I was driven to complete maybe fifty per cent of the missions, which might account for ten of my twenty hour experience. I equate this mission system to the mission system in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Indeed, it produces the same god-I’ll-just-do-one-more reaction in my soul, and I’m very glad for that.

The DMW. Before the game was released, the buzz was all about how weird and convoluted this DWM thing is. It seems pretty clear, though, that it’s just a simple way to manage limit breaks, summons, and leveling. No, of course it’s not random–though a slot machine it may be. It seems there are behind-the-scenes counters rolling constantly, affecting the DMW’s ‘randomness.’ If you go too long without leveling up, for instance (getting three sevens in a row equals a level-up), the DMW seems to just give you one. So it’s more familiar than people give it cedit for. And unlike the trigger squares, the DMW actually does streamline the game to help along the portable experience.

The DMW is unique in concept, to be sure, but some things will never change. Final Fantasy is rarely without its mini-games, and this one has several. They’re tolerable, and not much more can be said about them. We weathered through the Gold Saucer, and this, too, shall pass. But something must be said about the one, lone, ridiculous fetch quest. An apocalyptic, game-halting fetch quest to end all fetch quests that is alluded to as some kind of sick joke for the entire first half of the game, and then you actually do it. I will say no more. I cannot bring myself to write about it. It’s too terrible. It involves a wagon (or lack thereof!).

The voice acting, as with all North American Final Fantasy dubs, is a little shaky. The western pattern of speech is incapable of delivering the kind of melodrama necessary for what is essentially an RPG about magic ballet. Thankfully, the acting (are we calling it acting now?) is compelling enough to tug at your various strings and keep you engaged with the characters. And it doesn’t hurt that the soundtrack is probably the most faithful recreation of the original soundtrack yet produced, easily beating out Dirge and Advent Children (although a Kyosuke Himuro-esque power-pop track is desperately missed).

So it would seem that every gripe I have, every passionate observation that might skew towards the negative, has an anti-gripe. The battle-innitiating squares are unfortunate, but grinding is bypassed through pseudo-leveling, via the DMW, and perpetual rare item hunting, via the missions. The voice acting is bad, but you know what? With this franchise, it’s never great. The random-ass wagon quest makes me want to mail-bomb Square Enix. So I guess there isn’t a counter for everything. But we haven’t even discussed materia fusion, yet have we?

Crisis Core held its cards well. The game doesn’t introduce you to materia fusion right away–it saves it. Like a tease. And it’s so good. I always liked the materia system in VII. It levels up with you, as if, in addition to your party, you have hundreds of other party members that clip on to your main ones. Well fusion is the natural progression of that system! You take two little guys, throw them in a hadron collider, then at the point of impact you slide an item in there. Makes sense! What you get is the product of the time and attention you’ve put into those little materia… or not! It’s all based on stats, of course, so if you need a mastered dark thundaga and a mastered dark thundaga to produce a hell thundaga, well, all you really might need is a dark thundaga and something neutral the computer deems equal to or greater than a mastered dark thundaga. As for items? combining items with materia seems to buff out the secondary functionality the materia holds. Secondary functions are another addition to the original system that make it that much more interesting. This, to me, is essentially the best part of the game. Crafting materia, changing or adding to its secondary properties, testing out every combination in your materia library; these things are endlessly fun, and add a lot of depth to a system I was always perfectly fine with.

This is a great game. It starts great, and it just gets better. Bits of it are a little off, and some things are absolutely terrible (unless you really like wagons), but as you build up Zack and get into his story, the bothersome things just fall away. You’re left with a totally enjoyable experience. When it’s all over, you’ll put down your PSP and feel good about yourself. If I had one more little gripe to gribble, it’s that the game allows for so much tweaking, I was a god by the end. I’ll replay it soon on hard. Perhaps the thunder will clap all the louder.