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Crisis Core gameplay journal update 3

By Heath | September 26, 2007 at 1:53 pm

I played a little yesterday but not enough to write comments (also I was on the bus, which makes it hard to write on my laptop). For those curious, here’s some stats on my progress so far. I’ve included my playtime even though I pause here and there to write commentary, so your mileage with the game may vary. I’ll do another recap at the end of today’s session just to compare.

Level: 12

Playtime: 3:51:54 (I’d estimate I’m 3 hours in)

Materia: 16

Mission Completion: 5% (up from 3% after day two)

Final Fantasy VII Characters Met: 3

Summon Monsters Fought: 2

D.M.W. (Slot Machine Faces): 4/18

Materia: Lv3 Fire, Lv2 HP Up, Lv4 Cure, Master (loosely translated) Revolve Attack

Going to go for a little bit of a different format today, less point by point and more a running commentary. Hope you all enjoy. By the way, I highly encourage people to post on the forums for this. I’ll be more than happy to answer any and all questions. This goes for readers who aren’t part of the forums in particular: what’s stopping you? Anyway, onto the show.

I’m a little unsure of my stance on the whole Missions concept. The basic idea behind them is that you get these quick and dirty assignments that take anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes. You start a Mission through the menu, and you find yourself in a sliver of a bigger area’s map. There’s usually a pre-determined path with a specific endpoint, though I’ve discovered one so far that I think had two options. You run around and fight battles, open chests, etc. until you’ve completed an objective – generally this means fighting a specific set of enemies. Missions are ranked by difficulty, but it seems to be difficulty in the context of this is a very difficult mission for this particular area.

The Missions are absolutely great for acquiring Materia and equipment, but the limited slots for both (four Materia slots and two equipment slots) make your newly acquired items less valuable. You can pull off several attacks in the time it’d take to use one magic spell, so physical strength becomes more important than magic strength. I find myself not wanting to unequip anything that gives me a strength boost (which is why I won’t be unequipping my ATK +3 Materia anytime soon), even at the boost of another stat. This dramatically reduces the versatility of Materia when ATK and HP boosts become so critical to just staying alive.

My real problem with Missions lies in the amount of time they take up. I’m still early in the main plot, but I keep getting the feeling that the Missions are the game. You end up gaining so many items and levels (even with the random leveling system) that playing through the Missions ends up turning the story into the means of acquiring more Missions. I suppose you could just play through the main plot and skip the missions, but I imagine that would also make the game quite difficult.

While wandering around Shinra, I found my way into a showroom of sorts, complete with the motorcycle and pickup truck from the famous chase scene. Interestingly enough, there is also a huge painting of the Highwind here. While I’m not a Final Fantasy VII-obsessive fan, I will admit that finding a map of the overworld in this room actually brought a smile to my face.

One cool option you get part of the way into the game is Materia Fusion. I’ve only had a chance to play with it a little, but the gist of it is that you can take at least two Materia and fuse them together to form incredible new Materia. My first experiment with it, I took my HP Up and my Revolve Attack Materia, fused them, and ended up with a Revolve Attack with ATK +5. Useful, but I think I’d rather have the HP Up. I also can now equip six Materia.

What’s really impressed me today has been the little touches. There’s the obvious elements for the fans, the Sephiroth factor, the Turks being the Turks, and all that, but there’s also a nice element of subtly developing characters and weaving the backstory together. One scene I’d use to explain this, and don’t worry this is very spoiler free, simply had Sephiroth ignoring everything around him because he was busy reading something. It wasn’t just that he was reading, it was the way he stood there, silent, brooding, absorbed. The man loves to read. Dedicated fans to Final Fantasy VII should be pretty excited about this game.

Level: 12

Playtime: 6:03:50

Materia: 25

Mission Completion: 8%

Final Fantasy VII Characters Met: 6

Summon Monsters Fought: 2

D.M.W. (Slot Machine Faces): 6/18

Materia: Lv2 Firera, Lv3 Cure, Lv2 Attack Up, Lv4 HP Up, Lv3 Jump, Master Revolve Attack

-By Ryan Mance

Topics: Uncategorized