Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII

"If put out under a different franchise by a different developer, it would have done much better"

Dirge of Cerberus is a dark third person shooter released by Square/Enix that takes place a couple years after Final Fantasy VII and Advent children. While the game maintains some elements of an RPG (most notably money system and leveling up), it is a far cry from an RPG. The game's protagonist is the mysterious and dark Vincent Valentine, who is the powerful end product of a series of human expiriments that has left him with a beast lurking inside (Chaos, his final limit break from FFVII) that he struggles to contain. Valentine gets swept up in the World Regenesis Organization's fight with the former Shinra secret force Deep Ground and the game takes off from there.

Gameplay: The game play for this game can be a touch awkward, while it features a very useful autoaim (all FPS's on PS2 need AA, the sticks don't allow the level of precision Xbox enjoys). The BA factor (think Devil May Cry or God of War if you need to know what a BA factor is) of this game is fairly low, you don't sprint around and do flips and kick people in the face like he does in the cut scene, pretty much a stock run and gun third person shooter. The weapon selection is pretty slim, between a handgun (Cerberus, a handgun, hydra, a rifle, and Griffon, a machine gun). Most of the time you're better suited to using the handgun. On a side note, the Cerberus handgun is so named because it fires three rounds a time from it's three barrells, similar to the three heads of the gaurdian of Hades from legend. This game can be beaten in under 10 hours, and the Phoenix Down system put in place makes it really hard to actually die (think autorez from other FF games, and PDs are all over the place). All this being said, the game more than compensates for the kind of weak gameplay in other areas.

Controls: Not much to say here, very rigid, not intuitive. In my opinion, the PS2 is pretty week for 1st/3rd person shooters simply because of the control, granted I'm biased and have logged thousands of hours in Halo 2 on Xbox live, but the quality of the controllers is very apparent in a game like this. The control sticks don't leave you with much precision and the rest of the buttons don't do so hot either. Either way, it's tolerable.

Sound: The soundtrack for this game is very appropriate and reminiscent of past Final Fantasies. Most of the songs evoke the appropriate emotion for the stage of the game they are played during. The J-Rock by Gackt is pretty good too, even though in the immortal words of Chris Farley "I DON'T SPEAK JAPANESE!" As for effects, they're done well, the sound of a long barreled rifle firing makes you sort of 'feel' the recoil from it. The voice actors are all pretty good, with the exception of a couple who play very minor parts. I can't comment too much about sound since I don't have my surround sound anymore and just play through the TV's speakers, but rest assured that the sound bolsters the game's experience.

Characters/Story: Finally! There is a Square game that I don't want to slap the main character for being a crybaby and want to immediately strangle most of the early companiions. Vincent Valentine is an awesome protagonist who is tortured by his mysterious past and his unrequited love for the scientist largely responsible for his life, Lucretia Crescent. Will I got so far to say that VV is a better protagonist than Cloud? Sure I will, but I thought VV was the man in FFVII anyway, this game just reinforces that viewpoint. The story is very gripping and you'll find yourself having a hard time putting it down because the action is pretty intense through out most of the game but you don't feel exhausted at the end. The game has a very cinematic feel to it, but in the best way possible. If you thought that FFX was way too linear and you did way too much watching and not enough playing and the story you were getting into was kind of weak, I'd be inclined to agree with you. This game does not suffer that problem at all. It really makes you identify the conflict and get involved in it because you find yourself curious about VV's past and what exactly are the motives of Deep Ground. It's a stock "end of the world" Final Fantasy story line, but it is done better than most of the FF stories (meaning I didn't finish it simply to be done with it, but I was genuinely interested in seeing the conflict resolved).

Graphics: The graphics are pretty much top of the line as far as PS2 games go. The game is kind of dark so the environments tend to have a dark and muted feel to them which covers up a lot of the PS2 hardwares short comings. Basically, if you thought Vagrant Story for the PS did some unbelivable things with that hardware, then this game is similar (uses a dark story/atmosphere to cover up the short comings of the hardware). All in all the graphics were pretty impressive. The animation for all the characters is very strong and lifelike and not awkward at all.

Replayability: There are bonus missions which are fairly difficult and a plethora of unlockable movies, sound, galleries etc. Most of these unlockables I glossed right over in my initial play, not realizing that I needed to shoot memory capsules or anything like that. I'm definitely going to play this game again, and maybe again after that. There are several difficulty levels if you like a challenge.

Rent or Buy: That really is a personal question. If your'e like me, a young professional recently graduated with college with few expenses and enough money to blow on stuff like this, go for it. If you're like I was 7-8 years ago, a broke highschooler working some BS part time job that doesn't pay well and don't have to have the game, then rent it. If you're not a fan of Final Fantasy VII, rent it. If you don't like third person shooters typically, rent it. It is a good game to have and I'm sure I'll come back to it years down the line since it is not a substantial time investment and can warrant light playing.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/21/06