Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII

"Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, Vincent's Story"

After the monster success of Final Fantasy VII, its no surprise that a sequel game has been released in order to capitalize on its popularity. What's important though is how the game expands the story of the original as well as how the characters develop. In this regard, Dirge of Cerberus centers around the character Vincent and offers a focused look at his life, past and present. The game also changes things up by being action/shooter, which is a far-cry from the role-playing genre. With a lot to live up to, can Dirge of Cerberus really deliver a satisfying experience?

Game-play

The game-play diverges from the original's traditional RPG feel, active time battle sequences and open-world exploration to give us a first-person/third-person action game centered around gun fighting and melee combat. The first inclination in this game is to shoot things, however, the game fails to offer a decent targeting system. You can use the analog stick to move the target around and focus enemies in the center to aim at them. But mobile enemies will often leave your sights and are hard to track, especially flying enemies which can be a pain to shoot down. This isn't helped by the game's accuracy. Like an RPG, accuracy is ultimately determined by your stats, however, there's something fundamentally wrong when Vincent can miss from point-blank range. What the game does offer the player is a minor auto-lock function that takes over whenever an enemy is in your sights, but if you want to aim at a specific target and are locked onto something/someone else, its very difficult to unlock yourself without completely facing a different direction and trying again. This leads to a great lose in precision strategy when combat gets a little heavy, as you'll find yourself locking onto something that you had no intention of shooting at that moment.

Vincent also comes with a basic melee attack, which ends up being really ineffective considering a lot of the enemy population is capable of fire projectiles. Even if the enemy is melee-based, your melee attacks are very low-accurate and you might end up taking damage anyways before you hit them. Switching from melee attacks to shooting attacks is not fluid and can be frustrating. Vincent changes his stance before attacking, which means you'll be vulnerable for a brief time instead of just executing the action right away.

A huge aspect that gets in the way of any strategy is the game's AI. Normally, shooting enemies are aggressive and deadly. Usually they'll be able to target you even when you're out of sight or haven't made an appearance yet. This means you'll find yourself getting instantly shot at whenever you're around enemy fire. There's also very small error in the enemies' aiming capabilities. Some stages feature snipers which have an extreme amount of accuracy but are a great distance away or very hard to see. You'll often look around while getting shot at, trying to locate an enemy, just to find them far away and/or obscured a little. The game tries to help you out by pointing an arrow towards the direction where the shot came from when you are hit, but enemies are very hard to spot because they blend into the background a lot. Its also easy to take a heavy amount of damage from a single enemy's attack since you are easily knocked down, pushed around or are just immobilized. Vincent lacks any real dodging or recovery capabilities. The best the game gives you is a double jump which dodges projectiles and enemy attacks whenever it feels like it, which isn't often. The square button, when combined with the analog stick, can move Vincent rapidly in one direction, but also leaves Vincent wide open to attack after, so its effectiveness is really made obsolete. If Vincent is hit and knocked off balance, you can quickly mash the jump button to recover, but Vincent recovers so slowly, its easy to get caught up in another round of attacks. This is only exacerbated by the fact that Vincent is taken out of gun mode whenever he's attacked, which makes it really frustrating to get set up for shooting after taking damage, especially when the camera starts swinging around. Aside from the normal enemies, bosses, however, are not that challenging or inventive. Its mostly the same concepts of trying to dodge while just shooting. Most of them tend to be easy, while others are just annoying.

Jumping and ducking also lend themselves to the platforming aspect of the game, even though its kept to the absolute minimum. Though Vincent can jump, you're not really free to explore any of these areas. They're all either blocked off or you'll run into an invisible wall, which really doesn't make jumping feel all that useful in the game. Pressing the square button while not moving will allow Vincent to duck down, which can be used for aiming, but also is required for a few areas to get pasted which really don't feel all that necessary. The game doesn't benefit from jumping or ducking a lot, which feels like wasted potential.

The way you build your stats is either through leveling, or customizing your guns. After every stage, you'll be given the choice of experience points, which can raise your level like any RPG, which means your strength, defense, intelligence, etc can rise too, or you can choose currency, which will buy the next upgrade for one of your three basic gun barrels, accessories, etc. Leveling is pretty straightforward and isn't very demanding for this game (I beat the final boss on normal mode while being level 20). What the player might get the most out of is in the gear customization. You can choose which gun you want to customize, the barrel to attach, the accessory that it can use to really mold your weapon to reflect your playing style. The different guns will all have variations with weight, which affects Vincent's running speed, attack, speed or accuracy. For the most part, they all feel pretty useful, so none of the guns are really obsolete. However, you can basically pick one barrel and just fully upgrade that. The amount of money or experience you get is determined by your performance in each stage. If you somehow die along the way, you are also given an opportunity to use your experience points or money to upgrade yourself, to make your next attempt easier. This is a pleasant function and relaxes a lot of the stressful aspects the game throws at you.

The accessories that are attached to your gun can boost stats like attack and weight, or add a sniper scope. There are special accessories that allow you to cast magic. The idea of materia playing a part in combat has potential, however, it never fully develops. You're given the option of choosing the magical elements of fire, ice and thunder when casting. This is the full extent of the magic system, only three spells. It feels like a let-down, knowing Final Fantasy VII featured a vast amount of materia which ranged from attacks, supportive, command, etc to just fall flat with only three in this game. It could've been expanded so much, but, sadly, it was never really taken advantage of.

To also aid you in combat, the game features a small amount of items. However, the game puts restrictions on how many of each item you can hold; you can only hold four potions, two hi-potions, etc., which feels a little cheap. There's no reason not to be allowed to carry more items other than the developers trying to control the difficulty of each situation to some degree; which can be a good thing, but doesn't really work when the solution is to restrict item space.

Camera can also be a pain to control, as the game is very closely focused on Vincent visually. Often times you'll want a more distant look to really grasp your surroundings. Though you can control the camera with the right analog stick, it doesn't keep up with the action a lot, leaving a lot of enemies being obscured or hidden while they are attacking you.

The game-play alone can be hard to over come, and at times may get bad enough to force the player to give up. As the game progresses, it never feels like Vincent gets any stronger or that the player gains any useful skills that enhance the gaming experience, unlike similar action games which offer new moves or pushes players to become better at playing the game.

Story

The story of Dirge of Cerberus is shallow and doesn't make a lot of sense most of the time. A lot of it develops randomly as it goes along, and there are a lot of cheap plot devices used that didn't take a lot of imagination or originality. There are also points in the story that are just overly ridiculous. In summation, the plot doesn't add anything to the game, to the series or satisfy any of the player-base and fails to carry any interest to complete the game.

The villains aren't very well characterized and their motivations seem cliched and demented. For our returning characters from Final Fantasy VII, the game centers around Vincent, which special appearances from Yuffie and Cait Sith/Reeves. The rest of the Final Fantasy VII cast that's featured in this game seemed unnecessary and mostly called back for fan service. None of them have any development or any significant game time, nor add to the story at all. Vincent himself isn't especially well-rounded or deep, as well as Yuffie and Reeves. Their characters don't really go through any great changes or really get expanded on at all, and mostly stay pretty stale throughout the entire game. Vincent's back story received a great amount of attention in the form of flash backs. However, these flash backs don't do a coherent job of properly telling Vincent's history and often come off as overly-dramatic and cliched, especially the new revelations not found in Final Fantasy VII. Its strange to include the back story in a game that was entirely marketed towards the Final Fantasy VII fan base, because a lot of the fans already know much of what happened to Vincent from the original game, and these flash backs mostly retread that old ground. The new additions to the hero's cast, like Shalua, come out of nowhere and only serve to add more plot holes to the whole story.

Graphics / Sound

The characters and environments are rendered well enough. Everything looks clean and the game runs fluidly. The problem is, there's little to give the feeling that you're in the same world that Final Fantasy VII took place. The stages look so bland an monotonous that they run together a lot and are never stimulating. A lot of the times, you won't even realize you're in an area from the original game because the color palette and style are so forgettable.

The characters are faithfully recreated from the original game and look just like you'd think they would when brought to the third dimension. The problem occurs when they try to speak or emote. Basically, every person's face fails to really capture any emotion from what the dialog was trying to portray, giving everything the same static feeling. During the cut-scenes, their mouths often fail to match up with the voice acting, which really made it hard to be immersed in the game.

The voice acting itself is pretty consistent. There are a few actors who didn't feel right for the character or had poor deliveries throughout the game. Overall, it was a decent attempt, but definitely nothing special.

Probably the worst part about the game's attempt to give the feel of nostalgia or recognition to Final Fantasy VII is the soundtrack. Every song feels bland and stock that it really made it hard to believe that the game I was playing had anything to do with Final Fantasy VII.

Probably the game's greatest failure was a complete lack of immersion and memorability, and a lot of that can be drawn back to these elements here.

Play Time / Replayability

The game can be beaten in about ten to fifteen hours with full cut scenes, but it only had enough content to really fill about 5 hours. Just about all the stages feel the same and employ the same tactics to get through. You'll find yourself repeating the same enemies and situations over and over again to the point of boredom. The greatest amount of variation actually comes from the extra 300 missions that come after you beat the game. Had any one of these missions actually been substituted in the game, it would have made it all the better. However, you have to drag through the main story just to unlock the variations in game play, which aren't really worth it. You can go back through the story and find memory capsules, omega files and G files, but they really don't pay off well. It is convenient to have all the points throughout the game playable after beating them for easy access, but there's little reason to.

Once you go through the game, because of all the flaws and unoriginality, its very easy to just discard the game and forget it.

Conclusion

The game doesn't properly expand Final Fantasy VII's story, characters or atmosphere at all. It falls flat at even trying to resemble its original in just about every way. What new ideas the game does bring to the table are underwhelming and poorly designed. This game is forgettable and completely unnecessary.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 10/02/09

Game Release: Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (US, 08/15/06)