So, I got to play this last night. The game is.. deceptive. It looks like a cool game but falls short somewhere.. actually, several somewheres. First thing I'll cover is presentation, which is what the game does beautifully. The pre-rendered cut-scenes are Square standard.. beautiful.. jaw-dropping. The opening shot of the first cinema shows my luscious little Yuffie and pans around her ass for a good 30 seconds. So far, so good. Then, the camera moves away from Yuffie, stuff blows up, Vincent pretends to be "cool" (more on that later), back to Yuffie again (yay!), more stuff not concerning Yuffie happens.. and title screen.

Okay, so getting into the actual game (which has long memory card access times and long load times.. usually foreign concepts to Square) it becomes QUICKLY apparent that the controls for the game are crap. Mucho crap. Basically, take Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 4.. put them together, take out.. well, everything.. and there you go: Dirge of Cerberus. You can run around in a third person view but you're limited to running, a weak little jump and a roll. Oh, you can claw enemies too, I guess. When you draw your gun it switches to over-the-shoulder-pseudo-FPS-mode, except you rotate VERY, VERY SLOWLY. So slowly, that if your target isn't in your sights when you draw your gun it's usually a better idea to put it away, turn around and redraw. So far the variety of enemies and missions are sorely lacking. The first few levels you fight nothing but the same grunts and maybe a dog-mech or two, your objective is usually get from point A to B.. which wouldn't be so bad if getting from point A to B was a little more fun. There seems to be a lot of cut-scenes which don't really serve a purpose. You'll turn a corner and it'll show a cut-scene of the grunts coming down the alley. Hell, there's even cut-scene DURING the first boss fight. You're fighting a helicopter.. and instead of it just dropping off more of those pesky grunts, it cuts you out of the action and plays a 60 second cut-scene showing the helicopter drop off those pesky grunts. Multiple cut-scenes are of Vincent pretending to be "cool" (if jumping and flipping and swishing your cape everywhere is still "cool" after the The Matrix, Underworld, billions of "anime" shows and all the copy-cats). What's worse is that you don't get to display any of those moves in-game. You get a weak, almost apologetic little hop.. and that's it. Oh, you can limit-break, which turns Vincent into a monster where you can.. claw enemies and shoot fireballs (thankfully, fireball dispensing does not require you to be in over-the-shoulder mode).

Oh, if it wasn't for seeing Vincent and Yuffie.. you'd NEVER be able to connect this game to Final Fantasy VII. It looks and sounds nothing like it.. it's almost as if they had made an action game, realized its flaws and put Vincent in it to save some grace. What I really can't get over is that I'm sure there's a good game in there.. I don't know why.. maybe it's the high production values oozing everywhere not concerning the actual gameplay.. but I just can't take that it was so poor initially. I'm going to see if I can get my friend over again to give it another shot.. I'll report more if I do.

Pros:
Yuffie
Looks Great

Cons:
Vincent
Gameplay
Cut Scenes
Lack of Control
Lack of Moves
Lack of Variety in Missions/Enemies

Two questions...how'd you get your hands on a copy of the demo and do you know how old of a build it was that you were playing?

Build? It's been released in Japan and a friend of mine bought it.

Oh, no kidding. I didn't realize that it was released in JP already. Damn. I didn't really have I expectations for this one but in the back of my head I was hoping it would turn out good. Guess not.

Damn, well thanks for saving me pre-order $$$

I'd imagine big VII fans will still find some enjoyment out of it for story/character purposes. The supposed premise of the game is to explain what Vincent and Yuffie were up to and why they weren't present in the ending of VII (other than the obvious fact that the ending was a pre-rendered FMV and couldn't account for variables, ie: optional characters). Other characters show up (I saw Cid and Barret in the opening cinema and have met Cait Sith in-game) so I'm not quite sure how it would all fits in.

The big issue is the going in and out of FPS mode and the sluggish control while in it. Maybe there's a setting or two to tweak the control to an acceptable level but I'd be damn befuddled as to why the present setup is considered the default.

There's an Online Mode, but I don't have a PS2 modem.

Maybe if you get to kill Aerith again.. that'd make the game fantastic despite bad control.

I must confess that fandom often makes me break down and spend money that I shouldnt on sub-par products (Hey even I thought State of Emergency was fun for the first 15 minutes) but liking FFVII isnt enough for me to buy a game with broken gameplay. Based on what you've already descibed I dont think I could get into it, but once released I will rent it.

Can you turn into a monster in it like Vincent does with is Limits?

Sounds like a rental to me, but I'm still curious, hopefully Square-Enix will fix the controls when it comes here, they usually tweak stuff for the US releases or add extras.

How's the music?

Thanks for your input Pixy.
Off topic, but how was Kingdom Hearts 2? I saw you were playing that one and wondered what you thought of it.

Hmm I guess the people waiting for a more rpg style followup to FF7 (not that this was ever going to be it) will have to wait a bit longer. I bet a FF7-2 game would sell like hot cakes too .

Thanks for write up! You were actually quite kind Forums have not been kind to this title in their reviews this week, hehe. As you said though FF7 fans will likely get something out of it.

Read the OP for an answer to your first question.

The music was forgettable.. didn't seem to stand out but didn't seem to suck either.

Early candidate for Game of the Year 2006.. with no competition in sight. Everything about the game is amazing. The animation of the characters in-game is so perfectly animated you'd almost think they're pre-rendered. The music is great. The gameplay is so improved from the first game (which I loved already) that's it's insane. You can read some more in-depth on what I thought in the big thread I created. I only played the first 5 hours or so and then sold the game off (had to get it out of my system).. so I'm ready to wait for the US release now.

Really? I figured it would be like Advent Children where the reviews were so blindly positive despite the obvious and glaring flaws simply because it was Final Fantasy VII related. It's amazing that they've got this whole "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" series planned which thus far has been a series of sub-standard non-RPG items. Seriously, they could simply re-make the game using the graphics they're capable of in Vincent May Cry or Kingdom Hearts II and they'd be printing money. If they really wanted a follow-up, how about an actual RPG? I don't get it.. why a brain-dead action movie, why a poorly designed pseudo-FPS, why cell-phone games? Oh well.. they're bound to figure it out eventually.

I think this guy would disagree...

I don't know why I played this game again.. ugh.

First thing I noticed though.. when I tried playing the new Samurai Spirits game is that it said I was out of space on my memory card. While it was a surprise, I figured I just had some cleaning up of saves for stuff I've borrowed or tried and won't be playing again.. WRONG (well mostly). Dirge of Cerberus takes of 700kb of space on a memory card, second only to the 1mb behemoth of Ys I & II Eternal Story's save file. Why is it that comparable games on the PS1 took up 8kb of save space? Sheesh.

Anyway, I felt a little more used to the controls this time around but that didn't make the game any better or easier to actually play. Fooled around with various gun equips.. you have different barrels and accessories (one barrel made moving and aiming ever slower!) which was a neat idea but not enough to polish this turd. Cut-scenes only increase in number and length, which may be passable in an RPG but really have no place being this constant from an action game (you do have the Kingdom Hearts II function of being able to skip them, thankfully). It seems everything you defeat a group of enemies a stage or two into the game they show some elaborate cut-scene of Vincent taking out the last enemy in a fashion you dream of being able to actually do in-game.

I think it's time to put this one down unless the rumor I hard about there being a Yuffie second-quest is true.. at which point I'll probably wait until someone releases a save file that I can copy to my memory card so I don't have to suffer through anymore of this mess.. but I doubt my fascination with the spunky ninja will be enough for me to play the game anymore with her.. which says a lot, because boy do I like Yuffie.

Advent Children wasn't highly rated because it was Final Fantasy so much, it was highly rated because it was a visual tour de force.

As a movie though, it was pretty lackluster.

20 YEAR BUMP!

Anyway played this for the first time and completed it 1-2 weeks ago. Great fucking game. Loved it. Once U level up yourself and level up guns it's all good, cause there are some parts (ie Sniper Part) that can piss u off. Just put auto aim on and use a long barrel and level it up. And dying it's no biggie cause U keep all the EXP u gain up until the checkpoint and u can redeem it level up or turn it into money before re trying checkpoint.

I then replayed it this week on EX HARD (aka kinda new game plus) where u keep your upgraded weapons and attachments and money, but U don't keep player level. I completed it today with no big frustrations, since my weapons were all max level.

I wish this would get Fully Remade cause it would be fucking amazing, I bet.