Did anyone get this? I am and will admit that I am, a SquareEnix whore. I love their games I don't mind elaborate cut scenes or over the top cliche driven story plots or even character designs diseased with belts,zippers, and spiky hair that one could impale them self on.
I never played the original FF7 because 8 was my first and I just didn't care for 7's story. I did however watch my brother every now and then play the game so I found out most of the major plot points and I even watched Advent Children. However,I recently picked up a brand new PSP slim and light with a copy of Crisis Core in because of all the good buzz it was getting and figured that since it was a prequel to 7 perhaps this would be a good chance to see if 7's story will stick this time.
To my surprise this is really a good game. The battle system isn't hard or contrived, the music is gorgeous and lush, and the graphics are beautifully done while preserving the original art style. First off Zach is SO MUCH MORE enjoyable to play as then emo sad ridden Cloud and I mean that by a FAR margin. The story is well told and isn't forced on you so much.
One of the best features of the game that really makes it capable of playing in short bursts are the side mission modes. In your main menu hub at save points you are allowed to go off and just do missions which usually range from kill this boss to kill this many monsters. The missions are short, sweet, allow for leveling up and always reward you with some good item that you can use for yourself or sell at a vendor.
Another interesting thing is Zach is pretty much who you play the whole game, there is no party system, you don't manage other characters, they don't even fight as NPC's with you. You are always alone. What is weirder? The game plays as an action RPG there is no time based commands either, its hack and slash all the way. WHAT IS EVEN WEIRDER? The fact that everything runs on a giant slot machine. In the corner of the screen constantly running is a slot machine with all of the characters you have met in the game thus far. Eventually a character will be lined up with 2 more of the same character and you get to perform a limit break. Now after the 3 characters line up numbers are randomly placed with them, get 7-7-7 and you level up. Yes, I just said you basically level up randomly by a slot machine constantly running as you fight monsters. At first when I found this out I was kind of freaked out but then I found out that it keeps an imaginary exp system going on in the background so if you don't get three 7's in a certain amount of time the game increases your chances of landing one more and more each battle until it does happen. Does this mean that you can get very lucky sometimes though? Yes, there was a period once where I went through 5 ordinary monster fights and leveled up 3 times in just that short amount of time.
This game has gone way above my expectations thus far and ACTUALLY got me interested in FF7. . . for once. My only beef with the game is that there are 2 modes of difficulty that you can start as Normal and Hard. Seriously I am on Normal right now and it could of been labeled EASY mode. I tried recently the Hard mode and its ridiculously over powered. I just wish they made the Normal mode more challenging.