My copy of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII arrived this morning from Japan, I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy. I’ve had a chance to play a few hours of this game and can report that so far it seems a decent game. Of course my version is in Japanese. So I don’t understand 90% of what is going on. But its pretty straight forward. The graphics are amazing, some of the best yet on the PSP.

Welcome back to Midgard. FFVII, Crisis Core takes us back to the world of Final Fantasy VII.

You could say I’m not your die hard Final Fantasy fan, I have played Final Final 3 and really enjoy Final Fantasy VII. However I didn’t really enjoy Final Fantasy 8. Found that too childish with too many pretty boys talking nonsense. The same with Final Fantasy 9, I gave up on that too thinking it was directed more to a younger age group. Maybe I’m getting to old for the Final Fantasy world?

But it seems with Crisis Core, that its directed at the FFVII fans, of course being focused on Zack, Clouds friend who featured briefly in Final Fantasy VII and later again briefly in the spin off movie Final Fantasy: Advent Children . In this case it seems more mature (slightly) that your Final Fantasy 8 or FF9. I guess your thinking why am I playing it in Japanese? Well to put it this way. I prefer to play it now and later I will play it again in English. So then I get a little reply factor here.

I mentioned before that the graphics are quite amazing, looking at these screen shots you’ll see why.

Combat mode is very different to FFVII, now its in real time and it seems partys are out and you only play and fight as Zack here. Slot machine type combo’s will happen after taking hits or levelling. Much like the limit feature in FFVII. This time the combos are Character influenced. 3 x Angeal Slot will = an Angeal influenced combo attack. The controls are striaght forward.

Attack – O
Block – triangle
Dodge – square
Switching the commands – L/R

Some familiar evil faces return..

Check back for more, once I’m more into the game I’ll post part 2 of our hands on preview of Crisis Core. No spoilers though!