review of Crisis Core

[fanbeatsman]

I actually only picked this up as a primary text for my research. I enjoyed FFVII an awful lot, but didn't develop much of a fannish attachment to it (missed out on the nostalgia factor, for one thing, by only playing it for the first time, er, last year ¬_¬) - not enough to pick up the spin-offs, at any rate. So I was kind of surprised by just how

Comments

[shahni]

Crisis Core was the reason my fading, fading love for FF7 came back full force. I can't even begin to tell you how disheartened I was with Dirge of Cerberus for stomping on an area of canon that really could have been done so much better, but I decided I'd give it a chance for Zack.

That said-- I intensely dislike Genesis. Oh god, you could not make me acknowledge him as a character even if you paid me, and this is what I get for following the development process of how he was made and what they did with him. Perhaps this is my side as an RPer speaking, but he was the token self-insert of a fanboy who wanted all the speshul attention. And this has nothing to do with the fact that I ship Sephiroth/Zack/Angeal ffff. And to have been put in as *Sephiroth's* best friend and treating him the way he was-- it was annoying, pushy and manipulative. In fact, after playing this, I seriously wonder who -did- sincerely care for Sephiroth, and it's kind of sad because he definitely was a nice character.

And I want to laugh in the faces of certain forum members who argued that Sephiroth would be a mean jackass before he snapped, I mean SERIOUSLY, hahaha, major fail. Would he have gotten ANY respect and admiration if he was? God people. I'm so glad they showed him as a serious, but somewhat gentle person. I whimpered when they didn't allow him to give blood to Genesis.

What I -am- interested in, is Genesis and Angeal's relationship, as childhood friends because I am a sucker for that sort of thing and seriously want to know what went on between them. I know they probably couldn't cover it in the videogame with the short amount of time they had, but I think I might have liked Genesis somewhat if there was some bit of humanity in him shown-- like the whole Banora Apples thing? THAT was the only part I felt any sympathy for him at all.

Zack was just-- I have no words for how amazing the writing on him was. I mean seriously-- they broke the mold for this guy and I couldn't have been happier. His relationships and interactions, his mindset, his influence-- all done because he wasn't a badass chick-ass grabber but because he was a genuinely nice guy who grows on people and they all-- in some way, would be affected by his loss.

As for before Nibelheim? God, the irony there, just-- wah. I wonder if you played through the sidequests though you can do that in your second playthrough! But either way? Man. x_x djflksdjklsdjg.

Hi I just woke up |D

hi hi how's things?

[fanbeatsman]

SO MUCH WORD to everything you've said about Sephiroth. The way characters talk about him, the way the story-world constructs him as a hero, even the fact of his snapping itself just doesn't work unless you assume that he was a centred and honourable person to start with. And I thought the game did a really great job of showing that. I also thought it did a really interesting and sensitive job of communicating how difficult it would actually be to be someone like Sephiroth - not, IT'S A HARD LIFE BEING PRACTICALLY PERFECT IN EVERY WAY, but still acknowledging that the kind of superhuman strength and physiology he has could be very frustrating to deal with.

I do see what you mean with Genesis. The sheer amount of attention he gets in the game never sat well with me - no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't reconcile the centrality of him with the original game's focuses and storyline (it actually made it difficult for me to treat the game as a prequel, in some respects). Angeal's integration into the story was much smoother, and worked much better. Also, Genesis's design (although I don't know much about how they came up with the idea for him, beyond that it was based on Gackt? who I know nothing about) is very *facepalm*

THAT SAID I think this: What I -am- interested in, is Genesis and Angeal's relationship, as childhood friends because I am a sucker for that sort of thing and seriously want to know what went on between them. sort of hits on why it is that I did grow interested in him. It wasn't so much what they did do with the character (although there were a couple of bits that really made me feel like he had some depth, like finding that diary entry about Sephiroth D:), but what you could do with him. His LOVELESS thing is ridiculously over-played in-game, but the idea of a character that obsessed with a fictional text could be taken in really interesting directions. Or I'd love (because I am a horrible person who loves torturing characters :s) to poke at his relationship with Sephiroth, think about how a friendship (or even just working relationship) works when it's based on intense (almost certainly one-sided; Sephiroth seems like he would have been a good friend) admiration and intense jealousy. Or ITA with you, think about what he was like when he was younger and how he would have become friends with Angeal - and then what happens to that friendship when Sephiroth comes into the picture. So I sort of want to write him, because I think you could do so much more with him than the game does :D

genuinely nice guy who grows on people <- this this this is Zack in a nutshell, yes. So much ♥ The thing that really struck me about him is that him being the hero, and having such a profound effect on so many people, never once felt contrived or forced - he's just that genuinely likeable. I never once resented the fact that I was supposed to like him (which happens to me depressingly often in games&c.).

I ended up rattling through it at quite a pace (I was so underleveled that I probably only got through the final boss thanks to really lucky DMW rolls ¬_¬), so I've not done many of the sidequests. I am very much looking forward to a second playthrough, though :D