For those that are less than thrilled with Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus, I think you'll find this from GamePRO #219, December 2006, interesting to read.


The game was at #5 on GamePRO's list of the Top 10 Best-Selling Console Video-Game Titles. GamePRO has this to say --- "Final Fantasy games have been regarded as some of the finest titles ever created. However, Dirge of Cerberus does no justice to the Final Fantasy VII name, with redundant, sluggish action, and a main character that is anything but compelling (Agent0042 --- emphasis mine) Even the game's poor reviews couldn't keep it from landing at number five. Just goes to show that just the Final Fantasy name will sell."


GamePRO reviewed the game in its previous issue and gave it an overall "Fun Factor" rating of 2.5/5. According to the list of gaming magazine averages it publishes each month, Cerberus ranked an overall 5.8/10 among all the major gaming magazines.

word...though i think that's one of the few times i'd agree with reviews...i must applaud them for acknowledging how much this game sucks

but the sheer fact that it's #5 on the best sellling list shows how many people are willing to waste their money on a bad game

I see this as a telltale sign of denial of imperfection within the Final Fantasy community, as the fan base is probably trying to glaze and palliate the apparent flaws of this game over with exaggerated appeal.

yes, we all agree the game didnt live up for its expectation,
the only good thing about the game is the secret ending , and vincent story, which they couldve made a Manga for him and not a game title.

"... However, Dirge of Cerberus does no justice to the Final Fantasy VII name, with redundant, sluggish action, and a main character that is anything but compelling

No justice to the Final Fantasy VII name? You've got to be kidding... in many ways its exactly what Final Fantasy VII was :-).

I digress. What really gets me about Dirge of Cerberus is that it bases itself around one hollow character from Final Fantasy VII that was added in at the last second and had zero depth. How can you now try and base a story around a character that had no story to begin with? This was Square's attempt to right one of their wrongs and fill in the blanks... and it seemed like an improvised story the entire way through.

But worst of all. Not only is Dirge of Cerberus a bad Final Fantasy game, its a bad shooter. The geometry is absolutely terrible, the gun customization is fairly hollow, and the missions are dull and completely linear... boring.

Of course it was always going to sell though. Fanboy syndrome in the Final Fantasy series is awful.

Mr. Bunniesworth, your post is righteously full of righteousness and rightness. Right on. :)

<<
I bought it because I was curious....

I heard all the bad reviews, so I wanted to see how bad it was myself...XP
If I know the company or game series, I usually buy the games that all reviews praise, or all reviews completely bash on, just out of curiosity...
Mm, and it was pretty bad.
>> You shouldn't ever have the "trigger" button and the "aiming" directional joystick be controlled by the same hand....or at least not on the right-hand side of a controller....
General gaming usually gives people better precision movement with their left thumb rather than their right....
Or like, if they wanted to separate "aiming" and "movement" to different control mechanisms but wanted to allow both at the same time, they should make movement only face one direction, and all turning should be accomplished through "aiming"....

>> You shouldn't ever have the "trigger" button and the "aiming" directional joystick be controlled by the same hand....or at least not on the right-hand side of a controller....
General gaming usually gives people better precision movement with their left thumb rather than their right....
Or like, if they wanted to separate "aiming" and "movement" to different control mechanisms but wanted to allow both at the same time, they should make movement only face one direction, and all turning should be accomplished through "aiming"....

that's what PCs and USB keyboards are for

Mr. Bunniesworth, your post is righteously full of righteousness and rightness. Right on. :)

x2

that's what PCs and USB keyboards are for

Ah--!
I remember someone talking about how the keyboard makes the game much easier to control....
<< I'm not about to spend more money on this game...XP
Hm. That also means that I shouldn't complain....
Alright!

The game's control mechanism problems can be fixed or are easier to handle with a keyboard, but with a default controller, the controls are a bit awkward...
This is my first 3rd-person shooter type game, so I didn't know what to look for in Level Design or any of those sorts of things....

I think I was one of few people who didn't give a crap about this release. I've loved Final Fantasy VII ever since I first played it nearly 8 years ago, but the reason overexposure has made me take a few steps backwards.

I've seen "Advent Children," but didn't really care for it. The movie had a wafer-thin storyline, and the characters were practically numb. Cloud and Tifa were the only two characters that were even the slightest interesting, the rest of them were nothing but props.

Yeah. FF7:AC wasn't that strong story-wise.

I rented DoC and found so bad. The only thing decent about it is the FMV (with FF7:AC graphics) and the story. Apart from that, it really sucked.

Before the site crashed I posted one very elaborate post detailing my feelings towards Final Fantasy VII, but alas it has been lost so before I say another word I had best reiterate a little bit.

In the early days of video gaming I was a Sega kid. I played Sonic instead of Mario, and lets face it... the RPGs available on the Sega consoles back then were no match for the ones in the Nintendo camp. My first ever contact with a real "traditional" RPG was when I rented Final Fantasy VII. I loved it instantly, because my lack of game playing from the Nintendo camp had meant I had never played a Final Fantasy game before and the concept just flawed me.

It inspired me to back-track and revisit all those old titles that I was oblivious to in the 16-bit era. So I played through the classic Final Fantasy games, and Chrono Trigger and both Secret of Mana titles; enjoying a great many of them. But after seeing how gameplay worked in some of those old-school games, all of a sudden Final Fantasy VII really didn't feel as good as it did originally and it no longer seemed like a "traditional" RPG in hindsight. As the series progressed, I grew to dislike it more and more as I saw what other Final Fantasy entries did, while its presence in the video game world was solidified more and more.

Final Fantasy VII has a nostalgic place in my heart, if for no other reason then simply because it introduced me to the Final Fantasy series and the world of role-playing in video games. But from a technical standpoint it just does so much wrong, and backtracks away from a lot of the mechanics that made some of its predecessors such good titles.

And see, what some people tend to forget is, the developers of titles for the old Super Nintendo could of been forgiven for a lack of dialogue or a lack of depth in their games. Because size was everything in those days and some things just weren't feasible. But despite that, some games really were very deep, offered solid stories, and gave the gamer lots of choices.

But Final Fantasy VII didn't have an excuse for skimping. It was on a new medium and took advantage of new technology, so there is no excuse for... say, having an incoherent story or having characters that were just there for the sake of being there. I really, honestly, do believe Final Fantasy VII is the worst Final Fantasy in the series. But that's not to say I couldn't have any fun playing through it again, its just at the back end of a fantastic series of video games. I could play through the game again, but I'd be doing so with tongue-in-cheek and wouldn't attempt to take the core of the game too seriously.

Now, finally, back to Dirge of Cerberus. The real let down is that it just isn't ANY fun at all. Its a broken game built on top of a broken game.

Some say its story is endearing, but in all seriousness they've just added things onto to the original simply to make it fit. Like those doors in the Shinra Mansion that just appear there out of thin air, or that mystical basement-area beneath the Shinra Building that no one, anywhere, ever, drew attention to three years ago. It just FEELS so improvised.

Its game-play is just absolutely rubbish. There is nothing even half-decent about it. There are absolutely unless and shallow melee attacks, limited gun customizability (lets face it, you don't CUSTOMIZE your guns you just choose to upgrade one over another), and a hollow use of materia; which I guess was hollow to begin with.

The graphics are horrid quite honestly. Some of the texturing is second-grade, and the in-game geometry is nothing short of ridiculous; why for the life of me you can't jump off a balcony or jump over a crate is beyond me... you basically just follow the yellow-bricked road and go where you are told to go.

Ok the FMVs are nice. Square always seems to get that right, and they look very nice indeed (its a shame the cut-scenes don't look like that). But what is a game with good FMVs and nothing else to hold it up?

From an audio perspective the game is a sad shadow of any other Final Fantasy game. The music is just rubbish, and while the voice acting for some of the lesser characters is ok... some of the more prominent ones are awful (especially the completely hollow, moronically melodramatic bad guys).

This game is an absolute disaster in every sense of the word. Its a glorified version of that idiotic Warhammer 40K shooter, with absolutely nothing worthwhile about it. Honestly Square-Enix, stick to what your used to, because it was clear for all to see... you were out of your depth from the word go.

yes, we all agree the game didnt live up for its expectation,
the only good thing about the game is the secret ending , and vincent story, which they couldve made a Manga for him and not a game title.

You mean the secret ending where square is obviously and blatantly making a bid for a sequel to bleed us dry again?

Hee.

I'm going to be perverted and say the game's biggest saving grace will be among the pre-teen yaoi obsessor fanbase... this has got to be the most slashable game in history.

Also, Mr. Bunniesworth? Right On.