A must have for Final Fantasy VII fans!
First let me talk about the graphics, since a lot of people base a game on this point. This game shows what the PSP is truly capable of. Character animations were excellent, from their body movements
down to there facial expressions. You can definitely see the emotion that the characters were trying to convey. The scenery was clean and defined, and it brought back memories from the original PS1 game.
The cut scenes were nicely done, my favorite being the one with Genesis, Angeal, and Sephiroth fighting each other. Okay, enough about the graphics.
Next, lets talk about sound. I had no complaints with any of the music or sound effects. This was one of the few games games that I actually put my headphones on just to listen to the music. The sound effects added to the experience, instead of getting annoying and repetitive. The voice acting was the best I have heard in long time. The actors and actresses really put some effort into getting the emotions of the characters as believable as they could. Some of the voice actors from Advent Children reprised their roles in this game. In any case, I was very pleased with this aspect of the game.
Now I'll talk about game play. Like I mentioned earlier, I was worried that this would be a hack and slash knock-off. Well, I was wrong. Though, you will be hitting attack a lot, you will have to change things up a bit using magic as well as special attacks that you get access to by equipping materia. Most of the usual spells are in this game as well as some new spells that take an element and adds a condition like poison and such to which adds a little strategy to combat. The other aspect I was concerned about was the DMW, which is like a little slot machine in the upper left corner of the screen, that when you are in combat, characters faces scroll up and every few seconds they stop and depending on what the three slots are showing will effect combat in some way. I was actually happy with this once I found out how it worked. The DMW affects combat by making you invincible for a short time, making spells cost 0 mp, and other temporary boosts. However, the true innovation behind it is that if you line up three of the same faces you will execute a special attack that corresponds with whoever's face you matched. Also the DMW is used to level up.
Okay, in closing. If you are a fan of FFVII, than you need to get this game, because it clears up so much of the back story of the original game, and it is one of the better games on the psp. However, like I say in all my most of my reviews, these are my opinions, take 'em or leave 'em.