Made me appreciate the original Final Fantasy VII more.
To be completely honest I couldn't appreciate Final Fantasy VII (the original from 1998) at first. I started with FFVIII which was epic for me and since I've played it in 2001 I was already accustomed to better graphic (in other games). FFVIII was beautiful to me, esp the rendered movies and GF animations but the character's design was sth I had to get used to, therefore when I saw the FF VII characters I was even more discourages. I would have a better start with this game if I played it when it was released.
There were some girly things I didn't like about the original FFVII eg I didn't like how everyone was fussing about Aerith and Cloud, they never fit together to me, Aerith's character was off to me and when the so-famous scene came over I was angry at myself for feeling nothing about it, I wasn't even sad, she was a good character but I never felt her importance. I changed my mind about her after playing Crisis Core.
Crisis Core made me look differently at the whole story. Aerith finally found her place in the game and her story became complete, it was nice to see the human side of Sephiroth and young Cloud with all the reasons for his later confusions. The story has been well written. What I didn't like was Angeal's name, it annoyed me for quite a bit, naming him simply Angel or anything would be much better that this weird interjection, but that's my opinion.
During the whole story I was stunned by both Sephiroth's and Genesis' resemblance to singer Gackt, each of them reminded me of him in a different way, how was I surprised when I found out Genesis was based on Gackt's appearance! Plus, I got super angry when I found out that Gackt was the voice actor for Genesis in Japanese version and I got to listen to some random American guy, so unfair!
To get things worse I had to play this with German dialogues (luckily only subs), as this game cannot be bought through PSN, neither in stores in my country :V
::: Duration :::
Unfortunately, the game is very short. I always want to clear everything before fighting the last boss, therefore I've spent a lot of time by savepoints clearing the missions, I actually moved forward with the plot only when I was left with missions marked as 'Extreme'. Still, when I entered the final battle (it came so soon I had no idea it's gonna be the last savepoint) I had 37% of the missions cleared (altogether in 28:20 hours).
::: Graphics :::
I loved it! I don't need to have FF VII remake for PS3 or PS4 or whatever will come out in the future, CC:FFVII graphics were really neat, very similar to Advent Children movie.
::: Sound and music :::
Loved, maybe not as amazing and brainf***** as FFX and FFVIII OST but it went with the game amazingly well and didn't get bored.
::: Difficulty :::
Too easy, obviously. I've learned the materia junction (or whatever the english name is) pretty fast and early in the game I had TP+ ~300% (later became TP++ 540%, could get more easily but it gave me 9999HP already so there was no point. BTW, I just saw a screeshot from English version of the game and there the max HP was 99999, why can't I get boyond 9999????? Did I miss sth?) while other stats also quickly hit it's high level. Even without that the DMW system often got my stats double so even with 2500HP I could have 5000 after just one mission. I got all summons except Neo Bahamut easily (the pot was hinted to me by friend).
But after all I don't mind it being easy, it was fun, however, I wish the game was longer so it could get at least a bit challenging in the end. I died maybe three times in missions, never in main plot. I knew the last fight will be with Genesis but since we fight his clones so often I didn't realise that I finished him for real until I got to the end movies.
::: Riddles :::
Not many (3 ?), but I never really liked or needed them in FF games.
::: I cried in the end :::
(contains spoilers for those who didn't play FFVII)
I didn't cry at the last scene but I was crying in the last fight. I had my stats at 9999, I made the mission where I had to fight the 1000 soldiers and yet they finished me in the final soldier battle although my helath never went low and had plenty of Elixirs and Phoenixes and Phoenix summon. It was very emotional to see how Zack still get's beaten and his moves are getting slower and slower with all the DMW characters disappearing and Aerih being the last one and not being able to heal him like she used to. It made me feel really helpless and it felt like I personally was really dying. This made me cry a bit. I both liked and disliked the ending, the idea and how they made it was good but they could make it a bit more challenging / longer, etc.
::: Summary :::
Can I really sum this up? I'm really glad I played this game, it made me more familiar to FF VII, I don't recommend this to ppl who didn't play FFVII although playing this first may be interesting experience. I played FF VII just once (eg I beat VIII four times and X twice) so now I'll probably refresh my memory and play FF VII once again, although I'd really love to be able to play FF VII remade with AC / CC graphics. Hopefully this will happen one day!