Dirge of Cerberus

As you can tell by my uncreative title, I recently beat “Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus” in 13 hours, 17 minutes, and 55 seconds with a B ranking (which is worse than it sounds because the scores go S, A, B, C, D for some reason).  I had originally written a long explanation on how this is part of the “Final Fantasy VII” series, and how the original was supposed to be one of the greatest games ever, and I had never played it.  But, I’m happy to say that things have changed.  I recently bought “Final Fantasy VII” and have started playing it.  It is awesome.  But, that is for another post.  For now, I will tell you about “Dirge of Cerberus”.

            To start off, I like this game very much, but I have a few complaints.  For one thing, I think the story could’ve been better.  It was fine, but not great.  And the story part of the game is too short, especially for a Final Fantasy game.  (To give you an idea, “Final Fantasy XIII” took over 100 hours.)  My other complaint is that while you get to play as Vincent, who I like, the other characters from the original don’t show up much, and I wish they did.  Cid and Yuffie are in there a little, but Cloud and Tifa are barely there at all.  And for those of you who don’t know, those two were very important characters, and it’s very odd they are hardly seen.  They really shouldn’t have put them on the back cover.  It’s misleading.

            But, that’s where my complaints largely end.  As I said, this game is so darn fun.  I loved it, and I was so disappointed when I finished.  One thing that I like is that there was one thing in this game that is much different from other Final Fantasy games.  Unlike most of them, there is no turn-based fighting, the type where you and the enemies take turns attacking each other.  Instead, you actually get to move and fight freely, which I really prefer.  Aside from melee attacks and magic, your main weapons are your guns, a handgun (with three barrels, for three times the awesome), a machine gun, and a shotgun.  You use both control sticks to move around and aim, so you can move in pretty much any way you need.  You can even walk around in first-person if you choose, which I don’t.  I’d rather watch Vincent and his flowing cape.  (Most people can’t pull off capes.  Vincent can.)

            Aside from being fun to play, I love when they have cut scenes with the amazing graphics.  Most cut scenes, along with the gameplay, have fine graphics, but certain cut scenes get the most beautiful graphics, like that of the movie “Final Fantasy VII:Advent Children”.  It is so beautiful.  The characters look nearly real.  You can see the texture in clothing and other objects, every strand of hair.  I never get bored of it.  (You seriously need to see these graphics.  So amazing.)

            And while this game may be short, there are a good amount of extras.  You can unlock artwork, trailers, music, and cut scenes from the game, plus there are extra missions.  There are a lot of these extra missions, and I actually beat all of them (it took about 5 weeks), even the ones that weren’t required.  I’m so proud of myself, despite me having to look at a walkthrough a bit.  (The guide was written by Monistic_Turtle.  Thank you much, guide writer.  I needed to give you credit for your awesome guide.  Not that you’ll ever see this probably, but it’s the thought that counts.)  There is also a good variety of these extra missions.  Many were fun, and some were dreadful.

            When it comes to dreadful missions, Cait Vs the World is one of the ones that come to mind.  This one is just absurd.  You play as Cait Sith, who is a bipedal cat (with a Scottish accent, for whatever reason), and you must kill 100 enemies, which is harder than it sounds.  This should be a new punishment in jail.  People won’t commit crimes ever again.  I had to try for about a week before I could do it.  I read that it’s best to stand on this box in a narrow area and attack enemies from there because they can’t always hurt you as easily, so I spent so much time on that darn box.  I spent more time of my life on that stupid box than any person should.  And while I would get sick of that box, the enemies get tougher and more able to attack you on the box later on, so I then had to run around and attack out in the open, which was frightening, and then I missed the relative safety of that box.  Poor Cait.

            Also, sometimes they have time limits, and many times, they are more than enough.  But, in one area, Shinra Manor Prime, I believe, they give you 2 minutes and 40 seconds to get to the goal or you die.  This is barely enough time.  One time, I even got right near the goal, but Vincent died when the time ran out, and he fell into the goal.  Darn, he was that close!

            Another horrible thing they have you do is Missilebreaker Melee, where you stand on a little area while a helicopter shoots homing missiles at you, and you must shoot the missiles for 3 minutes.  You can’t get hit that many times, or you’ll die.  And it was right after I succeeded in Cait defeating “the world”.  And to make matters worse, they decided, “Hey, that area wasn’t bad enough, let’s make them avoid missiles from three helicopters.”  And so they gave us Missilebreaker Deathmatch.  Okay, okay, so I exaggerated.  No, there really are three helicopters, but it was somehow easier and took me less tries than the previous one.  And the area’s larger to move around on, so you can avoid some of the missiles.  And it’s optional.

            Last horror to mention is Rains of Gehenna.  It took forever, and then at the end, you must jump into a tiny room with an apparently immortal Dual Horn (essentially a huge, red bull) and get three medals.  Poor Vincent got the snot beaten out of him.  He didn’t die, surprisingly, but I bet he was quite bruised after that one.  Sorry, Vince.  But, it had to be done.  So as you can see, some of these extra missions can drive you mad.  I’m glad the story wasn’t this hard.

            Anyway, to unlock the other extra things I mentioned earlier, you must shoot these small targets called memory capsules, I think, hidden throughout the game itself and the extra missions.  I had a lot of fun watching out for these.  I wonder how many I missed…  There is also a secret ending if you get all the G files in the game.  I did.  It was neat.  It had the lovely graphics.  So lovely.

            Cuteness-wise, no mini sheep still.  Darn it.  But, I think Cait’s rather cute, and I love how he flails his arms about to attack.  He looks cute.  He also looks cute when he walks slowly.  Silly kitty.  I want to hug him.  And in some of the later extra missions, Cait would actually help Vincent out.  He’d follow you around, maybe attack enemies, and also drop ammo and items.  Thank you, Cait, my dear.  Two times, you got three Caits.  It was awesome.  Why can’t my cats drop items and stuff for me?  Lazy oafs.  They just leave things I don’t want them to leave….

            On a side note, there were a lot of weird characters in this game.  At least, that’s what I thought.  What’s the deal with Lucrecia?  Chill out, girl.

Dirge of the Duck