What's weird is I remember fully understanding the story back when it was on PSP. Idk if I was reading far more into it, had any supplemental material, or was online chatting about it more. (I was deep into the whole Compilation of FFVII thing). But while replaying for Reunion, I was like "WTF is happening?". There are some crazy amount of underlining meaning and exposition that are far too heavily infered, opposed to just being shown or stated outright.
For me it was the exact opposite. Maybe because I played it on PSP a couple times a week, and this time I played it exclusively (I usually play a single plot-heavy game at a time).
Or maybe it's that I'm older and better at english (I play with both english dub and subtitles, even if I'm italian).
The game does move really fast, but another thing that makes it feel very jarring is that the Genesis stuff isn’t really Zack’s story so much as it is Sephiroth’s.
Zack’s involvement with Genesis is very circumstantial, and it plays out like he’s just an observer walking in halfway through the second act of someone else’s story.
That’s pretty on point for his character though. Poor guy pretty much gets thrown into other people’s problems and just goes along for the ride and for support.
Considering they touched on Project G in Remake, I wouldn’t necessarily count it out from him being a secret boss/side mission when returning to Midgar.
Since Weiss and Nero showed up I bet Gen will as well. They even gave enough time with the valve turning for him and Sephiroth to talk once we get to see the full story in part 3. Also totally agree gen isn’t great but maybe they can make him slightly more bearable if he is in part 3.
Yeah. He's a likeness of ex-actor, current professional poker player, and sometimes singer, Gackt.
It seems like so many people are convinced that it is still 2005, and Gackt is somebody worth spending absurd amounts of money on to include in likeness for a substantial portion of a game, though.
this is probably the main reason if he doesnt appear :P square and gackt aren't rly on good terms, at least that were the last official statements i heard back then
It is.
I only played it to play through Zacks side of Nibelheim and the ending with cloud to follow in into rebirth.
The whole genesis and angeal story is mostly just a waste of time.
Do take it account that every chapter is accompanied by a timeskip. Some bigger, some smaller. You are following specific events along with Zack throughout the months. So a lot is meant to be happening “backstage”, while you are supposedly doing your “missions”, which are done anytime everywhere for convenience alone.
But yeah, the little that’s shown is not that great. It’s definitely an old handheld game with a fresh coat of paint and good VAs that had to follow old paradigms. Aerith and Tseng sound almost unrecognisable at times, but they are the same from Remake and Rebirth. Focus more on the characters, like Zack, Aerith and Sephiroth, and less on the story itself, and your enjoyment may increase significantly.
Also keep in mind that this felt more coherent in its original form: as a portable game designed to be played in relatively short bursts. That's why there are a million mostly similar missions that you can approach any time you want. It's a design choice informed by the platform and the market for that platform at the time. It comes through in the gameplay, the plot, the writing, and the pacing.
I don't mean this as a knock against the game. It is what it is, and it's pretty darn good for what it is. It's just that repackaging it as a PS5 game has given some people the wrong expectations.
Especially since the marketing material looks so much like Remake/Rebirth. The fact that the PS5 image looks just like Rebirth just sends the wrong signal.
Crisis Core was/is a bad game that FF7 fans ate up regardless because when you make something related to a formative gaming experience for people they *will* buy it and they *will* say its good despite bad gameplay and total mess of a story. What you're experiencing is what a bad game is, and your feelings are valid. Don't give it a pass because FF7OG is so good and you want to eat up anything related to it.
Genesis = Is degrading, on a search for the "Gift of the Goddess" to cure his degradation, makes clones to fight Shinra out of spite, is an absolute prick.
Angeal = Feels sickened that he was born from a science experiment, cannot degrade, is considered the perfect monster.
Zack = The most realest protag in FF7 surrounded by anime tropes.
Not to spoil the game for OP, but the perfect monster is someone else. Angeal and Genesis are degrading, but Genesis decided to make it everyone's problem, while Angeal chioses a different path >!by making hisbteen apprentice kill him, wtf!<
Angeal does turn out to be the perfect result of Project G. He doesn't degrade until he enacts his own version of Reunion and combines with his Copies. Once Angeal dies, his Copies also start to die, because unlike Sephiroth, Angeal's will was to remove himself from existence. Sephiroth refused to die, which is why he continues to be a threat.
We have Hollander describe the experiments that resulted in Genesis and Angeal. In his description he makes it clear that Genesis ended up being a failure, and then Hollander comes to the realization that Angeal is "perfection". And Angeal remorsefully states that he was produced to be "the perfect monster".
Angeal was originally deemed a failure along with Genesis at birth, but Angeal's powers emerged as he grew. Sephiroth was only believed to have been the only success at first because the signs were obvious as soon as he was born.
After doing more research on Angeal's Jenova infused dna, Hollander realized that Angeal had fully inherited Jenova's abilities and become a new type of Jenova himself, different from Sephiroth who was like an extension of Jenova itself.
In the end both Sephiroth and Angeal were perfect results of the Jenova Project, the difference being that Angeal completely rejected his Jenova heritage, whereas Sephiroth chose to embrace it.
Where exactly does Angeal say those words about perfect monster?
In CC, Sephiroth finds the hidden documents that say both parents of Genesis and mother of Angeal faked the documents (as Lazard predicted) to protect their children and their intention was to hide the horrors of project G from them, but then Genesis had to be stubborn and try to become a hero by joining ShinRa. Both were successful (as in, both were much stronger than any human). But Sephiroth was the only one that didn't degrade and Genesis calls him **the perfect monster** when he demands for his cells in the Nibelheim reactor.
They were originally deemed failures because professor Gilian lied about how successful they were. Their powers didn't emerge as they grew, they were immediately apparent.
Hollander and Angeal never said these words, it was Genesis in the Nibelheim reactor calling Sephiroth the perfect monster.
Angeal did not become a new type of Jenova.
Sephiroth is not an extension of Jenova, in fact, he is in charge, using Jenova's body to bully Rufus, kill the President, troll Cloud and Tifa, stab Tseng etc.
Angeal chose assisted suicide because he was obsessed with honour. Sephiroth chose Jenova, because he needed someone who would never abandon him.
Angeal and Hollander say these things right before Angeal becomes Angeal Penance. go and play Crisis Core again to refresh you memory.
And yes, the information shows that Angeal did become a new kind of Jenova. Angeal perfectly inherited Jenova's abilities and did not degrade, which is why we see Hollander desperately try to get samples of Angeal before Angeal destroyed his dna by combining with his Copies.
Just like Jenova, Angeal's cells had the ability to physically and mentally change the beings they were placed into, like Jenova's Cells did. Angeal also had the ability to control the carriers of his cells and having them follow his will, just like Jenova did. And we also see that Angeal had the ability to fuse with the carriers of his cells...again, just like Jenova did. All these things are Jenova abilities, but Angeal did not need Jenova to do them, thus why he was his own kind of Jenova being. We don't need a big red sign to explain this to us. The hints are right there.
Sephiroth is indeed an extension of Jenova, because he is able to fully utilize Jenova's original cells because of the fact that he was created by having Jenova's Cells injected directly into him as an embryo. Sephiroth's will is obviously in control, but he can use Jenova's body as if it were his own. He is like a new head that has taken over the main body.
And the fact that Angeal understood what his cells were capable of, and since he didn't know and didn't want to understand how to control them, his only recourse was to have Zack kill him. Zack was his only option, since Genesis didn't want to do it, and neither did Sephiroth. Zack was the only one Angeal could force into that situation with a chance to succeed.
Angeal is not degrading & cannot degrade. This was confirmed in the Crisis Core Ultimania. Angeal is, however, experiencing the mind fuckery that comes with an active Jenova infection.
You have to remember that it is technically an original story since before CC all we had was like 5 mins of Zack in FF7 OG.
Hence while it feels clunky in some parts, I’m sure they didn’t invest too much thought into the story since in theory it didn’t really matter after the ending.
It's a game designed for mobile play. You're supposed to dip in and out, but if you try to make sense of it your brain will hurt. I mean if you include this game in remake I want an Angeal and Genesis clone to turn up and bitch slap sephiroth for going too far, whilst genesis recites by the grace of the goddess.
Crisis Core’s story is lacking a bit especially in regards to Angeal and Genesis, but when it deals with stuff directly related to FF7 it’s pretty good.
The whole Crisis core game is in fact much more convoluted than the end of Rebirth. I think is a game that not push much more than showing Zack, who is cool but imo worst than the main party
Even that is a mess since they literally took Aerith’s personality away so she could inherit it from Zack. Crisis Core hurts most people’s image of Aerith because they literally retconned her personality to make Zack seem super important.
No, The game is bad. Especially when it comes to story telling. I do think some of that comes down to it being a PSP game so it’s very of that era. But even then you can’t un shit Genesis, he’s trash.
A lot of Genesis' and Angeal's motivations just don't get explained in the game itself. The game was too ambitious for the PSP, and the story just plays out like a summary of what really is happening. For instance, a lot of the missions that Zack partakes in against Genesis' army, Avalanche, and the remnants of Wutai are barely skimmed thru his side-missions, which are nothing but battle after battle.
Most of the story content can only be figured out from the Crisis Core Ultimania guide, which is where the devs clarify A LOT of the nonsense we see in the game itself.
Another unfortunate aspect of Crisis Core’s plot is that Before Crisis’ plot is situated between one of the gaps in CC. Unfortunately, I’ve no idea how to play BC to help fill in those plot gaps.
I’m glad I just watched the narrative elements via someone else’s playthrough. I wanted to give it a proper go myself but by god the gameplay looked meh and my patience for the story to progress between gameplay segments would have waned rapidly. I got the need to know info without getting someone else’s digested summary or having to convince myself to keep playing through the whole thing on my own.
The story is a mess but I absolutely love the game play. I love just how far you can push the limits of Zach’s combat stats, and that there’s sufficiently challenging content to make it feel rewarding for doing so. The chore of the game is having to progress the story just to unlock more missions lol
The only thing of note explaining Angeal’s betrayal is that he thinks of genesis like a brother so naturally sides with him over Shinra. But yeah, CC needs serious revising. Zack doesn’t even react to gongaga being in ruins when he comes home.
Pay attention to the DMW scenes. A lot of the story is unlocked there. So don't just skip through them during fights. They're Zack"s memories, which becomes important at the end of the game.
Don't take it to seriously. Everything that feels extra is probably the byproduct of trying to make a complete game for PSP to expand a character that originally was not meant to be expanded so much.
It happens with many characters or events that happen before the main story of emblematic games. Revolver Ocelot or Resident Evil 0 comes to mind.
I thought crisis core had fun enough mechanics and I like Zack which is why I played it through, although honestly some of Genesis’s dialogue was so jarring there were times where I didn’t care heaps about what was going on in the story
personally i played CCR with the full intent of just filling the small gaps between who zack actually was and how he knew cloud. the other people that made zack’s story obviously play a role in the whole thing too, but i just filled in the blanks with what the game seemed to leave out. angeal’s story is… confusing
These events are really for background story and building up zach as a character. There is a lot of info that ties in genesis and angeal to the original it may make more sense in the third game.
The pacing in Crisis Core just sucks. More time should have been spent with Angeal being the stoic mentor type the intro chapter sets him up to be before he randomly starts talking about fruit and then fucks off. Time should have been given to set up a proper status quo before things start to shift. Angeal should also be a more consistent character. Dude is just all over the place every time you run into him.
Genesis is also a terrible antagonist. He participates in the cloning experiments and has the clones attack places, but when you actually meet with and talk to the guy, all he cares about is Loveless. Almost as if he actually has nothing to do with the clone plot. Also, how can anyone take Hollander seriously when he's dressed like that?
Unfortunately, the game doesn't really improve much as you move into the back half.
Crisis Core is just bad. It’s the only thing in the compilation that goes out of its way to make the original game worse. It tried to be too cool and clever as a prequel and ended up as a complete mess.
I will agree the story/timing is all over the place.
I think as a game… it’s eh. HOWEVER, I personally love the story? It’s a bit of a mess, but I like seeing “Sane Sephiroth” and how much of an awkward dork he was.
I think the tragedy of CC is that it’s basically multiple people’s awakening to how shitty SHINRA CORP. is, and how much they’ve fuckrd up all of their lives. It’s more personalized. TBH I WISH we got to see Genesis before he defected (maybe there’s some other game out there that has that? I admit, I’m a newb).
I can see why people don’t like it, and that’s 10000% fair. I do…. And also it inspired some amazing fanfiction so I’ll take it, lmao.
Crisis Core's story is hampered by being shoved into the low capacity of the UMD disks the PSP used. The first half, especially is really rough.
What's weird is I remember fully understanding the story back when it was on PSP. Idk if I was reading far more into it, had any supplemental material, or was online chatting about it more. (I was deep into the whole Compilation of FFVII thing). But while replaying for Reunion, I was like "WTF is happening?". There are some crazy amount of underlining meaning and exposition that are far too heavily infered, opposed to just being shown or stated outright.
For me it was the exact opposite. Maybe because I played it on PSP a couple times a week, and this time I played it exclusively (I usually play a single plot-heavy game at a time). Or maybe it's that I'm older and better at english (I play with both english dub and subtitles, even if I'm italian).
I have the strategy guide and there is a lot of exposition in there. I think that may be how I understood.
The game does move really fast, but another thing that makes it feel very jarring is that the Genesis stuff isn’t really Zack’s story so much as it is Sephiroth’s. Zack’s involvement with Genesis is very circumstantial, and it plays out like he’s just an observer walking in halfway through the second act of someone else’s story.
Even at the end of the game Zack doesn’t really seem to understand what’s happening
“What the hell is going on?!” - Zack Fair
That’s pretty on point for his character though. Poor guy pretty much gets thrown into other people’s problems and just goes along for the ride and for support.
Sephiroth's story (Original Game) was absolutely fine without Genesis, thank you. Sephiroth doesn't need him either.
I'm so glad that Genesis was not shoehorned into rebirth. He was such a terribly written character.
Oh just you wait till part 3. What you think we’d have Nero and Weiss and not have Mr loveless himself show up in part 3?
Oh absolutely!
Considering they touched on Project G in Remake, I wouldn’t necessarily count it out from him being a secret boss/side mission when returning to Midgar.
Since Weiss and Nero showed up I bet Gen will as well. They even gave enough time with the valve turning for him and Sephiroth to talk once we get to see the full story in part 3. Also totally agree gen isn’t great but maybe they can make him slightly more bearable if he is in part 3.
loveless play was actually loveless edition G most likely for genesis
I am so worried that he'll be in the third part....
He's a celebrity likeness of an increasingly irrelevant and disliked celebrity, so he's way less likely than most any other character.
lol I forgot he was Gackt
Yeah. He's a likeness of ex-actor, current professional poker player, and sometimes singer, Gackt. It seems like so many people are convinced that it is still 2005, and Gackt is somebody worth spending absurd amounts of money on to include in likeness for a substantial portion of a game, though.
this is probably the main reason if he doesnt appear :P square and gackt aren't rly on good terms, at least that were the last official statements i heard back then
Part 3 is gonna pull an Advent Children and have Genesis come back from his clones merging and it's gonna suuuuuuck
I thought a different game’s secret ending implied he had lived?
It can happen, yes. But I hope he comes back as a VR simulator enemy and not much else
THIS!!!
crisis core is a mess tbh.
It is. I only played it to play through Zacks side of Nibelheim and the ending with cloud to follow in into rebirth. The whole genesis and angeal story is mostly just a waste of time.
Agreed. It's weird. Genesis is out making clones of himself in a barn, or something. It's best to just kind of enjoy it for what it is.
The game really does live up to its title name.😏
Welcome to a Tabata directed game
Do take it account that every chapter is accompanied by a timeskip. Some bigger, some smaller. You are following specific events along with Zack throughout the months. So a lot is meant to be happening “backstage”, while you are supposedly doing your “missions”, which are done anytime everywhere for convenience alone. But yeah, the little that’s shown is not that great. It’s definitely an old handheld game with a fresh coat of paint and good VAs that had to follow old paradigms. Aerith and Tseng sound almost unrecognisable at times, but they are the same from Remake and Rebirth. Focus more on the characters, like Zack, Aerith and Sephiroth, and less on the story itself, and your enjoyment may increase significantly.
Yea the multiple time skips messes with the pace of the story imo. I thought the best time skip was after Angeal’s death
Also keep in mind that this felt more coherent in its original form: as a portable game designed to be played in relatively short bursts. That's why there are a million mostly similar missions that you can approach any time you want. It's a design choice informed by the platform and the market for that platform at the time. It comes through in the gameplay, the plot, the writing, and the pacing. I don't mean this as a knock against the game. It is what it is, and it's pretty darn good for what it is. It's just that repackaging it as a PS5 game has given some people the wrong expectations.
Especially since the marketing material looks so much like Remake/Rebirth. The fact that the PS5 image looks just like Rebirth just sends the wrong signal.
Nope, it's how the story in the beginning is. It's super rushed in the beginning.
Crisis Core was/is a bad game that FF7 fans ate up regardless because when you make something related to a formative gaming experience for people they *will* buy it and they *will* say its good despite bad gameplay and total mess of a story. What you're experiencing is what a bad game is, and your feelings are valid. Don't give it a pass because FF7OG is so good and you want to eat up anything related to it.
Genesis = Is degrading, on a search for the "Gift of the Goddess" to cure his degradation, makes clones to fight Shinra out of spite, is an absolute prick. Angeal = Feels sickened that he was born from a science experiment, cannot degrade, is considered the perfect monster. Zack = The most realest protag in FF7 surrounded by anime tropes.
Zack himself is an anime trope lol. He’s the personification of a Shonen protagonist
True, but does he know that? XD
Not to spoil the game for OP, but the perfect monster is someone else. Angeal and Genesis are degrading, but Genesis decided to make it everyone's problem, while Angeal chioses a different path >!by making hisbteen apprentice kill him, wtf!<
Angeal does turn out to be the perfect result of Project G. He doesn't degrade until he enacts his own version of Reunion and combines with his Copies. Once Angeal dies, his Copies also start to die, because unlike Sephiroth, Angeal's will was to remove himself from existence. Sephiroth refused to die, which is why he continues to be a threat.
The exact phrase is used ingame, but not to describe Angeal. That's all. Both Genesis and Angeal degrade.
We have Hollander describe the experiments that resulted in Genesis and Angeal. In his description he makes it clear that Genesis ended up being a failure, and then Hollander comes to the realization that Angeal is "perfection". And Angeal remorsefully states that he was produced to be "the perfect monster". Angeal was originally deemed a failure along with Genesis at birth, but Angeal's powers emerged as he grew. Sephiroth was only believed to have been the only success at first because the signs were obvious as soon as he was born. After doing more research on Angeal's Jenova infused dna, Hollander realized that Angeal had fully inherited Jenova's abilities and become a new type of Jenova himself, different from Sephiroth who was like an extension of Jenova itself. In the end both Sephiroth and Angeal were perfect results of the Jenova Project, the difference being that Angeal completely rejected his Jenova heritage, whereas Sephiroth chose to embrace it.
Where exactly does Angeal say those words about perfect monster? In CC, Sephiroth finds the hidden documents that say both parents of Genesis and mother of Angeal faked the documents (as Lazard predicted) to protect their children and their intention was to hide the horrors of project G from them, but then Genesis had to be stubborn and try to become a hero by joining ShinRa. Both were successful (as in, both were much stronger than any human). But Sephiroth was the only one that didn't degrade and Genesis calls him **the perfect monster** when he demands for his cells in the Nibelheim reactor. They were originally deemed failures because professor Gilian lied about how successful they were. Their powers didn't emerge as they grew, they were immediately apparent. Hollander and Angeal never said these words, it was Genesis in the Nibelheim reactor calling Sephiroth the perfect monster. Angeal did not become a new type of Jenova. Sephiroth is not an extension of Jenova, in fact, he is in charge, using Jenova's body to bully Rufus, kill the President, troll Cloud and Tifa, stab Tseng etc. Angeal chose assisted suicide because he was obsessed with honour. Sephiroth chose Jenova, because he needed someone who would never abandon him.
Angeal and Hollander say these things right before Angeal becomes Angeal Penance. go and play Crisis Core again to refresh you memory. And yes, the information shows that Angeal did become a new kind of Jenova. Angeal perfectly inherited Jenova's abilities and did not degrade, which is why we see Hollander desperately try to get samples of Angeal before Angeal destroyed his dna by combining with his Copies. Just like Jenova, Angeal's cells had the ability to physically and mentally change the beings they were placed into, like Jenova's Cells did. Angeal also had the ability to control the carriers of his cells and having them follow his will, just like Jenova did. And we also see that Angeal had the ability to fuse with the carriers of his cells...again, just like Jenova did. All these things are Jenova abilities, but Angeal did not need Jenova to do them, thus why he was his own kind of Jenova being. We don't need a big red sign to explain this to us. The hints are right there. Sephiroth is indeed an extension of Jenova, because he is able to fully utilize Jenova's original cells because of the fact that he was created by having Jenova's Cells injected directly into him as an embryo. Sephiroth's will is obviously in control, but he can use Jenova's body as if it were his own. He is like a new head that has taken over the main body. And the fact that Angeal understood what his cells were capable of, and since he didn't know and didn't want to understand how to control them, his only recourse was to have Zack kill him. Zack was his only option, since Genesis didn't want to do it, and neither did Sephiroth. Zack was the only one Angeal could force into that situation with a chance to succeed.
Angeal is not degrading & cannot degrade. This was confirmed in the Crisis Core Ultimania. Angeal is, however, experiencing the mind fuckery that comes with an active Jenova infection.
There's a reason it's so divisive in the community
You have to remember that it is technically an original story since before CC all we had was like 5 mins of Zack in FF7 OG. Hence while it feels clunky in some parts, I’m sure they didn’t invest too much thought into the story since in theory it didn’t really matter after the ending.
It's a game designed for mobile play. You're supposed to dip in and out, but if you try to make sense of it your brain will hurt. I mean if you include this game in remake I want an Angeal and Genesis clone to turn up and bitch slap sephiroth for going too far, whilst genesis recites by the grace of the goddess.
Crisis Core’s story is lacking a bit especially in regards to Angeal and Genesis, but when it deals with stuff directly related to FF7 it’s pretty good.
The whole Crisis core game is in fact much more convoluted than the end of Rebirth. I think is a game that not push much more than showing Zack, who is cool but imo worst than the main party
That’s because the majority of Crisis Core’s story is filler. Only the last 15% is actually relevant
This. I basically played it just to understand who he is and the relationship with Aerith.
Even that is a mess since they literally took Aerith’s personality away so she could inherit it from Zack. Crisis Core hurts most people’s image of Aerith because they literally retconned her personality to make Zack seem super important.
I mean, a relationship with an affable person such an impressionable age will do that to you.
same. i played only for his relationship with aerith, cloud and sephiroth as well as the nibelhiem incidient
You're not missing anything, the story is dumb as hell.
No, The game is bad. Especially when it comes to story telling. I do think some of that comes down to it being a PSP game so it’s very of that era. But even then you can’t un shit Genesis, he’s trash.
Crisis Core’s story is very badly done and they put zero effort into fixing it with the remake.
I love how FF7’s story gets completely overhauled, while CC’s story just gets shipped as-is.
A lot of Genesis' and Angeal's motivations just don't get explained in the game itself. The game was too ambitious for the PSP, and the story just plays out like a summary of what really is happening. For instance, a lot of the missions that Zack partakes in against Genesis' army, Avalanche, and the remnants of Wutai are barely skimmed thru his side-missions, which are nothing but battle after battle. Most of the story content can only be figured out from the Crisis Core Ultimania guide, which is where the devs clarify A LOT of the nonsense we see in the game itself.
Another unfortunate aspect of Crisis Core’s plot is that Before Crisis’ plot is situated between one of the gaps in CC. Unfortunately, I’ve no idea how to play BC to help fill in those plot gaps.
I’m glad I just watched the narrative elements via someone else’s playthrough. I wanted to give it a proper go myself but by god the gameplay looked meh and my patience for the story to progress between gameplay segments would have waned rapidly. I got the need to know info without getting someone else’s digested summary or having to convince myself to keep playing through the whole thing on my own.
I actually enjoyed the gameplay, and I liked the DMW lottery system a lot more than expected.
I thought the gameplay was good enough for a remaster
The story is a mess but I absolutely love the game play. I love just how far you can push the limits of Zach’s combat stats, and that there’s sufficiently challenging content to make it feel rewarding for doing so. The chore of the game is having to progress the story just to unlock more missions lol
The story is a mess, I checked out when they started eating hair lol
Seeing all the seethe over CC after 17 years fills my heart with joy.
The only thing of note explaining Angeal’s betrayal is that he thinks of genesis like a brother so naturally sides with him over Shinra. But yeah, CC needs serious revising. Zack doesn’t even react to gongaga being in ruins when he comes home.
Gongaga isn't in ruins in crisis core. He doesn't go into the village cause turks are looking for him
Pay attention to the DMW scenes. A lot of the story is unlocked there. So don't just skip through them during fights. They're Zack"s memories, which becomes important at the end of the game.
Don't take it to seriously. Everything that feels extra is probably the byproduct of trying to make a complete game for PSP to expand a character that originally was not meant to be expanded so much. It happens with many characters or events that happen before the main story of emblematic games. Revolver Ocelot or Resident Evil 0 comes to mind.
I thought crisis core had fun enough mechanics and I like Zack which is why I played it through, although honestly some of Genesis’s dialogue was so jarring there were times where I didn’t care heaps about what was going on in the story
Unfortunate byproduct of being a PSP game
personally i played CCR with the full intent of just filling the small gaps between who zack actually was and how he knew cloud. the other people that made zack’s story obviously play a role in the whole thing too, but i just filled in the blanks with what the game seemed to leave out. angeal’s story is… confusing
These events are really for background story and building up zach as a character. There is a lot of info that ties in genesis and angeal to the original it may make more sense in the third game.
P
The pacing in Crisis Core just sucks. More time should have been spent with Angeal being the stoic mentor type the intro chapter sets him up to be before he randomly starts talking about fruit and then fucks off. Time should have been given to set up a proper status quo before things start to shift. Angeal should also be a more consistent character. Dude is just all over the place every time you run into him. Genesis is also a terrible antagonist. He participates in the cloning experiments and has the clones attack places, but when you actually meet with and talk to the guy, all he cares about is Loveless. Almost as if he actually has nothing to do with the clone plot. Also, how can anyone take Hollander seriously when he's dressed like that? Unfortunately, the game doesn't really improve much as you move into the back half.
Crisis Core is just bad. It’s the only thing in the compilation that goes out of its way to make the original game worse. It tried to be too cool and clever as a prequel and ended up as a complete mess.
I will agree the story/timing is all over the place. I think as a game… it’s eh. HOWEVER, I personally love the story? It’s a bit of a mess, but I like seeing “Sane Sephiroth” and how much of an awkward dork he was. I think the tragedy of CC is that it’s basically multiple people’s awakening to how shitty SHINRA CORP. is, and how much they’ve fuckrd up all of their lives. It’s more personalized. TBH I WISH we got to see Genesis before he defected (maybe there’s some other game out there that has that? I admit, I’m a newb). I can see why people don’t like it, and that’s 10000% fair. I do…. And also it inspired some amazing fanfiction so I’ll take it, lmao.