I've played FF7 multiple times in my lifetime and love it, just like many others do. For years I steered clear of the Expanded Universe content, as I thought it all looked like a mishandling of the property. So, a little over a week ago I decided to give Crisis Core a shot.

THE BAD:

*So far it has some "carrot on a stick" level of stat building mechanics. To make matters worse, growth is randomized due to an obtuse roulette system in the top left corner of the screen.

*The game is repetitive, limiting, and lacking in spontaneity. Same small areas over and over. Same few songs (though they can be pretty good). The whole experience is held back by unnecessary pauses where a computer voice holds you by the hand to tell you what's happening. If I have to hear "activating combat mode" or "modulating phase" one more time, I'm going to cry.

*Every side quest feels like a half-baked afterthought to me; like something that should be in a cheap DLC, not the actual game. Assets are flipped for different scenarios and nothing is immersive. For example, when you hunt down Wutai spies in Midgar, they go from their civilian disguises to *poof\* full on Wutai warriors with spears, even though you don't fight them. There's the exact same, rinse and repeat, cinematic with Zack chasing them and another Shinra soldier blocking their path for all 6 Wutai spies. It just feels insincere. They couldn't have at least removed the spears from the character models?

*The biggest crime is the weebishness of the voice acting and overall writing. It's really bad. It's smelly theater kid with foxtail that randomly breaks out in anime character impressions kind of bad. Characters scream melodramatic garbo into the sky about the purpose of wings on monsters and/or angels, to name one tiny little cringe thing. To me, this is particularly sad, as I came to this game for some sweet sweet ff7 expanded universe goodness. Instead, I'm getting Waifu Wetdream: Sinful Schoolgirls of LonLon Love Pop: Friendship Forever.

THE GOOD:

*I'm enjoying the materia fusion and growth. It actually shows some depth here. There are quite a few variations you can try out with stat boosts/effects and the sheer number of materia available is pretty staggering.

*The music is pretty good here, although there aren't enough songs. Re-imagined FF7 classics are done well and the originals are pretty good until you've heard them for the 4th time (out of 4 thousand). They go for a light, poppy, garage rock/jazz infused feel with some of these tracks, which threw me off in a pleasantly surprised kind of way.

Sadly, that's the gist of it so far (I'm around 50%). While I sound pretty negative here, I truly am hoping the game gets better. We'll see.