FFVII Dirge of Cerberus – Part 35: Out with Guns Blazing

Summary: Some brief parting thoughts on Final Fantasy VII – Dirge of Cerberus.


Protagonists

I’ll get some of the negatives here out of the way early.

Vincent was fine. He was the main dude here and his story made me interested to go back and get him in FFVII. I still had trouble getting too psyched about him. He felt a bit like a one-dimensional Broody McHerogun.

Yuffie disappointed me too. She was purely comic relief here, occasionally swooping in to save Vincent. Don’t get me wrong – she was effective as comic relief and funny/goofy. My issue is that that was one side of her. What made her such a wonderful character to me in FFVII was that fun silliness combined with a nobility, a staunch moral core that put the elders in Wutai to shame.

The overblown (and again, still very funny) speeches about being the radiant ninja or Wutai fit perfectly with the younger Yuffie of Crisis Core. Here, I was hoping for more here after all she’s been through.

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Onto some positives!

I didn’t know Lucrecia. I actually thought she was a totally new character for most of the game. Only later did I learn that she was Sephiroth’s mother. That impacted my appreciation of her role in the wider game world. I still dug her story as a scientist obsessed with her work to a fault, doing her best within the confines of an intensely unethical organization and working so closely with the horrific Hojo.

Then there’s Shelke. She’s one of those who’ll stick with me long after I’m done with this game. Certain tropes or types of character arcs just hit me at my core. Shelke comes from a horrific situation where she lacked any will or control over her life. It was such a pleasure to watch her grow to care about her life and become a contributing member of a community. Finding and building herself – and yet, not doing it alone.

(It’s not a coincidence that my favorite character in the FF series is Celes.)

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Antagonists

The Tsviets and Hojo/Weiss were pretty great, in the Exdeath style. Fairly straight-up destroy the world evil. Azul was kind of a doof and Nero had enough pathos to add variety, but Rosso was such a deliciously bloodthirsty sadist who matched up well with Hojo. It was a nice break from the more sympathetic Sephiroth and Genesis.

So happy Hojo was… well, I was going to say “the Big Bad,” but he was really just the path to Omega. He was “a” Big Bad anyway.

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Gameplay

I don’t have much to compare this to. I’d never played a shooter before. It wasn’t bad, but It’s not my favorite. The constant need for fast twitchy reactions puts me on edge. It was fine as a one-off.

Still, the gameplay went much smoother than I anticipated. I felt honestly afraid that I’d constantly die and that seldom happened. Swapping from manual to automatic targeting helped a ton. Weapon customization was nifty too. Didn’t do much with it – found my favorite set-ups and kept them – but nifty nonetheless.

One major benefit that I’d love to see repeated in the future is the lack of random and repeatable encounters. There’s something limiting about this. It felt like there was less to discover. But freeing! Made for a much leaner game.

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Music

I enjoyed a lot of tracks I went, but none stuck with me. The gameplay was so fast and stressed me out a bit that I didn’t get to appreciate it as much as in the turn-based games, but I look forward to going back to listen.

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Art/Graphics

My first game on the PS2. The graphics were grainy in my emulator and the emulator itself was a challenge, but worked well enough.

The standard enemies were on the repetitive side. A few brands of soldiers, some dogs and bugs, and that was it. The bosses were AWESOME. Loved the art style for the various Tsviets. And Omega was… *dons sunglasses* out of this world. (oh god sorry I’m so sorry)

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Length

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Replayability

On the low side. There are higher levels of difficulty, but as with Crisis Core I think the higher difficulty is just meant to make the enemies stronger rather than adding new story or even new combat mechanics.

I really want to find a Let’s Play of this game on a harder difficulty. Why? Because I was SO TERRIBLE at avoiding damage. I want to see how someone skilled at Dirge of Cerberus approaches the combat, what they do differently from me. Especially in terms of defense and evasion. If you have a suggestion of a good LP to watch for this, let me know!

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Story/Theme

As with the villains, there was something refreshingly clear cut about the story here. Deepground was the bad guy, there were some shenanigans about Hojo and Weiss but ultimately Deepground kept to its goals, summoned Omega. Boss fight, game over.

It was great! Direct. More indirect stories can work great – like, in FFVII it worked wonders, while in Crisis Core I felt a bit more lost.

Some FFs have pretty clear-cut themes. Like, in FFII it was the whole fight against tyranny thing. In FFVI, it was hope and despair. (Among many, many others.) I’m not sure there’s one defining theme that jumps out to me from Dirge of Cerberus to that same degree, but perhaps it’s redemption. Vincent taking the curse foisted on him and turning it to good. Shelke most strongly of all, recovering and redeeming what Deepground did to her.

Heck – even the ultimate big bad, Omega, wasn’t pulling a Kefka and destroying the world out of nihilism. He was destroying it to redeem it.

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So that’s Dirge of Cerberus. A unique entry in the series, and a pretty solid one! It took me by surprise, and the genre itself isn’t quite my thing, but it had some wonderful characters and exceptionally fun villains. It’s a joy to see this series evolve.

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Next time: THE START OF FINAL FANTASY VIII! I know approximately zero things about it and am super excited. I’ll start next week.