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Dirge of cerberus: Final fantasy 7 dirge of Cerberus is one of the most "me" games I've ever played, a game almost laser targeted to my taste specifically. It has almost everything: A cuteboy edgy protagonist? check, stylish gameplay akin to a devil may cry style character action game but with a rad revolver? check, a Masashi hamauzu OST with songs by GACKT thrown in? you betcha. The game has it all and it's no surprise that it's one of my favourite games ever made, it's my favourite of the compilation of FF7 as well. if advent children showcased the start of the era of cool FF7 then dirge is that in its final form. it's an effortlessly cool game that has you constantly in awe of just how rad the whole thing is, it's simply one of the coolest games ever made. the gameplay is one of my favourite aspects. it's a shooter but it has less in common with your gears of wars and a lot more in common with something like max payne, devils third or rollerdrome, the latter being a very good point of comparison with it's focus on lock on shooting mechanics. your reticle is huge in this but it serves a purpose, it's a large autoaim window where anything within you can shoot with your gun, I love his since it puts the focus a lot less on pure aim and a lot more on things like chaining kills for bonus damage, dodging hits or getting in close for a melee hit, to me it's honestly the ideal form of shooter and it makes it a lot more accessible since you don't ever really need to be pinpoint if you don't want to, though if you prefer that there is a sniper mode that disables this. the guns are also interesting, Cerberus is super customisable, instead of giving you the requisite machinegun or sniper it gives you the parts and lets you customize Cerberus to be that! you can even change things like its barrel, different frames with different sub effects, throw on charms and Materia for bonus stats or special attacks. it's a very fun system to play around with and the guns you an make look really cool. the game lets you carry 3 at once but you can customize and change these on the fly if you ever feel unsatisfied with your loadout, personally i liked having a long revolver, a long machinegun and shorter rapid fire machinegun. there's items like potions and ether, plus a phoenix down to give you an extra life and a limit break that lets you turn into a monster and throw around fireballs. you have materia that lets you cast a select few spells like fire and ice, though this can be pretty limiting and there aren't many materia available. there's also a melee combo that can be good for stunlocking enemies and breaking shielded enemies, you an even do it in the air! same with the shooting which can all be done while jumping and it looks rad as hell. that's not all though since the game has another playable character! cait sith! it's not frequent but the game does have a good few times the game will throw you into a fun little stealth mission with him and i think they're fun. you sneak around and roll barrels into people to take them out, it's simple enough. they're pretty forgiving too, it's not the kind of game to one-shot you for being seen. add that onto the occasional turret segment, some really fun boss fights and some mid-mission bonus objectives and the game has plenty of variety for its short runtime, you'll ever find the game getting too stale or repetitive. the story is also probably my favourite of the 7 games! i always enjoy stories set after the world has been saved and it was interesting to see how places like kalm and edge were functioning after the events of 7 and AC or getting to see the ruined midgar you see in AC and in the ending to the original. the idea of the world recovery organization was really interesting too especially since it gave reeve real screentime which is always nice, he felt like he deserved more screentime. same could be said for the other members of the cast it focuses on with yuffie, cait and Vincent very much stealing the spotlight here. yuffie and Vincent were very much just ancillary characters in the original so to see them get real time to shine here was so nice. yuffie is really funny in every scene she's in and this game has one of her best designs. Vincent too gets given so much development and his backstory had me in tears at least twice, his relationship with Lucrezia is one of the series highlights for me and i'm glad the game was able to show him off so well. it made him go from "guy i loved the design of" to just one of my favourite series characters. he's also cool as hell, he gets so many good scenes here that show's him as a total gap moe chuuni and i love him, he's such a dork. cait doesn't get as much screentime as I'd have hoped since the focus is more on reeve, but seeing them both again is just so nice, cait is probably my favourite member of the cast overall so any more screentime the little guy gets is welcome in my book. the new cast shine just as much as the old guard here too! deepground are a big highlight of the game for me as far as the new stuff goes. they're all so interesting and the gang of villains they introduce are a ton of fun, plus just the aesthetic of skintight glowing blue outfits and those rad helmets is really striking. they're one of my favourite RPG factions and their backstory is really solid. they're a dark experiment shinra made in an underground base. they're kept always fighting constantly in order to make perfect soldiers.it almost feels like something out of one of the better MGS games to me and i like that it's not afraid to get pretty dark with the whole thing. shelke's story is probably the best of the deepground cast. her and shalua have most of the games best scenes together and i think their relationship is the best part of the games story, it always gets me emotional and shelke herself is probably up there with my favourite FF characters. Her story is just that good. watching her going from being a fierce deepground soldier to undoing that corruption and helping the gang is some of the best development in the whole compilation series and i wish we had a real follow-up to see more of her and the gang in action. the actual deepground villains aren't as interesting as her, but characters like Azul and rosso are super fun foils to Vincent and every scene they're in is a total blast, same with nero and Weiss later on, though i think they have more depth to them. as a brocon i also appreciate the very clear relationship the two have, i ship it. it's canon and you cannot convince me otherwise. they're just too cute a couple and watching nero being willing to die for Weiss had me in tears my first run through, this game makes me really emotional incase you can't tell. i just get so invested in this cast. the WRO really only have shalua as their new character, but she's great! she plays of Vincent super well and her relationship to shelke is really well handled, her story is super touching and she gets one of the best scenes in the whole series during the WRO raid, reals know. she's also just cool as hell, managing to hold her own against tsviets despite only having one arm and a single eye. the final chunk of the game is probably it's overall highlight, when you get to become chaos and you get to see the gang all helping Vincent storm midgar, it's got some cool moments like when they skydive into the ruins or the final chunk with Vincent flying around a huge monster the size of midgar. it even has a cool secret ending if you gather some collectables, a secret ending that shows gackt playing a mysterious character the game calls "G". this would turn out to mainly be a tease for crisis core but it is interesting that it's the last real bit of canon FF7 content timeline-wise. the only part of the story i felt iffy on was the stuff with hojo, i like how silly it is that he uploaded himself to the net but it just comes a little out of nowhere and it feels unnecessary. and that's all without going on about the games style. the cool looking deepground characters, boys so pretty it's downright unfair to other games out there, some great redesigns for some of the cast and some of the best cutscene direction around. it's got such a cool energy to it, Vincent posing at the camera and doing his jumps and flips while shooting people, the cool shots of him brooding above a city with his gun, him doing one handed reloads from the top of church while the moon is in the background. it's all so unrelentingly rad and it's just so earnestly sincere about it. it's a game that is cool and it knows it is, you can't have character this stylish and gackt on hand and not know that you're the actual coolest thing imaginable. that bleeds into the gameplay too with how you can shoot people in the air or customize the raddest looking gun ever made or how you can turn into a huge monster, things the people making think are rad as hell. it's the kind of thing that would be considered very of its time these days, you see a lot of that sentiment online in a way that's always meant to mock or deride it for being "cringe" or "edgy". I think this behavior sucks and i think that it's really silly to be that way. in the case of a game like this, it's earnestness and the sincerity of how cool it is, that's what makes it so special. That there's no winks and nudges to be like "haha don't worry i'm actually cools for reals here let me make fun of myself for being cringe so you know i don't take any of this thaaaaat seriously". the kind of tone the game might have had if it had came out nowadays instead of 2006 and would have de it a far lesser experiance. i think the fact it is so real about it, that it doesn't mock itself or trip over itself to excuse it that is what it makes it feel so genuine. i love that about it, we need more games to come out and just do their thing without needing to worry about losers online trashing it with "ow the edge" memes, cringe culture has stifled us artistically and you all know it. the game is one of the best looking games on the console, by far. it's got really killer character designs for a start. Vincent has his best design here and i love the ways that Cerberus can change as you customize it, his cape looks great in action too. yuffie too has a new design and it's one of her better ones, though i do think i prefer the advent children design overall. the rest of the original cast are mostly the same with them using either outright advent children designs or some slightly modified versions of that. the new characters all look great though, some of Nomura's best design work is right here in this game. the deepground cast are the main highlights. Weiss is one of the prettiest characters to ever come from the FF series, the guy is just so rad looking and i love the kabuki-inspired hair he has. he also uses duel wield gunblades, how is that not rad! his brother, Nero, is rad too. he has some really bondage'y looking straightjacket'y clothes with an actual gag and these cool metal bone wings he uses to shoot you with guns. Azul and rosso don't quite hit that same high but the latter i still love the design for, her hairstyle is cool as hell, i love her red furry cape thingy and the crossbow sword she uses is really cool looking. shelke and shalua are the other big standouts. shelke has the usual deepground ensemble but she also has this cool VR helmet eye thing during some scenes and it looks rad as hell with all the CRT screens behind it, plus she gets a really cool duel wield stun rod that makes her eyes glow orange, it's so cool! shalua too! the scientist coat with the cool almost gyaru dress on, a mechanical arm and only one eye and she carries a massive desert eagle she uses as her main weapon, sure it's impractical and a little silly but, i mean if the fashion choices are what take you out of the fantasy game about an immortal vampire killing gods then i think this was never going to be a game for you. it's the rule of cool and the whole cast passes that flawlessly. the levels are also really good looking, it's so cool to get to see so many areas from the original in 3D and they're a lot of fun to explore. places like kalm with its market stalls and churches, midgar's train graveyard, the area around cosmo canyon, a ruined midgar and shinra building and even the shinra mansion. the game isn't just all old areas though, there are some new places like the WRO building which looks really rad with its blue lights and screens everywhere or how you have edge from advent children explorable during a rainy night. the deepground areas too look great, one is like a ruined midgar set underground and you go through a huge darker variant of the shinra building down there too! there's even a cool chapter set on an all new airship that lets you explore it and talk to all of the different WRO NPC's, it's one of the games highlights for me. the deepground areas even have a few multiplayer exclusive zones too, like a rad jungle and a few fields and canyons. it just looks so AAA, it's got really high quality models and at times some of the skyboxes make it look closer to an early ps3 game to me, it's an impressive package especially with the fantastic cutscene direction and some of those CG pre-rendered scenes. it's not just the looks either, the game sounds great too! some killer VA performances, though i do think steve blum is maybe a little miscast as vincent. the rest of the cast kill it and there's tons of recognisable VA's of the era in here. the music is even better though! there are two fantastic songs by Gackt here for start, with longing being played during the games final level and redemption accompanying the credits and the games trailers, both of which are two of my personal favourite songs by the artist and both fit the game perfectly. The games actual OST is good too! It's not one of hamauzu's best but it's still great and well worth listening to. Some of my favourite tracks include "flicker" which is the games opening track and it feels like a very FF13 era track, it's just very pretty. "calm before the storm", "10 year reunion", "sudden parting", "lifestream" and "fragment of memory" are some of the games best quieter tracks, the latter especially is a fantastic piano piece, though "memories with Lucrezia" is the best of these. The level tracks don't have quite the same listenability to them but some like "fearful happening", "WRO march", "silent edge", "trespasser", "deep darkness of shinra" and "counteroffensive" are all really solid, especially "silent edge". "girl named shelke" is another personal favourite track of mine, some of the games best piano and violin work here. "sneaky cait sith" is a good sneaky jazzy track. "mysterious ninja" and "ninja girl of wutai" are yuffie's two themes and they're both killer. "a discovery in sadness", "a proposal", "crimson impact", "splinter of sadness" , "the immaculate" and "hope of the future" round out the best tracks from the games single player mode. though this isn't all the music, since there as also a whole suite of multiplayer only tracks that were included in the Japanese version of the game as well as in the games challenge mode. the standouts here would be: "turks 101", "song of the gathered", "underground battle" which is one of the overall OST highlights, "meeting in the rain", "heavy armored soldier", "Lucrezia's research", "flying high", "pure stream", "central complex", "attack on midgar", "redeem the world", "outskirts of fight", "combat results" and "restrictor". the best track of the game is probably "Lucrecia cresent" which is the extended version of the earlier "memories" track, it's one of hamauzu's best songs i think. "forgotten tears" is probably a close second, along with the "memories of Lucrezia" track. one a strange tidbit is that "marching tune 10" and several other tracks use a really iconic sample that is all over the FF13 OST, go see if you can spot it across the tracks here. Masashi hamauzu himself is one of my all time favourite game composers. he's known for working on games like final fantasy 13 and its sequels, FF10, musashi samurai legend, tobal 1, saga frontier 2 and unlimited saga as well as more recent games like the final fantasy 7 remake series and wild hearts. As far as versions go you really only have two. There is the original Japanese and the localized international version. Each has their benefits, or had, rather. the first of these was rougher mechanically but it had a huge multiplayer mode that had its own tie in story complete with cutscenes and documents which seems like it would have been a great time back in the day: it's my white whale for server revivals personally alongside Babylon's fall and console FF11. there's some footage of it on youtube if you want to see how it played and it's cutscenes have been preserved and translated. these cutscenes contain a lot of crucial lore and some really solid character interactions as you get to watch the multiplayer character you made progress in the ranks in deepground. it's pretty rad to get to see how things work down there and the cutscene direction here is just as solid as the maingame. the other version cut this mode, turning its maps into a challenge mode full of actually really fun missions and reusing it's story for that, it also adds a ton of gameplay improvements which make it a little closer to the definitive version of the game. It has things like a more effective dodge, air combat, a weight system for weapons, a new camera angle, an extra hard mode and making limit breaks an item rather than a bar, which i would say are all good changes overall though it does come at the cost of the removal of "very easy" difficulty. i will give a warning about one of these inclusions though, that challenge mode is great and i love how it lets you see all those cool multiplayer maps and hear the music, but they are *hard* . some of those missions like the sniper sections or the infamous *cait sith vs the world* are some of the toughest challenges I've been through in a shooter, so be forewarned about that one. i do think they're worth it though, especially for that fight with chaos you can unlock through them. the game will run you a good 9-12 hours depending on your skill and the difficulty level, but there's tons of secrets and collectables and those extra missions if you want to replay. if you go for the 100% the game will easily take you a good 20 or so hours which i think is a perfect length. long if you want it to be and brisk if you don't. the same goes for the difficulty, it's on the easier side in the campaign but those extra missions are *tough*. price wise e game isn't very expensive or are, these days a copy will run you about £20-25 for a complete in box copy which i think is a great deal. of course the game went on to have a legacy beyond itself, it was the third big project of the compilation just after the advent children movie and "before crisis" which was a mobile game focused on the turks. you would have crisis core a few years later, a game i love and consider on the same level as dirge for me and then after that you have tons of other projects both big and small. stuff like the battle royale "first soldier", a remake series with ever crisis and the actual big money ff7 remakes (dirge is also central to the DLC for the first remake game so i would recommend checking it out for that), there was G-bike and a snowboarding game or even things heavily inspired by the compilation games, like dissidia. the games director, one Takayoshi Nakazato, hasn't worked on many games to this degree since, before then he did work on games like the SFC jojo game and the DBZ arcade games, but other than that he's mainly behind the scenes on projects like FFX and X-2, XII, forespoken and FF15. naturally i reccomend the game, it's one of my favourite shooters ever made, it's charming and fun and the story it tells is fantastic. go and play it as soon as you can if you missed out on it, there isn't much like this these days.