An awful, meandering story, horrible music, but solid gameplay and great graphics makes for a fair game.
Plot:
If you want complicated complexity, plot wise, this is the game for you. Having never played a Final Fantasy game before, I was very glad I purchased this game for its length and gameplay and NOT for its plot. Had I focused only on plot, I would have been like a tuna in a blender: doomed. All of the advertisements for Crisis Core should have given me the clue: they kept going on and on about how the game would "reveal the circumstances leading up to the story of FFVII." In other words, to understand a word of the plot, you would have to have played FFVII. WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS.
The plot of Crisis Core focuses on this genetically modified soldier, Zack, who is part of a special ops combat unit called SOLDIER which works for something called the Shinra Electric Power Company. Got that?
It seems that an esteemed member of SOLDIER, known as Genesis, has turned rogue and decided to clone himself several thousand times and attempt to (drum roll) rule the world, before his genes collapse (he was also a genetic experiment, but it didn't work out so well). D'oh. Here's where the weird (read: predictable) plot twist comes in: Zack's best friend Angeal decides to turn traitor, too, and heads off with Genesis. So the game chronicles Zack's adventures in the battle between Shinra and Genesis's clones, plus his confusion with his friend turning traitor. To add more to Zack's and your confusion, there's also political corruption in Shinra as well. Yawn, yawn and yawn again.
Plot score: 2/5
Gameplay:
Crisis Core scraps the Final Fantasy tradition of long, turn-based battles in favor of quicker, hack n' slash n' magic blast fights, which is better suited to a pickup-and-play PSP game than the unforgiving turn-based game engine. There is also a slot machine like thingy called the DMW (Digital Mind Wave) that continually spins in the corner of your screen. If you get three of a kind lined up, you get a special attack. Kind of quirky, but a fun little feature.
Gameplay score: 4/5
Music:
I love video game music. I'm actually listening to the soundtrack from Age of Empires 3 (yes, I have horrible music tastes) as I write this. Crisis Core on the other hand…urg. Horrible music. It is repetitive to the point of being insufferable and is completely off the mark (they play this weird, creepy violin piece during this climactic battle between Zack and Angeal instead of something fast and full of sound, for example). I still have the stupid theme music stuck in my head from the first time I played it. Also, from what I can tell, they used synthesizers for much of the music instead of an actual orchestra. Not cool, man. I'd say there's about one good snippet of music (deneNA deneNa denenenAAAA) for the 15-20 hours of game time offered.
Music score: 1/5
Graphics and Sound:
I didn't think the PSP had this graphics capability. The visuals in this game are awesome, especially in the FMV cut scenes, which look better than anything most animation companies (with the exception of Pixar), could churn out in a million years. Take for example one video that features a moon being destroyed that plays when one of the bosses (a giant dragon) attacks. Beautiful. The voice acting, except for Zack and Aerith, is incredible, especially Angeal and Genesis. And the sound effects? Amazing!
Graphics and Sound: 5/5