In Between Life and Death

Zack? I just wanna tell you that you’re so effing hot. Until I realise that you’re just some fictional character made up by the creators of Final Fantasy and I just wanna roll over and curse till the day I die.

As expected from the makers of Final Fantasy, Crisis Core sums up everything good about the Final Fantasy series VII. Plentiful of cutscenes to gawk at and the CG is a-effing-awesome.

Crisis Core lets you play the story of hot-blooded soldier Zack, who was one of Cloud’s counterparts in FF7. He starts out as an ambitious 2nd-class SOLDIER but through the help of mentors like Angeal and -gasp- Sephiroth and a series of events, he gets promoted to a 1st-class SOLDIER. If I have to describe him in 3 words, he is: Easy-going, Impulsive, HOT-DELICIOUS-CUTE-BISHOUNEN-WITH-A-CUTE-ASS.

Ya.

I don’t really play CC in a hard-core manner but I do play it on the MRT when I’m commuting to school, and since I spam missions more often than not, I progress very slowly in the story. However, Crisis Core, thus far, is such a depressing story. If someone were to come and ask me why, BE PREPARED FOR A FULL 32-HOUR MARATHON RANT ON IT!

I can’t remember much of FF7 since it dates back from sooooooooooooooooooo long ago. And even Advent Children remain in very small fragments of my memory. Sigh, I admit I have a very selective memory system  can? I learnt from Eunice that Zack eventually dies in FF7 so I am guessing that he will in this series which is -OMGWTGSHOOTAGAWD- just horrible (and I simply refuse to admit that I was sort of ’spoiled’ when I saw the first frame of some Youtube vids with Emo Cloud’s bloodied face looking tenderly at something in which I am assuming that it’s Zack dying with blood spilling everywhere like a hose on fire.)

Every time a cutscene ends; every time the plot moves a little bit deeper; I am left to fend for my fragile heart. All the characters, even the bad-guy Genesis, are so likable. Genesis became bad, but WHO CAN STOP HIM FROM WANTING TO BE WITH HIS DAMN MOM, GODDAMIT! LEAVE THE MOMMA’S BOY ALONE, WILL YA?! even his story is pretty sad to the point where you start to feel sorry for him…

Someone slap me. Because I think Sephiroth is really likable in this series, in his own queer-emo way. Come on! Who can resist this bad-ass bishounen with a big-ass sword that pokes at the speed of lightning (Ukes beware! I would be wary of him if I were Zack though)

Every small scene they show you, no matter how senseless they seem to be at that point of time, seemed to connect with a bigger picture later;

Like for example: there was a moment in Zack’s first mission when they were on their way to the designated point together, Angeal talked about dumbapples (a fruit?) which grew only in his hometown. It was just an informal talk about how Angeal used to steal dumbapples from everywhere because he was poor but he never stole any dumbapples on this wealthy guy’s land because the guy was a friend of his (and that he had honour). Through a series of events later that led to Shinra’s destruction of Angeal’s hometown (surely to destroy evidence!), Zack watched helplessly as his friend’s hometown turn to dust with each bomb that teared Angeal’s hometown apart. And the last scene, which I thought was the most heartbreaking scene, showed a dumbapple slowly burn to ashes as the fire devoured it. Simple but poignant. It was symbolic in a sense that it portrayed Angeal’s betrayal to Shinra (as well as Shinra’s betrayal to him) and it represented, in a way, the destruction of Angeal’s humanity.

There was another sequence, that seemed almost meaningless at that point (other than perhaps to reason that it was to develop the characters in the story), where Zack noticed that he had never seen Angeal use his sword before. Angeal replied coolly that he doesn’t want it to wear, tear and rust much to Zack’s amusement. However, much later in the game when Zack had difficulties defeating an anti-SOLDIER monster, Angeal used the sword and saved him. Zack was a bit ashamed of himself for letting his guard down and apologised for letting his sword ‘wear, tear and rust’. There was this coolness and smirk in Angeal’s voice when he said, “You’re just a bit more important than this sword. Just a little bit.” If not for the earlier scene, us otaku-gamers would not understand the meaning to it and that small male-bonding session might have seemed a little too gay for our liking (ROFL).
Well, I’m at the part where Zack and Aerith is flirting around and making flirting noises with each other. But even that is cute and there’s this natural chemistry between them. I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW I SENSED THAT CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT THEY ARE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS BEING PROGRAMMED TO FLIRT WITH EACH OTHER.

._. Ok, I shall stop ranting here. Before I start to lose my mind and ‘Walk into the fire where I’ll then enter into the Devil (zuo huo ru muo)’. Goodabai.