[Lady Lamont]

I had a longer reply before, forums must be mucking up a little...

Story: V - due to conflicts within the original idea of Final Fantasy VII, too many new introduced characters and seemingly sections of the story has mutilated the original idea of the game and it's plot itself. Some things should not have been introduced, for one - Genesis although the branching out of introducing new towns (such as Modeoheim which coincides with the Icicle Area in VII itself) and a basic scenario, however this is also ruined terribly by Genesis being featured as a main.

Gameplay: VI.V - due to the factor of the missions mainly bringing the score down as of their repetitive nature in all ranges (re-use of areas, ideas and to have such a fair amount of them becomes tedious and will begin to bore the player) however some of them were fitting - such as a couple of Yuffie's missions, the Wutai missions and another couple which were referenced to Final Fantasy VII itself. However, the battle gameplay itself could have been improved with the use of Limit Breaks or Summons being governed by the players' themselves instead of the useful Dream Wave system / DMW - which would have been more suited to giving extra effects to the player if lucky (as a Gambler's Gift somewhat based on their job class system's slot/reels in which effects could be added on ranging across a multitude of options) during battle gameplay. Overall the DMW has a similarity to some sections of Kingdom Hearts and it's following series with the design and final look of the scenes.

The Summons have been improved with their new and rather flashy cutscenes which do the job and do it well, however the Levels of the attacks can be rather annoying as for what it's worth the Summons have been noted to have a habit of appearing on the DMW on a time in which they tend to be fairly useless (i.e. when the enemy has just been defeated or with a Wait command of any form of attack which is then completed before the Summon is to be summoned and as a result is then Canceled).
To the side of almost all battles could be completely avoided by the player sticking to the sides of almost all areas in the game, but with adding in Treasure Chests and some seen characters/enemies and occasionally hidden items combined with the return of the Materia system and some mini games do make the gameplay fun. However it could have still used a lot of improvement on either selective mode (Normal or Hard) the overall gameplay is easy.

Another drawback is the voice and image interrupting gameplay to notify the player that they have entered battle. An option to remove this for clean transition would have been better placed (as we have seen in Final Fantasy XII or even Dirge of Cerberus) instead of a style of the old Random Battle system with "avoidance glitches" (i.e. player sticking to the walls to avoid battles - which is apparently a gameplay glitch) which features a eventually annoying voice, sound effect and image which has been a highlight of absolute annoyance among most players.

Sound: VI - Some initial use of new tracks for the Crisis Core soundtrack go over rather well until these tracks are repeated - with only minor changes either in the forms of: different instruments (or synths) or change of keys (notes) of which SquareSoft/Square-Enix would have originally listed as Demo or Alternate versions instead of separate songs.

The arrangements for the featured tracks from Final Fantasy VII tend to go over well, such as "The Mako-Controlling Organization" (The Shin-Ra Electrical Power Company Theme), "The Summoned" (Those Who Fight Further / Still More Fighting), "The Clandestine Dark Suits" (The Turks / Theme of the Turks), One the Verge of the Assault (The Who Fight / Fighting), A Flower Blooming in the Slums (Aerith's Theme), A Closed Off Village (Anxious Heart), The First Mission & To Be Continued (Opening ~ Bombing Mission) have been arranged nicely for their featuring for the Crisis Core soundtrack from their origins of the Final Fantasy VII Original Soundtrack...

However The World's Enemy (One Winged Angel) has been abysmally arranged and from all sorts of reviews - the choir is great to keep to the original BUT what lets this track down is the re-orchestration of the song itself - the choice of instruments and timing although is based on Nobuo Uematsu's original composition it appears to be greatly based on Yoko Shimomura's versions which were featured in the Kingdom Hearts series and this alone takes away the darkness and overwhelming powerful feel to Sephiroth and replaces it with a Disney-inspired attitude in comparison to the original themes for Crisis Core such as "A Beating Black Wing" is Genesis' battle theme seems to overwhelm Sephiroth's theme which also musically shows the discord between the original and new sectors.

Whereas some of the new tracks such as "A Burden of Truth" and "Melody of Agony" are fitting, the overall soundtrack is good but repetitive and does not completely fit the feeling of the game itself which is understandable as Takeharu Ishimoto was not involved in the original game nor really in it's film sequel - Advent Children. Whereas some of the compositions he provided for Last Order and Before Crisis were fitting, but seemed to only work for those scenarios. Crisis Core required a darker, more mysterious soundtrack without the use of repeated compositions which in my opinion could have been improved as there are better arrangements of some older tracks from VII's original soundtrack in the remixing community which would have fit perfectly in comparison.

Also in the terms for sound, the sound effects were great. Improved and many stayed true to their original versions from Final Fantasy VII and the Final Fantasy series which was outstanding to the addition of almost every small piece of gameplay had some sort of sound effect (even the Tumbleweed in the Desert areas).
Again, I will address as I did in the Gameplay section - the option to remove the notification sound of "Conflict Resolved"... etc would have improved the sound options and the gameplay.

Graphics: VIII - Beautifully rendered, some of the best seen on the PSP however it does have it's let downs with some of the models and areas having rather jagged and poorly rendered areas. For example some sections when clearly in a 3D view (meaning the player can move around it and see it from all angles) is clearly flat in an obvious 2D shape in which there has been no rendering effort made in comparison to the Cut Scenes of which they have stuck to their usual high-resolution graphics to make full use of the PSP and/or PSP Slim (providing the Crisis Core bundle, which I myself bought) LCD and Updated LCD screens to provide an amazing take on the quality/realism of their graphics which has become a standard for the company and for other companies to follow suit.

TOTAL: Well, from the fairly incoherent rambling I have just written I would give Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core an overall score of VII.