In this era of omnipresent media, where it's become common for supposedly objective enthusiast sites to be akin themselves in obnoxious campaigns advertising their subjects, it grows ever harder to truly approach anything without bias. Long in advance of release dates, or indeed dates on which release dates will be released [Release date dates? Ed.], publicity firms wage all-encompassing crusades whose armies are press releases, viral videos and carefully calculated previews. From last year's Assassin's Creed it seems clear enough that publishers can buy success with money as much as with a quality product - and with that success comes enough profit to plan the finer details of the next campaign and line a few pockets in the erstwhile. The great expectations such elaborate engineering inspires are impossible things to put aside once and for all; perhaps the only power greater than theirs is the personal experience of past disappointment. Unfortunately for Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, it has both of these factors to contend with.

Announced at E3 in 2004, before the PSP had even been released, Crisis Core was heralded - alongside the CG feature Advent Children, the PS2 title Dirge of Cerberus and the mobile-only Before Crisis - as an entry in the so-called Compilation of Final Fantasy VII; an experiment, the story goes, to determine the viability of polymorphic content, which is to say a multi-faceted story told heedless of the boundaries between different platforms and, indeed, media. Certainly the legacy of the seventh Final Fantasy, fast approaching its twentieth anniversary, is significant enough to warrant such exploration; but with the news of the compilation, the question on everyone's lips was whether its various entries would do the eternal story any justice at all or instead taint the bittersweet narrative held so dear, as Final Fantasy X-2 had done to the tragic romance of Tidus and Yuna only a few months before.

As the years passed and the arguably ill-advised compilation progressed towards its final entrant, it seemed that the latter suspicion would, regrettably, be the one to bear out. Advent Children was a spectacle of fan-service with little to its credit beyond a few breathtaking but implausible set pieces; Dirge of Cerberus was an awfully implemented attempt to take the franchise to the already crowded arena of third person action games; and despite a complete, subscription-based release in Japan, Before Crisis is two years overdue for its appearance anywhere in the West, which hardly bodes well. For all intents and purposes, the big-name creators behind the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII looked to be more interested in the willingness of nostalgic fans to squander their hard-earned money on cash-in after cash-in than any real investigation of the possibilities that could spring from the successful implementation of polymorphic content. Even the highest hopes, whatever the brilliance of their inspiration, are hard to sustain in the face of such utter disappointment. Crisis Core, however, shows that the legacy of Final Fantasy VII has not been entirely squandered; Square Enix's latest is among the PSP's very greatest, which, as well as demonstrating what an excellent system the handheld could be, stands in gameplay terms as almost the equal of the RPG that changed everything: its originator. Crisis Core defies the disappointing tradition established by the compilation to date and in doing so revitalises the franchise thoroughly enough that the prospect of a Final Fantasy VII remake no longer seems so appalling.

The first reason for this is Zack Fair, an indescribably more appealing player character than Cloud Strife; in name and nature he is, as intended, a fair-weather counterpart to his discordant, amnesiac protégé, and the difference his attitude makes is tremendous. At the outset Zack is a second-class citizen of SOLDIER, the special defence force employed by the ominous Shinra corporation to help keep the peace in the cyberpunk city streets of Midgar. He dreams of being a hero, believing with all his heart that he can attain the heights of the decorated officers who surround him - but they are a mysterious trinity indeed: in Sephiroth there is an uncertain darkness, a hunger for something altogether awful; Genesis, meanwhile, has gone rogue and threatens to disturb the delicate balance of power in Midgar; and Angeal, at the last, is a gentle mentor who guides Zack through the rank and file of SOLDIER, but has depths the young second can hardly begin to fathom. As the enigmas that initially obscure their characters begin to unravel, however, and Zack ascends in talent and status, he finds that the heroes of his dreams have nightmares of their own to face. Disappointments and betrayals - some predictable, considering the mythos as already understood, but some, surprisingly, not so much - follow in abundance. But Zack isn't the strong, silent type, nor the angsty amnesiac that so many RPGs have relied on; he's upbeat and hopeful, taking each of the narrative's convolutions in his resolute stride [He sounds a bit like the irrepressible Adell from Disgaea 2. Ed].

This approach proves a refreshing change of pace for the franchise - in fact, for the genre as a whole - and Square Enix has incorporated it into an experience that fits the tone very well. Where Final Fantasy VII put nothing less than the world on the line, Crisis Core is an altogether more intimate affair. What it lacks in scope, this last entry in the compilation more than makes up for in emotional depth. It touches on all the usual themes, of course - truth, power, love, loss and so on - but at the core of Zack's crisis is a very personal story about friendship. The focus is appropriate, sensitive without stumbling on the narrative certainty that lies ahead, always ahead, for Crisis Core is, after all, a tragedy. At the end Zack will fall and, when the moment finally arrives, it's all the more poignant for the compassion with which his misfortune unfolds. Localisation is one of the game's strongest suits, tempered as it is by a sense of maturity that lapses only occasionally - no mean feat considering the sheer wealth of content on offer. There are hours of cut scenes, some FMV and others in-engine, a surprising amount of which are fully voiced by a competent cast, including a collection of stalwart anime talent and Rick Gomez, whose nuanced performance as Zack lends the character a befitting depth.

This is no Metal Gear Solid, though. There are cut scenes aplenty, but they don't disrupt the ebb and flow of gameplay in any significant sense. First and foremost, Crisis Core is an explication of events that occur outside its boundaries, a valuable layer of context for Final Fantasy VII and the inevitable remake. In that, it succeeds, but it was a story ripe for the telling; the real surprise is the ample mechanics that you must engage in between chapters of narrative. There are random encounters, yes - that awful hangover from an era in which rendering power was thin on the ground - and a selection of misguided minigames, but you'll spend the vast majority of your time with Crisis Core caught up in the excellent real-time battle system. Quick loads masked by animations mark the transition from exploration to combat, during which you'll face off against up to six enemies with Zack's deadly inheritance, the Buster Sword. Combos are an unobtrusive, one-button affair based on timing. Between presses you can dodge, block, use items or, depending on which materia you've equipped before battle, tap the right and left triggers to select one of an immense selection of magic and abilities. You can move around the arena with relative freedom to recover or escape or better position Zack behind his foes for critical hits. Best of all, you can cancel out the majority of your attacks at any time - just because the firaga blade has begun its infernal arc doesn't mean you can't run like a chicken when your opponent reveals a gaping mouthful of teeth-like knives. It's flexible and intuitive, involved and involving, but when you fight your first enemy, you will nevertheless be baffled when the battle screen dissolves away to reveal... a Final Fantasy themed fruit-machine?

The DMW is hard to swallow at first. It's a pachinko-influenced scroll of numbers and icons that spins endlessly in the corner of the screen. A little time with Square Enix's last handheld release, The World Ends With You, will render the madcap frenzy of the DMW almost meaningful by comparison, but suffice it to say that matching certain numbers nets you status effects such as invulnerability or the ability to cast magic without expending precious points; and when the icons synch up, Zack can perfom one of several limit breaks. Finding special items and meeting characters for the first time reveals their blacked-out portraits on the wheel, unlocking new summons and special attacks - if you're thorough enough your spins will even bring about the appearance of a few franchise absentees. But the player has no control over the DMW: it's an entirely automatic process that runs in the background like a Trojan until a match is about to be made, at which point the battle abruptly ceases until the wheels stop turning. The breaks are jarring, but redeemed somewhat at the very end of Crisis Core and made bearable in the meantime insofar as the removal of things like limit breaks and summons from your direct control allows the other elements of the battle system to flourish. It's strange, though, that the developers allowed the DMW to take care of something so integral to the RPG experience as levelling up.

Ultimately, the DMW is quirky and pretty much meaningless, but it adds a sense of variety and danger to encounters that the other aspect of Crisis Core's gameplay - exploration - sadly lacks. There are only a few environments: one, essentially, for each of the eleven story missions, but even these are not entirely distinct from one another. There's a flowery meadow, a dark cavern, a mountaintop valley and so on, each as generic - if technically quite impressive - as the next. The visual fidelity of the environments only truly impresses when Zack returns to Midgar, which acts as a sort of hub between missions, or arrives at Nibelheim, where the last act of the fateful narrative begins. If it weren't for the stellar presentation of Ready at Dawn's portable God of War, however, Crisis Core would be at the very head of the pack in terms of the calibre of graphics it packs into a single UMD. Character models are appealing and well animated, the occasional FMV sequences are remarkable and the engine renders the in-game action, however frantic, almost without a hitch.

However, a little blandness is not the only drawback. Loading is frequent and poorly streamlined - on several occasions, in fact, you'll sit through twenty seconds of inexplicable nothingness before you realise the PSP has spent the time loading a load screen. The breaks between gameplay and dialogue can be disruptive enough to take you out of an otherwise enrapturing adventure. You can't skip cut scenes, even if you've seen them before, which is either archaic or narcissistic, and I don't know which is worse, that the frequent breaks in which the narrative unfolds are there to mask still more loading, or that the director has deemed his story so transcendent that players should have to sit through it a second or third time and beyond. One way or another, it's unacceptable, as is the uncooperative camera, whose fondness for sticking to invisible barriers and choking out entirely in enclosed spaces reveals the regrettably tight limits of the environments, which are themselves entirely too linear until the last few story missions enact their potential. In the years that Crisis Core spent in development, it's clear that some strange decisions were made early on, which could not be unmade when the team at last learned their way around Sony's portable platform. If the PSP is where the Final Fantasy VII remake finally happens - and it's not unthinkable - expect a much more consistent experience.

Look past the short-sighted choices and the occasional technical shortcomings and you'll find that Crisis Core excels in a way that nothing else on the PSP has thus far. Its maturity surprises, its story touches, you'll have a great time with the battle system, spend an age experimenting with materia fusion and if, after twelve excellent hours of story-driven gameplay, you still haven't had enough, there's a vast amount of fun to be had yet - and side quests, while present and correct, aren't the least of it. As a member of SOLDIER, Zack can access via save points a wealth of self-contained, non-narrative missions that take him through admittedly familiar arenas on the hunt for rare treasure, summons and other such extras. Assets are repeated ad infinitum and all of the portable missions amount to the same short, sharp burst of fun, but they're the perfect way to take your game on the go or level up your character when he's struggling to get the better of a boss. If you have the patience for them, the hundreds of missions on offer extend the lifecycle of Crisis Core exponentially in lieu of any kind of multiplayer functionality. So too does the option to start, after the final curtain has come down, a new game at a dramatically ramped-up difficulty that will prove a hardy challenge for even the most seasoned fans of the franchise.

The unsung star of the show, though, is without a doubt Takeharu Ishimoto's score. A masterful blend of original compositions and reworked themes from across Final Fantasy VII and the compilation thereof, it incorporates almost seamlessly his own pieces from the anime OVA that accompanied the release of Advent Children, as well as themes from that CGI spectacle and, of course, the wonderful work of Nobuo Uematsu from the original PlayStation RPG. From the chirrupy ambience of The Mako City to the distorted riffs of Ishimoto's encounter music and from the melancholy strings that swell at the high points of the narrative to the celebratory assembly that plays out over the end credits, his considerable efforts are authentic and appropriate.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII is a better game for Ishimoto's reassuring work and, despite its faults, the overall experience is well worth your time. As the first real fruition of the nearly boundless promise inherent in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, it's just a shame that Crisis Core is the last spin-off in the series. The road towards its last, glorious act might be bumpy at times, but the whole comes together well enough that it's easy to overlook the peculiarities of its various parts and revel in the pleasure of a long-overdue story well told.

Reviewed by Niall Rough for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).