Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 335: Crisis Core - Final Fantasy VII

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

A double-request topic as we follow up our Final Fantasy VII coverage by looking back at its PSP-exclusive prequel Crisis Core. Bill Nielsen joins Jeremy Parish & Nadia Oxford as they fire up the Digital Mind Wave for some fond rememberies. Art: Greg Melo

You're listening to Retronauts, a part of the Greenlit Podcast Network, a collective of creator-owned and fully independent podcasts, focused on pop culture and video gaming. To learn more and to catch up on all the other network shows, check out Greenlitpodcasts.com. This weekend, Retronauts, we're talking about the Gacts of Life. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. Oh, you know, if I were cool, I would have the schedule pulled up so I could see what episode number this is. And maybe by the time everyone has done their intros, I can tell you exactly what number this is going to be. But I am Jeremy Parrish, and this is episode 335. of Retronauts, according to the New Testament numbering, the Anno Domini of the show, not the before Kickstarter, BC, BK, yes.

Anyway, hi, welcome to this podcast. And this week we have a new mix of people, both of whom who have been on the show before, but never together. So let's see what happens when we mix our chemicals and come up with Kimtrails or whatever it is the kids are into these days. So calling in from Actually, I don't know If both of you might be from Canada

Who's the lady Who often joins for Retronauts? I am probably the lady you are referring to I am Nadia Oxford Of Acts of the Blood God An RPG podcast And I have never been on a podcast With Bill before

And I am sure that we will not fight Like those little Like those fighting fish That we put them together They kill each other That's not really in my nature No everyone This is pandemic

So everyone's in their little their own little glass cell. So you can see each other and you can make aggressive stances, but you can't actually fight. So we are properly isolated like Betafish. And as mentioned, who else do we have here? Well, Maddie, I'm from originally in Buffalo, New York.

So I like to think of myself as half Canadian as is. And my name is Bill Nielsen. And I'm still holding out hope for the Rufus Shinra spin-off, Executive Crucible Final Fantasy 7. Oh, no, that would be something. Yes, I've been in Buffalo many, many times. It's a pretty fun city. Yes.

Upstate New York is kind of like honorary Canada. So there is that. Anyway, yes. So this is a kind of a double patron request episode. We actually had two requests come in at the same time. First from Bobby Najari. And secondly, Bill said, I would like to be on a crisis core episode. And since we were already going to do a crisis core episode, Bill was invited onto this one because it doesn't make sense to do two of them.

because that would, yeah, that would be nonsense. So here we are, kind of doing two chocobos with one stone and talking about Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7. There's no TN Final. Final Fantasy 7. Fital Fantasy. So, yes, we have talked a lot about the Final Fantasy phenomenon over the past year or so, with two episodes on Final Fantasy 7 itself, an episode on Advent Children and an episode on the Final Fantasy 7, remake. So now here we are kind of rounding it out with a look at the one prequel that actually matters and that anyone should give a crap about. That is Crisis Core, which was released on

PlayStation Portable, came out in September 2007 in Japan as a, I guess it was supposed to be a 10th anniversary of Final Fantasy 7 thing, except that Final Fantasy 7 came out in September 1997 in the U.S. It was actually like January 2007 in Japan. So they sort of missed the anniversary date by like eight months. And then it came out here, about half a year later, March 2008. So they kind of bumbled it. But that's sort of par for the course with the compilation of Final Fantasy 7 in general. Yes, definitely. This, yes, this I would say was the one result from the compilation of Final Fantasy 7 that was actually pretty good, whereas everything else was either detestable or never came to the U.S. and therefore it does not matter. So let me ask you, Bill and Nadia,

What are your personal experiences with Crisis Core and with Final Fantasy 7 in general? So, yeah, I mean, originally I played Final Fantasy 7 back when it came out. It was the first RPG of any kind that I'd interacted with back in that time. And over the years, I stuck with video games. I stuck with the Final Fantasy series. But I reconnected with Crisis Core under the conditions of taking a intercontinental plane flight from Buffalo to Paris, France. And it's like, well, I'm going to need something to do on this flight.

So I went out and I ordered the extra large battery for the PSP that like it's so big that you need to order a separate extra special like case adapter for it. So that's the that's the naturally extra large battery for PSP. Not the not the battery that becomes extra large over time even though it didn't start that way. And then it explodes. Okay. It damaged everything around you. Can't take that one on the plane. No, you might say that one that I got is like the Project S variant and the one that

swells up on its own as like the Project G variance. But yeah, like that kept me company through a very long flight. And as we'll allude, we'll get to later, the gameplay proved to be very effective for someone whose brain was half shut off by time zone differences in jet lag. And just getting re-familiarized with like all the characters who make cameos or more in the game kind of kept me energized and now getting to see it brought back into the spotlight thanks to Final Fantasy 7 remake. That's why I wanted to be on this episode. All right. And Nadia, yourself, I mean, I know you know some things about RPGs. A few things. I know a thing here or there,

but yes, Final Fantasy 7 is one of my favorite RPGs. It wasn't my first, but it's definitely one of my favorites. And so I was given Crisis Core as a gift, like kind of by extension. and yes, I played it, enjoyed it very much. I did not get to finish it, but I have watched through the story on YouTube, thank you to the magic of YouTube. So, yeah, I am all about Zach. I'm actually really happy that the remake seems to be kind of calling back to Crisis Core, and it makes it more of a sin than ever that Crisis Core is not available outside the PSP.

Yes, that is one of the big flaws in sort of Squarespace, Inix's development strategy from around this period is that they made some really dumb decisions that have doomed some of their games to basically being trapped in obsolete physical media at this point. There are several really good Square Inix PSP games that did not make their way to the digital only release once the PSP Go came out, which is one of the reasons I think that PSP Go didn't do that well because people looked and were like, well, I have like half these games and I can't play, or I have a bunch of these games and I can't play half of them on the go. Why would I buy this one? But I think in this case, the issue with the games

reissue, the issue with the reissue, yes, is the inclusion of Kamui Gact, a Japanese, what is he, like a visual K artist? Is that how you would describe it? Yeah, I think he's a pop artist or something, but yes, he is a celebrity of some kind, and I imagine the licensing is probably hell. Yeah. So, you know, the folks who worked on Final Fantasy 7, they just had this thing for Gact and his like his whole kind of put on goth musical style. Tetsu Onomura, the designer of the characters in these games, studied fashion and the

headquarters at Square Innix. I think I mentioned used to be in in Shinjuku before they moved to their current headquarters was right next to a fashion institute. So I feel like there was just some sort of there was just something baked into their games in this era. And this is a case where they were like, wow, it would be cool to have this celebrity that only we care about in this game. And now because he's in Crisis Core and Durge of Cerberus, those games are not reissued. And in the case of Durge of Surbrus, no problem. But Crisis Corps, I don't know, Crisis Core is good, dumb, fun.

It would have been great on Vita. and, you know, if Sony still made portable systems, it would still be great, but they don't, so maybe it doesn't matter. It's definitely, as you say, good, dumb, fun, and I feel like it really kind of fills in one of the more fascinating parts of Final Fantasy Seven story, but I suppose we'll get there in a few.

Yeah, so really briefly, oh, I guess I should say how I played this game. I reviewed it for OneUp.com. Okay, that was quick. Ah, all right, beef. Actually, I was on a video debating its merits with Shane Bentenhausen, and people turned some of those, some of my reactions to some of his nonsensical comments into GIFs that are still, you'll still see them occasionally online.

God bless the internet does not sleep. That is the legacy of this game as far as I'm concerned. Jiffs of young fat Jeremy making rolling eyes at Shane. Anyway, not making eyes, rolling eyes, yes. That's totally different. So, yeah, I'm curious to hear what you know, I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are, on this game. My feeling is that it, as I said, it is good, dumb, fun, but it also kind of points to the issues with prequels in general, which is that it takes away a lot of the uniqueness of

the original media that people love so much and tries really hard to say, hey, there's all this really important stuff that you didn't know about because it wasn't important enough for anyone to mention, but it is really important, we promise. And so yeah, I feel like narratively this this is not that great an experience, but it is a very high quality PSP production. It looks great. It plays well. The music is phenomenal. And it really does speak to the high standards that Square Enix invested even in its portable games at this point, which not a lot of developers did. To their credit, yeah, the cutscenes look very, very good. Like even today, they've held up well. And like, when they get into the in-engine stuff, the character models look nice. Like,

they move around pretty well, like, they're clean. It is kind of weird that you have to do different types of camera controls for different environments, but generally, like, they have these well-modeled environments, and, like, when you go to Midgar, there is a bit of personality in there. So, like, yeah, it's a testament to what you can do with the PSP if you put a bunch of resources behind development. Yeah, and, you know, the camera issue is not a game problem. That is a Sony problem, because they were like,

why don't we make a system based around immersive 3D experiences and not put a second stick on there? Yeah, that seems like a great idea. Let's go. Let's ship it. Yeah, that was a great idea. Also, I think that compilation of Final Fantasy 7 in general added a whole bunch of stuff that the whole purpose of the compilation was, here's a bunch of stuff added to Final Fantasy 7 that did not need to be added to Final Fantasy 7. To this day, I'm still angry that they took the perfectly ambiguous, interesting ending to Final Fantasy 7 and just made Advent children out of it and well that was a dog's breakfast but I feel like crisis core it has its really really messy square enix spots but it also has um a few like

really heartfelt character development moments that I think um are really worth the trip like I think this is one of my favorite depictions of cloud ever yeah like the bigger beats the bigger overarching story like it seems like it suffers a bit because they were trying to meld it into that crisis universe with like dirge of Cerberus and stuff like that where like they've got the Genesis and the Angel subplot. But the moments between Zach and Cloud and the moments between Zach and Areth are very heartfelt. And like you learn a lot more about how like it's very naturalistic. Like it's not like Zach, we're going to assign you to Cloud. He's your new deputy while you're out soldiering. It's like, oh, you guys both are from the country. You should talk to each other

and that grows from there. I admire that restraint. Indeed, yeah, definitely. Cloud is actually, even though Advent Children kind of gave him that incorrect trait of being, you know, regarded as emo and everything like that. In Crisis Corps, he's quite happy, as happy as he can be given he's a screw up. Yeah, Cloud is definitely, like, you see the character before he became Cloud Strife. And he is, he is like this aspiring, he is. this aspiring young man who really wants to be a hero, but he doesn't quite have what it takes.

And, yes, it's a very endearing take on Cloud. It's a great view of kind of Midgar. Like, it's the first chance you really get to see Midgar as something other than these really dingy, pre-rendered backgrounds in Final Fantasy 7, where you can actually get down and, you know, kind of see the grounds-eye view of the game. And I think it works, you know, of the city. And it works pretty well that way. It does rely way too much on the expanded or extended universe characters, not just Angeal and Genesis, but also characters like Cisne and Lazzard and a few others that if you played before Crisis, then you would know who they are.

But guess what? That game didn't come to America. So everyone over here was like, who are these schmose? Should we know? Should we care? Yeah. I'm a little bit disappointed that before crisis didn't come here just because it tells you, as I recall, it tells you how Red 13 was caught by Shinra.

And I think that's an interesting story point to examine, but we'll never get to. Was it like that that trap that Ewox caught Chewbacca with? No, he actually went, as I recall, he actually went peacefully because he was doing some kind of ceremony to honor the earth like they do in Cosmon Canyon, I suppose. And I think he had a female companion with him. And he said to Shinra, like, okay, you got me. trapped, please don't hurt her, and you can take me. And they said, okay, and they even let him finish his, like, I love the earth ceremony. So I guess they're not all bad. All right. Well, you know, you mentioned that you're sad before crisis never made it here.

And that's actually, from what I've read, where this game began. It was going to be just a PSP version of Before Crisis. And you kind of have to trace things back to the state of Square Nix portable development in the mid-200. thousands, you know, around the time that the PSP launched and started to take off and the DS proved like, hey, people want this weird little underpowered machine with a touchscreen and two visual screens. You know, they were really focusing heavily on J mode type mobile games, which were really big in Japan and not anywhere else. And I think they, you know, they were starting to realize we need to be releasing our games that we're putting this money into in all regions, not just Japan. So there was this kind of shift that happened as they moved away from their mobile strategy and moved more toward portable systems. Of course, now they've moved back because they realize they can make tons of money from Gatcha without even having to actually design a game, just put some wipes in there and they're good.

But at the time, no one knew how much money wives were worth. Sorry, wifus were worth. So, yes. So they were still actually designing games as opposed to just vomiting out Gats. So, yeah, a bunch of, there were a bunch of games that were announced for PSP, or for mobile, and kind of made their way to PSP. And several of them were touched by the director of Crisis Corps, Hajime Tabata, who would go on to develop or direct Final Fantasy 15 after that whole thing was salvaged from the smoldering wreck that, uh, that it was as Final Fantasy versus 13. but he was going to develop Final Fantasy Agatow 13, which became Final Fantasy Type Zero for PSP. It was going to be a mobile game and then became a PSP game.

And, of course, the third birthday started out as a mobile game and then became a PSP game. And then there's Crisis Corps, which I think is different from those because it started as their attempt to say, hey, we put kind of some resources into this mobile game before crisis. what if we like rework that for PSP? And that's something, you know, they've done with the Kingdom Hearts games that started like coded and things like that. They've actually revamped those

and brought those to mainstream platforms. So that was the idea here. But then it just kind of evolved into being something different. Before Crisis was just, you know, a story about the Turks and about Avalanche and was set several years before Final Fantasy 7. And this is, this moves the timeline ahead a little bit.

and is about basically Zach, the guy that Cloudstripe wants to be and thinks he is for part of the game and kind of his story and how he came to be such an influence on cloud and, you know, kind of the beginning of cloud story where Sephiroth is involved and so on and so forth in Ereth. So, yeah, it just kind of turned into a new thing that I'm, you know, I think it worked out for the better, honestly, from what I've seen of before crisis. May I ask you both a question? Because you both were very active on the video game. internet I assume it during the aughts and like even at that point we're uh you know doing a lot of

coverage of games so was there a large cry for finding out more about Zach like it just seems no no he so briefly in the game so I would say if you look at the fandom of Final Fantasy 7 that existed and things like fan fiction which was extensive the story of Zach and you know what happened before Final Fantasy 7 actually began, which is covered very briefly in some optional flashbacks in the real game. I would say that was the most popular topic for Final Fantasy 7 fan fiction. I would say so, yeah. Not that I read a lot of it, but that's just the impression that I kind of got is that, I don't know, do you disagree? You were more active in fan fiction scenes, but not necessarily Final Fantasy. Yeah, that's the thing. Final Fantasy was a little

bit of a blind spot, but I do know that Final Fantasy 7, back when Fanfiction.net, was the place to park your fanfic, the Final Fantasy 7 category, first of all, had to be separated from Final Fantasy in general because it got so huge. Second of all, it grew to become like the biggest category in

fanfiction.net. So I would not be surprised, I suppose, if I heard that people were really curious about what happened before Final Fantasy 7 versus maybe what happened afterwards before Advent children told us for better for worse. So I guess that cry might have been there. But of course, it also depends on what the American

fan base wanted versus what the Japanese fan base wanted because the two were very, very separate at the time. Right. Right. And there is this element of tragedy that I think, you know, like destined tragedy. There's no escape from it that I think resonates better with Japanese audiences than American audiences. So I think that was actually part of the appeal. That's what Tabeta has said. He wanted to tackle Zach's story. Because it was, you know, there was a clear definitive ending to it. There's no ambiguity like, you know, whatever happened to Zach. No, he died.

He got killed real good. Like spectacularly. Yes. He was, he was a spiky hair Titanic. He definitely sank when the icebergs came in the form of tiny little soldier bullets. And yeah, that was it. So there's no, there's no question about how this story is going to end. The ship is going down and Zach will bleed.

out. So that was actually part of the appeal of the story for the development team. So that's kind of the inception point for it. But I do think that, you know, the topic of Zach and who he was and how he influenced Ayrith and Cloud, I think that was really popular among the really, really enthusiastic Final Fantasy 7 fans, not like mainstream players who played Final Fantasy 7 were like, oh, this is neat. I remember that game. That was kind of cool with the guy with the yellow hair and the spikes and stuff. Yeah. There was like a pretty boy. No, it was like the people who really got into it and, you know, really spent a lot of time thinking about how the world worked and wanted to explore it on their own. Zach was a pretty popular topic. So yeah, I think it was natural

for them to say, if we're going to do a prequel, it should be the story of Zach and, you know, kind of the introduction of cloud. Yeah, because I think if nothing else, fans definitely love to glum on to the smallest fragments of story and spin whole universes out of them, as I know myself. So, yes, I suppose you are definitely right that Zach was appealing in many, many ways to fans. Yeah, you got to see what happened to Zach in Final Fantasy 7 if you did explore those side quests and the flashbacks, but it was all told in a very sort of cursory surface level. So there was a lot that they could weave into the story. I don't necessarily agree. what they chose to weave in to the story here. Right.

Like, yeah, I don't know. The whole, hey, it's these guys who are like Sephiroth, but beefier. I don't know. Yeah, angrier. Not as pretty. It's a little strained. But it kind of gets to the whole ambiguity of the timeline in Final Fantasy 7 to begin with. Like, when I first played the game and, you know, read the manual that talks about the legendary soldier,

Sephiroth who disappeared on a mission. And, you know, you hear President Shinra talking about how great Sephiroth was. You know, it seems like this was something that took place a decade ago. But as you play, you realize, no, actually all this was like a few months ago. Well, maybe like a year at most. So there's just this kind of sense of like, I don't know, the collective memory of people in universe in Final Fantasy 7 seems really, really bad. So, yeah, I don't know. This whole whole story kind of feels awkward to me, but maybe that's unavoidable just because of how it was presented. On top of that, yeah, like Genesis seems to be driven by the idea of being better than

Sephiroth and, I guess, like, idolize Sephroth as a child, but aren't they, like, the same age? I mean, it was, my understanding of the timeline is a little hazy, too, but like, they excavated Genova at a certain point and like around the same point they did the project G and the project S and it was like Shinra was like, okay, we're going to try and figure out which of these two projects works out better. So it didn't seem clear to me how they could have that kind of relationship with each other. Yeah, Sephiroth grew faster or something. I'm sure they put in something to like patch that out. Yeah. So it's worth mentioning that the writer

for the story here was Kazushige Nojima, who was the scenario writer for for Final Fantasy 7, so it's not like they were like, hey, we'll just find some hack off the street and have him, you know, slap something together. This was the guy who wrote that whole story in the first place. I think it's safe to say that when he wrote Final Fantasy 7, at no point did he think. So there's this one guy who was like Sephiroth, but actually looked like Gacked. And there was this other guy who was basically like, if you take Sephiroth and stretch him to be kind of wide and make all of his ankles square and sort of kind of pointy um these guys are really really important and are the keystones of this entire universe

so he was he was definitely a little overzealous in in coming up with super awesome characters to flesh out the universe with square throth but i guess yeah squires are off yeah it's a good i like that but you know it speaks to kind of the the challenges of prequels so i guess there's only so much you can do. And if you ignore all the stuff with Genesis and Angel, then you have a pretty good story about Zach coming of age, maturing, going from being like this kind of toe-headed puppy is what they call him in the game, to a confident and charismatic leader. So in that sense, in that sense, it actually works pretty well. He did have a good glow-up, I agree. They could have done even more. Like with Sephiroth, too, I

appreciate the few moments where Sephiroth, like, you find out that he does have a gentleness to him. Yes, definitely. He does, like, confide in Zach, like, hey, I'd like to help them out, too, if I can. You know, we don't just have to, like, kill them. And if they could have given more of that,

I think it would have been made, like, his fall later on that we all know about even more tragic. Yeah. One thing I did notice about Crisis Corps as well as part of Final Fantasy 7 is that before Safferoth goes nutty in the Nibelheim mansion, he's an okay. dude. He's a little bit stuck up, but he's not mean. He cares about his men. He cares about

Zach. He cares about Cloud, I suppose, in his own way. So, yeah, I always appreciate that about the character. And that's one thing I think they're taken out of remake that I'm a little disappointed about, but that's something else. So does the remake, sorry, I haven't really played it yet, not very much. Does the remake get into the Nebelheim flashback, or is that more for a future update. It's, they have like cloud flashing back to like snippets of like Nibelheim on fire and Sephardt tormenting him as he travels down his path. So whereas the original game kind of leaves Sephroth as a mystery until the second

disc and you see what he did to the Midgarzolam, uh, you, you introduced to Sephroff almost right away from the beginning with the remake, but that's not surprising given how huge Sephraoth is to fans. Well, my recollection. of the original game is that you really kind of get a sense of what Sephiroth was about in the flashback once you get to Calm Town, that's it.

Yes. And you do see a pretty extensive flashback where you see kind of how he leads the soldier group that Cloud is part of. Exactly. And, you know, even though that's a an unreliable narrator flashback because Cloud

is like, it's me, Cloud, except actually that was Zach. And I was the dork in the side throwing up. Getting motion sick, poor guy. But you do still see Sephiroth as, you know, a pretty decent guy if aloof and hard to connect with. And that comes across here. Like as much as Advent children lost the plot for the characters, I feel like this game does a better job of holding it down. Yeah, definitely.

I just have to say one thing is that it's so cool how Sephiroth just one shots that dragon while it kills Cloud. Zach in one hit and he just takes out his massed muni now that's visual storytelling it's a sword that's bigger than anyone so of course it wins yeah but again it does it does kind of stumble with the weaknesses

of prequels the innate weaknesses in that all the special cool things you remember from the first game were just echoes of things that happened here like Zach meets Ayrith by falling through the floor and landing in the

church somehow and symbolism I guess complex series of shoots and tobes and funnels all leading to the same church right the natural dumping ground um but also also you know Zach passed the buster sword down to cloud but here you see how Zach gets the buster sword and it's from a guy who is basically like the deluxe version of Zach so yeah yeah I don't know there's just There's just a lot of this. with the prequel storytelling here. You know, a big part of Final Fantasy 7's backstory was that Midgar had been at war with...

Ufi's tie. Yes, Wutai. And here you actually get to see that happening. And there's even a fun cameo from Ufi who, you know, she's not anyone to be taken seriously at this point. And I think that's a good little bit of characterization for Zach, where he kind of humors this kid in the middle of a battle who's like, I'm the toughest,

soldier around and he's like, oh no, you've defeated me. That was cute. It's fun. Yeah, the Wutai stuff is an interesting villain because that's not something you get to see in the vanilla game. You just kind of go there and it's a tourist town already. And it's also interesting how it shows us how Leviathan is kind of the patron saint of that town. And of course, Leviathan materia, you get it in Wutai when you play Final Fantasy 7. So that's a nice little connection.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. So, yeah, they definitely put some thought into kind of how the world is set up. But then again, you know, like I said, they did introduce some elements like in the end, the whole plot revolves around Minerva, who is a goddess, maybe, who's kind of part of the mainstream, but maybe not. I totally forget what that's about. It doesn't, well, it's not something you can really remember because it doesn't make any sense. They don't actually explain it.

And I, you know, I took some time to read up on Minerva when I was putting together this episode and planning for it. And I can't find any definitive statement on what she is. She's just like a goddess and you find a statue and somehow she's connected to the life stream and then you never hear about her again. You might, this is one interpretation is that like that is Genesis trying to understand the situation. And because he doesn't, I mean, And it seems that he falls into the lifestream and never should be heard from again. But then minutes later, some people come along and pick up his still warm corpse for later. So presumably he's not truly dead at this point.

I really don't know. This, like the big story here really falls flat and is meaningless. But the story about Zach and about how he meets Ereth and how he and Cloud become friends. and, you know, how eventually he dies and, you know, passes on his, his, kind of his persona to cloud, like, that's important and it matters. It has impact. And the only real justification for Angeal and Genesis is strictly in the fact that that Zach does look up to Angeal so much and that they do have a bond and are kind of brotherly in that sense. And so, like, that's the, that's the only rationalization for those characters. being in this game. The rest of it is just like, what are you idiots talking about? That whole thing with Loveless. Like they took a My Bloody Valentine song that was mentioned like as posters. They don't even really talk about it in Final Fantasy 7. It's just like, hey, there's some My Bloody Valentine posters and Loveless posters on the wall in Midgar.

Neat. But now it's like become this whole thing. It's like a stage play or something. And this just keeps quoting it. And you're just like, dude, shut up. Like, if I go around and I'm... You're not deep. Yeah, like, you know, I could walk around quoting Jethro Tull lyrics instead of talking to people, but no one would like me. Oh, I usually do that anyway. I talk exclusively and thick as a brick. Nice.

You know what? It has... I still find the death scene, the last, the last DGI's cut scene between Cloud and Zach, very, very heartwarming. Very durable, man. You'd have expected there to be only, like, a couple bits of skis. and bone muffs by the time they were done with him, but he's not looking great, but he's still like conscious and mostly put together. That's true.

He still has all stuff intact. You know, the game begins with him, again, taking away the specialness of Final Fantasy 7, the game begins with a reprise, I guess pre-prise of the bombing run on the train from Final Fantasy 7, how that game begins. And he goes up against all these soldiers, and they're just like standing, shooting at it up with machine guns and he's like, whatever, and just kind of runs at them with a sword. So, you know, he's tough. He's got some either very strong skin or just, you know, does that thing like What's Her Face,

fortune from Metal Gear Solid 2 and nothing can shoot him. I don't know, but yeah. JRP hero skin. It's about five extra layers. That's a lot of it. I don't know. back up against, say, papers, please. And what's the one 3-D-O FMV game

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Or Rock and Ajax on the Greenlit Podcast Network. Yeah, so the DMW digital mindwave that defines the battle system is kind of like Angeal in that it's kind of like Angeal in that it's only really justified to be there by one connection with Zach. And that is the ending of the game. Like, otherwise, it's this stupid, overly complicated, like, casino kind of system, you know, gambling as combat. Yeah, it's, it's nonsense. I've played all the way through the game. And, like, going back and revisiting it, I still don't understand it anymore. But it's a thing that is there. And it finally comes together at the very end. Like, I feel like if you play it, just little snippets of this game. You condense this game down to like five hours that mostly

consisted of like the intro and Uttai and then, you know, the Nebelheim stuff and then the ending, you would have a much stronger game, maybe not, you know, enough to justify paying 40 bucks, but it would be much stronger and it wouldn't feel so like what is what is happening because there's a whole lot of that in this game. There is a whole lot of what is happening. And I think the slot system is another part of that. I feel like if that was gone, even though you'd have the, you wouldn't have that little bit at the ending, which was kind of nice. But you wouldn't be missing much. But you're right.

It is, for what a great game it is, and it's definitely one of my favorites on the PSP, it definitely has Square Syndrome. It's a combination of complicated and undercooked in that, like, you don't really do anything with it. It just happens in the background. And then sometimes you'll be like, oh, zero MP, time to spam FIraga. And so, like, in some of the tougher fights, if you want, you can just kind of like run in circles, dodge, dodge, dodge, and just wait to, you know, roll triple six is to get, you know, a summon attack to show up or to get your like zero MP so you can start spending your most powerful techniques. It's just not a deep system. It kind of reminds me a little bit of the trails of cold steel system, which sometimes gives you bonuses that pop up, like they're allotted in a random way. I don't quite understand just yet, but on occasion you get bonuses like, yes, cast without zero MP, get extra this, get extra that, but your enemies can get that too.

And I feel like it's actually a really good system, but it makes sense in Trails of Cold Steel, whereas in Final Fantasy 7, sorry, in Crisis Corps, it's just there kind of distracting you as all these things start rolling and matching up and not matching up. And it's very odd. Yeah, you really, I feel like a lot of square games, especially. from around this era really felt like they just needed to be this kind of over-stimulation. And, you know, so you have in Final Fantasy 13, say, when you attack an enemy, you don't just hit the enemy, you attack it and you hit it like seven times. And so you get all these numbers popping up. And you're like, you know, I'm getting like seven numbers popping up for every attack. And they're all like 12,000 points. So at some point, it just stops making sense. And you just

pay attention to the meters. It's just like, calm down. It's okay. And this game is really bad about that. And you know, it's interesting because I mentioned this game sort of has roots in mobile gaming. And the digital mind wave in particular really feels like it was inspired by Gatcha, except that didn't really exist in 2007. So it's almost like here is this weird accidental window into the direction mobile games were going. with this portable game that was going to be a mobile game. And so you do have this, like, high element of randomization, and you have, like, you know, slot machine where wifos pop up,

and they can make your gameplay better. It was kind of like Square Enix smelled on the wind. Something was coming, but they weren't sure what just yet. It was just starting to form in their heads. Yeah, like, there's no reason for Zach's brain and his endorphins to be regulated by a slot machine. this, it is, it is not, this. Maybe Hojo's messed up.

I guess. It has no ties to anything in universe, aside from, I guess, doesn't, doesn't, doesn't have like a slot machine reel when she's performing her limit breaks? But, but even that's just like a, you know, an artifice, you know, it's, it's just a fun way to input commands. Whereas here, it's like, it's fundamental to the game. And yet, why? I think they could have done a better. job of emotionally tying it to Zach where like I think it is a thing where they're trying

to symbolize Zach draw strength from the bonds he has with his friends and allies and like they sort of eloped to that because like the first time periodically you'll see like little cutscenes that are his memories of interacting with these people and it's like I remember this moment with Angeo I'm going to do a move that Angeo would do but they could have really gone further in tying them into who Zach is as a person. You see it, but in this case, they probably did need to tutorialize it a little bit better. Yeah, it's like, hey, it's me, Zach. I'm in combat. I'm killing monsters. I'm fighting Bahamut. And wow, I'm just thinking about my, my bromance with Angeal. Yeah. I like that guy a lot. I just can't stop thinking about him. Yeah, it's a little

strange. But to explain what the DMW is, not the DMV, that's totally different. The digital mind wave is, as I said, like a rolling slot machine that occupies a chunk of the screen real estate in the upper right-hand corner. And it's basically just constantly rolling as you fight through the game. Like every time you're in combat, you see it rolling. And there's, it's a meter. And then above the meter, there's another meter. There's like a sign wave. And that represents, I guess Zach's current emotional state and I guess the performance of your combat, how much damage you take, how well you deliver damage, that regulates kind of the mood that Zach is in. And also plot events can affect it. You'll get a little pop-up saying, you know, Zach's current

emotional state has affected the DMW. So yeah, basically the better an emotional state he is in, the more likely you are to get rare pop-ups, you know, good, good effects from the slot machine reel. And if you manage to randomly, no, no, you have no control over it, it just happens. If you manage to get two of the same character to pop up on either end of the slot reel, then you'll enter something called, what is it, resonance modulating phase, that's it. That's it, yes. And that's when things get crazy because that's where sometimes you cause cutscenes, to open up that make Zach just perform

actions. Sometimes it causes summons to happen. It sometimes causes you to activate limit breaks. It's really weird because you have very little control over it. So again, it just feels like you know, you've got this very simplistic battle system and this

makes it feel even more simplistic because all the stuff you want to do, there's no strategy to it. Like if you compare this to the Final Fantasy 7 remake battle system where you really have to pay attention to you know, kind of your AP gauge and your magic points and say, well, if, you know, if I do this here, it's going to use so many blocks out of my, my AP gauge, and it's possible that it could

be countered by an enemy, so I have to really think about my timing of it. There's none of that here. It's just like, hey, wow, I got two pictures of Ereth. Now I'm going to summon a Chocobo for some reason. Cool. I associate Chokebo. I was doing Aerith all the time. I mean, why not? What would Ayrth's trademark summon be? A whole bunch of flowers falling on someone and smothering them. A real beefcake, Titan. And like a mankini? Yes.

All right. So the DMW is really strange. And then there are other elements too. Like when numbers show up as opposed to character portraits, basically the various permutations of combinations, of the number seven that you can get affect things too. Like if you get, I think, two sevens in a certain position and then any other number, it'll cause one thing to happen.

If you get all sevens, then you become invincible for like 15 seconds. Again, it's all not within your control. And it just, it kind of reminds me of the world ends with you, which, you know, this did have some creative DNA in common with that game, where you have like another character fighting on the bottom screen of the DS, and you can actually control them if you want to, but it's really hard to control two characters at once using two completely different control paradigms. So basically what happens on the bottom of the screen is just like, you know, I'm going to leave it in God's hands, and whatever my companion character's RNG pulls off, then that's

great. But because the combat system is only Zach in this game, you don't have that companion character to lead on. So they were like, let's just make Zach random, too. the player you're controlling. Why not? Just Zach. Just that. All right, so I put in the notes that even the leveling in the game is semi-random.

It's determined by a lot of the same factors that determine the DMW. So instead of leveling up in the normal tradition, it's more like the Saugai games where it's like, hey, guess what? You hit someone with your sword enough. And now you're like 1.3 times as good as hitting with your sword as you were before. Congrats. Oh, God. Yeah.

That gave me flashbacks. I've tried very hard to get into saga, and I haven't succeeded very well. Have you tried Scarlet Grace? It's actually very good. Yeah, I got lost very quickly. Which character? This is a sidetrack, but which characters did you roll in your first attempt? Oh, I can't remember.

It's been a while. Was it the Yokel, Leonardo? Probably. Because his, yeah, his story is very traditional saga, and you do, you can get lost very easily because you're like just doing random stuff and it's causing the world state to change and you're like, whoa, I just made the game really hard for myself without realizing it.

I should probably try again without selecting the farmer who ends the world. Well, again, it's saga so you don't get to choose. It's chosen for you with your responses at a test at the beginning of the game. But if you can get Urpina, the princess, she's actually the best beginner character. Anyway, that's a sidebar.

There is no saga. There's no actual saga DNA in this game that I'm aware of. If anything, I would say the combat system feels like the midpoint between kingdom hearts and lightning returns in that it's, you know, it's real-time action with some menu elements and, you know, like the Final Fantasy paradigms, but also kind of sloppy and like what's happening. Yeah, definitely. I think Bill said it best when he said it was like underdeveloped but overcomplicated. That's pretty much it right there. I took a little time last night just to refresh myself on the gameplay.

I just played the first hour again, and I probably could have gotten through the entire stretch by just pressing the attack command over and over again. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, the opening hour of the game. It does get more complex than that after a while. And you have the ability, there's still materia in this game. So you have the ability to, you know, attach material to your weapons and customize your skill load out that way with spells. You know, the material is color-coded, red, yellow, green, et cetera.

green is going to heal, red is going to be, I think, attack. Yellow is like support. And this does add the the materia fusion element, which is kind of like a, it kind reminds me of like if they took the linked materia ability from Final Fantasy 7 where you can put material in adjacent slots that have the link and customize their capabilities, this actually makes it integral to the new material that you create. So that's pretty interesting, and you can kind of, you know, dig really deep into that. But the whole game really does feel like, I don't know if it's fair to say you can see kind of the mobile roots at play.

But it does feel kind of empty and kind of small. I feel like the kingdom hearts comparison is a good one, frankly. Yeah, just like, hey, I'm in a new box. And now there's some enemies who are going to attack me until I kill them. Then I move on to a new box that has, you know, pretty scenery, pretty wallpaper. But, yeah, like the battle system, you know, you have kind of random encounters for the most part. There are some instanced encounters. And, yeah, they just feel kind of disposable.

The dungeons, as they were, are pretty small and insignificant. There are a lot of side quests you can do, but a lot of times it's just taking you back through dungeons you've already been to. So it feels like you're retracing the same scenery and just kind of grinding through places you've already. been very much in sort of the Monster Hunter, Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker kind of vibe, you know, that's just kind of how they were, I think, making big, attractive games for PSP. You know, they didn't have a full AAA budget for the time. And they had some pretty severe hardware limitations. So I guess that's just kind of the format that they ended up settling on, like to get the most gameplay out of what has to be ultimately a pretty small game.

Yeah, they definitely did the best of what they had. I mean, not every single time they did the best, but they definitely were shackled by hardware limitations. And in the context of that, it's still a pretty good game, despite its nonsense bits. It is, yeah. I think if you were approaching it for the first time in 2020 through any means, it would be a little bit rough to go back to. but I think it still plays pretty smoothly. Like, a frame rate is solid. The story moves pretty quickly.

Like, you can get in and out to in, like, 20-ish hours if you really wanted to push. So if you want to know more, and after Final Fantasy 7 remake, which re-contextualizes a lot of events that have happened previously, then, yeah, this would definitely be a place to go. One thing, one additional little quirk

that I actually like about Christensen, Corr and Final Fantasy 7, and I never understood if this was on purpose or not, you will only find the behemoth enemy in Midgar, and I always wondered why that was, because Behavith enemy is always a big hulking thing that's usually fined in dungeons and is a huge threat. And for some reason, you know, usually find them in the wilds or in caves or in dungeons. No, you just find them here on the streets of Midgar. Shouldn't I use them as attack dogs? I never understood that. I love it. You know, it could be one of those situations like where we see coyotes and bears in cities more and more often these days because, you know, the abuse of nature and urbanization is destroying their natural habitats. Maybe it's for those commentaries.

Yeah, instead of like, because Toronto has like tons of coyotes just roaming around like they own the place and raccoons as well and they get into your trash and just imagine a behemoth getting to your trash, man. Just let them have it. You know, I do feel like the combat system is one of those kind of exploratory steps that they were just taking. And if you look at Tabada's games, there's kind of an evolution through the games he worked on from, this is the simplest. And then you move up to, you know, the third birthday, which for all that game's problems, the combat system had some promise and it allowed you to basically play like this except as a shooter. so there was like tactical cover and stuff

and you could switch around to different characters and then you get type zero Final Fantasy Type Zero which was even more kind of elaborate and had multiple characters and a lot of kind of skill juggling and then you get to Final Fantasy 15

which is kind of like a real time action game except with an RPG paradigm in there so you know I feel like he was kind of workshopping ideas and I don't know if we'll get to see what his ultimate destination is since he left square a few years ago

and started up his own studio but I think he's hard at work so maybe we'll see the ultimate evolution of the crisis core game mechanics. Yeah, whatever he has next, I hope that he applies it to whatever he comes out with because as you say, it does feel like he was

tinkering towards something bigger and well, the more you practice, the better you get. So, Bill, it looks like you put together quite a few stories. Do you want to walk us through the story? We've kind of made fun of it. in a sort of oblique way, talking about, you know, like the proto-fake Sephiroth dudes and Gact and so forth. But, you know, there are some story beats worth mentioning, you know, especially where Ayrrith is involved in Cloud. But I don't know if you feel comfortable kind of guiding us through this. I will do my best. All right. That's what I like to hear. That's all you can do. That's very Zach of you.

So, before the game began, back when Shindra originally discovered Genova, they believed Genova was part of the ancients, the race that had populated the planet Gaia, which I guess is the name of this planet before humans did, when actually Genova is a malevolent alien invader. But they don't know that. So they get these two scientists, one we know very well, Hojo, and when we don't know, Hollander, to each kind of come up with projects to utilize Genova. And with Hollander, we get Genesis Engiel, and with Hojo, we get Setheroth. And it's eventually realized that Genesis is kind of like a failed project.

They figure this out, like after a big spar between the three of them, that Genesis just is not as durable as going to wither away soon, while Angel is like the perfected version of Genesis and Sephiroth has this whole other thing, which is, are even better than Angel and Genesis. When Genesis discovers this, he, well, I guess Hollander figures this out about Genesis, and they kind of collaborate because Hollander convinces Genesis he has a cure to fix his condition, but actually he really just wants to screw over Shinra. and get revenge on Hojo. So he convinces Genesis to defect and I guess a bunch of other soldiers that we never see to defect

because those soldiers all become like clones for Genesis maybe. Like they get, anyway. So that's another, that's another of the things from Final Fantasy 7 that becomes less special in this. Because, you know, you had all the Sephiroth clones in Final Fantasy 7, but they were actually just copies of the Genesis clones. Right. Yeah. So like when you go on the Wutai mission,

Sephiroth is there seemingly for no reason. And then you find out, oh, he's on the tail of this mystery with Genesis as well. And on the Wutian mission as well, Angeal ends up leaving soldier as well. And at first, it's unclear where his allegiance lie. But eventually he's like, eh, I'll help you out. And somewhere in there he kills, in quotation marks, question mark his mother. but he actually didn't. Right.

Yeah, I remember that now. And Genesis is just bummed that he's a monster, and Geel is just bummed that he's a monster as well. And eventually, Zach and Sephiroth tracked down them both. Zach kills for the first time, Genesis, and then really kills Angeal. Then there's a beach break. Everyone goes to the beach.

As is the beach episode. Yeah, the end of the season. And now you go on to season two. Yeah, you get to see Cisnay in a cute bikini and Zach with his washboard abs. And everyone's having a great time until more Genesis clones show up. Because Genesis is still not dead. And Hollander isn't dead either. He's been held in captivity in Junon.

They break him out. So Hollander is partly able to escape because the director of Shinra also defects from Shinra. So the Hollander escapes. The director of Shinra is gone. Genesis is MIA. But also now they have to go on the Nibbleheim mission. And, you know, at this, I'm sure everyone listening is aware of the Nibbleheim story there. I have to admit it's a pretty, I love the Nibaheim mansion and mission and all that. I think it's actually really well done even today. They, I think they did a really good job. Yeah, with the, you get to see every moment of the story in better detail. And like they, they spend a little more time with the detail.

around the fringes like Tifa shows up and like you get to see the misconnection there you get to see Seph Roth like he gets a little moment where he's like

oh this is pretty messed up there are all these monsters in this reactor here and because I'm having trouble remembering from FF7 how deeply they go into the lore there but basically here

Sephirov realizes that they're like using Genova like the cells of power him and Geel and Genesis to run this reactor and it makes him

go something something he then murders everyone in the town pretty much and stuff happens I don't want to go fully into the FF7 plot there but it's an event

it's fine it's more than 20 years old so Zach tries to fight Sephiroth he loses Cloud shows up and manages to successfully kill Sephiroth That's so cool in the game, I have to say.

I like that he stabs him with the Buster Sword, which is extremely wide and flat. And the angle he's holding it at, like, Sephiroth's upper body should just fall off his lower torso. Like, he basically bisects the dude. It's very, it's very sterile. Not a lot of blood considering the sort of extreme separation that should be happening there. Well, even heirs died just without like a whole lot of blood, so. Yes, but that was a thin, precise cut to the sternum with a long, long, uh, Mazumune, whereas the, uh, the Buster sword is just like chopping dudes in half. That's what it's for.

That's what it's for. Bustin. Cetra skin is just not as durable as Mako-infused skin on, I guess. I guess. I guess so. So we, we skip ahead some amount of time and Zach wakes up stuck in a test tube. He is freed by Angeel, who is supposedly dead. He busts out cloud. They escape from Nibbleheim. And they get found by the Turks who are, you know, they're at the, we're going to be good guys point between the, with the arrow oscillating between good and evil.

And they're like, we'll let you leave. We'll let you go. But you should also, like, be careful. Zach goes to confront Genesis for the final time because they find out that him and Hollander are not dead and Hollander now sports an adorable little baby angel wing. Yeah, that's another thing that was taken away from Final Fantasy 7 where Sephiroth sprouts the single wing.

He's the one-winged angel. Everyone does that before Sephiroth. He's such a follower. You're right. I never thought of it that way. but Sephiroth is a clone in many ways. I will say this final confrontation, like the last chapter of the game,

is where it actually, maybe not narratively, but in terms of mechanics, it really comes together. The final dungeon is really good. And I remember when I reviewed the game, getting to this and thinking, whoa, I feel like, you know, it's finally a proper RPG. Like this is a big interconnected dungeon.

It has lots of side paths and places to go and, you know, interesting enemies to find. fight, and then the game was over. Yeah, pretty much. I really wish more of the levels and the dungeons had been more like the final space, because it's really interesting and really good, which is kind of the opposite of Final Fantasy seven usually, or Final Fantasy games usually, like usually the final dungeons kind of quick, straight shot and kind of boring.

This doesn't do that, though. Yeah. It's a little ironic, yeah, like gameplay-wise, it feels like, yeah, the culmination of what they've been building towards. And narratively after Nibelheim, it's like, well, you know what happens next. Now they're going to go to, oh, oh, there's this whole other thing we're going to do. Oh, okay. I guess we're going to take care of this, too, before we go.

So they, yeah, Zach goes and fights Genesis. Fighting Genesis apparently cures the weakness in Genesis's genes. And now he looks totally fine. But they fight again anyway. And this is where the Minerva stuff happens where he's put into the life. stream and his will will not allow him to leave the life stream or the life stream understands that his honor as a soldier does not want him to be he he goes away he's gone now anyway he had to leave at this point so they could get on to the story so he's gone yeah of course right and so zack

picks up the sack of potatoes that cloud has been for the last few hours yeah that's that's actually really so sweet the way he touched on cloud i think that's uh really kind of speaks to his character He's just kind of, you know, propping up Cloud and he can, talking to him like he's there. And then at the last moment, when Cloud regained and remembers who he is, it's just, it's just really heartfelt. I like the fact that the narrative of this game actually treats a role-playing adventure like the rest of us do, which is, well, I've got to go do the final dungeon and get to the ending. So now it's time to take care of side quests that don't really matter. So the story actually does that. They're like, well, it's time for Zach to go die.

But first, I'm going to go to this other dungeon and see this goddess that we've never heard of before and, you know, resolve some side quest stuff. So it's very almost like metatextual in that sense. And lastly, yeah, Zach is the sides at this time he gets a letter from ERIS, sorry, Ereth, the 89th such letter and he wants to go see her. Oh, by the way, the letter was delivered by a winged monster beast that apparently has the spirit of angel in it. Of course. Yeah.

Whatever saves the post office. They could use the help. So yeah, thank you, Wings, chimera. Zach gets cloud and they head off to Midgar. The Turks are trying to catch up to them because they know Shindra is trying to kill Zach in cloud, but it's too late. Zach runs up against

480 different Shindra troopers. They all simultaneously shoot him and then another one for good measure shoots him like eat more times in the head. Yes, just to make sure. Yeah, I mean, the ending here is like Halo Reach before Halo Reach

where it's an impossible battle. You know, there's no way you're going to fight through it and survive, but you're going to try anyway because God damn it, I can do it and you can't. It's faded. But this whole thing, Justifies the DMW, because as you're fighting this impossible battle, like, your entire kind of screen interface starts to break down. And you're seeing these DMW reels spin. And Zach is remembering his friends and all the bonds he's created.

And basically, like, having a, you know, like a deathbed experience, remembering the important things in his life. And it's integrated into the combat system, which is really cool. There's no other reason for the DMW to exist except this one battle. I really feel like the combat system, they worked backward from this one encounter, this final scene, and said, okay, this would be really, really cool. Now we just got to do that for another 20 hours before we get to this point. Yeah, pretty much. And that's pretty much the end. Like we know what happens after that.

there's another there's a scene of like erith in the church and she it's unclear yeah it's not clear if she's like omniscient about all events that are happening around here but it's i think it's implied that she like knows zach just returned to the life stream at this point and uh then we cut ahead to cloud who is uh fully in his muddled memories point being like i am a soldier first class and i'm here to do the mission yeah i have always been a soldier and then it ends by saying, to be continued in Final Fantasy 7, which started up a decade of people speculating and demanding a Final Fantasy 7 remake before Square finally said, yes, okay, we're redoing it. Fine. Leave us alone.

And they did. Eventually. But yes, there was a 10-year tease, basically, where they would show things and hinted things and come out on stage to announce a direct port of Final Fantasy 7 to PS4. And lead people to believe people to believe that it was going to be a proper remake. So many good memories, so many good memories. Anyway, so final thoughts on Crisis Core, like, would you want to replay it again if you could? Or do you think it's kind of a time capsule that's best left to YouTube synopsies and podcasts? I think we're good now.

I think that we've gotten like six different representations of Zach's final stand in different forms of media. so like that is pretty much the Nybalheim is already in FF7 the final stand now has been done we know what's up there's not really any need to go back and experience the rest of

what's going on in that story I feel like the way just how closely Final Fantasy 7 remake is intertwined with Crisis Core I feel like a remake would not be a miss it would have to be a remake I suppose because yes it is an older game

a little bit rough around the edges there are some underbaked parts Um, my only fear would be like they would add more nonsense to the story when it definitely needs less. So, but I would like to see an easy way for people to play this game just given how important the story is to, to the remake. Yeah. I mean, I would, would like to see this skimery service in some sense so people can experience it and see the good parts. But, you know, they, they remastered Final Fantasy Type Zero for current generation systems. And, even then, it came off kind of dated and rough and got kind of middling reviews. This game would do even more poorly if they just basically said, here's the high-res version. You can play it on PS5. It's not going to fly. So yeah, they'd have to do a proper remake. And I don't think that's a great use of resources. So maybe the best thing to do would be for the really important stuff in this game to be like a playable experience, a playable portion of a

future chapter of the Final Fantasy 7 remake and integrate it that way like the good stuff not the Angeal and Genesis stuff that is really stupid but the stuff that we actually like that has emotional resonance and kind of matters to the overall storyline that would be cool yeah I think that's a good that's a good call it's a little bit similar to what they did with the kingdom hearts collection with the more consequential games being either like movies or smaller in more condensed playable form. That's really not a bad idea. Yeah.

So the, what do you call it? The roadmap, the blueprint is out there. So, yeah, I definitely think this is a game that has some elements worth preserving. But as a whole, it definitely is a portable game from 2007. For good and for bad. So, all right. Well, I think that's it.

I can't really think of much more to say about Crisis Core. It is, you know, kind of a little bit insubstantial, but it does also at the same time pretty much wrap up our Final Fantasy 7 extended coverage, so that's good. Hopefully everyone has enjoyed us talking about Final Fantasy 7 and all its spinoffs and permutations. So, thanks both of you for joining the show.

Bill, why don't you tell us where we can find you and check out your whatever you do online if you want to share that and want to promote anything that you do, this is your chance. I would like to promote some stuff. I do a video game podcast called So Many Bits. It comes out every Monday

and it features interviews with different independent game developers about their work. So, I mean, sometimes that is more modern titles, but also there's lots of retro-inspired work that gets discussed on there. Like, for example, I've had on developers from the game Panzer Paladin in the past, from Cyber Shadow and upcoming title. So, yeah, I'd encourage everyone to check that out every Monday.

And if you need to reach me on Twitter, I'm on Twitter at So Many Bits. And I also stream on Twitch at So Many Bits. All right. And Nadia. You can find me along with Kat Bailey at Axe of the Blood God, an RPG podcast that goes up every single Monday. You can find my writing at USgamer.net. And you can find me on Twitter at Notie. Oxford, just one simple word.

And finally, you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite and writing for limited run games and posting to YouTube under my name, Jeremy Parrish, and of course here on Retronauts every Monday and often on Fridays. You can also support Retronauts and download Retronauts by going to places that have podcasts and checking us out at Patreon, patreon.com slash Retronauts, where you can subscribe to the show and get early access every Monday. And if you subscribe at the $5 a month level or higher, then you get access to all of our patron exclusive Friday episodes

every other Friday, plus weekend posts every weekend, text and sometimes audio by Diamond Fight, looking back at a notable anniversary of the past week, the previous week. So there's a lot of bonus stuff that you can check out. It's not just people talking at you. Sometimes it's people writing to you. In any case, thank you, Bobby and Bill, both of you, for requesting and supporting, sponsoring this episode. Hopefully, it lives up to standards, and everyone will go away feeling like, wow, I've learned a few things about Crisis Corps, like the fact that Jeremy Parrish does not really like the Gacked character.

The important takeaway is. Yes, definitely. All right. Thanks again, Nadia, and thanks especially, Bill. and we'll be back in, I guess, a few days with another podcast because that's what we do. You know, I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.