I suppose it was that it came out at just the right time for me to get into it. I was old enough to get into what the game was putting down, and more importantly I was just getting into ‘big boy’ storylines. I had started pouring over anything from Blade Runner to the Star Wars expanded universe lore to, of course, Final Fantasy VII. Once I got into the FFVII world of clones and gene therapy and living planets and aliens and dystopian sci-fi social commentary, and somehow a town of old fashioned ninjas amongst all of this, I was hooked. It got to the point where I wasn’t even playing the game anymore due to never really enjoying it, and would either just watch my dad play it or I would obsessively pour over GameFAQs spoiler walkthroughs to learn whatever I could. Like I said in my Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance review (enjoy), I was pretty cringe in my youth, man.
It’s very nice of Deepground to make their uniforms gender specific. How else would I have known that there’s female soldiers without the booty shorts and stockings?
I still appreciate FFVII today, though most of my knowledge of its story and the finer details has been lost in the haze of time. There is one part of it that has never faded from my memory, however; goddamn Vincent Valentine.
Love this weirdo like you wouldn’t believe.
Part of being a cringe teen-ish lad who thought he was really smart was being drawn to certain character types, and Vincent Valentine is absolutely that character type. The brooding, troubled shapeshifting vampire-coded goth man who also weirdly turns into a werewolf looking thing, he’s always stuck out to me since I first encountered him in his coffin (totally not a vampire, not sure why anyone would think that) in the basement of a Nibelheim mansion. He wasn’t even a main character, or even an essential one; he was an entirely optional encounter and companion that you could easily miss. It didn’t matter to my cringe young-Octopus mind; I thought he looked cool, and I liked his gun and his frankly hilarious habit of responding to things with complete silence. When the CG movie sequel Advent Children came out on this side of the ocean in 2006, I was most excited just to see more Vincent, and more Vincent who didn’t look like this;
He’s moody, morose and frequently smoulders underneath his headband and massive hairdo. At first glance may appear to be an ‘edgy’ trope character that borders on absurdity and parody, complete with asymmetric gauntlet and billowing cloak.
First of all, I mean it's Final Fantasy; of course it’s going to have some exaggerated character designs. And, as well, he’s not really an edgy character trope. He’s got the fashion for it, but the character himself I always found to be surprisingly stoic and actually fairly well-natured all things considered. This is coming mainly from Dirge of Cerberus (spoilers), as he had very little screen time across both VII and Advent Children. Honestly, I think Cloud Strife, the main character of FFVII, is the edgy trope; compared to him, Vincent is a perfectly well adapted man who just so happens to have been sleeping in a coffin for a few decades.
This coffin, right here. Home sweet home.
Do you know what else came out in 2006 other than Advent Children? Something that blew my young mind? I mean, it’s the title of the article and I already name dropped it above; should be obvious, but I’ll drop it anyway.
Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII on the PS2. I decided to play it again after having not touched it for at least 4 or 5 years, and then I remembered that I write articles on games about halfway through; I’m a professional, clearly. So I restarted, opened a new blank Google file and here we are.
A spin-off starring Vincent as the main character, it was part of Square’s push to expand the storyline and mythos of FFVII in the mid 2000s through what was dubbed Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. Coming out relatively close to the previously mentioned Advent Children movie, there was also Before Crisis, the Japanese mobile only side-scrolling action game that was a prequel to the whole shebang, and soon after Dirge was Crisis Core on the PSP, a third person action-RPG that elaborated on the backstory of Cloud Strife and his best bud Zack Fair.
As soon as I learned of Dirge, I was in. Both for the fact that it starred my favourite character from FFVII, and because it’s a very rare breed; a Japanese-made shooter. That’s right, you get to shoot dudes right in the face with Vincent’s triple barreled revolver; apparently he’d gotten some pretty major weapon upgrades between the original game and Dirge. But once again, before we get into the gameplay itself, let’s get into some riveting background exposition.
How Hard Was It to Make a Japanese Shooter?
Dirge of Cerberus was designed pretty early in its life to be an action game, and specifically a shooter. This was elaborated on by producer Yoshinori Kitase in an interview for both IGN and GameSpy in a 2006 preview of the game; “First of all, I love FPS games. Another reason is that it’s challenging, the field of action games. It brings the development team’s skill up.” That’s a respectable decision; remember the days when games actually had risk and effort put into them on a consistent and regular basis? Sorry, I got distracted there with my old man energy. Like I said earlier, Japanese shooters are a very rare breed. Outside of the Metroid series, I can’t really name something else off the top of my head that is a gun and shooting focused action game from the land of the rising sun. Oh wait, Breakdown; everyone remembers Namco’s smash hit Breakdown.The decision to have the game centered around Vincent Valentine was also Kitase’s decision, and as he says in that same interview; “He’s a mysterious character with darkness, and very sad things happened in the past. We can develop that background. As you know, his weapon was a gun last time, so since we are working with a gun-action RPG game, we can develop that more.” Once again, a respectable decision; I think this Yoshinori guy may have been good at making games, maybe. While not deliberately targeting the western market like Beat Down was, it’s safe to say they were taking some inspiration from this more action oriented side of the gaming world.
The developers also decided to add in some RPG elements into the game to make it a little more familiar for players, such as Vincent being able to use the classic and perennial items of ‘Potion’ and ‘Phoenix Down’ as well as the addition of the original games’ materia.
The game debuted to some average to poor reviews here in the west. 1UP gave it a D+ which is frankly a little much I think. The review mentions that the game is modeled off of Devil May Cry which is really just incorrect given that they play entirely differently from one another, and that “anything related to the original RPG plot has been abandoned in favour of new characters” which isn’t entirely accurate. As for the “story that’s needlessly vague and, at times, boring”? Well, we’ll get there…
Most other professional reviews weren’t quite so harsh, but the game was mainly sitting at the 50-60% review score mark which seems to be my stomping grounds when I cover something. Frequently cited was its similarity to Devil May Cry, which confuses me. Was every third person action game a Devil May Cry at this point, regardless of how it played? Also cited was its disappointing and lackluster enemy AI, which is a fair and accurate criticism. In its native land of Japan it did better, with Famitsu giving it a 28/40 score and Dengeki’s PS2 focused magazine giving it a very specific 313/400 combined score.
Before we moodily brood our way into the game proper, there’s one other thing to talk about the games development; regional differences. There were several changes made to the western version from the original Japanese version that debuted a year earlier due to the developers “not being entirely satisfied” with the original release. The biggest and most obvious is the removal of the short lived online multiplayer mode the Japanese version had, seeing you play as one of the bad guy grunts from the singleplayer game. It had its own dedicated little storyline that played out as you completed missions with other players, taking place before the events of Dirge and dropping what are actually important plot details for the main game. It wasn’t carried over due to both the lack of popularity of SquareEnix’s required PlayOnline launcher outside of Japan, as well as the low western sales of the PS2’s ‘Expansion Bay’ which gave both online network adapter functionality as well as support for larger HDD’s. Some of these multiplayer missions were brought into the other regions in the form of unlockable secret missions selectable through the ‘Extras’ in the main menu, but without any of the associated online services. Outside of this multiplayer mode, in the western versions Vincent can double jump for some added maneuverability, he can melee attack in the air, weirdly a dodge roll was replaced with a sort of ‘dash’ thing I hardly ever used, and the biggest change other than the missing multiplayer is that the ‘Limit Break’ transformation (where you turn into the werewolf thing) was changed to requiring a consumable item. In a very rare move, the easy difficulty mode from the Japanese version was removed. That’s how rare a Japanese shooter is; the Japanese developers knew that there’d have to be an easy difficulty in their own region for player’s to get used to it.
With that out of the way, let’s load our three headed revolvers, put on our very pointy shoes, stoically stare at things in a very off putting way, and play some Dirge of Cerberus.
The real game to be played here; guessing what emotion Vincent is trying to convey in every close-up reaction shot.
Begin the Dirge
Dirge of Cerberus sees you as Vincent Valentine shooting your way through a story that takes place 3 years after the events of Final Fantasy VII. Using your collection of customizable guns, gothic crosses and materia gun dongles that let you shoot out lightning bolts you go up against ‘the Deepground’, cloned genetically modified Shinra company super soldiers that I guess were left in like a lab or something somewhere once the company was more or less destroyed in the events of the main game.
To conclude the foreshadowing about the games storyline; it’s kind of a convoluted and hard to follow mess. Like I said earlier, my knowledge of FFVII has waned, and even back in my cringe days I didn’t know everything. That being said, I couldn’t follow any of this. It genuinely felt like there was important and necessary context and information that was not explained in the game. Why was there never any previous mention of Deepground until now? What have they been doing for the last 3 years? Unless I entirely misread or missed a cutscene or two, I have no answers to those questions. It could honestly have been a side effect of cutting out the multiplayer mode from the Japanese release. From what I gathered you played as a Deepground soldier in that mode, and the storyline is a prequel to Dirge’s singleplayer and may have presumably explained much of this.
It always felt weird when your best buddy Reeves would just casually name one of the Deepground leaders, called the ‘Tsviets’ (don’t even get me started on that confusion), like it's common knowledge who they are. “Oh, that guy? That’s Azul the Cerulean.” If the Deepground just emerged now, as if they came ‘deep’ from underneath the ‘ground’ perhaps, then how do people know this stuff? 1UP’s review was right on the money in that aspect. Again, maybe if I was capable of playing the multiplayer missions and had done so I wouldn’t be so left in the dark here.
I don’t know what that means.
Normally I’m not one to complain about a game's story or even place ‘storyline’ very high in my checklist of what makes a game good. I’ve almost never talked about the storyline of a game I’ve written about in more than passing detail until now, really, when I think about it. It’s not that I don’t enjoy narrative in my games but I usually prioritize the gameplay itself over it, and in the context of my reviews I like to leave a little bit of mystery for people to discover themselves should they be inspired to give whatever game I’m talking about a go. There are a few exceptions for me though, and that’s when the storyline is an integral part of the game experience, such as cutscene heavy narrative games or visual novels or what have you. Dirge of Cerberus is a cutscene heavy game, and you can’t really separate the storyline from the game experience itself in this case because of that. So, I’m going to complain about the confusing narrative.
The gameplay is luckily better off. The core of the game is in the gun shooting action, and to that end it controls and plays competently. The aiming is responsive, and due to the game's very lenient auto-aim it’s never an issue shooting targets when you need to. You can change the type of auto aim to suit your tastes, from none at all to the game entirely doing your aiming for you. I wish Vincent moved a little faster, but it’s not a major dealbreaker. It takes some getting used to, but the button to shoot your ridiculous guns is actually R1 instead of R2.
Don’t do it Vincent; don’t shoot the evil child!
Speaking of Vincent’s ridiculous guns, he’s got three main ones to play around with. You start with his dog themed triple barreled revolver Cerberus because Vincent is a man of profound taste (just like Edward Carnby in Alone in The Dark: The New Nightmare who also had a triple barreled revolver [I'm shameless]), and end up getting a tommy-gun styled machine gun called Griffon and a bolt action rifle called Hydra. They each have different strengths and weaknesses across a surprisingly deep amount of gun stats such as effective damage range and accuracy. Each of these is customizable through swappable parts including three different length barrels, as well as the previously mentioned materia and other special parts. The guns can also be upgraded at the jukebox stores you find throughout the game by dropping gil on them to increase their base stats. This whole weapon customization and stat system is, to me at least, the funnest part of Dirge of Cerberus. There is a surprising amount of depth to it figuring out what barrel is best for whatever effective range you’re gunning for and trying out different set-ups, and on top of the mechanical gameplay changes, I also find profound entertainment in trying to get each gun looking as silly and over the top as possible.
The game itself is pretty good, and the ‘guess what Vincent is currently thinking’ game-in-a-game is pretty good, but this is the real game-in-a-game right here.
Vincent can also melee attack with Circle. It’s not overly important to the game experience other than saving ammo on close opponents, which is one of the reasons why I’m confused by many reviewers relating this to Devil May Cry given that games’ generally larger focus on melee, or at least a more equal combination of ranged and melee weapons. Dirge is stylish in character design and look but it’s not really a ‘stylish action’ game like DMC is. You can’t ride enemies like skateboards in Dirge of Cerberus like you can in DMC3, or play around with different game changing styles. Its combat vibe is more grounded, and I know that sounds a little silly when you have magic stone talismans hanging off your guns that shoot fireballs. The actual combat though is much slower than something like DMC, and you’re definitely not dashing around and kickflipping off enemies and performing juggle combos in Dirge. Again, kinda confused why this game was so commonly associated as a Devil May Cry derivative upon release. Maybe reviewers at the time just saw Vincent’s red cloak and Dante’s signature red jacket of various designs as the same thing.
You journey across a few different environments, and some of them are a little lackluster in terms of appeal and design. The levels are relatively small contained areas in most cases, and linear save for a few side paths to get some loot in the form of ‘Hi-Potions’ and ‘Limit Breaks’. Speaking of Limit Breaks, in the NA version you find these items and use them to turn into your monstrous inner beast just like in the original game, as Vincent again is a shapeshifter after being experimented on by a mad scientist in his lab in a region that’s definitely not Germany. This mad scientist’s spirit can possess people after his death, and this was also all after Vincent’s scientist pseudo girlfriend melodramatically cut off contact with him after marrying said mad scientist…for some reason. This scientist then injected alien cells recovered from a body found in a meteor impact crater into their unborn child which apparently turned this kid into the poster child of the ‘edgy villain’ trope, and would eventually contribute to him ascending to near godhood complete with the ability to turn the entire party repeatedly into frogs.
FFVII was a weird game, but at least I understood what I typed there somehow; I still don’t know what the hell a ‘Tsviet’ is, or who Weiss the Immaculate is despite the game dropping the name like I’m supposed to know already.
What was I talking about?
There are some new characters created for this game that you encounter of course, but it also features ones established from the original game or other titles from Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. You spend a decent little time with everyone's other favourite entirely optional character, Yuffie Kusanagi, and someone named ‘Genesis Rhapsodos’ is briefly mentioned who apparently is an integral character from Crisis Core, and I laughed way too hard when I heard that name. You even get to play a quick little level as everyone’s favourite Scottish robot cat, Cait Sith, and spend a lot of time with the cat bot’s master who controls it through magical supernatural psychic powers that are never explained, Reeves Tuetsi. Maybe FFVII is more than a little strange.
Now it’s time; let’s talk about the bad things about Dirge of Cerberus, other than its confusing storyline I’ve already ranted about.
What?
The enemy count is pretty low, and the variety of enemies you encounter is also low. You mostly shoot the same basic Deepground soldiers, occasionally some dog-like enemies I assume are some genetic monster things, and a few bosses here and there but that’s about it.
The game plays nicely, but really there isn’t that much to it when you boil it down; the combat experience has just enough in it to be decent, but not enough meat in it to be impressive. Going back to the DMC comparison that everyone seemed to be obsessed with in 2006, that series doesn’t really have much to it as well when you really think about it but the combat system is fleshed out and surprisingly intricate when you get into it. If Dirge of Cerberus had a few more things thrown in there in terms of mechanics and more common and populated enemy encounters, it would be substantially improved. My first thought is for more weapon types, as only having the three is a little limiting. Why not have some explosive launchers, or fix the ultimate sin the game has committed; there’s no shotgun. Every shooter needs a shotgun. Blessed be the double barrels. Just picture Vincent running around with some goth looking shotgun, maybe the barrels are birds or something. It just makes sense.
As it stands, the game is a playable little side story in the world of FFVII. I don’t quite understand what the overall plot is or who the villains really are but there’s still some good narrative moments here and there, mainly revolving around the exploration of Vincent’s backstory that was left vague in the original game. The gameplay is fine enough if not a little barebones but it hasn’t committed such terrible crimes that it deserves that D+ review score. I’d recommend it less to action game fans as it’s not likely to stand out to them, but I’d recommend it for both fans of FFVII obviously as well as people just looking for something new to try out on the venerable GOAT of the PS2.
Pros
- + Surprisingly nice gun customization.
- + Some good storyline moments for the main character.
Cons
- - Overly confusing narrative.
- - Not the most riveting gameplay.
7
out of 10
Overall
Dirge of Cerberus is an overall fine enough game, particularly if you're a fan of FFVII or it's expanded world. Some threadbare gameplay and confusing overall storyline mar what could have been a much better experience, but the game has a undeniable style.
Last edited:
