Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII Member Review for the PS2

I'm a die-hard fan of Final Fantasy VII, and will stay that way for a long time.  I enjoyed watching Advent Children, I tend to watch it again, and it never gets boring.

When I heard that there would be a game for the PS2 which revolved around Vincent Valentine as an RPG/Shooter game, I was psyched.  I waited and waited for it to come out, and I sank the $50 it was worth at Best Buy.  I brought it home, and started playing.

I'm not completely disappointed, but...  It does have problem spots.

The game itself was fun enough for me.  I didn't get bored with it, and I was nearly killed a few times because I wasn't paying enough attention because I can be an idiot sometimes.  It challenged me well enough, and I actually ran completely out of ammo once, so I went around beating enemies with kicks/Materia until I had enough ammo to keep going easily.

My biggest problem lay with the parts near the end, when Vincent had turned into Chaos.  He got Death Penalty, which made my short barrel rifle seem like a toy gun, dealing solid amounts of damage of about 2000 - 3000 points apiece.  Once that happened, the game got pretty boring pretty fast; I never even ran short on ammo for Death Penalty; I had enough ammo to deal with everything easily.

Also, when Vincent was transformed, what's the most distinctive feature he has, other than Death Penalty?  His wings, of course!  You cannot, for anything, use those wings to fly.  Oh, sure, you get to move him around while he's flying through that tunnel area, and he glides with them, but you still can't really do much else with the wings.  I know they work, so why not use 'em?

Also, the point of the hidden capsules is to unlock bonus features, so it's only natural that they're, well, hidden.  Maybe they're too well hidden, though; I only found about 4 or 5 in the whole game, the first one being in the sewers beneath the Shinra Manor.  I was frustrated.

My final gripe with the game is the maps of the areas.  I remember looking around Kalm in FFVII, and viewing the spectacular rooftops.  I'd guess they had that few buildings for the ease of the game, so the rooftops are understandable in Dirge.  What left me stumped is the streets; those should've stayed relatively similar to FFVII, but they were more winding and longer.  Same deal with Shinra Manor; the underground portion was too long when it was very short in FFVII (only four areas existed underground in FFVII:  The area before the spiral staircase, the area with Vincent's room, and the two parts of the library).

All things considered, I'm glad I picked up the game, although I probably should have waited until the price came down to about $20 or $30.