Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus Part #44 - Episode XLII: Gates of Light

Part 44: Episode XLII: Gates of Light

Episode XLII: Gates of Light

The game doesn't even waste time with a proper title screen for the stage. It is time for ACTION, DAMMIT!

So, of course, a cutscene follows five paces from the starting position. Welcome to the legendary Deepground. A place of mystery, wonder, intrigue, and...a slight resemblence to the rest of the generic slums of Midgar. Huh...

Our ultimate goal is Mako Reactor 0... I guess... Err...what exactly was Vincent supposed to do when he reaches Deepground? The battle plan seems to be:

- Assault Midgar
- Infiltrate Deepground
- ????
- Win the War!

Before we can ponder on this any further, demons appear. Since, why not?

We now have a new enemy type: the Gargoyle. Gargoyles are neither tough nor dangerous. They hit for a whole hundred HP worth of damage and go down in one shot from the Cerberus or rifle. Their battle tactics seem to be spastically fluttering about like hummingbirds and occasionally shooting laser beams.

The Gargoyles do have one devious trick up their sleeves.

They can fly into the skybox, making it impossible to attack them, even with the rifle. This wouldn't be so bad, except I was lucky enough to have two Gargoyles just chill out in the distance for a solid three minutes. Likely cracking jokes and laughing at Vincent flipping around, futilely firing off shots, and running in circles up and down scaffolds in hopes they'd come back to be shot and allow the game to progress.

This, I would find, was the least painful instance of the stage.

For you see, boys and girls, that whole demon shooting exercise wasn't a stage mission. It was merely the number of enemies needed to be defeated in order for a cardkey to spawn and open one of the main laser gates in the area. And that is the theme of this stage.

In nearly every area there will be a laser barrier and a clusterfuck of enemies spawning. Killing them all will result in a cardkey drop. Or, to mix things up, there will be a gauntlet of enemies between Vincent and a cardkey and he has to fight his way through them in order to obtain the key. Sometimes it will even be the latter with the former dropped in the middle for shits and giggles.

It's sort of like Devil May Cry meets Doom in terms of breaking up the flow. Only, not fun. At all.

A few minutes later... (Cardkey count: 3)

A bit further ahead in the maze of metal walkways, Vincent meets a new Deepground soldier.

This one's gimmick?

Immunity to bullet time and all bullet related items via means of an impenetrable bullshit shield. Enemies invulnerable to firearms in a third person shooter titled after the name of the primary gun... Think about that for a minute...

Luckily, Bullshit Armor Troopers are both vulnerable and weak against melee attacks and die in one full combo of button mashing. Since they look more or less indistinguishable from normal Deepground soldiers, any instance of these enemies means:

- Wasting one or two shots (six bullets) figuring out they have a bullshit shield.
- Losing 200-300 HP as you're essentially a bullet sponge until you run over and wack them, since there's fuck all you can do otherwise.
- Die a little bit more inside.

Several rooms with slightly different shades of gunmetal gray later... (Cardkey count: 5)

Eventually, Vincent comes upon some manner of futuristic mine cart.

Mine cart sequences...those are always fun, right? Well, Dirge of Cerberus has no problem with making it as riveting as trying to pass a douchebag on the road going ten miles under the speed limit with no incoming traffic.

Upon activing the joyride, we get our first proper Stage Mission: accomplish a goal you would have to do anyway or else you would die. It's quite ingenious, really.

Basically, a couple of Deepground soldiers slowly pull up behind Vincent and fire off a few rounds. Nevermind they're on the same rail as Vincent and there was clearly only one train cart. These guys must be eliminated.

There is a whole four guys total for the three minute ride which show up to attack. The other four targets are the train carts themselves. Since, they're clearly up to no good.

The final target is a damn helicopter out of nowhere. Now, this would probably be exciting, were it not for three factors.

First of all, there are pipes, buildings, walls, and tons of other crap speeding by obstructing aim, making half of the non-telegraphed shots hard to make or near impossible.

Secondly, the thing...can't really attack Vincent. It fires rockets and such but they just seem to be there for effect. They never actually hit you. But, this is all made clear by the third point:

Despite the thing taking damage and soaking up tons of bullets...the whole chopper chase is basically a glorified cutscene. It'll crash at the end of the chase no matter what. Making the bucket loads of spent ammo completely wasted. Guess what?

NOMURAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Following the conclusion of the spectacularly dull mine cart sequence, Vincent dramatically flutters his cape and storms into the next area. I'm sure the cobwebs in the corner of the empty metal room were very impressed by the theatrics.

A short jog later...

Vincent emerges into Deepground proper and creepily whispers sweet nothings to his gun. Oddly enough, during this section of the game and this section alone, Vincent speaks. As in, he actually comments in-game about what's going on (ie acting surprised at ambushes, commenting on enemy traps, etc.) He doesn't really have anything interesting to say. It's just puzzling as to why they'd make the effort for a single section of the game.

Granted, this is a very long section of the game. Vincent really should have asked Cait Sith how he just skipped on ahead to Reactor 0 earlier on. It might have saved a bit of trouble.

Before we get into the slums of Deepground, I'd like to show off a little trinket on a nearby roof. You see this little floating CD tucked in the corner?

This is a "G Report". There are three of these items in the game. One in this stage and one in the next. Oh yeah, and one in the previous stage that I've already missed. All the of these must be collected in order to unlock the secret ending. The game never gives any indication that these exist or have any importance. You merely have to be extremely thorough in examining the copy and pasted corridors or have a FAQ open vaguely pointing you toward the items.

Since I've already missed one and I'll be damned if I'm replaying a stage and a half to go collect it, I have instead used the magic of technology to magic them all into my inventory.

Enjoy the files!

The G-Reports are a less than subtle lead into the next entry in the Final Fantasy VII Expanded Universe -- Crisis Core. Which actually isn't a half bad game. Though, "G" does make a cameo with "W" after "V" saves "TD" and defeats "O" and with the power of "C" and "F"

Moving right along...

Now, I know I've whined quite a bit here. But, I cannot stress how much this area sucks. Deepgroud soldiers are apparently akin to some manner of neon cockroach and start crawling out of the woodwork at this point. As such, they just completely give up on actually placing enemies ahead of Vincent. Instead, laser gates fire up and bad guys simply drop from the sky or materialize from the aether behind Vinnie and the designers call it a day.

On top of that, the snipers from Stage 3 have returned from their long hiatus and have tripled in number. Since my idea of fun is pixel hunting for a soldier that pops up for two seconds, shoots you 3 times for 600 damage and vanishes for another five seconds to do it again. Dirge of Cerberus' idea of fun is just that, only with six snipers doing it at once and a couple of monster closets opening up in-between for good measure.

The game does throw you a bone in the form of the 'Blast Machine Gun'. As the description implies, this is a weaker version of the Griffin which knocks down enemies. Which, doesn't sound all that useful.

Except, it knocks down all humans enemies (ie 99% of the ones in this stage) with each shot. Which means it completely stunlocks anything it comes into contact with. Making bullshit ambushes a breeze when everyone is flat on their ass within three seconds and well on their way to death with a follow-up shot from a decent weapon/melee.

That said, the game immediately punishes you by throwing up a laser barrier and requiring you to burn through a ton of machinegun ammo as no less than three dozen Guard Hounds fall out of the sky and swarm you.

Several blocks later... (Cardkey Count: 9)

Eventually, Vincent comes to a chaingun emplacement aimed directly at Deepground's front line because...I'll get back to you on that one...

Regardless, a new stage mission appears.

They aren't kidding about it being an 'onslaught' either. Four increasingly large waves bare down on Vincent. Everything from foot soldiers to weapon emplacements to mines to snipers to even spider-bots show up to tango.

It's particularly enjoyable that half of the enemies are stationary at the location they spawn a city block away. A chaingun with a blinding muzzle flash and poor accuracy isn't exactly the best of sniping material. But, nothing is ever easy, logical, or fun in these parts. Them there fightin' words.

Several blocks later... (Cardkey Count: 12)