Dirge of Cerberus is a role-playing video game that takes place after both the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children and the events of the original video game Final Fantasy VII. Players assume the character of the enigmatic Vincent Valentine.
Reeve Tuesti, an old comrade who controlled Cait Sith, contacts Vincent after the events known as “Meteorfall” have resulted in the formation of a new organization and asks him to report to the only surviving town, Kalm. Vincent has been invited to attend the celebration that the community is having, but while the celebrations are taking place, a group of soldiers raids the town and kills and captures the residents. It is now up to Vincent to defend the defenseless once more and discover the motivation behind these troops’ pursuit of him as well.
Although it takes place in the same universe as Final Fantasy VII, the action-shooter game Dirge of Cerberus is broken up into a total of twelve chapters. Because the on-screen action may be controlled either by the analog controller or by the mouse and keyboard attachments for the Playstation 2, the game is more comparable to those found on personal computers (PCs). The game is a character-driven shooter, and the perspective may be switched on the fly between the first and third person in order to let the player navigate the game’s multi-level landscapes.
The Chaos break limitations system, which lets Vincent take on the monster forms he turned into in Final Fantasy VII to inflict more damage on the adversary, makes its return in this installment of the series, along with a number of items and characters from previous entries in the series. As an homage to its RPG-based parent, the game does allow Vincent to find the typical healing items, material spells, and Gil from the Final Fantasy universe, all of which he is able to buy and sell in exchange for other new stuff.
A weapon customization system is included in the game as well. This system enables the player to combine different weapon parts in order to create more potent assault items and abilities.
