Wow, the voice acting in Crisis Core sounds HORRIBLE (at least, what I gather from the video). This just seems like a cheesy cash-in on FF7 and doesn't deserve me playing it.

Just my opinion, though. O:)

 Of course, we should all judge a game base on a 2 minutes video and about 4 dialogues, 

Lol, all the more reason I don't like reviewers...it gets a 4.0 one place and an 8.5-9.0 at a BUNCH of other places...hmmm, wonder if somebody reviewing doesn't like RPG's or just doesn't like Sony.

Exactly why I say you can't use reviewer scores as the ONLY method of determining AAA titles. It is only one of many factors that needs to be taken into consideration.

I don't think lowering a score so much based on voice acting is really justified. Serously, half the review is him trying to cleverly bash the voice acting. Turn the F***ing volume down and act it out yourself if you hate it that much; see, there used to be this thing we did, up until a few years ago, it was called READ the text.

If you can't turn on subtitles, ignore that. But still.

There's something odd there, but I don't think it's either malicious intent on the part of the publication or incompetence on the part of the reviewer. It looks to me like they just gave the review to someone who's not a huge jRPG fan.

Because, let's face it, the appeal is very, very hard for someone who doesn't feel it to understand. The gameplay is always awful, and mostly consists of menu navigation. The plots are comparable to those found in long works of fan fiction, or in soap operas. The characters are often cookie cutter works of juvenile wish fulfillment. Playing these games isn't really about playing a game, and isn't really even about experiencing a story. It's mostly just about being exposed to certain characters for so long that you grow attached to them, with just enough interaction along the way to help you feel like you're part of things. Quasi-interactive soap opera is probably a pretty good way of characterizing them.

There are people who like that sort of thing. I'll play one from time to time myself, and my mother used to watch several soaps, but it's very hard to maintain that any of these works have objective value comparable to other, similar works. You can really only rate jRPGs from the inside, as jRPGs. If you're outside, you're rating them as games, and there's really no way they're stacking up if you're trying to be at all fair.

A score of 4.0 for CCFFVII only shows how inconsistent their review criteria are. It is not gonna stop people buying this game.

Famitsu gave this game 9/9/8/9.  Very close to what most western reviewers felt about this game.

But honestly, I hope we will have the Japanese voice option for JRPG on PS3 in the future, 'cause BD has a larger capacity.

so how many of the people defending the game have actually played it?

 I think everyone who was able to make an capable arguement here has.

 Since you called it a "button smash" RPG, I assume you haven't passed Chapter 4. So maybe at least half way into the game before commenting? At least wait until you've fought a monster who can kill you with 1 attack and then see how big a "button smasher" this game really is

Tbh, I never heard about this website, so I guess they needed some attention and just decided to rape one game, which is already beloved by it's ancestor. Tbh, it's just where you put the accents. If you decide to pay attention to everything what's wrong than yeah, every game, even GTA IV will get a score like this.

 Just visit a real and serious website and check their review and leave the attentionwhores alone...

Okay, the opening of this review completely invalidates G4's opinion:

 "If a game features good looking guys and an incredibly stupid dialogue, you know it came from Japan."

 This is an outrage, and I'm surprised the entire gaming community hasn't said anything about that sentence. It's very offensive and biased.

I've heard of people calling reviews biased because of numerous stupid accusations, but this is where I draw the line and say this reviewer is as biased as they can get. I mean, what the hell? Games from Japan have stupid dialogue?