Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII[b] is a 2006 action role-playing third-person shooter video game developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 2.

In the story, Vincent is targeted by Deepground, a mysterious organization that plans to awaken a creature known as Omega, with the ability to destroy the Planet.

The team added role-playing elements in order to make the game more entertaining for traditional fans of the main series.

The game's main antagonists are the members of the organization Deepground, who plan to use the creature Omega to destroy the Planet's life.

[5] The online mode of the game, which is only available in the Japanese version, also introduces a group called the Restrictors, who were the former leaders of Deepground before Weiss took over.

[15] Shelke's sister, Shalua Rui, a high-ranking scientist in the WRO, soon discovers that Omega is a WEAPON, which activates when the Planet senses that it is in mortal danger.

[22] While the WRO continues to fight the remnants of Deepground, Vincent transforms into Chaos in a desperate attempt to defeat Omega Weiss.

[27] In the secret ending of the game, "G", a legendary warrior with unexplained connections to Deepground,[28] awakes beneath the ruins of Midgar.

When Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children began development, the Square Enix staff agreed that one title from Compilation of Final Fantasy VII was not enough to cover the entire world, and so Before Crisis, Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis Core were conceived so as to embrace more aspects.

[30] Producer Yoshinori Kitase decided the title to be a shooting game based on his love for first-person shooters and the challenge provided for the developers that would eventually improve their skills.

[32] Vincent was chosen as the game's protagonist due to the scope for expanding his backstory, which was left very vague in Final Fantasy VII.

[33] The main character designer for the game, Tetsuya Nomura, had also worked on both Final Fantasy VII and Advent Children.

The Tsviets were designed with the idea of creating a sense of balance for the warriors with which players would already be familiar; primarily Vincent, Cloud Strife and Sephiroth.

Nomura initially had doubts when designing Shelke's ordinary clothes for the end of the game, but he felt it was important for her to appear out of uniform so as to indicate she was truly free from Deepground.

[34] The character of Lucrecia Crescent, who features briefly in an optional quest in the original game, was redesigned so as to give her a similar appearance to her son, Sephiroth, based on portraits from guidebooks and in fan-art.

[38] The North American and European releases of Dirge of Cerberus received a major overhaul as the developers were not completely satisfied with the final Japanese version of the game.

[39] The Easy Mode, which was originally featured in the Japanese version to assist gamers not overly familiar with shooter games, was also removed.

[33][39] On September 11, 2008, the English-language version was released in Japan as Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII International[c], as part of Square's Ultimate Hits lineup.

For the game's ending theme, "Redemption", the staff originally planned for it to be a ballad, but Gackt decided to make it a rock song instead.

Titled Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII Multiplayer Mode Original Sound Collections, this album consists of 27 tracks, including several songs from the single player game which were not included in the official soundtrack, as well as all of the original music composed for the multiplayer mode, and two new songs composed by Ryo Yamazaki for the North American release of the game.

[4] Despite stating that it is not "the best use of the Final Fantasy VII universe", IGN called it "a decent game with a strong story and occasionally-engaging rifle blasting".

[46] Reviewer from Electronic Gaming Monthly's Shane Bettenhausen opined that he found all of the titles (As of 2006[update]) in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII to be unappealing.

[47] Eurogamer found that Dirge of Cerberus was a "risky gamble" by Square Enix, as their first shooter, and he criticized the fact that most of the main characters in the game were either optional in Final Fantasy VII or had only small roles.

They also praised the changes Square had made to the Western versions but found the game to be very similar to Devil May Cry, and felt that it didn't make good enough use of Vincent's abilities.

[51] G4's game review show, X-Play, responded negatively, citing poor level design, weak gameplay, too many cutscenes, and bad AI.