Short answers, pulled from the story.
Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII is a 2006 action role-playing third-person shooter for PlayStation 2 that follows Vincent Valentine three years after the events of Final Fantasy VII. Vincent is hunted by Deepground, a secret military organization that plans to awaken a creature called Omega to destroy the Planet's life. The game was the first shooter in the Final Fantasy series.
Square Enix developed and published Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, with Monolith Soft providing assistance during development. Yoshinori Kitase served as producer and Tetsuya Nomura was the main character designer.
Masashi Hamauzu composed the game's score, and the official soundtrack was released on the 15th of February 2006 in Japan as a two-CD set spanning 53 tracks. Japanese singer and actor Gackt wrote and performed the two theme songs, "Longing" and "Redemption".
Dirge of Cerberus received mixed reviews, holding a score of 60 percent at GameRankings and 57 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 51 reviews. Critics praised the story's scope and CGI cutscenes but criticized enemy variety, level design, and artificial intelligence.
The game shipped 392,000 units in its first week. By August 2008, North America had sold 460,000 units and Europe 270,000 units, while Japan alone had sold over 513,000 copies within three months of release. By July 2006, it had reached Sony's Gold sales category for games selling between 500,000 and 1 million units.
Square Enix overhauled the game for Western releases because the developers were not satisfied with the Japanese version. Online multiplayer was removed due to limited popularity of the PlayOnline service outside Japan and lack of PS2 hard drive support in the United States; its missions were reworked as unlockable single-player challenges. Easy Mode was also removed from the Western releases.