Final Fantasy VII
Hmm, when I originally posted the review, I didn’t write an intro to it and just put a linked picture of Aerith, so you all are getting a special treat.
Final Fantasy VII. It has been considered one of the greatest games of all time. If you have existed with the gaming community during the past 10 years, you would have at least heard of this game or logically deduced that Final Fantasy VII was somewhere between Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy XII. The game is greatly praised for practically every category that I consider in reviews. HOWEVER! Is this all true? Can it really be the greatest game of all time? Read on, young warrior, and attempt to find enlightenment in the largest review I have ever written!
Name: Final Fantasy VII
Game Ownership: Yes
Game Status: Beat last boss. Beat Emerald Weapon.
How it was Acquired: Bought it
Condition when Bought: Used
Game Type: Classic RPG
Preliminary Comments:
WARNING: Despite my best efforts, this review contains more spoilers than all other reviews that I’ve made. As highly unlikely as it is that you know nothing about this game in the almost 10 years that it has been out, if you do not want to have certain aspects of the game ruined, then stop reading.
Fact: This is not the Ultima Review that I had originally planned. However, it is the longest review I’ve ever done.
Fact: This game has been voted as “Best Game Ever” by Gamefaqs.com and is constantly called the greatest game ever made.
Rant: Tifa = HOT, Aerith = CUTE, Yuffie = PRESENT
Fact: Aerith is named Aeris in the American version, but I prefer the spelling Aerith.
Fact: Aeris is actually not pronounced “Air-iss,” but “Aries”.
Fact: Two extra, extremely hard bosses, Ruby and Emerald Weapon, were added to the American version of the game as well as an extra cinema scene depicting them and two other weapons escaping from the earth.
Fact: In addition, Sephiroth’s “Super Nova” move was lengthened by almost 5 minutes.
Rant: “Huh? Finger!? What the hell!?”
Rant: I read a poll once that said that this game did wonders for the hentai industry.
Rant: This is possibly the most grammatically-challenged game to ever reach such high status.
Rant: It also holds the title for being one of the least politically correct games ever as well.
FMV - Movie sequences, I think the letters stand for “Full Motion Video.”
Graphics - 7.5
Way back in the day, this was probably the most touted aspect of the game. Does anyone remember the commercials where they talked about all the people that they had to hire to work on this game or they showed the creation of the character models for the FMV sequences? No? Well then…
A major complaint of the game that I’ve heard is that most of the time you are not playing as the realistic models that you see in the FMVs. Instead, you are controlling little (chibi-ish?) avatars of your characters that look similar to “Lego” men. Many people complain about it, and I’ve even seen one account saying that Square conned the gamers by showing the good looking characters in the commercials but sticking players with the deformed versions with the good models coming out only during battle and certain FMV sequences. However, I don’t think they realize that it was the way Final Fantasy always was. Only in FF6 did Square start using the same sprites during battle in the overworld and towns. This could spark the question of why Square reverted backwards and not use the good models all the time. My guess would probably be Square’s previous inexperience with 3-D hardware coupled with space or processing limitations, but that’s just my guess.
The overworld map is a simple, completely 3-D environment, but towns, dungeons, and the like were implemented differently. While other games tried to make either a fully 2-D or 3-D environment with 2-D or 3-D characters, respectively, Square put the 3-D models in a 2-D world. Although not necessarily the first one to do so, it was a practice made more popular by this game that would be used by other games such as Resident Evil. The backgrounds and scenery are drawn very nicely and do have a good amount of depth. A criticism I have about it is how much the characters seem to clash with its backgrounds. Here we have a very nice picture, but have relatively silly, low-detailed, polygontal avatars running through it. It just didn’t feel right to me. Another criticism is how hard it is to navigate in these 2-1/2-D environments. A lot of times, you have no idea where a door is or where a path goes. The makers foresaw this and added in a finger to show where you are in the scene as well as arrows showing where the doors are (or consequently, what is a door) and where to go to go to the next area. However, another problem is that this game seems to change perspective a lot from area to area. There are times when you press up to go up, but move to the left instead. I’m sure there’s some technical explanation for this, but I still don’t see why they just couldn’t make up always go up.
This game is, to my knowledge, the first console game to use the full FMV sequence for parts of the game instead of just using the in-game models. I remember when everyone would marvel at these sequences and talk nonstop about how cool they are. Looking back, all of the FMV sequences (even the so-called “good ones”) look as stiff as Gumby cartoons. Considering that this was the first time Square used 3-D models in a game to begin with, the FMV sequences were pretty decent. Even so, there are two main problems with the sequences. The first problem was that the sequences had a high amount of inconsistency.
Let me explain: We all know about the famous scene where Aerith gets totally wasted by Sephiroth. If you watch the video closely, you can see from the different camera angles that many times the characters are facing different directions on the platform. First, it seems like Aerith is looking towards the entrance, then when she gets stabbed, she looks away, then she facing a side of it. Also, in the scene where Cloud puts Aerith’s dead body in the water, despite it shows that Cloud just waits there while her body sinks to the floor, when they show the view under the water, you don’t actually see Cloud wading at the top. There are several more of these instances in the game, and there is a website I found that explains all of them and even has pics, but I lost the link, and if I ever find it again, I could post it. Either way, I think that this reflects an overall laziness on Square’s part. Sure, their tools were limited, but I’m pretty sure that they could have paid more attention to where characters are facing or even their actual presence! It should be a given!
Some could argue that the last problem was really not much of a problem, but more of a minor nitpicky annoyance. However, there was a choice in the use of FMV sequences on Square’s part that made no sense. There are the FMV sequences that use the good anime character models, but a lot of other FMV sequences use just the little avatars. This in itself isn’t really that bad. In essence, they’re just making the actions of the avatars clearer to see with things like facial expression and smoother movement (Do you have any idea how long it took for me to realize that Porom was hitting Palom in FF2?). The real problem is that they use these avatars for some of the most important sequences in the game including Cloud falling off the Sector 5 Plate and Tifa and Cloud falling into the Lifestream. Here were two sequences that were supposed to have the player gasp and wonder what will happen next. Instead, the character is laughing at how ridiculous the FMV sequence looks with the avatars and totally kills the mood. The obvious question is why they didn’t just use the good models for all the movies? Was it just because it would have been more work?
The area where this game shines the most graphically is not in videos but in the heat of battle. Here, you can see the characters in all their full character model glory kicking/slashing/shooting the crap out of everything on the other side of the screen, which looks just as good. Unlike previous FF games, your characters actually run up to one another and hit each other! That in itself is trivial for the characters you control, but it is a world of difference for the enemy side. No longer do we just have one animation for ten generic attacking moves where the only difference was what it said in the text box. If a character is punching, we can see it! If it is chanting or powering up, we can see it! It’s almost life-changing! Ok, not really, but it’s still interesting. A nice detail that I liked was that the weapon a character holds in their hand changes depending on what is equipped instead of just being a generic sword. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply to accessories or armor. Normal attacking and Limit Breaks (special moves which will be explained later) look pretty good in the game. However, magic in the game seems to be a mixed bag. On one hand, you have some moves that look great like Comet, but then you have moves that could have looked a lot better such as Fire or Ice moves. A move that looked really disappointing was Ultima. Now, with a name like Ultima, you’d expect a lot. It looked really cool in past FF games, but in this one, it…how do I say this…looks like a creamy orgasm. Yes, that is probably the worst comparison that I’ve ever made, but when I saw it, that’s immediately what I thought it looked like.
Perhaps the most impressive animation in the game is Summoning. When you actually call these monsters, you can see the immense power that they have and can truly feel their presence. It’s almost like a separate FMV each time you use one. Nothing beats a giant dragon shooting a laser beam from space or dragging an enemy into another dimension to get totally annihilated by a ton of monsters. However, the biggest problem is that they seem to have overdone it. You only really need to watch the move once or twice. After that, you just wanna get on with the battle. The problem is that a lot of these summon animations are very long and become boring after a while. The “Knights of Round” summon takes almost five minutes! They didn’t even put in a way to skip the animation. It’s like the makers were saying, “Hey! Look at this move! Isn’t it great? It’s so great that you’ll always wanna see it! Anyone who doesn’t hates kittens and ice cream!” or something like that.
Graphically speaking, they were revolutionary for their time, but they fail to hold up after all these years. Even when considering the graphics for that time, there were still graphics that could have been better done such as the overworld or magic. Also, the inability to skip some of the highly animated sequences is very annoying.
Sound - 7.5
One of the most popular aspects of the game, especially these days, is the soundtrack. I’ve heard tons of praise for this soundtrack and how amazingly great it supposedly is. With that said, why does sound only get a 7.5? It is because I don’t believe that the soundtrack is everything everyone says it is. Now, it’s not because the soundtrack didn’t use real instruments or some stupid argument like that. It’s because the music used some of the worst game synths ever made. I have no idea what Uematsu was thinking when he chose them. The argument that they didn’t have good technology can’t apply cause they did much better sounding music in Final Fantasy 8 using the same technology, and his work in FF6 and FF4 is some of the best of any game ever and that was only using 16-bit sound. I don’t know the technical parts of music like composition and what not, but I know what sounds good, and I know what doesn’t, and a lot of these songs don’t. Just listen to the “Final Fantasy” part of the ending theme and you’ll see how annoying the synths can be. It just makes it feel like I’m playing some horrible indy game with really bad midis. (”Final Fantasy” is the song that is in every FF game in some form that isn’t “The Prelude” or the victory fanfare. It was also in the ending of FF6 and in FF4 at the part where Kain and Cecil leave Baron for Myst)
With all negativity being said, I must say that this game is another testament to Uematsu’s ability to make music with “inferior instruments.” Even with the horrible synths, he did make some good songs such as Aerith’s theme and the infamous One-Winged Angel (though relatively overrated). Also, I must commend him on making an overworld theme that was so long that it didn’t become annoying and repetitive that quickly (even though this does change later in disc two and is exchanged for the worst overworld theme ever). Various other songs scattered around the game were also pretty good even though they aren’t very remembered (”On the Other Side of the Mountain,” “Underneath the Rotting Pizza,” and “On That Day Five Years Ago” for starters). Unfortunately, I feel that all of these songs, even the good ones, are held back by the bad synths. There is so much potential in this soundtrack, but unfortunately it just isn’t realized.
I would like to take this time to criticize the fighting themes in this game. Some of the songs came out fine like JENOVA and Jenova Absolute, but the others fell short. The normal fighting theme (called “Fighting” or “Those Who Fight”) is fine, and I think it is one of the better made songs of the game, but I always liked fighting themes to be a bit more exciting. I know that the song may be a bit less exciting in order to fit with the slower fighting style of the game, but it still didn’t feel right to me. However, I felt that this song could have taken place of that annoying, badly made “Hurry!” song used in timed escapes and such. The normal fighting theme sounds like it would fit some type of scenario involving a time limit. Next song on the chopping block is “Birth of God,” which plays when fighting Sephiroth’s first form. For a song that is for a very important and difficult looking boss like this one, it really doesn’t capture the mood at all. You can put this one in the “bad indy midi” file, cause it deserves it. How could Jenova Absolute, the boss right before that was much less important than the boss that followed it, have a more epic song than the first form of the final boss?
However, no song in this game disappoints me more than the normal boss song “Still More Fighting” (alternately called “Those Who Fight Further”). Don’t get me wrong, I actually like the song. However, that doesn’t save the fact that this is the song that the synths have butchered the most. The first ten seconds are good with the guitar playing as it hypes you up for what is about to come, but then the electric organ/piano noise kicks in, and suddenly any coolness this song had has gone down the tubes. It really sounds that awful. It continues to sound mediocre until near the end of the song, meaning that you have to deal with the bad instruments until the end of the song! This song probably wouldn’t be that bad if they had just used a better organ noise. There have been tons of remixes that have used real organs or or other instruments, and they sound a lot better. If you wanna see what this song should have sounded like, go get the cover by “The Black Mages,” which, ironically, Uematsu is a part of.
Sound effects are pretty good in this game. There isn’t much criteria to making good sound effects in a RPG game if there is no voice acting involved, but I think that this game did a pretty good job of adding into the atmosphere of the area or putting that “umph” into an attack. Not much else to say.
Story - 8.0
Let me just warn you now that if you wanna take a bathroom break or get something to eat or see that new Pink Panther movie, this would be a good time to do that before continuing.
We have now hit the high point of the game. Not only is a good story a staple of Final Fantasy games in general, but this story especially has a reputation for being one of the best stories ever featured in a video game. There have been many arguments on both sides on the quality of this story. Both sides have brought up good points, and both sides have shown off their psychotic love or hatred for it. I’ll attempt to hit on as many of those arguments in this review as I can.
Well, let’s discuss the story overall. It has all the trademarks a Final Fantasy game: a large complicated story, uneven character development, and antagonists that become as popular as the protagonists. Overall, I must say I did enjoy playing through the game’s story. I’ve always felt that there should be two factors to a good video game story: unpredictability and the feeling of advancement. In terms of unpredictability, this game certainly does a good job. It has many plot twists that keep things fresh and entertaining. The best thing about the twists is that a lot of them actually make sense in occurring. I’ve always hated how other games just suddenly throw in some completely random thing into the game and expect it to be good (Ancient Wu in True Crime: Streets of LA is a good example). In the feeling of advancement, it always feels good to look back when playing a game and see how far you’ve actually progressed and go “Wow! I did a lot of stuff!” Of course, the length of the game is a largely contributing factor, but it still doesn’t matter.
Next up is the characters. I must say that this game is probably the best Final Fantasy at giving at least some of their characters some depth. Other Final Fantasies you didn’t really care and just wanted to play the game, but the makers have done a good job at making these characters seem real. Just look at the amounts of praise and crappy poetry that get made just because Aerith died. No other video game character got that much praise for dying! Did anyone care when General Leo or Tellah died? No! Unfortunately, Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith are probably the three that have actually had the most development while the others have the problem of being “There” characters. A “There” character is a character that is just “there” to move stuff along. They don’t really contribute to anything, nor do they really matter that much. Examples of “there” characters include Yuffie, Cait Sith, or even Barret after the first disc. I think that their development was cut short in order to give the player a variety of characters to choose from throughout the game instead of having to have a certain character in the party all the time to develop, which I really can’t complain about since I’m willing to have a degree of mediocrity for some improvements in gameplay. It suffers a similar problem as in FF6, though FF6’s character development was a little more even.
I think that there are people out there that take the characters way too seriously. For example, a ton of social outcasts and disillusioned emo teenagers must have played this game, cause they love talking about how much Cloud reminded them of themselves: a brash, confused 21 year old guy who can’t control himself. A horrible stigma that has arisen in this game is how people now actually expect to relate to the main character. Now, I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing to relate to a video game character, but I’ve read a ton of reviews for other video games where they bash the characters just because they couldn’t find a personal connection. “Oh! Paper Mario was a good game, but Mario sucked as a character because his life isn’t as f***ed up as mine, not like Cloud! That was a good hero!” Now, I never actually saw someone say that for Paper Mario, but you understand the point I’m trying to make. I have seen reviewers do this in reference to Final Fantasy 9 though, and guess who’s name popped up.
Another case is the “Cult of Aerith” that seems to be running rampant. Seriously, if you looked at the ways that some of these guys took Aerith’s death, you’d see that they’d need professional help. Is it wrong to feel sad about her death? No. I don’t even think it was necessarily wrong to cry about it, though there isn’t any reason you should. However, if you’re lighting the candles to your “Flower Girl” memorial shrine every night, then you’ve probably gotta rethink some stuff in your life. I’ve read some crazy things regarding Aerith’s death including an account that said that Final Fantasy VII is an incomplete game because Aerith can’t be revived and another saying she had to die because of male chauvinism. I’m sorry to tell you this, but Aerith really isn’t that great. No one could really get a grasp on her personality because she died so suddenly, and what we did know was vague. They killed her off when we had fonder memories of her so that we couldn’t have anything to complain about later on. The only reason we think so highly of her is because she died, and that’s it. Well, she had the cuteness thing going for her too, but that only helps in certain areas…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Something that I’d really like to discuss is Sephiroth. It seems like everyone loves Sephiroth. I think it’s because he doesn’t wear a shirt. However, I have to say that I really thought Sephiroth was a lame villain. He doesn’t seem to have any personality whatsoever. Whenever we see him, he just goes on about how great his power is and how he is superior to everything. He wasn’t even a hard last boss. Also, he seems to be as dumb as a brick. How come he only realised that he was different from other SOLDIERs because he saw the reactor? Couldn’t he have realized any of this before? Why does he suddenly decide to read the stuff at Shinra Mansion after this? Also, I hate how he just acts like an armchair villain throughout most of the game. He doesn’t really do much until you fight him at the end. Sure he uses a projection of himself and was involved with making Cloud think he was fake, but most of the time he doesn’t do anything. Not only that, but there isn’t very much delving into Sephiroth’s past. All we know is a vague idea of who is parents could be. Too much about Sephiroth remained undeveloped. This is a step back from the development of the FF6 villain Kefka, which was superb.
Now, let us look a little closer at this story. I’ve always been a fan of foreshadowing in storytelling, and this game uses a lot of it, especially in reference to Cloud’s past. Whenever Cloud asks Tifa about it, she always stutters or avoids the question. Also, whenever Cloud tells someone he’s from SOLDIER, there’s always some weird flash of light. You wouldn’t really catch all of these things until after you play the game through a second time, which I thought was a great aspect. It’s cool to play through the game another time and realise what all that weird stuff that was happening was.
Another aspect that I really liked in the beginning was the whole variable of who Cloud liked more, Aerith or Tifa (or even Yuffie in some cases). You’d be asked different questions and depending on what you answer back determines who you date when you go to the Gold Saucer. The thing that I didn’t like is that ultimately it doesn’t matter cause it only amounts to a date. After that, Aerith gets whacked and you’re kinda stuck with Tifa. This could have gone further, and even spurred different endings or something, but it didn’t and it remains in our minds as unfulfilled potential.
The story, overall, did a pretty good job at staying together, but there were several parts to the game that either weren’t clearly resolved or just didn’t make any sense at all. Let us start with the most popular event in the game, Aerith’s death, which was certainly the most emotional moment of the game that has left a major impact in many people’s minds. Of course, it is ironic that the event that put Aerith over Tifa in many minds is her death, but so be it. Unfortunately, what is one of the biggest plot devices in FF7 is also one of its biggest plot-holes. How exactly does Aerith die so easily? This applies to General Leo before her in FF6, and Tellah before that in FF4. Why don’t they just use a Phoenix Down? Some say that it’s because Phoenix Downs only revive those that are unconscious and not dead. To that I say, then why are there game overs then? If they’re just unconscious, why can’t we just wait for them to become conscious again and keep playing? It doesn’t make sense! Another argument that I’ve heard is that simply, “Dude! She got stabbed in the stomach! People die after getting stabbed in the stomach, duh!” Of course you would die from getting stabbed in the stomach, but it doesn’t make sense in this world of FF7. We see characters get shot, thundered, fired, iced, nuclear blasted, stabbed, poisoned, transformed, and many other things, but they only lose a measily few HP. Now suddenly we’re supposed to believe that she can die just from something as simple as getting stabbed by Sephiroth? I’m sorry, but I think the only reason Aerith died was to be a cheap way to gather emotion, and obviously it has worked.
There are a lot of other various plot holes such as how Barret escaped from Shinra after Dyne fell off the cliff or why we’re stopping Shinra from getting huge materia. I never understood the huge materia thing at all. If Shinra was gathering them to launch into Meteor and save the world, why are we stopping them? The story at a lot of times seems very shallow and unclear. In fact, they had to put in times where Cloud would actually tell you what is going on just so that you’d know what you’re supposed to do. After the first disc, the story goes downhill until the part where Tifa and Cloud fall into the lifestream, and then it just goes back downhill after that.
Other than that, the story had another big problem in translation. Now, this game wasn’t totally censored like the past Final Fantasy games, and FF7 was actually the first FF game not to be censored (except for some strange instances which didn’t make any sense). However, the problem was with something that was very elementary, grammar and spelling. This game has the worst grammar of any other game ever. You know all the crap people give about FF4’s bad translation? It doesn’t compare to this. I’m talking about sentences that actually say, “Good Morning! Cloud!”, “Beacause. you are…a puppet”, and “This guy are sick”. If these were a few isolated incidences, it wouldn’t be such a problem, but it occurs so often that it really does hurt the game. Also, the characters seem to have a lot of pointless conversations that don’t make any sense:
Tifa: Don’t you just hate this?
Aerith: You’re probably right.
Cloud: …Hmm. That’s how you’ll fool them.
Aerith: …….Hmmmmmmmmm. So that’s how you fooled them.
Quite possibly the biggest criticism about the game is how vague the story seems to be. Probably the vaguest thing in the game is the ending. You don’t really ever know if Meteor will kill everyone or if Holy will kill everyone or if nothing will kill everyone. Even the cinema scene after the credits (the credits looked really boring by the way) doesn’t really say if every person survived or not. The ending has come under fire by a lot of people who wanted to know what really happened. However, I kinda like how the ending never told you what happened because it leaves you wondering. It’s certainly different from the past FF’s where you know the bad guy dies and everyone is still alive and the world gets rebuilt and so on. Of course, Advent Children kinda cleared all the questions about it up (everyone’s still alive, jenova is still there, everyone gets infected with stuff), but it was fun while it lasted. Advent Children does open up another plot hole though. Holy was supposed to cleanse the earth of everything that could harm it, so why are there still Jenova remnants? Why do Kadaj and the other two guys still exist? Why does Jenova’s head still exist? These questions are never answered in the movie or in the game, which just causes more confusion.
Even without the ending FF7 was still vague for the reasons previously mentioned. There are two sides that address the issue: those that felt the game was amazingly deep and philosophical, and those that thought the game was just some string of events that leaves you confused as to what just happened. To the latter, does everything have to be spelled out for you? Seriously, a lot of FF7 could be explained if you just pay attention to what people are talking about or if you just sat down and thought a little about it. A lot of the criticisms I’ve read about vaguity resulted from people who either didn’t find the extra stuff that explains certain parts of the story or didn’t pay attention when it was being explained. That seems to be a problem with gamers today, no imagination at all. To the former, the reason you think FF7 is deep is because you perceive it to be deep. FF7’s story itself has so many unanswered questions and missing parts that the player’s own imagination fills in the gaps. FF7 is probably the most variable and hollow game in existance where everything can be made into what you want it to be. If that statement and the gameplay in battle doesn’t convince you, then I don’t know what will.
I ultimately felt that the main story was good, but it has so many small problems and large plot holes that it ultimately misses the mark on being a truly great story. Extreme fan assessments of “OMG DA STRY L33TZRZ LOL!” don’t really help either. I didn’t think that the story was good enough to get a score like 9, but it is still one of the better video game stories I’ve seen, thus netting it an 8.
Before we move on, I would like to cite some similarities I’ve noticed between FF6 and FF7 regarding the last boss fight. First, before you actually fight both bosses, you have to go through several other stages before you fight the final boss. In FF6, you had to fight the tiers of the tower to get to Kefka. In FF7, you have to fight Bizarro Sephiroth while switching teams to attack different parts. Also, notice how in both games when you do get to Kefka/Sephiroth that you always fight in a heavenly place that has a lot of clouds. Also, both bosses enter from the top of the screen, and both bosses look like some kind of transcended being. Also, when they are both defeated, they dissolve away. Is there a coincidence?
Fun - 7.0
Let’s begin with what you’re gonna be doing most of the time in this game other than plowing through the massive amounts of dialouge: fighting. Fighting is patterned as it always is, your team has to fight the team of enemies and kill them. Some key differences include how now you only get to use three people in battle, which I guess is due to graphical and processor limitations. The Active Time Battle (ATB) system is still present, meaning you need to make your decisions quickly or get attacked by the enemies. Your characters also have special desperation attacks now called “Limit Breaks.” Unlike in FF6 where you’d see them once in a blue moon, there is a separate bar that fills up whenever a character takes damage. When it is full, you get to use a high-damage special attack. The amount the bar fills up is related to how much HP is lost, so these moves don’t occur very often. Magic and summons are always present as well as extra abilities that can be enabled with materia.
Oh! That’s right! You don’t know what materia is yet. The Materia System is the new system in FF7 where your characters learn spells. When your character equips materia, that character will have the knowledge of how to do a variety of spells such as fire/ice/lightning spells, summons, stealing from people, and all that stuff. In order to make the materia spell stronger, you gains experience points for materia (called AP) in order to gain more powerful spells. The amount of materia you can equip on one character depends on how many slots their weapons and armor have for materia. The interesting thing about materia is that any type of materia can be equipped on any character. You could make someone like Cloud go from an attacking powerhouse to a magic master to a summoner to a thief to anything. Also, if the materia has already been leveled up, it doesn’t need to be leveled up from the beginning if equipped to a different person.
The problem that this creates is that it makes the characters lose their specialty. In past FF games, each character had some kind of special skill that was unique to them or were tailored to suit a specific role. For example, Rydia in FF4 had the ability to use magic and summon monsters as well as being handicapped by low HP and bad attacking ability. The only character that was close to being tailored like this was Aerith, and we all know what happened to her. Even FF6 gave certain characters special moves like Tools or Blitz. Imagine a team entirely made of Gogos. That’s what your party in FF7 is like.
However, as one plays the game, they may find that magic is completely unnecessary overall. Everyone can get strong attacking ability and magic normally doesn’t do as much damage as just normal attacking. This contributes to the problem that every single battle just seems exactly the same. Why should we use magic (that does low damage, take up MP, and take time to cast) or summons (that take forever to cast) or something if just mindlessly attacking will make the battle go faster and actually be a better strategy? I think it was a combination of wanting to appeal to a wider audience by simplifying the game and the long animations of summons and magic that contributed to the degeneration of the gameplay during battles. Fighting is the most tedious part of the game, and since this is a Final Fantasy (meaning you’ll do it a lot), it makes fighting just seem like some chore to do before getting to the next part of the story.
Not only is there the problem that fighting is tedious, but it is also easy too. This game suffers from the “level and destroy” mentality that plagues many other games. Actually, levleing just seems to be a consequence in this game instead of some type of strategy. Not only that, but enemies don’t seem to really get much harder as time goes on, but you’ll still be fighting tons of them, which means fighting more of the same battle over and over, which means even more tedium. Another problem is that any enemy can be defeated at any level as long as you have a ton of items. Although this was the case with past FF games, there are an even wider variety of items to get in FF7, and you’ll probably end up finishing the game not knowing what all of them do. Also, abusing in items in past FF games took more skill than it does in this game. Before, you had to worry about a character being defeated before you could use the item, but chances are that in this game you will be able to take several hits before having to worry about that.
Other than fighting, something that I was disappointed with was the lack of sidequests. There were only three that involved going to new locations: Defeating Ruby and Emerald Weapon, and Wutai. The ultimate weapons for everyone weren’t even that great to go after since they normally aren’t worth the effort. A lot of times the special weapons could be found by just doing the main game menaing that you didn’t really have to search for them. Finding everyone’s final Limit Break is good, but chances are you don’t use most of the characters, and would only be a waste of time. In order to make up for the lack of sidequests, they included a TON of mini-games. There are some interesting mini-games such as a strategy battle simulator, a snowboarding game, a motorcycle game, and several others. Many of the mini-games are integrated into the gameplay, but can later be replayed at the Gold Saucer. The actual quality of the mini-games is questionable. I myself didn’t really find any of them enjoyable, but other people might. Other than that, they also allow you to breed and race chocobos, which is kind of cool. However, I didn’t like it because of how much time it takes to actually breed a good chocobo. If you’re into that sort of thing, then it should be a nice bonus for you.
I ultimately felt that the game did have a sizeable amount of extra weapons and such, but there isn’t really that much incentive to actually get them. Before in past games, the weapons actually helped you a lot. Now, there’s only two real items that are good, and their both materia (Mimic and Knights of Round). There were only three pure sidequests, and only one of them was actually interesting. Fighting is as tedious as it ever was, and now it’s even boring. Granted boring fights didn’t start wih FF7, but it certainly did its part to make sure they stayed. As much as we want to believe, a handful of mediocre mini-games doesn’t really cover up all of the tedium that this game has. Why is this the case? I think it’s because the gameplay was not the major point of this game, but it was the story. Don’t think that you’ll actually be doing anything for most of the 60+ hours people say this game delivers. The game was long just because of all the dialouge you had to read and all the boring fights you had to do. In addition, this game started a “graphics over gameplay” trend that still plagues the industry today. It’s unfair to place this soley on the shoulders of this game, but no one can say that they didn’t serve a large part in starting the trend.
Difficulty - 6.0
Even with the two Weapons that were added into the American version, the game isn’t that hard at all. Battles take no strategy, and even in the times that they do, the game will tell you so. Even Sephiroth, in his overhyped glory, is as easy as they come. There aren’t really any puzzles or hard dungeons in the game either. Everything is straightforward and explained in detail. Any character can get any ability. The only real difficulty comes from fighting the hidden weapons and navigating in an area. The only reason I gave it above 5 was because of the ridiculous difficulty of the hidden weapons.
Replayable - 6.5
The game has at least one guaranteed play-through after beating the game because it’ll clear up a lot of the stuff that was hard to understand the first time through. After that, though, there isn’t really that much to go back for. Unless you really, REALLY, like the story of this game, you can just put this on your list of beaten games and move on. Didn’t expect me to say that about the “greatest game ever” eh? Well, I’ve got news for you, it’s not the greatest game ever made. There is no such thing as “the greatest game ever.” Final Fantasy 7 was just an average game with a interesting yet flawed story. Play it once to beat it, then one more time to better understand everything, and maybe once more to understand Advent Children, then let it go.
