Final Fantasy VII

""THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME"... Eh, it's good, but it's sure as hell not the best."

As a member of the planet earth, and as a person that has seen videogames before sometime in your life, you cannot have gone all of your time up until now without hearing about Final Fantasy VII. It's simply not possible- this game is renowned throughout the entire gaming world as being "the best game you will ever play! PERIOD.!” (yea, it needs the ! and the .- it's that good)

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with GameFAQs has similarly heard of Final Fantasy VII. It has won nearly every award that can possibly be won, and since the game hit the shelves Eight Years Ago, it has been the favorite in just about any and every gaming forum, ESPECIALLY this one.

. . . Is Final Fantasy VII really the best game ever? Hardly, but you can't really even compare it to most games. VII is an RPG, which cannot be compared to Resident Evil or to Madden; they're apples and oranges and grapes.

So, try this instead: Is Final Fantasy VII the best RPG ever? Most people would tell you yes- Yes, Final Fantasy VII is the best RPG ever. Gripping storyline, AMAZING graphics, and a gameplay that is rivaled by no other.

:BZZT!: WRONG!

The game is good- there's no denying that it is indeed a good game. However, Squaresoft is notorious for making good games, so who's really impressed that this one was no different?

If you compare this game to all other Final Fantasy games released both before and since, the storyline is mediocre and the gameplay was overshadowed by many other Final Fantasy games, and while there's no hiding the phenomenal graphics (for its day), several others were phenomenal, too.

However, enough about all of that- I'm not here to just bash the game; I'm going to discuss the game's various aspects and give my thoughts on them. Hopefully I'll provide enough information that you can agree or disagree with my opinion and be able to use my own work against me (That'd be sweet...)

Basic gameplay
As Doctor Evil once said, "Well, where do I begin..." I figure gameplay is as good of a place to start as any, so let's start here!

In Final Fantasy VII, you take control of badass Cloud Strife. Well, you TRY to take control, but it's easier said than done- this game has terible controls. Granted, this was 1997, and the controls were ALL bad, but the fact remains- these controls are difficult at best.

Your controller CANNOT have the analog sticks turned on (so be sure to deactivate them), for if they are turned on, the controller no longer works. Button Control is difficult, as the buttons are not especially responsive. For a game that has several secrets based on the timing of your button pressing, this can get quite irritating.

Once you've gotten past learning how to use your controller once again, you can begin playing. It's your typical RPG with three different worlds- World, Area, and Battle. Each has its own features,

World one is the World Map. On the World map, you generally don't have any interaction with anything. You enter random battles as you travel from town to town... that's about it. You get access to an airship late in the game that allows you to bypass random battles and travel that much faster. Late in the game, you'll also take control of a submarine (!!) to do some underwater exploration. You can also capture chocobos by finding their tracks on the ground and searching for a random battle (which has a chocobo in it.)

There are a total of four Continents that you'll travel across during the course of the game, as well as dealing with several islands.

Other than that, all other interaction takes place in the other two worlds. It's your typical Final Fantasy world map. If you've played any of the Final Fantasy games prior to FFX, this will be quite familiar to you.

World two is the Area Map. This is the primary map that you'll be dealing with through this game. Proportions will be a bit more normal (you won't be the size of the entire city, for example.) You'll also be able to interact with people, items, doors, beds, et cetera. All of the storyline progresses in this world, and a majority of what you're doing happens here and nowhere else. There are easily several hundred things that you'll do, so I can't list them all, but this part of the map is identical to EVERY Final Fantasy ever made- nothing new at all.

Battle System

As for world three, it's the battle world. It's ATB, just like IV-IX were. That is, each character has a time bar. When the bar fills, you get to perform an action. Actions vary, from simple attacks to magic spells to tossing an item for various effects. In the same way, enemies have an ATB bar of their own, so that while it's not directly turn based, the general number of turns with character versus enemy are generally the same.

I should back up a bit- those of you who are not RPG players, there are basic stats- attack, defense, magic attack and magic defense. Attack and defense obviously juxtapose each other, and magic attack/defense play opposite parts. There's also HP (your health- 0 HP=death), and MP (your ability to cast magic. With 0 MP, you can't use ANY magic) Other stats… eh, they're not really important. That's the core of it.

One of the more interesting (and by interesting, I mean popular) aspects of FFVII's battle system is the limit break system. You have several limit breaks that you can use by filling your limit gauge. As you take damage, your limit gauge fills. When your limit gauge has completely filled, you will be allowed to perform a limit break. Limit Breaks vary in use; most of them are a highly damaging attack (notably, up to 20 hits of 9,999 damage), but there are several that involve healing properties and/or party benefits (mostly Aeris- being the healing character, her limits are of the healing variety.) It adds a certain amount of variation to the battle, because while you're definitely gonna use the limit once you get it, you can never be sure of just when you'll get it.

Funny thing, though- FFVII is credited with inventing the limit breaks… anyone who believes that has never played FFVI, where the desperation attacks were introduced. Desperation attacks were brought about by having your character in low HP; the basis of the VIII limits, and most certainly the origin of the limit system.

Now, for the most "important" part of all- Materia
I say that with a bit of sarcasm- it's considered by many to be the single best creation of the game. I might as well explain why I disagree from the start; simply because FFV and FFVI had it first. FFV brought AP along first, and then FFVI perfected it with their esper system. Yes, the materia system was excellent, but it's not original, so it doesn't count towards making FFVII the “best game ever!”

So, as for materia:

Materia are little balls of… energy, I suppose. Within each materia is an ability. Each materia has an infinite amount of the ability within it, so don't worry about using up the materia- that's what MP is for; most materia abilities consume MP. The abilities vary, but generally speaking, they are magic spells. Every ability that your character can use (barring attack, item and limit) comes from the materia he is using. Then there are the support materia. These materia change the effects of the materia that they are attached to. What is “attached”, you ask? Well, that means that the armor that the materia are placed into has materia links that connects the abilities of them.

"Materia, in armor? WHAT?"

It's quite simple- materia are equippable. Each weapon/armor you wear has a designated number of slots for materia, ranging from zero to eight. As you get farther into the game and have collected more materia, you will (logically) find weapons that, on average, have more materia slots. This means that each character can only use 16 different abilities at any one time, which is what gives it such a high reputation for excellence. You cannot have every character using everything, especially since many materia are one-of-a-kind.

Well… I suppose you could. I mentioned that FFV introduced AP, but haven't really touched on it yet. Materia are identical to abilities in FFV in that you can only use the full potential of the materia if you go into battle with it equipped. For every battle that you win where your materia is equipped, you'll gain AP. After a certain amount of AP, your materia will level up. Level ups give two purposes- One, the materia learns a new spell. Two, you can use the materia more times per battle. (Many materia, particularly summons, are too good to be allowed more than once or twice per battle.) Once you gain enough AP, your materia becomes "mastered", and another materia of the same type spawns with no AP, and the cycle begins anew. So in theory, you could have three of EVERY materia.

Of course, it's not easy to level up your materia- anywhere from 2,000 to 250,000 AP per level, and at the beginning you gain about 3 AP per battle. Still, if you keep your materia equipped, they'll level up just about as fast as the game would like them to.

Oh, and I forgot to mention- Materia, as was true in with espers in FFVI, affect your MP, HP, attack, defense, magic attack, magic defense, et cetera. That means that you need to be cautious of how much materia you equip, as many of them boost your magical abilities and destroy your physical ones.

Chocobos
If you've played any of the more recent Final Fantasy games, you understand that chocobos are fairly important to Final Fantasy, and in FFVII, they're important enough to warrant their own sub-section.

Chocobos have been around for several games now, but were popularized in FFV with the introduction of Boco and his offspring. However, FFVII was the game that gave chocobos their own limelight.

For, in FFVII, you get to experience the wonders of nature; you get to breed them. Not only that, but once you've bred them, you get to race them! While not a critical plot element, it's the primary sidequest of the game; you can easily spend countless hours finding, breeding and racing chocobos (I was crazy enough to get an entire stable of top-tier gold chocobos...)

Storyline
Now, the storyline, which as I've said, I found to be pretty mediocre.

You start out as the badass Cloud Strife hopping off a train. You're a mercenary that's been hired by a local terrorist group to help topple Shinra Corporation. Shinra is the monopoly company that controls all of the power in Midgar, the dark and gothic metropolis that you've found yourself spending your time in. You enter the Shinra nuclear reactor and set dynamite to it. One down, seven to go! Hopefully, if you destroy all eight, Shinra will relinquish their iron fist over the city.

The first six or seven hours of this game take place inside of Midgar, a ruined city with living conditions that make Training Day seem pretty nice and clean. You and your various teammates (Tifa, your childhood sweetheart, Aeris, the local flower girl, and Barrett, your boss.) travel through the slums of Midgar, attempting to work your way into the eyes of Shinra and eventually take them DOWN!

It's actually quite fascinating, and it's good fun. However, it's not original- if you've played Final Fantasy VI, they are identical ideas. While the specifics are carried out in a different manner, the overall feeling of both storylines is the same. Shinra Corporation and the Empire both have the same control, and the AVALANCHE are just like the Returners of FFVI.

Of course, both games also suffer a massive downhill in plot fairly fast; you quickly find yourself in position to topple Shinra, only to find that you were beaten to it by… SEPHIROTH! That's right- the demi-god that you've heard so damn much about all across the internet. Sephiroth, the son of a freakish monster called JENOVA, is a psychopath with only one thing on his mind- find the "promised land." Oh, and kill everyone else, too.

As was true with FFVI and FFV, this idea of "stop the madman from destroying the earth!" gets pretty old pretty fast. Of course, FFV and FFVI had one redeeming quality- in their respective games, the bad guy almost wins. In FFVII, he really never comes very close. In fact, Sephiroth never seems to pose much of a threat at all. He just pops in to say a couple of "mystical" words here and there before dashing off again to sit around and stare off into space. Well, he's probably not staring off into space, but as far as you're concerned, that's all he's doing, because he NEVER indirectly affects the plot- you are ALWAYS there to witness changes he makes. It almost makes you feel like you're playing Mario- you reach Sephiroth, only to see him complicate things and vanish again. "Thanks for coming Cloud, but I'm in another castle! MWAHAHA!" :poof:

The ultimate problem with FFVII and its storyline was a lack of character development. Twenty minutes are devoted to a background story on Barrett that doesn't really give any background on who Barrett is, but it DOES tell you that he did in fact have friends before your group showed up.

I shouldn't be quite so harsh, though- Cloud has an EXCELLENT story about himself. A quarter of the game, he's out of commission as he tries to discover himself (Quite similar to FFVI, which does that with Terra.) There's just one problem- it doesn't really make any sense. Even today, 8 years after the fact, no one is quite sure what Cloud's story is about...

And that's it- you get nothing else about any of the characters. A brief introduction to who they are, and then you just watch them interact with everyone around them and develop your opinions on who they are based on how they act NOW.

All in all, it's got a great beginning development that was awfully similar to its preceding game FFVI, and then the main plot is driven by a wimpy villain. To top it off, it doesn't have any side-plots to carry the weak main plot. I mean, FFVI had a pretty weak main plot, but it had tons of side-plots that more than made up for what the main one lacked.

Graphics
The graphics of this game were OUTSTANDING. Pre-rendered backdrops? Maybe, but that doesn't change the fact that when Cloud and Tifa come up against a brick wall covered in graffiti, you feel like you're looking at the wall two blocks down from your house- it's incredibly realistic for a 1997 videogame. The sprites in battle are quite good looking as well, with a pretty fair amount of detail given. The summons are, as always, absolutely spectacular.

However, they're not perfect. Outside of battle, your characters have blocking syndrome. That is, each character looks like a pile of blocks placed on top of each other. They have no hands, just a cube of flesh colored pixels. I happen to like the look, but it's not IMPRESSIVE.

Oh, and I have to mention the absolutely horrible translation, and this is really the only place that it fits. It's quite obvious that the translators learned English as a second language, because grammatical errors run amok. Those people who played Metal Gear may remember "Oh, no! The truck have started to move!" Well, FFVII has it's own famous quote. Rather than "Of course!", the translator tossed on another F, making it "Off course!" It tickled many a fan, but the fact is- the translating was bad.

Sound
Amazing musical score that is incredibly varied. The music they chose for the nuclear reactors was absolutely perfect. I don't know how they do it, but I couldn't have chosen a better music for an eerie, radiation-leak kind of song.

The battle music was pretty weak, but that's OK when you put up against the rest of the music. Yea, it's pretty weak compared to FFIX and FFX, but this game was also one of the first to be released on the PlayStation, and it was revolutionarily good.

I hope you've gotten all of the information that you need to form your own opinion. As I've made clear, FFVII is definitely a good game, and that will never be denied. However, it's quite over praised. I would have put FFVI far over VII, for FFVII got most of its "good" and "original" ideas from VI. Not to mention that there are some flaws in the FFVII game that simply pull it down.

The best game of all time? No... I don't think so.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/12/05