FInal Fantasy VII is another wonderful addition in a long line of wonderful additions to a wonderful series.
Final Fantasy VII tells the story of Cloud Strife. Cloud Strife is a young mercenary who once belonged to SOLDIER, an elite military group that belongs to Shinra, an energy corporation who rules the city of Midgar, and is working hard to make life easier for its inhabitants. That being said, Shinra’s efforts use vast amounts of a substance called MAKO, which is comprised of a substance known as the LifeStream, which is the lifeblood of the planet itself. So, in effect, Shinra is destroying the planet. Hence Cloud and a group of terrorists/freedom-fighters band together to work to destroy Shinra, and bring down a powerful warrior named Sephiroth who has his own machinations for the LifeStream. Looking back, Final Fantasy VII’s story is far from perfect. The characters don’t develop as well as they could or should, the dialog isn’t the greatest, and the plot can get weak or flimsy in points. But, to be honest, I only discovered this in hindsight. Why? Because Final Fantasy VII has passion. Final Fantasy VII has vigor and intelligence. It has an epic, dark feel that few other stories can live up to. VII’s plot rushes along at such a breakneck pace that it’s hard not to be swept up in it. The characters are endearing, colorful, and original, and you’ll find yourself feeling for them, laughing when you’re supposed to or crying when you’re supposed to, development issues aside. It just goes to show you that a story written with love for the project and a true purpose infused therein can make up for anything it may lack. Even with its issues, Final Fantasy VII still delivers some of the best characters in the series, including a hero who’s unsure of his own identity, a villain with the same problem, a haunted genetic experiment gone wrong, a bitter man whose dreams have turned to dust, and a mesmerizing flower girl. It also delivers one of the darker plots in the series, and boy do I love dark plots. But enough about that, let’s talk gameplay. The gameplay in Final Fantasy VII is one of the more fast-paced and intuitive set-ups in the game. Of course the ATB is back, and it works great this time around, just like it’s always worked great. You do the typical RPG things of course, but Final Fantasy VII’s doing it about as good as it gets, especially at that time. It’s the combat that has a new system in place, and man is it a fun one. Materia. That’s the word in Final Fantasy VII. Materia are colorful, smooth gems refined from the LifeStream that in slots fitted into your weapons and armor. Each material contains a different attribute, from Elemental Attacks, to Regenerative Spells, to Physical attacks such as Deathblow or Counter. There is an endless array of materia in the game, and thus an endless array of possibilities to set your characters up. You can use physical materia on your stronger players, Elemental materia on your more magically adept characters, and different materia can be used well on everyone. There is a lot of Summon Materia as well, conjuring up large monsters to do your bidding, which is usually a bunch of ass-kicking, from such familiars as Esper’s Ramuh and Ifrit, to newcomers like The Knights of the Round. They are great for bad situations, that’s for sure, and they look nice and massive for awhile, then the animations become grueling and a big bore. Not only that, there are your Limit Breaks. Final Fantasy VII is the beginning of the Limit Breaks in Final Fantasy really being used with a stroke of genius. Why? It’s so simple. It’s not a bad thing when it ISN’T done like this, but it certainly is great. It was one of the most accessible things about Final Fantasy X, one of the more esoteric entries in the series. On the screen you’ll see a little gauge for Limit Breaks. You do or take damage, the gauge fills up. Then you can do your Limit Break. Of course, it would have been nice if I could have chosen not to use it when it came up, a la Final Fantasy X, but that’s all right, I’m happy using it since it’s going to come around again. Limit Breaks vary from character to character. Some do typical attacks, some do spells or status changes, Vincent even turns into various creatures. Regardless, there is a wide array of Breaks per character, and it’s usually pretty fun finding out what your new one is when you unlock it. Aside from the combat, there are plenty of fun little side quests you can do, for instance you can snowboard, or ride your motorcycle, or this crazy war game on this mountain that’s fun to play. Not to mention the casino. There are plenty of fun things to do in Final Fantasy VII, even if they have nothing to do with the games central story or mode of play, and that’s one of the things that make this game, nay, the whole series, great. That being said, the minigames don’t remain fun forever, so it’s back to the main quest sooner or later, which can at times be a little short on fun itself (like the Nibelheim mansion, where you randomly get attacked every .05 seconds). But that doesn’t happen often. At least most of the hours (it took me about 70) you’ll spend pumping into this game will be a blast, and even when it does become a bore (mainly when you’re leveling up), knowing that something great is in store will keep you playing without much complaint.
If I had to pick a weak spot in Final Fantasy VII, I’d pick the visuals. The visuals of the game were sublime upon their release, with their somewhat fluid transition between cinematic, CG cutscenes and distinctive landscapes. But with the release of Final Fantasy VIII, well, it was pretty easy to see how bad the game had aged. That was just in two years. There’s some mad pixelation all over the place and the somewhat fluid transitions actually seem pretty damned stilted. My biggest complaint is one Andrew Vestal hit upon in his review of Final Fantasy VIII on GameSpot. The character designs for all the characters are all over the place. They go from SD on the world map, to mature on the battle map, to sometimes SD/sometimes mature in the FMV’s. There’s just no solidarity to the way the characters were animated. That being said, however, none of the designs are so off-putting that you want to quit playing (although I feel the mature models would help accentuate the almost oppressively dark tone of the game, which is also offset by the occasional bursts of offbeat humor), and the wonderful designs of the areas you’re in are…just…beautiful. They’re so dark, downtrodden, and memorable. Like a post-apocalyptic steam/cyberpunk deal. Cool, eh? But yeah, the graphics are great, just not as great as everything else.
The music, though, wow the music though. Final Fantasy VII’s score marks another masterpiece for Nobuo Uematsu, standing right up there with his SNES compositions. The music goes from dark and moody (perhaps the bulk of the compositions) a la the beautiful opening theme, to the World-Map Theme (that man does some great world-map themes, don’t he) and the classic song everybody knows about called One-Winged Angel. Almost feel bad mentioning it it’s been talked about so many times. There is no voice acting, which is for the best, and the sound effects sound great. When you talk about value, this game has it in spades. It’s a long game, spanning 3 discs, so it understandably takes a long time to play. As I said before, 70 hours for me. I can’t see it physically taking less than 40 unless you’re a gaming God or you cheated. There are people who’ve spent more than 100 hours on this baby, and I believe it. People have played it multiple times, and I understand that as well.
Final Fantasy VII is, in a word, breathtaking. For all its shortcomings, it does so many things great that Final Fantasy VII is bigger than the sum of its parts. That being said, the sum of its parts is a pretty large figure. It kind of reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 2.