A milestone in story-telling and character design that should be in every gamer's collection.
Gameplay: Much of what distinguishes the Final Fantasy series from other RPGs is the story-driven gameplay and the focus on deep, emotional characters which makes the game an emotional experience for the players themselves. The game leads you through many different enviroments and cities, each with its own artstyles, background music and quests. Unless you're grinding to level up your characters, you should never get bored during the game.
Combat in Final Fantasy VII occurs mostly at random and is done in Active Time Battle. Having your party of up to 3 characters on the right side of the screen and your enemies on the left, you wait for a characters action bar to fill up and assign an attack, use of magic, special attacks or items. If your party members are attacked by enemies, their limit break bar fills up. As soon as it's full, you can use one of that characters special attacks. Speaking of enemies, each area is filled with an incredible number of unique monsters, animals or human opponents. The game contains so many different enemies you could in fact fill a library with it.
As noted above, apart from normal attacks, there are also many different magic spells to damage your enemies, cure your party or help you in other ways. This magic is sealed in Materia, small spheres of condensed "Mako" energy. To use the power sealed within them, you place them into your characters' weapons and armors. Those can have different numbers of slots for Materia, some of which are connected with each other to extend the effects of spells, add elemental damage to attacks or protect against them. Materia itsself gets stronger when used in combat and allows for more advanced versions of the initial spell. Additionally, you come across very powerful summoning Materia, which can have quite a devastating effect on your enemies and often finish the fights in one attack.
While following the storyline of the game, you will often come across short mini games most of which are a lot of fun and make a good break from the normal gameplay. You'll try Chocobo racing, motorcycle chase, snowboarding, strategic war games and many more.
When not in towns, caves or other special locations, you travel around on a huge worldmap. At first, your feet will be your only means of transportation, but you'll be given different vehicles that let you explore more and more of the terrain. For instance, at one point you will be given a buggy that lets you cross shallow river passages and get to the land beyond those rivers. This constant gain of freedom make traveling a lot of fun.
Graphics: The graphics of Final Fantasy VII were spectacular at the time of its release, not only from a technical standpoint but also by its design. It was the first RPG to feature cinematic camera angles, some of which blended into FMV sequences where you could still move your characters. The FMVs themselves looked fantastic and were often used during important and memorable events (*Tear comes to my eyes*).
While the worldmap is rendered in complete 3D, more detailed locations use 2D backgrounds in which your 3D characters move freely. These 2D areas are very detailed and vary a lot in art design, depending on the location. You will see futuristic cities as well as small villages, Las Vegas-like theme parks and mystical forests. In these locations and on the worldmap, the characters are displayed with a low poly-count model, which is somewhat disappointing, although they look really cute that way.
During battles however, all character models are very detailed, even weapons have their own designs. Fighting takes place in small three dimensional arenas that match the location you previously moved in. Enemies look and move just as amazing and make combat a lot of fun.
Sound: The musical score of the Final fantasy series is virtually unmatched and Nobuo Uematsu, who composed the music of the previous games wrote some of the most memorable pieces of music for this game. The best known theme is probably "One Winged Angel", the theme for Sephiroth, but every single one is a joy to listen to and adds a lot to the experience. Apart from character themes, the background music of the different locations also create excellent atmosphere and are always fitting. Some of the sound effects, like pushing buttons or opening crates sound somewhat weak, but most sound effects sound great, especially during combat.
Value: Playing through the excellent story will take you 30-40 hours, but the game offers a lot more beyond that and getting every single secret may well double that. It's also a game you will probably come back to sooner or later as the story is very complex and makes you want to replay it, so you can puzzle all the details you've forgotten about together.
Tilt: Final Fantasy VII is an unforgettable experience with one of the best stories ever seen in video gaming and many of its techniques of story-telling can still be found in todays RPGs.