Final Fantasy VII: What I've Learned and why it's not as good as you may recall

Note: Before you start reading you should know that what started as a smallish rant turned into a fairly in depth plot analysis with a small review of presentation and gameplay at the bottom of the page... so just keep that in mind, this is far more about how the plot is flawed than any other aspect, and I think this is fitting because the plot is what generally gets the most attention in this game. oh.. and obviously SPOILERS.

I'm reaching the end of Final Fantasy VII in my final fantasy challenge (which a couple of you may be following on another page) but this time while I've been playing I have paid more attention and realized how flawed the game really is. Perhaps it's better to say that the PERCEPTION many people have about this game is flawed. So you all know this is not going to be a 'bashing' review of the game as I still love it and still find it to be a VERY good game, and still a masterpiece of it's time, but I really think these things need to be pointed out and discussed, oh, and in case this wasn't obvious (and I ran out of room in the title) this review/retrospective/conversation (because I'd love for others to join in on this with me) will contain NUMEROUS SPOILERS so don't say you haven't been warned.

Now before I truly begin, I'm going to act like none of the prequels, sequels or anything else related to this game have been released (though I may come back to them later) and I'm going to break the game into sections, revealing how I feel about each part, starting with the first 1/4 of the game: Midgar.

Midgar Section: In my opinion, (and many other's for that matter) Midgar is easily the best part of Final Fantasy VII. The game starts strong within this dystopian city that really seems large and living enough to be the setting for the entire game. Within this first part of the game the pacing is amazing, immidiatly establishing an atagonist (the shinra corporation) a motivation for the heros (stopping the destruction of the world by destroying mako reactors) and showing the repercussions for such actions (the bombing of the first reactor had many civilian casualties). Right from the beginning we see something that was pretty unique at the time within the story, the 'good guys' killing innocent people as a means to an end. The characters even reflect on this a little later as they realized the destruction they've caused. As this 6 to 8 hour section of the game plays out, you learn a little about Cloud, Tifa, Barret and most importantly Aerith, the character who is most important to the story.

As I said before, the Midgar section of the game is perfectly paced, giving just the right amount of exposition between each exciting moment against the shinra corporation. It contains a great blend of excitement (the reactor scenes) comedy (the wall market scene) emotional scenes (flashbacks about Aerith as a child as well as The destruction of sector 7) not to mention great and fun puzzle elements (shinra tower). All of this alone makes for one of the most exciting and well put together RPGs, from the opening cinematic to the moment you leave midgar.

But... then you leave Midgar... and everything from there goes downhill (maybe not by much, but it does) as you are thrust into the open world for no real reason.. and without any motivation to do so. Seriously, replay the opening segment, they all climb out of midgar and just kind of look at each other saying "well... now what?' which is probably the same question the prgorammers were asking themselves at this point, and this is when the game moves into part 2, which I like to call the 'Character Section'.

Character Section: As you may have expected, this section will contain heavy spoilers about each of the main characters in the game, starting with, of Cloud of course, as he's the first one you get to learn about... (or at least you THINK you learn about him.. as many fans of the game know). As you enter Kalm (the town closest to Midgar once leaving) you are given a half an hour to an hour long flashback about Cloud and why he hates sephiroth, a character who had just been mentioned for the first time a few minutes before while escaping from Shinra Tower (well his name was mentioned before that in a small scene with Tifa and Cloud, but nothing more about him). Basically you enter this town, deal with the cutscene and then Cloud decides all of a sudden to go after sephiroth and kill him, since the game needed a reason to continue on. Fair enough, but the thing is the entire second 1/4 of the game does the same exact thing but with every other character you recruit, and during this whole section the only motivation you have in the MAIN plot is catching small glimpses of 'sephiroth' as you move from town to town, learning about the people in your party. Yes it makes for wonderful character development but the pacing is pretty horrible if you really analyze it.

To make this easier for you to read and me to write, I'm going to break up this next part of the character section.. well, by character, telling where you go and what you learn about them while you're there.

Aerith: You'd think I'd start with Cloud, but really the development of the characters and the rate at which we learn about them gives us the most information about Aerith up front before any of the other characters, which is pretty brilliant considering she's the one the player is supposed to get most attached too before her untimely demise. We learn that she is the last remaining member of a race called the 'Cetra' (also known at Ancients... not sure why they couldn't just pick one name, but whatever) which, in short, gives her the ability to hear the voices of the dead a.k.a. the life stream. This ability allows her to 'speak to the planet' and is the reason she has been stalked by the Shinra since a very young age and she is eventually kidnapped, leading to the Shinra tower scene. She is a very well developed character and is arguably the most important character to the plot since her sacrifice is what saves the planet. (Sephiroth kills her mere seconds after she activates 'holy' the only materia that can defend against the devastating Black Materia which is the cause for the main crisis of the story (which doesn't show up until 3/4s of the way through the game by the way, but we'll get to that later)

Cloud:Now we get to Cloud, the main character whom we don't get any REAL information about until he enters Kalm, giving his flashback scene where, in short, he went on a mission to his home town (Nibelheim) with sephiroth. While going along with their mission, Sephiroth discovers a terrible secret about his past and goes bat **** insane, burning down Cloud's hometown and killing a lot of the people living in it, ending in a showdown between Cloud and Sephiroth which Cloud can't remember the ending to for some reason. That's pretty much all the information we get about Cloud for quite some time. Really cloud only remains an interesting character BECAUSE of the mystery surrounding his past, and since they use that as the driving force for the entire 2/4 of the game... it's.. kind of weak in my opinion. Sure the pay off is good once we FINALLY get it, but up until then it seems like a pretty weak motivator, especially since Sephiroth hasn't done anything dangerous yet besides kill off the President of Shinra, which should have been Cloud and the gangs plan from the beginning since they were trying to overthrow the damn company.

Barret: Next (or should I say, after 5 pointless 'dungeon' areas where we constantly chase rumors of sephiroth's where abouts) we learn about Barret, a character whom I never appreciated as a kid but has now become one of my favorites. We learn of his tragic back story, everything from his reasons for hating shinra (long story short, they burned his coal mining village to the ground when they resisted putting in a mako reactor) how he lost his arm (it was shot off while he was trying to save a friend's life) and where his daughter came from. It all ends with a semi-climactic battle against the friend whom he'd tried to save named Dyne. Dyne also had a gun grafted on his arm and is the real father to Barret's adopted daughter Marlene. In the end Dyne throws himself off a cliff, leaving Barret devastated and that's the end of that. An extremely well developed character with a bad ass design and even some good character development through out the story.

Red XIII: After that w,e get to learn about Red XIII, a character who is (once again) supposedly the last of his species. Honestly Red XIII has NOTHING to do with the over all plot and is kind of a waste of space as far as that's concerned. He has a small back story where both his mother and father died protecting his home of Cosmo Canyon, but his mother was praised as a hero and his father a coward. Red hates his father until he learns the truth and has a sudden urge to help cloud and the gang save the world (from... a threat that hasn't really been elaborated on at this point because we've all but given up on destroying reactors at this point and sephiroth still hasn't shown signs of doing ANYTHING wrong). I do know a lot of people who like Red XIII because.. let's face it, playing as an intelligent Lion/Wolf creature thing in your party is pretty sweet, I'm just saying that his inclusion adds nothing of importance to the over all story, while all the previous characters have.

Tifa: Next we have Tifa, or at least, you'd think we would since we are entering Nibelheim her and Cloud's home town. Because of the way the narrative in the game is structured, you know as little about Tifa as you do some of the secret characters in the game, because knowing Tifa's true backstory would destroy the mystery surrounding Cloud, meaning this will have to stay blank until further down the line. What we do know is that the reason she fights against shinra is the burning down of her village mentioned above, which she blames on Shinra even though Sephiroth went Rogue...? Talk about intelligent choices.

Cid: Next is Cid, my favorite permanent party member in the game (because, as we all know, Aerith isn't permanent). Cid is a foul-mouthed, abusive ex-pilot who dreamed of going into space, and hates Shinra for taking those dreams away from him. He is a character that starts very unlikable (but purposefully so) that changes throughout the course of the story to become something better. He also has some of the funniest lines in the entire game, not to mention being one of the STRONGEST characters in the game, now if you all don't mind I think before continuing on with this long write up I'm going to sit down, shut up, and drink some god damn Tea! ...or maybe coffee would be more appropriate considering how much energy this is taking.

Cait Sith: Let me start by saying that I HATE Cait Sith.. and I know I'm not alone. You don't learn much about this character which makes since considering he's a robot. All you really find out is that he's a spy controlled by a man named 'Reeve' who works for shinra. You never learn anything about Reeve whatsoever which makes this character rather boring. When you add in the fact he's easily one of the most useless fighters in the game and that he's only 'important' as a plot device to get through story loopholes (for example: 'How are the shinra following us!? OH GOD HE'S A SPY!' and 'oh no! how are we going to get the black materia without sacrificing ourselves? I know let's use the dumbass traitor robot so he can be immediatly replaced within two seconds, making his sacrifice completely unemotional or interesting!' so yeah... moving on

Yuffie: All That's left are the two optional characters, Yuffie... is rather annoying to me as well, but at least she's useful. The thing I could never get past is when she steals all your damn materia, making for one of the most difficult portions of the game (but also one of the most fun since I love it when games put restrictions on you like that once in a while). Actually as I write this I'm realizing I didn't dislike her as much as I thought, but she's still rather pointless to the main plot. Yeah I know they did this on purpose because you don't HAVE to recruit her, but her story basically comes down to the fact that she only joins the gang to eventually steal their materia, even AFTER she fails at doing so. She's doing it to restore her hometown to it's former glory (since shinra destroyed it in a war years ago) but once it's mentioned it's never refferred to again.

Vincent: I have to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure WHY this character has gotten as many fans as he has. You know pretty much NOTHING about him. Yeah you can find his couple of flash back scenes that develop him enough to give him some good relevance to the plot (far more than Yuffie has even though his scenes last five minutes while hers lasts about an hour) but I didn't see enough with him to really make him all that memorable, especially when a lot of average players didn't find him in the first place. His motivation is to stop Sephiroth because he blames himself for the birth of him in the first place. Essentially the girl Vincent loved had a baby with Hojo, and they used it for an experiment that made sephiroth... and for some reason because Vincent couldn't stop the baby-making process he is to blame for the experiment? It's self guilt bull**** if I've ever seen it, but at least it's interesting. Oh did I forget to mention that Hojo shot him and then turned him into a weird creature thing? Yeah that's kind of important, Vincent also wants to kill Hojo, which should make everyone happy! Is that why he's so loved? because of the mystery? Because of his fashion sense maybe? I don't know.. anyway I liked his back story once it was revealed more in depth in Dirge of cerberus, but the point it is WASN'T in depth at this point, yet he still gained popularity. Still a decent character in the game and I like him, just wondering why he got SO popular.

Sephiroth: Well guys, this is where I'm going to get a LOT of hate, and where I think most people aren't paying attention to the games story. For the record, I'm not like most sephiroth haters, I don't think he's an 'emo momma's boy' or any of that crap, in fact if you pay attention to the story in the flashbacks he's not a 'momma's boy' at all, he's just simply snapped and lost control of his mind. That being said, Sephiroth is NOT a good villian... at all. In fact he has SO little to do with the games plot that it's laughable. The first time you see Sephiroth (besides flashbacks) in the entire game is when Cloud goes nuts and hands over the black materia at the northern crater, and the first time you actually even share a line of dialogue with him is before the FINAL BATTLE. Guys, sephiroth has NOTHING to do with this story. If you pay attention you'll figure out that every time you see 'sephiroth' before that it's actually Jenova taking his form. the villians of this game are Hojo and Jenova NOT sephiroth. All sephiroth can REALLY be seen as 'cool' for is his long ass sword and visual style. Next time you play the game pay attention to EVERY line of dialogue and you will realize the sad truth, and trust me, it bums me out too, I liked sephiroth, but sephiroth has NOTHING to do with this story except for being bait. That being said, Cloud's thirst for revenge driving the 2/4 of the plot is COMPLETELY POINTLESS because sephiroth has NOTHING to do with the world being in peril until the last minutes. Not to mention that Sephiroth isn't even REALLY Jenova's son, he was just implanted with her cells (like Cloud and many others).

Jenova (and her body parts): The REAL main villian of this game is Jenova, a 'calamity from the sky' so.. I'm guessing that means an Alien? Basically she is a higher species who was supposedly supposed to rule the planet but didn't because the humans captured her and started studying her I guess? It's strange that Jenova is the villian since her true form is a body with no limbs who is contained in a sort of life support chamber. Really the whole plot behind Jenove makes no sense. She does everything she does to get the black materia to sephiroth so HE can summon meteor (the real plot device that threatens the world that doesn't come into play until the last 1/4 of the game) so that he can damage the planet enough to absorb all of the lifestream and it's energy to become a god to... travel through space again? It's pretty stupid if you think about it... I mean at least with Kefka he just wanted to see crap get destroyed. I don't know there are a lot of other plot details here and there but really if I were to write about EVERYTHING in this game I'd be at my computer for freakin' days. As it is I'm only about half done with this damn thing... If only I'd realized what I'd gotten myself into two hours when I started this thing. oh! and P.S. This means Sephiroth didn't kill Aerith.. Jenova did... so next time you should put hate where hate deserves damn it!! Poor sephiroth being blamed for everything!

Hojo: Hojo is often though to be the reason behind everything bad that happens in the compilation of FInal Fantasy VII. He is Sephiroth's Biological father as well as the one who injected sephiroth with Jenova cells, so he is at fault for creating the soldier, but at the same time, even without his experiments wouldn't Jenova have escaped and tried to rule the world anyway without sephiroth's help? Sephiroth was just a form that Jenova's limbs took as they wreaked their havok. See? the more I read into the plot the less sense it makes. Anyway, Hojo is a slimy evil scientist you will love to hate, and kicking his ass at the end of disc 2 (the last story boss before you enter the final dungeon) is oh so satisfying.

Cloud (Again, but this time the truth): It isn't until far later in the game that you learn the truth about Cloud, so I will summarize it as briefly as I can. After a lot of time with the group struggling to decide if Cloud is even really a person from Tifa's past, it turns out he is, but he never became a soldier like he thought. He was experimented on after the nibelheim incident and through a chain of events his memories were somehow rearranged to make him think that he was his friend Zack, who actually WAS a soldier first class and so on. If you really want more info on this, play the game, because it's honestly interesting, but if you've been paying attention to what I've been typing Cloud's backstory is essentially pointless because SEPHIROTH ISN'T THE VILLIAN.

Zack: Has close to nothing to do with the plot of the stand alone Final Fantasy VII. All you learn about him is that he was a Soldier 1st class who saved Cloud from death, and Cloud took his memories and his sword before joining avalanche. If you want to know more about this character (and see him become one of the most fascinating protagonists in the entire FF series, go pick up Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII as it's based around his story)

There are a lot of other more minor characters like the Turks, Rufus Shinra, and don corneo, but none of them are really important enough to warrant focusing on at all.

hew.. now that I'm done with that, let me just say that the majority of the 2/4 of the game is spent developing the first few characters I listed, but there's no motivation to keep going forward except 'I head sephiroth went this way!' so basically everyone is tagging along with cloud simply so he can get revenge, completely forgetting about the FAR more interesting battle against shinra to stop the reactors, not to mention that even SHINRA starts chasing after sephiroth without ever giving a good reason for it besides 'finding the promised land' a land supposedly full of mako energy for them to harvest... that.. they couldn't have just found by putting a reactor at Mideel.. a place known world wide for having what's essentially a lifestream geyser... but whatever let the megalomaniacs run the world how they feel like I guess.

The 'SH*T's Getting Real' Section:

Well anyway, after about 15 to 20 hours of doing nothing but recruting characters, hearing backstory and following rumors of Sephiroth (actually Jenova's) where abouts, you finally go to the temple of the ancients where you learn Sephiroth (Jenova's) real plan which is to get the black materia, and summon a giant meteor to hit the planet, where the life stream will gather to try and heal the wound, but instead the REAL sephiroth will just absorb all the power and become a god. Shortly after this you get the black materia... and then cloud has a break down and hands it right back over to sephiroth do to the jenova cells mind...screwyness subplot which is too long and complicated to explain but actually DOES make sense which is why I'm not mentioning it here. After this you go to the Ancient City (where I assume the Cetra/Ancients used to live) find Jenova AGAIN disguised as sephiroth and try to take back the black materia, but instead recieve a dead Aerith after she activates the holy materia, which is supposed to keep meteor at bay).

After this you follow jenovaroth to the northern crater where you FINALLY for the FIRST TIME see the REAL sephiroth stuck inside a giant crystal, proving he was never active to begin with. Through some complicated events cloud gets the materia back again and promptly returns it to the real sephiroth through another breakdown, causing Sephiroth to finally become free and summon meteor (off screen of course). From here the game actually picks up it's pace again for a little bit. A lot of things happen that aren't that are interesting but don't affect the problems with the story (such as cloud going COMPLETELy nuts with mako poisoning and eventually getting his memory back) but now I have a huge problem with the story. Shinra has the ideas of using 'huge materia' as a means of destorying not only sephiroth, but the meteor that is hurling towards earth.. and our genius heros decide to interupt these plans for no reason but to fight against shinra. HOW STUPID IS THIS!? Shinra is going after the SAME goal! Stopping the destruction of the earth, and Cloud and friends decide to Rebel against them just because 'the shinra is always evil' what a bunch of freakin' MORONS.

Anyway you either obtain or fail to obtain all of the huge materia, (which has NO affect on the story what so ever... thanks for wasting my time) go back to the city of the ancients, . learn about Aerith casting holy (she did this at the end of disc 1 and you don't learn about it until shortly before the final battle) and then realize the last hope of saving the earth is killing the REAL sephiroth so that holy can finally take effect. There is a section before this final battle where you stop shinra and kill hojo (for good reason this time, it turns out that giant canon they used to try and kill sephiroth is actually giving him more power), but after that it's straight to the end where you go through a pretty uninteresting final dungeon (it LOOKS really appealing but it's not a very well constructed or fun place to explore) before finally killing sephiroth with a blaze of omislashing glory where Cloud finally gets his revenge.. then we are left with the most ambigously frustrating ending ever as the last thing you see is metero colliding with holy, the lifestream coming to defend the earth and a flash of white light not explaining what happens to the characters OR the world. (Yes we have sequels that tell us this NOW, but when the game came out it was a pretty big slap in the face).

THERE, finally done with the plot analysis... I swear the rest of the 'review' thing will be much shorter and more bearable.

Presentation: This will be a very short section because what is there to say? The graphics have a nostalgic charm to them yes but guys, take off your nostalgia goggles and the game does NOT look good anymore. I have the warm fuzzy feeling inside from remembering this game in it's hay day but no amount of words could ever actually make this games graphics 'good'. Are they servicable? Yes. Do I like them? Yes, but they are not GOOD.

What IS good however, is the soundtrack, even with the midi quality it is absolutely beautiful, and you need no nostalgia to see that.

The only other thing I can really talk about here is the NUMEROUS grammatical errors but I'm sure most people know about that as well, it's really not THAT big of a deal, but it is rather funny that they could get away with this many errors in a completed game.

Aside from that, I feel that Final Fantasy VII has a very strongly built world with many interesting places to travel too and a great mythos (hence why so many more stories have been made to fill in the original games gaps, it really was interesting and well designed enough to merit this).

Gameplay: All that's left to talk about is the gameplay. The game is still very fun and holds up well, but to be honest it was never that well balanced to begin with. The game is stupidly easy, making it a great game for beginning RPG players (which makes since why this game got so many people into RPGS) the game allows for a great deal of customization with the materia system, but honestly that's one of the things I don't like about the game, I don't like it when all my characters in RPGs play exactly like every other character. Yes you could argue that I could specify and make one character mage like while another is a tank, but the game isn't structured around that kind of thinking, instead Final Fantasy VII's combat boils down to 'use your most damaging attacks every round'. Okay it has a LITTLE more strategy than that at times, but in terms of depth when compared to say.. Final Fantasy VI, it just doesn't stand up quite as well. I guess what I really mean to say is the gameplay is fun and varied (especially with all the mini-games) but it's not a challenge... at all... and it's is EASILY exploited.

...sorry the last few sections were short and rushed.. I may flesh them out later but I've been typing for about 4 hours straight now and can use a break x.x PLEASE comment and talk about this with me, I'd love to hear some other opinions. Once again I'd like to say I love this game, but part of being a 'critic/reviewer' is to look at th things that do and don't work regardless of your personal opinion on them.

Or... the forums can remain dead

Well that was a long and interesting read. Probably I am the first (and possibly last) person to even comment in this. (Somehow I belive that most people in this union are not capable of discussing the series, like seriously, prove me wrong please).  Well I am not the best person to discuss this as I have not played FFVII and its spin-offs that much, but I will try, at least what I know about the series.

As far as I see the Midgar section you wrote was the complete truth, it is the only well made(or really well made) part of the game whatsoever.  As I recall, then most of the characthers you have correctly covered. The most well biult characthers in the game is Aerith and Barret as you said, and Vincent... Yeah Vincent, but wait a little with that.

First of in my reply is the wonderful s**thole known as Cloud. I really hate the characther of his. He got no feelings at all, he is a mindless puppet without any sort of social capabilities at all. His story is quite the mess through the hole game, it is actually amazing that anyone managed to sort this mess of a life Cloud had. First of all the first flashback scene in FF7 was the only flashback scene in the game Cloud has of his own memories (if you didnt think Spoilers were incomming.....). The rest of the game Cloud was beliving he was someone else totaly, for my part I would rather have Barret or Tifa as the main characther (or even better, Zack). The part of game the drives on only Clouds "revenge part", is the most boring of the entire game. He ends up as this merc with a weak story that they try to hold the focus around. The part that really makes me annoyed about him, I didnt really understand until yesterday (when I talked about FF7 with one of my friends), he isnt capable of a relationship. It is amazing how throughout the game and its spinoffs then Cloud continues to push away Tifa after Aerith died. My friend got new respect for Tifa when I told him that Tifa and Cloud never got together, I can give you her exact words : "I thought Tifa was cool before, but I dont like it when characthers are there just for becoming the main characthers girlfriend", then I said : "Tifa never became Clouds girlfriend, he bascily ignores her the hole series" and she answered with : "Are you kidding me, god damnit Cloud, you could have made wonderful kids but noooooo. That changes things". I kinda have to say, I agree with her.

(I had an 8 hour break here, I got friends over for visit) 

Barret is one of those that got a backstory that was well built up, since he leads a terrorist organization and as a legit reason to fight for something (again, this is what made Terra interesting, the lack of reason.), namely his daugther/adoptive daugther. They could have really expanded on his story, but even if they didnt, the story of his was groundsolid.

On Reds part he joined to show that he could be as couragous as his father, he didnt join to "save the world" as you said. His backstory on the other hand doesnt change any of the main story whatsoever. His story get that sidenovel also, I really like that one. Where he and Vincent agrees to meet up once every year.

Cid (I skipped one for a reason) starts out very unlikable, and still didnt become any favorite with me at all. He got some funny lines, thats all, and his hatred for shinra just help the hatred all the others have.

Cait Sith has more backstory in Dirge, I will agree with you on that. You said you hated him, well he is basicly the link between Shinra and the party. He was originaly a spy, but after some events he goes rouge for the party. You get to know that it is the Reeve that sits in the Shinra board. He appearantly plays more of a role in Dirge where he becomes the "leader" of the group.

Yuffie is there since they really need a cute sidekick in the game.... Oh and I dont want to make any large part on Jenova and Sephiroth, since you dont get any big story with Sephiroth. Seph is not a good main villain, he is just a powerhungry maniac, not a mommas boy as everyone says (those that say that got the games story wrong, rather Jenvoa witch is Sephs overprotective Mom). Hojo was the real villain from the start, Shinra wouldnt have any power without him and his teacher Gast. Hojo was not as good as Gast in his studies, but he was more morbid. Red XIII joining you makes more sense when you think of it when you remember that he got the motive to kill Hojo. 

Then to those two that I have the most to say anything about, Vincent and Tifa.

First of Vincent. Vincent I think you get moe backstory of when you play Dirge. Vincent was a Turk like Reno, and he was assigned to protect a scientist that he falls in love with. She then make an relationship with Hojo (already here you know, Vincent gets hatred for Hojo, and with Hojo into the picture then you know that crazy stuff is going to happen), After confronting Hojo with the human experimentation Hojo "almost kills" Vincent. After "almost killing" him he makes alot of experiments on him, which makes Vincent go into a koma before the scientis he fell in love with "revived" him with the chaos materia. In the end, he wakes up after his love had died and Hojo had his success with Sephiroth. Now the story says he goes to sleep because he feels he is responsible. Now I think he went to sleep to keep himself from going on a killing spree, as he probably hated EVERYONE in Shinra for letting Hojo do sh*t like that. Now what probably made him get popularity was that the characther model was fcking amazing looking. It was one of the most epic people in the game (beaten by Red (it is a friggin talking wolf). 

And then Tifa. Tifa became the sole protector of Nibelheim after Zack and Cloud left. She learned herself martial arts to be helpful incase of bad things happening, as the one diciple of a Grand Master of that fighting art. Tifa hates Shinra more than Seph for a reason. Seph isnt important for her, the reason for her village burning down was not sephiroths rage. She probablt looks up at the Shinra Reactor and points it out as the main reason of the village downfall. Shinra made Sephiroth, Shinra made the reactor that desroryed the the village around her, Shinra took both of her closest friends away from her and her teatcher. At the end, the death of her father had to main parts, the location was inside a shinra reactor, the other was the sword through his back. Tifa has one of the saddest storyies since she actually didnt even get mutal love from Cloud. And as a sidenote, her characthermodel is a much more awsome model than aeriths.

FFVII has its nice touches, but it doesnt even get close to the glory that FFVI had at all. The sprites just reminds me that this was the big time of Square. The music is godlike though, and it is a shame that the maker of them has quit Square forever. The last game he had support to was FFXII. 

FFVII has it charms, but it has some major flaws. It is still the most popular one and the game that got most people into the gameseries. The final touch on my reply is that the materiasystem is waaay to complicated. Just like the god damn drawing system is got confusing in FFVIII

Oh and if nobody else even answers to this, it is a shame and the union should be switched around to The Final Fantasy 10 and 13 Union...

Seriously, now maybe 10 hours after I started my post, no other replys have been given. I friggin dare you damnit. 

(Sorry for the late reply Kares, I was gone for 10 hours eating pancakes with my friends at pancake night.) 

I wasn't expecting an immediate reply or one that thorough so I'm highly surprised and happy about that, thanks for wasting all that time on a response ^^' lol. I noticed as I read yours that in my hurry to write all that out I forgot to write the second half of Tifa's character section where I defined her more. I really do like Tifa as a character as well, but after writing what turned out to be 7 pages worth of notes off the top of my head I was bound to forget a few things (there are quite a few small details that I left out about a couple of the characters that bugs me... but honestly I didn't think they were big enough that they changed my over all arguements in the first place, so why change them?) with the exception of Tifa whom you already covered better than I would have anyway, so thanks!

I do agree that Vincent and Cait Sith get far more interesting in Dirge (and I actually DO like them there, I should have specified) but When I'm looking solely at the plot of FInal Fantasy VII as a stand alone title.. Cait Sith especially just kind of pisses me off @.@. Vincent, like you said, it was probably just his character design.

Like I said, my write up wasn't perfect, but the whole time I was writing it I kept getting more and more ideas of what I wanted to say, and I ended up forgetting some things in the process (you know how it is when the good ol' 'muse' hits you just right) but like I said my over arching thoughts still come across well. And I still LOVE Final Fantasy VII, it really is a great game and arguably still one of the best RPGs ever made (especially if you take into account when it was released) buuuuuuuuuut there are some major plot holes that a lot of people seem to be ignoring.

(Oh, actualy just read the novel you mentioned for the first time last night... the prose wasn't great, but I assume that's because it was translated directly from Japanese. I'm sad that Tifa's section was so damn boring, but I can't believe how moving they Made Denzel's story.... I also liked Barret's section but feel they should have made him a little less cartoony with his shouting and stuff... he only did that a couple times in the game and he had damn good reasons for it.. in the book they just had him do it about once a scene.)

OH! I actually have a correction to my sephiroth section, you actually NEVER share a line of dialogue with Sephiroth in the game, he NEVER ONCE talks to you... EVER... does that not irritate anyone else?

Took me awhile to read this lol. Ehhh, i liked this game but didn't find the same appeal for this as others have had.

As for Sephiroth, it has to be his character design. He just looks like a freaking badass. But alot of people would have probably thought that since he was the last boss fight then that meant he was the main villian in this game. It's been awhile since I have played this game and there actually isnt that many memorable moments in the game. The Aerith and Seph scene being the most memorable. 

I liked the story, especially the last part of the game and I thought it was really worth it just waiting for that pretty cool twist with Clouds memory. 

Well I am not very good at typing long essays/reviews when I am tired so I will leave it at this. 

After further research I have learned that Sephiroth was really behind everything that Jenova was doing.. and supposedly he was controlling her while in his hibernated state, so I'm sorry for the misinformation... on the other hand I STILL don't take back the fact that he is a weak villian. Think about this, he sent his MOTHER to do his dirty work! Sephiroth Never once talks to you, and you don't even see the real sephiroth until 3/4s of the way through the game x.x He is cool looking and hell, I still even like him... but a mastermind of epic proportions he is not.. I much prefer Kefka as a villian with Golbez being a close second (ever notice Golbez never actually LOST... he just kind of quit being evil?)

After further research I have learned that Sephiroth was really behind everything that Jenova was doing.. and supposedly he was controlling her while in his hibernated state, so I'm sorry for the misinformation... on the other hand I STILL don't take back the fact that he is a weak villian. Think about this, he sent his MOTHER to do his dirty work! Sephiroth Never once talks to you, and you don't even see the real sephiroth until 3/4s of the way through the game x.x He is cool looking and hell, I still even like him... but a mastermind of epic proportions he is not.. I much prefer Kefka as a villian with Golbez being a close second (ever notice Golbez never actually LOST... he just kind of quit being evil?)

Xx_Kares_xX

I really love as a villian Seymour though. He was also a brilliant villian. Even if he does appear very little throughout FFX, you want kill him everytime. If you want to kill the villian then that for me is a good villian.

That's what I thought really shined in Final FAntasy X, the combat strategys (unless.. you just spammed aeons for 95% of the game). I still like the game but see more of it's flaws now than I did when I was younger. This playthrough has really changed my opinion on a lot of these games, so I wonder how I will feel when I get back to it again.

Haven't read this yet but here's a fun fact for you. Kares, your entire discussion before any replies were made at all was over 4,500 words in length :P Just thought I'd like to share that.irishdude199210

Uhh... sorry for how long it is then ^^'

Haven't read this yet but here's a fun fact for you. Kares, your entire discussion before any replies were made at all was over 4,500 words in length :P Just thought I'd like to share that.irishdude199210

How did you find out?

Copy all the words and post them into Microsoft Word? :P 

[QUOTE="irishdude199210"]Haven't read this yet but here's a fun fact for you. Kares, your entire discussion before any replies were made at all was over 4,500 words in length :P Just thought I'd like to share that.Balmane

How did you find out?

Copy all the words and post them into Microsoft Word? :P 

o.O good question how DID he do that? lol. I originallky typed it in microsoft word and I know it came out to about 7 pages... but I didn't care to do a word count 

[QUOTE="Balmane"]

[QUOTE="irishdude199210"]Haven't read this yet but here's a fun fact for you. Kares, your entire discussion before any replies were made at all was over 4,500 words in length :P Just thought I'd like to share that.Xx_Kares_xX

How did you find out?

Copy all the words and post them into Microsoft Word? :P 

o.O good question how DID he do that? lol. I originallky typed it in microsoft word and I know it came out to about 7 pages... but I didn't care to do a word count 

Maybe a word could of all your posts in the Mega Race thread should be done. Just so see how many words you have actually donated to the forum in one thread. 

[QUOTE="irishdude199210"]Haven't read this yet but here's a fun fact for you. Kares, your entire discussion before any replies were made at all was over 4,500 words in length :P Just thought I'd like to share that.Balmane

How did you find out?

Copy all the words and post them into Microsoft Word? :P

[QUOTE="Balmane"]

[QUOTE="irishdude199210"]Haven't read this yet but here's a fun fact for you. Kares, your entire discussion before any replies were made at all was over 4,500 words in length :P Just thought I'd like to share that.irishdude199210

How did you find out?

Copy all the words and post them into Microsoft Word? :P

Well I guess it made for interesting discussion :P 

Yeah I'm including optional places. The Midgar sectors did look the same, but they were supposed too. It was a slum. I'm not talking about looks though I'm talking about things that happened at each location, not the locations themselves. I will explain better when I do my write up. Please don't feel like I'm picking on FFVIII just to pick on it... we are discussing this in a thread where I TORE INTO Final Fantasy VII, a game I have a great deal of nostalgia towards and really LIKE, I am critical of everything. Here is another thing people need to realize.. there is a difference between liking something and knowing whether it's actually GOOD or not. I am critiquing, not Trolling... I give good credit where it's due as well as bad and I tear into the things I like as much as I do things I don't. For example... I really like the Saw video games because I'm a huge fan of the films. Yes they are very flawed games  and I can aknowledge that while still having fun with them. They are VERY bad games but it doesn't change the fact that I like them.

So that's the difference here... even if I liked Final Fantasy VIII more than I do I would still tear it a new one for all it's flaws (as I will be doing for Final Fantasy X... a game with very mixed reception that I remember loving but DOES have a lot of problems).

Kares, I am not criticising you. What you wrote was what you thought and you are right. It's just that others have different opinions and are more tolerative towards the flaws if they like the game.

Also that connection is pretty awesome. First time hearing that. 

Thanks Squallsrevival, glad you liked it ^^. I'm namely writing these to open up discussions not to say 'I'm write and your opinions wrong' (well.. most of the time).

x.x... yeah... I've heard that connection it's all bullsh*t made up by square to try and sell more copies of the game (once again, they've even come out and said so). It was not originally intended to be connected they just retconned it after fans asked about Shinra's name (which was supposed to be just a simple easter egg for those paying attention)

Edit: If you notice all of these connections came from X-2, not X... a game that they knew was not going to sell as well and they knew that fanboys would flock to buy a copy if it was related to their precious Final Fantasy VII... (I'm not being a hypocrite... I nerdgasmed just as hard when I first found that article years ago.. but with further research I learned it was just a marketing ploy... Square... once again... at their finest...)

Thanks Squallsrevival, glad you liked it ^^. I'm namely writing these to open up discussions not to say 'I'm write and your opinions wrong' (well.. most of the time).

x.x... yeah... I've heard that connection it's all bullsh*t made up by square to try and sell more copies of the game (once again, they've even come out and said so). It was not originally intended to be connected they just retconned it after fans asked about Shinra's name (which was supposed to be just a simple easter egg for those paying attention)

Edit: If you notice all of these connections came from X-2, not X... a game that they knew was not going to sell as well and they knew that fanboys would flock to buy a copy if it was related to their precious Final Fantasy VII... (I'm not being a hypocrite... I nerdgasmed just as hard when I first found that article years ago.. but with further research I learned it was just a marketing ploy... Square... once again... at their finest...)

Xx_Kares_xX

It's disapointing.. I'm still clinging to ANY last hope that they will redeem even a sliver of how good they used to be. (well to be fair... from what little I've played of KH:3D so far, it's pretty good) but that's the only thing they seem to be keeping consistent.Xx_Kares_xX

Hope is all you can have for them to make a great game again. I mean how hard could it be for them they've done it several times before this is just a little hiccup they need to get through. Even though I'm pretty sure there was no reason for the XIII sequels.D3dr0_0

Well all of the key players that were around when they were making their 'great games' have left the company, Like Hironoby Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uematsu and many others whose name escape me because... well... those are my too favorite <<...>>. This isn't me being cynical though, there was a mass desertion when square got a new president and started being a jerk and only wanting money. That's WHY the key people left and started their own companies because they KNEW Square was in the crapper.