Reader Reviews

Final Fantasy VII (PSone)

by Lutz

"7? Final Fantasy 7? Seven?. Where were the other six?" If I had a pound for every time I've heard that I'd have enough to make the other 6. But it was a fair point - where were the other six? Ahh... We're in Europe, yes. We got shafted, as per normal, by Nintendo. So when Sony lured Square into the land of CDs and Ridge Racers, they did the world a favour. And what a favour. For months my mate raved about it. "Yeah yeah, whatever" would be the response as I moved a little soldier in Shining Force 3. About a month from release I saw a trailer. And my entire gaming life changed.

On the day of release I sold my Saturn with a collection of now very rare titles (Including aforementioned Shining Force 3 - which I bash my head on the desk about repeatedly) so that I could buy a brand new PSX, a memory card and Final Fantasy VII. Oh and Descent. Anyway... I raced home, well, the taxi did, and I can honestly say I've never got a console set up as fast. 30 hours later I put the control down and almost cried that the game had ended. For the first time ever I'd sat from the beginning of a game right through to the end. (Bar about four toilet breaks of course) What did I do next? Started again of course...

So what made this game so good? Why do so many people think this is the best game ever made, let alone greatest RPG ever made? Well, let us begin.

From the opening you had a stunning never-seen-before (not this good anyway and certainly not on a console) FMV sequence of a train travelling around a large spire and the camera panning out to show a shot of the entire city. Sound boring? It probably is. But is was so good, so smooth and when it ended the next screen didn't load up, the characters simply jumped straight from the train to the platform. The FMVs were in perfect sync with the actual game. All the while you have this great soundtrack playing away, the tempo and beat making one hell of an atmosphere. Later on in game they only got better with the awesome limit breaks (Omnislash anyone?) and the stunning summons. I can even remember the first time I summoned Bahamut Zero; I've never seen a goblin smeared across the landscape so well. The graphical detail was staggering for 1995, and the amount of polish on the game makes you wonder if the programmers actually had any life outside of making this game.

The learning curve was perfectly spot on. At first you'd have someone to follow around, leading you form A to B. In combat it was slow and only a few options were available, each one explained by a quick press of the "select" button. Over time more options were added. The speed increased as you levelled up your characters and the combat was also partially customisable too.

The story was immediately gripping. You were a mercenary gang fighting against the oppression of the super-corporation Shin-Ra. First job: nuke one of their Mako Reactors. You had guards to deal with, a beautifully laid out building to navigate and a boss to get past. Brilliant intro. More jobs unfold as you try more daring things until things start to get a bit out of hand and it isn't long before you realise something far more sinister is afoot. However here comes the first of the bad things. The story was very confusing and it took me at least three run-throughs of the game before I understood what happened. And that's only my opinion as to what happened. There's no clear-cut message as to whom or what is doing what to whom, even when they did it. It makes your head hurt just thinking about it. The fact that the translation is a half-baked affair doesn't help. Aside from the blocky character models though these are just about the only flaws in the game. However the story is still talked about even now, so maybe that's a good thing.

It started a fresh surge in interest in RPGs over on these shores and will always be remembered for that. Sadly it will also be remember for many other things, like the tards trawling the internet looking for naked pictures of Tifa, one of the main characters, or them asking tard-like questions such as "How do you revive Aeris?!" And before you ask yes it does have "TeH m04Orb1k3s!?", which you get to play with as much as you like.

The game gripped you and didn't let go until the final bloody confrontation between yourself and Sephiroth, who incidentally is regarded as one of the greatest villains of all time. Not a patch on Luca Blight from Suikoden 2 mind, but I digress. Each of the characters had their own story and all were involved with the main plot whilst maintaining their own side quests and quirks that made them unique, something that I feel the Final Fantasy series has lost a bit of over the years. One factor they got spot on was the side quests. There were a lot of them, two of which were from the "secret" characters in the game and each one was usually rather long and purposeful. No side quest could ever be complete without the bad guys though - up stepped Ruby and Emerald Weapon, two of the toughest bosses ever to be in a computer game. Entire guides have been written about them, and some people still can't kill them off. Even now I personally reckon I'd be hard pushed to take them out. The game has risen to an almost cult status in places, which is sort of scary.