So I finished FFVII last week, and I thought I'd do a full review. (Quick note: I'll be using a lot of Roman Numerals, cuz that's the proper way to refer to the games.) OBLIGATORY SPOILER WARNING!!!!
First of all, I thought I'd fill you all in on my limited history with the Final Fantasy series.
I've only ever played Final Fantasy X and XII (I never finished X though.....). I thought X (Ten) wasn't all that great, but they may have been because I screwed up the Sphere grid and none of my characters were strong enough to do doodley squat against some later bosses. I must have screwed up royally, because I had a friend who breezed through the game like it was nothing. XII (Twelve) was pretty good in my opinion, but it had a problem with money, so I spent far too long grinding for sell-able items.
Anyway, I thought I'd pick up VII, possibly the most famous in the series. I got it for $11.99 off the Square Enix website. Getting it through their site was a mistake, as their download program is apparently famously terrible. I suggest getting it on Steam instead. Ok, NOW on to the review!
Game: Final Fantasy VII is an RPG released by Square in 1997 for the Playstation, and for PC in 1998. It was re-released for PC in August 2012 on Square Enix's website which is the version I got.
Gameplay: Final Fantasy VII is an RPG, and thus has fairly normal RPG gameplay, such as random battles, an open world to travel around, etc. It uses the Active Time Battle System, a Square standard which was introduced in Final Fantasy IV. It should be familiar to anyone who has played a Square RPG of the 90s, such as FF-VI and Chrono Trigger. In effect, this system adds a level of real time by giving each character a time bar that must fill up over a few seconds in order to act. Once the character takes an action, the bar must refill from the beginning again. This scatters the turn order so that fast characters, like Yuffie the Ninja in VII, get more turns. For more info on this System, check out this site:
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_System#Active_Time_Battle.
All the Magic and Abilities are equipped through orbs called Materia. Each piece of equipment has a certain number of slots to place Materia. For example, Cloud's Buster sword has two slots. These slots are connected, which means the two Materia can influence each other. Say the Green one is Lightning, and the blue is the Elemental Materia. This combination gives the Buster sword a Lightning element, so it's attacks deal lightning damage. On the other hand, the Titan Bangle's slots aren't connected, so the Materia there can't interact.
The Materia levels up on its own system of AP points, and the abilities you get from them increase as well. For example, when you first equip that Cover Materia up there^^^ it works 20% of the time, but when upgraded it to three stars it may work 40% of the time. You also get new abilities like Cure2 when you upgrade the Restore Materia. Some of the coolest Materia I got were Double Cut, which allows you to attack twice in one Attack Command; Choco/Mog, which lets you summon a Moogling riding a Chocobo to attack your enemies; and Death Blow, which gives that character a command that always scores a critical hit (though accuracy takes a hit).
Next up in the Battle category is Limit Breaks. These are essentially Super Attacks that either let you deal a lot of damage, heal the whole party at once, or cast multiple buff spells at once. Each character has their own unique 7 Limit Breaks in four levels. For example, look at the pic above^^^. They are unlocked by defeating enemies and using other Limit Breaks often. However, the strongest and final Limit Break for each character must be found in the form of an item somewhere in the world. They are spread all over, so it takes a while to find them. For example, Cloud's requires you to earn a lot of points in a battle minigame, while Red XIII's is find-able sitting around in his hometown, Cosmo Canyon.
Another facet of the gameplay is the over-world movement. FF-VII has a gigantic world map that manages to have more and more to explore as you progress. You gain access to different vehicles throughout the story that unlock access to new areas. They range from a hovercraft/car to cross shallow rivers, to an Airship that lets you fly all across the world, to a submarine to explore underneath the ocean.
On a more small scale note, the individual areas are really well done. Square did a really good job making the flat 2D backgrounds interesting and obscuring hidden pathways so you have to put effort into finding them. The areas are drastically different from each other, each having their own gimmicks.
One thing I really liked is the amount of minigames you encounter as you progress through the story. It feels like the developers decided to throw in whatever they felt would improve the game. While that may sound like a terrible idea, it actually really works in their favor. One minute you are skydiving off platforms to land near items, another you are playing a piano to unlock a Limit Break, and another you are playing a simplified RTS game to fight off the enemy army. The thing that sets this concept apart is that in other RPGs I've played, you'll play a minigame like one of these, but it will get used repeatedly and eventually be used in the final dungeon. Final Fantasy VII does have a few of these, but the single use minigames far outweigh the often used ones.
The one complaint I have is that the game was too easy. For a game with so much to do, and so many systems to master to improve your characters(straight levels, Materia levels, Limit breaks) I never needed them all that much. When I first got the game, I heard that you could use a tool on Square's website to max out your character's stats, "so one could just enjoy the story". This led me to believe that I might have some trouble with the game, but I only ever died to optional areas/bosses of ridiculous difficulty.
Gameplay gets a 9.5/10 for overall awesomeness, but being too easy.
Presentation/Graphics: In my opinion, Final Fantasy VII's graphics are fairly good. If we look at some other games released in 1997, we can compare graphical quality:
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| Final Fantasy VII |
 |
| Mario Kart 64 |
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| Tekken 3 |
In terms of model detail, I think that FFVII is better than Mario Kart 64, but isn't as good as Tekken 3. However, considering that the model and character animation is of such large importance to Tekken, this makes perfect sense. All in all, FFVII had good graphics for its time.
Every Party character in Final Fantasy VII has two models, one for the field, and one for battles.On the right, you can see Cloud Strife's battle model, then his field model. Next is Barret Wallace's two models.
As far as I can tell, Square did this because of hardware limitations. The models lack detail to allow a greater flexibility in what the character can do. For example, with this under detailed model, jumping around and climbing is easier to animate, and more effort could be put into making the world and story deep and interesting. I love it when developers do this because, to me, it means they care about the game as a whole, rather than just how it'll look on the marketing campaigns.
The graphics may seem pretty dated, but it isn't a big deal while playing, and it has a certain charm to it.
I give the Graphics a perfect 10/10, because they are about as good as one could expect from 1997. I don't see how they could have done better.
Sound: As is traditional for JRPGs, the soundtrack is awesome. It was written by the great Nobuo Uematsu, the guy who writes all the music for Final Fantasy games. He's like the Koji Kondo of Square's games. Instead of talking about it a bunch, here's some links to some of the best tracks:
This first one is the Main Theme, but also the World Map music. Imagine running across endless plains, snow covered mountains, and even a canyon or two as you listen to this piece. I suggest listening to the orchestrated version as well.
Main Theme
Main Theme (Orchestrated)
The other really good ones are the Battle themes, both for normal battles and the Boss Battle Theme.
Random Battle
Boss Battle Theme
The Sound effects were pretty good as well. It may have been a problem with my headphones, but some of the sound effects were very tinny and piercing, especially during some of the summons.
I give the Sound a 9.5/10 for being amazing, but not quite perfect.
Story: Now we reach the interesting collage that is the story. It is definitely one of the better RPG stories ever written. BIG SPOILER TAG here because I'm gonna summarize the story. Those of you who would prefer to skip all this, scroll until you see SKIP TO HERE.
The game begins in the city of Midgar, where Cloud Strife and Barret Wallace on their way to a generator to destroy it. Along for the ride are minor characters Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge, who, along with Barret, make up the rebel group AVALANCHE. They want to destroy this generator because it is harming the Planet as it extracts Mako, or Life energy, from the ground. Midgar City is run by the bigwig corporation Shinra, a corporation who owns all the Mako generators. They run a group of super soldiers called SOLDIER (Real creative Square!), which Cloud claims to be a former member of. Another notable SOLDIER is Sephiroth, a crazy strong dude with an abnormally long sword.
After a chaotic mission and battling off a few dozen of Shinra's mercenaries, The generator is destroyed. They go back to their hideout, and Cloud leaves because it turns out he was only on the team for that one job. Before he leaves, he meets up with Tifa, a childhood friend of his who now works for AVALANCHE. Soon after, Cloud wanders around and meets Aerith, a young girl who sells flowers on the streets of Midgar.
Also working for the Shinra are a team called The Turks, a Trio of suit wearing mercenaries. Cloud saves Aerith from these Turks, and takes her to her home, where he finds out Aerith is the last of an Ancient race called "The Ancients". The Shinra want to capture her because of this.
Next, the Shinra, being the big jerks they are, drop a metal plate that hangs above the city onto the part of Midgar where AVALANCHE hides, killing hundreds or thousands. Tifa and Barret make it out okay, but Biggs, Wedge and Jessie die. The Turks also capture Aerith from right underneath Cloud's nose, taking her to the Shinra building in the Center of Midgar. With nothing else to do, Cloud teams up with Barret and Tifa to save Aerith from the Shinra.
Along the way, they meet Red XIII, a red dog/wolf thing who the Shinra have been torturing/running tests on. They save Aerith, but watch Sephiroth murder the president of Shinra. Cloud and Co. barely escape the building as the president's son, Rufus, orders their execution. They escape the city of Midgar, and the game finally gets going.
SKIP TO HERE!! There you have about an eighth of the game, maybe a bit less. WHAT?!?!? It's a long game! :P
Other notable happenings: Chasing Sephiroth, meeting a flying old man, Chasing Sephiroth, a Cat on a Giant Mog who talks, Cigar smoking engineers, A giant Meteor, and Cloud having three hundred nervous breakdowns!!!
But seriously, I thought the story was pretty good. I liked how the cutscenes had differing dialogue depending on who was in your party. For example, Barret always wanted to know how things would affect the planet and his daughter, while Yuffie was incredulous to a lot of stuff. I like how often the game gave you a chance to just poke around and explore. There are a few times where it tells you something like "hey, head north to that Island!" but lets you poke around all you want.
Finally, the ending was a bit underwhelming, but that was probably because Sephiroth was a bit too easy. I laughed my way through the boss fights, but I did think the two party thing was pretty genius. The trouble is that I've always heard that the duality of light and dark between Sephiroth and Cloud was a big deal in the end, but I didn't see any of that. I've also heard Sephiroth called the One Winged Angel, but he's never called that in-game.
I give the story a 9/10 for being pretty good and engaging, but the ending wasn't as good as people tell me.
I give Final Fantasy VII a solid 9.5/10. I definitely recommend picking it up from Steam. 