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Final Fantasy VII (PSX) Square
In 1997 Sony Computer Entertainment America released one of the biggest games in console history: Final Fantasy VII. Though the series was adored by many hardcore gamers, it never had mass appeal until the seventh installment. Backed by a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign, the game generated more hype than any other Final Fantasy title to date. The game was a remarkable success that appealed to RPG enthusiasts (who have been waiting for years for a new Final Fantasy) and mainstream gamers. Sony sold millions of copies and Square became so synonymous with RPGs that even the average "guy on the bus" knew about the company.
The famed trio: Cloud, Barrett, and Tifa.
While the success of the game was fantastic for Sony, Square, and the industry, it also left many with clouded (tee-hee) opinions of the game. For thousands (possibly millions) of gamers, FFVII was their introduction to the series. And, almost always, the first time you encounter something is the most memorable. Most FF aficionados will tell you that VII, while very good, is hardly the best game in the series. Yet many gamers feel otherwise -- check out the GameSpy Forums for proof. Many of the editors at GameSpy have played most of the FF games, and none of them think VII is anywhere near the best. In this case, the first time's the charm.
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Psylancer: I very much enjoyed FFVII, but there are several FF games I enjoyed far more. To me, FFVI was the game that really elevated the series in every way but commercially. I loved the complexity of the "job system" in FFV. The "grid system," gameplay, and characters in FFX were fantastic. It's a relatively unpopular FF, but I found the characters in IX to be far more charming than the ones in VII. And, though it's a spinoff, FF Tactics is one of my favorite games of all time.
When I compare the components of VII to the other games, I just don't think it stacks up. The music is good, but Uematsu has composed better. Save for Yuffie, the characters weren't as memorable as other FF denizens. Gameplay has been done better in other FF games. The story is uneven and not as "epic" as other FF tales. The one thing I don't get at all is how people rave about the "materia system," which is the game's prevalent method of character customization and combat. It really deemphasizes individual characters and abilities. One of my buddies said, "Materia makes magic and abilities too interchangeable, so the characters fade away and just become materia slots. So the whole point of characters becomes their limit breaks, which is sort of lame."
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ferricide: Final Fantasy VII is not my least favorite game in the series. It's nowhere near my favorite, either -- it rests squarely in the middle. I look at it as a very transitional game for both the series and the industry: It was an experiment, and like many experiments, it's fraught with a number of little failures and small successes. The result is something of a lovable mess. The bad: a horrid translation; squatty, miserable-looking characters in the exploration bits (even at the time -- really!); endless, irritating mini-games; a boring (if cool) antagonist and a nonsensical story (which is compounded by the aforementioned shoddy translation.) The good: creative, pioneering use of cinemas; a beautiful polygonal battle system; increased drama and tension in the story. That's not everything, but like I said -- experiments. Say what you will about Final Fantasy VIII -- personally, I like it a lot -- but it's a hell of a lot more consistent game.
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Ben: Well, I have to disagree with my colleagues and leave myself open for flaming from every Final Fantasy freak in the world by saying that I didn't like Final Fantasy VII. At all. It just wasn't a good game, especially in its English incarnation.
I can only attribute its popularity to the cutting-edge (at the time) graphics and the heavy marketing push it got in the States. As a result, it drew in many people who had never played an RPG before, and made many of them longtime fans of the genre. ('Course, once in a while I also hear anecdotes about newbies who made it to the final dungeon without knowing what Materia was.)
That wasn't me, though. I was already very familiar with the genre, and I didn't like much of what Final Fantasy VII had to offer. The characters were paper-thin and the English writing / translation was among the worst ever. The music completely failed to take advantage of the CD-ROM medium, and the game's tepid MIDI score was hardly worthy of a soundtrack album ("One-Winged Angel" or not). Even the vaunted graphics weren't that great, with ugly dithered CG backgrounds, laughably spartan SD character models, and a battle system that limped along at 15 frames per second. And, let's not mention the plethora of annoying mini-games, and the insipid, insulting story with its utterly spectacular FMV non-ending.
So yeah, I guess you could say that I think Final Fantasy VII is overrated.
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