No wonder people love this game.
It’s been at least 6 or 7 years since I played FFVII for the first time, originally playing the PC version, which at the time didn’t really seem to compare to the original Playstation one. The PS version’s low-res backgrounds and videos looked great on a TV (at least a TV from that era) but terrible on a higher res computer monitor. Nonetheless, I remembered FF7 as being a wonderful game and its value on EBay today confirms how many people still cherish it as one of the Square RPG’s to have, along with Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana for the SNES.
You’re Cloud (or rename him to be any name you want), a young loner punk with a big, uh, sword. You’re young, strong, badass, and you do your own thing. As the game starts, Cloud’s teaming up with a rebel group called Avalanche who are trying to overthrow an empire-like Shinra. Cloud’s in it for the money, which causes some friction with the group’s leader Barret, whom I would describe as Mr. T with a minigun for a hand. As things progress, you decide that maybe you should stick around, maybe you’re not such a punk after all. Maybe they are things you care about in life.
Like Tifa, the hot girl you grew up with. Or Aeris, the hot girl with mysterious powers who is wanted by Shinra for more than her looks…..Both of whom have an interest in you.
Hot girls, a call for adventure, and only you can save the world?
An innocence any not-so-cool-in-life 17 year old (or for me, 27 years old) would enjoy!
Oh yeah, did I mention you may have occasion to ride a bad ass motorcycle and cute little yellow horses/camels/things called Chocobos?
Sign me up!
If you’ve played any of the SNES FF games or the recent GBA remakes, think of FF7 as FF3/6 in 3D. I basically mean, the town structure, the battle system, you have seen it before. The way you interact with non-player characters (NPC), etc., there isn’t any real change in gameplay. Instead of 2D sprites, imagine a world with painted CG backgrounds and polygonal characters.
10 years ago, the big deal with FF VII were the graphics and story. The story, while great, had been done before, but not the graphics: Full motion video, polygon characters, crazy special effects! Summons were half ridiculous, half awesome. Obviously today the graphics are no big deal, but the art direction still shows. The designs still look amazing, if not super clean, and it’s still a world I’d love to be part of today.
Final Fantasy VII feels like a true adventure. You go places, meet people, have sad moments, have happy ones, I think it’s more of you feel like you’re doing something, you’re part of a world, but you in itself are not the world. You have to save the world, but you can enjoy the ride, life isn’t so depressing. It reminds me of the original Star Wars trilogy, where there was a seriously depressing obstacle in the way, the Empire, yet the stories and characters have time for fun and comedy in between moments of near-death.
Yet, what’s most apparently wrong about FF, not just with this FF game but so many in the series as well as other similar-styled RPGs is the need for constant battle.
In many Japanese-style turn-based RPG’s, battles does not mean action.
I personally don’t think battles are fun. Leveling up, getting stronger, sure that’s important and rewarding. Who doesn’t want to progress, gain more skills? But random battles? I’m just running along trying to get to the next town, and then I have to get hit randomly 20 times on my way there, forced to fight? And when I do fight, I don’t consider the act all that appealing. Sure, maybe for a boss fight, that can be stressful, exciting, tension-filled, but fighting a bat 30 times in a hour? All I do is keep pressing attack when the turns turn up because I don’t want to waste my magic points in case I need them later.
This isn’t fun. And random battles is a big reason why I haven’t haven’t played many RPG’s. Square Soft games are notorious for them, and while leveling can be a fun time, knowing there’s 30 hours worth of leveling to be had doesn’t really fit my schedule any more now that I’m older.
I know the newest Final Fantasy game, FFXII, makes battle more enjoyable, but I don’t see any reason why battle is so important. To me, it’s more about the adventure, the story, the characters you meet. There can be fights, but my guess is that you can easily remove at least 70% of the fights, and you’d enjoy the game much more and not feel so enslaved to monotonous level grind.
So back to FFVII again. It is a good game. I don’t think it’s a game for beginning game players, just because it’s a bit annoying in terms of the level grind. I guess at this stage in my life, which is mainly consumed by work, I’m more into immediate benefit, linear gameplay. Whatever I’m doing, I want instant feedback that, hey this is fun, I want to keep doing it. Battles take away that constant feedback/fun for me. I
If you have a gamepad, I definitely recommend using it. I used my XBox 360 controller, but when you’re playing the game you definitely think of it as a console experience, as not much was done to take advantage of the PC in terms of game interface.
For the PC version, fans have worked on various projects to update the graphics (1280 x 1024 res, new character models) and fix other issues that have not aged so well over time (various bugs).
For information on the upgrades, try:
(Edit: 06/01/2008) Added Screenshots of the game with the enhancement patches:
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secret of mana,
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