So I’m a bit behind on the times when it comes to some of the classics of video games. One of those beinging, Final Fantasy 7. I never had an original Playstation, instead I stuck with my Super Nintendo playing Yoshi’s Island, and I think I moved on to N64 after that. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is I finally got Final Fantasy 7 (because I’ve been hearing about it ever since it came out when I was in 6th grade) and felt I needed to finally experience the magic.
My thoughts…it was alright. Now I have to take into account that I was until just recently playing a Playstation game when we’re currently on the Playstation 3, which has incredible graphics. I also had to take into account how much FF7 paved the way for other RPG’s and I could definitley see that. While the story was interesting it wasn’t captivating. The struggle between Avalanche and Shinra was intersting but the story didn’t quite feel epic enough (despite a comet coming towards the world about to blow it up).
What really sold me on the game were the diverse characters. This RPG was probably the best cast of characters I’ve ever played in an RPG. You’ve got the tough talking Barret, the tough yet introspective Red XII, the horribly unreliable Yuffie, the strange and ridiculous Cait Sith creature, the cursing and smoking sky pilot Cid, and Vincent who was silently emo before emo was a real thing. They were just all so diverse and different. I hate playing RPG’s from Japan where all the characters look like stock characters from any anime show. Or characters that all look the same or just look plain stupid.
Now for the characters that didn’t do it for me. I’ve been told by people, online forums, top lists, etc. that Sephiroth was one bad dude and in the Advent Children movie and Kingdom Hearts he seems pretty wicked…pretty wickedly awesome! But the Sephiroth in the game was sort of uninteresting. His backstory of his realizing who he really was and going bat shit insane was alright, but his insertions into the rest of the story seemed pretty trivial. Even while fighting him as the last boss I was left feeling that I had been cheated. The only thing that made up for it was of course the One Winged Angel music, which is marvelous and does what the Imperial March does for Darth Vader. They’ve more than made up for him as I’ve said in the media that has followed after FF7. The other characters that didn’t really work for me were surprisingly Cloud and Aeries. Cloud’s story was so hard to follow, what was true and what wasn’t, that I had to rely on written explanations online. He was so incredibly moody for the first part of the game and then suddenly becomes this sort of this character that says really dumb things. But at least he didn’t suddenly become the awe inspired anime youth that wants to take on the entire world with nothing but their upbeat attitude. For that I thank you. And lastly Aeries. She was barely in the party (and I must admit I never used her in my party) before she goes off and gets herself killed. It was pretty out of the blue and the music made me feel bad (I’m a sucker for music setting the mood) but I knew so little about her and she was barely in the story, that I didn’t feel like I really lost someone important. I definitely think her death could have been much more of an impact.
oh!...umm...okay, whatever
Overall I liked the game. It was fun ride even if the deformed polygon bodies (and using the d-pad on the controller) were hard to stomach at first. And I can definitley see how it raised the bar for all the RPG’s to follow it. I’d also like to see more twists in RPG’s, like the death of Aeries. Perhaps a death of the main character? That would really switch things up. Also the RPG’s now really have to strive and make their characters stand out, otherwise RPG’s will become stale. And that’s no good for gaming and storytelling.
