Then the setting: I loved that world. A better world map, I have never encountered. Full of mystery and variety, from exploring the ocean depths in a submarine to zipping about the skies in your airship to traveling around on a chocobo, it was about as dynamic as any interactive world could've been.
Each town had a style and persona all its own, each area had a specific appeal, and how each character reacted to each region was also important. There's a reason why one of the most memorable moments in history is when Sephiroth slays Aeris.
They remember specific moments. They remember the times when they reacted to what they say, and the bottom line is that we kept reacting throughout. It seemed like every new scene was worth storing in our memory banks, because it affected us in a completely new and even profound way. No matter what happens in gaming from here on out, you know you'll always recall these scenes.
That's what makes for a special game. When you factor in everything, and you take into consideration the era in which it was released, I don't think there's any doubt about it: Final Fantasy VII is still the best RPG ever made. Doesn't apply to me, trust me on that.
Web Twitter Facebook. Published Jul. There seems to be a high correlation between ff7 fans and being a weeb who never really played other rpgs anyway. There have been so many great games since FF7 came out. But none have even close to had the same impact on me. It had such an utterly engrossing storyline.
I'm nervous with the remake coming out. If it even comes close to what the original was, then a whole new generation of gamers are going to experience a magical game that will change the way they look at video games. I just hope it does the original justice. I didn't have a Play Station, but our family got a new PC in and by that time I was able to get a fairly cheap PC version of the game.
I finally finished the game in January While it's hard not to be impressed by it, I think I came to the realization that I just assumed that the game would be better than any RPG prior to it that I'd played, because of the game's length and depth. Nintendo was extremely cautious not to offend the American market, perhaps overly cautious.
Many players were upset, but the game was still fairly successful, although not as successful as it was in Japan. Nintendo was not the only one to make mistakes. The game bombed. Final Fantasy V, released in Japan in December , almost made it across the ocean. Squaresoft announced that it would be Final Fantasy III in America, and even started work on the English translation, but it was dropped for unknown reasons. Speculations abound, including one that says Squaresoft thought that the game would be too complex for US gamers, and another one that hints at squabbles with Nintendo over cartridge size.
Anyway, the game was later announced for US release again in by Squaresoft, and then again in by Eidos, but both times gamers never saw the game. It eventually arrived in as part of the Final Fantasy Anthology for the Playstation. But that is another entire story unto itself, worthy enough to be discussed separately some other time. This was also the first game in which we could see the clear guiding hand of director Kitase towards a more dramatic and mature tone.
Final Fantasy VI addressed issues such as suicide and teen pregnancy, and handled them in a mature manner. Squaresoft knew then that it was time to move on. To achieve a breakthrough, a newer, more powerful console system was needed, but that new console was not destined to be a Nintendo machine. You have no heart and cannot feel any pain. Despite the long working relationship Squaresoft had with Nintendo, not everything was well. Nintendo had an infamous reputation for exerting tight control over the game makers and Squaresoft was no exception.
In addition to problems over censorship and localization, other issues also contributed to the gradually souring relationship. In December , Squaresoft had to delay the release of Romancing SaGa not released in the US into January because of bugs, but found it impossible to fix the bugs due to a lack of cartridge memory. Squaresoft requested Nintendo to allow them to use the new 12M cartridge but was denied.
Squaresoft was left with no choice but to take out parts of the game, including a final boss scenario. Squaresoft was forced to downsize the game to fit onto a cartridge, and the result was lots of bugs. It was originally supposed to be a Squaresoft release, but Nintendo took over at the last minute, and it became a Nintendo release.
Nintendo complained that Squaresoft rushed the development of the game, and things never looked worse between the two companies. When Squaresoft found out that the next-generation Nintendo 64 Disk Drive would not be a CD-ROM system but was going to be yet another cartridge-based system, they decided it was time to move on.
The news shocked the industry, although it was already known by industry watchers for some time that Squaresoft was planning to leave Nintendo.
At that time the Sega Saturn console was very popular in Japan, with a huge library of games. But Squaresoft decided, for unknown reasons, to go with Sony instead. It was even more surprising considering that Shiochiro Irimajiri, the president of Sega, and Tomoyuki Takechi, president of Squaresoft, grew up in the same city and are childhood friends.
By mid-March, Nintendo dumped all their Square stocks, which were bought up by Sony. The impact on Nintendo was great. There's no way that any Nintendo cartridge-based system could cram that much data into one game. The split was so bitter that even after Nintendo re-established relations with Namco in , Yamauchi, president of Nintendo, still refused to consider working with Squaresoft.
Never before had so much money gone into the making of an RPG. Over a hundred artists worked on producing the most amazing computer graphics ever seen in a video game.
Beautifully rendered full-motion video FMV sequences were woven directly into the gameplay, and the game played out pretty much like a movie. Pre-rendered backdrops graced the screen throughout the entire game world. It was a very radical thing to do. Squaresoft believed otherwise, and thought that graphics would appeal to a much wider audience. They took a huge gamble with the production budget and proved that their intuition was right. They also showed that a Hollywood-sized budget can in fact for an RPG, and raised the status of RPGs away from the perception that RPGs were made by a few guys tinkering around in a garage.
The main game engine was developed at the Japanese offices of Squaresoft, supervised by Hironobu Sakaguchi, while the impressive video sequences were created at the new and expensive offices of Square USA in Honolulu, Hawaii. Squaresoft fully took advantage of the many talented and experienced computer animators and powerful computers this side of the Pacific.
Every new Final Fantasy has to have something new in terms of gameplay, and in Final Fantasy VII that innovation was the materia system. My eyes are burning! The emotional texture would be entirely different if I were watching someone who looks like a grown man say these things, and I suspect that Remake will have to find its own way of navigating this particular emotional and psychological territory as a result.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake , however, drowns us in detail, to such an extent that our imagination has nowhere to go, and no blanks to fill in. We see what Square Enix wants us to see, nothing more, and certainly nothing less. The realistic design could, in fact, hold back some of the more emotional reactions inspired by the original release. And what of the world that these characters inhabit? Sometimes the framing emphasizes the industrial and military power of the Shinra corporation, as in one scene where Cloud moves through a shipyard, a barely visible speck, dwarfed by a massive airship looming above him.
What Remake adds in immediacy, it lacks in the power of the sweeping grandeur of the original. The challenge faced by the artists responsible for creating the environments of Final Fantasy 7 laid in how to make them feel alive, despite the limitations of pre-rendered backgrounds and a static camera.
The team rose to this challenge with aplomb, understanding that subtle touches could go a long way toward making these places feel like more than just static images. See that steam issuing forth above? One of my favorite tricks FF7 uses to make areas feel more alive. Both takes have value, and merit, and work best as companion pieces instead of a binary choice. Finally, I appreciate that Final Fantasy 7 feels so inviting, especially when compared to Remake.
I want as many people as possible to experience the enchantment that it offers, and I think the makers of the game did, too, and designed the game accordingly. The Chocobos were pretty much a game within a game, which is why they stand out so much.
Well, that, and the Chocobo dance. When you needed a break from hunting Sephiroth or escaping Shinra forces, you could just head on down to Gold Saucer and leave the battles behind, at least for a little while. The bright, vibrant amusement park city had games galore--if betting on Chocobos wasnt your thing, you could always head to the Speed Square for a quick on-rails shooter. The Battle Square let you put your combat skills to the test for some lovely prizes, or you could just check out the arcade-like Wonder Square.
And if Gold Saucer was too loud for your tastes, there were plenty of mini-games built right into the campaign: snowboarding, a squat competition, and Fort Condors tower defense, just to name a few. These sequences, whether mandatory or voluntary, gave you a break from the action and some fresh gameplay before returning you to the traditional RPG format, which kept the FFVII from feeling redundant and boring. Current page: Page 1. Get the best gaming deals, reviews, product advice, competitions, unmissable gaming news and more!
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