Final Fantasy VII

This is it, people. The moment I have been waiting for to show you how much of a fanboy I can be and the moment you have all been waiting for to skip to the last paragraph or the rest of my review due to the excess amount of fanboyism in this review. To those that don't know, Final Fantasy VII is the reason I am a gamer, the reason I fell in love with Role-playing games and the reason I am still single. I have repeated this game countless amounts of times and I always recount ridiculous stories to my friends of how obsessed I was with it, from losing the original copy of the game and eventually finding a copied version only to hide 5 copies all over my house in case I lose it again, to another story of my brother preventing me from playing FFVII on his Playstation, to which I emptied a bottle of water on his Playstation as revenge. Yes, I was a devil as a kid and a stubborn idiot. But all you had to do was let me play my damn RPGs in peace. I haven't even started to what a masterpiece this was and how shitty it is today LOL

I only had realized this recently but Final Fantasy VII was great on its own. It was a fully regarded masterpiece and considered one of the best games of all time. You'd think they'd be happy with the amount of revenue it had but the game spawned into ridiculous and terrible spin offs, prequels and sequels in any medium you can think of. It felt humiliating being involved with the characters of the game only to have some hope that the same experience would be on a similar platform or a godforsaken novella about Tifa and Cloud's feelings that seemed like a half assed fanfiction. Anyways, I got right into the topic of the game because most of those that would check this review are most likely already familiar with the story of the game. It has popularized JRPGs and fanboys have been dreaming about it and now they are getting it, a remake.

But enough ranting about how effective it was in my life and how good of a game it was back then. The jump in the series from the old Final Fantasies is what broke the world, although I was quite oblivious to it back then. This is the first Final Fantasy I got to play so I still enjoyed the series going back to the previous entries, although playing it first did raise the bar for a better game. You play as Cloud, an EX-Soldier that forms a group that fights the mega corporation known as SHINRA that is draining the life of the planet for resources, also known as the lifestream. as the plot thickens, you end up fighting through countless terrains, villages and explore the world through your airship against Sephiroth... all in 3D. I was actually patient for a game like this back then and it was engaging from start to finish. However, it is sad I don't have the tolerance for a JRPG as much as I used to, as I get tired easily from a 2 hour session where I would sit for 8 straight hours playing FFVII and replay it again without any hesitation.

To save some readers some spoilers because there is a great amount of new fans to the series after the remake was announced, Final Fantasy VII did a lot of daring things in terms of writing and at the time it was new to the series itself, it was new to the fans and it was stunning to say the least in terms of killing off some characters or giving every character a chance where the player gets to explore their psyche and the way they handle things. Every single character had a moment where the player controlled them and they were leading a situation and I loved that very much such as Tifa handling things when cloud has had too much on his hands or how Barrett saves the day when Tifa is not there. They are all a team and the game allowed us to explore their personalities as best as they could at the time.

Let's not forget just how beautiful the game looked like with controlling Cloud through pre-rendered backgrounds. Every field map was beautiful on its own and even though it was done with other game in the same decade like Chrono Cross or The Legend of Dragoon, it was done the best in my opinion. Despite the character models looking funny as hell on field maps, they looked really well in battle as well as the monsters they  are fighting. As for the battle system and the customization system, one could go on and on and never get bored out of the endless combinations one could customize their party into.

The materia system was new at the time and was revolutionary in the sense players customized their characters in. Each weapon a character equipped had slots and materias the player obtains throughout their journey can be equipped in said slots, which ranges in their use from magic to passive abilities to summoning espers. After winning a battle, the player gains experience along with AP which helps in mastering and leveling up your materia, so there was a lot to do in terms of character progression. Every angle of every character had a room for progress, whether you are using a specific character to gain their new limit breaks or working on mastering a materia not to mention upgrading their stats from leveling up. Combat is a lot of fun without getting into too many details. The ATB guage is back in this game and the combat itself is the most familiar thing to the previous entries. It is the skill system and the materia that approaches your characters' progression from different angles. Unlike the previous entries, FFVII only allows three characters in your party.

For the first part in Final Fantasy VII, the game seems almost too linear until you realize the first town was just a single quest and it is an ovewhelming feeling when the world map theme plays and you get to explore different parts of the game including sidequests, characters that can join your party, enemies you don't have to face but are challenging and rewarding to kill. There is a lot to do in this game and it is fun to explore. There is a whole town dedicated to mini games and it really shows you how capable and how much effort was put into it from the developers. Don't get me started on the music and how enchanting it was for me. The World map theme alone was mesmerizing where I enjoyed staying for hours out of towns to customize my characters in preparation for a dungeon or a boss fight. Speaking of boss fights, they were mostly memorable and the most memorable ones were the secret ones. There are a lot of secrets in FFVII and one playthrough at the time just wasn't enough even though on average it would go for about 90 hours or so. 

One of the most renowned features of the game is the gold saucer, a town dedicated to mini games and the games depicted in the picture above is only one part. A more in depth mini game that affects in the overall exploration of the game's world is the chocobo mini game (Chocobo racing and breeding) where you can breed chocobos to have the rarest chocobo in the game, the golden chocobo that allows you to fly and explore every nook and cranny of the world map, as ridiculous as it sounds. 

I could literally keep on writing as much as I have written up till now but Final Fantasy VII is a very complex game to explore in one review. It is easily one of the best games I have played in my life and revered as one of the best games of all time. But still, after all that, it is not everyone's cup of tea but for a role-playing game fan it is a must have. Final Fantasy VII is being remade on the PS4 and it is already ported and modded on all platforms whether handheld or on PC so it is really tough to miss nowadays. If it is mini games you want to waste time on or engaging puzzles in convoluted dungeons that you want to get lost in only to succumb to random encounters and fight tough and optional boss fights while customizing your characters to an intricate skill system, Final Fantasy VII is for you. Just beware not to get too involved with it and eventually obsess over it like me in hopes of finding the other games that the developers have created to be as valuable as this game. It is why I called it shitty to begin with simply because it was great once upon a time and eventually became  If it is an anime episode or prequel on the PSP or a spin off about vincent, nothing can replace what has already raised the bars to begin with. I've said more than enough about what I can say of this beautiful game and I'll see you on another review from the Final Fantasy series.