Review - Final Fantasy VII

A little late to the party

From left to right: Cid, Cait Sith, Tifa, Cloud, Red XIII, Aerith, Barrett, Sephiroth

Final Fantasy is a name that any gaming fan has at least heard of before. It's a franchise spanning sixteen mainline titles, countless spinoffs and animated films, and is one with a naming scheme as intimidating as it is uninspired. Did you know that Final Fantasy VI in Japan is Final Fantasy III in America, or maybe that Final Fantasy IV in Japan is actually Final Fantasy II in America? No? Me neither. For me personally it's an intersection of things that I'm not particularly a fan of, like turn based combat, visual novel-like storytelling, and an anime-esque art style to tie it together. That being said, everyone knows about Final Fantasy VII. This one has a reputation that transcends the bounds of the series, with the characters and even plot twists being pop culture icons at this point. I caught some gameplay of the new Rebirth remake that shocked me with how cool it looked, and I have a friend who has sung the game's praises for years. I finally decided to give it a shot to at least fill in one of my gamer blind spots, and I'm here to report: Yep, it's considered a classic for a reason.

I was not prepared for the epic scope of the journey I was about to set out on. You play as Cloud, a member of the freedom fighting group AVALANCHE, whose sole mission is to fight back against the Shinra Corporation. This 'electric' company essentially rules the planet through its control of the resource Mako, which they extract from the earth en masse to give themselves a monopoly for world domination. From there things get so off the rails insane that I was surprised there wasn't a title card saying "Directed by Hideo Kojima". An old buddy of cloud named Sephiroth, a solider of Shinra, discovers that he is really the product of a science experiment involving alien technology, which spirals him on a warpath to destroy the world. This is what really gets things rolling. The city of Midgar where you begin your quest is such a damn cool location to explore. As the population grew, Shinra decided to layer another city level on a big floating plate above the original city, leaving the bottom to become a slum while the elites live on top. What I wasn't prepared for was that about 8 hours in, you leave the city and enter an open world of new locations.

Tifa's Seventh Heaven bar in the slums of Midgar

I am a huge fan of the original Resident Evil trilogy, so the fixed camera angle exploration and pre-rendered backgrounds really struck a chord with me. I thought they were super gorgeous and packed with detail, which highlights how well this game makes use of its limited resources. I'm not going to pretend that the graphics are incredible, it's a PS1 game from 1997 after all, but the amount of emotion they were able to draw out of the characters just through their animation blew me away. They essentially look like toys with flathead screwdrivers for hands, but the way characters would fall to their knees during emotional beats or flip around during action sells the scenes with such realism, and that's not even considering the fact that there is no voice acting. I think this is really the game's biggest strength, and it is so easy to see why people could connect with these characters so immensely back in the 90s.

Cloud is an excellent main character, as he has a clear arc that is entertaining to watch unfold. He starts off as a kid, closed off to the world and his friends, and you almost get to see him grow up before you and come into his own as he experiences the story that unfolds. The same goes for almost all of the companions that follow you. They all have fleshed out backstories and I love that the game gives each one of them a bit of time in the spotlight so you can learn more about who they are, and it does this naturally during the main quest. That being said, I did miss two whole unlockable companions because you find them in the most bizzare places and unless I missed some obvious clues, I never saw anything hinting at where to find them. Even though it's very well rounded, it is still clear that the main group gets favored over some side companions like Red XIII and Cait Sith, because they kind of fall to the wayside again, which I can understand since it's hard to balance a cast of this size.

Our main hero Cloud with his screwdriver shaped hands

Despite this stuff aging incredibly well, I can't say the same about the gameplay. FF7 uses an old-school turn based style of combat that reminds me of Pokemon mixed with a dash of Knights of the Old Republic. What I mean by this is you have a party that you are giving actions to in turns, but there are timers constantly running that dictate who is able attack and when. This makes it so you can't take your sweet time planning a move, because while you're digging around in your inventory for a potion, your enemy might be a few seconds away from getting to attack you. I am actually quite a big fan of how this system works because things are not truly paused for you which creates a sense of urgency, although it can be a bit ridiculous when your inventory gets larger. The materia system, which are basically your equip-able spells, give you a lot of room to experiment with builds and different play styles for your party members. While this is all good in principle, the combat does just feel outdated and the menus make it terribly clunky to actually navigate to the places you need to go for these things, and so I ended up just using the same couple people for the entire game.

Something else that severely hampers the experience is the use of random encounters. Once again, this is just one of those old school mechanics that existed in RPGs like this at the time, and we've moved on from them for a reason. Of course finding enemies in an open world is to be expected, but you don't come upon them naturally. As you run through the map you have a random chance of engaging in a battle which will completely throw you to a halt in order to complete. It feels like a huge interruption and it made exploring a world I truly came to love an unfun experience. I did learn that you can run from these battles but this poses another problem in that you need exp from them to help level you up, and by constantly running I made it through the game feeling more under powered than I probably should have been.

A look at the way combat encounters are set up

I usually have a pretty high tolerance for outdated mechanics in games but this is one that definitely wore against me and it made it more difficult to enjoy to its full extent. There are a whole lot of side quests and things I knowingly skipped past because I just didn't want to fight a dozen encounters crossing the world again. Something that exacerbated this problem on the pc port is that the prompts in minigames would pop up as [Cancel] [Menu] [OK] which obviously makes doing things more complicated, and even switching to a controller did not help. It was nice to pick it up on Steam for a couple bucks and have achievements, cloud saves, and everything built in, but in hindsight emulating the original version would have been a better option.

I knew that FF7 was famous for being 3 discs on the PS1 so it was very clearly a large game at the time, but I still wasn't expecting how expansive it would actually feel. The map takes you from dystopian cityscapes, little villages, canyons, rolling fields, snowy expanses, and forgotten ruins. When Cloud and the gang make a brief stop at the Golden Saucer amusement park towering above the skies, the last thing I expected to find was a hub world full of mini games and stores that you could without a doubt spend hours exploring. This was probably the moment where I was really taken aback, wondering what it must have been like seeing all of this for the first time when the game released. It feels like an epic in all senses of the word, and again, this was a game that came out in 1997 to be played on CRT TVs.

The over-world, with a view of the map and all of its points of interest

Nobuo Uematsu was the game's composer, and what a score he composed. This is yet another one of those elements that I have heard praised over the years and didn't know what to expect, but it has utterly blown me away. I'm a sucker for a good soundtrack and if I have at least one major takeaway from this game, it's that the score instantly jumped up there to one of my favorites I have ever heard. When I mentioned earlier how much emotion they could pack into the characters, about half of that for me comes from the music. It ebbs and flows perfectly with the beats of the story and captures beautifully what the characters are trying to express at any given moment. Even if you have no intention of playing the game, give some of the music a listen. I couldn't help but peek ahead to see what some of the remake's re imaginings sound like in full sweeping orchestration and it's as awesome as I would expect. This is without a doubt going into my regular rotation, it is that good.

I didn't play FF7 when I was younger and I'm missing a lot of that childhood nostalgia that I know plays a big role in everyone's love for this game. That's why looking in on it now I think the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Yes, it's dated in terms of its mechanics. All of the makings of a modern RPG are there, but in this form it can be clunky and frustrating. If this was the main focus of the game I wouldn't have enjoyed it, but fortunately it's the story, characters, and world that take the center stage. It makes it easier to look past those shortcomings when you get to experience such a wonderful journey, although it still doesn't mean I didn't get frustrated at it more than a few times. Would I recommend it then? Well if it's good enough for Robert Pattinson, then it's good enough for me. On a serious note, it's an all time classic for a reason. If you are able to put up with some slow, outdated combat then you are really in for a ride, and I seriously have been thinking about the journey for a long time after I finished.

A pretty shot highlighting some of the outstanding pre-rendered locations

There are so many entries in the Final Fantasy series that it's intimidating but I am definitely going to check out some of the others when I get a chance. I have heard great things about the remakes of FF7 but I'm taking a break for some other titles in my backlog before I pick those up and dive in. If they're able to combine the charm of the originals with a more modernized combat system I really think it could work its way up in favorites for me, but we'll see when I get there. Regardless, what exists already is a beautiful game and I'm embarrassed how long it took me to come around to it, but at least now I'm part of the club.