Edit 7/15/13: Wow, I had completely forgotten about this. This came about before I decided to make this blog with me discussing movies, games, and anime. It was a spur of the moment while reviewing pictures of cosplays from AnimeNext.
So to most people, Final Fantasy was their first game, and lets be honest, it was the game that took the final fantasy series into a completely new direction. As I was discussing with a group discussing final fantasy at the con, while Final Fantasy 7 was definitely hyped well more than most deem it to deserve, but was it really overrated?
In some ways. Was it a good game? Yes. Was it revolutionary? Yes again. Is it flawed? Yup again. Is it deep? A bit! While FF7 does take a generic premise, good guy vs a unsympathetic evil, it does a lot to shake it about. While the main villain, Sephiorth, is a unredeamable villain, he is not without shades of gray. He for the longest time was a hero, not just to Shinra, the 'evil' empire that we will discuss a bit later, but he was a hero to the people. Everyone admired and looked up, aspiring to be just like him. What the game did great was they painted from the beginning, he was a force to be reckoned with by taking you, and physically showing you he was a badass.
Most games, movies, shows, simply take a villain and tells you about them. They tell you they're great, wonderful, and that everyone loves them, and yet they are shown to be extremely flawed, to get beaten the first time you see them, etc etc. What you need to do is show your viewer, not tell them. First time you hear of Sephiorth, he slaughtered everyone your group was fighting against, killing the big bad that you started the game fighting against. That the game gave you damn good reasons to acknowledge as a foe to be respected.
Sadly no one cosplayed as any of the baddies from FF7 except the Turks, so settle for them. We'll get to the Turks next. Back on topic of Sephiroth, not only did you see him slaughter force the plot into a new direction by killing the Shinrah head ups, you soon actually get to play a young Cloud, where you see him in battle. While oyur party only did damage in the double digits, Sephiroth effortlessly did thousands of damage points, and used materia you could get. Not only did this pave a direction for you the player to aspire towards (I know the moment I was able to, I mimicked his materia set), but showed you he was a badass and had the right to be revered.
Now, Sephiroth wasn't the only enemy you had to fight, Shinrah wasn't defeated and still harbored a goal that took a seperate path than yours, against Sephiroth. The lead of Shinrah's efforts against your team would be the Turks, a team that mirrored yours, starting off with you just barely fighting them off one at a time, to the point where it escalates and you're fighting the full force at once. This really built up a rivalry, a group to look forward to face against, and that would return again and again, without being a main villain to sap from the threat Sephiorth harbored. Before I move on, Reno ftw.
This alone was enough to engage a player and make them realize, Sephiroth was a threat, every time he showed up, the group lost something. Sephiroth wasn't the only threat though, there was Shinrah, and other factions at play. Shinrah was a very gray group of villains. You could emphasize with some of the members, understand their reasons, and even sometimes had unsteady alliances with them as you both had a mutual enemy, Sephiroth, but it didn't end there. Shinrah was your greatest ally against Sephiroth, despite the two groups fighting against one and another, and it was actually Shinrah's last real action that even allowed your group to take the fight to Sephiroth.
When Shinrah ended, it gave a sense of dread. In a fell swoop, your greatest ally was gone, and the force you were fighting against was no more. Never again could you return to Midgar, and no longer were they chasing you. That was it, all that was left was Sephiroth.
People like to argue the biggest reason why FF7 was bad is because it wasn't as climatic as FF6 where the villain succeeds to destroy the world, and that the graphics shifts between a deformed look to realistic styled characters. In discussion of depth? FF7's villains had further depth than FF6. In terms of gameplay, it completely took the final fantasy series general style and brought it a step to the side with the materia system. The gameplay was solid, and the meta game was huge, with a strong endgame provided by Emerald and Ruby Weapons. The graphics were a step down from what the console was able to handle, but as it was the first final fantasy to be rendered on polygons, it was understandable, and at no point, did it detract from the gameplay.
Overall, FF7 was a great final fantasy game, and with the disaster of FF8, bringing a whole new audience with it be switching to playstation, and being a huge timegap before the next bigname final fantasy title to attempt to rival it. It holds up to the test of time and is till fun to this day to go back and play.
Well, I can continue to discuss FF7 for pages and pages, but doubt many want to read all that somewhere made mainly to show off photos and videos from cons, so I'll cut it short. There are plenty more Final Fantasy photos I have, though depending on the comments this post might get, I might keep the chitter chatter to a minimum.
Overall Rating: 9/10
