And before you start giving me shit, Mr. mrbenning, this was copied from a fugly MySpace page
so the spacings and things are screwed up. Stinking M'space
4/8/09
So after a few weeks with Final Fantasy VII and finishing the game for the first time in 10+ years, I initially felt uneasy about how things turned out while still being satisfied. While not the transcendent classic that others remember it by, it’s
fair to say that FFVII is still a pretty good game now a decade removed.
How good? Let’s take a compartmented look.
Plot/Characters....
Taken as a whole, the pacing issues that I have been mentioning
through the last week or two coincide with some of bigger problems with the
overall story. Basically, it’s pretty much just Cloud’s show with a little bit
of Tifa thrown in at the end to give it some heart, making the ensemble ending
pointless. Then again, that pointlessness is even discounted by the fact that
you’re pretty much given nothing in terms of resolution for any character
outside of Red XIII in the ending, but let’s get back to the first concern.
Since I was able to select from individual characters throughout the vast
majority of the game, I only really got insight into many situations based on
which characters were in my active party whether I liked them or not. So if you
hate using, say Yuffie, but she seemed practical for you to fight with, you
probably went through the next story sequence with her and heard her gripe
about something. Most of the time, I found that pretty perturbing; sure, Yuffie
was a strong long-ranged character through most of the game, but the plot would
have been much better had Tifa been in my active party- even though I stopped
using her early and found her to be worthless by the end.
Then again, the interactions I had with the individual main
characters were fun and pretty well realized. Cloud serves as a pretty good
protagonist, even though he is blandly single minded as the game carries on
(“There’s Sephiroth! Let’s go get him!”). Tifa unexpectedly adds a lot of soul
to an otherwise mundane video game story near the end, and turned out to be a
pretty refreshing change compared to the rest of the clichés that just about
everyone else were. The real jewel here is Cid. From the first time you meet
him through the end credits, he was such a jerk that I had to love him. Even
though I found his motivation for joining the team a little thin and I kind of
think it was harsh the way he treated some of the other characters, he didn’t
degenerate into a plastic RPG hero in the endgame and I loved all of his
chain-smoking shenanigans. It really isn’t common (or at least wasn’t in 1997)
for a hero, even a minor hero in this case, to be so much of a chump in a video
game outside of the down-on-his-luck private investigator types in many 90s PC
games. Play the game for Cloud, finish the game for Cid.
Everything else was textbook. Sephiroth, unfortunately,
never went further than his initial descent into crazyhood into being much of a
fun character, especially since he only physically shows up to fight you for
real at the end of the game. While I think his back story and motivation were
very interesting, I find that it would have been far more interesting to find
that he was just another figment of Clouds shattered personality than an actual
corporal threat. That’s just me, though.
Difficulties In and
Around the Blank Slate....
Ok, this is going to sound hypocritical after I gushed over how much I love FXII, but I hate blank slate characters. In that, I mean that every character in this game is totally interchangeable outside of their desperation attacks (Limit Breaks, as
the lingo goes). Since the materia system of the game was designed so you could
freely swap them between characters, it made no sense at the 2/3rd point to use characters that you didn’t think looked cool, and that was it. Blank slate characters kind of rob me of some of the escapism of these games. With
character classes in games like FFIV or X, specific uses of each character
dictate what strategies you use and lend to a deeper experience. In the case of
VII, it never matters who you’re controlling as long as they have the right materia equipped.
Case in point, here’s how I cracked the game wide open: I had been using Yuffie and Barret through the majority of my daily dealings only because I hadn’t yet stumbled on a Long Range materia (so I could basically turn all of my other characters into long-range fighters). I found myself near the end of the second disk in one of few optional areas that I thought would be worth it (as I found that most of them weren’t after this experience) where I ended up with Yuffie’s best weapon, Cid’s best Limit Break, and a Double Cut materia (I think that’s what it was called). Anyway, knowing that the end of the game was near, I thought it might be an alright idea to kill three birds at once: I’d level my characters, enhance the Double Cut so I could hit 4 times per attack, and train Cid so he could use that Limit Break because I hadn’t touched him for the entire game. A few hours later I was a god. To prove that newfound might, I bitch slapped one of the optional bosses- which, in turn, gave me Cloud’s best weapon. I had decided that no more unnecessary time wasting needed to happen, and I stepped on the end boss. Case closed. It didn’t matter what character I was using, I just happened to find better weapons for a few of them and that’s how I finished the game. Had I ended up in the same situation with anyone else, the outcome would have been identical.
If reading the above paragraph leads you to believe that the game was a joke, give yourself a cookie. The reality is that I didn’t spend too much time outside of blindly attacking my enemies with very little spell casting or monster summoning (if ever). When I figured out a way to set up my empty shells of characters how I wanted them, it was only a matter of time before I crushed some fools while not expending even one elixir from my inventory without straying too far from one button push. This, as it stands, was something of the end of an era for a lot of RPG design. In this game, and the six that preceded it from what I can recollect, a might-makes-right mentality can carry you through all the way to the end. Simply, take the time to level your characters and you’ll be fine. Other games, especially the way they are designed now, can force you to completely manipulate the game a different way to tackle end bosses, forcing you to basically deprogram yourself
from how you went through everything up to that point. Famously, while playing Final Fantasy VIII, I capped my main character’s level (99) after 80ish hours of my life only to find that I had been playing the game incorrectly until the end and was punished for it by the last boss. That is bad design. While I can appreciate how games like (in this case) FFVIII offer a more tactical approach to meatheaded level grinding; and yes, I’m sure there are more fun ways to fight endgame encounters than to just be stronger than they are; I didn’t find it necessary to either seek out a guide for killing the last boss or completely revaluate how I was playing altogether. I actually found it pretty refreshing.
Boogada....
So all in all, it turned out to be a pretty fun distraction from the games I typically buy now. It was comparatively short clocking in at around 35 hours, a nice round number that made sure that Cloud and co. didn’t overstay their welcome. As a cultural curio, and I say this especially after having restarted FFVIII, it’s more
than evident that VII is the beginning of a massive paradigm shift in RPG design. While I found the core game mechanics to be a toned down version of FFVI,
the use of the Playstation hardware in it’s overall presentation made it a successful test run for the later more complex (and far prettier) games of its ilk to surface. In a lot of ways, FFVII is like rap group N.W.A.: their influence on the genre cannot be understated, but the passage of time and their imitators have almost cheapened what we once thought was brilliance into a turning point in popular music, but not the transcendent, profound work of art we thought it was to begin with. For that, Final Fantasy VII, I can only say this to you: thanks for what you’ve done, but I think I’m done with you. With that, I hereby give you no more shit.
The End
Postscript
It’s become obvious over the past few years that guys like me have been ragging on FFVII more for its success rather than its flaws. While I’d be a liar if I didn’t
partially adhere to that mindset prior to the last few weeks, that doesn’t mean
that it’s fair to assess a game on how great it sold as opposed to how good it
may or may not be. I will still disapprove of its place in aftermarket collectability in this respect, though. People, please remember that before you find yourself considering buying this astronomically priced game, know that:
A- it is NOT rare. One could find abundant copies of it anywhere for less than $15 five years ago.
B- a remake is inevitable. Note that I don’t wait with baited breath for this to happen; I just see it as unavoidable as entropy. If Final Fantasy XIII (and it’s spin offs) turn out to suck, Square Enix knows that it need only to spend whatever money they have left on a remake of VII to get back in the black.
C- if a remake happens, or even if it doesn’t, it’s not outside of the realm of possibility that Square Enix rerelease it for the PSP or DS, or put it up on the PSN to download (for a steep price, I’m sure). As Square is prone to remaking, sequelling, and generally siphoning it’s past successes to death, I’m a little surprised it hasn’t happened already…
For some further research, it's best not to lurk through the murk (another unfortunate rhyme) of Gamefaqs.com's FFVII message boards (helpful as they may be for actual game play answers), this is a very interesting debate over the merits of the game from some of the writers at 1UP.com. Be warned that it degenerates into some pretty nerdy nitpicking, but the argument is somewhat lively (if a bit one-sided).Also linked below is GameTrailers.com's FFVII entry for their impeccable Final Fantasy Retrospective. A bit lengthy but fun to watch...
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