SydLexia.com - The Forums :: View topic - What made Final Fantasy VII such a great and legendary game?

Posted: Jun 05 2010 02:29 pm

Although FFVII may not be the greatest game ever made or even of it's time to you personally one can't deny it's legendary status and it's constant appearance near the top of a lot of "Best game ever' lists.

Why was it though? Was it because of the characters? The fact that it was one of the first 3d RPG's ? (or at least the first game to do 3d right). Was it the timing of it's release? It's re-playability with all of the side quests and special items to collect?

I"m currently playing it again for the 4th time on the PS3 and I must say after 13 years it's a fantastic and engrossing game?

So tell me what did it for you? Or why do you think everyone constantly rates the game so high?

Posted: Jun 05 2010 02:31 pm

mario 64 was the first game to do 3d right.

and i never played FF7, so i dont care. i just know that sephiroth has some cool music, is a total badass, and cloud is a whiny little emo kid.

Posted: Jun 05 2010 02:43 pm

To my understanding, the characters were emo before emo was cool.

Posted: Jun 05 2010 02:44 pm

Aeris(Or Aerith sorry) died.

Posted: Jun 05 2010 02:44 pm

chocobos arent cool

Posted: Jun 05 2010 03:07 pm

Ba'al wrote:

Aeris(Or Aerith sorry) died.

Yeah death was something video games didn't really do back then..The story made you care about Aeris' character and then when she was killed it got to a lot of people emotionally and made the game that much more engrossing.

Joined: May 22 2008 Location: Goshen, VA Posts: 6544

I'm not gonna pretend I didn't totally love Final Fantasy VII when it came out. Being a Nintendo fanboy, the only reason I got a PS1 was to play the continuation of some of my favorite NES and SNES RPG's, Final Fantasy.

What it lacks though is the replayability of any of the other games. I had played and replayed Final Fantasy II for the SNES at least 10 times and it never gets old. I can't bring myself to sit down and play VII again, it was just too goddamn tedious and boring. I can see if it was someones first Final Fantasy game that it would be the best thing ever, but to me it was a mediocre entrance in the franchise.

Posted: Jun 05 2010 03:21 pm

The scope was what really got me, and the detail. Yeah, stuff now blows it away, but for it's time, it was really expansive and engaging. I was that way with Shenmue too, though.

Posted: Jun 05 2010 04:13 pm

It was the first RPG aside from Pokemon I ever really played. It was a good introduction for me. It had a lot of RPG staples: An interesting overworld, great music, and a battle system that was easy to learn and understand. Sure their were moments where the story was kind of cliche'. From a modern standpoint you could group most of the characters into some of the more basic character archetypes. That being said at the time the characters were decently fleshed out. Cloud got pretty whiny about midgame but he snapped out of it eventually, though his Kingdom Hearts design and the Advent children movie would say otherwise.

I'm not going to pretend to be hardcore about it and say that it was bad because it wasn't like the previous installments. It wasn't world changing or anything but for a lot of people it was a gateway into a bigger genre and proved to be pretty memorable all around. Before VII I had never had the chance to play any of the previous installments. I had never owned a Super Nintendo and we had to sell my NES at an early age. I was pretty much stuck with sidescrollers and shooters. Outside of Pokemon the concept of turn based combat was foreign to me. I'm not a die hard fan. I know that it has quite a few flaws and spawned more then a few cliches, but it was still good and I have fond memories of staying up late playing it.

Posted: Jun 05 2010 05:33 pm

True about Cloud.He does get annoying at times. FF7 changed my mind completely about RPG's. i thought I never had the patience for them but for some reason that game just really engrossed me. That's why I posted this topic because although I think the game itself is really good there was something else drawing me and apparently a lot of others in to explore and play for hours and hours. In my opionion the game itself isn't that good on it's own and I can't put my finger on what makes that game something more.

Joined: Feb 16 2008 Posts: 832

i really loved FF7 its probably my favorite rpg, not even joking

Posted: Jun 05 2010 06:56 pm

It had all the FMV. Good FMV. Not like that Night Trap bullshit.

Posted: Jun 05 2010 07:11 pm

Yeah, I think it was the slick FMV that really captivated and impressed people at the time. Those cutscenes were unlike anything we'd seen before at the time.

I never really got into the game when it was new as it didn't really grab me like it did most people and having gone back and played it when I was older, I have to say that it doesn't hold up at all. It looks far more dated than most older video games and the story is fairly convoluted and muddled. In my opinion, it's one of the most overrated games of all time and doesn't really belong on any "Best game ever" lists.

Joined: Feb 16 2008 Posts: 832

the fmv's had nothing to do with it, there are like 4 of them all of the others are like 5 seconds long

it was a combination of the intro, it did things that other RPG's out at the time didn't dare to do, it was a bit more mature storytelling then most people were used to at the time.
the immense character of the setting (backgrounds too) had a little to do with it also.

i do think it's overrated, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. i think it's position on any 'best ever' game list is rightfully deserved

Posted: Jun 05 2010 07:22 pm

Despite being a little dated I still think it's a pretty good game. I feel the same way about Wild Arms 2. It's not really fantastic or anything, but it's a game I'd gladly replay and I've done so a few times for both.

Posted: Jun 05 2010 08:39 pm

I can't really say FFVII is as special or nostalgic to me. I grew up playing the older FF's, 1, 4, 6 and eventually 5 and 2. I was already in my mid twenties by the time I'd played VII, so it still seems like a 'newer generation' game to me. I liked it. But it will never have the replay appeal to me like the older ones will. Even VIII and IX I thought were good games as well, but I know I'll never end up playing them over and over the way I did with the early ones since they're not part of my childhood. Overall, FFVII still a good game though.

Posted: Jun 05 2010 09:10 pm

For me, I think it was the atmosphere. The music, graphics, and locations just came together in a way that made something great. I never thought of Cloud as emo, I always saw him more as apathetic. What I think made the game great was a sense of timelessness while playing. You don't really get a sense of how much time passes in the story which I like. To me though, what makes a great story and a game, is when by the time you finish it, it feels nothing like it did when it started.

Posted: Jun 06 2010 12:12 am

It showed what the 32 bit era was fully capable of for the masses along with most of us being young teenagers looking to move past Mario/Sonic type games for a while.

if you went from a SNES/Genesis to a Playstation -with nothing in between -it was pretty mindblowing to how much better a Playstation in its full glory was over the previous gen systems.

After the Playstation completed its life cycle I have to admit that it didnt age very well except for a few games.

The SNES was more fun than the Playstation looking back, but the PSONE let us go through our graphic whore stage and gave us some good memories to boot.

2010 SLF Tag Champ Joined: Jun 07 2006 Posts: 12294

username wrote:

mario 64 was the first game to do 3d right.

and i never played FF7, so i dont care. i just know that sephiroth has some cool music, is a total badass, and cloud is a whiny little emo kid.

yeah, Mario got it right, with it's clipping issues, awful camera, and horrendous collision detection.

Posted: Jun 06 2010 01:57 am

FNJ wrote:

username wrote:

mario 64 was the first game to do 3d right.

and i never played FF7, so i dont care. i just know that sephiroth has some cool music, is a total badass, and cloud is a whiny little emo kid.

yeah, Mario got it right, with it's clipping issues, awful camera, and horrendous collision detection.

Fuck you, the camera wasn't so awful as you could control it fairly accurately most of the time, as long as you aren't n00bing it up you should be fine. Mario 64 is brilliant, look at the "3D" predecessors before it, nothing can even come close. As far as I am concerned, Mario 64 ushered in the era of gaming in a true 3D space.

On topic, I am a sucker for music and FFVI has one of the best FF soundtracks of all time IMO. The characters are also absolutely timeless and classic as fuck, Cyan is one of my favorite characters in the whole FF universe, Locke is also quite badass. The scope of the game was also pretty much unheard of before it came out. Great game.

Posted: Jun 06 2010 02:41 am

I remeber just being amazed I was playing an rpg where I was running around in a cool enviroment, jumping and climbing around with all the avalanche guys in the first area. Deffinately never seen an RPG like it before, nowadays though the controls and graphics won't let me get too far into the second disc, but still a classic

Joined: Dec 06 2007 Location: Connecticut Posts: 11244

When it came out the graphics were awesome, those who enjoyed FFVI were dying for a new title in the series, and the game had a lot of depth.

Unfortunately the story was about an emo brat. Emo may have become more popular over the last few years, but it is not cool and never has been.

Posted: Jun 06 2010 10:20 am

I still like the graphics of FFVII, it's part of the charm. I think everything FFVII related after the game made Cloud into a huge emo.

Posted: Jun 06 2010 11:25 am

Maybe I don't understand the definition of "emo," but Cloud struck me as more of an apathetic jerk than emo.

I liked FF7 a lot, but FF9 was my favorite FF game (granted, I only played 7, 8 and 9). I just felt like FF9 "nailed it" on the PS1 better than the others. Plus, it was nice to have a main character with a little more personality, and I liked the class system.

Posted: Jun 06 2010 12:36 pm

Ermac wrote:

It showed what the 32 bit era was fully capable of for the masses along with most of us being young teenagers looking to move past Mario/Sonic type games for a while.

if you went from a SNES/Genesis to a Playstation -with nothing in between -it was pretty mindblowing to how much better a Playstation in its full glory was over the previous gen systems.

After the Playstation completed its life cycle I have to admit that it didnt age very well except for a few games.

The SNES was more fun than the Playstation looking back, but the PSONE let us go through our graphic whore stage and gave us some good memories to boot.

FF7 came out halfway through the PSX lifecycle, and was one of the first games to show what the PSX was capable of. Before that, you had blocky, laggy 3D games and 2D stuff that didn't look any better than SNES. FF7 redefined people's expectations of the system.