Every RPG aficionado as well as any gamer born before
1985 has a story to tell about Final Fantasy VII, a.k.a. the game that
single-handedly introduced the mainstream gaming scene of two continents to the
joys of JRPG. As Square Enix is cooking up a remake of this beloved cult
classic and we're about to come full circle twenty years after the original game's
release, it's now time for me to unfold my personal story about FFVII.
There will be hype, there will be hope, and there will be unrequited love grown
cold. Make yourselves comfortable and grab some popcorn, dear fellow gamers:
for what you're about to read is the bittersweet story of how I totally and
utterly missed on FFVII.
Let's rewind all the way back to 1997. Summer 1997, to be more precise. To
say that this was an underwhelming gaming summer for me would definitely be an
understatement. At that point, I had milked my Game Gear library dry and
squeezed every possible ounce of fun from the system; and since no new games
were being released, I had nothing left to hope for on the Sega portable front.
My Game Boy was long gone, sold to a second-hand store a couple of years before
in order to get the necessary funds to purchase my Game Gear; as for my beloved
second-hand Megadrive, it would only come into the picture a couple of months
later. In a nutshell, I was stranded with no games to play and immediate gaming
prospects looked pretty dire.
In a desperate attempt to stay connected to gaming, I
decided to acquire the summer issue of a now long-defunct gaming magazine. This
was definitely not an usual move for me at the time: far from being the avid
game magazine reader I am nowadays, I carefully shied away from all these
colourful tomes bristling with hype-inducing pictures and over-assuming titles
that could best be described as the ancestors of today's clickbaits. There were
two reasons for this avoidance: the first was that these magazines were quite
expensive, and I hardly had enough pocket money to purchase games, let alone
magazines about games. The second reason was that at the time, I was still
dreaming of acquiring a home console and actively lobbying my parents to let me
hook a machine to the home TV; and while the deed was not done, reading
enthusiastic articles about the latest home console releases would only have
poured salt in the wound. But these two very sound reasons to stay away from
gaming magazines virtually evaporated that summer, wiped away by my
overwhelming desire to indulge in something—anything—related to
gaming.
So I purchased this magazine, whose name I cannot remember for the life of me.
Not that I cared at all about that at the time, mind you; the only thing I was
craving and caring about were the contents. And boy, did I got more than I
bargained for. For lo and behold, dear fellow gamers: somewhere in this holy
magazine, between an El-Hazard poster and cheesy readers' letters, was nested a
full-fledged feature about the upcoming Final Fantasy VII.
I remember that piece like I read it yesterday, dear fellow gamers. A complete
survey of FFVII's storyline and cast of characters, replete with
gorgeous full-colour pictures. Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith, Rouge 13: they were
all displayed there in all their official art glory, and they all looked
impossibly cool and edgy. Like, cooler and edgier than any other videogame
character created since the dawn of gaming. And gosh, how hard did I want to
grab a controller and swing that impossibly huge sword around.
Of course, this wouldn't have been possible at all,
since FFVII is a turn-based RPG; but that was not something you could
infer from the article's content. The whole piece was solely focused on the
narrative, with little to no mention of the type of gameplay involved. Even
more revealing, there was not a single gameplay picture to be found in these FFVII-soaked
pages: the many pictures that adorned the article were either the official art
or screen captures lifted from cutscenes. Over the years, I've learnt to
despise that gaming advertising angle that focuses on character fan-service and
does away with gameplay footage; but during that summer '97, I was totally
unfazed by this lack of gameplay information and lapped up the whole thing, all
the more so as my anime obsession was at its peak at the time.
To say that I was enthralled by this article would once again be an jolly
understatement. This was the first time ever I was hearing about that game, and
what I read pretty much glued me to the magazine. To put it simply, this
brand-new RPG looked like the most amazing, mind-blowing, breathtaking game of
all times to my younger eyes. I was ferociously hyped up, and my level of
hype climber higher with every reread of that FFVII feature that had
become akin to a sacred text for the younger, game-starved little me. I wanted
to play that game with every fibre of my being, and my body and soul ached at
the thought that it would probably never happen.
Because indeed, things were pretty complicated between
the Playstation and me at the time. For one thing, I had already grown to
dislike Sony's first gaming piece of kit for its ugly blocky 3D and shitty
shades of brown by the time I discovered that fateful FFVII feature,
and it would take more than one appetizing game to make me change my opinion of
the system. But the most damning reason I would not get to play FFVII in
the near future was that there was no way I could own a Playstation in said
near future. Even if my parents gave me the green light to purchase a home
console the very next day, the Playstation was way beyond my financial
means. It would have taken months and months of saving my pocket money to
garner the funds required to purchase a Playstation and a copy of FFVII;
and young little me had already been through that whole process with the Game
Boy and was not in the mood to repeat the deed with the Playstation. Especially
when there was no guarantee whatsoever that I would find any game to play
beyond FFVII.
And so did FFVII pass me by at the time of its release. I could still
have played it a couple of years later, mind you; I was a mere couple of years
away from adulthood in 1997, and I could perfectly have gotten my paws on a
second-hand Playstation and a copy of FFVII when I moved into my first
flat. However, I rather choose to dabble in emulation and anime marathons at
the time, and FFVII slowly but surely slipped out of my radar as years
went by.
To this day, I still have to play FFVII. But you know what? I
really don't want to. Not only did I lose every last shred of interest for the
game over the years, but I'm pretty sure that I would be sorely disappointed if
I tried my hand at Square's most famous RPG ever. For one thing, it didn't
exactly age gracefully: I encountered some actual gameplay footage for the
first time a couple of years ago and was appaled by the sheer ugliness of what
I saw—not that
cutscenes are any better, mind you. But most importantly, FFVII has
become such a perennial and absolute cult classic over time that even while
gradually losing interest in the game, I've absorbed all the praise about it
and unconsciously developed expectations. And without nostalgia to make the
heart grow fonder, those expectations are bound to not be met and I'm bound to
be disappointed by FFVII.
So, I'd rather let gaming legends rest undisturbed. There is a time for
everything, and there's no time but the right time; and the right time to play FFVII
is over as far as I'm concerned. And since it's also highly unlikely that
I'll ever play the remake, FFVII will forever remain my main teenage
years gaming fantasy and The Cult Classic RPG That Passed Me By. I've been
passionate about that game, desperately greedy for it and bitter not to get to
play it; but nowadays, FFVII is nothing more than a bittersweet memory
of those years when I was starved of games and a reminder that I have it really
freakin' good nowadays when it comes to gaming abundance. And now
that I've unrolled my own private FFVII story for you, dear fellow
gamers, I fervently encourage you to humour my insatiable gaming curiosity by
doing the same in the comments. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!
As a big RPG
and Final Fantasy fan, I can only say that you should give it a shot one day,
even if only to pay homage to the RPG that made RPGs a thing outside of Japan.
Much like Pokémon, it was a game that came out at the right time and got lucky,
because the game itself is far from being the legend many paint it to be, but
at the time of release it was legitimately a thing. The game is really easy,
you can break it in half around midway, the exploration is clunky, the Materia
system, while seemingly great, is very poorly explored and used and the
translation is very poor (but serviceable).
That said, the whole lore and world of FFVII was pretty nice and admittedly
deserved to be revisited trough spin-offs and/or sequels (and movie, and OVA).
Too bad the only ones FFVII got were terrible in the story department (but not
so bad in the character development though). And the music was overall great
too.
Disclaimer: Like I said, I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan, but I recommend that you
play Final Fantasy VII because it is a decent RPG (and because it is, whether
people like it or not, an hallmark in the story of RPGs), not because of blind
love for a game. Objectively speaking, it's a solid 7,5/10.
"The exploration is clunky": It definitely looks clunky when one pores over gameplay footage. In that regard, FFVII reminds me a lot of the two first side -scrolling Zelda games on the CD-i, with their unclear paths and shifting boundaries between mere scenery and explorable areas. Not a popular opinion to have I guess, but this is the first comparison that came to my mind when I finally encountered FFVII gameplay footage a couple of years ago. :p
It's a PS1 game
and that's enough reason. Most 3D games in that era were pretty clunky in the
exploration department. On the other hand, 2D games or mainly sprite-based
games had no problem in that regard.
>FFVII reminds me a lot of the two first side -scrolling Zelda games on the
CD-i, with their unclear paths and shifting boundaries between mere scenery and
explorable areas.
I'm not sure I follow you. FFVII isn't really that hard to explore. Clunky,
sure, but like I said, it's the bane of the first 3D/pre rendered
graphics-focused gaming era.
Like I said, it's the first comparison that came to my mind when watching gameplay footage. On the other hand, I never played the game myself, so I don't know what exploration in FFVII actually feels like. Nor do I know what exploration in the Zelda CDi games felt like, for that matter. :p
I only got into
RPGs in the mid 2000's with the PS2. I played some RPG-like titles before that,
like Pokemon, the Harry Potter games on gameboy, Legacy of Goku II, the
original Digimon world if that even counts? But I didn't «know those types of
games were a genre all on their own, since they all differed from each other.
I only got into the genre with FFX. So I completely passed by FFVII. I've been
meaning to play it for years, but eh, it's been so hyped to hell and back that
it makes me not want to play it. The graphics truly look awful and the plot has
been spoiled for me so ehhh. Whereas I managed to avoid spoilers for other FF's
I still haven't played yet, minus FFVIII (another game I don't want to play).
So there's not a lot of motivation for me to play it when I have hundreds of
other games and frankly, I'm so sick of hearing about how great it is over and
over and over that I want to avoid it out of spite. It's not a great attitude
to have, I know that, but I can't help it.
I was hoping to enjoy the remake instead, but they went ahead and changed the
turn-based combat to something similar to FFXV...and I didn't care for FFXV's
combat at all, so I guess I won't play that either. Frankly, I truly don't feel
like I'm missing out on anything, all the twists have been spoiled for me
already.
I'm with you regarding the extreme spoiling of the storyline. After years spent reading over and over about how Aerith's death traumatized a whole generation of gamers and seeing the very scene a million times in all sorts of Youtube videos, I don't see how the actual in-game event could have any sort of impact on me. And knowing more or less all the main twists and turns in the story apart from that main event certainly doesn't help...
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