http://www.toastyfrog.com/toastywiki/index.php/Site/FinalFantasyVII

The human brain is a strange thing, and most of the time a very malfunctioning thing. We, as humans, aren't really all that smart, especially when it comes to subjective matters. Our brains can fool us into thinking that something very bad is actually very good, and vice versa. This is known as "taste," and while they say there's no accounting for it, I beg to differ. Taste is a function of the spongy grey stuff in our skulls, and bad taste is a function of that grey matter's horrible imperfections.

And when these imperfections happen en masse, millions of people flock to something terrible and hold it aloft as a beloved gem. It's hardly news, of course; just one more thing to add to the list of reasons our civilization is doomed.

Which explains Final Fantasy VII. Square's first 32-bit RPG is, in retrospect, one of those mediocre games that commands a massive following, a loyal flock of well-meaning but hopelessly mistaken folks who treat it like the consecrated word of God. If not for my remarkable emotional stability -- known in some quarters as "all-consuming apathy" -- seeing the kinda-crappy FFVII festooned with love while far more deserving games languish in obscurity would almost certainly make me deeply angry. But thanks to my general disinterest in the universe at large, I can't say I particularly care. If anything, I welcome its benighted existence.

FFVII does have some value -- for instance, as a litmus test. In many ways, it serves as a convenient dividing line between different classes of gamer. Yes, I know, we're all egalitarian in our refined modern society, but when the day comes to divide ourselves into castes to ensure our survival at the hands of merciless capitalism run amok, you'll be glad we have the winnowing rod that is FFVII.

First, there are the people who don't hate FFVII, but generally think it's a pretty weak game. That is, the sensible, rational gamers. Then there are the people who deeply despise the game to the point of venomous resentment; they most likely have some emotional issues that they should be forced to sort through before being allowed to use the Internet again lest they turn into FAQtards. God knows we don't need more of them.

And then there are the gamers who totally love FFVII. Inexplicably, they number in the millions. Some of them are simply nice but misguided people, but generally speaking, they're youngsters who had never actually played a role-playing game before 1997. (Or who suffer from intense, debilitating head trauma.)

Of course, to call FFVII a role-playing game is to stretch the term to the point where it gets so thin you can see the veins through its skin. Any more and it would outright rupture, spilling blood and guts and D20s all over the place. FFVII has about as much in common with a true role-playing experience as that Dungeons & Dragons cartoon did with the tabletop game that "inspired" it.

On the whole, the D&D cartoon is a whole lot better than FFVII, because at least the characters were pretty likable and spoke coherent English. That's a lot more than you can say for the game.

Part of what makes FFVII's popularity so enduring is the nefarious power of "firsties" syndrome. That is, it was pioneering in many respects and thus netted a lot of attention for its novelty -- including attention by a lot of people who were new to the RPG genre and thus had no metric for determining a good one from a sloppy, mediocre one. Back in 1997, FFVII was pretty jaw-dropping; the graphics were detailed even though the game world was huge, the integrated cinematics were awe-inspiring, and it basically seemed to embody everything the "next generation" promised. It was the PlayStation's decisive blow against the up-and-coming Nintendo 64, the single volley that determined the dynamic of the console race.

So impressive was the game in its time that overlooking its glaring flaws was entirely too easy to do. Like the inconsistent art direction. Characters came in three different versions: squatty midgets, lanky puppets and detailed humans, and depending on when a given video sequence was rendered (and by which studio) the designs jumped around from event to event like a crack-addled grasshopper. The music was nothing to write home about, either; it was pretty well-written, but whoever programmed the sound decided that "out of tune Moog" would provide the ideal sonic texture for heartfelt moments. The story was a damned mess, patterned largely after Neon Genesis Evangelion not only in content -- alien force crash-lands in the arctic, spiritual connections with mom, dopey religious symbolism, etc. -- but also in terms of plot structure and its overreliance on obtuse crypticism. (I don't even know if "crypticism" is actually a word, which is fair enough, because I'm also not sure if FFVII's plot is actually a story.)

In short, FFVII was very much a product of its time and has aged more poorly than any other Final Fantasy, except maybe Mystic Quest. Alas, people are largely unwilling to question the validity of their nostalgic fondnesses, so FFVII has remained a much-loved creation despite the fact that it's really mostly terrible.

Tomb Raider? is another game that enjoys the benefits of firsties syndrome, but it's harder to resent that particular series because (1) it was pretty widely reviled until about a week ago when Tomb Raider Legend came out, and (2) Lara Croft is no longer being crammed down our collective throat. Not so with FFVII -- there's Advent Children? and Before Crisis? and Dirge of Cerberus? and Crisis Core? and god knows what else. And since Advent Children is pretty much the only thing that made money for Square Enix last year (despite being a wretched exercise in visual overkill at the expense of story) we're practically guaranteed to see a hell of a lot more AC-style crap in the coming years.

Which is good if we're talking about "Cait Sith's Summer Vacation." Bad if we're talking about "Cloud and Vincent in: Angststurm-X."

FFVII was an unfortunate first in a lot of senses, but probably none so tragic as the really annoying archetypes and clichés it established. Prior to Cloud Strife, RPG heroes were either upbeat or, better yet, totally laconic. Now they're all a bunch of surly jerks who seem a lot more interested in hair care products than in social graces. I'm certainly not the most outgoing person you'll ever meet (or at least notice sitting standoffishly by myself), but Strife makes me look like a social chihuahua with an espresso IV drip.

Then again, he's actually a brilliant character in a lot of ways -- particularly in proving just how well Square knew its target audience. Cloud seems like a carefree badass at the adventure's beginning, a self-assured mercenary with a heart of ice and an oversized sword that appeared to have lived a former life as a jumbo jet tailfin. But he really wasn't. On the contrary, he was a neurotic loser wracked with insecurity and incompetence; though he aspired to badassery, he was in truth a SOLDIER program reject who cravenly patterned his personality and mannerisms after his personal hero, Zack. Hell, he even went after sloppy seconds with Zack's old girlfriend... it doesn't get more pitiful than that.

Which just proves how cannily Square recognized its customers. What better way to sell to people than by speaking directly to them? Cloud Strife is the everynerd -- wrapped up in delusions of greatness when allowed to take things on his own carefully-selected terms until he sees the world for what it is and is forced to come to grips with the fact that he's actually completely pathetic. That's your average game-obsessed message board dork in a nutshell: the petty tyrant of a tiny little niche of the Internet but a failure in real life. It's the kind of parable Jesus would have been proud to have shared with the hungry masses between bites of magical fishloaf, the cigarette ad of nerd coming-of-age stories -- a promise to nerdlings that if you face down your demons, accept your failures and struggle to move beyond them, you'll save the world and your childhood crush will fall madly in love with you. And, P.S., she's totally stacked now and, if the CG movies are to be believed, has never heard of this thing called a "brassiere."

Of course, the CG movies are the real culprit here. FFVII arrived right as Pixar-quality animation started to become available for the humble masses, and the PlayStation provided a large enough medium to allow them to dole it out in massive doses for eager eyeballs. Seamlessly, too -- once players saw that opening movie as the camera zoomed in on Midgar, further and further until it met up with the interspliced train engine and the player's party hopped out without a hint of load time, that was all it took. Never mind that the load times throughout the rest of the game were atrocious, that moving from screen to screen was met with a lengthy pause. Or that the frequent random battles took longer to load than most random battles in Final Fantasy VI? had taken to complete. Or that the bulk of the "play time" was empty padding. That was the FFVII revolution: half the game, spread across twice as much time.

Worse, the filler-heavy 60-hour clock time quickly became the new standard for console RPGs -- who cares that Chrono Trigger? was 25 hours of unmitigated awesome? After FFVII, anything less than 50 hours suddenly became a rip-off; developers responded, tragically, by giving gamers exactly what they wanted. Parasite Eve was soundly rejected for its shocking!! 10-hour story; its spiritual successor Vagrant Story (which would have made a powerful 20-hour game) was stretched to 30 via tons of copy-and-paste corridor design.

Sadly, the follow-the-leader nature of Japanese RPG devs meant that they trod lemming-like into wretchedness, following FFVII's lead into tedium and excess. Gamers, they discovered, would suffer through any amount of boring combat as long as there were flashy cinematic special effects (which had the net effect of dragging things out even more). They'd traipse along in pursuit of the dangling carrot provided by 30-second nuggets of slick FMV, regardless of how boring or illogical the story in between turned out to be.

Come to think of it, "wretched exercise in visual overkill at the expense of story" (and gameplay) makes for a pretty good description of FFVII in general. In that sense, Advent Children was a chip off the ol' Materia. Square even tried to compensate by tossing in a handful of minigames, which were simultaneously terrible and inappropriate. Hey gang, Aeris just died a tragic, heartbreaking death -- it's time for snowboarding!

A quick survey of the console role-playing genre reveals a creative landscape pockmarked with the scars left by FFVII's world-crushing success. Stiflingly linear narrative-driven adventure games bogged down with excessive menu-driven combat. Sissy-boy heroes. Incomprehensibly dense plots with at least two obligatory twists, usually centered around the protagonist's conveniently forgotten connection to the villain or crisis at hand. And, oh god, the villains.

Thanks to Sephiroth, we'll never be able to take an RPG villain seriously again. Tetsuya Nomura's discovery that leather-daddy albinos are inherently evil means that Sephiroth has become the template (and fashionplate) for the RPG villain: effeminate, ridiculous and driven by obscure motives. It's pretty sad that FFVI's Kefka literally dressed like a clown, yet represented a far more significant threat than his successor. Kefka broke the world in his quest for raw power, then ruled over the ruined remains with divine fury; Sephiroth wanted a hug from mommy and babbled a lot. Advantage: Kefka.

It's taken the Final Fantasy series nine years and five chapters to dig itself out of the hole that FFVII dug. FFXII does things right: it has a story that's worth a damn. Characters -- including villains -- who actually have motivation and personalities. Fast, fluid gameplay. A brilliant character skill system that offers even more flexibility than Materia without turning the party into a handful of useless, interchangeable meatbags.

But don't worry, FFVII fanatics. Nomura and Kitase are rumored to be in charge of Final Fantasy XIII, so you can be sure the status quo of anime-inspired superficiality will be restored in due time. In the meantime, you can wallow in fantasies of the alleged FFVII remake for PlayStation 3. Because god knows that if you fix the horribly dated graphics the whole thing will magically be good again.

FREE CHAI VANG!

YOU'VE READ MY FILE NIGGA (c) Jack 'Mufuckin' Bauer

http://rjcc.stumbleupon.com - what I'm looking at

www.hdbeat.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

Most every RPG'er I know has been playing RPGS since long before FFVII, and yet each of us loves it and has replayed it at least once (twice in my case).

edit: IMO you could even say that the old school RPG'ers actually enjoy it more and defend it more than the newer cats to the genre. Im not sure where duke is getting that claim from.

____
'andmakeamanaffendatoor and lay a snare' OMS
jtblq™ y'all...
•http://jtblq.deviantart.com/•http:/www.myspace.com/JTBLQ•

?

except for the fact it reads like he's 34 and sells his Everquest swords on Ebay

but FFVII is celebrated moreso for it's place in time and collective nostalgia than the actual story or gameplay

or is that what he considers 'padding'? If he does, thats utter bullshit. The Golden Saucer and the chocobo raising and all the other extras remain some of the best if not best in a RPG. There are some serious side things which he simply dismisses.

He further also blames FFVII for somehow bringing along the age of menu battles, ummm that started from FFI! The fuck is this cat talking about? That has been FF's forte since its inception, somehow he just blames it on FFVII. CT was that same kind of menu combat, with pre-maid double and triple moves thrown in.....yet thats 25 hours of awesome? Hell, id say the FFVII weapons were the most challenging bosses that I ever had to prepare for(maybe outside FFV), and they were fun as all hell.

And I call bullshit on somehow FFVII's soundtrack not being amazing, I think hes just downplaying another aspect in order to get more fodder for this article. Hell, I have the OST and its awesome.

but overall I'll agree with him

I still like FFVII and will remember it as one of the most fun times I ever had playing a videogame, but - there are A LOT of GLARING flaws that are ignored

of course, you can say much of the same about several golden-age RPGs of the 16-bit era, even FFVI

esp in games like RPG's with so many different aspects and often very long, its much easier to complain about an assortment of things....it really doesnt change how great the game was or not, because thats just a part of any game.

widely considered the greatest of all-time

-a story that goes nowhere and completely falls apart at the end
-suspect characterization
-materia/clone-a-character

not to mention some bad habits it started, including excessive CGI and tedious length

but the bottom line is that FFVII is a very good game that doesn't age so well and is remembered more for it's impact on the industry than it's own gameplay merits

ff6 was the first rpg i played. its still my favorite.
i wanna play 7, but i dont wanna pay 30 bucks for it.

____
'andmakeamanaffendatoor and lay a snare' OMS
jtblq™ y'all...
•http://jtblq.deviantart.com/•http:/www.myspace.com/JTBLQ•

?

try a Sam Goody

his game clock was 99:99 like all of ours.

what a loser having the nerve to look down on gamers that liked FF7 (how much of a pretentious bitch is he to use roman numerals? it's 7. not even video game mags use roman numerals) but his whole article sounds like the one that got his ass kicked for walking around with 20 sided dice.

that homo is just mad he couldn't beat emerald weapon.

---------------------
it hangs down to her dick, her piece bang glass tables.
http://www.myspace.com/thievinstealberg

____
'andmakeamanaffendatoor and lay a snare' OMS
jtblq™ y'all...
•http://jtblq.deviantart.com/•http:/www.myspace.com/JTBLQ•

?

This is like that blogger that got cursed out by Bun.

shit i found it. lol

---------------------
it hangs down to her dick, her piece bang glass tables.
http://www.myspace.com/thievinstealberg

you had a whole new generation of players who wanted to become "hardcore" gamers, and latching onto ff7 (a traditional rpg) was the way to prove themselves

he is on point

FREE CHAI VANG!

YOU'VE READ MY FILE NIGGA (c) Jack 'Mufuckin' Bauer

http://rjcc.stumbleupon.com - what I'm looking at

www.hdbeat.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

ff7 was a great game that's why a lot of people latched onto it.


now it's being persecuted because of that?
niggas sound like dirty backpacker ass niggas that get mad when they see a hip hop video on mtv2.


i've been playing rpgs since ultima: quest of the avatar for NES.
when ff7 came out it was NEW for it's time. cinematics integrated with gameplay. nobody at that point (the average consumer at least) had seen storytelling like that in a videogame before. everybody was turned off to turnbased gameplay and battles but eventually it gained acceptance because RPGs finally became "cool". now the dorks who are still virgins jerking off to FF fan fiction are getting mad because FF7 turned their innocent little crush into the girl that makes all the guys turn heads.


fuckin hoes.

---------------------
357 with a bayonet?
http://www.myspace.com/thievinstealberg

I had been playing RPGs since ever since (c) Fokai

and FFVII did a lot of amazing things - one of the best times I had playing an RPG, no doubt

but there are a bunch of sores on that game we now can see with a critical eye

it's called "aging".


the game was great.
still is.
dont try to backtrack over how much the game sucked now because you see better shit now.

---------------------
357 with a bayonet?
http://www.myspace.com/thievinstealberg

I never liked the materia, it was a bastardization of the espers/job system

and everyone knows the story fell apart

if anything, there is more revisionist history beneficial to FFVII than detrimental

but neverrrrrmind.

---------------------
357 with a bayonet?
http://www.myspace.com/thievinstealberg

SHE WAS FAT N UGLY BACK THEN TOO NIGGA

FREE CHAI VANG!

YOU'VE READ MY FILE NIGGA (c) Jack 'Mufuckin' Bauer

http://rjcc.stumbleupon.com - what I'm looking at

www.hdbeat.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

they play games cause they're trying to impress?

I've never met anyone who said, "man, have you played that new game. It's not that hot, but it's the hip thing to do".

This article is just hate for the sake of hate.

Btw, spm's reply below is on point. The only reason I'm even saying this is because I know most of his statements are crap. But in this case, haterade and revisionist history are exactly what makes the above article dumb and useless.

Why do folks have such a hard time accepting that?

No need to write a fucking encyclopedia of FFVII's flaws

I played FF3, Chrono Trigger, and plenty of other RPG's before getting my hands on FF7. But none of them were more memorable and addictive as FF7. I love the game cause it's ridiculously long and kept me interested the whole way through. I remember being in the 10th grade staying up til 3am playing the game and going to school w/ playing FF7 on my mind the whole day. That game made my grades drop and me lose weight cause i forgot to eat cause i was that drawn into the game.

Why do people feel the need to hate on a game that was loved by millions. I think it's the same idiots who don't like their favorite underground rapper when they start getting famous. It's just hate. Y'all need to grow up.


Just take the game for what it is... ENTERTAINING! Isn't that what video games are made for anyways?

I can understand the FFVII hate, but damn, most people can make the same point in one or two sentences

this is like if a nigga wrote an article on how wack double dragon was
fuck outta here
i GUARANTEE he copped FF7 and was playing the shit out of it when it dropped

At least in the States.

The time before it's release, I can count one decent RPG (Wild Arms) on the PSOne. The rest were mostly trash. You can think the story has holes, the graphics aren't that great and the battle system wasn't a favorite. You can't doubt it's place in gaming history though.

first RPG to hit #1 at Electronics Boutique

I wouldn't say FFVII "revived" the RPG genre in the States b/c there really wasn't anything to revive...it was a small niche market that was mainstreamed by FFVII's release

I should have said made more accesible to mainstream gamers. The only RPG I can think of at the time that was marketed so heavily.

How could I forget about Suikoden!? I should be ashamed of myself...

There is so much Nutella being spread in this article, it's hard to take it seriously.

>On the whole, the D&D cartoon is a whole lot better than
>FFVII, because at least the characters were pretty likable and
>spoke coherent English. That's a lot more than you can say for
>the game.

This is an example of such. More on this later...

>Part of what makes FFVII's popularity so enduring is the
>nefarious power of "firsties" syndrome. That is, it was
>pioneering in many respects and thus netted a lot of attention
>for its novelty -- including attention by a lot of people who
>were new to the RPG genre and thus had no metric for
>determining a good one from a sloppy, mediocre one. Back in
>1997, FFVII was pretty jaw-dropping; the graphics were
>detailed even though the game world was huge, the integrated
>cinematics were awe-inspiring, and it basically seemed to
>embody everything the "next generation" promised. It was the
>PlayStation's decisive blow against the up-and-coming Nintendo
>64, the single volley that determined the dynamic of the
>console race.

This right here, is 100% truth; no argument from The Doc on this.


>So impressive was the game in its time that overlooking its
>glaring flaws was entirely too easy to do. Like the
>inconsistent art direction. Characters came in three different
>versions: squatty midgets, lanky puppets and detailed humans,
>and depending on when a given video sequence was rendered (and
>by which studio) the designs jumped around from event to event
>like a crack-addled grasshopper. The music was nothing to
>write home about, either; it was pretty well-written, but
>whoever programmed the sound decided that "out of tune Moog"
>would provide the ideal sonic texture for heartfelt moments.
>The story was a damned mess, patterned largely after Neon
>Genesis Evangelion not only in content -- alien force
>crash-lands in the arctic, spiritual connections with mom,
>dopey religious symbolism, etc. -- but also in terms of plot
>structure and its overreliance on obtuse crypticism. (I don't
>even know if "crypticism" is actually a word, which is fair
>enough, because I'm also not sure if FFVII's plot is actually
>a story.)

First of all, a Moog synth sounds better than the sparsity that is most of FFVII's soundtrack. The Doc thinks the soundtrack to that game is serviceable, and has a lot of classics, but it's not touching FFVI's soundtrack, or even -some- of the music on FFVIII (the use of wah-wah guitar and Rhodes-like sounds was something you don't hear much in games nowadays, much less RPGs).


>In short, FFVII was very much a product of its time and has
>aged more poorly than any other Final Fantasy, except maybe
>Mystic Quest. Alas, people are largely unwilling to question
>the validity of their nostalgic fondnesses, so FFVII has
>remained a much-loved creation despite the fact that it's
>really mostly terrible.

This is true too, EXCEPT putting it on a rung on the latter near Mystic Quest. While it is commendable this jabroni actually recognizes that Mystic CRAP was an aberration that should have stayed in the homebrew dungeon of Square USA's R&D, FFVII is nowhere near the second worst Final Fantasy game.

The Doc would put FFXI or FFIX on that rung before that. The former, because the franchise shouldn't have wasted a sequel "number" on an MMORPG, and the latter because that was a 2-pronged kiss-off pandering which The Doc will probably rant about in another post.

>FFVII was an unfortunate first in a lot of senses, but
>probably none so tragic as the really annoying archetypes and
>clichés it established. Prior to Cloud Strife, RPG heroes were
>either upbeat or, better yet, totally laconic. Now they're all
>a bunch of surly jerks who seem a lot more interested in hair
>care products than in social graces. I'm certainly not the
>most outgoing person you'll ever meet (or at least notice
>sitting standoffishly by myself), but Strife makes me look
>like a social chihuahua with an espresso IV drip.

Did he get Cloud confused with Squall? True, the current hero archtype began with Cloud, but Squall was 10x worse than that roody-poo ever was... not to mention, since Squall, Square has skirted away from that kind of PB&J than fangirls eat up (at least in action, character design is another issue).

>Then again, he's actually a brilliant character in a lot of
>ways -- particularly in proving just how well Square knew its
>target audience. Cloud seems like a carefree badass at the
>adventure's beginning, a self-assured mercenary with a heart
>of ice and an oversized sword that appeared to have lived a
>former life as a jumbo jet tailfin. But he really wasn't. On
>the contrary, he was a neurotic loser wracked with insecurity
>and incompetence; though he aspired to badassery, he was in
>truth a SOLDIER program reject who cravenly patterned his
>personality and mannerisms after his personal hero, Zack.
>Hell, he even went after sloppy seconds with Zack's old
>girlfriend... it doesn't get more pitiful than that.

LOL.


>Which just proves how cannily Square recognized its customers.
>What better way to sell to people than by speaking directly to
>them? Cloud Strife is the everynerd -- wrapped up in delusions
>of greatness when allowed to take things on his own
>carefully-selected terms until he sees the world for what it
>is and is forced to come to grips with the fact that he's
>actually completely pathetic. That's your average
>game-obsessed message board dork in a nutshell: the petty
>tyrant of a tiny little niche of the Internet but a failure in
>real life. It's the kind of parable Jesus would have been
>proud to have shared with the hungry masses between bites of
>magical fishloaf, the cigarette ad of nerd coming-of-age
>stories -- a promise to nerdlings that if you face down your
>demons, accept your failures and struggle to move beyond them,
>you'll save the world and your childhood crush will fall madly
>in love with you. And, P.S., she's totally stacked now and, if
>the CG movies are to be believed, has never heard of this
>thing called a "brassiere."

Ok, this "assessment" is starting to get a little gay. Sardony is fine, but this is wrapped in The Fabric of Hate.


>Worse, the filler-heavy 60-hour clock time quickly became the
>new standard for console RPGs -- who cares that Chrono
>Trigger? was 25 hours of unmitigated awesome? After FFVII,
>anything less than 50 hours suddenly became a rip-off;
>developers responded, tragically, by giving gamers exactly
>what they wanted. Parasite Eve was soundly rejected for its
>shocking!! 10-hour story; its spiritual successor Vagrant
>Story (which would have made a powerful 20-hour game) was
>stretched to 30 via tons of copy-and-paste corridor design.

This must be somewhat of a hidden jab at the side missions, some of which (@#$#%#%#$@ Chocobos!) weren't exactly The Doc's cup of tea. But..never mind. Carrying on....

>Come to think of it, "wretched exercise in visual overkill at
>the expense of story" (and gameplay) makes for a pretty good
>description of FFVII in general. In that sense, Advent
>Children was a chip off the ol' Materia. Square even tried to
>compensate by tossing in a handful of minigames, which were
>simultaneously terrible and inappropriate. Hey gang, Aeris
>just died a tragic, heartbreaking death -- it's time for
>snowboarding!

WTF?


>A quick survey of the console role-playing genre reveals a
>creative landscape pockmarked with the scars left by FFVII's
>world-crushing success. Stiflingly linear narrative-driven
>adventure games bogged down with excessive menu-driven combat.
>Sissy-boy heroes. Incomprehensibly dense plots with at least
>two obligatory twists, usually centered around the
>protagonist's conveniently forgotten connection to the villain
>or crisis at hand. And, oh god, the villains.

This jabroni talks about FFXII being greater than FFVII and then uses the "sissy boy heroes" tag? Did that jabroni see that asswipe Vaan? Jabroni is possibly the gayest Final Fantasy character since KUJA. And it's probably worse once you go through that game itself...

>Thanks to Sephiroth, we'll never be able to take an RPG
>villain seriously again. Tetsuya Nomura's discovery that
>leather-daddy albinos are inherently evil means that Sephiroth
>has become the template (and fashionplate) for the RPG
>villain: effeminate, ridiculous and driven by obscure motives.
>It's pretty sad that FFVI's Kefka literally dressed like a
>clown, yet represented a far more significant threat than his
>successor. Kefka broke the world in his quest for raw power,
>then ruled over the ruined remains with divine fury; Sephiroth
>wanted a hug from mommy and babbled a lot. Advantage: Kefka.

LOL. Not touching this one. Sephiroth is an icon of RPG villains, but again... "effiminate, ridiculous, driven by obscure motives" ... KUJA, jabronis.


>It's taken the Final Fantasy series nine years and five
>chapters to dig itself out of the hole that FFVII dug. FFXII
>does things right: it has a story that's worth a damn.
>Characters -- including villains -- who actually have
>motivation and personalities. Fast, fluid gameplay. A
>brilliant character skill system that offers even more
>flexibility than Materia without turning the party into a
>handful of useless, interchangeable meatbags.

See, all this jabroni needed to say about his criticism of FFVII was "Materia broke the game because it zapped any really inherent individuality from the characters outside of Limit Breaks". That's The Doc's main, and only criticism of the game itself. Everything else about it was something that needed to happen to the genre to hoist it out of that damnable "dungeons and dragons" motif that usually kept cats out of giving the games and genre a chance. All this other stuff, despite The Doc agreeing with some if it, in principle, is extra.

>But don't worry, FFVII fanatics. Nomura and Kitase are rumored
>to be in charge of Final Fantasy XIII, so you can be sure the
>status quo of anime-inspired superficiality will be restored
>in due time. In the meantime, you can wallow in fantasies of
>the alleged FFVII remake for PlayStation 3. Because god knows
>that if you fix the horribly dated graphics the whole thing
>will magically be good again.

^^^^ PB&J alert

critisim of it? I dont think it was the best game from Final Fantasy either, but I cant even read that without thinking this game somehow got him anally.

I just did a quick playthrough of FFVII for the first time in probably 15 years...and it was a lot of fun. enough fun to ignore any deficiencies.

- Midgar is one of the best sections in Final Fantasy history. those first 5-10 hours are perfectly paced, set up a bunch of interesting characters and story motives, and are overall just a blast to play.

- once you hit the world map, it's a mixed bag. the story relies *a lot* on MacGuffins and one-time revelations, so knowing all that makes the journey to get there very clunky. disc 2 is especially all over the place.

- for the complaints about materia homogenization, I think it's a great system in retrospect. most FF games end up being magic-heavy or attack-based, with your party comprised of different types, but materia was basically the jobs system on crack. when you unlock the different combinations it gets really fun -- maybe the most enjoyable FF game to "break."

- I'd say the complaints about "character likeness" stem more from the fact that several cast members aren't well developed. Vincent and Yuffie are both sort of throwaways (each are fan service in their own way). Cait Sith is a cool idea but more time is spent hiding the "secret" then making Reeve an interesting character. Red XIII looks cool but might as well stay in Cosmo Canyon after his bit. that said, the character design was top notch. and best Cid ever, too.

- if you set yourself up right the game has little to no grinding (I ran from every battle until the third disc, when I had to level up to beat Emerald and Ruby) and moves really quickly, which I love. most of the "OMG THIS IS THE BEST EVER" parts don't translate anymore -- remember how amazing it was to move your character against a FMV backdrop as it played? but the whole of its parts is still plenty enjoyable. subtracting the MMO entries, FFVII is easily top five in the series.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

what a dumb ass I was 😂