Is it just that I'm playing it 11 years later or....

Was Final Fantasy VII overrated from day 1?

Maybe it's because I've seen Advent children 12 times and already know what happens for the most part.

maybe becasue graphically it's aged horribily.

Maybe becasue in reality it's still a 2d FF with really bad polygons.

Maybe the battle system is too simple.

I don't know but I'm underwhelmed by it and for a game I almost Paid $80 for..... I want to know why.

People go ga ga for it becasue of the story pretty much not becuase it's a good RPG right?

 

Yes.

 

The materia system is quite good. Back in the day the Battles were the most gorgous seen on a home console RPG. The summons and character models were piticularly good for their time. The story is the best part though, to truely appricate it you have to had played it around the time it came out though.

I have such fond memories of it and so do many others, and thats why its still so popular today, people see the movie or play the PSP game and want to relive those days of the PS1.

The whole game is quality though, from the sound to the story and even the graphics (for their time)

 

I'll give it the music. Everything else about it though...eh

Maybe Lost Oddessy and Persona 3 spoiled me.

I STILL <3 Chrono trigger

I'm not very far into FF7 though. Only like maybe a half hour in. It's when you have to blow up the 2nd reactor. Barret's manorisms and way of talking Cracks me up. Plus for more hilarity I named Cloud "your mom" so you KNOW some unintentionally funny things come up.

 

Should have bought the PC version and modded it so it looked a bit better heh

 

wasn't the music worse on PC?

and also the PC version hates XP and Vista if I recall

But yeah I got it for PS1 because I want to have the most Awesome PS1 collection ever!

 

Strongest character (the ones that traditionally can't use magic) shooting fireballs and healing = instant fail. It wasn't that bad. Actually, for 1st gen 3D it's not total crap. Just a bit pretentious. Not into the pretty boy style.

 

Plenty of soundpacks. And plenty of fixes for XP, Ive played through it before on XP with no issues. Vista I cant say though heh. But I know theres high resolution mods, high res characters, and who knows what else from the last time I checked a few years ago.

 

Yes.

 

The PC version sounds worse. However, there are crap loads of mods you can download to fix that. Looking back, the music in the PS1 version wasn't that great either.

Here is my impression of every FF7 song ever:

"HONK HONK HONK HONK"

Anyways, I liked some of the characters, like Cid and Barrett, the Summons and Battles looked REALLY good at the time, the Materia system was easy to use but it kinda took strategy out of the game and lead to tankmage characters who can do everything.

The story is pretty good, however I think Jenova was a better villain than Sephiroth. They left a lot in the air during its release and some people thought Jenova was controlling Sephiroth, but Nomura retconned it into Sephiroth controlling her, to please the Kingdom Hearts generation of Final Fantasy fanboys I guess. I like to think of the plot of an Alien form spreading her influence over the world instead of an angry bishonen having a temper tantrum because Cloud kicked his ass before the events of FF7. Sephiroth is all flash and no substance, as said earlier. Not the greatest villain ever. He's only hailed because he killed a main character, which, to the best of my knowledge, never happened in a game as popular as FF7 anyway.

As for the prequels like Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus, I really have no desire to play those at all. Nor have I seen Advent Children. I've heard that Crisis Core tries to make Sephiroth's story more tragic, but when seeing previews on TV, it still looks like he's a generic overpowered womanlike goth kid.

 

Depends on how popular you would consider Phantasy Star II.

 

Well, I knew main characters dying before has happened, but...

Well, lets just say it was a cheap way to make Sephiroth seem to be an "Awesome" villain. Same with the Midgar Serpent and all that.

X-death kills a main character in a fight, and it was an emotional scene and all, but it didn't happen "Out of the blue" if you know what I mean.

 

Oh I agree entirely man. I think anyone who considers Sephiroth a better villain than say... KEFKA, needs to have their videogame playing license revoked.

 

I like Kefka a whole lot more, he's like FF's answer to the Joker from Batman. Poisoning a whole towns water supply, not to mention he actually suceeds in what he wants to do.

You need to check out Youtube Oblivion mods for 5 minutes. I keep making comments like "Guys, use a villain other than Sephiroth and stop using One winged angel for the Battle music, for one thing it gets old, he's not that great a villain, and fighting mudcrabs to one winged angel is retarded" only to get a slew of negative feedback scores.:icon_bigg

I don't think One Winged Angel is even that great, it kinda bores me now. I said this on /v/ and some fanboy threw a temper tantrum and told me to go back to "My precious Halo." I think theres more and more underage people on that site every day.

 

Yeah, the music in FFVII isn't that great. Especially when compared to FFVI before it or the masterpiece Lost Odyssey after it. :icon_bigg

 

Yes, it's overrated, I know, but it's still a damn great game. The character design screams "1st gen 3D" and the music could be much better, but if even with that troubles it became a classic quickly is because of something.

The biggest deal of it in my opinion is the story. I heard everywhere people saying "FF7 story is the same that xxxxxxx game changing this or that" or "the story is a total ripoff of xxxxxxx", I tried most of those games and I still believe that FF7 story has something different, something I couldn't find in another game yet.

Never tried it on PC but I'd like to, anyway I'll have to wait 'til I get a XP-capable computer (I don't think it'll run fine on Vista for some time, compatibility troubles are still extremely annoying...)

 

Storywise, I think FF7's story is somewhat similar to FF6's story. Not so much character-wise, though.

 

I agree, because FFVI's characters were actually well developed and interesting. ;-)

 

I am playing the PS1 version now on my PSP and I still love it, great battle system, great materia system, the story is good, it's overall a good game. It's been surpassed by other games now which is why people go "ZOMG it's shit" mainly because they aren't taking it into context. I still play the original NES Zelda and think it's awesome when my phone has games better both graphically and story-wise.

If you look at FFVII as "the best RPG ever" then you will be dissapointed, if you look at it as "one of the best examples of early 3D/FMV/Story driven RPG's" then you will be fine.

 

I think most would agree that FF7 has the best atmosphere of any FF game (at least until FF8 which is when I stopped playing them..) even Square would have to agree with their shameless spinoffs and painful continuation of the story (now with 3x more prettyboy). For me the digital-steampunk era of FF7 was right on the money. It also was a breakthrough in the series by increasing the "adult content" of the story, the first same-species multi-racial game, first game with confusing real world language references among other things. There was just always hype around FF7 just because of it's production value, everything about it was a really big deal. Back then it deserved that hype. Only in the recent years where 12 year olds discover it and proclaim it the best game ever does it not deserve it's hype.

I totally don't agree that the graphics didn't hold up well. If you had played this in 1997 it would have cast an irreversible charm on you lasting to this day. I agree that the FMV doesn't look as "realistic" as it did back then, but even today the prerendered backgrounds I still think are as masterful as any Final Fantasy despite it being "early 3D".

For many years I thought it was overhyped and thought I liked FF4/6 better, but after revisiting FF7 almost 10 years later I finally realized how much FF7 improved on FF6 in every way except perhaps the plot's coherence. Honestly my nostalgia towards FF4-6 was pretty unfounded, possibly because I was 10 when I played them.

BTW, people pay $80 for FF7? If so my copy is for sale