That's just you personally.

I create structures on a daily basis for work just out of my own mind,also played legos a lot as a kid but gaming and books can evenly or even on a bigger scale spark my imagination.

Personal interest is going to play a factor, so we can't say that one thing is going to inspire the imagination of people in all cases.  Some people might be inspired by things that would not normally inspire people... Like Seth in Superbad drawing endlessly creative penis drawings.  So, of course I wasn't trying to make a hard rule for all people.

But in general, the more that is given to you by the creator of something, the less your imagination will be engaged.  Definitely an oversimplification (something with too little to build off of might not inspire anyone at all for instance), but I think it's good enough for most purposes.

At any rate, when someone says that a particular game requires so much imagination that no one has actually seen it (whatever that means).  I would say that implies that there's something objectively special about this particular game that somehow makes it generally more imaginatively engaging than other games. Not that it's just something that strikes their fancy in particular.  Wouldn't you?  And I've been given no explanation as to why that would be aside from essentially you can play it and think of stuff... which would hold true for any game.  

Ff7 , its story and characters, its world settings and godlike music, its amazing battle system.

It isn't the same. The revolutionary thing is moving and fighting, while you still automatically face the enemy. That is something 3D action adventure games to this day use, and if not the controls are often deemed clunky and unintuitive. Nintendo talked about how they got inspired for this solution by watching a traditional japanese fight, where the contestants are bound to each other by a rope. That was their basic idea in implementing that.

This is what I think. Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game ever.

Yeah it allowed more enemy designs and concepts to become possible lock on wasn't the innovation as that was introduced by Panzar Dragoon it was being able to lock on and move freely on the fly in combat that changed things as that was why OOT's fights and boss battles were on another level to other games of the time. As you mentioned games to this day still use the execution OOT brought out much like how game engines today take cues from SM64's engine another innovation by OOT was the introduction of an actual day and night cycle and one that influenced what was going on in the game at the time.

Well, both are great games, but also very different games in different genres. So it comes all down to personal preferences. Well, actually there are some more considerations, I get into it shortly.

I myself didn't play any of the two games as they were coming out. It wouldn't be that nostalgic anyways, as I am older than most of this forum, my nostalgia games are older. But back then I was a PC gamer myself, and I didn't even *heard* of OOT and FF7 until a decade later or so. I never played the originals on the original machine, I only played the 3DS remake of OOT and the HD-rerelease of FF7. For me personally it would be OOT, holds up better, but in both cases I can see how gaming evolved since then.

So, why then professional reviewers preferred OOT back then and still today? Why OOT has a Metacritic of 99 and FFVII has a Metascore of 92? Because professional reviewers can't overlook the impact on the industry. Square had an easier task to transform FF7, because the main gameplay of turn-based RPGs works as well in 3D, as it does in 2D. These are menus basically, so that's that. But Nintendo had to solve the problem, that the 3D-space worked differently for fighting. So they invented the lock-on with even when you moved, you still faced the enemey. That system was refined later and is in some form still used today. So therefore professional reviewers give OOT higher marks.

But that is not all. You also have nostalgia playing a part. N64 sold about 33M, the PS1 three times as much with over 100M. This resulted also in higher sales for FF, although the difference is not as big as for the platform. So basically: more kids grew up playing FF7, than OOT, so nostalgia breaks for FF. More so, as many gamers who still played N64 probably grew up with NES or SNES, and were already older at the time.

And there is another factor. Final Fantasy was a symbol for Playstation winning over Nintendo. they made advertisements with that. That produces an emotional divide thinking about FF7. People invested with Playstation will see FF better than it is, people invested with Nintendo worse. And as I said, three times as much people had a Playstation. So this helps. I would like to see the split on above poll for europe and america. I have a strong feeling in europe FF wins strongly, as N64 didn't have a strong presence.

Ocarina...is just a flawless game especially back in 1998. FF7 was absolutely mind blowing too, back in 1997. Ocarina just pretty much did everything better except for story and music. They are different games, one is action adventure/rpg the other is a traditional turn based JRPG.

Ocarina was also revolutionary, established new gameplay conventions and broke new ground. FFVII Played like most JRPGs that came before it, it was just bigger, and modernized in the visual department. There are also arguments about games within the same genre being better before it (Chrono Trigger, FFVI) and after it within the same gen (Xenogears, FFIX).

That said FFVII was probably my favorite game that gen, only behind OoT and SM64.

The same applies to OoT, even if the reasons may slightly differ.

People invested with Nintendo see OoT better than it is, and those who aren’t see it as worse.

Well, I owned both systems, played both games at, (OoT) and near (FFVII) their respective launches. You didn't need to be biased towards a particular company to appreciate that Ocarina was special, the game was just jaw dropping from the start.

The best comparison I can make between the two is this: FFVII pulled me into its story more than any game before or after it, and OoT sucked me in to its world more than any game before or after. In terms of which was the better game, Ocarina was, and this is coming from a guy whose favorite genre from 1994 to 04-05 was the traditional JRPG.