Sorry dude but Final Fantasy VII has been topped more than once since its release,not to mention there were games better than it before it got released in the first place.

There you go.  Persona 3 and 4 don't have random battles but they are challenging games or so I'm told.  FYI, I actually played a bit FFXII and I can tell you that the game is not a walk in the park like you say it is.  You will sometimes find enemies in the game that will absolutely kick your butt even if you try to use a strategy to beat them.  In fact, the game pratically forces you to grind if you want to continue the main part of the game.

FFXII is of moderate difficulty discounting the random super powered enemies. Remember the level in the Giza Plains, when you need to go around getting the sun crystal? and the little kid said"i almost got killed by some werewolves?" well my first game over in that game was running up to the 2 werewolves in the area expecting a battle as hard as all the other ones in the area and getting one-shotted....

Wow, why so much Final Fantasy VII hate guys? Blasphem! -_-

I thought FFX was better but I think Square-E needs to concentrate on only a few Rpg's at a time lately there work has been horrible.

Bullshit.

Ultima Exodus didn't have Random battles... and that was on the NES.

It was Link to the Past style.  Monsters popped up and chased you and you had to avoid them.

It's just that RPGs had random encoutners and people have just kept with it... just because.

Even other Square RPGs didn't have random encounters.  They just kept it that way on FF because they set a precedent with it and didn't want to change it.

Because it greatly disapointed many many people who bought a console soley for it.

Luckily Front Mission 3 made up for it.

Up till FF7 though square could do no wrong in my book.... then that game came and eh... there quality just took a hit and kept droppin.

Will there ever be another?

I hope not. Once was bad enough. I couldn't play it for more than an hour without feeling retarded, so I turned it off.

all these years i thought i was the only one who felt this way

You have to remember, at the time, we were all coming down off of FF4, Chrono Trigger, and FF6, so we were basically still high off of Square's heavenly golden age of RPG-making. We had really high hopes for what the graphical leap and the introduction of the 3rd dimension could bring to Final Fantasy, and were slapped in the face with all the cutscenes. Our beloved franchise got hijacked and replaced with a movie.


Here is the most scathing satire of FF7 ever created:

http://www.weebl.jolt.co.uk/ff7.htm