EDIT: I should have probably quoted, but the start of my post was directed at Soriku's dislike of FF7 being to western-y.
Um, I'm pretty sure Final Fantasy has always been westerny and only made the transition to more asian culture based since FF7.
I mean, pre-7 is classic european architecture and clothing aside from the distinctly asian job classes and characters.
7 Introduced very modern Japan pop-culture into the series, with the design of midgar and the wild spiky hair of certain characters. Even character models were very anime-esque, again with the spikey hair, large round eyes, cait-sith.
Personally, I think FF7 is one of the most important games ever, but it's not one of the best. As a person that's played almost all FF's, it doesn't do enough to set itself apart from the other FF's except for the jump to 3D (which is not setting itself apart from 8 onwards anyway).
