FF7 - Is it just me...

[Words Of Wisdom]

naznatips said:

And this folks is how to add a worthless reply to a topic that you have no experience with because it makes you feel smart to contribute even if you know nothing about it.

Since apparently WoW thinks I just hate this for no reason, let me go through my issues with this game:

Design: Yes, you may say graphics are a superficial reason to dislike a game, but this borders on downright unplayable. Why am I playing a game where the only time my characters can display anything even remotely resembling emotion is in a cutscene? Why am I walking through gothic/steampunk backgrounds as legos? Why is there so little freaking variety in the environments? You don't have technical limitations as an excuse for that. Backgrounds were hand-drawn.

Just because you have the technology to use 3D, doesn't mean you should use it. This is the perfect example of that, and don't say graphics don't matter at all. They absolutely do, and really bad ones have a damaging effect on the gameplay experience. If you don't believe that, then go play your Atari. On the other hand, a game like FFIX holds up even today, despite it's graphics being bad for modern standards. Graphics do matter to a point.

It not so much graphics that matter as a willingness to tolerate the graphic style.  Many grew up with sprite-based graphics and they feel perfectly at home with them.  I'm an example of that.  I like sprite-based art a lot.  While I thought the battles of FFVII as well as the cutscenes were very neat, I was also disappointed by the "lego people" as you put it.  I'd have much preferred sprites in that instance.  This is a very fair criticism of the game.

Plot: Okay, now this is going to get lengthy. First of all, stuffing 5 billion lines of dialogue and explanation into a plot does not by default make it good. In fact, it just makes it worse because it kills the pacing. You would figure the upside to this would be that the plot would be complex and deep, and that the characters would be well developed. To the contrary, the plot was simplistic and derrivative. Even in the late 90s the super-soldier gone bad thing was ridiculously over-used. To make it even worse, despite the game being crammed with wordiness and supposed "twists," none of the plot was actually revealed till the last 30 minutes of the freaking game!

Then let's get into the development of the plot itself. First of all, Sephiroth was not the main villain of this game, nor did he have a major part in this game. Of course, given how poorly translated it is, this just created confusion. Jenova was the main villain of this game. Jenova's clone in the form of Sephiroth killed Aeris. Jenova is the one who you hunted for 80% of the game. Jenova is the one who killed President Sinra and burned down the village. She was the one who controlled Sephiroth's actions using the cells in his body. Jenova was the main villain of this game. Didn't anyone wonder why everytime you caught a Sephiroth clone you fought Jenova???

I agree to a point.  The plot never really came together in an "Ah ha!" moment at a reasonable point in the game like Final Fantasy VI's did when one character betrayed another certain character.  The plot twist at the end of the game will make some happy and others less so; I personally didn't really mind.  I think that the real key was that the plot of FFVII was simply its own McGuffin.  It motivates the player to go forward and as the party leap frogs from one place to the next the over arching plot fades into the background as the journey takes the fore.  Some will like that, some will not.  I personally would rather not have a transparent plot as mystery can add to enjoyment however I would agree that FFVII didn't handle it as well as it could have.

Characters: Jeeze, so much awful stuff here. I already started on Sephiroth before, but I'll continue on him now. Sephiroth was an awful character. He goes from being completey normal to completely insane just because he found out his genes were screwed with some? So were Cloud's, and although he was a jackass until Aeris died then an emo after that, he didn't randomly decide to go insane. Sephiroth completely lacked motivation and emotion.

Of course, he didn't matter that much anyway, because he was worthless! Sephiroth spent the entire game frozen in the Northern Crater, then came out in the last hour in time to try and drop a meteor on the planet, which he even failed at (unlike Kefka who practically destroyed the world). Sephiroth did nothing. Nothing but whine and complain about his poor unfortunate past. He is one of the absolute worst characters in video game history.

That's not even going into the other characters... Aeris was just a slut, Tifa was a bimbo, Barret was the most ridiculous example of a stereotypical black man I've ever seen in a video game (Well, until Unreal Tournament 3 anyway, but that's another story), Yuffie was only there to steal your materia and add an extra few hours to the gameplay, Vincent was just another emo, Cait Sith served no purpose and had no character development, and Cid was decent.

The problem was that Sephiroth was no more so an awful character than Kefka.  Sephiroth had a laundry list of reasons to hate the world around him beginning with being lied to his whole life, genenic manipulation, the fate of the ancient ones...etc.  Kefka just wanted power.  It may not have actually been Sephiroth who wreaked much havoc in the game but the player's belief regarding him that was formed during a lot of those moments shaped his character in the player's mind far more than his real actions ever really did.  I'm sorry you felt hosed at the end due to the twist, but I can't honestly see a case for Sephiroth versus Kefka.  Kefka was pretty 2 dimensional and very cliched.  Manical laugh?  Check.  Evil actions?  Check.  One-liners?  Check.  He did everything the cliche villain does except twirl a black mustache.  At least Sephiroth wasn't the kind of villain you'd find on a Saturday morning cartoon.  IMO Kefka was one of FFVI's disappointments because there just wasn't much to him.

As for the characters of FFVII, I don't know how you can dislike them so much yet not dislike aspects of the FFVI cast for example.  Terra and Gau in particular were walking cliches.  Near emotionless character learning to love?  Not original.  Boy raised by nature?  Not original.  Still, this is where FFVI took the initiative.  It didn't just give characters backstory... it developed them.  The cliff scene with Celes (you know the one), the Phoenix magicite scene with Locke, the scene with Gau's father... those moments were truly touching. FFVII tried with Dyne and RedXIII's father, but I think FFVI had way better execution.

I HATE Final Fantasy VII, and I have since I first played it. I don't care if other people hate it because they jumped on some band-wagon, or because it's on the PSX, or whatever other stupid reason. My reason for hating Final Fantasy VII is that I got hyped to play it. I saved for a year to play it. I was ready to fall down and worship it if it met the standards of FFVI and Chrono Trigger before it, and it completely crushed me. I hate it because I played it.

Ironically, I never even played FFVII on the PSX.

...I played it on the computer.  And my Cloud had fingers. 

Anywho, thanks for the solid response Naz.  At least someone can give one.  As for my "worthless reply," I can only respond with: