FF7 - Is it just me...

[Helios]

Actually, I agree with Borkachev (about VII); the plot really isn't that bad. Everything you need to know is in the game.

The problem is, I believe, the fact that the story isn't anywhere near properly laid out. Shakespeare’s plays are played to their end. In FF VII? Missed that one optional scene? Well that's too fucking bad - you'll just have to live without knowing how Cloud and Zach escaped/who Sepirioth's true mother is/what happened to Gast, etc... On the other hand, the main plot itself (what with the living planet/human experiments gone wrong/mind-bending aliens) isn’t that important because if you’ve played Chrono Trigger and FF VI, you already know most of it.

One thing I couldn’t stand though; why does virtually every single character in the game suffer from some kind of delusion? Seriously, Sephirioth would rather destroy the world than face the fact that he was a failed experiment of Hojo's, and Cloud's actions were idiotic even before he was injected with Jenova's cells. The fact that Tifa accepted his tomfoolery even though she knew the truth is just stupid. Vincent, Barrett and Red XIII really were no better. And then there’s Hojo, Gast, Lucretcia, and probably some more I forgot about.

And yeah, Aeris doesn’t suffer from that, but her character never made any sense to me. “Hey, those guys kidnapped me and murdered my mother and father, so I’m gonna be friends with them! Also, I know I’m gonna die, but who cares! Yay!”

Then, of course, is the fact that scenes typically don’t play out with any kind of realism. For a game that takes itself seriously, that’s not a good thing. The scene when Cloud gives Sephirioth the Black Matter... No.

So yeah, there is a lot to complain about in VII, but really, despite the implications of furry love, what killed the game for me was how utterly poorly the story connected to any the of gameplay. On the other hand, to this day, I still do not know of any JRPG that did this better than FF VI. And that’s why it’s my favorite FF (well, I always have been a sucker for fairytales...)