I think you're both right. :P

Graphics have always mattered!

Just not quite in the way today's graphic whores feel they do (pixel count, hardware effects or whatever). As long as the game looks good - and FF7 does not. It's not unlike having terrible art design, the lego block characters just don't do it for me.

Though I know my cousins that play it on the PC play it with mods and such, which fixes the models and stuff... I may check that out later

VII cetainly is an awesome game. i think ff 7 ,8 ,9 > than all FFs ..psx was just great for ffs

Sure the "world map" models look grossly deformed but the battle models look good to me.

it depends, personally i think the characters are very realistically driven, for example Dagger, is a young women at a turning point in her life, we actully have a lot of insight into what shes thinking and how she feels like her life is completely out of her control, i think young people feel like that when they come of age.

then we have Steiner who has a type of facade, where he places the devot knight, but in his heart he doubts his actions but he always puts duty before himself. i mean i think Vivi and Zidane had the most depth, but the characters may look cartoony, but theres so much substance behind that that really touches the player. its actully quite similar in some ways to FF4, where Cecil is the main character, but Kain's story is detrimental to the plot.

anyway, i think that FF9 is very good in terms of story and characters, it dosent bother with all the camp hormonal drama of FF13 and FF7 compliation, its about substance over style!. and fair enough people love the visual style, but personally i would have loved it had they have stuck to the orignal Ammano art, imo i think FF9s Ammano work is is finest character designs in the series.

What they should do, what with PS2 collections being the new hotness, is release FF7, 8 and 9 as their own remake collection, but keep the pre-rendered backgrounds to keep development costs down(although I'm sure they can use modern techniques to give them a more dynamic feel pretty easily), and then release a second volume for 10 and 12.

For some reason I can't really see that design calling anyone Rusty. How it looked in the finished product I find to be generally better suited to the dialogue the characters speak(for the first 8 hours anyway, at least).

Well i imagine exactly the same character, just with that look, i just love the Ammano desings for FF9, the characters look phenominal imo. i think its because with FF13, FF8, FF7 when we're given a certain look, those desgins usually come with a sterotype for that look, this design dosent have to be sterotyped imo, thats how i interpret the designs anyway.

I agree.  After IX, SE started removing features from the game.  WM was removed in X, towns in XIII.  I guess Versus is supposed to break the trend.  FF XII kind of had a map, but no flyable airship so it's not exactly the same.

Even though FF7 isn't my favorite in the series, I sill think it's a really good game.  I started with FF4 on the SNES, so know one can say it's because I started with FF7. 

I admit, I miss the days when these kinds of games were hyped alot instead of Halo or COD like now days.

I miss those days when RPGs got massive mainstream Hype to, I remember Hyper Magazine in my country dis a issue when FFX was released saying in the headline stating basically that the XBOX has HALO but PS2 hits back with FF power.  

I think that the lose of a over world in FFX was not that much of a seatback because you still had a Airship to go any were you wonted at will. 

FFVersusXIII look like a combination of FFVII & FFVIII with a bit of FFVI as well being that it is only the 3rd FF to have Cyberpunk/Steampunk world.

out of interest I am replaying FFVII, FFVIII and FFIX right now.

You can compare Final Fantasy 7 to the music of Beethoven or Mozart
after more then 100 years people still listening their music.
Same with final fantasy 7 i believe in 100 years people will still play it.