yes it was the first for many, my point is that it has no relevance or very little. There is no rule that says your first RPG has to be your favorite and that rule only comes into play with FFVII. If your first RPG was your favorite then no one would have an informed opinion when it comes to favorite RPGs. Everyone who's played them has had a first RPG, yet only the ones that have played FFVII are too ignorant to see other RPGs are better? If your first RPG was FFI-VI, Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest, Mario RPG, anything besides FFVII then it means you can objectively review RPGs...but if your first RPG is FFVII that means you will ignorantly love it no matter what? That really makes no sense.

I couldn't agree more! I think that this game came out when I was about 18-19, and I couldn't believe how hard I had to *try* to like it after such excellent Square games that I had experienced in previous years with FF IV, FF VI, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana. And honestly, I played through the game at least twice and still didn't like it. I just kept trying to find something that I liked in the game, and there really wasn't much at all.

By comparison, I played the other Square games that I mentioned probably at least half-a-dozen times through and they never wore off. They just keep getting better. I even have re-releases of several of them as well, in addition to my original carts (which still had working batteries last I checked). I couldn't see myself ever buying a remake of FFVII. Even the power of modern consoles couldn't do anything to save that game from its aweful story and poor design.

FFVII introduced the following items to the series:

1. Unmemorable and boring characters that weren't unique in any respect whatsoever.

2. TERRIBLE music from Umatsu (compared to previous games, at least) thats just absolute murder to listen to. Tinny and repetative MIDI tunes litter the game and completely lack any of the magic that the old tunes had. Music was a HUGE part of the old games.

3. A step back in graphics with terrible blocky cardboard 3D models, though people were wowed by that assortment of ugly and inconsistent FMV movies. This compared to the beautiful and detailed 2D images of the "inferior" SNES.

4. An absolutely boring story that has been recycled with virtually every FF game since it was ripped off from FF VI (where it was done right). It was saved only slightly that Aeith scene, which was pretty well done and was quite dramatic.

The sad thing is, Square just keeps on putting out crap. Xenogears is the last excellent game from that house, and it is only a *year* newer than FFVII!  10 Years, and they've created next to nothing that I've wanted to play.

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.

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???

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.

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.

I find it hard to take the reviews of people who say it's the worst game ever or complete crap or whatever seriously when millions of people obviously enjoyed it. If the game was as bad as some people are claiming it wouldn't have as many fans as it does. The characters in the game wouldn't be as recognizable as fan favorites like they are. Having a character in the game die wouldn't have hit the people playing it so hard.

This really reminds me of something I've seen in forums that talk about the current Battlestar Galactica and Bionic Woman series. I've seen many of the fans of the older series completely bash the newer ones even though the newer ones aren't really that bad and in some ways are just as good in their own way.  I think some people just don't like change or only want it on their terms.

It's mostly because around that time, RPG's changed to accomidate 3-d and they're still changing to this day. I didn't hate FF7 because it was cool to do so. I didn't hate it for being on the PS1 I hated it because I was so pumped up to buy it after finishing FF6 and I was utterly dissappointed by it.

Cloud pissed me off, I was scratching my head about Cait Sith and I don't know why they even bothered with adding some of the useless side crap that they did. As for Sephiroth don't get me started.. if I wanted to hear endless monologues I'd tivo Jay Leno and loop his.

The truth is Final Fantasy 7 started arift in the RPG fan base. It opened the doors to what we have today(in majority) and made RPG's more of a main stream thing outside of Japan.

It's not a bad game it's just not to my taste and I believe it single handedly opened the doors to the downfall of traditional RPG's . Final Fantasy fans have a huge gap there's the guys that like 1-6 and the guys that like 7-12 They both might mix a bit (I personally liked 9 and 11) but never totally and always seem to have a huge difference of opinion.

It's fine if you hate FFVII, it's just stupid to try to come up with insulting reasons as to why people don't agree with you. Like if I said

"People only like FFVI because they're too stupid to understand the complex story of Final Fantasy VII or FFVIII"

That's a very stupid thing to say because it's not true and all it is is me bashing someone else to justify why my opinion is superior to their own. It's also stupid cause it compliments FFVIII but that's not the point, I took that quote from an FF forum so it's not mine.

And I know plenty of people that LOVE the FF series as a whole, from IV and up. I'm one of those people and most of the people I talk to don't have any hatred for half of the series. I also don't see how FFVII isn't a traditional JRPG...

  And that's the second time you've said something like that instead of actually responding to people's points.  First it was "Oh the naysayers are obviously angry Nintendo fans that a bitter the series went to Playstation" and now it's this.  Take Naz's post above yours, obviously well thought out, yet that's all you can give.

Sorry, I was a little harsh.  I'm not trying to say you have no right to like it.  You're absolutely not an idiot if you like FFVII, and it doesn't make you a bad gamer.  I just hate being told I don't like it because of some stupid bandwagon crap or because it's on the PSX.  I don't like it because I formed my own opinion of the game after playing and beating it.  I'm tired of having my opinion marginalized by people who think that there is no way anyone could possibly dislike the game if they played it.

You're definitely right,and sorry Naznatips,but all the objectivity that you always show,dissapear when you start talking about how you hate FFVII,I see your points,but sorry,everyone have points,I'm not in the mod to get to debate your conclusions,maybe in another time,the sure thing (and you can't denied) is that a HUGE amount of people LOVE this game,this game means many things for many,introduces a lot of people to RPGS,was one of the most influential games at that time,and it's not only my opinion Naz,at least 10 million of people could say the same to you.

Why, when talking about Final Fantasy games, does nobody ever mention gameplay? (Except in the sense of "that stuff you do in between cutscenes"?) I thought games were supposed to be, you know, interactive.