Great RPG but not the best, it wasn't even then best in its era as during that time the were some class RPGs like Panzer Dragoon Saga, Shining Force, Paper Mario, Parasite Eve, FFIX, Chrono Trigger, Star Ocean etc...

Yea it would be such a pity if jrpgs stopped using the same tired fantasy tropes and cliches.

Good thing many of them have.

Lol sure. Which ones?

FFVII is not the best, it's the first one to get mass appeal that broke into the casual market. This was caused by a bunch of factors such as first time FMV done well, incredible graphics for a huge open world RPG, and huge cash for advertisement. I guarantee you that if FF6 (aka FF3 in the US) was given the same treatment and had come out for the first PS instead of the Super NES, we would be talking about FF6 being the best FF in the series ever, not FF7.

Many notable ones that are not Dragon Quest and maybe Final Fantasy. Unless your version of "tired fantasy tropes" is about modern day Japan, because there are a lot of small niche RPGs of that ilk. And there are a number of steampunk JRPGs. Then there are a few of them that do make a lot of use of time honored western fantasy tropes just like western RPGs.

-Xenogears is all about industrialisation, Roman Catholicism, and early 20th century western psychology (Carl Jung, etc.)

-Kingdom Hearts is not at all traditional fantasy. It pulls from classic Disney though.

-Every Mario RPG doesn't really have much at all to do with fantasy cliches.

-The World Ends With You is very nontraditional, though it is pretty Japanese and has an amnesia storyline.

-Shin Megami Tensei's games aren't classic fantasy. Much more dark and modern with some philosophy of politics and ethics, though I don't think its commentary is quite as effective as it could be because it's usually fairly binary. And many games within the series do tread the same themes. Persona would be the accessible ones and maybe the most different, though they are more modern Japanese-y.

-The Mother series isn't classic fantasy or very Japanese fantasy and isn't that full of tropes. It's not exactly realistic but I don't think that's the point here.

-I don't think games like Chrono Trigger fit the fantasy trope any more than most every western fantasy already does.

-Xenoblade Chronicles modernized many things about the "genre".

-Pokemon has a horribly simple storyline but it doesn't really follow fantasy tropes otyher than "young kid goes out on his own to quest". The mechanics are old hat though.

-Eternal Sonata was an exploration of the life and music of Chopin and carried decent social criticism outside of fantasy tropes.

-Valkyria Chronicles is an alternate universe WWII JRPG.

-Even modern Final Fantasy isn't that bad of a culprit. I haven't touched them though. IX I hear isn't so steroetypical fantasy/JRPG-ish in story. FF has built up a lot of cliches of its own but they aren't always traditional fantasy ones. The upcoming FFXV should depart even further.

-Maybe Parasite Eve counts as an RPG, if so I'd count it.

There are some other non-traditional games but you may call those action-adventure instead of JRPGs, because the mechanics are a bit different. Some of those can be pretty generic but there are a few different ones. At a point it bcomes difficult to make these distinctions for you, because many games buck trends in traditional JRPG stories/characters but have traditional combat, and then there are games with SUPER cliche stories that buck the trends with mechanics.

Yeah......... I think I will just use an emulator... It's not like Square Enix even gives a shit!

With final fantasy 7 it is a multiple game series with crises core and dirge of cerberus the cell phone sequel advent children multiple books. anyone who says 7 has a linear story with vague/bland characters is out of thier mind do some research on the ultimania guide for and play the other games and tell me this isn't one of the deepest games ever to date. You have the Cetra, Jenova, Shinra (way to much to list about them) professor gast, hojo, vincent valentine, lucrecia, sephiroth (summoning meteor), the lifestream, red XIII being the last of his race cloud fighting his own mind over who he really is. This game is beyond deep play some of the prequels and sequels and if you don't want to take that time just skim through the english ultimania guide. I have to say though i like final fantasy 9 the best with 7 close behind. Now with final fantasy 6 i don't know how anyone can claim this to be the pinnacle of final fantasy, very short character dialogue, you don't see much of Kefka through the game even though he is like the ONLY antagonist, and after about 20 hours into the game (halfway through) the game gets about as linear as a game can get, kefka destoys the world and now you have to hunt down like 10 party members strung across a world you just barely got familier with thats now destoyed and flip flopped everywhere. Don't get me wrong i like the game but back then in 1994 they didn't focus to heavily on character relationships and dialogue (some might call meaningless droll but i love and is what makes you understand character personalities. Instead of the typical vague cheery,mad,stern character personality traits with prototypical answers like "Alright lets go guys" "I'm ok" that you could slap on any character personality Great game for the time but its 2014 and time gets in the way of it now, which sucks because technology wasn't holding them back from writing more texts into the bubbles for the characters to have deeper emotions and stronger relationships but still they didn't. The ending had to be the worst even worse than FF7. "lets use teamwork and make it out of here alive"(its like thats what 40 hours got me? what happened to terra?) after they killed kefka. pretty shameful ending that puts a huge stain on a great game of the time.

1. Umm..Emperor Gestahl?

2. What? That's where the game deviated away from it's linearity and became non-linear. You could do most of the events in any order and you didn't have to get all the party members back. 

3. There's plenty of "strong relationships and character personalities." The relationship between Locke and Celes, Terra trying to find out what her purpose in life is, Edgar and Sabin's relationship based on their past and father, Shadow's past as Clyde, etc. The characters did have personalities and there was plenty of character development, I don't get your argument here. 

4. It was a great ending, an epic music track in the background in a situation where there was high tension and you wanted to see if the characters would be able to resolve it. Not to mention it was pretty cinematic for a SNES game.