Squeenix Played FF7 for the first time recently...

[Optimist]

...and I was surprised at how much fun I've had! Bought it for Switch, for a price of a movie ticket, to have something to chip away at while on train/ plane. I expected dated if charming mechanics, cringy dialogue, and a painful story. What I got was a vidya with so much soul, that I was ready to forgive its small issues and over-the-top drama.

There will be some spoilers ahead - we all know that Aeris dies, but that was pretty much all the knowledge I've had while going into this game. I expected the rest of the story to play off this and was pleasantly surprised by how there was something else to it. I absolutely wouldn't play FF 7 just for its story, but there were few moments (Niebelheim personal visit, rocket launch, losses of control) that struck some kind of a chord with me.

It took me ~30 hours to finish it (although I did spend most of this time in the 3x game speed boost mode), but it turned out I missed quite a few things. After looking up the guides to see what passed by me, I realized that other than quite a few of materias, and the emerald/ ruby weapon fights, I also skipped one entire town, a few L4 limit breaks, a ton of items, and a bunch of stuff in the Golden Saucer. Guess it's a reminder of a time when you read guides and licked walls, and then hung out with your pals discussing what you've found without having many other games to play.

The good:
- The universally praised Materia system is indeed quite fun! I've heard a complaint or two about how it renders most of the characters same-ish, but I'll take that over having to pick two specific party members to round out the MC. It also made the occasionally forced character swaps less painful, as you could always build up something useful. Barret with mutliattack, cover, counterattack, and added effect with Hades was a random-encounter wiping machine. I wish we got some weapons/items with more than two connected slots; it'd be fun to see what craziness we'd be able to come up with.
- The dialogues were not overly dramatic monologues... too often. Guess the memory of having to be succinct for the text to fit into the cartridge was still fresh-ish, as most of the dialogues and scenes do not overstay their welcome.
- There were some C&C. Nothing overly dramatic, but depending on how well/ poorly you did and what you said in some situations, you could expect different commentary/ rewards from the environment - I didn't expect this in a linear jRPG. Also, the party member relationship system, while greatly overused today, was fun to read up on once I was through with the game.
- There was a lot of effort put into weird places of the game. I don't think I'd like to spend too much time playing the minigames for longer than necessary, but it was a joy to see what else did these madmen put in there. I greatly appreciated the whole side-story that requires Yuffie to steal all your materia at that one point, which you could easily miss in its entirety, and how - if you recruit her - she helps you out for a second during the escape from the seaside military base.
- I love the exploration system where, depending on your mode of transport, you can access more and more of the map. It did feel somewhat underutilized, but switching to the buggy, then to Bronco and then to Skywind (with some ship/sub action on the side) felt good.

The weird:
- Hatching phoenix. Jesus Christ, just look at its wobbly everything. It's the chungiest chungus that ever took to skies.
- There is quite a lot of world exploration to be done, but it too often felt like having to find one specific place to move onward - there were far too few optional locations and dungeons (I don't think there were any optional dungeons actually, other than that one plane) to make world-scouring feel rewarding. Finding the place the devs intended you to find was not a problem though, as long as you talked to random NPCs and made sure to visit each new location that became available to you.
- The soundtrack is OK. There were quite a few tracks that'll stay with me for some time. I just wish there was a few more of them, as they started grating on me as I approached the end.
- The occasional platforming-ish sequences (rolling rocks, passing barriers) were a bit of a pain, but nothing too bad.

The ugly:
- The game doesn't signal missable content or when you're going to lose control. I rushed into Junon planning on getting some rest and then exploring the map for a while, but it all kind of spiraled out of control (wtf was that CPR / dolphin) and I ended up on the other continent. Then it turned out that I missed out on quite a few reactor defense missions, partially because of that. Not a huge problem, and that's partially on me, as I should've probably paid closer attention to where I save, but it still felt bad.
- The graphics did not age well, but one can get used to the chunky characters once you realize that these solids have emotions too. The backgrounds, on the other hand, were oftentimes quite unreadable and it was sometimes difficult to traverse the screens/ find interactive spots.
- The game was easy, a bit too much so. All you had to do to go through the toughest combats was hasting yourself and bombarding the enemy with the most powerful attacks, occasionally paying lip service to the elements. Sephiroth chucked a destruct materia at me in the lab basement, and I carried it with me throughout most of the game to be ready for some situation where dispelling stuff will prove necessary. I think the only enemy that ever used some kind of barrier/ wall was Sephiroth himself in the final fight. There is a trilogy of free flash RPGs called Mardek (1-3, 1 is pretty much a demo, 3 is a multi-hour, fully-fledged game - I really wish the dev didn't go off the deep end of furry fandom, as he had all the signs of greatness about him) that done FF7-like combat system so, so much better.

All in all, I'd say that it deservedly holds the title of a classic. It's weird how I'm touting a production that used to be advertised for its cutting-edge graphics for its janky charm, but hey, I guess it's a mark of its quality that despite getting a bit outdated it still was pleasant to play. Would rate it VII out of Tactics.

 

[Falksi]

Agree with most of that.

I'm playing through FF 3/6 now and fucking hating every second of it.

 

[Delterius]

OP's name checks out. :friendly:

 

[Tigranes]

FF7 wasn't by any stretch some bastion of complex gameplay systems or meaningful difficulty, but it's startling to look back at the Materia system now and see just how customisable and robust it is compared to many recent CRPGs. You have a lot of room to customise every character, you can even build against party members' canon strengths to an extent, you can set up a few interesting synergies. It's just a pity that there weren't enough encounters that could really challenge you into thinking about your materia loadouts carefully, and that the big optional bosses tended to just require gimmicky loops.

In the context of the recent conversation about BG2's theme park design, it's interesting how the 'Golden Era' games often were indeed slapdash theme parks with every random thing thrown in the mix, but they end up having atmosphere over and beyond many newer efforts with more deliberate thinking about theme and tone.

 

[mushaden]

Nice bait and switch. I mean to play it soon so I can maybe talk to some normies.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

If you've enjoyed the game, I recommend trying the New Threat mod for the PC version, which not only makes the game harder, it really brings forward the amazing versatility of the Materia system. Basically one of the best mods ever for any game. I'd even recommend it for first players with a CRPG background.

 

[Optimist]

In the context of the recent conversation about BG2's theme park design, it's interesting how the 'Golden Era' games often were indeed slapdash theme parks with every random thing thrown in the mix, but they end up having atmosphere over and beyond many newer efforts with more deliberate thinking about theme and tone.

One of my favourite non-RPG games is Giants: Citizen Kabuto. It's a weird combination of a third person shooter/ slasher/ third person caster/ strategy game/ kaiju battler/ racing game (?) which is a joy to play from start to two thirds of its final act. Guess devs didn't have all these analyses of what appeals to the most numerous audiences ready in 90s, so they added in what seemed cool to them, giving so many games this endearing "passion project" feel.

Nice bait and switch. I mean to play it soon so I can maybe talk to some normies.

Sounds like it'd be a good plan in 1997. Heavily recommend to give it a whirl, though, as I said - I was pleasantly surprised by how it played.

If you've enjoyed the game, I recommend trying the New Threat mod for the PC version, which not only makes the game harder, it really brings forward the amazing versatility of the Materia system. Basically one of the best mods ever for any game. I'd even recommend it for first players with a CRPG background.

Will keep that in mind, although my backlog is big enough that I don't think I'll be coming back to FF7 any time soon. I don't think I ever played a jRPG on a PC, unless you count some flash/ jRPG games.

 

[Gastrick]

I got through 14 hours before getting bored and quitting. Materia only makes the gameplay a bit more interesting.
Minigames that I got to were dull. Good to know there is exploration as well.
What games are you thinking of that have "overly dramatic monologues". Text space wasn't an issue on CDs.
I liked the graphics. Soundtrack's amazing.
For the game itself even though I stopped halfway, it's very good for a standard jrpg.

rate it VII out of Tactics

It rate this a Broken Marriage out of 10

 

[Arthandas]

I don't understand how anyone can play it without Reunion. The original translation is mediocre at best.

 

[Optimist]

What games are you thinking of that have "overly dramatic monologues". Text space wasn't an issue on CDs.

Most of the Japanese stuff I played. MGS was pretty dramatic-monologue prone, and as far as newer stuff goes Persona 5 and Tales of Berseria that my wife tried to play left we with that impression. I'm not a huge consumer of Japanese stuff, so these, and probably a few other games were what shaped my expectations towards games coming from glorious Nippon. And I didn't say that the writers were limited by CD space - what I said was that memories of having to fit into a NES/SNES cartridge were probably still fresh in Square's mind, so this might have tempered their output.

I don't understand how anyone can play it without Reunion. The original translation is mediocre at best.

Honestly, I had no idea that there is/ was such an active modding scene for a primarily console game.

 

[Arthandas]

Honestly, I had no idea that there is/ was such an active modding scene for a primarily console game.

Yeah, Reunion is a must have for the translation alone but it's also a massive fixpack addressing both PC specific and original bugs. Just look at the database to understand the scope of this monstrosity:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...yAT4giTPeNmCR4TCaHAiXOLlU/edit#gid=1292658812

 

[Doktor Best]

Is there any way now to play the new threat mod together with reunion? Last time i checked it led to an unstable game.

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

IIRC, New Threat already touches up some dialogue to make the story more understandable, which would make it incompatible with Reunion. It's very subtle and I didn't notice any difference, although the last time I had played the game was in the PS1 days.

It comes down to what you value most, great gameplay or a high fidelity translation.

 

[Gastrick]

Most of the Japanese stuff I played. MGS was pretty dramatic-monologue prone, and as far as newer stuff goes Persona 5 and Tales of Berseria that my wife tried to play left we with that impression. I'm not a huge consumer of Japanese stuff, so these, and probably a few other games were what shaped my expectations towards games coming from glorious Nippon. And I didn't say that the writers were limited by CD space - what I said was that memories of having to fit into a NES/SNES cartridge were probably still fresh in Square's mind, so this might have tempered their output.

I haven't played any of those, but now that I think about it, Xenogears had a few over dramatic dialogues.
That could be true that the game-developing experience they had stopped them from turning it into a full-on visual novel.

 

[RoSoDude]

Nice coincidence, I just finished Final Fantasy VII as well. I emulated it on PSX with a ROMhack that fixed the non-functional Spirit stat on armor, and it took me 39 hours (1x speed, no save states) without much deviation from the main content. I recruited Vincent and Yuffie and did the Wutai sidequest, but otherwise I finished the final area without any level 4 limit breaks, ultimate weapons, master materia, purchasing any extra consumable items, or grinding my characters at all -- I frequently swapped my party around and had Cloud at level 60 and both Tifa and Vincent at level 58 when the credits rolled. In that context, I think the game's difficulty is actually quite well-tuned, but if you're doing a lot of side content and maxing your characters out I'm sure it's too easy. I was quite satisfied with the challenge the game is able to provide if you're just rushing through it, without punishing frequent experimentation and suboptimal leveling.

Most of what I'd praise about the gameplay is the character progression. In the absence of class archetypes, characters are still pretty well distinguished by stats, weapon type, and limit breaks which are special abilities your character can unleash after taking enough damage. Characters receive half experience when out of your party of three, so you can occasionally swap them around without worrying about grinding. The materia system allows for a lot of customization, as it grants access to magic spells, special commands, and summon attacks by equipping different types of materia which also raise and lower character stats when equipped, and each can be combined with support materia to enhance and modify their effects. It's fun to experiment with different character setups, and you also rank up your materia over time so there's still some build commitment. Gear is somewhat basic, but that's arguably a good thing as it allows for more distinct choices about what to do with your materia, since your weapon and armor each have a number of materia slots which present a tradeoff with attack and defense stats. Each character will unlock new tiers of limit breaks by using them during battle and killing enemies; higher tiers are more powerful but take longer to charge up, and swapping resets the gauge. Between gear, materia, limit, and character selection there's a lot of stuff to play around with and it's all pretty meaningful.

The combat plays out in a pseudo real-time "Active Time Battle" system which ultimately just loosens up the turn order, both a good and a bad thing for allowing for different dynamics in fights but also making it a bit harder to read how encounters will play out. While combat is not very mechanically interesting on its own, the enemy and boss designs make up for it with a large variety of gimmicks that intersect pretty nicely with the character progression systems, keeping the game challenging and engaging throughout its runtime. Enemies will resist certain damage types, inflict creative status effects, surround other enemies in cover, summon reinforcements, perform setup for devastating attacks, and elicit more unique behaviors, and the types of challenges constantly evolve over the entire game. I also thought resource management was pretty good between HP/MP concerns and various status clearing items, and I frequently tried to optimize my use of magic and tactically save limit breaks for harder encounters.

The rest of what I could call gameplay is often dull, particularly the level design which usually consists of a single linear path where the only requirement of the player is figuring out what parts of the painted backgrounds are interactable/maneuverable while random battles occur every few steps. There are notable exceptions as the game goes on; the Temple of the Ancients and Cave of Gi mazes were decent, Nibel Reactor had some genuine looping and branching with optional areas, and the Great Glacier had a great mix of nonlinear exploration and a more focused gauntlet with some light puzzle solving and a satisfying climax at the Whirlwind Maze. The game's level content gets better as it goes on, and the final dungeon was an enjoyably challenging combat gauntlet considering that I hadn't obtained any really powerful endgame gear and had never done any grinding. The lack of any checkpoints other than one the player can place themselves makes the final boss rush fairly tedious if you fail the first time, though. The generally lackluster level design is partially offset by puzzles, setpieces, and minigame gimmicks which introduce variety, though these are a mixed bag. The motorcycle chase, chocobo race, mountain snowboarding, and submarine dogfighting were fun distractions, while the absolute best that could be said of the gym squat, CPR, and military parade minigames is that they could be considered charming, and the Fort Condor tactics minigame was dreadfully tedious. The environmental puzzles suffer from 3D Zelda dungeon syndrome where every puzzle is brand new, so no element can be reused and built on nor combined with other elements for greater complexity. Really it's the enemy/boss encounters and RPG systems that hold up the gameplay, which isn't bad as they're rather well designed, but I had expected more.

These issues aside, the game is paced excellently with new areas visited, gimmicks introduced (and thrown away), and story beats presented at a steady clip; I was still rarely bored despite wanting for much more involved dungeons. I could criticize the railroaded structure but I accept the constraints on player agency due to the narrative, which is paced out and told quite well with interesting reveals and humorous character interactions throughout, and I particularly enjoy how you get unique dialogue in some situations depending on the makeup of your party. The art direction and music is stellar; each location has a memorable atmosphere and I find the tunes stuck in my head constantly. Overall it's a solid package but I don't know if it measures up to any of my favorites, as it's a rather story-focused experience with highly competent but not quite excellent gameplay. I don't think it would convert anyone with a negative disposition towards jRPGs, but it's absolutely worth playing if you're into that sort of thing.

 

[Phinx]

In the context of the recent conversation about BG2's theme park design, it's interesting how the 'Golden Era' games often were indeed slapdash theme parks with every random thing thrown in the mix, but they end up having atmosphere over and beyond many newer efforts with more deliberate thinking about theme and tone.

One of my favourite non-RPG games is Giants: Citizen Kabuto. It's a weird combination of a third person shooter/ slasher/ third person caster/ strategy game/ kaiju battler/ racing game (?) which is a joy to play from start to two thirds of its final act. Guess devs didn't have all these analyses of what appeals to the most numerous audiences ready in 90s, so they added in what seemed cool to them, giving so many games this endearing "passion project" feel.

Nice bait and switch. I mean to play it soon so I can maybe talk to some normies.

Sounds like it'd be a good plan in 1997. Heavily recommend to give it a whirl, though, as I said - I was pleasantly surprised by how it played.

If you've enjoyed the game, I recommend trying the New Threat mod for the PC version, which not only makes the game harder, it really brings forward the amazing versatility of the Materia system. Basically one of the best mods ever for any game. I'd even recommend it for first players with a CRPG background.

Will keep that in mind, although my backlog is big enough that I don't think I'll be coming back to FF7 any time soon. I don't think I ever played a jRPG on a PC, unless you count some flash/ jRPG games.

Yep, that game sits alongside Sacrifice for me. Two of the best games from my childhood, and both came packaged with computer parts my parents bought. They tried to kickstart a successor, but sadly weren't able to raise the funds.
TIMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY.

 

[J1M]

Now go play Lufia 2.

 

[Dickie_Anderson]

I have been playing this recently for the first time, on-and-off. It does a lot of things right

It's a game that definitely wants to be cinematic, and it succeeds the best at this just through using fixed camera angles with pre-rendered backgrounds. A lot of these "shots" still look good to me, and the developers rinse as much out of this "impression of 3D" as they can. The Whirlwind Maze, with the robed Sephiroth-followers throwing themselves off cliff-edges, is pretty inspired imo. The spiral staircase in the Shinra Mansion you go down before Seph goes insane, the way the Temple of the Ancients is almost like an interactive Escher painting. Those stepping stones you have to hop on individually before Aeris gets it, and how the cutscene shows that bead slowly clinking down each one. These are cinematic ideas integrated into a video game with surprising elegance, especially so early on

The Aeris death in general I think was pretty smart. A lot of players come to rely on her "Healing Wind" Limit Break and form a kind of attachment to the character through this. Though I can't say I was reaching for the hankies when she died, this meant that there was a noticeable hole left after she was gone. For a game that you could certainly criticise for having an abundance of tedious hardly-interactive dialogue scenes/cutscenes, this feels to me like a very successful kind of storytelling tied to gameplay. Another example of this is the section where you accompany Sephiroth on a mission, and you get to witness in-gameplay (kind of) how strong the main antagonist is.

I very much like the "hidden dialogue options" which influence who you go on a date with at the Golden Saucer. What I like is that a lot of them mean the player has to actually pay attention to the story, the characters and their traits to get the desired outcome. For example, if you show some sort of sympathy toward Shinra, your "points" with Tifa and Barrett go down (at least from what I remember). This is better I think storytelling-wise than indicating to the player that "this dialogue option is the good one", trivialising the player's attention to the story and consideration of his options. Fallout 1 hid speech skill-checks and didn't indicate which were the "right ones", from what I remember, and was similarly successful. It's funny how only giving the player two basic, sometimes one-word responses in dialogue options can be so meaningful. Not meaningful to the overall story but meaningful to how you see the characters, I guess. I know it's virtually an easter egg but it shows the amount of love put into the game. How was this discovered, anyway? Did players organically just experiment and find out about it or was it indicated in strategy guides/the manual?

My criticisms are pretty much the same as most people's. The combat can be sort of fun but also often boring, because it's not consistently challenging enough to really press the player to consider Materia options carefully. I think the game even recognises this to a degree. When Yuffie gives you back your Materia in a random order you could really just play the game with these new assignations, it might even make the game slightly more challenging and fun. I also think the narrative makes some very strange and jarring choices that don't add much overall. Like when Cloud turns out to be a grunt LARPing as Sephiroth's buddy rather than actually being his buddy. Maybe I misunderstood it? The translation is obviously very dodgy

Overall it's a pretty good game

 

[Optimist]

Yep, that game sits alongside Sacrifice for me. Two of the best games from my childhood, and both came packaged with computer parts my parents bought. They tried to kickstart a successor, but sadly weren't able to raise the funds.
TIMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY.

As far as spiritual successors go, Armed & Dangerous was pretty OK, especially for a game that was initially released on consoles. Some of the craziest weaponry ever, too.

Shame about the sequel failing. Still, it feels like Planet Moon Studios getting taken over by another company was more of a mercy kill, for the last few years of their existence they were releasing mostly so-so DS/Wii games.