First off, I'd like to make it clear that I'm NOT saying Final Fantasy 7 is a bad game. Not at all. I played through it, spent countless hours playing it. I liked it. But it is no where near as good as most people say it is. Final Fantasy 7 is the first Final Fantasy game that about 70% of North America has ever played, and is also the first RPG ever played by the majority of that 70%. So since this audience has absolutly nothing else to compare this game to, they rate it extremely high. The graphics of this game are wonderful. A lot of great FMV scenes that are impressive for it's time. But graphics don't make a game great. The sound is pretty well made as well. It has a great soundtrack with lots of great songs in different areas. The gameplay of this game is a competely different story from it's graphics and sound. It's more of a watered down version of it's previous Final Fantasy games. They have completely taken out the class system which made Final Fantasy unique to begin with. No longer do you have a white mage, or a fighter, or a black belt in your party so you can use strategies. That's now replaced with the Materia system which is extremely easy to master. Allowing you to instantly power up your character on the spot. Every character can have heal magics, attack magics, status changing effects, summons, counters, and anything else you feel is needed to defeat your oponent. No need to even worry about leveling up everyone as well. Just pick your three favorite people and just level them up, since no one in the game has a unique ability other then their limit breaks. Which brings me to another point. All Final Fantasy games before 7 have had 4 people in a party. By cutting the party down to 3, you are unable to make larger strategies in fights. Not like this game uses much strategy to begin with. The weapons have been watered down as well. In previous Final Fantasy games, each character wears a helmet, body armor, 1 or 2 weapons depending on if it's 1 handed or not. Maybe even a sheild. And 2 accessories. This has all been replaced with 1 weapon and 1 armor in Final Fantasy 7. Also, they changed it so that each weapon only goes with 1 person. While in previous Final Fantasy games, just about everyone can use the sword, only thieves can use this and only mages can use that and so on. Not only that, but each weapon you get in Final Fantasy 7 is better then the previous weapon. While in other Final Fantasy games, weapons have different statistics but doesn't mean it's better. For example, Sword A gives you +5 Attack and +4 Deffence while Sword B gives you +3 Attack and +6 Deffence (just to make a simple example). Everything is so linear in this game, even the story. The story of the game is filled with tons of plot holes. You are left with more unanswered questions at the end of the game, then you are answered. If any questions have been answered at all. But by the end of the game, no one realises how many plot holes are in the game because they are distracted by the great looking FMV scenes. The characters are very shallow as well. Cloud has the cliche "I don't care" attitude until he realizes that he needs to care. Barret can be described only "Mr. T". Tifa is just a girl slapped into the game to add some "back ground" story with cloud, and even that isn't explained well. Aeris has this huge death scene that means very little since she keeps running away most of the game anyways, and you play very little of her. Cid starts off with a wife beater attitude and all the sudden changes to some hero guy all the sudden out of no where. Red XIII is a cool looking character, with a shallow attempt to have background story. Cait Sith, is a cat that ends up being a spy and that giant Moogle thing that he sits on all the time has as much story as he. vincent says very little in the game at all, and isn't even in the ending. And Yuffie has nothing to do with the main story at all. She's just a waste of time. Overall, this game is no where near as good as the previous Final Fantasy games in both story and gameplay, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game at the same time. Although, when someone claims this is "the best Final Fantasy" "the best rpg" or even "the best game" ever, they need to do their homework and actually take a look at the flaws of this game instead of just looking at how great the technology is or how great the shock factor of playing a Final Fantasy game for the first time.
Final Fantasy VII is called the greatest Final Fantasy game and one of the best in the world. I completely agree. This game's story, graphics (for its time), gameplay and sound are some of the best ever to grace a consol... Read Full Review
(This review was made September 2004 for GameFAQs but it was too long that's why it was not posted there. Thank you GameSpot for posting this review, although it is not compatible with your rating system :P ) THANK YO... Read Full Review
