an OK game. and that's it.
the story in this game is for the most part a pompous bag of wind that takes itself too seriously, hence it falls flat on its face. it starts the adventures of Greenpeace-like terrorists (sorry, but that's the nature of their actions, even if they are justified) in their quest to save the dying planet from the dreaded power company known as Shin-ra, and evolves into a quest to beat the villain to the promised land filled with mystical energy. sure, it's trite, but the writer gets the benefit of the doubt, as avoiding cliches is difficult and a waste of effort in the long run. plus, i cant give you the whole story in a nutshell; that's impossible. it's the cast that fails the story. sadly, Cloud, the main hero, is about the most dull protagonist i have ever come across, devoid of any personality traits at all. he has a brief stint with being detached and "too cool to care", but soon winds up caring about everything, without any discernible motivation. his friends are goofy cliches in the purest sense of the word, such as the Mr. T rip off, Barret, who kills the mood with his corny dialect. the stacked barmaid, Tifa, is Cloud's friend with whom he goes way back, and is supposed to play a deep, sentimental role, but ends up serving little purpose other than eye-candy. face it, the artist was asking for it... and lets not forget Aeris, the flower girl who's so innocent and pure, you'll want to lose about a gallon of whatever's in your stomach. frankly i couldn't establish an emotional connection with any of them, which is hard to do with such empty-natured people. i do wish they evoked joy, pity, laughter, or anger when they were supposed too. perhaps i'm being too harsh, but they all signify a lack of creativity. they did craft some deep back stories for the characters, i'll give them that, but such pieces of lore are wasted on these particular characters.
the gameplay...oh, the gameplay...was an empty void. practically no battle gauged my interest. a slew of attacks, offense spells, and a cure here or there always did the trick. i wasn't even using my mind half the time, and just acted randomly, which still yielded positive results. it didn't matter who did what, and nobody played an important part. this is the fault of the materia system. materia are mystical rocks that enable pretty much any command except for attack. there are no restrictions on materia wielding, so you can just go wild and pile materia on anyone who happens to be in your party. everybody will casting spells, summons, and other unbalanced maneuvers that are sometimes not even in their idiom. freedom is good, yes, but a little less would've been fine. at least you can create the illusion of role-playing by establishing classes, such as your healer and lethal spell-caster, on the fly. it doesnt matter who you have in your party, as they are all the same, save for a few negligible stat differences and limit breaks (overpowered attacks caused by accumulating enough damage). do the limit breaks add depth? no, not really. if they didnt occur so rarely (which would require a nerf for them all) and were all available at once instead of just two at a time, maybe they would. i suppose you party depends on your personal taste, if it's possible to develop one.
graphics have never really bothered me, except in this case. they are ugly. horrible blocky sprites with deformed appendages, accompanied by rigid backgrounds. seriously, they look like fisher-price plastic dolls, except jagged. the only way to stomach them is from a considerable distance. the backgrounds, which make you feel like you're running around on the surface of an impressionist painting, are a bear to navigate; even with the pointers activated by the select button, important features such as ladders and subtle pathways seem to blend in with your lifeless surroundings. they tried to pass this off as 3D, but it's merely pseudo-3D. the only time the game looks any good is in battle and the cutscenes, which are all over the place. the environments in the cutscenes are nice, but most of the time they stick with the hideously stupid character models as opposed to their more realistic counterparts, which you'll hardly ever see.
however, i MUST give credit to the in-battle graphics, which are true 3D. the flashy spells, the long-winded summons, and the character and enemy models were done beautifully (for this platform). and its about time that battles finally came to life after six games of waving weapons at the thin air in battles against sedentary depictions of enemies. the less left to the imagination, the better, to be honest.
sound is good. or, at least, the composition of the music. the instruments and sounds are suprisingly low quality, though. some of it seems like it should be on a system from a previous generation.
this game's appeal is understandable, but given far too much credit. it doesn't deserve half of the praise it garners. i tired to love it. i reeeeeeally tried to drool over it like 90% of the people here. i just don't.