Without a doubt, one of the best RPG's of all time.
Final Fantasy 7 kept up the good work and got me deep into gaming.
Just as Mario, Zelda and Sonic did...
Graphics : 6/10
Many gamers beleive Graphics come before gameplay, I pity them, due to that they miss out on some of the better games and game series's.
Okay, the graphics in FF7 are not the best they could have been, mainly due to the character models on the maps, they look like a more advanced lego character.
The battle graphics are much more detailed that would make you say " So... are the field models supposed to look like chibi characters? ".
Basically, the battle scene graphics are the full character, you can much more on them in the battles.
Music : 9/10
Everyone who has played this game through til the end knows the soundtrack is awesome.
Fact.
One of the songs in the game, One Winged Angel to be specific is one of the most know RPG songs, for good reason too, it has the only vocals in the game, everything else is without voice.
Not the the vocals are the most interesting part, the whole song itself is very impressive, no denying that,
However, most of the soundtrack is great and should never be overlooked, from all the FF's I have played, the soundtrack to this one, is my personal favourite.
" SEPHIROTH!!! "
Gameplay : 6 or 7/10
I'm mainly putting this down to the battle system.
Today, I don't think I would replay the game all the way through.
After playing games, like Kingdom Hearts 2 and Tale of *whatever*, the battle system would be the one thing to stop me enjoying the game.
As the people who have played the game know, Random battles are plentiful.
But thats not the worst thing, to me, its the ATB or Active time battle for long.
You take it in turn to deal out damage to your opponent, depending on your Speed stat, you would be able to attack pretty quick or at a snails pace.
The fact is, that once you've played an RPG with a quicker battle system, your gonna get bored with it eventully.
Other aspects of the game are pretty much standard RPG stuff, dungeons, chests and that sort of thing remain true to the nature of RPGs.
Every playable character is not stuck with a class like in FF9 ( Zidane being a theif, Vivi a BM and so on), each character is mainly known what they are good at by their weaponry, Cloud having a Broad Sword is classed as a Knight or Sword guy at first glance.
I never really took much time to look at stats when I played it, but I know for certain that Materia ( The magical orbs ) change that. Offensive and defensive spells weaken your HP and raise MP I think.
Replay value : 8/10
I don't think I know anyone who has replayed through the game, at most restarted and got a a little way through, I might have redone it if my copy wasn't broken.
With each character being able to pull of any class decently I guess you could turn Cloud into a White Mage and challenge yourself to go through with just him.
Story: 9/10
The game has quite a few plot twists and turns and will be sure to keep you interested through the game.
EX-SOLDIER ( actully just Cloud but starts with that name) a quiet tough mercenary joins a group called Avalanch, thier constant job is to destroy all the mako reactors in Midgar and stop the Shinra company from killing the planet.
I haven't played the game in a while so thats all you're getting.
CONCLUSION : 9/10
A solid game worth playing.
Buying it is worth the £20.
The game being over 10 years old should not worry you.