The story of a love that can never be, and a hate that always was...
Cloud, the main character, joins AVALANCHE, an anti-Shin-Ra group, to stop Shin-Ra from sucking all of the energy out of the planet, Mako energy. This Mako energy powers all of Midgar, a metropolis of sorts, and without it the city would be in the dark. Not to give away the first few hours of gameplay, I’ll skip ahead.
Sephiroth, an Ex-SOLDIER, goes berserk and wants to fulfill his “mother’s” dream of destroying the planet, thus making him reach the Promised Land. He calls upon a meteor to smash into the planet…
Despite the seriousness of the plot, there are also some light-hearted moments, like with Don Corneo. That was a very brief plotline, if you want a full one check out Wikipedia, they have everything about anything.
Gameplay is also great. The ability system in Final Fantasy VII is different than any other Final Fantasy to date. Each character has a weapon and a piece of armor with a certain amount of slots that the player can decide to put abilities, magic, summons, et cetera. The materia, as it is called in the game, levels up if it is equipped to a character, thus making it stronger, or giving it more uses in battle. This makes the game more strategic, rather than being at the whim of the job of the character.
Also the chocobos are back, but play a much bigger role than ever before. You can race them and they even “level up” when you breed them. Some of the game’s best materia are accessible only after you have a chocobo that can fly, which can take hours to do, but in the end is very satisfying.
The visuals are about what you’d expect from a Playstation game, but some of the best of its time. Fully 3-D environments and overworld and full motion videos are a series first.
Audio is magnificent. Nobou Uematsu really gets you in the mood for the environment you were in. For instance, there is up beat music for the Gold Saucer, and downtrodden music for scenes in Midgar.
There is so much more that I could have said for this great game, but I’ll just let you figure it out for yourself. This is a game that you'll play over and over again.