This was quite possibly my most anticipated "game to get to" in my A-Z of Steam series. Final Fantasy VII requires little introduction. With the remake out last year, and fresh DLC for it this year, my timing for getting back to the original iteration of the game was pretty well timed.
This review may contain spoilers for the Final Fantasy VII Remake. Be warned.
FF7 released on the PlayStation 1. I had an original copy, and would play it on the weekends at my grandparent's house in their spare room on a tiny TV. I got a few hours in each weekend, and it made me want to constantly be at their house.
While I didn't understand much of the story at the time (as I was pretty young!) I loved the combat and the perceived freedom gleaned from the world map. There was so much to explore, and battles were a challenging grind.
Now, it is 2021, and I'm a far more mature gamer - I've reviewed games for money (as a full time job), and I've got a couple of decades of experience beyond what I had when this game was first released, and I was first exposed.
Final Fantasy 7 follows Cloud Strife, and his burgeoning connection with Avalanche. He's a mercenary, interested in money, and getting the job done. He used to work for a company known as The Shinra Electric Power Co, who produce energy using MAKO energy, extracted from the Planet.
As a seemingly eco-terrorist group, Avalanche bomb a reactor, pulling back the curtain on what Shinra is doing to "kill the planet", as splinter cell leader Barret explains in the early game.
Thus commences an adventure that spans the planet, and builds upon everything else the Final Fantasy series developed prior. The combat system allows characters to be unique through their "limit breaks", powerful attacks that are triggered by them taking damage in combat - and you are allowed an enormous degree of customisation through the use of materia - magical energy orbs that can be equipped in weapons and armor, giving you access to magic, summons, and other abilities.
This means you can make any character a thief. You can make any character a ninja who throws things. However, not all characters excel at all roles. There's a fine balance, and combinations of party members synergise well to enable different outcomes in combat.
Enemy monster designs have aged decently, with perhaps the exception of a few of the minor things that were blown completely out of proportion later in time, by things like the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
Speaking of the Remake, it is amusing to see how so many elements from the full game made it into the remake. While we don't have chocobo racing / breeding, or the half dozen mini games from The Golden Saucer, we have its influences evident almost everywhere in the Remake.
The battle dungeon in Wall St is a stand in for the Battle Square at Gold Saucer, as is the combat simulator. Underground Shinra bases not explored til late in the FF7 Remake are influenced by the party's revist to Midgar on "the third disc" of the original title.
There's so much here that is faithfully injected into the Remake, making me appreciate it even more, so much so, it will be the next game I play, to stuff my brain right full of FF7 literature that I can experience the entire universe all at once. I might start that later today by watching the Advent Children film prior.
The version ported to the Nintendo Switch is decent, stable, and plays well in both docked and portable mode. The best feature is a 3x speed up, which means that I completed the game, and all side-quests in around 40 hours, an endeavour which would've taken significantly longer were it not also for the battle boost feature, which allows you to wander around with perpetually filled HP, MP and Limit Break bars, making the modern port far easier than the original title's sometimes unforgiving combat, and sparse save points.
This drew out length on the PlayStation version considerably, as it is often not just about the final hours on the clock when you finish, but how many hours of lost progress you were subjected to throughout the play through.
FMVs have dated considerably, but they do not interrupt the story telling. There's a marked difference between the opening FMV of the game, and the final, which is evident that the developers who, when first coming to grips with the tech at their disposal, flexed their artistic prowess with more intent towards the end of the game.
It reflects a game that had its areas and story hand crafted, with a passionate group of developers and artists enhancing their skills and refining their crafts as the game wore on.
While the original title had three discs, it is a seamless experience on the Nintendo Switch, which each disc declared a part, or an act. They're of unequal length, but coalesce impressively to deliver a truly classic RPG experience.
While it's Final Fantasy, it feels truly unique, not only being the first 3D title, but a new world, devoid of crystals, maturing them into materia; which allowed for far more customization and exploration with the combat systems than previously allowed in any Final Fantasy game prior.
Overall, this is the title that exposed much of the West to the JRPG, and there are all too many reasons why this game is considered a cult classic. It excels in not only evoking nostalgia due to the timing of its release, the burgeoning game market at the time, and the articulate nature of those now looking backwards as "gaming historians", but by weaving together a story of ecological terrorism that was prophetical in the analogues that can be drawn to the current day, capitalist undertones that mar the world's leaders and their decisions.
Perhaps this stuff was going on in the late 90s when this game was released, but back then, I was just a kid. Now, I look back on the tale, and think, well, yeah, that happened, and it's still happening, over a decade after this master piece's release.
An excellent game, and something every gamer should experience at least once.
WoW my favorite game will never stop selling hehe, I played this game on ps1 maybe more than 450 hours. nice @holoz0r
I'm sure this was going on in the 90's. And I'm sure this game had a role in shaping how I feel about that nonsense as I grew.
I often return back to this game. It's a favorite of all time. Squaresoft really outdid themselves with this one and set a high bar in gaming.
Definitely. It was a monumental development achievement, especially when comparing 7 to the prior title, there's an enormous amount of technological advancement.
Are you playing it ona Switch or is it the Steam version?
About 4 years ago I tried replaying FF7 for the first time since 1997.
I put about 30 hours in ,went to load up my save one day and it wasn't there! There is a known issue with the Steam version just losing your save file....I nearly threw my laptop out the window....
I've been wanting to replay it for a while. I thought about getting the PS4 version. Maybe I will try my Steam version again and this time make multiple saves.
Played it on the Switch. Own it on Steam as well. :)
There's a save editor you can use on PC to restore your progress and levels. :)
Nice one , I might start a new lets play series for FF7 soon.
I've never completed the game , I got to Sephiroth at the very end but I hadnt leveled up enough to beat him.Back in 1997 I was only 13 ,I didn't know anything about rpgs back then, FF7 was my introduction to the genre.
I recently picked up the repixeled version of Final Fantasy 1 and started a lets play for that a few days ago.Ill try and finish that and then I kinda want to jump into FF7 again.
I picked up another Square Enix game today called Octopath traveller.Have you played that game?
I've got a copy of Octopath Traveller on the Switch. I haven't taken it out of the shrink wrap yet. I got that game about a year and a half ago, if not longer. Close to its release. I tend to buy, hodl, then eventually at some point in the distant future, play the game.
This one was my first Final Fantasy game (and also got me into Xenogears and Kingdom Hearts later, and also VIII and X and it was after borrowing X-2 from a friend for a little while I realised that unlike games like Unchartered and Folklore where I could binge for a couple of weeks and then leave it for months before coming back to it I had zero moderation with Final Fantasy and had to quit completely).
I borrowed it off my cousin semi-frequently but I did spend a lot more time watching him play than playing it myself (as we spent a LOT of time together growing up, it wasn't unusual for him to be at my house sometimes for entire weekends so even when I was borrowing it he was usually playing it).
The graphics look pretty nice on the Switch O_O
though the opening shot is bugging me immensely, looks like the arm just got rotated XD
Speaking of Advent Children I have a Youtube scene in my next progblog (which I'm slowly working on for Friday seeing as I failed to get one done last week x_x). Young friend and I were discussing the look for visuals we're making for the steampunk AU WoD game he's running and he wanted some normal mapping done for one of the characters and that was not going to work with the toon shading look I was doing at the time so I posted the Bahamut fight (which is one of my favourite scenes partly because all of the player characters are somewhere and mostly for where everyone hurls Cloud into the stratosphere) and suggested we go for that type of look instead and now that's what we're doing XD
I'm pretty sure all the stuff has been happening for a while now and games like this (and others and a lot of movies/artwork/things) have been showing it for at least that long but the people consuming either don't understand it at all or soothe themselves that it's just a story and absolutely cannot under any circumstances possibly be happening in real life because "'they' wouldn't do that because they just wouldn't".
Such genuine nostalgia here. I remember sititng on the front steps of my school talking about the best enemies to use the Morph skill on to get items from them to sell to buy weapons in game, or where to train for the best AP to max out materia.
None of these are really problems with the 3X speed mode in the Switch version.
The switch is very capable hardware wise - with a "jailbroken one" you can emulate PS1, PSP and other consoles very comfortably. Tons of YouTube videos about that - that'll be a rabbit hole I go down once I finish all my purchased Switch games, which if I'm honest, will probably be sometime next decade. :D