Interesting, somewhat brief retrospective on Final Fantasy 7

[Ack]

I agree with most of what he said, in particular that Aeris's death is made out to be way too big a deal. As he said, she's just a flower girl that dies at the end of the first of three discs. It's in no way the game's climax and to be honest,

Cait Sith's death

was more emotional. But whatever. Even if FFVII has become an overrated sacred cow, it's still a great game that deserves to be remembered.

Admittedly though, it felt like the developers went out of their way to mitigate any prolonged emotional impact you might have felt about that one.

[graffix_13]

Good article, thanks for posting. Especially apropos for me since I'm currently re-playing it.

I remember the commercials in the late 90's (97?) advertising the game. I don't think there was one single frame of actual gameplay...it was all FMV shots (well, at least from what I remember). Even the back case of the game was made up of FMV stills and nothing of actual gameplay; which I always thought was strange since I wanted to see ACTUAL gameplay.

I know people like to bash it, or call it "overrated" but I think its a fantastic game and its still in my Top 10 of All Time. I love it for all of its aspects: story, graphics, gameplay, etc.

[Erik_Twice]

You guys already know my position on the topic but since we have new members around, I thought it would be interesting to go back to it.

Mechanically FFVII is not an interesting game. It focuses most of its 40 hours of gameplay in killing harmless enemies through the rotation of attacks and healing, without any other interesting nuance entering into it. It's a strategical game of combat yet most of the combat is not strategically interesting.

There's nothing interesting in killing FF's equivalent of slimes and levelling up yet most of the game is spent in killing slimes and levelling up. The game takes 40 hours and in my mind half of it is padding.

I think Mr Stanton sees depth, narrowly defined as options, but I think the "depth" doesn't lead to interesting choices by the player. Materia isn't an interesting systems and neither are the nuances of Chocobo breeding. The game has a lot of systems and options in them but I don't think any matter.


I leave the narrative for others to complain about, I'll focus on the mechanics.

[MrPopo]

You guys already know my position on the topic but since we have new members around, I thought it would be interesting to go back to it.

Mechanically FFVII is not an interesting game. It focuses most of its 40 hours of gameplay in killing harmless enemies through the rotation of attacks and healing, without any other interesting nuance entering into it. It's a strategical game of combat yet most of the combat is not strategically interesting.

How is this different from every other Final Fantasy game?

[Erik_Twice]

How is this different from every other Final Fantasy game?

It isn't.

[MrPopo]

How is this different from every other Final Fantasy game?

It isn't.

And to expand the question, how is this different from most JRPGs?

[Erik_Twice]

And to expand the question, how is this different from most JRPGs?

It isn't either. It's a genre-wide problem in my mind. It also applies to other kinds of digital roleplaying games, but there are more exceptions.

[Erik_Twice]

But tell me, where do you disagree with me?

[Ack]

I'd say the argument really comes down to the JRPG. A game can manage to make its combat interesting by requiring a certain amount of strategy to survive, making characters highly unique so that forming a different party will lead to a drastic strategy change, or enabling certain combinations of characters to do unique things. That or simply making combat more active, either by opening it up for more player control or requiring something to disrupt the "traditional" flow that most JRPGs.

A few examples:

Chrono Trigger's tech system requires combining different characters' abilities to perform double and triple attacks, though these require waiting for both or all three characters to be ready at the same time, which can lead to harrowing moments while waiting for a slower character to get their turn while an enemy wails on the party.

Star Ocean and its sequels employ a very active combat system which allows characters to wander around the battlefield performing various moves with specific effects but which may also affect things like the player character's mobility.

Wild Arms 3 has a battle system that comes across as more generic, though it requires after so many shots that characters take a turn to defend and reload. The number of shots depends entirely on the modifications to each character's firearm.

The 7th Saga features a system which makes the attacking character more powerful if he defended the round before. Also, characters can be switched between at the start of each round of combat, which can enable a strategic advantage or cause certain defeat if not used effectively, because even normal monsters can deal massive amounts of punishment.

Final Fantasy 5's job system changes combat abilities, which in turn can lead to different strategies based on the different configurations of jobs within the party.

Live A Live's combat grid is highly strategic, as many abilities are based on location of enemies and movement around the grid is limited for each character. Going for a particular move can open the player to a highly devastating move from the enemy that they would not have easily been able to use had not the player made a pivotal mistake, and vice versa.

[MrPopo]

But tell me, where do you disagree with me?

I disagree that there isn't anything interesting to be had with the combat. But I'm the type who likes to theorycraft and figure out how to best create characters who can steamroll everything in their path. So while the individual battles might not be interesting, the path I take to get my party in a state that the battles are uninteresting is interesting.