Final Fantasy 7, The good old days

[aboleth_lich]

It would amazing if they ever redid it.

I have great news then: Square Enix actually announced a HD remake of Final Fantasy VII for the PS4 earlier this summer! Check out their trailer:

As for my opinion on the original Final Fantasy VII for the PS1:

I fully acknowledge all of the criticisms in this thread. Is it as good as Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, or Final Fantasy Tactics? No. Is it an imperfect, flawed game? Yes. (In several ways it isn't even a fully complete game!) Given all of that, is it somewhat overrated? Well, yes.

However, despite all of that: I regardless still consider it to be a fantastic, engaging, immensely enjoyable JRPG that I absolutely adored and spent many hours indeed playing throughout my junior high school days! And I'll gladly revisit it when its PS4 remake comes out!

For me, the decline of the Final Fantasy franchise doesn't truly begin until Final Fantasy VIII! (I'm fully on-board with Noah "Spoony One" Antwiler in his lengthy criticisms of Final Fantasy VIII onward!)

 

[SLTE]

Good game. I remember slobbering over it when it first came out, because FF7 was the reason I picked up a PS1 as a kid. Thought it was the greatest thing since sliced insert-fantastic-whatever-here. I pick it up and play it again every few years and I always find that it hasn't aged as well as some other FFs - the story is rather wacko in places, the graphics look abysmal (I much prefer sprite-based SNES games to FF7's Popeye nonsense), and the combat system is a bit bland - but it's still fun. I'll grab the remake fo sho.

 

[aboleth_lich]

It's true, Final Fantasy VII's graphics are the aspect of the original PS1 game that have aged the worse--but naturally will be the biggest improvement in the upcoming PS4 remake! However, while I also prefer the sprites of the SNES's classic JRPGs--the sprite approach to graphics were taken as far as it could be by then and the shift to the more polygon style of the PS1 and the N64 was a necessary stepping stone on the road to the sheer realism of modern games' graphics. (Seriously, graphics could advance no further than they are today and I would be perfectly content with that freeze!) In particular, sprites (which were fantastic for traditional side-scrolling, top down, etc games of the past) could no longer cut it with the transition to the truly 3D gaming of the N64. Many of the games of that transitional era suffer from the then limitations of that then-new-but-ultimately-promising approach to graphics.

As for the occasional wacko moments of Final Fantasy VII's story: I can overlook the silliness of Cloud cross-dressing in a brothel, Cloud's date night, etc given the general strength of the broader story. I grant you that Final Fantasy VII's story pales in comparison to the likes of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, or Final Fantasy Tactics--but on the other hand it is preferable to the hot messes that are the Final Fantasy games to come! Honestly, in my opinion the biggest flaw in Final Fantasy VII's story is a lack of an explanation as to why Aeris can't be simply resurrected with a Phoenix Down!

As far as Final Fantasy VII's flaws go, I'm considerably more annoyed by the dangling threads of elements abandoned in the final release (presumably cut to meet some arbitrary deadline): the toy soldiers that serve no purpose, aborted methods to resurrect Aeris, etc. That, and the Japanese edition of the game had an ATM mechanism missing in the North American release--which even included a secret card linked to an account with infinite funds, talk about a fantasy!

However, despite those flaws: I considered the game to be the bees' knees, spend many hours playing it, and it was also one of the main reasons I bought a PS1 back in the day (along with Final Fantasy Tactics and the Resident Evil series). Is it the greatest JRPG ever? No! Is is a great JRPG regardless? Yes!