Final Fantasy VII Review
More impressive to me than its technological achievements or its expressive battle system, is how FFVII hardly needed to change the core structure. The jump to the 3rd dimension didn’t bring with it a reshuffling of how Square would approach a next-gen rpg. You still have three core separate modes of play, you still have a select cast of party members, you still have resource management. Sure, dungeon delving has gone the way of the dodo, but its replacement still retains searching every corner of an area to find what secrets are waiting for you.
Still, it would be such a disservice to omit discussing the leaps in technology and presentation achieved in FF7. Despite having played the two later PSX titles, both of which have impressive presentation in and of themselves, I found myself allured and fixated on how three separate renditions of FF7 can co-exist without feeling disjointed. The majority of the game has you seeing stylized, polygon models in the overworld and in areas. Battles and cutscenes have more detailed models. And then you have the character portraits in menus. Despite three separate renditions of the same character, it still feels like it just belongs and never feels out of place. Even as the later two PSX titles begin to blur and homogenize the presentation into a cohesive style that presents consistency, I find myself more drawn to 7’s ability in juggling all three.
Square also understood that the newfound freedom that could result in more interactivity in selling the narrative and the world. After all, this is a medium of play. And by god there is sooooooooo much play here. It would have been cool to see Cloud and the gang run out the building on an impressive FMV of him getting on the bike, but the fact it cuts to its own gameplay section afterwards? Mental. Unreal. I cannot imagine how cool this shit must have felt seeing this unfold in real time in 1997. If anything, it's a testament to this moment that it still feels cool now. Even something as minor (well, in comparison) as a CPR minigame feels intimate as you are directly in control. YOU, the player, and by proxy, Cloud, are saving this girl’s life.
Then, of course, there’s the battle system with its emphasis on player control. In forgoing the usual characters being assigned hyperspecific roles, party members could become any role via the Materia system, effectively creating your own class. It’s such a genius system in allowing characters to still statistically push them into certain roles, but you can build them however you please. I ran Cloud, Vincent, and Yuffie for the majority of my runtime, switching either Yuffie or Vincent up for my caster, while the other two just ran straight damage from the backlines. There is so much Materia to play around with, and of the FF games I’ve played so far, this is easily in the top list for most fun to gear and play with. If I am actively hunting out random encounters for the hell of it, you’ve made a good battle system.
Finally, we have the main scenario itself and it’s… alright, I’m kind of shocked at how much I was kept in the dark on, despite, you know, this being such a revered game. Prior to playing FF7, I’d say I knew, maybe, the gist of the first couple of hours, which just so happens to take place entirely within Midgar. You’d be forgiven for thinking that all of FF7 takes place here because I thought the same thing for the longest time. But no, you just spend a couple of hours here, gathering a majority of your party, before embarking on a globetrotting adventure to kill a god. It’s incredible.
Also, I really should have known better given the track record of this series in which a main protagonist, or any character for that matter, is clearly hiding something and it’s up to you to explore the why and help them overcome their plights. Like, yeah, no shit Cloud Strife was going to have character development. But so much of the cultural osmosis I had soaked in made it seemed like he was this unchanging, nonchalant guy the entire runtime. He gets one of the coolest reveals, and I’m thankful this was never talked about much before playing.
However, try as I might, it was impossible to ignore the elephant in the room: Aerith’s death. This was the scene I knew about before anything else in FFVII. She’s always been in my mind as “the FF girl who dies” and nothing more. And yet she still ended up being an endearing party member with her short time. The fact you can pursue a romantic interest, something that logic would dictate should be rewarded from your investment, and still have the gall to remove her from the party is so mental to me in the best possible way. Her death is so sudden too, like, you barely have time to grieve in the moment before your thrust into a battle while her theme is playing. The cutscene itself is remarkable with her Materia being the only audible sound bouncing as it descends into the water, where she herself will shortly rest and return to the lifestream. Just a really, really good moment.
As much as I hate to use this word, the best way to describe FFVII is ambitious. Square took one hell of a shot in the transition to the third-dimension, unsure of themselves if JRPGs were even going to be a thriving genre in the fifth generation of consoles.
And by god, what a shot they took.