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Retro Game of the Week, Week 7
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08-02-2016 1:39pm#1Moderators, Category Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 34,679 CMod ✭✭✭✭Join Date:Posts: 33901
This weeks game for debate, discussion and character assassination is
Final Fantasy VII!
as suggested by Doge!
I know nothing about this game as I have never played it, so is it awesome or over rated?
Links to the Past!
Week 1 SoR2
Week 2 Myth
Week 3 SF2
Week 4 Doom
Week 5 Sonic 2
Week 6 Duke Nukem 3D1
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Join Date:Posts: 51590
I'd like to say FF7 was my first JRPG but I had played Shining Force 2 beforehand but it took until FF7 for me to realise it was a JRPG.
FF7 was the best looking game ever when I saw it first. of course it was just an illusion, the pre rendered backdrops were just 2D pictures but I was fooled for a long time. It took me a long time before I finally got to play it, first a pirate copy on PC which ran unplayably slow on my PC and finally when I got a PS1 years later. I loved every minute of the game and for the longest time it was my 'ZOMG best game ever!'. The atmosphere and story had just the right amount of angst for my addled teenage brain and it was well paced with a great soundtrack, even if the instruments used are kind of rubbish.
Going back to it now with a bit more knowledge of games and JRPGs you can kind of see the cracks. The story, which starts of great, falls apart one you leave Midgar and the game turns into a standard dragon quest clone. The game feels quite rushed. Then there's the battle system which is as deep as a paddling pool and not helped by how easy the game is. The materia system is terrible and kind of just a poor mans Esper system from FF6 which wasn't really all that great to start with. Still one thing did stand out when I played through the fan translation a few weeks ago, I had a hell of a lot of fun going through it again. It's quite well placed with no real frustrating road blocks other than the god awful chocobo racing. It's also surprisingly not as emo as the fanbase would like you to be with Cloud being completely different from how the terrible sequels and extended universe stuff portrays him.
FFVII was also quite a big influence on the industry. For one shining moment the genre king was the JRPG, something I'd much rather than the FPS and open world games we get now. FFVII helped bring more RPGs to the US and Europe. If it wasn't for FFVII we would probably have never seen Grandia, Shin Megami Tensei, Valkyrie Profile or it's ilk in the West, let alone Europe where FF7 was the first mainline FF game to be released there.
Then there's the influence it had on me. It opened my eyes to RPGs which are now far and away my favourite videogame genre. It opened my eyes to all the games Europe was missing and lead me to mod my console and import my first game, the awesome Final Fantasy Tactics.
So Final Fantasy 7 isn't the best game ever. It's not the best JRPG ever. It's not even the best Final Fantasy game. But it's still a great game. It's a weird halfway point between 16-bit and 32-bit RPGs which makes it seem weird. That and the fact that it's kind of a complete mess of yoyo-ing tonal swings makes the game fascinating (and I wish japanese developers weren't so tight lipped because FFVII would have an amazing making of article). If it wasn't for FF7 I might still be stuck playing dumb FPS games and I certainly wouldn't be playing games such as Xenoblade Chronicles X or anticipating Persona 5.
So thank you FF7. You might be a bit weird, janky and have rubbish minigames but you left a great legacy and are a top game to boot.
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Join Date:Posts: 51590
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Master of the UniverseJoin Date:Posts: 35097
Retr0gamer wrote: »Not even close to the best.
In terms of the whole series, I'd got for Final Fantasy Tactics. In the mainline series I'd take FF4, 5 , 6, 9 and 13-3 over it. You could make a pretty good case for 8 and 12 being better as well.
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I played VIII before VII, and I played VII for maybe 2 hours is all so dont have much of an opinion on it, I dont think id would enjoy it now that its been hyped for by everyone for so long....I'll just play Chrono Trigger instead
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Master of the UniverseJoin Date:Posts: 35097
Jack burton wrote: »I played VIII before VII, and I played VII for maybe 2 hours is all so dont have much of an opinion on it, I dont think id would enjoy it now that its been hyped for by everyone for so long....I'll just play Chrono Trigger instead
Still haven't played Chrono Trigger yet? Jaysus, sort that out ASAP!
I can't see you not liking VII, it's a fantastic game. Even if it has been over hyped, there's still a really solid game there.
Played VIII when it came out and absolutely hated it. One of my biggest let downs in gaming ever. Next to Metal Gear Solid 2
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Join Date:Posts: 51590
VIII is a weird game. After coming from FFVII you think the game is dumb because the first thing it does is give you a summon and you know summoning is the most powerful thing in the game so you just go through the game summoning every turn.
Except that gets exceptionally boring watching the same cutscene over and over. Then you get stuck because the only attack you have is an AoE attack and you eventually hit a road block on a boss where AoE attacks are useless.
The real way to play the game is to break the system by junctioning spells to stats and once you do that you don't ever need to summon because your damage output will far exceed any summon.
I absolutely hated FF8 the first time I played it but the second time once I understood how to actually play it was actually a lot of fun.
FF8 is a weird game. They basically followed up FF7 which was by far and away the safest and most mundane FF in terms of mechanics with a weird experimental RPG, and I kind of have to give the developers kudos for that. It's kind of been a Final Fantasy thing where every final fantasy is wildly different from the last (except 7 funnily enough which was a dumbed down 6) and I'd take that over a mass market sequel mass production machine like CoD or Assassins Creed.
Funny how the opinion of MGS2 has changed. I'm willing to bet the people calling it a masterpiece haven't played it since 2002. I played through it again a few weeks ago. Sure the themes of the story are way ahead of their times and are frighteningly close to what is happening in the modern world but the execution is terrible with some really hammy writing. Also as a game it's not that fun.
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Really enjoyed 7 way back when, wasn't my first final fantasy, but it's probably my favorite. I actually think the game picks up a lot when you LEAVE Midgar. You get access to more characters, you get more backstory for Barrett, and you get to meet Cid, arguably the best Cid in the series!
I think it has aged a lot though. But I'd still prefer this over 8's awful plot/character development anyday. But I think 6 and 9 are better games than 7, but, gonna stick with my favorite being 7. The music's too good to not be my favorite.0
This discussion has been closed.
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