Final Fantasy VII (1997) by Square

Final Fantasy VII's extraordinary atmosphere will leave you reeling

I grew up as a young child in the '80s playing the first Final Fantasy on the NES with my father. I was too young to read, so he had to read the dialogue to me as we played. As I grew and learned to read myself, I spent hour upon hour with the sequels, Final Fantasy II (IV in Japan), and III (VI in Japan), both for the SNES. I have a strong memory involving the time I walked several miles to my friend's house after school because he had a new PlayStation, and a copy of Final Fantasy VII, a game that I was hugely excited to experience given my history with the series. I had spent the past few months reading about the game in various video game publications and was hyped out of my mind to try it.

It was autumn, 1997, and I was 12 years old at the time. 15 years ago. I've replayed the game a dozen times since then, and mostly recently delved back into the Steam port to examine how the game has aged and how well the port runs.

The very first thing that I noticed about the game was the chasm between how well the audio design and soundtrack have aged versus how poorly the graphics have. It becomes clearly apparent that sprites have aged far better than polygonal characters when comparing this game to an older, sprite-based games in the series such as Final Fantasy VI. Sprites carried a certain charm to them, and remain tolerable despite their lack of beauty. Polygons, for lack of a better description, just look strange and ugly. Their blockiness represents a human character far more poorly than even a sprite can. To compare it to Hollywood, sprites are like Disney cartoon of the '70s, while polygons are like the bad special effects of the '80s. The audio, however, has aged gracefully. Nobuo Uematsu's haunting, elegiac score (see above video) has always been perfect for the game, and I remembered how fond I was of it the first time around immediately upon starting the game again.

The characters are generally well-realized, if not helped by some shoddy translation. Cloud is such a deep and human character that it's worth playing through the game just to witness his growth. By the end of the game you come to realize how deeply flawed a person he is, and having such a flawed hero leading the game was something that was quite groundbreaking for JRPGs at the time. Sephiroth's villainy hasn't shown age, either. He's still one of the best gaming villains in history, a title well earned through his enigmatic actions and intriguing backstory. Some of the characters lean more heavily towards comic relief, like Cait Sith, but are still given the depth they deserve in a game as large as this one. Each character's backstory is engaging. I will always fondly remember being shocked at how much depth was given to Red XIII, a character you meet in a lab early in the game who seems at first to be nothing more than a cool-looking, speaking attack feline. Cosmo Canyon looks amazing, the background music is fantastic (see indented video), and the story it tells about Red XIII will hook your emotions immediately.

It's obvious what to expect from the gameplay. This game is purely old school JRPG. It doesn't bother me, as it's a type of game that I once had a huge affinity for. I can jump back into the more slowly-paced, active turn-based battle systems any time and still enjoy it. To others, it may be a bit more tedious. This is especially true regarding random battles. The tedium of random battles may be intolerable for others that are more used to the real-time fare of old cRPGs or more recent Western RPGs. It's difficult for me to be objective enough to say. I don't mind random battles even now, but I never have.

One thing I will tout is the materia system. I've always loved it. It's my favorite form of character development in any Final Fantasy game, and it holds up. Growing your materia through the management of your weapons is so much fun, and the high-level materia such as Slash-All and Double Cut really make you feel all-powerful toward the end portion of the game. They're scaled very well.

The main complaint from my latest replay is an issue that never seemed to bother me before. The control of Cloud through the various pre-rendered areas is absolutely atrocious. Pressing up on the directional pad will sometimes cause him to go left or right, and pressing right or left on the pad will sometimes cause him to go down. There's no clear indication of when this will happen -- It's unique to each area. This becomes particularly annoying in areas where random battles occur. Very often I'd find myself doubling back due to this, and fighting far more random battles than I actually had to.

I wouldn't be able to conclude this without mentioning the cutscenes and minigames. The idea of rewarding players with a CGI cutscene during certain parts of the game was a fresh, new concept at the time of the game's release. Seeing the devs at Square flaunt their graphical prowess was mind-blowing, and the cutscenes were unlike anything in video games at the time. They truly were rewarding, and I remember being so impressed as a 12-year old first playing this game that I recorded them on a VHS tape for later playback. The minigames were also groundbreaking, but have aged poorly. Bad control plagues many of them, specifically the motorcycle and snowboarding games. But the inclusion of these changed the genre for years; the lack of minigames in a post-Final Fantasy VII JRPG would be a strange omission for a later title.

Final Fantasy VII has got its problems. In some cases, it's aged beautifully and become the historically powerful title that gamers expected it to be upon its release. Final Fantasy VII brought RPGs as a genre into the mainstream. The graphics and control, however, will be nearly unbearable to any gamer going back in time to play this game for the first time.

I do have some complaints specifically regarding this Steam port. Every resolution that isn't 640x480 windowed looks terrible. They've upped the resolution on the characters and NPCs, but the pre-rendered backgrounds are the same so they look awful in any other resolution. And don't even think about going to 16:9. All it does is stretch the picture to fit the screen.

There's also a persistent black bar (pictured above) along the bottom of the screen that is only ever filled in when accessing the menu. Imagine you're watching a film in letterbox, except that there's only one black bar on the bottom of the screen and no matching bar on the top. Just awful.

On top of the graphical issues, Square's ridiculous DRM is present. You must log into Square Enix when you first start the game. People already hate Uplay. Why would Square do this? It's an idiotic move.

People have also mentioned the music quality being subpar compared to the PS1 version, but it honestly didn't affect my experience at all. I definitely noticed the music being a bit different, it didn't seem any worse than the original game.

Despite the wear of aging and the shoddy port, I still believe this game is a must-play for anyone who liked the original or any gamer looking for a history lesson. There is still enough depth in the characters, immersion in the environments despite their age due to a phenomenal soundtrack and great art design, and player investment in the story. Like an old painting, Final Fantasy VII continues to be historically relevant and is worth seeing and experiencing if only to recognize the influence it had on present day gaming. The paint has aged, and the artwork is unfortunately not quite as vibrant and stunning as it once was, but with the right mindset you can still experience it and be moved.

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