FF VII is the #1 Game of All Time on a reader-poll list?
Quelle surprise.
Games You Probably Like, But Shouldn't: Final Fantasy VII
Oh, I'm madly in love with this piece right now. If this game had ankles, I'd totally go Kathy Bates on it with a sledgehammer. Or rather, on some of the fanbois who have somehow inexplicably managed to sustain the lifecycle of this dull, anemic game far, far beyond its point of natural heat-death.
In
Final Fantasy VI, every single major character received substantial development, and arcs that enabled their growth within the storyline. Not in FF VII, though. There are several supporting characters and NPCs, and the opportunity was there for some great interaction and relationships among the cast. However, despite the fact that leading figures like Cloud, Tifa, and even Sephiroth, get some token development...they simply don't receive
ENOUGH, compared to FF VI and later games in the series. Additionally, most of the supporting cast are ciphers, completely underwritten, and as such, are major disappointments.
The rest of the game is even less exciting. Exploring and looking for the next random encounter is not so bad, but the towns and other slow parts can be utterly, utterly awful. To advance past these parts, you must spend hours just walking around "talking" to people. Being stuck somewhere for hours because you haven't yet randomly discovered that you have to talk to the old man three times, after alternatively talking to the child in the street and the lady with the hat twice, is not fun.
There's really nothing original about
Final Fantasy VII, and in fact, many RPGs on the previous Genesis and SNES platforms had better storylines and gameplay. It's slightly interesting that you're thrown into the middle of the main character's life, but the minutes-long flashbacks and resulting lack of understanding quite what the goal is, get tedious and downright annoying. Basically, other than the graphics, this is an anemically-underdeveloped pale shadow of far better role-playing games that have been released both before and since.
Many people state that the emotional ties that develop between the player and the characters are a large part of the enjoyment of the game. I suppose that would be a valid point, if the characters or story were actually interesting or believable. All of the characters are one-dimensional and wooden, and the story plods on and on, only being tolerated because you're forced to watch it in order to continue playing. The game would probably be more enjoyable if it were just about stats, Materia, and Chocobo-racing.
Then we come to the hardcore, evangelical FF VII fandom, which frequently make Trekkies look like Buddhist monks:
I once got yelled at by someone at a con.
"Why are you cosplaying?"
"Kadaj."
"That's...
Final Fantasy VII?"
"You don't play it?"
"Yeah, I bought it when it was first released, and I even finished it, but I disliked it, and sold it back to GameStop."
"What the hell is wrong with you? What, did you like
X-2, or something?"
Yeah. No other FF fans have ever bitched at me. I simply didn't like FF VII.
I didn't go up this person and
*SAY* "
Final Fantasy VII sucks," so I should be yelled at like I did? FF VII fans take it too far, from a fandom to a lifestyle. They're like hardcore Browncoat Whedonites, and are very gung-ho -- which is to say, if you even dare to disagree with them, you're wrong. These people short-stroke it every night in bed over Cloud and Sephiroth. And it's true that many of the hardcore FF VII fen are
only interested in FF VII, and not the other games in the series.
Summing up: the more you hype something, the less people are going to enjoy it once they finally get to it. I was at the point that I could have combined FF VII fans' opinions of the game, and taken it all to mean that it could've cured blindness, cancer, and global poverty.
