That sounds interesting...too bad the gameplay bored me to tears. I played the GBA, Dawn of Souls Version that came with FFI. I don't know how people got past the combat.
I understand why Sephiroth is the most iconic villain in the entire Final Fantasy franchise.
- Thread starter Samtemdo8
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He's ripped. No Question. But our heroes are normally built like Gears of War moving Refrigerators. I'm not my high school friends so I don't know for sure, but seeing a guy who was able to fit in the clothes that they own and being able to wreck face seemed to really excite them.
He's always been a Broody Edgelord to me. I get what you're saying, but "My life is a lie, everyone's gotta die now" is some tryhard stuff there.
I just think we need to understand that there are characters that are meant to appeal to broody edgelords and there are characters that are meant to appeal to broody edgelords AND are also broody edgelords. But yes, I agree that he's inspired a lot of "Totally OC bros, don't steal" characters and fantasies of the like.
And this distinction may seem trivial but ever since Chestor Bennington committed suicide, I've felt like the distinction needs to be made that just because something appeals to people we see as being cringe doesn't mean that something deserves the same feelings. In that particular case, Linkin Park may have appealed to a lot of whiny teens but Bennington was coming from a place of real trauma in his life.
Kefka particularly, but Exdeath also had relatively well defined sprites in their proper boss battles.
The later redo CGI variations of Kefka are just kind of garbo though.
Exdeaths thing is interesting, but his name is godawfully stupid (rivalled only by "Cloud of Darkness" ). He's also not particularly well fleshed out on his concept since FF5 was a throwback to the mechanics oriented first trilogy.
Sephiroth just seems generic as hell. Long haired broody anime boy with late 90s black trenchcoat (Seen also in the Crow, Blade, Matrix, the wrestler Sting, and like 70 other random films around the time).
Also yes, everything Sephiroth manages to do, from kiling the president, killing the Snake, killing Aeris (an overblown feat considering Exdeath's grand dispatch of Galuf, and however many party deaths (mildly censored/bowdlerized) there were in 4), wasn't actually Seprioth, it was either Jenova or clone mooks (possibly multiple clone mooks working in concert to do things like kill the Zolom). He's really hyper-neutered by his big reveals.
Actual Sephiroph kills a dragon, goes mega emo, gets beaten up by not-even-a-solider, not-mako-infused-yet Cloud. Then gets stuck in a block of ice before noticeably better Cloud shows up and finishes the job.
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Sephiroth is memorable, because every time he (or jenova pieces being controlled by him) shows up, someone dies, or something big happens. Just look at every scene he shows up in.
1. He slaughters his way through the shinra headquarters, and kills the dictator of the planet in his own office. And then he escapes.
2. We get a flashback where he destroys clouds home town, murdering clouds mom and tifa's dad.
3. He kills a giant snake that you just spend 30 minutes avoiding, and then strung it up as a testament to his power.
4. He casually breaks into the military ship where the president and his entire staff are located, kills the guards, and breaks out jenova
5. He either kills or gravely wounds tseng, who is not seen again for the entirety of the game. He then manipulated cloud into sacrificing cait sith, and then takes over clouds body, forcing him to try and kill aerith.
6. He kills aerith.
7. He releases multiple city destroying kaiju from an ice berg, who then proceed to wreak absolute chaos and mayhem on the planet, and who are a potentially planet destroying force unto themselves. He then summons a meteor capable of destroying the planet, put cloud into a coma for a large chunk of the game, removing both him and tifa, and creates an impenetrable shield around his new base in the north pole.
8. He has a larger then life final battle, culminating in a psychic duel.
Sephiroth isn't a great character because of his design, or music, which are fairly generic by anime standards. Nor is he a great character because of his power. There are multiple final fantasy characters who are stronger then sephiroth, even in his own game. The reason he is a great villain is because of the way he is portrayed and written. He's a game changer, and every single time he shows up in the entire story, the status quo changes. Every. Single. Time. This is why he's more interesting then Kefka, or ultimecia, or whoever else. This is why his appearances in other media, outside of the original game, have been bad. They've watered down his character into someone less intimidating then he originally was. Sephiroth was fucking terrifying in the original game, because you never knew what he was capable of doing when he found you. People remember him killing aerith, but that wasn't the last, or most damaging, thing he did in that game. Sephiroth is a masterclass villain.
1. He slaughters his way through the shinra headquarters, and kills the dictator of the planet in his own office. And then he escapes.
2. We get a flashback where he destroys clouds home town, murdering clouds mom and tifa's dad.
3. He kills a giant snake that you just spend 30 minutes avoiding, and then strung it up as a testament to his power.
4. He casually breaks into the military ship where the president and his entire staff are located, kills the guards, and breaks out jenova
5. He either kills or gravely wounds tseng, who is not seen again for the entirety of the game. He then manipulated cloud into sacrificing cait sith, and then takes over clouds body, forcing him to try and kill aerith.
6. He kills aerith.
7. He releases multiple city destroying kaiju from an ice berg, who then proceed to wreak absolute chaos and mayhem on the planet, and who are a potentially planet destroying force unto themselves. He then summons a meteor capable of destroying the planet, put cloud into a coma for a large chunk of the game, removing both him and tifa, and creates an impenetrable shield around his new base in the north pole.
8. He has a larger then life final battle, culminating in a psychic duel.
Sephiroth isn't a great character because of his design, or music, which are fairly generic by anime standards. Nor is he a great character because of his power. There are multiple final fantasy characters who are stronger then sephiroth, even in his own game. The reason he is a great villain is because of the way he is portrayed and written. He's a game changer, and every single time he shows up in the entire story, the status quo changes. Every. Single. Time. This is why he's more interesting then Kefka, or ultimecia, or whoever else. This is why his appearances in other media, outside of the original game, have been bad. They've watered down his character into someone less intimidating then he originally was. Sephiroth was fucking terrifying in the original game, because you never knew what he was capable of doing when he found you. People remember him killing aerith, but that wasn't the last, or most damaging, thing he did in that game. Sephiroth is a masterclass villain.
I played the same version you did and believe me, that's pretty much all there is. You kill the emperor, later his hell castle rises from the ground, demons swarm out and you go in through a hell passage that's opened up to assault his castle.
As for the combat, lots and lots of desire to finish it for completeness sake. Possibly also lots of alcohol.
It's not worth playing for the story.really, the only reason to play through Is for the historical value
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I can sort of understand the criticism of his design, but I think the rest is a tad bit unfair. I think people forget that sephiroth wasn't really trying to accomplish a nihilistic destruction of the planet, in the same way kefka was. He was trying to help jenova accomplish her goal. For all intents and purposes, you're not fighting a nihilistic edgelord in ff7. You're fighting a lovecraftian elder god that travels to a planet, absorbs its life force to survive, and moves onto another planet. You're fighting a kind of Cthulhu or nyarlathotep character.
Also, for the people saying that you were fighting jenova, not sephiroth... maybe? It's very unclear who was controlling who in that relationship. If you consider advent children canon, then sephiroth was clearly controlling all of the jenova pieces throughout the game. It was his consciousness in their bodies. Unfortunately, the spinoffs of ff7 have a ton of retcons and plotholes, so I don't actually care about them. They also didn't have the original creator working on them, so I don't think the staff working on advent children, or even the recent remake, actually understand the original story being told. The original writer did, and he left the company in the early 2000's. If you only look at the original game, which is the only piece of content i care about in relation of ff7, then it's less clear. I think there are a few possibilities. Either sephiroth was in control of himself, and was being manipulated by jenova, or sephiroth and his memories were sort of "absorbed" by jenova. Similar to what happens in The Thing. This would explain his appearance in the final battle. We know that jenova took over the bodies of the ancients, and turned them into horrible monsters. I believe it effectively did the same thing to sephiroth, taking control of him on a cellular lever, and melding with him.
Basically, for all intents and purposes, sephiroth becomes a host for the eldritch creature known as jenova. Jenova attempts to take over cloud in the ending, as he's the last surviving vessal through which jenova can survive, but cloud is able to stop it from taking over him like it did sephiroth. In a sense, this actually makes sephiroth quite tragic, as he's essentially assimilated by an alien life form.
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I've always considered them to be working in concert to a degree. Sephiroth is calling Jenova to the crater... but it's already established that Jenova's cells yearn to recombine, so this is all in line with what Jenova wants. Sephiroth is aiming to crack open the planet and converge the lifestream... but it's already established that Jenova aims for the destruction of the planet as well.
One thing I think makes abundantly clear that it's not just Sephiroth's mind inhabiting Jenova is that when Cloud confronts him on the ship, Sephiroth-Jenova doesn't even recognise him. That's because it's not Sephiroth, who's met Cloud before and worked with him.
Sephiroth is beckoning her, but he's not just in literal control of her, and her goals align anyway-- goals she's had since long before Sephiroth was born.
Well I haven't played Final Fantasy VII (or any title, save for getting a bit through VI on my SNES Mini) but I have seen let's plays up until Cloud told about the Nibelheim incident and seen the rest of it in parts enough to know the outline of the game. I say this as a disclaimer since I can be in the wrong here.
One aspect that I suspect makes Sephiroth compelling is that he is a dark mirror of the protagonist. Over the course of the game Cloud finds out that he had manufactured memories and he isn't the badass SOLDIER 1st class he thought and is thus forced to question both himself, reality and his place within it. With the help of his friends he managed to figure out the truth and learned to accept it.
In the backstory of the game Sephiroth found out he isn't one of the Ancients with the power to speak to the planet for whom there was a destined promised land, he was a lifeform infused with JENOVA, the thing that destroyed the Ancients. His reaction to finding out about his true nature: Burn Nibelheim to the ground.
One aspect that I suspect makes Sephiroth compelling is that he is a dark mirror of the protagonist. Over the course of the game Cloud finds out that he had manufactured memories and he isn't the badass SOLDIER 1st class he thought and is thus forced to question both himself, reality and his place within it. With the help of his friends he managed to figure out the truth and learned to accept it.
In the backstory of the game Sephiroth found out he isn't one of the Ancients with the power to speak to the planet for whom there was a destined promised land, he was a lifeform infused with JENOVA, the thing that destroyed the Ancients. His reaction to finding out about his true nature: Burn Nibelheim to the ground.
And thus he found his ultimate despair.
By the way, this might be a bit of old news, but the final episode of FF7 abridged came out on Friday.
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KH sephiroth battle was awesome, easily the best battle in the entire game and forced you to use most of the cool mobility ability that you don't need to use most of the game. KH games have a pretty good combat system, but the game doesn't push the player enough so it feel much more shallower than it is.
Pretty much completely unrelated but I'm listening to the FF6 ost atm and the opera just started playing, anyone who haven't played FF6 should give it a try, it's kinda hilarious that they tried to do one with 16 bit sound XD.
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Yeah, I feel like a big issue is how much damage you can put out in a short amount of time just by getting in the face of your enemies and hitting them till they stop moving. Higher difficulties didn't really help much with this (At least in 2) because they just made the enemies do more damage but they still died just as fast.
That whole series was brilliant. Sad they will never finish dbz and with this finale out i no longer have a reason to follow them
I understand why Sephiroth is such an iconic villain. I also understand that Squire Enix has done everything in their power to distance themselves from what made Sephiroth so iconic.
In every game after the original they just turned Sephiroth into an extremely boring antagonist with not a single ambition other than to mess with Cloud for a bit. He was just so aggressively boring in Advent Children and especially in Dissidia where he had to share screentime with far more interesting villains. Even lunatics who constantly simp for the void had at least some color to them.
And the unfortunate thing is that the Remake decided to go with this aggressively boring interpretation of Sephiroth. The remake put great effort in putting Cloud's character back in track. He was no longer the mopey emo that he became after FF7, but a hopeless dork who's ''too cool for school'' acts was just that, an act, and an act he's not even very good at. But with Sephiroth they seemed to have rejected the notion that his character should return to what made him iconic. Instead he's just a boring one note character who's only ever motivated by the thought of messing with Cloud for a bit.
In every game after the original they just turned Sephiroth into an extremely boring antagonist with not a single ambition other than to mess with Cloud for a bit. He was just so aggressively boring in Advent Children and especially in Dissidia where he had to share screentime with far more interesting villains. Even lunatics who constantly simp for the void had at least some color to them.
And the unfortunate thing is that the Remake decided to go with this aggressively boring interpretation of Sephiroth. The remake put great effort in putting Cloud's character back in track. He was no longer the mopey emo that he became after FF7, but a hopeless dork who's ''too cool for school'' acts was just that, an act, and an act he's not even very good at. But with Sephiroth they seemed to have rejected the notion that his character should return to what made him iconic. Instead he's just a boring one note character who's only ever motivated by the thought of messing with Cloud for a bit.
Them ending at the Cell saga was perfect for me. Got to go out with a bang. I hate the Buu saga with so much passion, and it was clear they were burnt out on the series. I may not have interest in their original content, but I do wish them the best of luck. Plus, they still make the Dragon ShortZ. That's something to tide me over for a little bit.
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