Leemaster777 said:
VII is my favorite of the three I played recently. I think if the internet hadn't completely ruined the big emotional moment, and if the media that takes place after the end of the game hadn't ruined the somewhat ambiguous ending, it might have been my favorite of all time.
I think that the biggest blow the Internet Hype Machine (and subsequent media, building off this) dealt to VII was the flanderization of Cloud as whiny, weak, and angsty. As a convenient illustration, compare his FF7 art to his Dissidea art:
The standard, cliche RPG arc goes something like, "I thought I was a loser/nobody, but I'm actually the hero!" Ie, an average person who finds out they're not so average, either through birth or prophecy (or both.) Off the top of my head... FF4, 5, & MQ, both Lufias, Illusion of Gaia, and Xenogears start from this premise. What 7 did was to set up Cloud as someone who
knew he was the hero, then reveal to him (and the player) that he's a loser. He thought he was an elite fighter, both by training and genetic engineering, but turns out he was an enlisted grunt who
wasn't good enough to make the cut for SOLDIER, and the "engineering" was harmful tampering rather than beneficial improvement. He has his mental breakdown, but comes out of it sure that he can be the hero
on his own merits. Rather than the angst ball he's caricatured as, his trajectory is more "incredibly cocky and sure of himself->existential crisis when he learns his self-image is based on bullshit->reconstitution as a legitimately heroic individual once he comes to terms with and accepts who he really is."
So yeah, it was a really radical departure from the standard formula at the time, but it's something that later media/hype has kinda lost sight of.
(On a similar note, I really hope 6 holds up well for you [and other new players in general.] There are so many incredibly innovative things in that game that it
invented but which I worry new players might mistake as cliched because later games copied them so aggressively.)