Poll: Final Fantasy VII - Why is it so popular?

[Hengst2404]

I have to echo some of the same sentiments of others here, FF7 is so huge because of a combination of nostalgia mixed with a serving of innovative for the time and a dash of internet fanboyism. If you don't believe me, go to gamefaqs and bash FF7 in the forums.

I try to keep things honest and in perspective and while I did finish ff7, it became more of a chore towards the end than anything else. The plot was just a bit much for me, perhaps growing up reading lord of the rings or even Terry Brooks makes me look for more cohesive storytelling, but FF7 was like that indie house flick that is just trying to be too indie/arthouse. I actually find it a tad pretentious, but then again that is a trait that dominates the JRPG market.

I will acknowledge that for its time time it was something special, but so were a lot of games that aren't as good today as yesterday. I actually really and perhaps to my surprise greatly enjoyed FF12. I realize that many on the net actually hate the game and think it is overrated, and perhaps it was, but it was one of my faves anyway. I think the story was fairly cohesive and the actual gameplay was fairly fun and innovative for an FF game. I actually enjoyed using the gambits once I mastered them. Perhaps FF12 was merely more western than previous titles, but it was the first Final Fantasy game I actually bothered to finish since 7. Sure I put 40+ hours into 8,9 and 10, I just haven't gotten around to finishing them. Maybe some day....

 

[Saskwach]

Both times I played the game I stopped at the same point: the barrel rolling scene. Ohoho! So I must telepathically know or guess or memorise from previous attempts which barrel rolls where do I? What a pinnacle of ludic achievement! This after some of the most annoyingly on-rails gameplay I'd seen-both literal and figurative- was enough to force the controller down.
Edit: This is not a full frontal assault on FF7 lovers. I'm sure that I'd become addicted if I gave it the chance but really, if a game starts badly not even a recommendation from Everyman's talking dog will get me to complete it.

 

[mastersppd]

One of the problems I had with 7 and the later ones (my general problems with jRPGs aside) was that you lost the uniqueness of each character. Sure, Cloud had the big sword, and Tifa was the hand-to-hand fighter, but the Materia system just removed the total uniqueness of every character and instead turned into a secondary leveling system.

The same holds true for FF12 and their levels + licenses system.

Exactly my thoughts. Besides the story being... umm, just okay, the Materia system (although interesting) proved to be the straw that broke the camels back. It really didn't matter who was in your party, because every character could do any spell, summon, etc. so long as you had the right materia equipped. That's crap.

The only recent FF that came close to taking back to the old school was FFIX. Only the Mage could do magic, only the summoner could summon, and the warrior was the strong one of the group. As it should be. Now, you actually have to think about who is going to be in your party and when. It's called strategy, but maybe that's too hard for the casual gamer to understand? I think at this point it's all about appealing to the casual gamer and so even RPG's get nerfed to sell lots of copies to the mass market. FFVII < Any FF besides VII

Oh and by the way, FFVII might also have the worst ending in an RPG ever. Ever.

 

[Darkong]

That's another thing. Sephiroth didn't really seem like a great villain. Other than killing Aeris (admittedly too late to affect the game in any substantial way) and wanting to be a god, what exactly did he do anyways? Other than looking cool and carrying a cool sword, what exactly did he do that was all that impressive? If he was Zack's and Cloud's comrade and friend, why did he turn evil?

Really... after Aeris summoned Holy just before Sephiroth killed her, Cloud and party could have just sat around drinking martinis on the beach and playing games at the gold saucer and the ending wouldn't have been affected in the slightest. Holy still would have come to the rescue in the end.

In answer, no they couldn't have just sat around because, as is explained in the game, Sephiroth may have been too late to stop Aeris summoning Holy, though he wanted to kill her largely because she was a nuisance and getting in his way rather than because he thought she was a threat to him, but after he killed Aeris he then blocked Holy so it couldn't do anything. Hence why when you go to fight him at the end you see it imprisoned, they had to kill Sephiroth to release Holy from that prison so it could work (this is largely explained when Cloud rejoins the party after his mako poisoning and trip through the lifestream).

Sephiroth also, earlier in the story, murders Cloud and Tifa's families and burns their home town to the ground after he makes the discovery of his origins and goes insane, he also stabs Tifa and leaves her for dead (flashback after you leave Midgar and arrive in Kalm), which is ironic because he still didn't know all the truth like how Lucrecia was his actual mother and Hojo was his father (you need Vincent in your party to discover all of this in-game at places like the waterfall where you meet Lucrecia). Hence why Cloud and Tifa ended up where they are at the beginning of the game and why they want to go after him, to get revenge. Its also part of why Cloud finds himself so messed up, if the incident in the Nibel reactor hadn't happened he and Zack wouldn't have wound up in the mansion basement as experiment subjects (flashback when you go back the Mansion basement later in the game).

In answer to an earlier point you made about Zack, he was Cloud's friend and comrade as well as Aeris's first boyfriend, but more than that he was the embodiment of what Cloud wanted to be, a powerful warrior and member of SOLDIER but Cloud was allergic to mako so he couldn't be infused with it, though it happened anyway after he has his fight with Sephiroth (Nibel reactor, part of the second flashback when he's in the life stream) but he had a bad reaction and after that he became delusional and mixed Zack's past with his own.

I do agree that some poor translation does make some of it hard to grasp but I think you need to go through and look again because almost every criticism you've made in this thread about characters and the story is actually addressed within the game. There is definitely an imbalance between characters on how much information there is about them but I personally think that there's more than enough to define each of them very well.

 

[Hengst2404]

I have zero doubt everything you just said was 100% on the mark, but that is the problem. If you have to provide a detailed analysis in order to make the plot more coherent, then the makers of the game, at least the story portion have failed. I read far more than I game and I still had to replay portions of the game to catch everything. Just because it is possible to do research and glean all of the meaning from a game, doesn't mean that the info was readily or easily accesible initially. Again, perhaps the translation lost some things.

 

[Darkong]

Well personally, I got everything from it the first time I played but yeah, I do know plenty of people who missed parts of it the first time through and even plenty after that. Certainly the writing/translation could have made it easier to understand. I guess that's just something that game developers have to work on, making better stories. FFvii could probably have benefitted from being a bit longer to develpo the story more but then there's the issue of dragging the gameplay concepts out (some might argue that was done anyway).

 

[Count_de_Monet]

This is a new FFVI gripe for me; the story was too complicated to follow. I'll admit you had to put a little extra effort into the game to fully understand it (as in not just following the main quest) but otherwise it was handed to you in the somewhat frequent cut scenes.

The story is bad, it takes effort outside the main quest to fully understand, it was difficult to follow, it wasn't actually innovative, the characters lack depth, the story lacks depth, the setting loses all immersion once you hit the world map, and the timed battle system was boring. Does that about sum up all the complaints about FFVII?

 

[EzraPound]

The influence of FFVII alone (i.e. popularing J-RPGs in the western hemisphere) makes it inarguably great. Let's tally up its virtues:

- An excellent storyline that built upon the blend of science fiction and medieval elements in FFVI to set itself apart from other games (some call the plot convuluted, but that's a poor criticism - why are films allowed to have ambiguous storylines, but games aren't? If anything, the mystique that FFVII maintained through its storyline made the game more intriguing in the way that, say, the X-Files is).

- More sophisticated presentation than an RPG had had up to that point, abetted by the potential of CD-ROMS as opposed to cartridges (think of the soundtrack, CGI, etc).

- Gameplay that, while following in the FF tradition, was brought down in difficulty a notch to ensure the game was more accessible than its forerunners (I should add that the intitial five or six hours of the game were so engaging that they managed to entice alot of gamers hook, line and sinker).

- Environments that were decidedly moody in nature, and aesthetically artful: Midgar, etc.

- Ethical conflicts in the storyline that people could relate to because they seemed to allude to many societal problems we deal with in the west on a day-to-day basis: environmental degradation, spiritual vacuity, corporatism, cultural assimilation, polarization of wealth, etc.

- Art direction far superior to other titles available in 1997. Aeris' death is the obvious example: notice the little things, like the muted somberity of the whole scene, how an ominious, almost "end of the tunnel" light radiates above Sephiroth as he brings down his sword, and how the tension of it builds into a beautiful musical score (courtesy Nobuo Uematsu), cued at the exact moment the materia from Aeris' necklace strikes the ground.

- A 40-hour quest with some significant tasks to complete when it's finished.

- A consistent dramatic tension in its storyline that never lapses into triteness.

 

[L4Y Duke]

I actually wrote a blog about this.

Here's the link [http://www.gamerevolution.com/blog/entry.php?id=4609]

 

[Whisperkill47]

I think one of the things that make FFVII so memorable is because it was amazing for its time; The story was intriguing and the characters had a distinct personality and were all likable in their own way. Honestly though, like most classics, i do not think FFVII is, today still fun to play... i dont know... its just if i play it today i feel like ive been there before so many times.

 

[Divinegon]

You know, I could say the same thing on Final Fantasy VI (Actually I can't, but I was never able to finish the game because it feels to be the FF game with the highest random encounter spawn rate).

Why is FF VII so popular? Easy. It feature a blonde main character that through out the whole game finds himself to be a misunderstood teenage boy/man where nobody just seems to comprehend him and the only person who ever got to ended up having a katana stuck in her chest.

That's what made FF VII popular: The emo population that fell in love with it. Heck, I'd go as far as saying that FF VII started the trend emo trend. At least for the Japanese, because they always have spiky hair. We had to contend ourselves with the flat over the eye hair.

Still, to these kinds of threads I like to present what I find to be a wonderful theory about the game's actual deep plot that is hidden beneath the superficial Cloud Vs Sephiroth one. Sadly, I lost the link a long time ago and Google is not helping me.

 

[gibboss28]

All i saw in ff7 was a storyline about a spiky haired twit who was sexually confused and had a major obsession with a guy who had some serious mother issues.

 

[Asymptote Angel]

Since I haven't really bothered much with FFI, II, or III, I can only speak from IV forward, but I have played through IV-VIII and X (kinda gave up halfway through XII; I was just starting to lose heart for JRPG gameplay while I was playing it.I got a new gaming PC while I was working on IX so I didn't really get a chance to experience it fully).

I'd have to say that V and VII are the low points in the series. V is technically okay, but I didn't really get drawn in like I did in IV and VI. The Job system was good though; I was kind of sad to see that get kicked in the head.

VII, meanwhile, has an expansive world and all, but the characters didn't feel human. They were just moving piles of unexplained emotional baggage with sometimes-unreasonable problems. The only characters I really liked from VII were Vincent--whose coolness has been destroyed by all the sequel BS that came out for VII--and Red XIII. It didn't help that they were all pretty much identical in combat, except for slightly different weapons and Limit Breaks. Despite all the stuff there was to see and do, it just felt really shallow while I played it.

 

[Count_de_Monet]

Why is FF VII so popular? Easy. It feature a blonde main character that through out the whole game finds himself to be a misunderstood teenage boy/man where nobody just seems to comprehend him and the only person who ever got to ended up having a katana stuck in her chest.

Well, I rarely hear people praise VII for being emo and there are few people I know who played and enjoyed it who I would consider emo...

Maybe it was so widely liked because you weren't forced to approach every single battle in the exact same way throughout the whole game. Even VI, which I love dearly, gives each character a specific defined role and then unlocks abilities and items for them as the game progresses instead of giving you the freedom to choose what each character should do.

The limit break system gave each character the ability to great damage, characters weren't restricted to certain armor classes, and materia allowed every single one of your characters to specialize in offensive magic, defensive magic, enhanced physical attacks, or any combination you could think of.

 

[Wolvaroo]

VII was alright. Nothing near amazing.

FFT is most certainly my favorite (I almost want a PSP just to play the remake)

FFIX is probably second, and I don't really know why. I just liked it.

I feel FFVIII would have been so much better if the entire game wasn't ruined by the GF feature. But since every single battle turned into summon your favorite GF and own face over and over again, I don't even recall half the events in the game, just repetitive and overpowered GFs. (and a complicated system of assigning things I never got ahold of because I was still pretty young)

though I stopped caring after IX. But I feel I've heard/seen enough of X and XII to assume I do not like them.

 

[Gollon]

I think Final Fantasy 7 was just after the peak of great Final Fantasy games. 1, 4, and 6 were all great, even a little bit of 5 I played was pretty fun. Six was amazing. Kefka was simply evil and merciless, and he didn't care if the world was ruined simply because he wanted power. Then 7 came out, and Sephiroth was evil with an enormous sword for some reason and he cried about his mother.

Also Sephiroth's song was pretty awesome but not anywhere near as cool as Kefka's tower of doom song. On the SNES that song made shit my pants.

 

[Apone]

That's another thing. Sephiroth didn't really seem like a great villain. Other than killing Aeris (admittedly too late to affect the game in any substantial way) and wanting to be a god, what exactly did he do anyways? Other than looking cool and carrying a cool sword, what exactly did he do that was all that impressive? If he was Zack's and Cloud's comrade and friend, why did he turn evil?

Really... after Aeris summoned Holy just before Sephiroth killed her, Cloud and party could have just sat around drinking martinis on the beach and playing games at the gold saucer and the ending wouldn't have been affected in the slightest. Holy still would have come to the rescue in the end.

Well many people think he is a good villain. He turns on his superiors because his life was a lie (being a construct of an evil company, who made him from an alien).
And he didnt kill her too late. As someone else already pointed out, him killing her summoned Holy. It was the sacrifice.
And if they just sat around he may have killed them anyway, but maybe he would just have waited and Holy would just have come.
It seems like you didnt really get the plot/characters though, which would explain why you didn't care for it much.
For those of us who did, many enjoyed it extremely.
It wasn't my first either (VIII was, then I got a second hand VII from a friend) but it is my favorite. Everything since has seemed to lack plot substance to me. I enjoyed 8 but 9 didnt interest me beyound the visuals. 10 was kinda odd, I liked it enough to complete it. 9 and 12 I put down half way through, (watched my brother complete them instead so I have seen the, all through).

 

[KaalVeiten]

I feel like one of the few people in existence who did NOT think Final Fantasy VII was up to the FF standard. I played FFVII the week it came out and played it all the way through several times within the next few years. I feel like I played through the game this many times mainly because I WANTED to like it, and was trying to find a reason to like it, but couldn't quite get myself to do so.

My gripes about the game include the following:

- Only three characters in your party, a step down from previous games
- Lack of character weapon/armor and skills customization
- Abstract psudo-philosophical anime-style plot with numerous logical gaps and lack of explanation for several very important key events (Why was Aeris killed again? Who is Zack and why exactly was he important?)
- Poor English translation which probably didn't help the explanation of the plot
- Generally uninteresting and underdeveloped characters, aside from Aeris which didn't really have enough screen time, Cloud, Red XIII and Vincent.

On the other hand, some of the games pro's include:

- The graphics were gorgeous for it's time
- The music was as masterful as ever
- The Materia system was intuitive and interesting

Now, I've done a lot of soul searching to figure out why FFVII seems to such a huge hit with the general populous while I've gone and completely missed the boat. After much deliberation, I've come up with to two possible theories:

1. My first Final Fantasy game was FFVI, and is by far my favorite Final Fantasy out of all the games, if not my favorite RPG period. It's slowly dawned on me that people tend to fall in love, and stay in love with their first Final Fantasy. Nine times out of ten, if you ask people what their favorite Final Fantasy game is, they'll tell you the name of their first. Final Fantasy VII was the first Final Fantasy to usher in a new generation of hardware and graphical capabilities into the mainstream (following Square's transition from SNES to the PS1), and many of the current generation's first video game console was the PS1. I think it's possible that the majority of the current generation's first Final Fantasy was also FFVII, and hence the popularity.

2. Slightly more pessimistic. FFVII was also the first Final Fantasy to deliver a beautiful, almost movie-like experience, and cater to a lot of people who would otherwise pass over RPG's as slow and boring. I believe it's possible that FFVII was the ground-breaker in bringing about the current generation of graphics-first, games-should-be-more-like-movies mindset in the video game community. Maybe FFVII just appeals more to the average, dumb, non-RPGer other Final Fantasy games.

Oh, and the third option: maybe I'm just crazy?

What do you think? What is it about FFVII that appeals to you? Why do you love FFVII? (Or do you?)

First of all let me start out my post by saying that by no means am I posting a recommendation for FFVII. However, I feel you are misrepresenting exactly why it is bad. In fact, by your comments I would have to venture to say that I am trying to defend all of the FF series. It has to do with your third negative point, which I quoted above.

Every story in every Final Fantasy is a pseudo-philosophical anime-style plot with numerous logical gaps and also lacks development for several key characters. However, that may also be because you haven't played the game since it came out and you may not remember that every single member of your party had their own backstory chapter. You got most of these by visiting that person's hometown. In fact, FFVII had more character development than any FF before it. FF4 was the first one with really any development, but it was mostly centered around Kain and Cecil and Rydia, pretty much ignoring all the other members. FF5 took a step back by having the single-most annoying main character I have ever seen in any series ever. If any FF is bad, then it is FF5. FF6 was an amazing FF, and one of the few I actually would play again, it had back story, a likable main character, the characters actually had personality, the villain is the most badass person ever and definitely the best villain in FF by a longshot (He actually won, for the most part. The main characters had a fairly Pyrrhic victory.) FFVII had alot more main character backstory than FFVI, unfortunately the main character in FFVI was mostly lacking that, and included the character development on villains, all of your party members, and even people that are dead in the series, like Zack.

Personally, I thought FFVII was bad because it started off in the first two discs with an amazing amount of development and story, but by the time disc three rolls around everyone starts dieing and the story just kind of drops off into a bunch of grinding before the final battle and an absurd amount of pointless side quests.

Oh, I forgot to expand on the Anime plot thing. Actually, I'm not going to expand on it, I'm just going to let Wikipedia explain the story and I'm going to bold what I think is so amusingly anime-ish.

FF1: Four hundred years prior to the start of the game, a people known as the Lefeinish (Lufenian), who used the Power of Wind to craft a giant space station (called the Floating Castle (Sky Castle) in the game) and airships , watched their country decline as the Wind Orb went dark. Two hundred years later, violent storms sunk a massive shrine that served as the center of an ocean-based civilization, and the Water Orb went dark. The Earth Orb and the Fire Orb followed, plaguing the earth with raging wildfires, and devastating the agricultural town of Melmond as the plains and vegetation decayed. Some time later, a sage called Lukahn tells of a prophecy that four Light Warriors will come to save the world in a time of darkness.

FF2: (I feel that the story for FF2 was decidedly... crap, and won't quote it. If you really want to know about it read the Wiki article.)

FF3: One day, an earthquake opens up a previously hidden cavern in Altar Cave near the village of Ur on the floating continent. Four orphaned youths under the care of Topapa, the village elder, go exploring and come across a crystal of light. The crystal grants them a portion of its power, and instructs them to go forth and restore balance to the world. Not knowing what to make of the crystal's pronouncements, but nonetheless recognizing the importance of its words, the four inform their adoptive family of their mission and set out to explore an overworld outside the area in which they were brought up to bring back balance to the world.

FF4: I actually feel that this particular story is very Anime-ish. However, I don't use that as much of a detrimental insult as the author of this thread does. In fact, I would say that this particular story is the best crafted, most believable (as believable as fantasy can be) story.

FF5: Now if any story deserves to be insultingly compared to Anime it's this one. It uses every stereo-type known to man in it and is one of the worst RPGs I've ever played.

FF6: This game is probably the most Anime-like yet. It features a steampunk setting included with machines also powered by magic and an Armageddon plot by a guy trying to become god. Who succeeds. That plot screams anime as you put it, but it would be a damn good one.

End that particular rant.

My next problem is this quote; 2. Slightly more pessimistic. FFVII was also the first Final Fantasy to deliver a beautiful, almost movie-like experience, and cater to a lot of people who would otherwise pass over RPG's as slow and boring. I believe it's possible that FFVII was the ground-breaker in bringing about the current generation of graphics-first, games-should-be-more-like-movies mindset in the video game community. Maybe FFVII just appeals more to the average, dumb, non-RPGer other Final Fantasy games.

FFVII was the longest FF yet, and longer than most RPGs out there at the time, barring Suikoden. For the most part it kept you in the story the whole time, minimizing the amount of grinding and random battles you had to do by constantly keeping you in the story and constantly moving it along. FFVII was ground-breaking in that it challenged every RPG after that to keep up with that experience of a constantly flowing storyline.

If you want to toot the JRPG horn then say JRPG, don't say RPG. Because the slow, boring, grind that is the JRPG isn't as exciting as most RPGs. I'm also a fan of JRPGs like Suikoden and the Fantasy Saga but I can say without a second thought that JRPGs are not as fun as RPGs on the whole, because the whole experience isn't really about having fun and reading a well-written story it's about leveling your characters up over and over again because you're bored and have nothing else to do. Fortunately JRPGs now seem to be taking the RPG road, with less grinding and more story. For those of us who just want to screw around and grind for a few hours, Ragnarok Online is a heaven-sent game. But FFVII isn't really a JRPG series anymore, it stopped being one around FFIV.

That's all I'm going to say for now because, well, I'm bored, so I'm going to play Nobunaga's Ambition.

Also, replace every time I said "anime" with "fantasty." Those people who use a generalised statement of anime to refer to generally fantasy or sci-fi worlds are being slightly bigoted, as Anime is far more general. You should be saying JRPG. Although from what you've been saying, you like JRPGs. Anyway, I'm out.

Ah, the "Which FF was my first bandwagon," mine was 2.