Is FF7 overated?

VIII loses points for its original yet tedious DRAW system. You'd kill endless hours just drawing spells from enemies so that you can build attributes in its pseudo-junction system.

But that is the only problem with it. The story is fairly good, the battles are fun and challenging, the GF system is excellent. Better in pretty much every way than VII, which did nothing original but move to "3D". No, materia wasn't Earth shattering. It was an expansion of the VI system.
 
I was there in front of my local EB hours before the store opened, and sat in line (4th in line) for the game. My EB had presold more FF7s than any other local joint for about a 50 mile radius. It was in gaming magazines, the paper, and on the news.

The hype around the game was phenomenal. I remember playing the demo that came with Brave Fencer Musashi (love/hate relationship with that game...) and dammit - it was a beautiful thing. The pre-rendered backgrounds, the lighting effects, the combat system, the character designs, not to mention the teaser summons, (I think they were Leviathan and Ifrit) it was all amazing.

It's all relative. Like many have mentioned before, it all has to do with the generation and what had been experienced prior to that.

For me it's special because of the extra hype around it, because of the event I mentioned.

Plus, it had the absolute, BEST GUIDE EVER MADE. The VERSUS guide (i think they're defunct now) was just amazing. I still have mine, and I look through it occasionally. It was their first guide, and definitely their best.

Wow, I suppose THAT had a lot to do with why I dig the game so much.

But I did like FF9 quite a bit.
 
yeah...Eights draw system and sometimes frustrating card game system really wierded me out. Too bad for that...i missed out on a pretty good game.
 
Go pick up the PC version, you can probably find it on the cheap, and won't have to look at the "lovely" PSX graphics so far after-the-fact. The resolution and textures were improved for the PC release, plus it has gamepad support (cheapass PC version + cheapass Gravis GamePadPro).
 
i was actually thinking about that..But ive been hearing strange rumors about the internet and by word of mouth about remakes....No idea how true those are.
 
I have to say FF6 is eassyl the most overrated FF. After replaying them all (fairly recently) FF6 was definetly enojoyable but the FF6 fanboys (see topic) far exceed the FF7 fanboys in strechting how good a game is.
 
Friend told me about it i buy i play i like very mooch then i buy FFX FF7 better cuz of good story
 
I haven't finished them all, and I'm finishing up FFX as I write this, but my faves that I own and have played are:

1. FFX
2. FFVIII
3. FFVII
4. FFIX

Havent played FFX-2 yet, but will start it as soon as I beat FFX here in the next couple hours.
 
And dood, the PC Version of FFVII and FFVIII are about 3 times the cost of FFVII/FFVIII on PSX. They'll run you anywhere from $20-$50. Before theyt had a small rerun FF8 was fetching like $80.
 
Why is it considered so great...? Well... when it came out it was one of a few games with really great CGI. The number of side quest available was mind numbing... and in general the characters were so well developed. I spent an entire week playing FFVII non-stop in order to complete the entire game and side quest... and the stories plot is still easy to remember... alot of games simply are forgotten... FFVII really impacted the gaming community and non-rpg players could even find something they liked. Though I do not believe RPG's need to be come more cross-genre products... RPG are for the role players. The FF has many gems and VII is just one.
 
I have to half agree with WildWop on this one . Definetely remembered because it was revolutionary and blew us away. I however, love this game and it ranks in my top three FF games. 1) FFII-snes 2) FFVII 3) FFX
I still haven't played FFXI, I should be shot!
 
here's my take. I played FF 6/3 first and I thought it was a good game, alright, but nothing to write home about. Later on I played FF7 and it blew me away. To this point I have not encountered a better story for an RPG (Chrono Trigger and SOA:L notwithstanding). It was ambitious and set up a group of characters that still go unmatched. The only other FF that gets close is FF4/2. That is a great game with great characters/story. So ya, it's not overrated and deserves to be on the top of the heap
 
What was so damn likeable about the FFVII characters, anyway? You had a lifeless lead character. A lifeless boss. Some filler, and a giant Mog robot thing with a cat on his back.

I was pretty disappointed with the main enemies after 6, until 9's Kuja. They were just lifeless husks, going about their business that just HAPPENED to be evil business.

IV is king. Haven't played much of V. VI was great, though there were too many characters to give them the development they needed. VII is weak. VIII was better. IX had a lot of character, but was far too easy. X had a great battle system, lame characters. X-2 needed to be story driven rather than mission based.

Will continue this rant after I get home later.
 
It's been a long time since I played the game, and perhaps I just expected too much out of it. Final Fantasy 1 was a lot of fun when I was a kid. I'm not sure how I got it, but at the time it was the best RPG I had ever played and put Dragon Warrior to shame.

Then came Final Fantasy 2, which I got for $10 because Montgomery Wards ran an ad that said "Super Nintendo games as low as $10" but when we showed up, no $10 games. So the Manager let us pick. I still consider that my favorite game of all time. I loved Final Fantasy III, but didn't like it as much as 2. Then, finally, comes FF7. The only reason I bought a Playstation - at the time I was very bitter towards them for stealing Square from Nintendo, and for the way the sheeple were flocking to the system because they had "more games" ("more games" = "more crap"). I still can't believe you people sold out and took quantity over quality, but that's for a different fanboy rant.

But I trusted the ratings and how can Square screw something up? Well, this is why I felt that the game let me down. It is all about the general atmosphere of the game. There are several things I had, until FF7, always depended on Square to deliver.

1) A sense of exploration and discovery. You are welcome to your opinion, but nearly the entire time I played FF7 I felt like I was in a cage. "You cant' go there, not there. Not there either. You're supposed to be in this city right now. No, you can't go over there." "Is that a secret door over there? It looks like I might fit in that space." "No, that's just the way the fancy 3-D graphics are drawn. Trust me, the only point of this room is for you to perhaps fight some random battles on your way to the next room.

2) The Characters: I just didn't like the characters all that much. In my opinion the characters were not clever as they were in FF2 and FF3. Because of the "grown-up" graphics, they lost the ability to have their characters be witty as they were in prior games (probably because it would have come across as "cheesey"), whereas it was humorous in the old games that already had hokey graphics. I didn't feel all that connected with the characters, and more importantly, I think it adds to the mystique of the characters when you have people with "destinies". If everyone in your group can use magic, etc. then what is the point of having several different types of characters? I didn't feel that they differentiated the qualities of the characters enough to feel a connection to any of them. (Bear in mind, it has been a long time since I played this game but I seem to remember everybody being able to gain magic, etc.)

3) The Story: I'm sorry, the story just didn't do it for me because I didn't really feel a connection to any of the characters, or the places either. Such and such city is going to be destroyed? That's too bad, I guess…I won't particularly miss any of the characters or locations from that city but I guess I have to wander over there and see what I can do...

4) The Linearity: I have to admit that FF2 and FF3 seemed much less linear in my memory than when I actually went back and played them again recently. I think the linearity just stands out to me more in FF7 because so little else in the game really impressed me. I never noticed the linearity of FF2 or FF3 because I was so into what I was doing. In FF7 you spend such a great deal of time going from Point A to Point B to Point C, and heaven forbid you ever want to jump ahead in the game and go find a powerful weapon or something. I tried to find diversions and reasons to like the game and it wouldn't let me off the track they stuck me on.

I started this post a few hours ago, so if somebody else has already mentioned these complaints then ditto, obviously. I know there are many of you who will want to defend your precious game with stories about Chocobo racing or the death of whatever that girl's name was (which I admit, was one of the few moments in the game that really had my attention). This is just how I feel about it. The game did not do all that much for me. It was a hollow experience in a world filled with characters (playable or non) who did not seem to have much charisma or reason to be.

Needless to say, I have skipped every FF since then because you people keep saying "FFXYZ is good, but not as good as FF7". Well if you want to subject yourself to a game that's not as good as FF7 go ahead. I have an old Whopper in my refrigerator that's not quite as good as the dog turd on my front lawn that you can have if you get hungry, too.
 
I disagree Wop. The characters of VII had more personality than VI. Now whether or not that had to do w/ limitations of space is a whole other issue. The hero and villian of VII were supported by a deep back story, especially Cloud. He is the classic example of an underachiever attempting to make up for his imperfections. He obviously suffers from any sort of mental disorders. However, look at VI. Playing through it I did not feel empathy, sympathy, etc. for these characters (except for Celes, I liked her a great deal). Kefka only amused me by just being plain nuts. He didn't really have a reason other than wanting to take over the world.

I do agree w/ your assesment of X. Hated playing as a whiny Meg Ryan-look alike. My order of FF favs would be as such:
7,4,9,5,8,1,2,10
 
Everything about FF7 is wonderful. The story line is sensational. The characters are incredible Cloude is great Barrett, who could forget the best villian ever Sephiroth. The battle system is great very simple and fast. The summons attack quickly unlike ff8 in which the aeons take three days to finish attacking. And who could forget the materia system, the easiest magic system ever a baby could figure it out unlike ff8,ffX, ffX-2. Thats why FF7 is the best ever. :!:
 
Looking cool does not a villain make. Don't forget that the real villain was that lame Jenova thing. You only really see Sephiroth in flashbacks or dream sequences. Cloud was boring, essentially a robot for the entirety of the story. "Don't talk to me, I'm brooding." Contrast that with possibly the best developed lead in a FF game, Squall. Sure, he's socially inept, but dammit he responds like a human. Has human experiences. Emotion.

In summation:

Sephiroth = "o_O he has a sword and a black coat, he HAS to be cool" [I do admit that One Winged Angel was a phat ass boss theme though]

Cloud = Boring Automaton

Squall = Your father, with better taste in digital women then Cloud
 
That is a good point. Squall is perhaps the most relistic acting of the heros. He is a prick, which was a huge change. Personally, i get tired of the happy go lucky heros and i appreciate when a company makes a darker character. I do not like when they make that character dark for dark's sake. I think that's what may have turned many off to the game (that and the godforsaken Draw system)
 
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