Introduction: This is a world of funfilled excitement,
entertainment, love, laughter, heartache, and death. There is just no way that after you have completed the game, you will say that "I didn't like that game", and mean it. It is just impossible. Nobody realises how much time they have been spending on a silly little computer game. Well that's just it. The game is not stupid, and it is not one of those games that you play as you are about to go to sleep. You will end up being awake for a long time. Firstly, you won't be able to stop, as the plot is so immense that you just have to find out what is going to happen next. Secondly, you won't be able to get to sleep, as you will be thinking of the experience that you have just had was breathtaking. You will be thinking of what will happen next, or "oh no, I am going to finish the game to soon", when you are still only half way through the first disc. That is the beauty behind Final Fantasy, you see, the game seems to be about to finish, when suddenly a whole new storyline develops. Plus, the game is just so enjoyable, that because it is so long, you get three times as much gameplay from it as you would with loads of other games, thus saving you money because of not buying any more games. Because you see, that is the thinking behind Square. They don't want you going out and buying games from their competitors, they want you to enjoy this one game to the very max. By the time that you have finished one Final Fantasy game, because of its length and hidden extras, it will be just about time for you to buy another Final Fantasy game, which has just been released. For, providing you play it more than once, Square releases a Final Fantasy virtually every year, so you are ready to buy one in yearly intervals. And this my friends is my analogy: Once you have played one Final Fantasy, you will never play another type of game again. You won't stop until you have played and completed every single Final Fantasy. Well done, you have finally come round to my way of thinking!
Final Fantasy is not your regular RPG. It has all the usual features of one, but goes so much further than that. It makes you feel like you are there. It makes you feel like you are there when Cloud gives his first kiss to Aeris, and hands over the Black Materia to Sephiroth. This is a statement of fact "Final Fantasy VII is believed to be the best ever RPG game of all time." The CG (Computer Generated) scenes are the best to date. The gameplay is addictive. The storyline is completely sound. It is not that difficult to learn the materia commands. There is so much that I could say about it. But does it have any flaws?
Well yes, unfortunately. Because after all, all great games always have something wrong or weird about them. Everything great always did. Albert Einstein had his funny hair. Muhammed Ali, shouting "I am the Greatest" was considered weird. It is only natural for Final Fantasy to have something wrong with it. And that, my friends, are the graphics.
GRAPHICS: Yes, well, although it has the beautiful CG scenes, the characters appear to be "chunky". By this I mean that there arms and legs are sort of block shaped. They have no proper ends to them. It is like a boxing glove. They have no fingers, and their legs are pretty much the same. Fortunately, the graphics, and also the writing can be cured, with a patch which Square made after realising that the game was poor quality in those respects. Download the patch on my downloads page.The CGs sort of take your eyes away from the blocky characters. The backdrops have all been rendered beautifully. All of the mountains ranges, towns, sky, enemies, summon monsters and the players are all polygonal, so they all have their own little faults with them.
The characters have been described as having "square eyes, no noses and no mouths". I am sorry Square, but I suppose that you were just too lazy to make the perfect game that you could have had if the characters actually looked like people, and not chunks of ice!
RATING: 7/10
MUSIC: The music is absolutely marvellous. I immediately went out and bought the soundtrack from it, as soon as I found out that there was one! There are over 80 tracks (83, I checked), all of them different to each of the others, and all of them suiting the mood at that time. There are sad tunes and bouncy ones, and some to make your heart pound. Nobody makes music like Squaresoft. They all have fully orchestrated backs, and not one of them seems to ever get boring. You can download the soundtrack in winzip midi file here. The music is truly sensational, and I doubt that any other game will ever be able to top it.
RATING: 10/10
STORYLINE: Obviously, no Final Fantasy game is complete without a superb storyline. This is no different. I don't think that there has ever been such a demandingly complex plot as this. It is, I admit, a bit hard to come to grips with at the start, so if you have haven't played the game yet, here is the reason for you fighting soldiers and monsters:
Cloud is an ex-soldier turned mercenary. He has joined the undercover operation of Avalanche. Run by Barret, this group of rebels are very much like Luke Skywalker's bunch in Star Wars. They are out to thwart the plans of the Shinra Corporation, the evil fighting force which just seems to disagree with everything that the Avalanche does. Eventually, the plot switches over to catching Sephiroth, a Jenova clone, which seems to be bent on destroying the Earth……
Well, okay, you might just be sitting there now, thinking, wow! How are they ever going to get that all into one game? Well, the solution to that is to make it 3 discs long. Yes! Now you can enjoy three times as much gameplay! The story never fails to disappoint. At every point in the game there is a little twist in the plot….When you actually don't (for some strange reason) fight the Turks for once to when Aeris dies.
RATING 10/10
GAMEPLAY: The game does, I suppose take quite a while to get used to. Everything is, at first a bit of a blur really. What with materia and limits, but believe me, you quickly come round to its way of thinking. It is only difficult if you make it difficult yourself. Anyway, even if you can't work it out, you know you must, or else you will be missing out on a treat. The game cannot be beaten, although I must admit that having to battle all of time does get quite annoying, and I am sorry, but that hasn't been improved for Final Fantasy VIII either. If you persevere with it though, I am sure that you will agree that it is a superb game.
RATING: 9/10
CONCLUSION: Obviously this game has already become one of the best games of all time. There is no doubt about it that the game is wonderful. I don't think that I have ever heard anyone say a bad word about it. Well, that is mainly because you forget that it has reasonably bad graphics when you are so deeply embursed in the game that everything just seems to be so real and wonderful. I very much doubt that you won't say at the end of the game "That was Great".
