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Final Fantasy VII review

Game: Final Fantasy VII
Platform: PlayStation
Genre: Turn-Based RPG
Developer: Square

Reader review by princess_heather

August 14, 2006

I’m sick of people praising Final Fantasy VII as the quintessential, ultimate RPG. Sure, it’s great and all, but seriously this game was easier than my roommate (and take my word for it - she is the loosest gal you’ll ever meet). It lives up to the quality and craftsmanship we’ve come to trust Square will deliver in every title, but it doesn’t even take a trained chip to plow through this adventure.

As we all know from the 1000 reviews before this one, FF7 tells the tale of an androgynous, young mercenary named Cloud. He and his terrorist buddies, a racist stereotype of African American males and a big breasted bimbo / slut, go around bombing property of the Shinra Corporation in order to save the planet from the company’s planetary energy draining machines.

Diasterrific events ensue and soon our heroes are separated, but Cloud meets and falls head over heels for his star-crossed lover Aeris. Although soon she becomes just another damsel in distress and plot device, Aeris is the kind of women video game companies should be promoting: pretty, nice and with breasts that don’t look like they’ve been gutted and replaced with silicon. After some encounters with a womanly looking man named Sephiroth, Cloud and Aeris are thrown into an epic love story filled with action, danger, and romance!

There are a lot of other cool characters too! You’ll encounter a talking dog named Red XIII that thinks he’s sophisticated and wise, but he’s really just a kid. There’s even a potty-mouthed pilot named Cid, whose dialogue is always good for a laugh. Other party members include a big stuffed doll, a ninja girl, and a brooding semi-goth guy that turns into monsters.

Unfortunately there was a really big plot twist that I didn’t like at all. It made me feel all icky inside and upset. I wanted to throw a bloody tampon at my TV I was so pissed at Cloud’s later actions of love. Fortunately I didn’t because that would have been gross and unlady-like.

My rage was thankfully subdued by the gameplay. FF7 uses the same standard turn based battle system we’ve come to love since the 2D FFs. There are a few neat twists though. Although you’ve been limited to a meager three party members at a time, you now have limit breaks. After taking damage, your character’s physical attack command will be replaced with the flashy and totally devastating attack.

Magic has been improved thanks to Square tossing out the shoddy Espers from FF6. Now your characters can equip materia to slots on their armor and weapons. You earn AP from battles to level up your materia and unlock new spells. Some material slots are even links so you can utilize a variety of combinations that have different cool effects. For example, link up Cure + All, and you can heal your entire party rather than just one person. Or use Elemental + Fire on your weapon to infuse your attacks with the power of flame (great for snowy environments).

This all well and good until you realize FF7 is just too darn easy. Most of the random encounters can easily be dispatched with only physical attacks and limit breaks. Factor in materia and you’ll leave piles of dead enemies everywhere. It also doesn’t help that equipping materia boosts your MP allowing for more killing power. FF7 quickly becomes even easier when you’ll quickly learn more spells and obtain ridiculously overpowered materia like HP & MP Plus.

Limit breaks also are a factor of breezing through this one. You earn stronger, more deadly maneuvers by either using them a certain number of times or landing the killing blow to a set amount of enemies (the method you need to use alternates between the two). This means you can just waste a bit of time fighting encounters to intentionally earn limit breaks and you’ll crush everything. But on the flip side, you can easily run into a snag due to the “killing this # of enemies” method if a particular character never lands those felling hit. You’ll end up never progressing with limit breaks, which is stupid.

FF7 is by no means a bad game, but it’s a horribly overrated one. It’s a big, epic adventure with a stellar soundtrack, tons of materia ranging from spells to impressive summons to stat boosts, and, for the most part, an adorable love story. It’s just too damn easy! All the earlier FFs were a lot more challenging. Square should have beefed up the enemies somehow. The problem is they had to make it possible in case you were a complete fool that didn’t know how to correctly use materia. Unfortunately anyone with common sense will easily build the perfect party capable of destroying everything effortlessly.

Rating: 7/10

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