Millennial Fair – Final Fantasy VII Review

Final Fantasy VII

By Jonathan Womack
Excellent Storyline

Final Fantasy 7 takes place in a world where life is run by machines, materia, colorful orbs with dangerous powers hidden inside of them produced from the planet's energy. As well as a powerful and sinister corporation called Shin–Ra, whose capital is in in the run–down slums of Midgar, and which has Mako reactors spread throughout the world. These materia factories are slowly draining the Earth’s energy to the point of destruction. The main character, Cloud Strife, ex–Soldier(elite fighters of Shin–Ra’s army), is an arrogant “spikey haired punk” who joins Avalanche, a rebel factor against Shin–Ra to destroy all of the Mako reactors in the land, starting with Midgar’s sector plants. After several incidents involving the massacre of the Avalanche crew except for Cloud, Barrett, and Tifa, the capturing of one of Cloud’s new friends named Aeris, and another mass–slaughter in the Shin–Ra Headquarters, the group leaves Midgar in search of a man they had thought to be dead for a long time.
The group travels through vast plains, beautiful cities, seemingly endless deserts, and rocky mountains. Almost every person you meet plays a part in the story later on. This story is full of drama, humour(sometimes ill humour at that), action, and tragedy. Almost all details fit into place at the end, yet professionally leaving room to wonder about what happens next, making a sequel to this game an excellent idea. This goes to show that if effort and time is put into a game, it will turn out well. This is the best aspect of Final Fantasy VII.

Great Characters

It seems that all games made recently have either lacked a great storyline or moving characters to back gameplay up. While the characters themselves do not look all that great, because of the graphics system that was used at the time, the amount of detail put into each character is great. Each one has scarred memories, broken dreams, a clear background(unlike most characters in games lately). They all have a good reason to fight, and are determined to do so. Even the villains of the story have their touching moments and times of emotion. This is one of the many areas where the game shines.

Controls & Difficulty

This is a fairly easy to master game, but it can be difficult at times. The controls are no problem to master and I would say a capable person’s learning curve would be 10–25 minutes at the most. The only difficult parts of the game are long dungeons with strong enemies in the random encounters and the mazes and trials you encounter to proceed through the game. Difficult at times, but not frustrating.

Music

This is honestly one area where I was dissapointed. While the boss fight music is great(I love the Jenova fight music), the stage and common battle music is not nearly as good. It gets repetitive after listening to it for more than 10 minutes, and I found myself slipping on my headphones and listening to music on the radio instead. I really think they could have, and should have worked on this area. Not all of it is bad, and you may like what I do not. It is all in the players’ musical taste

Dungeons

Long, ever winding, yet never ending dungeons. While not near as bad as Xenogears, this game’s dungeons are quite frustrating especially when you are looking for items. It would not be near as bad if they didn’t have so many random battles in them, or that awful (In my opinion) dungeon music

Overall Score

Over all, this is great game with an involving and beautiful story and moving characters. If you can look past the sometimes annoying music and frustrating dungeons, this game is a must for any RPG lover and collector. If you do not own this already, you should try it, you will be pleased in my opinion.

Final Score

Enjoyability = A+, this game is great, definitely worth buying and deserves to be one of Playstation’s “greatest hits”. You will be enjoying this game, because the mixture of comedy, violence, and adventure is very well done. Worth the 15 – 20 dollars you would normally spend. If you are ever in need of a quality yet slightly outdated role–playing game, I would suggest this above anything else.
Sound = B, the sound is okay, not too good, not too bad. It isn’t at all detrimental to the game, but it does get annoying sometimes.
Controls = A+, this game is very easy to handle and control. No one should have too much trouble learning to play this game.
Graphics = B+, not many games back then could match up or surpass this game in graphics. You may look at them now and scoff, but back then they were extraordinary.