From what I remember, JRPGs were more of a geek niche market than anything. While FF had been popular, the general perception was that unless it was some huge release like FF or Dragon Quest, RPGs weren’t going to sell well. FFVII brought RPGs into the mainstream so that it was actually something companies would take a chance on. Copycat RPGs appeared after FFVII became popular, I remember one game was practically an attempt at cloning FFVII. It was called The Legend of Dragoon and featured the same polygon characters on CG backgrounds that FFVII had. There were others, though I can’t remember them now. You don’t get magazines calling it “quite possibly the best game ever made” if it was a dud. That was a quote from I think EGM magazine on the back cover of the original FFVII US version.
What JRPGs do you feel are better than FFVII from that era?
That’s hardly a criticism of FFVII. RPGs in general were moving away from the grinding aspect to being easier and more balanced. Nowadays, unless you’re playing an MMO, your RPG characters level up enough during the normal gameplay that you don’t have to take off hours from the main quest to go grinding. I remember in FFI, I had to grind to level 3 before I could even walk down the peninsula to the Temple of Fiends! FFVII continued a trend that random encounters were road bumps that one didn’t have to take seriously.
Many its a result of mainstreaming the genre, as more casual players had no patience to grind for hours just to reach the next plot point. If you want an extreme example of difficulty, try The 7th Saga on SNES. That game was so hard I don’t know how anyone could play it. And all of its difficulty came not from cleverly designed puzzles or tricky attacks by monsters, but from the fact that you’re weak as hell compared to the normal roaming creatures
Oh? Think how many academy award-winning movies are now forgotten or viewed as “OK” at best, and consider whether this makes any goddamn sense. Reviewers often see what they want to see just as much as the rest of us.
Final Fantasy Seven was ahead of its time in many ways. But it wasn’t very solid at the core and time has bypassed it. Meanwhile many other RPG’s before and since have greatly eclipsed it. FF7 is a footnote in RPG history. Most of its imitators did far better, and to this day it’s more a sign of the bad decisions Square took, eventually leading towards the execrable crap they slowly ooze out now.
That was a bug. A huge bug, but a bug all the same.
There are certainly valid arguments about how good the game is based on any number of RPG elements..
But to try to retroactively claim it was insufficiently good that time passed it by is just bizarre to me. The recent PSP re-release of FF7 and the PlayStation Store version for PS3 are incredibly good sellers.
Sure, a lot of that’s going to be nostalgia. But I’ll note again that there has to be something there in the first place for gamers to be so dedicated to a game. It just denies reality to claim otherwise.
FF7 has a lot of great gameplay in it. I liked most of the minigames and side quests. However, I felt that the storyline was rather confusing at times. I played it when it first came out, and I dig it out every now and then to replay it, on my PS2, no mods. I liked it then, I like it now.
I actually prefer FF8 to 7. I think that the storyline is better, with one glaring exception (amnesia). I love love love the card game, though I will eliminate the Random rule. 8 has its faults, but overall I think it’s the second best FF. Hack: get the Card ability, and use it, so that you level up your GFs but not your characters.
Personally, though, I’d recommend FFVI/3 as THE best FF. There are certain aspects of it that I don’t like (I hate one of the characters, and rather dislike a couple of others), but I’d say it’s the best. It originally appeared on the SNES, and was re-issued for the PS1, with another FF game. It might have other re-issues, but those are the two versions that I have.
I’m currently replaying Secret of Mana, which isn’t a FF game, but it was put out by Square or Squaresoft. No minigames, no random encounters, and it’s not turn based, but the amount of damage you do is directly related to how long it’s been since your last attack. Chrono Trigger is also a classic SNES Square/Squaresoft game that’s not a FF. No random encounters, does have minigames, and it is turn based. I have it on SNES cartridge and also as a PS1 reissue. I recommend both for oldschool gaming goodness.
What’s also quite good (and pretty hard to find, except as a ROM) is Terranigma. The game was localized into English but never released in North America. I’m a little surprised it was never released for the Wii Virtual Console or some other download service.
I own way too many JRPGs. I keep saying I don’t have time to play that genre anymore, but I think I just dumped 80+ hours into Mass Effect 2/Mass Effect 3, so obviously I probably actually do. Heck, maybe someday I’ll finish my copy of Thousand Arms (the grind of the dating simulator made me lose interest.)
FF8 has some marked improvements over 7, but the characterization and “plot” (for lack of a better word) are just awful, albeit hilariously so. I prefer 9, which had a much more plausible mix of the silly and serious, and which integrated gameplay and story much better. It’s both retro and ultra-modern for its time.
/Agree.
FF6 gives little sprites more emotive power than all the 3d modeling power of any FF past it. Sometimes less is more, I suppose.
/Agree in Spades. Chrono Trigger was among the best games ever made, period. And Secret of Mana is one of my favorites just to drop in and play for a while, any time.
I liked some parts of 9 very much, but what I didn’t like was the fact that I’d play for 10 minutes, then have to sit through half an hour of movie. I like fantasy movies, if they’re well done, but I don’t want that much movie in my game. I also hated the strategy guide…I’d get a few useful bits of info, but then the book would say “For more information, go to the website”, which always made me feel like I should have skipped buying the book and just gone to Gamefaqs. I found that at least one minigame was impossible for me to win (the jump rope). Same with X, I couldn’t win that frigging Chocobo race. Neither could my daughter, and she was usually able to win any minigames that I couldn’t. In return, I’d grind her games for her. Sometimes I feel a need to grind, it helps me think about problems IRL. Man, I miss having my daughter live with us…she used to love to build ships in Kingdom Hearts. Since I hated it, I was only too happy to let her build mine.
Incidentally, if you don’t have the Chrono Trigger that was re-issued for the PS, you need to get it. Yes, I know I just bitched about FF9’s cut scenes, and CT added some cut scenes, but they didn’t go overboard. All of the added cut scenes only take ten and a half minutes to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsZ9Nh6q-3E
Stop right there; That’s exactly my point. FF7 was a major release. It got a lot of advertising, and it was not completely terrible. It came out for a system that was gaining a lot of traction. It had, for the time, startling visuals in the form of its cutscenes. None of this is really any merit of FF7s, except, I suppose, for not being completely terrible. It hit the market the right way and the right time. That doesn’t make it good.
VIDEO GAMES were a “geek niche market” prior to the Playstation era. Seriously.
But it obviously DIDN’T, because no JRPG has done as well since. FF7 was more like the last hurrah than the great harbinger of JRPGs being big news. And really? Dragon Quest? Not a major seller over here, my friend.
Sorry, I disagree.
I didn’t have a Playstation, so the number of JRPGs I’ve played “from that era” is extremely small. I don’t think I’ll get a lot of argument when I say that Chrono Trigger was leagues better, I don’t think I’ll get a lot of argument when I say that FF6 was better. I might get some argument that Skies of Arcadia was better, but that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. Hell, I enjoyed Shining Force 3 (which was “that era”) more than FF7, but that’s apples and oranges for me, since it’s a strategy RPG, which comes with a very different set of expectations for me.
I disagree; Just because it’s not SPECIFICALLY a criticism of FF7 doesn’t mean it can’t BE a criticism of FF7. I’d even go so far as to argue that in THIS regard, FF7 -did- set the pace - lots of cutscenes, and stupid, grindy random encounters.
You see, I’m not arguing that you should need to grind - you seem to have completely missed the point. I’m arguing that random encounters should offer some level of challenge. They should deplete your resources in some meaningful way (using up ‘MP’ or items, or something) and should require - or at least, benefit from - some marginal amount of strategizing, rather than hitting ‘A’ (or X, or whatever.) repeatedly. In general, the best JRPGs are the ones where random encounters are occasionally a problem, rather than just stuff that you have to button mash through to get on with playing the game.
I think there are less false positives than false negatives when it comes to these awards. To the game-playing public, FFVII was a huge achievement in sights, sounds, and story. Given at least my personal experience with JRPGs and video games in general, I think they hit it out of the ballpark. So many things were innovated or new in FFVII, and was done better than any other game at the time, that I did for a long while consider it the best game I’ve ever played. Games are first and foremost about fun. Give me a 2D sprite game with an intriguing gameplay or an addictive mechanic and one can play it for hours. FFVII had all of that, though it cannot overcome people who hate parts of JRPGs as a default. If people didn’t like, for example, random battles, they’ll never like FFVII. Or of they have a problem with Japanese bishounen archetypes, they won’t like Cloud or Vincent
What specifically was not solid about it? And what games did it better that was its contemporary?
And RPGs were a niche segment of that market. After FFVII, it was brought into the mainstream
FFVII was simply the best, and yes, it did benefit from being released at a time that bridged the old 2D sprites from the 16-bit era to the 32-bit polygon era of the PS. But it being the best seller doesn’t make it the last big hurrah. FFVIII did comparable sales, and follow-ups all sold more than 6 million. That doesn’t point to FFVII being the last big release, it meant that after FFVII there was a glut of copycats. Smaller companies saw that it too can get into the RPG market. That’s the biggest legacy of FFVII from a real-world perspective
How many other games were called the “best ever” that truly, objectively sucked?
Yes, lots of people loved CT and FFVI over FFVII, but I’m not one of them. I liked both, but both had their issues.
CT suffers from a story feature that I’ve always felt was a flaw: the silent protagonist. It is difficult for me to relate to Crono simply by watching his blinking eyes and sprite body. The music was fine, but not as memorable as the FF games in general. I think the hook of time travel and multiple endings was what got people obsessed over it, but if you look at it, time travel is simply the same as traveling from one area to another. I also felt the controls weren’t as responsive as the PS FFs, and that bugged me too.
FFVI’s story was good if you take the overall plot. It had things that usually doesn’t happen in a game, like the bad guy winning (briefly) and a total transformation of the world. I felt that such a plot point makes the game feel more epic, as there are only so many times one can save the world, but its rare that it gets destroyed and we have to rebuild. That and the gathering of the heroes in the 2nd part of the game, and the number of them, made it stand out. However, the lack of exposition in conversation limits the depth of the story, even though it did a great job with what memory space it had to work with
I’ve played a lot of the RPGs that came out during that time on the PS. FFVII was the best one amongst all of the Breath of Fires, Lunars, Wild Arms, Star Oceans, Saga Frontiers, Legend of Legaias, Dragon Quests, and Legend of Dragoon.
The random encounters were not grindy at all. It almost sounds like you consider any encounters to be grindy. By definition, they were not, because you almost never had to walk back and forth in a certain area to kill monsters for experience. THAT’S grinding. In contrast, you could almost make a beeline for your next objective whenever the story points you someplace and your character would gain a level or two along the way and be strong enough for the next boss battle. With the materia leveling up alongside you, and your increasingly devastating limit breaks, you almost never had to worry about true grinding. True grinding it FF1, where you’d have to gain 3 levels to reach the end of the peninsula at the beginning of the game, or FFII’s horrible skill system that I spent 10 hours grinding outside of a town to gain the proper stats I needed. That’s grinding. FFVII had cutscenes, but it was hardly a lot. They happened during big moments and epic encounters. In contrast, later FF games sprinkled them through out the gameplay.
Perhaps games simply moved away from what you enjoyed? I know I liked some of the grinding. I don’t mind it, hell I play an MMO that is pretty much 90% grind. But I wouldn’t say that other types of games that I don’t enjoy is objectively bad. If you like games like 7th Saga or Breath of Fire, go ahead and play them. I’m not going to sit here and tell you what you should enjoy
Well, clearly there’s a lot of subjective opinions floating around.
This thread itself and the fact that the re-releases have also done well show that, despite any flaws, the game resonates with gamers.
There are certainly very popular games, movies, music, etc I don’t consider good. And that’s not going to stop me from giving my opinion if prompted.
But I’m also not going to tell somebody not to try something out based solely on my opinion. If I thought something wasn’t good but 80% of people thought otherwise, I’d at least be honest about that part of it (and grouse about lousy taste).
Isn’t that pretty much what I’m doing? Besides, the OP has already decided he doesn’t like the game.
I’m obviously not being clear here, because you are arguing about something that’s not even under discussion. Also, I think you misunderstand or are misusing a term.
The problem with FF7 is that the random encounters are boring, stupid, non-entertaining, and generally only there because, hey, JRPGs had random encounters. They are not grindy. In fact, encounters themselves cannot BE grindy. You may have to grind ON THEM, but the encounters themselves are not at fault. “Grindy” implies that you have to deliberately inflict additional encounters on yourself (Beyond what you would ‘normally’ get while progressing through the content) - your FF1 example of having to basically walk around outside the starting town until you are strong enough to proceed to the next location. FF7 is not grindy (Outside of optional content, most likely, but optional content tends to be grindy by design). It is, however, boring as crap. The random encounters lack any hint of challenge, and their entire function could practically be replaced by just having your XP counter go up as you walk through an area. They’re not fun. They’re empty content. They represent, essentially, what was wrong with JRPG design at the time and what continues to be the stereotype of the “genre” ever since, even though many more modern games have done away with the problem entirely.
There are two ways to approach making random encounters NOT meaningless:
The oldschool method was made them HARD, if not individually, at least in aggregate - meaning that while it wasn’t difficult to beat any given random encounter, they’d do enough damage to you that you’d either need to use up MP on attack “spells” or use up your limited healing resources, such that it was difficult to get to the end of the “dungeon” with enough resources to beat the boss (if any.). The problem with this approach is that it could be overcome by grinding, unless the game used a “weighted” XP System (I’m making that term up - I’m not sure there is an ‘official’ term for this) where XP drops off sharply after a certain point, thereby making grinding virtually ineffective beyond a certain “approved” level. You can see this method used in the Shining Force games, where killing an enemy can give anywhere from 49 (For enemies that are ‘on level’ or something) to 1 XP (You need 100 to level). And also more recently in Lost Odyssey.
The “newschool” method is to make the encounters…fun, by having gameplay that isn’t a crap “just push A repeatedly to win” battle system. This method is used (or at least attempted) most noticably in FF13, but I would argue is used more EFFECTIVELY in Tales Of games, and the Mana Khemia series. Though it’s also worth pointing out that the oldschool method does, in a way, contribute to making encounters fun by imbuing them with some level of challenge, which results in satisfaction.
Regardless of which approach is used, however, when you get people saying things like:
Then you KNOW that the designers failed.
FF7 is a poster child for bad RPG encounter/battle system design, and, I would argue, responsible in no small part for the reputation JRPGs have for being boring to play.
I can’t add too much to YogSosoth’s defence of the game in post #17, but I just wanted to add that I too consider it a clasic. Easily in my top 5 games all-time and as high as #2 depending on mood.
Of course the technological advancments it made it will seem pedestrian by today’s standards, but for me what makes it a classic is the characters and story. I don’t recall any game before then that explored a serious and complex love triangle. (Or maybe even a love “square” if you count Barrett, Tifa, Cloud, and Aeris.) Add to that, the slow unfolding of Cloud’s past, the struggle against the evil corporation, the badass but complex villain, and of course, the “incident” which I dare not spoil. I still remember the emotional impact it all delivered as if I had played it yesterday. No other game had come close since (until maybe Walking Dead which I just finished. Side note, HOLY SMOKES what a great game!).
And beyond all that there’s the enormous world to explore, an amusement park in the middle of nowhere just when you can’t take any more hardship, the titanic summons, the airship that really FEELS like it’s flying, the bigger than life swords, a guy with a machine gun for a hand… What can I say, I ate all up and loved every morsel. It’s either a story that will grip you or it won’t. I can certainly see why it’s not for everyone though.
I’ll also defend the pacing of the game. I never found it to be “grindy” at all. Sure you could go back and forth in one area and grind out some levels to make the next section easier, but like YogSosoth said, if you opted not to, you could go right to the boss and always have the tools to win. It would just be more of a challenge. It’s a LONG game to be sure, but if you’re invested in the characters, that just makes it even better.
What I don’t get is the love for FFVI. I respect the opinions of so many who say FFVI is better, but personally, I don’t get it. Maybe I’m confused on Japanese vs American numbers, but I honestly don’t remember a single character or event from that game. I could see the love for FF2 (American) instead. With that one you had the huge revelation of an entire underground world, and just when you thought things couldn’t get bigger they send you to the freakin MOON. That was a WOW moment for sure. But even as much as I loved that game, I still give FFVII the edge.
I wouldn’t deny any of the many valid points in your post. I’d only add that the random encounters didn’t seem pointless to me because it gave you an opportunity to try out new materia schemes before finding the optimum strategy against the more difficult battles. That’s how I remember it at least, it’s been years since my last play through. Regardless, certainly the battle system was never part of what made the game great, and there were plenty of ways it and other things could have been improved.
I just wanted to chime in that I think Final Fantasy I and IV were more revolutionary for their time, and more fun to play both at the time of their release and today, than FF VII.
If so, maybe I never played that one. I remember hearing about its greatness long after FF7, and THOUGHT I played it via emulator. Maybe it was FFV that I played instead. I remember it being almost exactly like FF2 (American on SNES) visually just with nothing memorable ever happening. Maybe I need to revisit that.
Final Fantasy never outdid the materia system, in my mind. It’s true that it kind of made the characters generic, but I loved leveling them up and finding just the right set of materia to pull off really cool combos.
I’d love to see them bring it back in some form.
The only bad part was that selling a fully leveled “all materia” for a million gil made me feel like I’d entered an unlimited money cheat code.
In retrospect, FFVII may not be a masterpiece… but for me, at the time (I was 13 or 14), it was a titanic game.
I think THIS, more than any other reason, is why this game gets talked up so much. It hit an entire generation of gamers at their most impressionable time.
It’s also why newer FF games, which have tried their damnedest to do everything FF7 did, but taken up to 11, have generally not resonated with people. You’re not 13 anymore, and even though the newer games are objectively better in many ways, you are not the same, and no longer want the same thing.
This is also, IMHO, the real reason why Square Enix ISN’T releasing an “HD Remake” of FF7. Because it would either (or more likely, some combation of) offend all the purist fans by changing things that “didn’t need to be changed” or raise all kinds of awkward questions about “why did we think this game was so good again?” FF7 is better left in the history books.
Ah ok, I get what you’re saying now. You find the random battles sort of meaningless right? They either aren’t fun because they’re so easy, or are meaningless because they’re so easy, and represent little more than delays as you move from one area to another.
I think that’s a valid criticism of all random encounters. Ever since RPGs have become more mainstream, there’s been a push to balance things out. Older JRPGs were hard because of the grind, the term here meaning they were so hard you had to spend extra hours fighting these little encounters until you were strong enough to advance. I think the Japanese seems to have some kind of superhuman tolerance for it that I don’t find in Western games. Maybe its a cultural thing, maybe our way is better, or maybe we can’t appreciate the grind for extending the life of our games, I dunno.
What I do feel is that personally, I don’t need to find them difficult enough to take me out of the main story. I like a game with both options, like it is present in FFVII, because you can go through the storyline and you can grind for optional content. I feel that’s a good balance. I don’t mind the normal battles being essentially easy mode because there are stuff I can fight if I want a better challenge. Personally, I’ve felt that magic and summons are generally too cumbersome and slow to be of much use. Cure is the spell I use the most. Sitting through endless summon animations does tend to bore even me, but only after I’ve used them a few dozen times.
But I take random battles as a way of honing my skills for the boss. Sure, by themselves, they are not very threatening, but if you get some new spells or weapons, who better than to test them out except on weaklings? That’s what I use random battles for.
A similar way to do this is to have enemies level up with you. They did that in FFVIII, so that no matter how much you grind, its the Junction system that truly powers you up.
Given the length of some of these games, I’d say that’s a real challenge to keep it fresh at battle 1 vs. battle 500. FFXIII isn’t so different though, it just looks different. When I played FFXIII, I got the same rush of excitement as I did when I played FFVII back in the day. Knocking enemies into the air, waiting for the right time to attack, those were all fun but ultimately the basic combat is still the same. One thing I didn’t like about FFXIII and FFXII is the gambit system. I prefer to have full control over my characters no matter how clunky it may be, because sometimes the computer just can’t do what I need it to do better than I can. I feel that its a big weakness to remove that control. You might as well automate everything
Its not a failure. Its a limitation that longer RPGs have. There needs to be regular encounters that are both obstacles for you to overcome and ways of honing your skill for the bigger bosses. These obstacles, if they are too numerous and take too long, are unavoidable. If they are too easy, people complain. If they are too hard, people complain. But the obstacles are important. Imagine if they did replace it with your example, that characters simply gain EXP walking from one area to the next. There’s no fun in that, nothing for you to do. I might as well watch a movie. Games need interaction, and even small bits are ok. Enough people enjoy having generally easier random encounters than not for me to believe its not a design flaw. Imagine if combat in FFVII was like Final Fantasy Tactics. In that game, monsters are fought on a grid, and you take turns one by one moving towards each other and attacking. Monsters also level up with you so even if you’re level 99, you can still be killed easily by some of the earliest enemies in the game (chocobos). Near the mid to end game, I was dreading random encounters because each battle would take upwards of 15-20 minutes. I wished I could just fast forward through them but I had to fight each and every one of them. I would have loved a system like FFVII where you could just push A and skip through the battle quickly
I have a theory. Not only is it objectively good, I think it represented the apex in storytelling in the 16-bit era (I consider it better than Chrono Trigger). Even FFIV, which I loved and am replaying on the DS right now has your standard character templates. Cecil the paladin/tank, Rosa the healer, Edge the speedster fighter (ninja, thief, or rogue). Its been said that until FFVII, odd numbered FFs had great gameplay, but even numbered ones had great stories. Having playing nearly all the FFs, I can say that actual gameplay-wise, FFI through FFV were very similar. Yes, there was the class/job that affected who you used and what you bought in terms of armor, and what abilities you brought into battle, but they were choices you made in the menu before a battle, not ones dynamically integrated into the gameplay during battle.
FFVI finally had the different classes of characters bring forth their skill sets that affected the gameplay. Suddenly, you had to do Street Fighter-esque button combos in order to pull off Sabin’s attacks, or use random rolls for Setzer to pull off his moves. While I think FFVII did it better, FFVI integrated gameplay and story into a way that was, until that point, mostly dotted with cookie-cutter one-dimensional, and interchangeable characters. FFVI was terrific at having you have a choice in who to bring, and having those characters mean something. They moved towards that point in previous games. FFI through IV had fixed characters. Depending on the plot, you always had some character at some point in the game and you can’t change that. FFV allowed you to swap out wildly different jobs, but the characters stayed the same. But FFVI, after the big event, lets you recruit who you want for the final battle. If you want to go mage-heavy, get a team of Terra, Stragos, Relm together. Melee-heavy would go with Sabin, Shadow, and Edgar. Its no coincidence that every FF since then have you recruit a team of characters which you can only use 3 or 4 at a time. It totally changes the gameplay. But to me, it still doesn’t beat FFVII
You mean you didn’t use the item duplication trick with W-Item Materia instead? That’s the only way one can reasonably max out your materia, by duplicating Elixirs and feeding them to Magic Pots for tons of AP. By the end of the game, I had 3 sets of Master Materia for everybody. A maxed out Quad Cut is like one of the strongest materias in the game.
I used to think this, and still believe it applies to myself a little bit. However, if it were 100% true, then there should have been groups of gamers of the applicable age for every FF. Each group who played an FF game during that formative time should be crowing about how their FF is the best ever, but really the biggest groups are the fans for VII and VI. There’s almost no significant numbers of people clamoring for the other ones
They don’t have to change any damn thing, that’s what makes me mad. Just re-release it with updated graphics and I will fucking by 2 or 3 copies! Make everything HD but keep the music, keep the translation, and hell, even keep the typos! The game is perfect enough as it is, no need to tinker with it.
Besides, the OP has already decided he doesn’t like the game.