[chanting] SEPHIROTH! SEPHIROTH! SEPHIROTH! SEPHIROTH! [/chanting]
All those years ago, and I can still hear that choral chant during the final battle sequence… creepy!
Phantasy Star II was a pretty good game. I and III were… less so, but worth playing if you liked II. IV is an amazing game and almost without question is the best RPG on the base Genesis system (the only game remotely close is Shining Force II if you count that as an RPG), not that there was particularly much competition.
/hijack off
In addition to taking away the majority of the distinguishing characteristics of the various characters during battle, FF7 also failed miserably when it came to the equipment side of things. In the end, I think they gave up way too much to put the focus on the whole materia system. It was still a great game, better than any of the ones after it I would say, but I just enjoyed 6 more.
Kefka can kick Sephiroth’s butt any day of the week. 
ahem Back to discussing the game itself.
I had no problem with FF7’s graphics. I grew up in the era of Dinky Sprites, so I found the 3-D polygon style endearing (and the squares for arms were so cute :D), as opposed to the creepy RealDoll look the rest of the games started taking.
But the plot, from what I’ve seen of it anyway, was severely lacking. Having just finished playing a game where a ragtag group of rebels take down a mighty empire which has an insane psychopath for a right hand man (FF6, in case you’re wondering), I couldn’t help make comparisons and felt that FF7 fell way, way short.
To further hijacking this topic, here’re my favorite Square games:
- Chrono Trigger (immensely high replay value)
- Final Fantasy Tactics (bought the Playstation for it)
- Seiken Densetsu 3 (a friend actually got the cartridge, so we played it in Japanese, none of which we could read, but it was still so fun that we went through it several times anyway)
- Final Fantasy 6 (otherwise jokingly known as Square’s tribute to George Lucas)
FF7 fell short in four departments IMHO:
1 Heroes: While Barret, Tifa, and Yuffie were at least amusing, the rest fell flat. Aeris and Cloud had no particular personality, and Vincent was cool… for the five minutes you got to use him. Red 13 was supposed to look cool but also had little of interest. Cait Sith was alright, actually.
2 Villains: Sephiroth looked cool al right, but the man had no personality. He was simply a walking psychopath for the party to hit. Shinzer and the turks seemed cool, but basically got their butts kicked every time. They didn’t exactly seem like a real threat to me.
3 Plot: Good start, but it all became very lackluster, repetitive, and even a litle random after leaving Midgard. It felt like I was just sort of randomly going from town to town until something popped up to end the game.
4 Graphics: Everyone raved over it, but frankly they annoyed me a little. This was back when 3d was still a little shakey teen. They never managed to give the characters the little motions and style that made the tiny 2d sprites so likable and vivid, at least not until FF9.
That said, it was still a good game. But it wasn’t up to the usual standards.
…I only get here so I can get to her hometown, so I can get the Leviathan materia.
You’re weird. 
I HATE Yuffie. For that matter, I hate pretty much all of the “mascot” characters…the little summoner in 9, Relm in 6, Sephie in 8…I kind of liked the Al Behd thief in 10, because she was anxious to grow up. Yuffie’s just a little brat, period, though she had some great limit breaks.
But she’s a ninja and a chick! How can you not like something as sweet as that?
She’s an annoying, whiny little bint. Who steals your materia the second your back is turned, and when she puts it back, puts it back all wrong!
But she wears shorts and has that cool throwey-thingy! And she’s a ninja chick!
Somebody’s got a one-track mind here.
I’m not sure I follow you.
(bolding mine)
It’s cute, Scumpup.
Maybe you have a point.
Maybe.
So do you have the hots for our very own NinjaChick?
Possibly, but with the age and cultural differences, there’d be no future in it if I did.
Boy, do I feel silly. When I responded to this yesterday, I thought you were talking about Yuffie. Quite by accident today, I find that we have a member here named NinjaChick. So, no I don’t have the hots for NinjaChick and she needn’t worry that I’m some sort of internet pervo.
That’s who I was talking, and she is pretty young as I recall (teen maybe) so your post fit perfectly.
I did wonder about the “cultural differences” though.
Just picked up VII for the PC (cheaper than buying for PS + getting a PS1 memory card). Anyone happen to know how to brighten the game up, or just brighten up all games in general through windows?
Download Advanced Gamma Corrector. It will let you do all sorts of cool things with brightness, contrast, and so on. It is especially useful if you have an older monitor that is getting dim.
So after talking about FF5 so much in this thread, I’ve been replaying it, and I discovered I had forgotten a few of the warts of the job system. I still prefer it to materia, but I’d definitely make some major changes to it.
For those who haven’t played the game, here’s a quick rundown: You have four characters, each of whom gets to select a job to advance in. Job levels are separate from character levels, so if you’re level 32, you can be a level 32 knight, or a level 32 thief, or any of the other jobs. Each job has from 1-7 levels, and with each level you gain, you get an ability that you can use as part of any job. So if a character gets 1 level as a white wizard and then converts to a monk, they can be a monk who casts level 1 white magic. That’s the basics of it.
However, not all is well. A character’s stats, HP, and MP are determined by their current job, which means that our white magic-wielding monk is casting spells with about 60% of the magic power of a white wizard. And a white wizard who has the knight’s ability to equip swords is going to be fighting with the strength and hit percentage of a white wizard. So not all combinations are great–but things like a black wizard with white magic make a lot of sense.
The other issue is that each job has exactly one slot for customization. There’s no such thing as a knight who can cast white magic and use the thief’s steal command. That’s the big pitfall–there are a lot of abilities that are really useful in limited scenarios, but don’t warrant being equipped at all times, so they don’t get used much.
But it’s not all that bad. You also have the option of giving your characters no job, which allows two slots for customization. In addition, if a character has attained the maximum level in a job, all the non-command abilities of that job come free when that character has no job. So once a character has mastered 2-3 jobs, they’re much better off with no job.
That’s the real rub here. Most jobs cost somewhere in the range of 700 ability points (AP) to master, and it’s not until pretty late in the game that you can reliably get 2-3 AP per battle. Most abilities just aren’t worth the time it takes to earn them*.
There’s another drawback: there are some genuinely crappy jobs that have one awesome ability, but it’s the last one they’ll learn, and it’s still inordinately expensive.
So why is this better than the materia system? In large part, it’s because the abilities a character earns are available with no job equipped. No matter how long you let one character hold a piece of materia, they lose all of its power as soon as they take it off.
The other drawback with materia is that it’s very highly specialized. IIRC, you can’t equip all the summons in the game on one character cause there just aren’t enough slots. Same deal with black magic and maybe white.
Additionally, most of the materia are just rehashes of stuff that showed up in FF5 or earlier. As mentioned above, there are some very specialized materia that are different from what’s come before, but those aren’t available until very late in the game, so they don’t really affect the majority of gameplay.
The big issue, though, is that there’s no notion of a character class here. There’s no specialization, and that removes a lot of the need for strategy. Need a strong physical fighter and a healer in one battle? Hey, make all your characters do that. I think it takes something away.
Now, that last point is mitigated by the fact that you only have three characters here instead of the usual four. But I still think it could’ve been better done–maybe something a little closer to FF9’s ability system (which is still flawed, but the best in the Final Fantasy series so far, IMO).
*[sub][sup]To be perfectly honest, I’m playing on an emulator and I’ve taken advantage of the state save capability to hack my way into job mastery. The game’s a lot more fun if you don’t have to build up job levels on AP at a time.[/sup][/sub]