Final Fantasy VII Review

By: Matthew Boyd
Submitted: 2007-01-17 15:46:23
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Since its release in 1997 this game has set the benchmark for all other RPG games, since its release there have been up to FF XIII so far in the series but as the number in the series gets higher there seems to have been some loss that has been making FF games less popular. So Square-Enix has been going back and reproducing their previous FF games for hand held gaming, but enough of the facts let’s talk about the game.

When FFVII was released it was the first of its kind, a 3D RPG game that had one of the most detailed storylines of its time, the main source of evil and enemies in this game comes from the Shinra company that controls a city where most people live called Midgar. The Shinra company mainly supplies electricity to the city and other places round the world with reactors, but the catch is that it they make this electricity by taking the life-force of the planet (It basically takes today’s problems with power to the extreme), but as well as supplying electricity Shinra has an army of troops the strongest being the 1st class SOLDIER who are genetically modified humans who have been exposed to the planets life force and injected with alien cells.

These alien cells come from an almighty being called Jenova, which crashed on the earth hundreds of years before FFVII. Shinra found Jenova and took her into captivity and performed various experiments even creating a human being from Jenova’s cells.

As every game has an evil guy in it this game has Sephiroth who was the best SOLDIER there ever was, during a routine check up of a reactor Sephiroth goes into the Shinra mansion nearby and starts to read some books from the secret laboratory underground, one book mentioned a child of Jenova who has super human physical abilities and being the best fighter in the Shinra corporation Sephiroth believed this child to be himself and took it upon himself to free Jenova from captivity and destroy the planet, but he was stopped by two Shinra SOLDIER’s Zack and Cloud (the hero of the game) and when Shinra learned of their victory they captured the two SOLDIERS and performed various experiments on them until the day they escaped. But during their escape Zack was killed.

FFVII takes place five years after Sephiroth was killed and you take the role of Cloud, as you progress through the story you meet new friends and even some old ones from Cloud’s past throughout the game, these friends will join you in the fight against Shinra and Sephiroth. The battle system is time-based meaning that you don’t have forever to think of what you want your character to do which keeps the action and the pressure coming time and time again. During battles you have a wide choice of moves that are updated as you progress through the game. The main factor that affects your moves is ‘materia’ which will allow you to cast a variety of magic spells, steal and even summon monsters. Also there is one factor that can turn the tide of the battle in the blink of an eye, this is called the limit gauge and fills accordingly to the amount of damage that your character receives, when the gauge is full you will be able to perform a special move that deals great damage. Your limit move will be upgraded depending on how many enemies you kill and also how many times you use it, each character has about 8 different limit break moves and are very different from one another, I'm sure FFVII fans will understand when I say “Omnislash destroys all!!!” google it if you don’t know what Omnislash is.

As you can see from the length of the review FFVII was a very long game but entertaining none the less. Most Playstation games usually have one disc but this game had three and since its release there has been what is known as a ‘Compilation of FFVII’ and in this compilation there is a fully animated movie (Not Cartoon looks more like real life) that was a huge success and also games that tell the story of the past and future of Final Fantasy VII and also other characters stories, FFVII was so successful there have been millions of requests for a remake of the game.

Even though it’s a Playstation 1 game it is still worth buying and is better than most of the games out today. It's also my favourite game of all time, and Cloud rules!!!!!!!

Boydies Overall Score- 10/10

Matthew Boyd - Geekazoid Writer

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