What exactly is supposed to be so good about Final Fantasy VII?

I didn't think it was unplayable then. That's how I feel when I try to revisit the PSX MGS nowdays... it has been completely outdone by Twin Snakes and there's not a single reason to ever revisit the original, imo. In it's own time, it was a relevant and refreshing take on a genre that was finally starting to bloom, but in my opinion, it felt a bit misplaced. Twin Snakes makes the original obsolete, if you ask me.
Twin Snakes is, um, interesting. There is quite a lot wrong with it, though.

I would personally never recommend it over the original. Hell, I would even still recommend the MSX originals that MGS basically remakes.
 
FFVII, however, is just a mediocre game all around and being remade or revamped wouldn't change anything. It is most definitely the worst FF game I've played (though I have yet to finish V and XII), and that includes Crystal Chronicles and 2 FFT games as well! Finishing FFIX for the first time last week just made me realize how much a of an overrated mess VII really is. I love that GAF prefers IX to VII but it saddens me to see the rest of the world think the other way around. IX is like the DQVIII of it's gen, a perfect encapsulation of it's genre done tastefully and filled to the brim with charm. FFVII looks, plays and feels like an amateur game.

I find it so odd that you can appreciate IX so much but seem to find VII so reprehensible. IX was better, sure, but it built on a lot of VII's strengths as well as learned from its mistakes. They are cut from the same cloth.
 
It's different with MGS than it is with FFVII. I like the ideas and concepts behind the game on the PSX, I just don't think it plays that well. Especially when compared to Twin Snakes. In other words, I think MGS was a good game released too soon/on the wrong hardware. It truly comes alive in Twin Snakes (again, this is just my opinion).

FFVII, however, is just a mediocre game all around and being remade or revamped wouldn't change anything. It is most definitely the worst FF game I've played (though I have yet to finish V and XII), and that includes Crystal Chronicles and 2 FFT games as well! Finishing FFIX for the first time last week just made me realize how much a of an overrated mess VII really is. I love that GAF prefers IX to VII but it saddens me to see the rest of the world think the other way around. IX is like the DQVIII of it's gen, a perfect encapsulation of it's genre done tastefully and filled to the brim with charm. FFVII looks, plays and feels like an amateur game.

I find FF9 to be an absolute chore to play. Battles take far, far too long. I think it's a dreadful game. I will never play it again.

I don't see how anybody can say the gameplay in FF 6-9 is really all that different. And I don't think that "GAF prefers IX." I just think that discontent speaks louder than praise.

FF7 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I don't bother posting about it in every thread where people are saying it's terrible. Same with MGS4 and other games.
 
There's an entire sequence where she has to bust out of a flooded gas chamber, crawl hand and foot down the outside of a giant tower, get chased down by hundreds of armed soldiers and make a huge leap to barely grab the dangling rope of a speeding airship.

Just something to consider any time someone complains that Tifa is a weak female lead. Just because she has romantic aspirations about Cloud saving her doesn't mean she can't take care of herself.

Sure, but her characterization is almost entirely built around Cloud.

This conversation is probably better suited to the community thread though, to not risk derailment and all.
 
I find FF9 to be an absolute chore to play. Battles take far, far too long. I think it's a dreadful game. I will never play it again.

Yes, the ATB timer is ridiculously slow in this game. Go into settings and move the slider to Fastest. Now it plays at normal speed.

That aside, I find the characters and story in 9 to be ridiculously charming. I seem to prefer the FF games where characters have preset roles instead of leaving the combat open ended, so this game and VI are some of my favorites.

As far as tech goes, it looks fantastic. I love the whole pre-rendered backgrounds and FMV era of RPGs. It also finally brings your party back up to 4 members!
 
I'm playing through it right now and enjoying it. No, it's not the best RPG ever but it's not terrible like all of the haters would have you believe, and it's still a good game.
 
Yes, the ATB timer is ridiculously slow in this game. Go into settings and move the slider to Fastest. Now it plays at normal speed.

That aside, I find the characters and story in 9 to be ridiculously charming. I seem to prefer the FF games where characters have preset roles instead of leaving the combat open ended, so this game and VI are some of my favorites.

As far as tech goes, it looks fantastic. I love the whole pre-rendered backgrounds and FMV era of RPGs. It also finally brings your party back up to 4 members!

I do that in all FFs. I also play on active instead of Wait. Still slow.

How is VI not open ended? Esper system is pretty much the precursor to Materia.
 
I'm tired of always seeing FF7 be considered as one of the best RPGs/games ever... I just don't get it. At all.

... It has got to be the worst game I've ever completed, in my opinion!
...
Now, I don't want this to turn into a hate-thread, so what I'm basically asking is... WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU PEOPLE LIKE ABOUT IT AND WHY?

Now, FFVII wouldn't even make it onto my top 20 games, but if its the worst game you have ever completed, you must have better taste than everyone else here. Not only that, but you dislike everything about it, thought it worse than any other game you had previously finished, and you still sat through 30 hours of it, including every battle intro and summon sequence.

I've got to ask, is it really the worst game you've ever finished? Congrats if so. You've missed a hell of a lot of rubbish-but-playable games!

As for why people love it, it was a lot of people's first JRPG if they started gaming in the mid 90s, or lived in Europe where our 8 and 16-bit options were severely limited. The characters are fun, the opening is great, making you think the city is all there is, it's got a revolutionary, anti-corporate and eco-warrior vibe with the freedom-fighter characters, which appealed to general youth counter-culture at the time no matter where they were from, and even a nonsense story doesn't stop the battle engine just being fun.

It's 16 years old and people still talk about it, odds are there must be something it did right. You might not have found the characters interesting, but I found the beast-thing (red?), Cid and Tifa to be quite interesting, certainly more so than the cast of the last three games.
 
It was a mindblowing game for its time, and is an excellent JRPG after all this time. I don't really understand this need to slam FFVII while things like Chrono Trigger and FFVI get effusive, blind praise.

Is it because VII was commercially successful? Because it's popular to hate on popular things?
 
It was a mindblowing game for its time, and is an excellent JRPG after all this time. I don't really understand this need to slam FFVII while things like Chrono Trigger and FFVI get effusive, blind praise.

Is it because VII was commercially successful? Because it's popular to hate on popular things?

I wonder if its because 16-bit pixel art has a kind of timeless, cartoony charm about it but early, blocky 3D models just look like very crude versions of modern computer modelling.
 
this topic reminded me about all the fuzz about aeris, for me it was average and to be honnest I didn't like her so it wasn't a big deal haha now if you move to legend of dragoon I still curse the day when
Lavitz was killed and then having to fight his soul
 
I find FF9 to be an absolute chore to play. Battles take far, far too long. I think it's a dreadful game. I will never play it again.

I don't see how anybody can say the gameplay in FF 6-9 is really all that different. And I don't think that "GAF prefers IX." I just think that discontent speaks louder than praise.

FF7 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I don't bother posting about it in every thread where people are saying it's terrible. Same with MGS4 and other games.

Battles are slow, yes. It was the only thing I didn't like. Very slow indeed.

Gameplay in 7 is not that different in 6 or 9, yeah. It's just slightly inferior (which when compared to 6 makes no sense as a decision). That's why FFVII is such an offender, imo, the gameplay is standard RPG fare with none of the charm of the other 2 and cluttered with junk and minigames as well as a system that renders all characters equal (which ruins the fun, if you ask me... picking your party should be an important thing, in FFVII it doesn't matter.

As for the GAF preffering IX to VII I was refering to the Top 100 RPG thread, in which there was no such thing as "negative voting" involved and in which IX came out ahead of VII. Even if by a small margin.

Now, FFVII wouldn't even make it onto my top 20 games, but if its the worst game you have ever completed, you must have better taste than everyone else here. Not only that, but you dislike everything about it, thought it worse than any other game you had previously finished, and you still sat through 30 hours of it, including every battle intro and summon sequence.

I've got to ask, is it really the worst game you've ever finished? Congrats if so. You've missed a hell of a lot of rubbish-but-playable games!

It is indeed. Out of all the games I've ever completed/finished, FFVII is the one I liked the least. Which doesn't mean I hated it, I just really couldn't care less about it. It's so average! oO
 
It was a mindblowing game for its time, and is an excellent JRPG after all this time. I don't really understand this need to slam FFVII while things like Chrono Trigger and FFVI get effusive, blind praise.

Is it because VII was commercially successful? Because it's popular to hate on popular things?

I'm playing through FF6 atm and I like how there's no hand holding relative to 7-10 & 13.
 
It was a big deal when I was 13, does not hold up now, but people are unwilling to separate the game from their age and raised standards of quality from 1997.

First (well second) post is wrong.

I played FFVII for the first time at 13 as well. I played it again last year. This was the first time in about 4 years I had played it, though probably the fourth or fifth time I intended to play through the whole thing.

I loved it. Some parts drag for sure, but the only gameplay system that rivals materia for me in RPGs has been FFX sphere grid. I don't mind the extremely blocky characters on the non battle and non cutscene screens. The limit system still is great and gives something else to unlock.

Random battles are the worst part IMO. Most bosses are well done, the overall story I enjoy but much like the game as a whole does drag on at times.

Anyways, point being, I loved and still love it.

FF8 on the other hand :(
 
It was a big deal when I was 13, does not hold up now, but people are unwilling to separate the game from their age and raised standards of quality from 1997.

It does hold up. A true quality product, something I haven't seen in a long long while.
I played it in 2003ish
 
Battles are slow, yes. It was the only thing I didn't like. Very slow indeed.

Gameplay in 7 is not that different in 6 or 9, yeah. It's just slightly inferior (which when compared to 6 makes no sense as a decision). That's why FFVII is such an offender, imo, the gameplay is standard RPG fare with none of the charm of the other 2 and cluttered with junk and minigames as well as a system that renders all characters equal (which ruins the fun, if you ask me... picking your party should be an important thing, in FFVII it doesn't matter.

As for the GAF preffering IX to VII I was refering to the Top 100 RPG thread, in which there was no such thing as "negative voting" involved and in which IX came out ahead of VII. Even if by a small margin.

How is it inferior from 6? For me, they're all the same except for customization (which will be YMMV), especially end game when your characters are so powerful you don't even need to use strategy. Charm is a word about as useful as visceral in that it doesn't describe anything at all.
 
Of course people want it, but that doesn't have to be this. Save the new tech for something new that you can actually build a franchise on, let someone else handle the muscle in taking old assets and new models and making it work in the same way it worked back in the day. You can't have a game look like that tech demo and have the same scale of FF7, you just can't. So don't try and make a faithful remake using the same methods they used 15 years ago. It's a sound plan that would generate an amazing amount of revenue.
There's a reason why FFVII or any other similar JRPGs (not just Square Enix ones) have not been remade, not even the way you want them to. And it's because it's not as cheap or as guaranteed to sell gazillion copies, like you seem to think.



And yet, they're doing it AGAIN. It's a bad plan and they should be trying to work with the middleware that already exists unless they are planning to sell this thing they've spent 3 years making, instead of working on easy profit layup games.
Man, you simply refuse to understand anything you read. It was a good plan/idea that they just failed executing because they didn't have experience of doing things that way 7-8 years ago (+ they added to the original plans a lot too, which caused delays). Now they DO have experience, have learned from past mistakes AND have asked their western studios for help in making it a reality. They AREN'T repeating past mistakes, Luminous is the result of everything they've learned and it is a GOOD result. The tools are ready NOW (well, almost ready) when the next-gen hasn't even arrived instead of not really even being in the early stages when they launch and then taking forever to be finished, like Crystal Tools did.

Middleware isn't the answer to everything. Square Enix have their own specific needs that middleware isn't necessarily the answer to (and middleware can end up being much more expensive). Just like Obsidian has been horribly shackled by shitty middleware they've had to work with that doesn't fit the kind of games they make in the ways they make them (Gamebryo... *shudders*) and their own Onyx engine being a remedy for that.


And that's great but has nothing to do with how they're running the show NOW.
They are making changes that are slowly but surely taking effect. Square Enix is simply a big company, they don't turn around in an instant and as I said they have excess package to consider with XIV2.0 & such that prevent them from moving on (but are better do be finished than forgotten).

Sure, the first few years of PS2 development were rocky. They nailed that down by creating tools that work for the hardware available and keeping an open dialogue with Sony who wanted square around because, at the time, square games printed money.
Umm... they DIDN'T nail it down with PS2. They did start getting great results out of PS2, but it still came with a high cost (i.e. FFXII's development took forever, almost as long as Versus has taken now). They did learn to harness PS2's power, but their development methods were still inefficient, unable to answer to the requirements of efficient PS2 level development. They could still get by during the PS2 era since the graphics were still relatively simple, but those problems simply escalated once transitioning to PS360 development. They simply weren't ready for that kind of jump in quality. Their methods/dev pipelines were hugely inefficient to develop PS3 games that pushed the hardware relatively as much as their games pushed the PS2 hardware. THAT is why they needed something like Crystal Tools (too bad it failed). THAT is why they need Luminous Studios now.


They didn't replicate that with current gen consoles, they were left blowing in the wind because they decided that PSP and DS development would be easier and more lucrative and they could make up the different for the money and time lost by prodominately catering to one demographic on a handheld that was failing pretty much everywhere except japan,
DS & PSP are some of the best selling platforms EVER. You talk shit about Square Enix not wanting money yet try to make it sound like a bad thing when they release games for the best selling gaming platform ever (and one that is easily in the top 10). It wasn't really their fault that a huge number of people have no interest in paying for products others have seen huge efforts to develop if they can get things for free (that is, rampant piracy on both DS & PSP).

Also, they pretty much had to do things this way. You do understand that Square Enix, as a developer, is relatively small? That's why they've had to have other teams help finish games like XIII & XIV 2.0, instead of just letting separate teams do their own thing. They can't really have the same kind of output on home consoles alone anymore that they did during the PS1 era when small teams could develop big games in short time spans, so there could be a steady stream of games that pushed the edges. So they decided to have smaller teams develop games (numerous awesome ones, btw) on handhelds while bigger teams were working on home console games.

AND ALL THE WHILE have spent what must be more money than god has even known on future products that still won't be able to even begin to make up lost funding until 2015 at earliest.
Now you're just being stupid. You bitch and bitch and bitch about Crystal Tools being a huge mistake yet don't want them to do anything that would prevent that kind of thing ever happening in the future again.

NEWS FLASH! Companies NEED to invest into their long-term future as well. Just because they might not make money back out of all the resources that has gone to the Luminous Studios until 2015 doesn't mean it's money that isn't well spent, ESPECIALLY if it means they can avoid the kind of catastrophes that FFXIII & XIV turned out to be during this generation.

You cannot sit there and say that Square has done anything right this generation. The 1 smart move they've made was buying Eidos and that is the ONLY thing that has kept them alive.
Lololololol. Square Enix has done MANY things right and, again, while stuff like Crystal Tools didn't span out as they had hoped, they were right in pursuing the development such toolset that would help in game development and be used across different teams with different projects. Not only was it wise of them to fund the Luminous Studios while current generation is still going on strong, they've developed internally & funded the development of games such as The World Ends With You, Kingdom Hearts: BBS, NieR, Dragon Quest IX, Dissidia and such. And while I'm not the biggest fan of MMOs, XIV 2.0 does seem like money well spent.

Eidos is in no way the only thing that kept them alive (after all, their Eidos side has had their share of flops or games that didn't perform as well as they'd hoped), not when they've had huge sellers like Dragon Quest IX and the continued success of FFXI. The whole "Eidos is the only good thing about Square Enix nowadays" is hugely exaggerated, blind hate stupidity.


And that's a whole lot of faith to put in a developer that has made such vivid glaring obvious mistakes. You can put your faith in them if you want, I sure as hell ain't.
Lots of faith? I say it's very little faith given how good many of their games have been and TAKING THE CONTEXT of their troubles into account. Their big mistake was to try to improve their development practices yet failing in that which has lead to some rushed games (XIII & XIV 1.0, mostly). People make mistakes and they learn from them. Personally, I've still gotten more good games from them during this generation than most other big Japanese publishers.



If they are doing nothing with the brand, then why is it "too important" to let other people handle it? That doesn't make sense.
Sometimes it's better to let things rest than do something half-assed. If they don't have a clear idea and resources to do it justice, then they just better focus on something else (new games).

And of course a remake would sell out the nose, FF4 sells at least 500k everytime it's re-released, and other than the DS 3D remake, which sold MILLIONS in japan alone, that's basically a quick emulator job.
500k is not 10 million. And no DS remake of a FF has sold "MILLIONS" in Japan alone, when they've hardly done that worldwide.

An FF7 remake that simply take the existing formula and makes it palletable for today's visuals would be easy.
No it wouldn't.

It doesn't have to look like FF13, it could look like Bastion or the Orge Tactics remake, and it would be one of the best sellers of the year, hands down.
So you think they should make a 3d game into 2d one like Tactics Ogre? That'd be a graphical downgrade, not sure fans would eat that up, at least not 10 million copies sold worth of eating up.

And making something look like Bastion (which, btw, takes a lot of shortcuts when it comes to graphics that a FFVII remake simply couldn't do) would be hugely expensive in the scope of FFVII.

Release it on XBLA and PSN, no hard distribution fees, probably 5 million to make and the returns would be damn near limitless.
The kind of remake you'd want would be much more than 5 million. It's a huge world, every room/screen would need to be remade with improved graphics, every effect redone, characters remodelled, music remastered, probably animations redone too, not to even mention the prerendered CGI would then have to be redone as well, and with their Visual Works quality those alone would probably cost a lot more than 5 million. Any kind of FFVII remake would have to be a retail release and cost more than 10$.

It's getting to the point where it's almost irresponsible for Square to not remake FF7, or better, hire someone else to do it for them.
YOU'D be a much worse mismanager of Square Enix than Wada could ever hope to be. Again, publishers usually need to focus on the future. Remakes/up-ports can bring in some easy cash, but they aren't an answer to any kind of monetary problems or something that any publisher should pursue aggressively. THAT is pure nostalgia goggles speaking. FFVII is an important game for them but not important enough that they should pursue big remake projects no matter what, when they have bigger fishes to fry (finishing XIV 2.0 and Versus XIII)
 
I remember playing through FF7 for the first time shortly before Advent Children came out. The game was still pretty solid honestly, but I think it's a case where you had to "be there". FF7 was the franchise's first game with 3D models.

Going from this-

FFVI_Fight_Screen.jpg


To this-

final-fantasy-7-screenshot.jpg



That's a significant jump. You also can't discount the effects FMV had either. FF7 was a game that definitely wowed people I'd assume. The only thing I struggled with I can recall was navigating those pre-rendered backgrounds. Very confusing for me I remember, shit in the foreground blending into the background and vice-versa.
 
How is VI not open ended? Esper system is pretty much the precursor to Materia.
Sure, everyone can learn every magic, but each character is a set class with unique abilities.

You can almost swap out any characters in VII for any other character with a similar materia build and nothing much would change. Replace Sabin with Gau and now everythings sucks forever.
 
It's one of those games people seem to love to hate, people hate popular things because it's cool to hate them, now that doesn't mean there aren't things in FFVII that deserve criticism, I am just saying a lot of people hate it unfairly, it's easy to accuse some people to be blinded by nostalgia but we must also not be so hasty judge things so harshly and dismiss some old games simply because of nostalgia.

Most of the haters of FFVII hate it because in their opinion it's inferior to FFVI, now I personally love both games but for entirely different reasons, but saying a game is a inferior to another doesn't necessarily mean it's bad, frankly I love the dungeons in FFVII more than FFVI and I found the setting of FFVII to be far more interesting but that is probably me hating all things steampunk.

FFVII is one of the best JRPGs out there, it still has the most rewarding overworld in a FF game to date, exploring it was so much fun and there was so much to discover in it. the battle system is slower than VI but it was still fun while keeping things exciting, and most importantly it had for it's time a presentation like no other, the world had not seen presentation like that before, the quality of cutscenes, backgrounds, and the overall art direction was just fascinating.
 
In 1997 the use of FMV was huge, and most of the sales could probably be traced back to its "good" graphics-- namely because of the TV commercial that exclusively featured pre-rendered CG.

It was the dark, gritty reboot of a well-established franchise.

It was all things to all people... or at least all 11-15 year olds living in 1997. It had emo brooding for moody kids, it had dudes turning into monsters to wreck other dudes and dudes with gatling guns for arms shooting fools, it had melodrama, the bad guy was THE MAN, and MOST IMPORTANTLY it had a harem of ambiguous love interests to suit the tastes of any young man or woman.

Sooo to answer your question what was good about FF7 was marketing and demographics. The actual game, not all that great.

Sure, everyone can learn every magic, but each character is a set class with unique abilities.

You can almost swap out any characters in VII for any other character with a similar materia build and nothing much would change. Replace Sabin with Gau and now everythings sucks forever.

"The different characters are completely interchangeable!" is not a sterling compliment for an RPG's character progression system IMHO
 
Yuffie's, Red's, Vincent's final limit breaks all suck.
4X Cut is all you need in the end.
Elemental spells become useless a few hours in.

Still the best FF.
 
"The different characters are completely interchangeable!" is not a sterling compliment for an RPG's character progression system IMHO

I think that's what he/she was saying :P

I don't think it matters since I can make my characters whatever I want, and then I get to use my favorite characters regardless. I don't think the difference is so big in FF6 that it matters each character had a unique skill, but it is one difference the characters don't have in FF7 (unless you count limit breaks).
 
How is it inferior from 6? For me, they're all the same except for customization (which will be YMMV), especially end game when your characters are so powerful you don't even need to use strategy. Charm is a word about as useful as visceral in that it doesn't describe anything at all.

VI did literally everything better. Better story, better music, better and more varied combat, way better and more fleshed characters, better graphics (yes, better graphics), a more varied and actually relevant character roster with unique abilities and pros/cons, and a bigger and alot more interesting quest that wasn't affraid to deal with adult themes without being all cheesy and cyberemo about it. Also, having the best antagonist in any FF, ever helps. It remains, to this day, the quintessential FFVI, it's the pinnacle of the series and the perfect crompromise of old and new.

If you don't understand what charm and visceral mean/describe go read a dictionary. In the context of IX, the charm is the setting, the lovely music, vistas and atmosphere, the way the characters interact with each other and above all the world itself. Compared to VII's industrial wasteland setting, it's alot more compelling and enjoyable.



Sure, everyone can learn every magic, but each character is a set class with unique abilities.

You can almost swap out any characters in VII for any other character with a similar materia build and nothing much would change. Replace Sabin with Gau and now everythings sucks forever.

You make it sound like having balanced and unique characters is a bad thing. oO
 
VI did literally everything better. Better story, better music, better and more varied combat, way better and more fleshed characters, better graphics (yes, better graphics), a more varied and actually relevant character roster with unique abilities and pros/cons, and a bigger and alot more interesting quest that wasn't affraid to deal with adult themes without being all cheesy and cyberemo about it. Also, having the best antagonist in any FF, ever helps. It remains, to this day, the quintessential FFVI, it's the pinnacle of the series and the perfect crompromise of old and new.

If you don't understand what charm and visceral mean/describe go read a dictionary. In the context of IX, the charm is the setting, the lovely music, vistas and atmosphere, the way the characters interact with each other and above all the world itself. Compared to VII's industrial wasteland setting, it's alot more compelling and enjoyable.

I understand what charm and visceral mean. In the context of describing something, they're largely pointless buzz-words that people use. Saying something has charm is useless. Explaining why something is appealing is not.

Annnnd, I disagree with everything you've just typed. Especially about Kefka. He's a one-dimensional, horrible villain, with horrible dialogue. So boring. Nothing entertaining to me about somebody who wants to kill all humans while spouting lines like:

Son of a sandworm!* You'll pay for this!

or

Hee-hee... Nothing beats the sweet music of hundreds of voices screaming in unison! Uwee-hee-hee!

Did I read Mzo wrong? I'm pretty sure he's agreeing with the people who think FF6's cast is better.
 
"Nostalgia glasses" is the just the worst insisting argument ever. People actually can appreciate things that have aged based on their own standards, who woulda thunk!

I always find the "nostalgia glasses" argument with FF7 amusing because you'll often times see the same people arguing that turn around and list some SNES RPG as the best one ever made.
 
for me, that feeling of oppression and a planet on its way out, its just unmatched in any game since.

there's been plenty of post apocalyptic games that try the whole oppressed thing since, but the whole of midgar, that area below the golden saucer, cid's town, it screams so much personality, so much anguish.

and the city of the ancients is by far the best location i've ever been to in an rpg. and listen to the cries of the planet is godly.

and to the person saying ffviii and ix's osts are more played in concerts, well its probably because they're a bit more easy going, chirpy and upbeat.

if everyone went to see the black mages or whatever and they just played ffvii songs, well people would be depressed by the end of the gig. it why i think its so effective.

and the post above with the backgrounds is awesome.
 
I'm tired of always seeing FF7 be considered as one of the best RPGs/games ever... I just don't get it. At all.

I love Final Fantasy! I really do! VI, IX, IX and XII are all amazing
VI = Mediocre.

IX is good, sure.

XII is shit.

Anyhow, let's be serious now. Most old games that people rave about don't hold up. Ocarina of Time? Crap. Super Mario 64? Crap. Chrono Trigger? Crap.

These games should be judged in the context of their time. That way their impact and significance is more understandable. Revisiting these games a decade after they've released has never been a good experience in my opinion. I've yet to truly enjoy an old game which I didn't play close to when it initially released. They're all mundane.

FF7 was remarkable for its time.
 
It was the dark, gritty reboot of a well-established franchise.

It was all things to all people... or at least all 11-15 year olds living in 1997. It had emo brooding for moody kids, it had dudes turning into monsters to wreck other dudes and dudes with gatling guns for arms shooting fools, it had melodrama, the bad guy was THE MAN, and MOST IMPORTANTLY it had a harem of ambiguous love interests to suit the tastes of any young man or woman.

Sooo to answer your question what was good about FF7 was marketing and demographics. The actual game, not all that great.

"The different characters are completely interchangeable!" is not a sterling compliment for an RPG's character progression system IMHO


You could pretty much hate on VI with the above quote, from the perspective of a disgruntled fan of Final Fantasy V. Try reading it that way.

I honestly think part of the reason people hate it so much is because it was, is, and continues to be so popular. It's a strange kind of gaming hipsterdom where you have to hate on it to prove you played the lesser known but so much better alternative, when really there's just no reason to compare VII to any other entry in the series (besides XIII, which tried its hardest to nail "the formula")
 
It was amazing the first time I played it, and it was still fucking great when I played through the entire game again a couple of months back.

Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere.

In a modern market saturated with Japanese games it's easy to take FFVII for granted now, but back then, in the context of the times, hoowee what a fucking game.

That music.

That art.
 
There's a reason why FFVII or any other similar JRPGs (not just Square Enix ones) have not been remade, not even the way you want them to. And it's because it's not as cheap or as guaranteed to sell gazillion copies, like you seem to think.



Man, you simply refuse to understand anything you read. It was a good plan/idea that they just failed executing because they didn't have experience of doing things that way 7-8 years ago (+ they added to the original plans a lot too, which caused delays). Now they DO have experience, have learned from past mistakes AND have asked their western studios for help in making it a reality. They AREN'T repeating past mistakes, Luminous is the result of everything they've learned and it is a GOOD result. The tools are ready NOW (well, almost ready) when the next-gen hasn't even arrived instead of not really even being in the early stages when they launch and then taking forever to be finished, like Crystal Tools did.

Middleware isn't the answer to everything. Square Enix have their own specific needs that middleware isn't necessarily the answer to (and middleware can end up being much more expensive). Just like Obsidian has been horribly shackled by shitty middleware they've had to work with that doesn't fit the kind of games they make in the ways they make them (Gamebryo... *shudders*) and their own Onyx engine being a remedy for that.


They are making changes that are slowly but surely taking effect. Square Enix is simply a big company, they don't turn around in an instant and as I said they have excess package to consider with XIV2.0 & such that prevent them from moving on (but are better do be finished than forgotten).


Umm... they DIDN'T nail it down with PS2. They did start getting great results out of PS2, but it still came with a high cost (i.e. FFXII's development took forever, almost as long as Versus has taken now). They did learn to harness PS2's power, but their development methods were still inefficient, unable to answer to the requirements of efficient PS2 level development. They could still get by during the PS2 era since the graphics were still relatively simple, but those problems simply escalated once transitioning to PS360 development. They simply weren't ready for that kind of jump in quality. Their methods/dev pipelines were hugely inefficient to develop PS3 games that pushed the hardware relatively as much as their games pushed the PS2 hardware. THAT is why they needed something like Crystal Tools (too bad it failed). THAT is why they need Luminous Studios now.


DS & PSP are some of the best selling platforms EVER. You talk shit about Square Enix not wanting money yet try to make it sound like a bad thing when they release games for the best selling gaming platform ever (and one that is easily in the top 10). It wasn't really their fault that a huge number of people have no interest in paying for products others have seen huge efforts to develop if they can get things for free (that is, rampant piracy on both DS & PSP).

Also, they pretty much had to do things this way. You do understand that Square Enix, as a developer, is relatively small? That's why they've had to have other teams help finish games like XIII & XIV 2.0, instead of just letting separate teams do their own thing. They can't really have the same kind of output on home consoles alone anymore that they did during the PS1 era when small teams could develop big games in short time spans, so there could be a steady stream of games that pushed the edges. So they decided to have smaller teams develop games (numerous awesome ones, btw) on handhelds while bigger teams were working on home console games.

Now you're just being stupid. You bitch and bitch and bitch about Crystal Tools being a huge mistake yet don't want them to do anything that would prevent that kind of thing ever happening in the future again.

NEWS FLASH! Companies NEED to invest into their long-term future as well. Just because they might not make money back out of all the resources that has gone to the Luminous Studios until 2015 doesn't mean it's money that isn't well spent, ESPECIALLY if it means they can avoid the kind of catastrophes that FFXIII & XIV turned out to be during this generation.

Lololololol. Square Enix has done MANY things right and, again, while stuff like Crystal Tools didn't span out as they had hoped, they were right in pursuing the development such toolset that would help in game development and be used across different teams with different projects. Not only was it wise of them to fund the Luminous Studios while current generation is still going on strong, they've developed internally & funded the development of games such as The World Ends With You, Kingdom Hearts: BBS, NieR, Dragon Quest IX, Dissidia and such. And while I'm not the biggest fan of MMOs, XIV 2.0 does seem like money well spent.

Eidos is in no way the only thing that kept them alive (after all, their Eidos side has had their share of flops or games that didn't perform as well as they'd hoped), not when they've had huge sellers like Dragon Quest IX and the continued success of FFXI. The whole "Eidos is the only good thing about Square Enix nowadays" is hugely exaggerated, blind hate stupidity.


Lots of faith? I say it's very little faith given how good many of their games have been and TAKING THE CONTEXT of their troubles into account. Their big mistake was to try to improve their development practices yet failing in that which has lead to some rushed games (XIII & XIV 1.0, mostly). People make mistakes and they learn from them. Personally, I've still gotten more good games from them during this generation than most other big Japanese publishers.



Sometimes it's better to let things rest than do something half-assed. If they don't have a clear idea and resources to do it justice, then they just better focus on something else (new games).

500k is not 10 million. And no DS remake of a FF has sold "MILLIONS" in Japan alone, when they've hardly done that worldwide.

No it wouldn't.

So you think they should make a 3d game into 2d one like Tactics Ogre? That'd be a graphical downgrade, not sure fans would eat that up, at least not 10 million copies sold worth of eating up.

And making something look like Bastion (which, btw, takes a lot of shortcuts when it comes to graphics that a FFVII remake simply couldn't do) would be hugely expensive in the scope of FFVII.

The kind of remake you'd want would be much more than 5 million. It's a huge world, every room/screen would need to be remade with improved graphics, every effect redone, characters remodelled, music remastered, probably animations redone too, not to even mention the prerendered CGI would then have to be redone as well, and with their Visual Works quality those alone would probably cost a lot more than 5 million. Any kind of FFVII remake would have to be a retail release and cost more than 10$.

YOU'D be a much worse mismanager of Square Enix than Wada could ever hope to be. Again, publishers usually need to focus on the future. Remakes/up-ports can bring in some easy cash, but they aren't an answer to any kind of monetary problems or something that any publisher should pursue aggressively. THAT is pure nostalgia goggles speaking. FFVII is an important game for them but not important enough that they should pursue big remake projects no matter what, when they have bigger fishes to fry (finishing XIV 2.0 and Versus XIII)

In short because I need to step out the door: The crux of your argument is that, because Square did things once and failed, SURELY they must now have to knowledge on how to do it right, which is guesswork at best and foolhardy at worst. Square has given no indication that they're on the right track with Onyx tools and it's the exact same path they took with Crystal tools that got them into financial trouble the first time, only this time they're starting earlier. As I said earlier, unless they're planning on selling it as middleware, Square should be looking at other less expensive avenues to go down.

As for an FF7 remake, all I'll say is look at the numbers. Everytime FF4 gets re-released, sales numbers go down, but the first time, it sold 5 million world wide. The DS remake still sold 2 million world wide, and the FF3/6 remake that was nothing more than a ROM with a touched up translation, sold 3 million world wide. If you're saying an FF7 remake wouldn't sell at least 5 million, YOU don't know how the industry works or what Square fans are looking for. It would absolutely sell 5 million within the first 6 months. The question is, what's a reasonable projection for such a game? It would make serious bank and if they got someone decent to handle the remake, it would be of minimal effort on their part. There's no reason not to do it, "because i'd be hard" is a stupid excuse. Game development is hard, find people who are good at it.

And finally, if Square could abandon work on FF14-2 and Versus 13, they would have. They simply can't afford to let projects which wasted so much money go. Those projects have gotten in the way of so many easy cash ins that could be used to, at the very least, alievate enough stress from the publisher to the point where selling 3.4 million copies of your partners game in 3 weeks isn't "Disappointing".
 
Well yeah, because at the end of the day, those are 320x240 stills.

Imagine if they were 1920x1080.

Good lord, don't play with my heart. Imagining something like the Train Graveyard or Lindblum with backgrounds like this? Wow. Even an effort like Bravely Default's prerendered backgrounds would be good for remakes.

 
It hit when the echo boom was in its late preteens-early teens. It carried very emotional and angsty themes when most of the audience hadn't yet seen enough of it to have developed more discerning tastes on the subject. Basically, it came around when you had a lot of people at the right age for its style.
 
Fun battle systems, entertaining stories, nice atmosphere, addictive secondary elements (materia or enemy skills and leveling them was a pokemon-esque gotta catch' em all for many, chocobos too).
 
FFXII is already outdated and surpassed by a much better RPG. It only seems good with nostalgia goggles on.

I don't know, I played FFXII izjs for the first time not too long ago and quite enjoyed the combat. If RPG's want to modernise it's the direction they need to head IMO.
 
I understand what charm and visceral mean. In the context of describing something, they're largely pointless buzz-words that people use. Saying something has charm is useless. Explaining why something is appealing is not.

Annnnd, I disagree with everything you've just typed. Especially about Kefka. He's a one-dimensional, horrible villain, with horrible dialogue. So boring. Nothing entertaining to me about somebody who wants to kill all humans while spouting lines like:

Son of a sandworm!* You'll pay for this!

or

Hee-hee... Nothing beats the sweet music of hundreds of voices screaming in unison! Uwee-hee-hee!

Did I read Mzo wrong? I'm pretty sure he's agreeing with the people who think FF6's cast is better.

It's not his personality that makes him great. It's the fact that he doesn't flinch. Ever. Not even once. He's determined and makes no mistakes. He succeeds in destroying civilization. You try your best to stop him but that doesn't matter, he wins. He won, in the end.


VI = Mediocre.

IX is good, sure.

XII is shit.

Anyhow, let's be serious now. Most old games that people rave about don't hold up. Ocarina of Time? Crap. Super Mario 64? Crap. Chrono Trigger? Crap.

These games should be judged in the context of their time. That way their impact and significance is more understandable. Revisiting these games a decade after they've released has never been a good experience in my opinion. I've yet to truly enjoy an old game which I didn't play close to when it initially released. They're all mundane.

FF7 was remarkable for its time.

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I completely disagree. All the games you mentioned hold extremely well. They're all games that will still be as enjoyable 100 years from now, if you ask me. And revisiting them was a pleasure. Chrono Trigger is perfect and has aged marvelously. Same for Mario 64 and FFVI. And OoT too, except for the pre-rendered backgrounds which I never liked. They are games that encapsulate and define their respective genres so well that they are guaranteed to be timeless... I should now because I never played any of them when they came out. I played all those games the first time in the last 5 years and after being a serious gamer since 2003 they still surprised and engaged me. FFVII on the other hand was obsolete and outclassed 3 years after it was released. Chrono Trigger is still the best JRPG I've ever played, to this day.
 
It's the perfect game for me and my fave game ever. Of course it doesn't hold up too well today but you can't hold that against it in an ever changing industry and mechanics we are now used to. The music though stands the test of time. My favourite soundtrack ever and I get tingles and great memories from listening to the tracks. Of which are instantly recognisable against the setting or character.

It's probably my favourite battle system too. I love materia. It had great mini games in the Golden Saucer. It had great characters and main villain/s. It's just a fantastic game where nearly no RPG has ever given me so much joy since sadly. It'll always hold a special place in my heart and in gaming.
 
FFXII is already outdated and surpassed by a much better RPG. It only seems good with nostalgia goggles on.

Which is? If it's another RPG outside of the FF series which you are referencing, then I have no time for that opinion - the topic was about which Final Fantasy game is the best.

I'm playing FFXII: IZJS right now in PCSX2 and i'm wrapping up some side quests before beating the final bosses. The game holds up extremely well - fun battle system, mature plot that doesn't insult your intelligence with animu junk and wooden emotional sequences, deep gameplay mechanics (gambits + job system + license boards), massive world full of towns with people who are always evolving with the plot, tons of stuff to do (hunts, side quests, trial mode etc), still looks phenomenal in HD, and the fast forwarding feature corrects some of the monotonous grinding. I struggle to espouse as many incredible features like this for any other FF game.
 
I don't know, I played FFXII izjs for the first time not too long ago and quite enjoyed the combat. If RPG's want to modernise it's the direction they need to head IMO.

He's talking about Xenoblade, which is essentially a spiritual sequel to FFXII but even better.

edit: damn... beaten!
 
It had great mini games in the Golden Saucer.

Everything else in your post is fine and dandy as we're each entitled to our own opinion and obviously this type of thing will affect us in different ways. This, however, I can't let go. The minigames were uter and absolute shit with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Dismal. The single worst thing I've ever experience in any game ever are the FFVII minigames, unless you count QWOP. I doubt there'll ever be anything as atrocious in any AAA game until the end of time.

Oops doublepost. =/
 
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