Retro Achievements Unmastered 2 - Final Fantasy 7

So I’ve been doing all the sets for each of the Final Fantasy games, but I’ve been dreading FF7. Not because of the game. I’d never beaten it and have wanted to replay it for years. No, its cause the RA set is actually just bad. It’s a bad set. I try not to use words like that for volunteer work, but there’s a reason I did not master this game, and never will.

But I DID still play it, and thats what matters, so let’s talk about Final Fantasy 7. This review WILL talk about spoilers to one of the most popular games of all time, which you’ve probably played. You’ve been warned.

Final Fantasy 7 is the 7th FF game, obviously, unless you ignore those ones that don’t count, AND if you ignore the fact that it’s actually the fourth that came out here. Ohhh to be a Final Fantasy fan back then. Either way, this is the Big One. The series was popular before this, but this was THE big one. It was fucking MASSIVE. It still IS massive. There’s a reason Squeenix lit a billion dollars on fire to make a sequel, it’s cause it’s extremely beloved. Maybe the most beloved game I’ve ever even attempted to review. Other games have more rabid fan bases, but maybe none as rabid and LARGE. What are my thoughts on it? Well, we’ll see…

In FF7, you play as Cloud, a soldier and ex-SOLDIER. SOLDIER are like, a super soldier squad for Shinra, a mega corporation that basically rules the world. Unlike every Final Fantasy game before it, which were all high fantasy, FF7 is cyber punk-ish. It’s grungy, dark, and rusty. The game starts in Midgar, a megacity with shitty slums and violent megacorporations. It’s a significant departure. Cloud has been hired by Avalanche, an eco terrorist cell. Like, literal eco terrorists. Its leader, Barret, has hired you to blow up a reactor, because that reactor runs on Mako, which is the life force of the planet. Yes, this game has a VERY heavy environmental theme. A thing I feel very strongly about, personally.

The environmental message is strong, but it feels a bit mealy mouthed in parts. In the end, Barret realizes that blowing up that reactor was WRONG, because uh, violence solves nothing. Anyways Cloud let’s go kill this guy, Sephiroth. It could be a stronger message, tbh.

Let’s talk Sephiroth. Sephiroth is the “villain” of the game. Kind of. He’s an ex-SOLDIER too, the best of the best, but he disappeared a few years ago when he and Cloud went on a mission to Cloud’s home town. In truth, Cloud fought him, but barely remembers anything of it, because his memory is spotty. His friend Tifa was there too, but she’s cagey about the whole thing. But see, the thing is, Sephiroth is not really the villain of this game. We basically see Sephiroth one time in the whole game, in the flashback where we see him go insane and kill Cloud’s home town. Then he’s killed and thrown to his death. Every other Sephiroth we see is a meat virus called Jenovah masquerading as him, or some clones of him that are broken and unfinished. The REAL villain of this game is either Jenovah, who’s a barely sentient alien virus, or Hojo, who’s the kind of mad scientist dumbass who thinks that a human-like species and a dog should fuck, or that the next stage of human evolution is A Pile Of Meat.

Honestly? I don’t like Sephiroth. I find him boring. And that’s ignoring the fact we barely see him, even if we consider ALL Sephiroths we see as Sephiroth, as one unified Will, he’s not interesting. He’s a muahaha I will take over the world villain in a very boring way. He’s not as austentatious as Ex-Death, nor as fun as Kefka. He’s taken as this serious cool badass bishonen and then he does silly stupid stuff, but it doesn’t hit like Kefka’s silly stupid stuff, because you don’t think it’s SUPPOSED to be silly and stupid. But it is. I genuinely do not get why people fell in love with him so much. Like, I do, he looks

The best part about Sephiroth is the stuff AROUND him more than him. And by that I mean his connections to Cloud. See, Cloud isn’t who he thinks he is. The entire game, lies are CONSTANTLY being fed to you, both by Cloud’s own fallible memories, tampered by drugs and experiments, and by ‘Sephiroth’ planting lies in his head and manipulating him through their Jenovah connection, cause Cloud has Jenovah cells in him.

Though that’s an important thing about Final Fantasy 7. Those cool moments with Cloud being unsure who he is, and of the game lying to you? It’s hard to follow, because of just the NATURE of that, and also the game kind of being poorly written/translated in parts. It can be VERY hard to follow what’s going on, you basically need someone reading a wiki page, and that wiki page is using information from future FF7 games to explain what the fuck is going on. It’s hard to follow to a fault. And the translation is pretty infamously rough. THey did their best. It was one dude’s work, and he was no Ted Woolsey. But This Guy ARE Sick. Also the r-slur is used, which is fucking terrible.

How is the gameplay? It’s good! It’s typical Final Fantasy, though with a few twists. All your characters are KIND of blank slates. The way it works is, they’re kind of blank slates with unique limit breaks and weapons, but they can be augmented with Materia, which is solified Mako that grants magic. It’s an evolution of FF6’s Esper system, and it’s done MOSTLY well, but by the end I found it very unwieldly. If you want to use it effectively, it takes a LOT of AP grinding. If you don’t want to grind, you can’t use it very well, or at all. And you don’t NEED to? But it makes it WAY easier.

You may be thinking I’ve been very harsh on this game. And I have been. I actually like it quite a bit, and there’s a lot to like. I like all of the characters. Cait Sith and Yuffie fall a bit more flat to me, and Red XIII feels so poorly utilized, his ONE major plot point is the worst part of the game. Bugenhagen lied to Red XIII about his dad for years, AS A JOKE. But the rest of them are great. Ilike Cloud, he’s SO different form how people pretend he is. They pretend he’s a stoic badass emo boy. No, that’s Squall. Cloud is a massive dork who loves his friends. Barret is cool as hell. Aerith is cute AND a horrible Goblin, which I appreciate. Cid can be awful but in a way I kinda love. And of course Tifa is perfect, and my wife.

The thing about the story and characters is that they are good, but there are a lot of lulls. The start of the game is by FAR the best part. The first like 6-7 hours are Midgar, and those are very, VERY good. Once you get out of Midgar the game slooooowly slumps, and it never really improves. All the fun scenes and interesting story are replaced for a while by weird gimmick mini games, which this game fucking LOVES, and they are VERY bad for pacing and vibes.

The most famous scene of the entire game, a major character death, is IMMEDIATELY followed up by Cloud doing a fucking snowboarding mini game segment, which is SUCH a tonal whiplash. Like, what the fuck.

A lot of this game astounded me, because I had no idea why they designed things they way they designed. As I delved deeper, into specific mechanics and bonus content, I was ASTOUNDED by how weird all of it was. Why did they build it this way? As a joke? Like for example, the end game dungeon. You split up your party, and who you send where determines what items they find. But some characters can’t find some items, so there’s an optimal way to send them, and you can ALSO circle back to get their items, doublign items. Why? There’s a LOT of stuff like that, where there’s an optimal way to do things, and you need to look them up cause they are NEVER explained and hard to figure out.

In all, I like FF7, but it’s nowhere near the perfect experience people make it out to be. That’s why I was optimistic about FF7 Remake. This story, and its characters, could be cool with a bit more of a modern retooling, and I think the remake fixed a lot of the issues. But I honestly HATE FF7R’s gameplay, and its pacing has some issues. But thats a story for another day.

In the end, I’ve played FF1-3, and 5-7 all the way through semi-recently. I skipped 4 because I don’t like it and the set was pissing me off, I’ll get back to it soon, I promise. But of those, I’d say FF7 is… 4th place. Behind FF6, 5, and 3. Yes, I liked 3 more, honestly. Depends on the day, prolly, but TODAY I like 3 more.

Still a good game. Please don’t kill me.