Final Fantasy 7 remains perhaps the most well known entry in the series. It is a well connected with the Playstation, representing a strong allegiance turn from the first 6 in the series which were Nintendo exclusives to a Sony one. I originally played it in the early 2000s on PC that I borrowed from a friend at school. Since then I played it again on PSX and on PSP via Playstation Classics. This time I played through the Switch port.
Initial Observations
The first impression jumping from Final Fantasy 6 to 7 is that this is a massive leap. There's so much Square put into this it's easy to see why it was so impressive at the time. Perhaps the first most obvious point is the graphics. Looking back it's actually a little surprising that Square jumped so head-long into 3d. Plenty of RPGs at the time making their 32-bit debuts often did so with higher resolution sprites on 3D backdrops. The main benefit you'd get is significantly higher number of sprites which allowed for all sort of effects plus the elements of being able to rotate the environment as expected in 3 dimensions. But not so with Final Fantasy 7, they instead went with 3D models on 2d backdrops. This has a number of it's own advantages. Because 3D is rigged, you can create bespoke animations for anything you want and interchange them with other models without a lot of custom work, and Final Fantasy 7 uses this quite a bit. It's a substantial improvement over the fixed set of sprite animations. However it's also pretty clear that Square was experimenting a bit and perhaps bumping up against limitations. Final Fantasy 7 has a very well-known look with lego style characters whose limbs end in blocky hooves. This is likely to save polygons but it seems overly aggressive even versus some contemporaries. It also creates an interesting bridge between the 2D game sprites which use similarly exaggerated proportions and require a bit of interpretation on the part of the player so perhaps it's not entirely technical. What's also interesting was that they chose to mostly use flat, single color shading with minimal texture mapping. Again this is probably technical, but in many ways this helps the aging process as low resolution textures (at least on the characters) aren't so much of an issue. Interestingly, they use much more detailed and proportionally correct models in battle which is quite similar to how the 2D games worked as well. Though if they could push that amount of polygons it's not super clear why they didn't more of the time, after all the backgrounds are just images. But it seems like resolution was a problem so they slapped a large menu bar at the bottom to reduce the effective resolution. It's interesting being able to notice these things more now.
This leads to the other most striking aspect, the 2D backgrounds. This technique is useful because for the cost of 2 polygons (or 1 with clipping) you can get a rich background that's entirely offline rendered. And the backgrounds are quite rich. Each area is a unique piece of art, sometimes multiple if it's rendered from multiple angles. They even employ layering to allow the models to move between background and foreground convincingly. No doubt this would require a fair bit of artistic tweaking to get right as there are no Z-index issues. However, this technique also has some severe limitations. Firstly, is that background quality is far greater than the foreground. They are rendered with way more polygons, detailed textures and most importantly lighting and shadows. The foreground polygons are lit from a single source and do not cast shadows and because the lack of lighting they stick out with their brightly lit colors. This is sometimes used to the game's advantage to point out things like items and interactable objects, perhaps less intentional but utilized for gameplay non-the-less. The biggest problem though is that the backgrounds can be extremely difficult to read leaving you wandering around trying to move past what might be a wall or maybe ramp or something and you just can't tell what you are doing. And because things like ladders and exits do not have very clear markings like in tile-based games you are left guessing trying to wiggle around and make progress. As a result, the game offers an "assist" visual that shows clear icons above the player and indicates all ladders and exists. I had forgotten about these details until this replay but it turns out that modern-day "visibility mode" and yellow paint problems are much, much older. And for the modern day player the backgrounds also significantly age the game because they cannot be re-rendered without essentially recreating them and therefore are very low resolution especially versus than the foreground which can scale and requires that any port be cropped to 4:3.
But what this combination of techniques allows is a much more cinematic experience. Areas are all positioned at artistic camera angles. Sometimes high-overhead to show more space but sometimes zoomed in and cramped to convey claustrophobic spaces, or low camera angles to make buildings look tall. This is an entirely new set of skills and art direction and partly why the visuals seemed so extra impressive. Even in battle the camera changes angles dynamically with spells and attacks, panning and zooming while keeping things in frame. When you compare that the 32-bit 2D+ style of RPGs it makes them look completely dated. Of course the other notable part, is that they occasionally use full-motion video (FMV). Backgrounds might have flashing lights and other moving objects, or for certain scenes they even start panning and tumbling the camera angle, playing a video under your character which was pretty impressive for the time. And for the scenes that need the utmost impact it switches to pure prerendered video of impossibly (for the time) detailed renderings which would be the sort of thing you'd have seen in all the advertisements. Strangely, when each technique is employed seems haphazard. Sometimes it's just the normal polygon characters over video, sometimes it's video but uses the simplified lego models with better lighting, and sometimes it's highly detailed realistic proportioned models. I couldn't figure out why some where used in some cases but not others. Budget I guess?
The character designs themselves also underwent a huge change. Yoshiaki Amano is not present either in portrait or enemy designs instead replaced with Tetsuya Nomura. While Amano's dreamlike and whimsical style lent itself to the high fantasy setting, Nomura's edgy design make a good fit for the darker futurist look of Final Fantasy 7, especially the slums of Midgar. The enemies also get a lot weirder. It has always been Final Fantasy tradition to have some strange enemies but they usually made sense given the setting and location. Final Fantasy 7 has you fighting toy houses in Midgar and Matryoshka dolls out in the field of a world that is otherwise trying to seem realistic. Still a lot of effort seemed to be spend modeling and animating the huge roster of baddies. In the 2d games these were static sprites that just flashed to attack but now each enemy has idle animations and unique animations for each of their attacks. They even somewhat convincingly look like they hit characters rather than swing at the air.
The soundtrack is also much improved. It's still MIDI but it's using what would be a modern recorded synth and unencumbered by the actual hardware capabilities. Final Fantasy 7 has a very memorable soundtrack. Peaceful towns and upbeat battles and at least the first time I remember hearing vocal music in a game, the Latin choir of One Winged Angel. Sound effects themselves did not see quite the same jump. They are reminiscent of the digital noise sound effects used on SNES which take a bit of imagination but just slightly higher quality.
On the gameplay side there are big changes too. Characters no longer take a specific job. While the remnants of the old job system can be seen in some characters like Tifa (monk) and Yuffie (ninja) in actual gameplay these distinctions are mostly cosmetic with the materia a character holds making up their overall class, which give a much wider range than Final Fantasy 6's static classes. You can pretty easily change any character to a healer or attacker or mage or even all 3 at the same time. The game is very easy and stats aren't super important so you don't even specifically have to grow them that way, just equip them. Weapons are now individualized, while armor can be equipped to anyone, each character has their own weapon progression and there are no longer distinctions in types of weapons either, aside from maybe short versus long-range. The biggest point of individualization though is the Limit Break. This new system allows characters to perform one powerful move once they've taken a few big hits. These are essentially a embellishment of the very rare desperation moves found in Final Fantasy 6 but are more formally integrated into normal gameplay. Mostly they are just big attacks, but some do things like healing and they have very flashy animations.
The materia system is very flexible. Most of the regular spells hit single targets. In order to group cast you need to pair them with a second support materia, "all." There are other support materia that set the specific status ailment or element to weapons and armor. Classes come in the way of yellow command materia and there's a fairly large range of these to do things like throw, steal, or manipulate. There are also purple materia which bestow stat buffs or other passive stuff, and red summon materia. While summoning in previous games were just spells of a slightly different type and often weaker than their magic counterparts, Final Fantasy 7 gives them a very big promotion. The MP cost is high and you're limited in the number of casts but they do damage far beyond typical magic, and inline with limit breaks. They also have highly detailed and over-the-top animations. This is a welcome improvement but it also means the late game gets very heavy with them whereas normal magic and attacks become almost unnecessary. Materia can also level up to unlock new magic or give you multiple castings. Since materia is usually a rare find and most good materia cannot be purchased this creates more incentive to search the landscape as some of the abilities can make a very big difference. With the right materia you are unstoppable.
Eco-terrorism with aunt Tifa
Using my memory of the game I thought the Migar segment was much longer but it only clocked in around 4 hours total on the in game clock. The initial opening is pretty impressive and shows off a lot of the new cinematic tech they developed as well as the more mature plotlines and dialog perhaps to target the slightly older audience that child fans of the series had become. It feels more young adult than the previous games though Final Fantasy 7 is still silly sometimes. The first couple chapters set up some context for the Midgar dystopia but gameplay wise are uninteresting as you traverse two identical reactors. Then you have a memorable scene falling through the roof of the church and meeting Aeris. Although I found the plot starting to get weird and video-gamey really quick. At the Wall Market there's a sequence which is both somewhat mature in content (prostitution and rape) but also completely ridiculous (and probably the focus of a hundred gender analysis papers). Immediately after we get to Shinra trying to drop the roof of sector 7 and kill everyone. It's utterly ridiculous. Even if you use your imagination to fill in many other unseen AVALANCHE operatives (who did not blow up reactors) it's unclear why they would spend billions to commit mass murder instead of just sending some police in. It's somewhat addressed in the board room scene where they say they simply don't need sector 7 and will just move on to Neo Midgar but that's just sloppy. Fighting your way up Shinra HQ is also silly. I tried going in the front door this time and that was a good choice because it's a bit quicker and the difficulty is super easy. What are those guards behind the statues guarding anyway? Why does nobody else care a bunch of people stormed the building? But maybe most importantly they setup Sephiroth but don't really explain his motivation at all. After the highway chase Cloud say they will "settle the score" but it's not clear at all what he's talking about. There are some little puzzles in Shinra tower too. Nothing too interesting but also not too annoying either. Of the initial chapters I'd say Shinra tower is probably my favorite.
Chekhov's really big gun
The first thing after getting free of the slums is going to Kalm to watch some flashbacks of Cloud, Tifa and Sephiroth in Nimbelhiem. I liked how these were done with the party asking you questions as you do things in the flashback ("did you go in my house?"). It also gives you a couple battle scenes with Sephiroth to show off how much of a badass he is compared to Cloud. You then get fed that missing piece of Sephiroth's motivation which is revenge for being created from Jenova and he murders a bunch of people in town. This is fine to explain Cloud and Tifa but doesn't really explain why everyone else in the party would tag along, it's not like they cared about a few murdered Shinra execs. There's a progress gate to learn how to catch a Chocobo and then you move on to Junon and Fort Condor. Fort Condor is a boring strategy minigame you don't have the funds to play at this point. What I forgot about Junon is how it is also plagued by awful minigames. The CPR and dolphin jump are the worst because they have no real feedback. You just keep trying until you succeed. The final part of this section is the boat ride. Apparently Sephiroth was onboard along but was just chilling for a while, but it also turns out he can just fly and warp through walls and doesn't actually interact like a normal person so all the tips about a "man in a black cape" don't make sense, plus he's like a celebrity murderer, everyone should know who he is. In any case, Jenova serves as a slight difficulty bump to check you.
Saucy lads
This part feels like filler. The team is chasing Sephiroth but always one step behind. Nothing but map traversal and random battles for a while. There's some back story for Barett but it doesn't make sense. The people blame him for ruining the village but in the flash back everyone was on board with Shinra putting in the Mako reactor except Dyne (who is ironically pro-fossil fuel). Dyne then goes on a killing spree in the Gold Saucer despite being locked in the prison camp at the base with no way out except a guarded elevator. The Gold Saucer is also probably the most iconic place of Final Fantasy 7 except maybe Midgar. It's clearly supposed to be a visual showcase using lots of flashy backgrounds and it must have been difficult to get the text legible at 480 interlaced. Things here cost a special currency called GP which you gain by playing minigames that are boring. At least they don't force you to. In fact the only mandatory part is a Chocobo race which is actually decent and I can't help but feel it was the inspiration for Chao racing in Sonic Adventure 2.
I'm Nanaki, Jerry!
After the Gold Saucer you get the rover which can cross streams. At this point you can also recruit Yuffie. The process is a little weird because it's a bit trial and error with you needing to choose certain dialog options and not use the save point. I forgot a bit of the sequence and had to encounter her a few times. The next stop is Cosmo Canyon. This is a sprawling town area but there's really no point to most of it. The primary use is exposition about the planet and serves as Red XIII's character building moment. I remembered this sequence being long, but it's not quite as bad as I remember. You then continue on the Nimbelheim, the town in the flash back that Tifa and Cloud are from. Here a few more pieces come together. Firstly, it was previously alluded the the "man in a black cape" is Sephiroth, but it might actually be the other experiments who also wear black cloaks because that makes more sense, but I'm not sure if that was the intent. In any case, you finally get to see them wandering around here. It turns out the Cloud wasn't really reliable when he explained his past. Even though I know what comes later with this, I'm still missing enough detail in my memory that it's somewhat mysterious. You also get to talk to Sephiroth again in the mansion basement and he's going to some "reunion." That trek to the basement really just feels there to waste your time. You can also find Vincent down there if you solve a puzzle and fight a boss. The boss is actually a bit harder than ones so far but Aries' seal evil works on many bosses including this one so you can just freeze it in place and easily win.
Is that a Rocket or are you happy to see me?
The trek beyond Nimbleheim is also a slog if you are trying to grab items and materia because it involves long, winding areas. Eventually you end at Rocket Town and meet Cid. Cid is verbally abusive to his assistant/live-in-girlfriend to an extent that he's not really likable. The game tries to rationalize some of it with the complexity of him losing his big chance but he just comes off as an asshole. Not really party character material. The next few scenes get a bit silly as you fight a joke boss and crash into the sea with the plane which becomes a makeshift boat that you can use to get around. Navigating like this I found to be difficult. The map isn't detailed enough to plot a course, so you just hug the shore and try to probe your way the direction you want to go and it's a bit frustrating.
Wutai opens up as an optional area and not remembering where I was supposed to go I wound up there. This sequence is pretty long and you're trapped until you finish it. It's very hard to read some of the backgrounds so I struggled a bit going back and forth trying to figure out the progression. It's still a fun sequence otherwise, especially meeting the Turks on break and giving them a little spotlight beyond just being jobbers.
Eventually you figure out you need a keystone that Dio of the Gold Saucer has. You're forced to fight in the arena but you don't actually have to win. Depending on some past decisions you get to go on a date. This is another one of the memorable sequences because it adds a little bit of a dating sim element and is one of the few things that can change on replays. I actually thought this was longer but it's just 2 scenes. First, is a play where you for some reason have to be in the cast. It doesn't make sense but I'm guessing the opera scene in Final Fantasy 6 was well received and they wanted to put something like that in. It's not as good. Then there's a more cute gondola ride with some FMV fireworks. At the end you chase Cait Sith who gives the keystone to Shinra. This whole plotline is also a bit weird and forced. It's insinuated that he has Marlene and Aries' mother hostage so you just go along like nothing happened and it doesn't feel like it would work with the characters' convictions.
Ancients et Cetra
After all that, it appears none of it mattered because when you get to the Temple of the Ancients an injured Tseng just gives the keystone back to you. The temple is one of the better dungeons with some exploration and a few puzzle sequences. I don't know if I just misread but the black cloaked experiments are actually the purple guys here? You see Sephiroth again who tells you his real plan: injure the planet and by standing in the wound he'll absorb the lifestream and become a god.
Caith Sith redeems himself by sacrificing his toy body to get the Black Materia but Sephiroth takes control of Cloud and immediately steals it and Aeries leaves the party for the final time. It's never really made clear how she got to the city of the ancients but considering it's a hard trek for the whole party it doesn't seem to make sense. There's another obligatory minigame of digging for treasure that's thankfully pretty easy. And you can get into the city of the ancients.
Artistically this is one of the stand out areas. It looks like a seabed civilization on land. It's entirely empty though so it's a lot of screen by screen exploration for materia and items with nothing interesting about it. I guess you're supposed to vibe for a bit. At the center your find Aeris and the big scene we she gets shanked by Sephiroth and that finishes out disc 1.
In my memory I really thought the discs were shorter than that, that Midgar ended disc 1 and Aeris' death ended disc two. Disc 1 is a mostly linear affair of walking from town to town dungeon to dungeon. It's a world tour basically. It doesn't really feel like much happens though until the very end though.
Ice fishing for Red Herrings
Starting Disc 2 you head up north to a snowy area. There's a town here to stock up, and you need to get a snowboard that a kid conveniently lets you have. One thing that always stuck out to me in past playthroughs was that the shop has the weapon "Organics" which I thought was a weird name for a sword because it's didn't do anything organic. Later I realized it's a mistranslation of "Ogre Nix" a re-occurring weapon in the series. Once you got the snowboard you're forced to play another mostly unfun (but bigger) mini game. Depending on the path you wind up in a different location and need to use landmarks to get to your destination. Then the screen starts rotating in a snow storm so you need to plant flags to orient yourself to keep moving forward. At the end is a rest spot and another dungeon.
The icicle cave is another pretty looking area. There's some very minor puzzles that are solved by linear progression. There's also a mechanic where you need to warm yourself up before climbing cliffs. I have never, ever failed this so I don't know what the point is. It's also weird that the icicles attack your though and they are one of the harder hitting enemies! The boss of the cave is actually pretty tough. Maybe I was just running underleveled at this point but I was also forgetting to buy tents and rest at inns, just going straight through because I didn't feel the difficulty. He has a lot of health and some strong magic attacks but by this time you are given enough equipment and materia to create builds that absorb at least half of them. So I died and tried again better equipped but it was still a struggle. I was left with just Tifa standing, who absorbed ice, constantly attacking the remaining ice head making it basically a guaranteed win.
There's yet another dungeon immediately after. This has you going through the crater watching the remnants of the clones die off and a mechanic where you have to run through windy barriers with specific timing. When you reach Sephiroth you get the "truth" about Cloud and every time I feel like it doesn't make sense.
According to Sephiroth, Cloud is actually a Sepiroth clone but a failure with no number and never went to Nimbelhiem that day, he just had those memories implanted. What's confusing is Tifa knew he wasn't there in Nimbelhiem and that he wasn't making sense when he talked about the past and just rolled with it. And finally it's revealed that Sephiroth died 5 years ago and that we've been following Jenova DEATH as controlled by Sephiroth. But minutes later, actually, Sephiroth is alive! Just buried in a mountain of mako in the North Pole somehow? It's hard to follow. Cloud gives him the Black materia and has an "off screen death."
Materia so fat it plays pool with the planets
The next part I found to be one of the more enjoyable. Up until now you have to have Cloud in the party and because there's only 3 slots this doesn't give you a lot of room to experiment. Since Cloud is gone you are required to use some characters you didn't before. The game should have had more of these sequences or like Final Fantasy 6 have separate parties for some sequences.
The party is to be executed in Junon but Cait Sith helps Barret escape (you fight with Barret before his handcuffs are taken off...). Tifa gets put in a gas chamber and while she says she can't hold her breath forever that's clearly the case. I'm not sure why they didn't add a timer here, since there's plenty of other countdown sequences in the game. The enemies are easy to accommodate the fact that you probably didn't level up certain characters. There's also more cool cutscenes where you get to see the big immovable cannon blow off the head of the weapon who was so fortunately standing directly in front of it. Then Tifa is rescued and you get the airship.
You aren't given a lot of clues for what to do next but there's also only one town you haven't been to because it's only accessible from the airship. Cloud wound up there and Tifa decides to stay with him. This means of my 3 main party members Cloud, Tifa and Aeris all of them are now gone. The game is still easy to help accommodate and the rest have been auto-leveling at certain points at least.
You find out about the big materia and so you have to find them. The first Big Materia is in Corel and you have to fight a sequence of enemies in a time limit. The second is in Fort Condor. You are forced to play the stupid minigame and it turns out if you played it earlier none of it mattered. I didn't get it or care but all that matters is fighting the boss at the end whether you win or lose. After the getting those two, Cloud wakes up and you finally get the missing puzzle pieces.
Cloud is actually a real person. In Nimbelhiem Cloud was there with Sephiroth, he was just a generic soldier (not caps-lock SOLDIER) and too embarrassed to say anything. He also gets mad and kills Sephiroth. Still doesn't explain why Tifa just made stuff up or how Sephiroth's body made its way to the North Pole. Nobody remembers poor Zack. And I guess Sephiroth lied just because he's mad at being stabbed otherwise what was the point? The plot is still a mess.
Afterward you go get a big materia in the Junon underwater reactor fulfilling the promise that up until now all odd numbered Final Fantasies feature a submarine. This is a pretty cool underwater location. The end is also probably one of the worst minigames in a game full of bad minigames where you need to awkwardly pilot a submarine by by setting speed in 3 dimensions with momentum. I didn't really grasp what was going on and failed. On the one hand, you don't need to succeed, it's just a shortcut but it also screws up getting the big materia. You need the blue one for Bahamut ZERO which usually entails succeeding all of the missions. You also have the option of digging it up in bone village, but I couldn't be arsed because it's random and a time waste. What was new to me having never failed it before was that you now get the submarine by going through Junon again, but you get the red submarine instead of the gray one. Neat.
The final big materia is in Rocket Town. When you get there the rocket is all setup and ready to go so you force your way on with Cid. This pays off the whole Rocket Town saga and is a memorable highlight. You have another big materia challenge to open the cage with the materia before the rocket hits meteor by figuring out a passcode while Cid giving you hints. I was able to successfully do this without looking it up, and I must say the sequence is pleasantly stressful.
Back to Midgar
Some more globe trotting busy work. Go to Cosmo Canyon, then the Ancient City, then underwater. Past here pretty much all side-quests are open. Finally a weapon attacks Midgar and this part to me is really where the "end" of the game starts. Rufus takes the Junon canon and bolts it on to Midgar. It looks cool but it's also really silly how fast he was able to do that. Like that's some amazing engineering. The diamond weapon gets the last laugh and gets a lucky shot on Rufus' command center killing him. You parachute into Midgar and the sequence is a nice throw back to the opening infiltration. This area is very hard to navigate, and the following area gives you the option to go through about 10 identical sections of train track of get an important materia. Well it was important in previous playthroughs because it can duplicate items but I didn't even know if it worked in the Switch version and I didn't bother. The final couple of bosses of Hojo and Proud Clod are push overs at this point. You learn one last tidbit that Hojo is actually Sephiroth's father and he's not a Jenova clone and after beating him the final dungeon opens up with disc 3 which is all sidequests and the final boss.
Chocobo Breeding (give it a different "Nut")
The biggest thing to work up to in disc 3 is the 2 weapon super bosses but before that there's a lot of busy work. This is also where I started breeding Chocobos. It's a very time consuming process and you really need a guide because the in-game resources are not sufficient. You got to catch certain types of Chocobos which only appear randomly at certain tracks. Then you make a breeding pair, race them and mate them with a nut item. Very opaque and getting the right combinations requires manual resets for gender and color otherwise you're just wasting time. The rewards for it are good though. The best materia in the game are locked behind these chocobos. But it's a long term project because you need to cool down and battle between breeding sessions (and it costs a lot of money to get the greens). I had a few errands to do inbetween segments of racing and breeding like going down to the underwater crashed helicopter to get the good items and collecting my party's best weapons and limit breaks. Once you get these you're pretty much unstoppable. The game was easy before, now you're just one-shotting just about everything. Cloud's Omnislash has to come later because I needed to level up the double cut materia. This allows you to attack 4 times and with his ultimate weapon that's about 20K damage and it hits across multiple enemies which is useful for Battle Square. Doing Battle Square requires a bit of setup because the handicaps are pretty nasty but once you find a good one you can win most of the time otherwise getting 32K points would take forever and you're not allowed to leave.
Late game leveling happens in the final dungeon near the final room. There's one area with enemies that give orders of magnitude higher AP than anywhere else. Unfortunately most of them need elixirs. This would be where I use the W-Item duplication glitch, but I did legit this time so I only had about 16 on hand and they aren't easy to farm either. After a few spelunking sessions to level up materia and finally getting the gold chocobo, I got omnislash and Knights of the Round which trivialize even the final boss. Knights of the Round is just so absurd, not just the damage but how long the animation takes. It's cool the first time but they need to implement a skip animation. With these in hand though you can beat the Ruby and Emerald weapon.
Rough Gems
Despite having lots of overpowered options, these fights are designed basically as puzzles and you need highly specific setups. There's really only 2 I know which is to get lucky 7s and hope you get luck with the back half or HP absorb + Knight of the Round, Counter+ Mime. The Ruby weapon is invincible until it kills 2 party members and if you revive them it'll just insta-kill them again. So using the materia combo you cast Knights of the Round, regain your HP and then use mime to cast it again for free, while you counter every attack with the same combo. It's still very possible to lose because it counters with ultima and you generally cannot take 2 attacks in the same turn, so if you're unlucky enough he attacks twice and you don't dodge that's a few minutes down the drain. But otherwise it's auto-pilot. Same for emerald. I usually use lucky 7s but I tried the knights of the round combo instead. It's mostly the same though if your other characters are well equipped you can make it go faster because they don't insta-die. Still, you cannot have more than 9 materia (and probably less than that) equipped or you will 100% die from Aire Tam Storm which is sometime used as a counter-attack. Here I needed a little extra oomph from another character because I was getting unlucky. And thank God for 3x speed because I'm sure between the two that's like an hour of watching the knights of the round animation.
After all that the end is anti-climatic. Jenova died in one limit break, the first part of the final boss introduces a party switch mechanic but since I didn't level anyone else up I just killed it with one party and Knights of the Round. The final Sephiroth basically held out enough to finish the intro of one-winged angel before dying to normal attacks.
The ending movie is a treat that I guess took up most of the disc. Though it's odd they use subtitles. Like if they were spending all this on render cut-scenes couldn't they have hired someone to voice 6 or 7 lines? Maybe it's for the better considering the quality of voice acting at the time.
Story Thoughts
Honestly the plot doesn't really work. There's so much focus on the events of Nimbelhiem which is framed like unraveling a mystery but it's really not. Rather, because all the narrators contradict each-other, it's basically the final person to talk wins. Also, in the early game no one's motivation is really revealed making it confusing, and even once they are it feels hand-wavy. The player just accepts that good guys do good guy things and bad guys do bad guy things. Why does Tifa accept Cloud's original version of events? Why does Sephiroth lie to Cloud about what happened? If Cloud is not actually a clone why can Sephiroth control him? Maybe I missed the answer somewhere? And also none of it really matters to the current situation of Sephiroth wanting to kill everything with meteor. Even if they just met yesterday it would be fine to expect Cloud to want to fight him. That's also another thing. In later media especially Sephiroth and Cloud are depicted like rivals. This is not at all how they behave in the game. Cloud to Sephiroth is a nobody NPC who got a lucky shot in and can be controlled like a useful idiot. He does not really have perceivable beef with him and Cloud is never on equal terms. In fact versus other Final Fantasy villains who obtain power Sephiroth actually fails. He's beaten at his lowest point, recovering from a fatal injury before his plan to gain ultimate power works. The rest of the party just seems along for the ride and stops developing after a while.
Port Thoughts
The switch port is super bare bones. It's a PC port (which has a few quirks like digital movement) with the polygonal elements rendering at 1080p but the background use simple scaling and lot very rough. The only features are 3x speed (which doesn't work all the time), no battle toggle and a cheat-code mode that heals you and charges your limit breaks. The 3x mode is super handy though. Versus the previous games animations and movement speed are very slow and the game loves to waste your time traversing areas full of fodder enemies that are too easy.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately Final Fantasy 7 is still a good game. I had a lot of fun and I still remember a lot. Though I'd say it didn't age too well. There's so many rough things that I'm sure would bother a modern player because they bother me. However, coming from playing 1-6 you can absolutely see what an achievement it was and how much they had to learn and invent to make it work. That probably gave me more appreciation than I had before (I played it first after Final Fantasy 8) for the sheer enormity of the project compared to what Square had been doing. I think it's a little too easy, parts of the graphics aged terribly but some like battle animations actually look really good even today. The plot seems to have a lot of holes, Crisis Core (haven't played) probably has to do a lot of work to make those pieces fit. I can't imagine how boring the end game must have been before the international version added the Ruby and Emerald weapons. But it also appeals to more modern (at least at the time) tastes. It was edgier and darker than the SNES games which went with the image that Playstation was trying to create. And outside of super bosses it's not demanding that you utilize the systems to their fullest or do a lot of grinding making it very approachable. Throw in some glitzy CG that was approaching what you might have seen in a movie. Gamers know better now that FMV is trash but it was pretty wild at the time and made for good advertising. And there was absolutely a solid foundation under it, for all the bad minigames the core explore and battle loop is really good and feels good most of the time and there are some genuinely good scenes and fun characters. It's no wonder why it had the impact it had.
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