5/5 ★ – TheLastWord's review of Final Fantasy VII.

40 Hours Main story completed and a lot of side stuff. Not everything though as I still have yet to do Chocobo breeding or fight Ruby and Emerald Weapon, those I may do in the coming weeks just to wrap everything up. Final Fantasy was not a franchise I grew up with, I was always kind of aware of these games, but didn’t know much else. What made me play FF7 for the first time was when Cloud was announced for Super Smash Bros. For Wii U and 3DS and everyone was extremely hyped, but I had barely even known what Final Fantasy was. I knew of Cloud, but didn’t fully grasp why people were so excited. Prior to that, I remember people losing their minds over the FF7 Remake announcement that same year. So, I knew after both those things that I didn’t wanna miss out on the hype again when Remake would eventually come out. When I first played FF7 through the PlayStation 1 version, I fell in love with it through the characters and the world, and and it became one of my all-time favorites, but I did feel in retrospect that I didn’t experience much of the side stuff or really get that involved in making character builds, as I went mostly blind. I also felt completely taken aback by the pre-rendered backgrounds, and my 14-year-old self was commonly confused by traversal in many areas. It was the main thing that made the game feel “dated” to me since I never grew up with it. Years later after playing the Remake in 2020, FFXVI in 2023, and finishing Rebirth a few months ago, I was really on a kick to just play through the original again. After beating it again, I love this game even more than I did before. I found myself not struggling with the pre-rendered traversal as much 9 years in the future, likely due to the added experience from before, and I truly think it’s one of my the best stories ever told in video games. What makes FFVII so incredible and timeless is the characters, the world, and the sheer scale. So many characters are just so incredibly interesting and iconic. Not a single party member goes unnoticed, there’s a place for every single one of them. Cloud has become one of my favorite characters ever because of his journey of self acceptance. It’s easy to like Cloud for how cool he is, but Cloud’s arc throughout this entire game is riveting and so unique for a video game protagonist. Cloud represents what the FF7 party is as a whole: a bunch of people who have accomplished very little despite trying so hard. I’m not saying they’re incompetent people that need to learn to take things seriously and use their “potential,” they’re people that have worked their hardest and don’t have much to show for it. Things just haven’t gone right for any of them. What helps with the scale of this game is the world. The first 6-8 hours of the game in Midgar feel like a massive journey on its own, but then you’re opened up to the 30+ hours that take place outside of this massive city. I think Midgar is one of the most expansive and interesting places in a video game and you barely get to spend any time there. You could base an entire game around just that city (which Remake kinda did). There are not many games released in general, let alone in the modern day, that feel as monumental as the journey you go on in this game. The game features a battle system that still holds up super well, side content that feels like it’s worth exploring, and a jaw-dropping climax. That’s not even to mention Sephiroth as one of the greatest villains in video games, a colossal part of why you want Cloud and the party to succeed. The final cutscene before the credits and the post-credit scene are the perfect way to wrap up a game of this kind of proportions.