Final Fantasy VII (PS1)

Note: This review contains spoilers for Final Fantasy VII.

As I mentioned in my review of Final Fantasy VII Remake, I’ve had an interesting history with Final Fantasy VII in that I went through more of Compilation of Final Fantasy VII before the actual game. While I thought I could experience the story through Remake, the ending finally gave me the motivation to play through the original game, which I accomplished with my PS1 copy. At this point, I can appreciate what Final Fantasy VII did and why it’s still celebrated today, but as someone who wasn’t there when it first launched, as I was only four years old, there are some flaws I couldn’t overlook.

Cloud Strife, a mercenary and former SOLDIER, joins the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE in opposing his former employer, the Shinra Electric Power Company, and its efforts to use mako, the life essence of the planet, to power the city of Midgar. During their crusade, they uncover many of the company’s secrets, including a plot to kidnap Aerith Gainsborough, a young woman believed to be the last of the Ancients. However, the tide changes with the reappearance of Sephiroth, a legendary SOLDIER who was presumed dead five years ago. Sensing the danger Sephiroth poses to the planet, and in need of answers to long-forgotten questions, Cloud leads AVALANCHE in pursuit of Sephiroth across the globe with Shinra on their trail.

Cloud Strife travels the world in pursuit of Sephiroth.

I’m fully aware that by this point in time, many story elements that Final Fantasy VII more or less pioneered, including amnesiac characters, deconstructions of RPG tropes and characters who turn out to be entirely different than how they first appear, have been widely used by other games to the point where this game can seem cliché. However, looking at it now, I still appreciated what Final Fantasy VII did with its story and focused more on how well these elements were used.

Despite taking up three discs, the story moves at a generally good pace and there was a clear understanding of the most dramatic points to separate each disc. It helps that, although there is a serious story with an underlying environmental message, there’s an inherent silliness that the game knows how to exploit. This creates a good balance of serious and comedic moments backed by great timing, knowing when to take a load off and when to deliver an emotional punch to the player. On that note, the story does a great job of building up to specific moments and twists that recontextualize everything the player has seen up until that point. Aerith’s death scene, in particular, still felt powerful in context and the revelation of Cloud’s true identity made complete sense and had a great presentation that took full advantage of the medium.

I also liked the diversity in the cast, especially in their backstories, since it gave a real feeling of a ragtag group of people whose goals end up aligning one way or the other in the search for Sephiroth. Each one also has their own story arc that gets a moment in the spotlight so as to give them a meaningful resolution. Although some of the characterizations feel a little iffy now, I appreciate that the writing is pretty consistent and there aren’t too many out of character moments to speak of.

That said, I took notes throughout my playthrough on things that bothered me. Despite each character getting their time to shine, two of them, Yuffie and Vincent, are optional, easily missable characters. Yuffie requires you to randomly find her in forests (some of which have a higher probability than others) and Vincent requires completing a sidequest. Both of them are powerful characters in their own right and worth seeking out, but not getting Yuffie blocks you out of an entire questline and Vincent’s backstory as a former Turk ties in so well with the main story of the game that it’s criminal for him to get his resolution in even more optional content. Getting his full backstory requires you to find a specific location on the world map and his resolution is locked behind having him in your party during a boss battle near the end of Disc 2. With this in mind, the idea that they would be non-optional in future installments of Remake takes away some of the sting.

I also noticed that the amount of story content decreased with each disc. Disc 1 by itself contains at least half the story, while Disc 2 covers less ground and Disc 3 is literally just the final dungeon and bosses. While new side content does make up a good amount of Disc 2, the lower amount of main story is still noticeable.

Disc 3 has considerably less story than Discs 1 and 2.

The only plot point I had any issue with was the Huge Materia subplot, in which AVALANCHE sabotage Shinra’s attempts at destroying Meteor with a rocket and then are disappointed the rocket plan failed. To be fair, there are plenty of reasons to oppose Shinra’s use of the Huge Materia that are perfectly understandable, like how they contain the wisdom of the Ancients. However, the game could’ve handled the execution of this opposition better since, as it stands, it almost feels like a waste of several hours outside of getting the Bahamut ZERO Materia (provided you didn’t screw up any of the missions).

Then there’s the ending. After finally defeating Sephiroth, I felt satisfied by the final cutscenes and found the successful casting of Holy to combat Meteor powerful, especially the final shot. However, the post-credits sequence, while presenting a hopeful future, still felt ambiguous and open-ended. It shows that the planet has healed after 500 years and Red XIII is able to continue his species, but everyone else’s fate is up in the air and the final screen is an endless field of stars. Without any previous emotional ties to it, I’m wondering if this ending felt more powerful 23 years ago and if it caused any Kingdom Hearts-style speculation.

At this point, I also feel the need to point out a number of translation errors I came across during my playthrough. I’m no expert in everything that changed between the Japanese and American releases, but there are some very obvious errors like “This guy are sick.” or the “Touph Ring” item. It also bothered me that the translators couldn’t decide if Shinra was referred to as “Shinra” or “the Shinra” in dialogue (I even saw both used in the same exchange at least once).

Final Fantasy VII uses a turn-based Active Time Battle system, where turns are determined by the speed of both the player characters and enemies. At its core, both sides exchange blows until the other is defeated. When the ATB gauge of each party member fills up, the player can issue a command. These commands include Attack, Magic, Summon and Item, as well as Defend. Attack unleashes a basic attack with the character’s weapon, Magic allows them to cast a spell by expending MP, Summon brings forth a special creature to deal damage or activate another effect and Item uses an item from the player’s collective inventory. It’s also possible to skip a turn by pressing Triangle, provided another character’s ATB gauge is full.

Selecting a command from a menu may open a submenu related to that command, which players must scroll through to find what they want and then choose a target. The ATB speed is also customizable in the menu, which lends a certain degree of difficulty selection. Although the game itself isn’t particularly difficult, it does still provide a challenge and I like that the developers had the foresight to include such a feature.

One special feature, however is the Limit gauge. As characters take damage, the Limit gauge will fill up until it glows pink. Once this occurs, the Attack command will be replaced with Limit and allow access to that character’s Limit Break, powerful moves that can deal a hefty amount of damage or inflict additional statuses. Characters each have access to multiple Limit Breaks, which are unlocked by fulfilling certain criteria over the course of the game.

Limits add a powerful option to combat.

Although each party can only contain three characters at a time, placement of these characters between the front and back rows can be very important. The back row typically sacrifices power in exchange for added defense while the front row increases power in exchange for defense. However, long-range characters like Barret and Vincent thrive in the back row, since they can have added defense with none of the drawbacks, a skill that is otherwise only granted by the Long Range Materia.

Players must also be mindful of the equipment of each party member, which includes Weapons, Armor and Accessories. Each weapon carries its own strengths and weaknesses to be mindful of. For instance, each character’s “Ultimate Weapon” has eight connected Materia slots at the cost of no Materia growth; Barret, normally a long-range fighter, has weapons that sacrifice his range for incredible power; and some weapons offer a lot of power but have few or no Materia slots to speak of. Armor has a similar balancing act, with some offering additional protective abilities, such as negating or draining an element, while offering few Materia slots in return. Of course, I noticed that some accessories are strictly better than others, with the Ribbon quickly making itself indispensable.

The most notable feature of Final Fantasy VII, however, is the Materia system. Each weapon and armor has a certain number of slots in which Materia can be placed, which adds new abilities to each character, though often at the cost of lowering their maximum HP. There are multiple types of Materia: Magic, which adds new spells to cast; Summon, which allows the summoning of different creatures; Support, which enhances paired Materia; Command, which adds additional abilities to the command menu; and Independent, which add passive abilities or provide stat boosts. Figuring out the optimal balance and combination of Materia for each situation is key, as having the right Materia at the right time can easily give the player the edge they need. Equipped Materia also gain AP after each battle, which can eventually cause them to level up and increase their power or even gain new ones.

Outside of combat and navigating individual areas, the game features an overworld system that allows for travel to various locations around the game world. This functions as more or less a pseudo-open world, which I say in light of Final Fantasy XV’s more traditional Open World style. The overworld itself, which can be viewed from an overhead three-quarter angle or in full 3D, hides many secrets that are normally inaccessible until you obtain the right vehicles to overcome various environmental obstacles. These include a Buggy; the Tiny Bronco, a water-bound plane; the Highwind, which can fly over everything; the Gelnika submarine; and various breeds of avian Chocobo. Going out of your way to find the various secrets is often rewarding, as you can discover additional story content or powerful Materia, including the strongest Summon, Knights of the Round.

A view of the overworld.

There are also some quality-of-life mechanics that I really appreciated. For one thing, everyone gains EXP whether or not they’re in your active party (though active members level up faster), so everyone is always around the same level to mitigate level grinding. The PHS system (named for the Personal Handy-phone System, a common mobile phone system in Japan at the time), allows for easy swapping of active party members at Save Points. Additionally, the Materia Exchange system allows for easy swapping of Materia between multiple characters anywhere in the world, eliminating any worry over losing access to any Materia just because a character is unavailable.

On a smaller note, there’s a section in Midgar where you have to guess the Mayor’s (randomly generated) password. I thought it funny how the password I got happened to be “BEST”, reflecting the static password in Remake.

Since the world of Final Fantasy VII has a lot of depth, however, there were inevitably a few things that bugged me, some more than others. One of the perhaps more nitpicky examples is that scrolling through submenus during combat can feel inefficient at times. No matter what Materia you have equipped, certain abilities will take up specific space within the submenu instead of being in a more accessible location. For example, if I have Knights of the Round equipped, it will always appear at the bottom of the Summon submenu, meaning I have to scroll for a couple seconds every single time. The Item submenu is more customizable, but still requires manual optimization for proper efficiency (and you have to re-optimize it every time you get new items).

While I loved the Materia Exchange function, I wish there was a similar system for armor and accessories. In order to swap certain items, like Ribbons, between characters, you have to put characters back into your party with PHS, equip a different item and then swap them back out with PHS. Going through this process every single time got very annoying very fast and I never looked forward to that side of item management. Speaking of Materia, though, it can take an absurdly long time to get AP to level some of them up, considering how much you typically gain after a battle and how much is required, unless you choose to grind. I suppose the same could be said for getting every character’s Limit, however, since grinding is the best way to ensure they’ll be able to use their Level 4 Limit later on.

I wish armor and accessories could be exchanged like Materia.

Exploration also isn’t free of faults. For instance, there are plenty of screens with a deceptive amount of depth, so it can longer than it feels like it should for Cloud to trigger the flag to advance to the next screen. This could extend to the fixed camera angles in general since, while plenty of the decisions are great, some make it difficult to tell where exactly you need to go to reach the next location without trial and error. Advancing the game also sometimes required solving clunky puzzles that I didn’t find much joy in completing. Then there’s finding certain secrets, which were so cryptic that I played with a guide to make sure I couldn’t miss anything. I mean, how else would I know that learning more about Vincent and getting his best weapon/Limit requires finding a cave with the Gelnika, then fighting 10 random battles and returning to the same cave?

Then there’s the Chocobo. Getting one is enough work on its own, finding them in random battles in specific areas and making sure they don’t run away, but breeding is a whole other can of worms. The only reason to do this is to breed a Gold Chocobo, which can access any part of the overworld, regardless of terrain. From what I can gather, the intended method involves breeding specific Chocobo and feeding them specific nuts, then racing offspring until they’re S-Rank and continuing the cycle. This process could easily take several hours or even days to pull off and when the game came out, there was easily a lot of trial and error involved. I did, however, manage to find a guide that got me a Gold Chocobo without any racing in only 36 minutes.

The end goal of Chocobo breeding.

Although breeding specific Chocobo is a necessity for reaching four powerful Materia (Mime, Quadra Magic, HP<->MP and Knights of the Round), I was able to exploit a cool glitch with the Highwind on Disc 2 for early access to Quadra Magic, so there’s that.

One section of the game, the Gold Saucer, is like a digital Vegas. It lures you in with alluring prizes and fun minigames, but it can cost a lot of time and Gil to get anywhere and you need to spend GP, the Gold Saucer’s currency, to do many things, including saving your game. For the sake of this review, I wasn’t patient enough to try and acquire Cloud’s Omnislash or the W-Summon Materia, but props to anyone who was. Speaking of minigames, two of the major ones in the game, a motorcycle battle and snowboarding, felt hard to control, though I’ll admit I’m not sure if it was me or the software.

One of the bigger annoyances with battles would be the really long summoning animations. Using a Summon triggers a cinematic that plays for easily a few seconds, with the length increasing the more powerful the summon is. Although Summons can do wonders in a pinch, the damage output doesn’t always feel worth the wait with the exception of Knights of the Round, which can eliminate the penultimate boss in one go. Similarly, however, there’s the final boss’ Supernova attack. The animation is very lengthy and implies a potentially game-ending level of power, but the end result is a percentage-based damage attack that you can easily recover from on your very next turn. I’ll admit that I liked the animation the first time it happened, but the feeling of witnessing such a scale is lost when it’s cast multiple times.

The start of the longest Summoning animation in the game.

The biggest issue for me, however, was the implementation of the random battle system. I’ve never really been a fan of random battle systems in general, since it’s easy to get into a fight when you don’t want to or a fight to seemingly take a long time to trigger when you actually want them to. In Final Fantasy VII, however, some battles seem to happen at the most annoying times, including when you’re one pixel away from an entrance/exit or immediately after climbing a ladder. It’s these groan-inducing instances that made me glad Remake ditched random battles entirely.

One thing I will say is that while Final Fantasy VII looks dated by modern standards, and especially when compared to Remake, the graphics held up pretty well. The interface is clean and everything looks distinct from one another, especially the environments. There’s also an interesting mix of CG and pre-rendered backgrounds and objects that gives the game a specific feel, like a time capsule of late-90s 3D graphics. In spite of the limitations of the CD-based hardware, there was still a lot of room for creative and iconic designs and even the ability to show off the grotesque.

I’ll note here that a majority of my playthrough was on a PS2 hooked up to an HD TV, but it looked a lot better when I played it on a PS1 hooked up to a CRT. I’m aware that this difference is due to the TVs and how they display old games like this, so if you want the best visual experience with the original version of the game use a CRT. If you only have an HD TV, then see if it can upscale using the Nearest Neighbor algorithm. Otherwise, get a modern port of the game.

This game also has great sound design, with specific sounds that have stuck with me long after playing, and the game knows when to use silence or ambient noise to build up atmosphere. The music by Nobuo Uematsu is also a highlight, since I thought it was good enough to seek out the physical soundtrack. While a lot of the soundtrack is memorable and worth a casual listen, there’s no questioning the legacy of “One-Winged Angel”, the final boss theme. As the only song Uematsu had ever composed with a “puzzle piece” method, the track has endured with a number of remixes throughout later entries and spinoffs, each time adding a new twist that brings out a new aspect of the piece. It’s still easily one of my favorite Final Fantasy tracks and it still carried power in its original context.

It's worth getting the OST.

Although Final Fantasy VII is easily a product of its time with some lingering issues, it’s a game worth playing. While the later Compilation of Final Fantasy VII is of debatable quality, playing this game within the vacuum of itself was a fun experience that I’m glad I went through. Whether you want an old-school RPG or are just looking back at older Final Fantasy titles, Final Fantasy VII’s legacy feels earned.