Final Fantasy VII is still one of the Greatest games ever made.

Dat Sword.



 

 Final Fantasy VII is a pretty divisive game, some consider it unjustly overrated, and the others consider it a masterpiece. I fall under the latter.
 Let's jump back to 1999, I'm this wee kid who's latest games he had played were Tomb Raider 2 and 3. I had previously owned a NES and a NES knock-off, and now had a N64. The closest thing I had played to an RPG was Quest 64, and I loved it(And still do, to this day, one of my biggest guilty pleasures). So I'm at a computer-stuff shop, and I see this odd box, with a rhombo-ish shape, a white box, with a dude holding this big-a$$ sword.
-"Daddy! Daddy! I wantz dat!"
-"Too expensive"
-"Then let's save up!"(This meant that I did jack and he'd save up the $, but I still felt as if I was doing something, lol).
 And then.... it came. I proceed to install it, while reading the instructions booklet and drooling over the box. I'm hyped, I don't know what I'm getting into, but I'm so friggin' hyped. Game's installed, I start it up, the intro CG plays and "HOLY EFFING SH!T THESE GRAPHICS", suddenly this funky purple blob of polygons jumps out of the train "Well, this looks... different"(I never cared about graphics).... and then a battle starts "OMFG HE GREW! THIS IS AWESOME WHAT IS THIS, MENUS? OMFG THIS IS AWESOMEEEEEEEE!!!!!!1111111111ONEONEELEVEN", and the rest, my friends, is history. I should note that one of the... "Features" I liked the most, was that it had "3 kinds" of graphics: Exploring, Battling and CG. I loved that, for some reason, and I still find it endearing.

 What I'm getting into, is that this game was my official introduction into the more traditional RPGs, and guess what? It introduced me and many others. This is the game that brought console RPGs out of a nichey status and into the mainstream. Suddenly, I wanted to play more games like these, heck, everyone wanted to! And companies wanted to have the next big RPG, suddenly everyone had their tries at these, even western studios. Shadow Madness, Legend of Legaia and many others are a fruit of this. Final Fantasy VII proved that there was a very profitable market, hungry for console RPGs.

 But why is it that great? This game had a HUGE world ready to be explored, and it was completely in 3D, if you had the means(Boat, Buggy, Airship, Chocobo), you could reach it. It had towns, forests, dungeons... and it was all very cohesive. Nothing felt out of place in this world. And what made this huge world so much more impressive, was how you were stuck for the initial... 5-7 hours, maybe more if you liked exploring and grinding of the game in one town. After you storm the Shinra headquarters, and need to escape, you get to the end of the highway, and suddenly... What is this? Midgar wasn't the whole setting of the game? Mind.Blown. Maybe if you had played RPGs in the 16-bit era this came as less of a shock, but for me, I'd never seen an overworld like this, and I was not alone.
 Characters. What I enjoy the most about JRPGs is watching the characters grow and develop. In Final Fantasy VII there's plenty of character growth, and each character gets their own sort of chapter. Even the extra side characters like Vincent and Yuffie have their own personal adventures, that show you their motivation, their resolve and how they plan to deal with their problems. Cloud is not "just an emo girly boy", Cloud was the emo guy with "amnesia", he was, dare I say? the first one like that, and just because many came after him, trying to copy or deal  their own spins on the angsty hero, Cloud came first, Cloud aced the part and Cloud was there before it was a cliche. Cloud made angst the new cool. Then, there's the fact that most characters are completely different from each other. You could argue that Vincent and Cloud both fill the angsty persona, but Vincent is a much less talkative(Though him and Yuffie have less lines than the core members...) character, and he'd never have cross-dressed like Cloud. Cid and Barret are both rash, angry characters, but their reasons are completely different.... Speaking of different, how about the fact that there are no whites and blacks? Even Barret, who's trying to "Save the world" gets called out by fellow ally Caith-Sith, he may be trying to save the world, but he is killing bystanders in the process.

 Music. This is a much more subjective topic, what my ears like might not be the cup of tea of another, but MIDI music has never sounded so good, and the themes from FFVII are still fresh in my mind. It may be from Nostalgia, but I love the music, and it always fills me with memories from my childhood <3. I love this music, but it may be my personal taste, moving on...
 Gameplay. Final Fantasy VII had a very unique Materia-junction system, which was deceptively deep. According to the Weapon and Armor you equipped your character with, he'd get different slots for Materia. Each Materia affected your other stats(HP,MP, Strenght, Speed, Defence), so you wouldn't want to handicap your character too much. There was also materia that wouldn't do anything by itself, so you had to place it in a "Joined slot"(If your equipment allowed it) next to another Materia. Even setting up the materia was fun. Battles took a faster spin than  most other RPGS, using the Active Time Battle(ATB) that Square had implemented on their latter 16-bit RPGs, and the 3D graphics made battles look really good.
 Graphics. Most PS1 games have aged really badly on the graphics department. Not Final Fantasy VII. Everything looks how it's supposed to look, and the characters, even at their simplest(When "out of battle") have a very expressive range of animations, so you can tell how they are feeling. From Cloud's shrug, Cid's foot-tapping or Barret's shooting. When outside the overworld, Final Fantasy VII used pre-rendered backgrounds, and they still look very good, and are very distinctive. From Midgar's Steampunk look to Cosmo Canyon's more tribal enviroment. Characters may not have fingers on their hands, but they still pack quite a punch(It's a joke, since they have stubs for hands. It's funny, trust me).
 Lastly, the story. Other game that came later may have dealt with it better, but Final Fantasy VII did it first. Frankly, FFVII took story devices from their past games, the love triangle? Final Fantasy VI, Terra-Locke-Celes, but while it was dealt with undertones in VI, it's made much more obvious in VII with Aeris-Cloud-Tifa. Permanent death of a Party member? Fintal Fantasy IV killed a lot of their characters, but with VII they gave you much more time and reasons to care about Aeris. She was not just "another party member", she was there almost from the start, and she was part of the love triangle, you could take her on a date(Instead of Tifa, Yuffie or *gasp* Barret), there was no way to think that she'd be expendable, so her death was incredibly well done and unexpected(Though going as far as "Crying"(in real life) is a bit too much...). One-Winged Angel last boss? Kefka did it first and... actually, Sephiroth is not necesarily better than Kefka, so... yeah, nothing else to say. Kefka Wins. Move along now.
 My point is, Final Fantasy VII was never a bad game. And it'll never be. The foundations of the game are great, they were great, and you can't take it away from it. If you compare it to other games that came later, sure, it may not be as "good" as them, they may have better stories(And better translations!), they may have better battle systems, but when Final Fantasy VII came out, it was new. It was fresh. And it was awesome.
 Final Fantasy VII is awesome.