I’ve played through Final Fantasy VII twice now, and I’ve given it a perfect score both times. This surprised me, as I can be a bit apprehensive about games heralded as the best in the medium. Often I find these claims only lead to me being let down. I also tend to lower my scores upon replay, as I like to have an awkward obsession with new things then realize the duller aspects once I fall out of love with them (see my shift in opinion on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). To top all this off, my opinions on RPG design are more critical than most. I hate feeling lost and without direction in games, and I feel like this flaw is most common within that spectrum of game. With all this considered, Final Fantasy VII truly is timeless, as it turns out.

I’ll start by noting an odd charm carried by the narrative. I would hesitate to call it compelling, but it does have a strange way of grabbing my attention on each playthrough. The overarching story isn’t anything insanely striking. For its legacy to be so defined by its antagonist, Sephiroth is spectacular in every aspect outside of his writing, otherwise feeling stale and under utilized. With all that said, it has a unique feeling to it and combined with the rudimentary (but loveable) visuals, I did end up being interested in what was happening in it. To carry a story on the back of characters and aesthetics alone is notable for any game, let alone a game going for something as new and daring as Final Fantasy VII obviously is. If you’re apprehensive about it, I would recommend jumping into it, taking it as it is, and understand that it doesn’t really expect anything more than your attention. There isn’t much to read into or rip apart with it, but it’s likely to earn a smile (or maybe even some brief pangs of sadness) by the end of it. Somebody clearly cared about the story, and often that’s enough to earn my respect and at least a passing grade from me.

At first glance, I was also intimidated by the idea of the Materia system. It seemed overwhelming, and I disliked the idea of managing a set of complex abilities and individually piecing together which had an edge over others, then investing time and effort into leveling those abilities up. I initially wondered what would happen if I found that a Materia I had invested time into was losing its edge in the late game. What then? Would I be expected to grind a new one up, sacrificing my time and effort for something I would have had no idea I was doing wrong? I was completely off, and I really should get over developing such harsh preconceptions. I found by the end that experimenting with new abilities and playing around with all the Materia felt natural and fun. I made mistakes with my setups and strategies, but never felt I was being cheated by the game for not arbitrarily selecting the Materia it wanted me to at any one point. Failure meant learning more about the abilities, which was exciting and kept the combat interesting to the very last fight. This is a pretty landmark victory in design, and certainly knocked me on my ass. I have lots of praise to sing for this system. Have fun with it, it’s great.

The visuals are inspired and a lot of thought went into bringing this game to life. It really pops, even to this day, and provides a beautiful glimpse into how creative this industry once had to be in order to conquer the mountain of problems that came with three dimensions. Alongside this, the soundtrack is phenomenal, and seriously helps the game in conveying what it wants to. The text boxes come with no audio or voice acting (obviously) so the soundtrack becomes imperative in characterizing the interactions between the characters and their environment. This really helped my connection to the game, so the degree of success it found here is one I have a great deal of admiration for.

I suppose at the end of it all Final Fantasy VII wins on its creativity above all else. With this game’s remake receiving the reception it did, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the current industry trend, and my connection to this game is partially influenced by this. At the end of it all I worry about losing what’s exemplified in this game's design to the ever-present ideals of optimization and improvement. This game isn’t going to win any modernity contests anytime soon, that much is clear, but I still have a strong appreciation for how this game handled itself. That isn’t a slight against Final Fantasy VII Remake or any of its prospective sequels, of which I judge according to their own merit, rather it’s my own worry that those games are intended to replace the original in some way. I don’t think translating art to be more modern is an improvement over the original, and that line of thinking might present a danger to the philosophies that attracted me to games as an artistic medium for expression in the first place..

But I’m also aging like anyone else, and past a certain level of aging you just start liking old shit. Whoops. It happened to me too.

Also hey sorry for the review, next one will be a sentence long again don’t worry.