If Final Fantasy VI was basically just a group of wizards pushing a game system to its absolute limit in terms of capabilities, Final Fantasy VII is more akin to a ramshackle amalgamation of jankily implemented ideas, held together with old bits of duct tape. Despite how the latter option sounds though, it also fits the kind of gameplay experience that I have a certain fondness of, never being short of ideas whatsoever, just throwing more weird stuff at the wall and watching it lightly come apart at the seams, all tied together with the rest of the game going all out in making setpieces that feel utterly massive in scope. The game in general feels really big in a way that led to it having this effect where I'd often feel the need take big breaks in between play sessions and almost dread returning, but then I'd pick it up again and become enthralled all over again, and by the end I felt pretty confident in this being something that's almost as amazing as people have said for quite some time.
The game strikes this great balance of being incredibly goofy for a lot of its runtime while still maintaining just enough elements of self-seriousness to keep you engaged in the actual narrative going on. Time and time again, the stakes of what's broadly going on around the player is contrasted by a lot of funny character interactions, especially from Cloud, who continues trying to appear very solemn but ends up just being really awkward and a bit in over his head, especially with some of the dialogue options you get in the first half of the game. I really like the way that the game being so consistently off the wall in the first half also works at making the big turning point of the game hit so much harder once all of this is torn away, leaving some moments of levity, but having them be very few and far between.
In terms of the core gameplay, I felt that this took some interesting steps forward to the systems found in FF6, especially with how Materia feels like an evolution of espers in a lot of regards, and one that I like a lot more. One of my biggest problems with the mechanics of FF6 was the way that the espers essentially meant that all of your characters could do anything as long as you put a bit of time in to grind those abilities, limiting the sense of mechanical individuality each character would have outside of their core special ability. While at a glance, the ability to assign any materia to anyone seems to have the same effect, the limited materia slots each character can have will leave each party member in a certain role of your choosing anyway, since there aren't really enough slots to be able to let everyone do everything. This is further bolstered by the stat changes that the materia gives when equipping it, often lowering a couple of stats while raising others, giving a nice layer of strategy to team composition. I like this as a way to make each piece of new equipment feel a bit more interesting and exciting as well, as the more powerful pieces of gear will often come with more materia slots as well. This makes getting better gear not just feel like a statistical bonus, but an opportunity to further expand upon your battle strategy and team complexity.
The combat itself is rather easy for the most part, but provides sufficient enough roadblocks for players who try completely turning their brains off and mashing through everything, it feels comfortable, yet rewards a bit of thought as well. This leads to there being nothing in the main game that requires any grinding as long as you're smart about things, which is especially nice, given that for the first time in the FF series, the random encounters feel sparse enough to almost never be intrusive, which makes the exploration feel more fun. I also love the limit break system, not only for the spectacle of it all, but also with how it manages to make enemies using powerful attacks feel exciting, as while you're obviously damaged and now likely in a rough position, you're a lot closer to being able to unleash something big of your own, making for a wonderful bit of give and take.
This isn't to say that the combat is flawless however, as there are definitely some issues that became increasingly annoying as the game went on. I feel like with each passing game, the ATB system has felt more intrusive and annoying, with this being the peak of that for a few reasons. The reason why I thought this was a neat system in FF4 mainly was because of the little quirks in the character loadouts that specifically played out in ways that wouldn't translate quite as well in pure turn based gameplay, such as making twincast feel cooler because of its slowly charging bar, but by FF7, an instance of this stuff is almost nowhere to be seen, making it feel superfluous at best. These issues are exacerbated by the UI, as while it's visually appealing, it's so big that it barely shows any actual information either. This is most egregious when you need to scroll your inventory for an item and only 3 of them can be shown on screen at once, leading to a lot of scrolling while the enemies are still able to keep attacking, it just feels awful all around, and while the other abilities you can use aren't quite as egregious as this, it's a common problem that becomes especially frustrating once you're far enough in the game that this can become very costly. Other elements of the UI that felt bothersome were the way that targeting had a tendency to be quite finicky due to the shifting camera angles and fact that there aren't really any strong bits of feedback to let you know what you're targeting unless you press a separate button to bring up another element that clutters the screen more.
The game is still very fun despite these issues though. The constant minigames were always a highlight to me, especially with the way that no matter how simple something seemed, it was actually horribly broken in one way or another. While I get that not everyone's sentiment would quite be the same as mine here, I couldn't help but smile whenever one of these appeared and brought forth a new frontier of barely functioning nonsense. After all, how can you not at least find a bit of comedy in your ascent up to one of the most significant moments in the narrative having a random snowboarding section that controls horrifically? It's not just the jank that I find endearing in the game though, as the game can pull off some absolutely fantastic bits of spectacle when it wants to, with the fearsome power of the Weapons being especially notable, easily standing out as one of the coolest things in any of the Final Fantasy games up to this point. Thanks to them, along with a few other specific points in the story, disc 2 ends up being this constant thrill, overcoming the one other big issue I had with FF6, that being its largely uninteresting 2nd half.
This game is just awesome, everything feels so big and flashy, with the summons especially benefitting from this. The experience is undoubtedly a bit of a mess, with the seams being very visible all over the place, along with there clearly being some ideas that were added very late into development and ended up being visibly half-baked as a result, but what we got here is still a phenomenal achievement.
The game strikes this great balance of being incredibly goofy for a lot of its runtime while still maintaining just enough elements of self-seriousness to keep you engaged in the actual narrative going on. Time and time again, the stakes of what's broadly going on around the player is contrasted by a lot of funny character interactions, especially from Cloud, who continues trying to appear very solemn but ends up just being really awkward and a bit in over his head, especially with some of the dialogue options you get in the first half of the game. I really like the way that the game being so consistently off the wall in the first half also works at making the big turning point of the game hit so much harder once all of this is torn away, leaving some moments of levity, but having them be very few and far between.
In terms of the core gameplay, I felt that this took some interesting steps forward to the systems found in FF6, especially with how Materia feels like an evolution of espers in a lot of regards, and one that I like a lot more. One of my biggest problems with the mechanics of FF6 was the way that the espers essentially meant that all of your characters could do anything as long as you put a bit of time in to grind those abilities, limiting the sense of mechanical individuality each character would have outside of their core special ability. While at a glance, the ability to assign any materia to anyone seems to have the same effect, the limited materia slots each character can have will leave each party member in a certain role of your choosing anyway, since there aren't really enough slots to be able to let everyone do everything. This is further bolstered by the stat changes that the materia gives when equipping it, often lowering a couple of stats while raising others, giving a nice layer of strategy to team composition. I like this as a way to make each piece of new equipment feel a bit more interesting and exciting as well, as the more powerful pieces of gear will often come with more materia slots as well. This makes getting better gear not just feel like a statistical bonus, but an opportunity to further expand upon your battle strategy and team complexity.
The combat itself is rather easy for the most part, but provides sufficient enough roadblocks for players who try completely turning their brains off and mashing through everything, it feels comfortable, yet rewards a bit of thought as well. This leads to there being nothing in the main game that requires any grinding as long as you're smart about things, which is especially nice, given that for the first time in the FF series, the random encounters feel sparse enough to almost never be intrusive, which makes the exploration feel more fun. I also love the limit break system, not only for the spectacle of it all, but also with how it manages to make enemies using powerful attacks feel exciting, as while you're obviously damaged and now likely in a rough position, you're a lot closer to being able to unleash something big of your own, making for a wonderful bit of give and take.
This isn't to say that the combat is flawless however, as there are definitely some issues that became increasingly annoying as the game went on. I feel like with each passing game, the ATB system has felt more intrusive and annoying, with this being the peak of that for a few reasons. The reason why I thought this was a neat system in FF4 mainly was because of the little quirks in the character loadouts that specifically played out in ways that wouldn't translate quite as well in pure turn based gameplay, such as making twincast feel cooler because of its slowly charging bar, but by FF7, an instance of this stuff is almost nowhere to be seen, making it feel superfluous at best. These issues are exacerbated by the UI, as while it's visually appealing, it's so big that it barely shows any actual information either. This is most egregious when you need to scroll your inventory for an item and only 3 of them can be shown on screen at once, leading to a lot of scrolling while the enemies are still able to keep attacking, it just feels awful all around, and while the other abilities you can use aren't quite as egregious as this, it's a common problem that becomes especially frustrating once you're far enough in the game that this can become very costly. Other elements of the UI that felt bothersome were the way that targeting had a tendency to be quite finicky due to the shifting camera angles and fact that there aren't really any strong bits of feedback to let you know what you're targeting unless you press a separate button to bring up another element that clutters the screen more.
The game is still very fun despite these issues though. The constant minigames were always a highlight to me, especially with the way that no matter how simple something seemed, it was actually horribly broken in one way or another. While I get that not everyone's sentiment would quite be the same as mine here, I couldn't help but smile whenever one of these appeared and brought forth a new frontier of barely functioning nonsense. After all, how can you not at least find a bit of comedy in your ascent up to one of the most significant moments in the narrative having a random snowboarding section that controls horrifically? It's not just the jank that I find endearing in the game though, as the game can pull off some absolutely fantastic bits of spectacle when it wants to, with the fearsome power of the Weapons being especially notable, easily standing out as one of the coolest things in any of the Final Fantasy games up to this point. Thanks to them, along with a few other specific points in the story, disc 2 ends up being this constant thrill, overcoming the one other big issue I had with FF6, that being its largely uninteresting 2nd half.
This game is just awesome, everything feels so big and flashy, with the summons especially benefitting from this. The experience is undoubtedly a bit of a mess, with the seams being very visible all over the place, along with there clearly being some ideas that were added very late into development and ended up being visibly half-baked as a result, but what we got here is still a phenomenal achievement.
iyellatcloud
4 months ago