Pros:
- Freedom of character builds through materia make winning battles satisfying.
- Masterfully crafted plot with intriguing mystery, twists and turns.
- Most of the cast gets great character development.
- Good pacing; side quests can be done to take breaks from the big events, or ignored entirely once you want to see what’s in store next.
- Very good art direction.
- Great soundtrack.
Cons:
- Boring level design. Dungeons and whatnot only amount to walking through the area until you get to the end (or find miscellaneous loot off the beaten path). Random encounters are usually a lazy way of setting up battles, and FFVII is no exception. Especially given that these random encounters are relentless and stop you in your tracks at seemingly every opportunity.
- Despite the UI looking aesthetically pleasing, it annoyingly does not allow for enough information to be displayed at once.
- Save points are an annoying save system that does not provide interesting gameplay in a game like this. They work in something like Resident Evil, but in an RPG, it only serves as an artificial roadblock and add more potential for too much lost progress.
- A couple of characters (mainly the optional party members) are unfortunately not as fully explored as other characters, despite being endearing in their own right.
- The ending is too abrupt. Ambiguous endings are all well and good, but there must have been a better way to execute it. The way the ending is makes it seem like it was sequel bait all along, despite the Compilation of FFVII probably not being in their minds at the time.
- The official English translation is downright terrible (even with the updates from most recent versions of the game). I’ve played the game in the fan translation “Beacause” (from “The Reunion” mod), which is an improvement, but I’ve seen the whole game in the original translation as well. Therefore, it feels impossible to experience this game in English in a way that feels completely genuine to the original text (and 100% professional). This point does not contribute so much to the overall score because it’s not really the actual game’s fault that this happened, more so the circumstances surrounding its release in the late 90s. But I thought it was worth mentioning.
Score: 8/10, closer to a 7 than a 9.
- Freedom of character builds through materia make winning battles satisfying.
- Masterfully crafted plot with intriguing mystery, twists and turns.
- Most of the cast gets great character development.
- Good pacing; side quests can be done to take breaks from the big events, or ignored entirely once you want to see what’s in store next.
- Very good art direction.
- Great soundtrack.
Cons:
- Boring level design. Dungeons and whatnot only amount to walking through the area until you get to the end (or find miscellaneous loot off the beaten path). Random encounters are usually a lazy way of setting up battles, and FFVII is no exception. Especially given that these random encounters are relentless and stop you in your tracks at seemingly every opportunity.
- Despite the UI looking aesthetically pleasing, it annoyingly does not allow for enough information to be displayed at once.
- Save points are an annoying save system that does not provide interesting gameplay in a game like this. They work in something like Resident Evil, but in an RPG, it only serves as an artificial roadblock and add more potential for too much lost progress.
- A couple of characters (mainly the optional party members) are unfortunately not as fully explored as other characters, despite being endearing in their own right.
- The ending is too abrupt. Ambiguous endings are all well and good, but there must have been a better way to execute it. The way the ending is makes it seem like it was sequel bait all along, despite the Compilation of FFVII probably not being in their minds at the time.
- The official English translation is downright terrible (even with the updates from most recent versions of the game). I’ve played the game in the fan translation “Beacause” (from “The Reunion” mod), which is an improvement, but I’ve seen the whole game in the original translation as well. Therefore, it feels impossible to experience this game in English in a way that feels completely genuine to the original text (and 100% professional). This point does not contribute so much to the overall score because it’s not really the actual game’s fault that this happened, more so the circumstances surrounding its release in the late 90s. But I thought it was worth mentioning.
Score: 8/10, closer to a 7 than a 9.