FINAL FANTASY MARATHON RANKED:
https://www.backloggd.com/u/fragilant/list/final-fantasy-marathon-ranked/

Final Fantasy VII is the game that keeps surprising, even after already having played it before.
It has admittedly been a while, but wow, there are so many moments in this game that is barely mentioned in discussions that are truly memorable, and that's not even mentioning the moments everyone do keep talking about that hit so much harder in context.
This game gets really fucking weird at points, especially in the last third and I absolutely love it.
I know a big complaint people have with this series is that it can get really convoluted, while I can see VII being the start of that trend, it made the experience that much better.
Going from the pixel era to this, was like night and day and it's such a welcome change. Wear your weird ass influences on your sleeve, VII, I love how u embrace it.

The overall narrative here is so much stronger than I remembered as well.
The actual "meteor" in the logo builds so much tension and dread, it's truly incredible to me how they keep one-uping themselves when it comes to innovating on the overworld for each game.
Traveling the overworld, fighting the Weapons while that meteor is slowly closing in, and stuff like going underwater and seeing Emerald Weapon swimming around, this game is terrifying.
It's a masterclass in atmosphere, and I think some of that is simply due to the time it was released and its dated graphics, but they work so well with them despite the models looking a bit off at times.
I was truly torn between VI and VII as my current favourite, but the atmosphere at the end just solidified everything, there truly is nothing like it.

Speaking of age, however, my main and probably only gripe is that the minigames, while not an issue by themselves, become an issue when I feel like I'm doing them for no reason and they control like absolute dick.
The Steam port being horrendous with its control scheme truly does not help this.
You can definitely tell its age in this department, so much more than any other game in the series, but it also comes with a lot of charm so it's not all bad.

They finally 100% nailed the cast.
There's a perfect amount of mandatory and optional characters which all serve their part in the story really well, and all have their own arcs that honestly all work better than the arcs in VI, despite cast being praised a lot.
It helps a lot that the cast's motivation for going on this adventure is highly relatable, and also very topical even today.
Vincent is the exception, though.
Kain syndrome, his ass is carried by his design.

While I think the materia system is cool, I much prefer the battle systems of V and VI before it.
Every character manages to play so differently, whereas in VII I felt my ass was just spamming Beta for like 70% of the game, as the Enemy Skill materia took a priority over everything else, but I also think that's just a difficulty problem as VII is piss easy in comparison to every game that came before it, which can be felt even more once you're in a marathon of the whole series.

However, getting to this point just made me greatly realize how fucking cool this series is and how each game manages to differ from the others.
VII is much more unique in comparison to the Warriors of Light and Crystal shenanigans, and while I've said they're truly starting to find their footing with each installment, VII is where they truly managed to nail it, and that can definitely be felt with the success it managed to bring in.

Obvious classic, nothing more needs to be said about it.