Gaming | Final Fantasy VII

This is the game that made me quit playing PC games and never looked back. It's also the game that forced me to buy a PlayStation in 1997, and it happily exceeded all my expectations. Prior to this, I had never played a single Final Fantasy game in my life.

Final Fantasy VII begins with a group of rebels out to sabotage the operations of an evil corporation that's exploiting the world's resources, but as the game goes on, that's just the tip of the iceberg. An even more sinister evil awaits, one that places the entire planet in danger.

Boasting a very complex storyline, FF7 had it all--drama, mystery, comedy, tragedy, plus minigames and more. It also had a cast of very likeable and memorable characters, all of whom have become iconic in stature. This cast was probably the strongest cast ever assembled in all the Final Fantasy games, and the characters of the succeeding games just paled in comparison to the likes of Cloud, Tifa, Aeris, Yuffie, Vincent, Barret, Red XIII, Cait Sith and Cid.

Front, from left to right: Tifa Lockhart, Yuffie Kisaragi, Red XIII, Aeris Gainsborough
Back: Cid Highwind, Barret Wallace, Cloud Strife, Vincent Valentine, Cait Sith

The game also features one of the most emotionally devastating moments in gaming history, as one beloved character meets a horrible end, and the player will feel the resulting hopelessness brought about by this event as the game progressed. It actually made me a bit depressed afterwards, but it was a masterpiece move on the part of the game developers.

While the hardware limitations of the original PlayStation kinda hampered the execution of the game, with the characters looking blocky with no mouths, they all looked very detailed during combat, and when they manage to execute their ultimate moves--called limit breaks--it was just cool to see.

Even more spectacular were the summons, where characters called on mystical entities or creatures packed with tons of power to aid them during combat. An elaborately animated sequence would then play, in which the summoned entities entered combat and used their abilities to wipe out the enemies--pure awesomeness.


Final Fantasy VII also raised the bar for console RPGs with its heavy use of full cgi cutscenes that smoothly integrated with the in-game graphics, which was a prelude of things to come in the next FF games.

To commemorate its 10th year anniversary, Square launched the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII Project in 2005, in which several FF7-related games and films were released for different platforms, beginning with a cgi movie, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, which was the long-awaited sequel to the events in FF7. The 2006 Project seemed to have some kind of code, with each title starting with a letter in alphabetical order followed by a "C": AC for Advent Children, BC for Before Crisis, CC for Crisis Core, and DC for Dirge of Cerberus.

But while all the Final Fantasy games and various media that followed had more features and were more graphically enhanced, one thing remains clear: none could hold a candle to Final Fantasy VII and its impact on console gaming. Well at least for me anyway, as this is my all-time best console game ever.