Summer Long Back Blog Part 2: Spikey Haired Addition

Last week I mentioned that I probably would be changing up the list this time around and well, I did. I added Final Fantasy 7 and decided to play it this week. Only about 12 hours were spent on the game so this will probably be a short blog.

Final Fantasy 7 is...well, its Final Fantasy 7. That's almost all I can say. Its really hard to make any comments on a game that is so widely talked about and as old as FF7; nearly everything I have to say has already been said. That's really part of the problem I have with Final Fantasy 7. Its been talked about so much to the point where the game almost feels uninteresting to me. It doesn't excite me anymore, I'm bored of it. Every character and story point has been discussed so much that its reached this point where I, first off, know everything there is to know about the game, and I'm already so utterly sick of hearing about these characters that I don't want to see them.

That being said, I'm still finding the persistence in me to keep going. I'm even starting to enjoy the characters a lot more than I originally thought I was going to. The characters have a certain charm to them, a certain aesthetic appeal to them. Squaresoft really had a good vision of what an aesthetically pleasing character is supposed to be. Each character in the game has a certain feature that is memorable: Barret has a Gatling gun in place of his missing hand, Cloud has his iconic spikey hair and Buster Sword, Red XIII is...a talking lion thing. These characters are what people consistently reference when they talk about FF7 because of their amazing designs. I admit the graphics are extremely dated but the idea still stands as it is.

The last thing I want to comment on is the Materia System. I hate it. Since the game is so dated I wont go into full detail as to how the system works. You can probably check it out somewhere or I'm assuming you know how it works already...also I'm a lazy writer. The Materia System holds many similarities to Final Fantasy 8's Junction system, in that it allows you to apply any skill you choose to any character that you want. Sure, certain character's stats cater a certain set of skills but it still feels like it doesn't really make that much of a difference. I find it very easy to turn every character into a magic user and spam magic attacks. I tend finish fights with this method just as efficiently as putting characters into their proper roles would. Cloud doesn't need to be a front line melee fighter, I get the same affect from using magic with him, sometimes even a better affect. It begins to lose its challenge and it feels cheap after wards. I prefer Final Fantasy 9's combat system where it applies certain roles to characters, that way I actually am making some differences in my character choices. In FF7 my characters are just stock characters, I can make them what ever I want because their roles in the party are completely flexible. I REALLY don't like that.

Okay I guess that's it for now, like I mentioned its a short one, not much to say in regards of the game. I've found myself buying too many games as it is. I'm having a hard time catching up with my back log...I should stop doing that, maybe just a bit.