Summer Long Back Block Part 4: It's Finally Over!

Its done, its over, Final Fantasy 7 has been completed. I'm surprised by how little time it took to finish the game, when I first played FF7 3 discs of content seemed like a hurdle I could never get over. It's an odd feeling actually finishing the game, I've spent over 8 grueling years battling with myself, trying to force myself to reach the end, but each time I ended up unsuccessful. Now, I've done it, its over and it feels...like I achieved nothing.

You know that feeling when something has become so over hyped that when it finally comes its extremely underwhelming? Yeah, that was the situation here with the ending of FF7. I've always wanted to finish this game. So much so that once I did, I ended up thinking to myself, "That's it?". It was just another game, and that's it. Not some life changing experience , no grand finale...Well in all honesty I didn't expect it to be life changing but with all this time leaving it undone, the ending feels like it falls short.

The last dungeon in FF7 bothered me, the foes you encounter tend to be a lot more difficult than what you're used to. Many enemies would use strong one-hit moves and overly powerful skills. Here's what bugs me about this, throughout the bulk of the game the enemies are fairly forgiving, you begin to understand how they all think but by the last dungeon they ramp it up two folds. My problem is that there isn't any gradual build up, they just spike up. I wasn't prepared. This last level was a shock to me, out of nowhere I was getting hit with attacks that have only been used against me in a boss battle. After my frustrations levels increased I nearly quit all together. I was ready to drop the game, I was done for good.

I think this is where, what destructoid writer Jim Sterling calls, "Final Dungeon Syndrome" comes from. Its when people drop a JRPG when they reach the final dungeon. I find that they end up becoming too overwhelmingly difficult , to the point where a player may be too uninspired to continue on with the game. I had to muster up a lot of persistence in me to continue playing FF7.

But yeah, bitching aside, the game was still time well spent. I'm glad I'm able to knock a game off the list.

Speaking of which, I realize I'm completely moving away from the games I put on my list. In retrospect the list thing was a bad idea in general, there's no way I'm going to dedicate my time to the same 10 or so games. My mind changes, you know?

Which also bring me to my next point, next week I'm going to be updating on two games, Persona 3 and SMT:Devil Survivor. Yeah I know, two games, I don't think I can do it either. We'll see next week.

In other news, I figured out what I want to do on the whole daily article thing. I'm going to do daily articles but there's going to be a twist. I'll be doing a certain theme each week. For example, the first week I'm planning to do are daily lists (Lists I know sorry, I wanted to start with something easy). So yeah, be expecting one of those...today.