Why is Final Fantasy 7 loved so much?

[SergeantAnt]

to be honest due to me never being able to find a copy and not knowing emulation(sh) at the time i never played it. UNTIL 2 years ago i found a copy at my local game store.

i'm huge into rpgs, it's been my favorite genre since i was like 8-10.
having no nostalgia goggles and being used to recent rpgs, i still loved the shit out of it!
the combat was excellent, i enjoyed the customization, the secrets were interesting, the story was funny at times as well as being serious(well final fantasy serious that is), and overall just an amazing experience. hell i even enjoyed the graphics i found them cute in a wierd chibi like way.

so that's why i loved it. definatly not my favorite game. yet from a newish player point of view it aged very well.

thats just my personal opinion though don't go all flame happy on me because it's cool to hate on ff7 -.-

 

[Valiance]

It was just really well marketed and sold very well, most JRPGs were ignored up to that point by the average person. This was the first FF played by most US (and EU) players.

It was also the first one on the PlayStation which was getting very popular in the US (and I guess Europe too).

Also, most RPGs didn't have 3D graphics at the time, and that was a big change; the FMV and CG was pretty good at the time, all things considered.

Obviously JRPGs have evolved since then, but at the time there was a lot of groundbreaking stuff, and I guess people are nostalgic.

 

[Entourian]

Not a fanboy here but it was the least terrible one of the bunch. And YES IT DOES NEED REMAKING FOR THE PS3!!!!1111!!ONE! because my psone died.

 

[RoyalSorceress]

The only reason I ever wanted it was so I could get the chocobo pet in Legend of Mana.
I never got it, but found out later that you only need the FF7 save file if you want your first pet to be the chocobo instead of the rabite. You can catch another chocobo later.

 

[hink86]

I don't know. All I know is that you CANNOT argue with people who think it's the greatest game ever, because they will fight that point to the grave.

this is true with most of my friends.

Not a fanboy here but it was the least terrible one of the bunch. And YES IT DOES NEED REMAKING FOR THE PS3!!!!1111!!ONE! because my psone died.

It was re-released on the PSN I think, if that helps any.

It is a solid game that introduced a lot of people to the series and RPGs in general. It is not the god send that people make it out to be, nor is it the best Final Fantasy, nor is it the best PSX RPG, nor is it even close to being in the top 10 RPGs, but it is still a solid game.

Also - I'm not buying that 12 years to remake FF7 crap.

It definitely wouldn't take 12 years to remake FFVII.

That said, it would take approximately quadruple the price of FFXIII to get it to modern graphical standards. The sheer volume of stuff needed to be modeled, textured, etc would send the price and time through the roof.

I'd give an optimistic estimate of 6 years and $80,000,000 to do it.

That makes more sense than what I was being told. Had no clue how much work goes into the graphics part alone, until I got into this argument with my friends to begain with.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Well one of the things I loved about it was the materia system which was really cool to use and develop. You could basically play the game how you wanted to. My set up was completely different to my friends.

I really liked the atmosphere and cyberpunk setting of the game, It was different from anything I had seen before I'm pretty sure games like Mass Effect took queues from it.
The exploration value was excellent aswell, you had to work for it breeding or catching the correct chocobo for your needs and maybe racing him for Gil. I had a Gold one called Ferrari. If you put the effort into it you even found extra characters, bosses and suchlike. It was just really deep.

The characters were really nice and the seriousness of their situation was always tempered with some humour.

It was a great game and they should really make a remake and try and keep it the same as the original with better graphics. I can't think of any fault I had with it at all tbh. :|

Spoiler: Slightly off topic...

Am I the only person who has noticed the FF7 references all the way through Deus Ex Human Revolution? I mean one of the areas is basically Midgar...:| I haven't seen anyone else mention it at all. Although I didn't read many reviews.

 

[Atticus89]

Because Aeris died. And she wasn't really that great a character in my opinion.

Oh, and it was the first RPG that many people played and got into the story. I think it was because it had cursing in its dialogue and made some kids feel "grown up."

 

[LilithSlave]

It was most people's first Final Fantasy game.

It was most people's first RPG game.

The PlayStation was many people's first system.

Final Fantasy VII was one of the longest games for the PlayStation.

Final Fantasy VII was one the PlayStation's biggest plot games.

Final Fantasy VII was one of the PlayStation's most successful games.

...

Things like that leave an impact. Personally, IV is my favourite. But whatever. I do think that it is at least charming even when I go back and play it several years later. I would by no means call it a bad game, though perhaps a bit overloved. And I would buy and play a remake if it came out. Then again, I'd do that for any game I remotely liked.

 

[flaming_squirrel]

Actually, FF8 makes a lot of sense if you give it a change of perspective. Specifically: http://squallsdead.com/

Naaah, been told about this before but still dont buy into it.

 

[Sougo]

FF7 and Metal Gear Solid were the two games that probably revolutionized 3D gaming.

Other than that, I wasn't really impressed with FF7's story, characters, plot or materia system. I found FF8 to be better in all these categories.

Advent Children on the other hand made everything about FF7 seem much more cooler, but in the end I played through the whole of FF7 anticipating something mind-blowing to happen, and it never did. It also ended kinda anti-climatically for me.

Note: I actually played FF7 after FF8 so maybe I was expecting too much, since everybody I talked to claimed ff7 was better. In my book, they were wrong.

 

[Erana]

Everyone loves FF7 for what it was at the time. For many, it was simply their first 3D game and their first JRPG.
The Playstation was this fancy new system touted as being less geeky and able to function as rad things like a CD player with its sweet new disc drive technology, etc.

I mean, imagine that Final Fantasy seven was your first video game ever, as well as your first look into Japanese pop culture.
You're also stuck in the mid-to-late 90's, a place still dripping with the XTREME 90's media attitude and the likes.

FF7 simply filled a niche for the 90's youth of the time, and claimed a huge portion of nostalgia for itself.

 

[Legion IV]

FF6 was my favorite.
FF7 adding NOTHING new except a 3D engine and a variety to magic and whatnot.

Lol i disagree, honestly 4,6 and 9 are the worst, still amazing but the weakest.

Out of the old school 2,3,5 are the best. 4,6 especially dont care much about gameplay, which makes them BORING at first. you get like what a total of 5 spells for like 5-6 hours? thats it? I hope you like pressing the attack for hours on end. The game banks so much that the story alone will make you keep playing, when i played 6 i imported it, i couldn't speak Japanese my friend translated, i depended on my FF imports to have good game play.

After like what an hour? even less? in 7 am developing my magic and my stats am actually leveling up. Am developing my characters slowly from the very beginning, there was a lot of interesting new spells to. 6 may have brought a lot of new stuff but game play was not the main priority and thats sad. 6 for the first few hours is pretty much a movie a text based movie.

2,3,5,7,8,10,12,13 all took great strides in game play and how to develop your character so if there were parts that were slow you didn't care you were developing game play wise instead of storyline wise.

JRPGS usually always have a very interesting game play system and a way of leveling. I about every jrpg out there and even import the ones that dont come here. 6 just didn't. It was storyline first and storyline second, game play 3rd. thats why its the weakest.

People bag on 7 but at least it was interesting most of the time.

7 would take A LONG time to remake, i dont think they need too, comon who dosent have a copy i have 3. But if they were to keep every little minigame and just everything, itd take forever, and if you take ONE thing out the fanbase will hate it, i know i would. You dont make changes to a game after its launch, unless a glitch.

 

[Hides His Eyes]

There seem to be a lot of people who now don't like FF7 and say it's overrated and so on, who at the time loved it to death. It stinks of fashionable cynicism, to be honest.

People (by which I mean me, but I assume many others would agree) love FF7 because it's got a fantastic story; a wonderfully imaginative setting; beautifully realised environments; deep, psychologically complex characters; solid combat gameplay (as long as you're not aggressively anti-turn-based-combat as many people are); and pretty good RPG mechanics.

All of that is only my subjective opinion, but I'd point out that it is shared by a great many other gamers, and was shared by even more in the few years after the game came out, before everyone decided they were too cool to like the damn game.

Having said all that, I can totally understand how someone playing it for the first time today could find it hard to get into. As several people have mentioned, it's largely about nostalgia. I certainly won't deny that; I grew up with Final Fantasy, especially 7.

Is there any point to a remake? No, not really. Also, I'd be a bit worried that if they did it they would add in a bunch of stuff from all the "FF7 Compilation" crap, and that would make me cross.

 

[Defense]

It's loved because it's actually a decent game. It had its flaws of course, but there weren't many console RPGs at the time that were like VII.

FF6 was my favorite.
FF7 adding NOTHING new except a 3D engine and a variety to magic and whatnot.

7 did to add new stuff

whiny emo protagonists, not like Cecil at his worst ether
and featured a moms boy for a villain, who got no personality dose very little 'evil' out side screwing with cloud and killing a girl that, by all rights, had no real chance against him anyway, but he stands around looking cool >.> so we have fanboys now to

-.- thank you FF7

*goes back to playing FF6*

Oh god I hope you're just a terrible troll.

 

[krazykidd]

FF6 was my favorite.
FF7 adding NOTHING new except a 3D engine and a variety to magic and whatnot.

That 3D engin is quite a large step foward don't you think ?

I'll say FF6 is my favorite , but not the first i played , I played the first 3 to come to america . Now 7 was the first finalfantasy game most people played first, that added with the great story , and awsome characters , gained it alot of popularity . There's also something you have to consider, A LOT of people have trouble playing older games that what they are used to . Meaning most of the people that played FF7 first couldn't go back to anything before that and like it ( this isn't true about everyone , but more than the majority ) . Hell as an example, my girlfriends brother , loves CoD black ops. I had him try L4D and he couldn't play it because the graphics suck. Needless to say i wanted to punch him after saying that , but that made me realise that many people can't go backwards with video games.

 

[faefrost]

It is a solid game that introduced a lot of people to the series and RPGs in general. It is not the god send that people make it out to be, nor is it the best Final Fantasy, nor is it the best PSX RPG, nor is it even close to being in the top 10 RPGs, but it is still a solid game.

Also - I'm not buying that 12 years to remake FF7 crap.

It definitely wouldn't take 12 years to remake FFVII.

That said, it would take approximately quadruple the price of FFXIII to get it to modern graphical standards. The sheer volume of stuff needed to be modeled, textured, etc would send the price and time through the roof.

I'd give an optimistic estimate of 6 years and $80,000,000 to do it.

They actually have a lot of it sort of rendered. They did come very close to making a 1080p FF VII variant. As a proof of concept for FFXIII on the modern consoles they made a bunch of FF VII cutscenes and renderings. I think some of them went on to be part of Advent Children. (note the similarity of the scenes and camera moments between the opening credits of Advent Children and the opening credits of FF XIII. Some of the shots are so close that it is obvious that the share a common development).

Now what I would really love to see is some new console hires conversions for FF X and FF XII. Currently you can get most of the earlier FF titles that will play on either a PSP or DS or as a PS1 game on PS3. 9FF I, II, III, IV, VII, VIII. IX, XIII) But X and XII were PS2 games and supposedly next to impossible to emulate or convert on the newer hardware.