Finished playing Final Fantasy VII (1997, SquareSoft, PlayStation) for the third time on 03/11/2017.
Hours: 85
The Lifestream. Life energy in its purest form flowing from the planet's core, giving life to all kinds of lifeforms on Gaia and even crystalizing itself into colored orbs that allow the knowledge within them to be used as magical powers. Shinra Inc. A company whose technology syphons the Lifestream, turning it into Mako Energy to fuel human civilization across the globe. And Jenova, a mysterious being of extraterrestrial origins captured and experimented on by Shinra to strengthen its military force. Caught in the middle of this trio of elements is Cloud, an ex-Soldier of Shinra who finds himself spiraling deeper down into the messy maelstrom Shinra has stirred in its hunger for power.
This is SquareSoft's most lucrative title we're talking about here and one of my favorite of the series without a doubt. And look at that! Over 80 hours to complete the game with everything unlocked and all items collected! Heck, I could've easily passed the 100-hour mark just trying to finish a couple of last few things that I sort of left half done, hahahah! Ahem, anyways, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you how popular this game is or how amazing the story and characters are. What I will tell you is that I haven't played this game in a while and playing it again has made me realize how some of the scenes in the game would be a bit awkward to see Cloud in when the recently announced Remake finally makes its way to home consoles around the world. Among some of those funny scenes, I hope they at least keep the cross-dressing chapter and the one where Cloud infiltrates Junon city by jumping on a dolphin. I mean, think about it! A brooding, emo Cloud high jumping on a dolphin as the sun beautifully sets in the horizon. Magical! Hahaha! But there's also other things that don't quite fit the Cloud we're so used to seeing in HD. Like jumping in celebration of his first place victory in a Chocobo race, among other things. But anyways, I've read that the Remake will be a bit inconsistent with the FFVII Compilation so I'm hoping that means that they're polishing up some of the writing to be more consistent with the image Tetsuya has of the characters and other details that didn't quite make sense in the original. But getting back to the actual review, I think the only things that bothered me were the map and the battle controls. Sometimes it was kind of annoying trying to figure out which direction the D-Pad would take you on each different screen and as for the battles, trying to target overlapping enemies or characters got frustrating at times depending on the camera angles and even as characters moved around performing their attacks.
9/10 - Ultimately it's really a deep game in all of its aspects and I can't wait to see what the Remake is going to be like.
