I played through a majority of Final Fantasy VII close to its release, but I only recently did a full playthrough–from the opening cinematic to the post-credits scene. Some aspects of the game have aged piss-poorly in the last fifteen years. For some other aspects, perhaps some of my desires and habits as a game player have changed enough that I can no longer hold the same appreciation for them. But brushing away all of that, is there still a good game to be had in Final Fantasy VII?

Yes. Underneath the then-new full-motion video presentation and pre-rendered backgrounds, Square’s first Final Fantasy entry on a Sony console continues the traditions of the franchise. In some respects, it is most certainly an evolution mechanics presented in its predecessor, Final Fantasy VI–for better and for worse.

Final Fantasy VI slowly mixed in the idea that “anyone can do anything”–that is, while all of the characters technically had jobs, many of the characters: were adept at physical combat; could equip almost any weapon; were effective spellcasters; and could learn any magic spell. In Final Fantasy VII, this is even more full-blown. With the exception of one character, anyone you can recruit to your party packs a pretty heavy punch, and everyone seems to be an effective magic user.

This notion is bolstered by the Materia system. Previous entries in the series required that you either purchased magic from shops, or learned it by some means of leveling up–straight up levels in Final Fantasy IV, or by equipping “Espers” and learning via prolonged exposure to them in Final Fantasy VI. Again, the roots of Final Fantasy VI spread out in VII where characters equip stones called “materia”–each stone granting its bearer with magic spells and special abilities. Only this time, once the materia is equipped, that ability, spell, or set becomes instantly available.

Materia grows in strength as you win battles, just like you do. Materia growth is represented most obviously when a new spell becomes available–for instance, the “Recover” materia starts you off with Cure, then eventually it grants you Cure 2, Regen, and Cure 3 in (very) gradual succession. Other more subtle growth traits include increased effectiveness of the Steal command, or increasing the number of times you can cast a Summon spell in battle. If you equip that same grown materia on some other party member, the new bearer instantly has access to those benefits, whether they be a mature spell set or increased abilities.

On the one hand, I like this mechanic as it encourages the player to try different party combinations without fear of having to level-grind just to have newer party members reach parity with incumbents. It also encourages you to experiment with materia linking. There are certain materia which exist solely to provide some added benefits to your equipment and other materia, such as adding a fire damage to a sword or fire resistance to armor. It’s in this way that the game becomes more instantaneously customizable over past iterations of the series. With no fear of destroying a player’s progress, you’re free to play around with different linked materia combinations.

But one thing I’ve always been fond of in Final Fantasy is the idea of a job. Each character plays a special role, and your challenge is to build their abilities and then play them off of each other in the most effective way possible during the more taxing battles and boss encounters. In Final Fantasy VII, characters almost become nothing more than “shells” for materia. Having almost every single ability in the game–abilities that, in the past, were linked to specific jobs–accessible just by equipping some rock is what drives that sensation home. While you can choose to customize your characters in such a way that each one takes a specific role, in my experience I never felt encouraged to do that by the game. Especially because the number of characters in your party has been reduced to three, as opposed to four in previous games (or a whopping five in Final Fantasy IV), it felt more effective to just have “everyone do everything” instead. By some weird mojo, because I didn’t really care about what my characters had to offer individually in battle, I ended up not caring as much about them in the story, either. They were just “there.”

It’s a matter of preference, of course, and at least the characters aren’t complete ciphers. The most distinguishing trait that your protagonists have, mechanically speaking, are Limit Breaks. Think of them as you would in Super Combos in a fighting game: powerful, unique skills that become available when you’ve taken enough damage in battle. Cloud, the game’s central character, generally learns powerful physical attacks, as does his cohort Barret. Another character presents you with a slot machine to determine the strengh of her attacks, and her growth in power rewards you with extra slots for a maximum of eight. Still another character’s Limit Breaks are almost exclusively of the curative variety.

So, there’s just enough differentiation in Final Fantasy VII’s character abilities to make them worth experimenting with. I just wish that either there was more differentiation, or that the customization of your characters was even more granular (two things that were handled in different ways by each of the two immediate follow-ups on Playstation).

Final Fantasy VII does balance out the fact that you can equip a super-powerful Materia on a never-before-used character by requiring you to put quite a bit of time into growing every stone. Materia’s growth is handled by a rudimentary points-and-level system, just like for character growth, except it’s represented in “AP” (not EXP) and Stars (not levels). Without grinding too much, of the multiple tens of Materia I purchased or found, I only brought maybe one or two Materia to full maturity (maximum amount of stars). Granted, RPGs can be grindy affairs by nature. But with 45 hours of game time, not counting most of the optional quests and boss encounters, and with minimal grinding, I felt that the rewards were a touch too meager.

Perhaps it’s because more time than I would have liked were spent on the odd mini-games that broke up the pacing and focus of the main game, some handled in-engine and some with their own, shoddy engines. The former are silly affairs in which you press a face button when prompted so as to stride along in time with a marching band, or to engage in–wait for it–a bitch-slap contest. Some of those which require their own engine include a deep-sea torpedo battle in a submarine, snowboarding, or racing Chocobos. All of these experiences felt rushed and kludgy, and none of these felt fun at all. Final Fantasy VII’s experience as a whole would have been more focused, and as a result, better without them. But in truth, had they been developed more tightly, perhaps I wouldn’t mind them so much.

My qualms, mechanically, are largely preference-based, and aside from the minigames the actual gameplay holds up. Take away the presentation and it’s Square doing what Square does. Add in the presentation, though, and you have a big reason for why the game reached the critical mass of popularity that it does. But you also have a big reason for why the game appears to age incredibly poorly today.

The visual style is inconsistent. Your characters on the map screens, where you traverse the world and smaller environments, are rendered closer to the “super deformed” aesthetic popular in a lot of Japanese media. In battle, their proportions are decidedly human. In most cinematic cut-scenes, they also look more proportionally human–but in a few of them, particularly the ones that blend from gameplay into full-motion video, they are rendered super-deformed again. The quality and detail that goes into certain characters is also inconsistent between some cut-scenes, even if the same body proportions were used. It’s completely all over the place, and you can really tell that this was the first time Square had ever tackled something like this.

Driving that point home is the localization and characterization of the main players: It smacks of, “We’re on a new platform with a more mature audience–let’s make this a ‘mature’ game!” While the core elements of the backstory and plot are actually quite interesting and enjoyable much of the time, the way it all plays out tends to be marred by the dialogue. Square handled the localization in-house, and boy, does it show. There’s some swearing in there, but one man’s “shit” is another man’s “#(@&$”. There’s some individualization in there, but it boils down to the stereotypical, one-dimensional “angry black dude” and the “foul-mouthed (airship) sailor”. In particular, Square’s representation of the “angry black dude” just smacks of ignorance, with the oddest word choice imaginable–for instance, “Shut up!” becomes “Shu’up!” which is a characterization that even carries over to the cleaned-up translation on PC. Most characters stay one-note, and when sensitivity is introduced, it almost feels too forced. (If I’m being dismissive, I’d say that the character that feels most genuinely developed in his short amount of sidestory is a dog, but I have to admit that he’s a pretty damn cool dog.)

Still, the overarching story manages to shine through, and while it can get a little convoluted, it’s a good unique experience on its own. Yes, the world is in danger, and that’s still a cliche in games at large. But the arc that the main character goes through and the fragmented, confused memories he starts piecing together–starting with events that happened before the game–certainly had me wanting to learn more and more with each new bit of information that came out. You learn everything about him with a decent chunk of game left over, though, and the main antagonist then ceases to be interesting, but intrigue at least carries most of the way through. It’s bolstered all the way through by a classic videogame score–much more so than by visuals–that, while at times also sounds inconsistent from an instrumentation standpoint, sports memorable and well-composed melodies that manage to translate well into a less fantastic, more sci-fi setting. (Note: For all of its warts, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core really does enrich the story experience in this game. If backstory is a priority, and you think you can stand to play through it, I recommend you do so before playing through Final Fantasy VII.)

It’s common to cite Final Fantasy VII as a favorite Final Fantasy game, favorite game overall, “best” game, or what have you. I don’t feel that way–not by a long shot. I’ve also found a surprising amount of poo-poo’ing of Final Fantasy VII, and–while I loudly pick on nits that I acknowledge are mostly the result of personal preference–I don’t actually think it deserves that treatment either. Taken into the context of its release and what I imagine to be the frame of mind of many gamers at the time, I think it’s easy to see why people appreciate it. Coming from the other end, once you let go of the cynicism–a skill I’m still trying to level-up–there’s a very solid, intriguing role-playing experience there. And for the record, if someone were to homebrew a version of it with 16-bit visuals, throw me a bone with materia growth, and fix the minigames, I might have to consider retracting my GINPA.

Verdict:

In November of 2012, I saw the storyline of Final Fantasy VII from beginning to end for the very first time. That will also assuredly be the very last time I do so.

Despite the inaugural edition of GINPA dealing with Chrono Trigger, and this second edition dealing with perhaps the most revolutionary console RPG (at least in some respects) out there, I don’t hate popular Squaresoft RPG’s–I swear!

I’m finding it difficult to pin down the underlying reasons why I have the feeling that I will never play Final Fantasy VII ever again. Unlike what I experienced with Chrono Trigger, I didn’t 100% this game. I never bred a golden chocobo, I think I only Mastered one or two materia in total (one of them was Fire; the other must have been Restore), and I certainly didn’t come close to scratching any of the Weapons. So it certainly isn’t Final Fantasy VII Fatigue.

Or is it? I know I didn’t 100% the game because *I didn’t want to*. Not because I was in a hurry to finish the game, or because the main story was so gripping that I just _had_ to see what happened next instead of going on a sidequest, or because the rewards didn’t seem worth it (for the most part I know that the rewards are pretty sweet).

The more I think about it, the closer my radar is pointing towards the grind. I know that RPG’s in general are a grind. There’s something about Final Fantasy VII that seems grindier than other RPG’s that I’ve loved and would readily revisit, though. When I found myself at several points in the game too poor to afford new weaponry or materia, I had to grind for gil. When I saw how many AP I’d need just to level up a materia by one star, but felt that I needed the additional spell to proceed past some part of the game, I had to grind for AP. (Oddly enough, I never felt like I had to grind to defeat a particularly powerful boss, but perhaps that was because the gil- and AP-grinding conveniently resulted in EXP-grinding.)

When I found out what it took to breed a golden chocobo? Hoo, boy–I said, “No thank you” to that grinding.

In an odd way, even the mini-games felt like a grind. Probably because I ended up severely disliking them, but I had to sit through them in order to proceed. Learning the button prompts to march in the ceremony at Junon; doing squats; snowboarding; sitting through a chocobo race; taking control of the slap-fest between Tifa and Scarlet (and come on, really?)… these are all things that felt mechanically sub-par, were mandatory, that I had no desire to do, and that completely destroyed any forward momentum I felt from exploring the game world or experiencing the story.

Kind of like grinding, except at least with traditional grinding, you get something out of it. I suppose.

But let’s take this objectively. Is the grinding sensation of Final Fantasy VII really any different from any other game in the series, or RPG’s in general? Probably not. Final Fantasy VI had its own AP grinding. Final Fantasy VIII had the Draw system, which completely redefined what it is to grind. If you wanted to manipulate the Sphere grid the way you wanted to in Final Fantasy X, that could be a grind. Merriam-Webster’s alternate dictionary definition for “Dragon Quest” is “level grind”. (As fate would have it, Dragon Quest IV is most certainly a prime candidate for a GINPA.) And in all fairness to Final Fantasy VII, you could probably beat the main story with no more grinding than it would take to beat any of the other Final Fantasy games–that is to say, more or less a decent amount that never becomes unreasonable.

Perhaps the lack of desire to ever touch, or even smell, Final Fantasy VII again is because while it is a good game, and one I’m glad I finally experienced all the way through (instead of stopping near the end of Disc 2), I waited too long to do so. During the delay, I experienced games which I feel are superior, both within the series and outside of the series; both within the genre and outside of the genre. That the game has aged horribly aesthetically doesn’t particularly help it, but nor does this harm it, so I’m not considering that aspect of it.

But there are other aspects that don’t seem to age well, where older games in the series–and even other games which intentionally bill themselves as “old-school”–hold up just fine. The mishmash of minigames is part of that. They destroy the focus and tightness of the game, but I feel that if they were designed more carefully such that they held up better today, I might not mind them so much. The botched translation is another–it hindered my understanding of certain objectives, or at least, my enjoyment of some of the plot threads. And some of the dungeon design seems uninteresting today–from a structural standpoint, not so much an artistic one.

Meanwhile I find that its direct predecessor, Final Fantasy VI, somehow stays better-playing, better-sounding, better-designed and even better-looking–imagine that. (Some will argue that it’s because VI is one of my favorite games all-time, but I’ll argue that it’s my favorite because of those exact reasons.)And Final Fantasy VIII–for all of its detractors and the heinous nature of the Draw mechanic–still feels like a more tightly-focused, more tactical experience that remains more interesting and forward-thinking. In my eyes, these two titles have aged much better.

I did enjoy my time Final Fantasy VII. I liked enough of the sights, I really enjoyed Midgar, and AP-grinding aside, I did get a kick out of customizing my characters with Materia as a foreshadowing of things to come with VIII’s Junction system. Some part of me really wants to be able to commiserate with my fellow Final Fantasy veterans about the trials and tribulations of beating Emerald and Ruby weapon. Unfortunately, a much bigger part of me doesn’t ever want to do the work that gets me there, nor does it want to re-experience Cloud’s tale ever again.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII does a fantastic job in bringing this back story to life in vibrant detail. The experience centers on Cloud’s best friend, Zack Fair, whose very limited involvement in Final Fantasy VII proper is shown to belie his importance to Cloud’s existence. Following Zack through his time as part of the Shinra Corporation’s military force, SOLDIER, Crisis Core gives you some insight into the past of Final Fantasy VII veterans such as Tifa, Aerith, Sephiroth, and of course, Cloud, through their interactions with Zack. A new character, Genesis, whom you may have caught a glimpse of if you played Dirge of Cerberus, serves as the primary antagonist of the game–and the main plot thread is actually about pursuing him.

Zack is an actually very likeable guy, his upbeat demeanor reminiscent of Final Fantasy male leads such as Zidane and Tidus. Certainly he’s a polar opposite to what we see in Cloud in Final Fantasy VII. Up front he may seem one-dimensional but you can definitely see how he matures from eager and almost impetuous to nurturing as the game progresses.

Now, I didn’t find the main storyline–pursuing Genesis and uncovering his motivations–all that intriguing. Genesis himself is pretentious to the point of annoying, frequently quoting verses from an epic poem while trotting about. Certainly, the more interesting plot points are those which tie directly into Final Fantasy VII’s back story, capturing some of that game’s most iconic flashback moments re-rendered and produced with much better visuals than we were afforded in 1997. Even cut scenes using the in-game polygonal engine look quite nice, with emotive, convincing motion capture. Luckily, Squaresoft seems to pay as much attention (if not more) to tying these threads with Final Fantasy VII as they do with unveiling the main storyline of the Genesis pursuit. And without spoiling anything, the way in which the writers do so is incredibly effective, creating an almost seamless transition point between the game’s conclusion and Final Fantasy VII’s beginning.

All told, the events that occur, and the aesthetics that accompany them, comprise some truly great fan service, even for me, being someone who doesn’t remember Final Fantasy VII quite as fondly as many others do.

But looking at the big picture, fan service and plot are pretty much the only things Crisis Core is good for. The act of playing the game is, well, almost no fun at all. Whether it’s mindless button mashing, a combat subsystem that you have almost zero control over, or monotonous mission “design”, Crisis Core continually challenged my will power to NOT be a jerk and just look up the main story points on YouTube and Final Fantasy wikis.

Crisis Core bills itself as an action-RPG, with its combat largely eschewing nested menu commands in favor of allowing you direct control over Zack’s movements and sword strikes. I say largely because there’s still a simple row of commands at the bottom of the screen corresponding to the materia that Zack has equipped. Materia, in Final Fantasy lore, are in the simplest terms stones that carry innate powers. Most of your equipped materia translate directly to magic spells and special physical attacks that Zack can carry out in combat, while others give passive benefits such as status boosts. The former are right there for you to select whenever you choose, requiring only a few shoulder-button taps to select the right materia and X to execute the command.

The framework is actually sound. The idea of merging the materia system with its various complexities–materia growth, in particular–with sword-happy combat seems like a great idea. But “character action” this is not, as the mechanics prevent combat from feeling like a smooth experience over which you have total control. The game treats “Attack” just like any other command, requiring you to have selected it with your cursor and hitting X to pull off a slash (complete with Square’s classic “poink” sound effect). Maybe it’s the fact that the game auto-targets and auto-directs you to a target even if you aren’t pointing at anyone, or perhaps it’s the way they animate your attacks, but it really does feel as if you’re selecting a menu command repeatedly as opposed to actually balancing sword swings, dodges and parries in real-time… even though combat takes place in real-time.

And most of the enemies, frankly, are brain-dead. One erstwhile games journalist blogged that Crisis core was, “attack attack attack attack cure attack attack attack”–and I’d be lying if I said that I felt differently. Once in awhile you’ll be challenged to the point where you have to do quick rolls to dodge enemy attacks, and taking the typical precautions by casting Barrier before engaging enemies hearkens back to the RPG battles we know and love, but I was able to emerge victorious quite often by mashing on the X button with one hand. Not a good sign. Or, at least, not what I want out of something with any sort of “action” billing.

Then there’s the Digital Mind Wave (DMW) system, which is nothing more than a slot machine–yes, you read that right–that they stick in the upper left hand corner of the combat screen. As you fight, the slot machine whirrs and stops on various portraits of Crisis Core characters. Meanwhile, numbers accompany the faces, so you’re trying to hit any combination of matching numbers and faces. Match faces in the outer slots, and combat stops, dramatically zooming in on the machine as the middle slot lands on the final character. Will you match three? Will you not? What numbers will you get? Supposedly implemented to introduce luck, drama and “fun” to the combat the DMW system can result in status buffs; restored hit points, magic points or ability points; or limit breaks (super special attacks or other status buffs, for those uneducated in Final Fantasy lore).

But guess what? Apparently, you have almost ZERO control over this, not with any button presses, not with the actions you take in combat, nada. The only influence I could tangibly detect that I had over the DMW was with special materia that, when equipped, would increase the chances of landing a specific limit break. So, the system as a whole just seems kind of silly. Then you get to the part where combat comes to a screeching halt for the sake of keeping you in dramatic suspense as the game zooms in to show you whether or not you match that third slot.

Furthermore, the game randomly shows “images from Zack’s heart” (as the tutorial puts it)–really just artwork that represents key moments in Zack’s life and Crisis Core’s plot–which indicate that you somehow have increased luck for that particular go-round. Who knows how they determine that. And, of course, waiting for those images to appear on the screen takes up even more time. Now, if you thought it was tedious to wait for an unnecessarily long magic spell or creature summon animation to run its course in a full-blown RPG, imagine having combat flow (or Crisis Core’s version of it, at least) interrupted every so often by this obnoxious slot machine and its fly-by images. It really just takes away from the time you could be using to slice up fools. It’s enough that, among the randomness that accompanies any game at least partially rooted in role-playing (damage, chance to suffer status effects, etc), they’re asking us to put up with even more randomness. But now they’re wrestling actual interaction time away from us during combat sequences that are supposed to be all about action. It renders combat monotonous at best, and a real annoyance at worst–and not at all fun.

These mechanics are all tied up in optional mission design that is, to be polite about it, tedious. At any save point, you can initiate a mission, the reward for which can be materia, money, or special weapons and armor. Accompanying each mission is some nice descriptive text, but actually completing the mission is almost always just a matter of killing the required number of enemies. Exciting? Hardly.

Perhaps the only thing that comes close to a saving grace from a systems standpoint is materia fusion, where you combine two materia to generate a new one. Though most combinations yield nothing special, every once in awhile you come across a new attack or a more powerful spell variant, and the experimental aspect of the fusion at least manages to inject some amount of amusement, regardless of how minute. But I missed the materia slots and linking aspects that were present in Final Fantasy VII. These could have added an extra layer of planning and strategy to a combat system that is, as a whole, a boring affair.

That the combat ends up boring is a bigger shame in a game like this than a traditional RPG, simply because Crisis Core emphasizes directly-controlled action. No, it doesn’t have to be Devil May Cry or God Of War. But shouldn’t we expect–and receive–more than a game that could easily devolve into one-handed button mashing? I think so, and perhaps the lesson that videogames at large need to take to heart is that magnificent presentation and interesting story beats don’t make up for kludgy mechanics and lackluster gameplay design.

Now, watching YouTube clips and reading a wiki might get you the information just fine, but you lose that emotional connection with the characters that you might otherwise get by suffering–sorry–spending 20-plus hours with them. And it’s in that regard that Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII entertains in spades, doing enough with Zack and Cloud’s relationship and story line that it’s worth slogging through the tedium for the emotional payoff. That it leverages Final Fantasy VII’s iconic universe only helps it. Given what I just said about story not making up for tedious gameplay, that’s as close to an endorsement as I can give. But I freely admit succumbing to nostalgia, having somewhat of a vested interest in the Final Fantasy VII’s world and flawed but intriguing legacy. What if you don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that, and are just looking for a solid action-RPG to play for the mechanics and design? If that’s the case, then there’s very little reason you should even sniff in this game’s direction.

Verdict: