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Final Fantasy 7 my path to enjoying FF7 was one that was a lot longer than most people's. when I first played it I was actually a little disappointed. it took me a good 4 tries for it to really click with me and even longer than that to finish it. I'd played 13 and 8 and the 10 games beforehand and seen advent children twice (long before I'd ever even touched a video game since it was one of the cheaper anime DVD's in my local HMV and I loved its energy and style even without any game knowledge) and compared to those it just didn't really engage me to nearly the same extent. I disliked the controls and the writing and world just didn't grab me. On my first time I quit around the church, second time a little into the shinra tower and third time I didn't get passed fort condor—though I don't blame myself for that one and it took until my fourth whole retry for it to finally click for me. 7 never quite entered the halls of my favourite FF games and I still find myself enjoying its sequels a lot more, but as time goes on I've found a lot more to appreciate about it and my fondness for it has grown a lot over time. the game's graphics are something I'm all over. while the pre-renders might not be as detailed or in motion as ones from say FF8 or 9, they're still so pretty and full of charm. every city has such character to it and they're almost all a sight to behold. I could spend all day just hanging out in places like costa del sol or mideel or midgar. the variety is real too, from snowy towns, beach towns, medieval style towns, jungle towns, cyberpunk towns and Japanese towns, which might be the best one since it has some of the game’s best sidequests in it. the game has it all and exploring every area was a total treat. same goes for the dungeons, too—cool snowy mountains covered in blizzards, midgar's various abandoned sectors like the train tunnels and the cool train graveyard, the huge shinra building or the downright stunning underwater reactor which was one of the game’s highlights for me. though the game does default to "mountain and cave" a little too often, I think, and as pretty though some of those can be like on the snowy mountain with all the crystals. I love all the transportation methods you use to see this world too. you have chocobos, cars, boats, ships, boat ships and even a submarine at one point. i love how it progresses from just a chocobo and a car to having to pay for a boat ride and then later on you have a submarine to go underwater, which opens up tons of hidden secrets and areas and you also get an airship that lets you land tons of places. it's great. the world you explore is also interesting. i love the disparity of styles it offers. places like midgar are futuristic and affluent and fit that cyberpunk aesthetic but then poorer places like kalm and mideel almost feel like they're from a different game, with the former especially having a look right out of something like those older FF games or something like legend of dragoon (though i feel like this could partially be because it was a leftover from early development). but either way i like what it tells you about this world. it's an interesting world and the story you experience in it is interesting too. The themes of environmentalism really work for me and it feels real. the story really feels like a big adventure despite the game's relatively short runtime and you really feel like you get to travel the whole world. that short length works well in its favour. it's super fast paced and it packs a lot into its runtime so you never really feel like things are getting all that stale or boring. the runtime is about 25-30 hours, which i liked, with a good 10 or so hours after if you want those extras like the weapon fights, limit breaks and the optional minigames. it's not an overly difficult game, either. some late fights are tough but the game is generally on the easy side with how exploitable a lot of things like summons and your moves can be. and the music, too! I mean, if anything is iconic about the game, it has to be it's music and it's all genuinely that good. I don't think the game has a single song I don't like and every other song has been in my main playlists for years now. it's genuinely that good and it goes far beyond just the ones you've probably heard. Its soundfont is also just so endlessly iconic. nothing else sounds like FF7. like sure "one winged angel" is a classic, as is "aeriths theme" and "tifa's theme", but there's also other killer tracks here like "costa del sol" which is probably the game’s best town theme, "prelude", "bombing mission" which to me is just as iconic as any of the big tracks, "anxiety", "mako reactor" which might be my favourite of the dungeon themes, "barrets theme", "hurry", "shinra inc", "let the battles begin" which is an all timer theme", "flower blooming in the church", "turks’ theme", "under the rotting pizza" and "the oppressed" are also some of the game's best town themes. In addition "who are you", "don of the slums", "fight on" and "dear to the heart" are great. The main theme of FF7 is one of the best tracks in the game also—one of the series' best songs even. "On our way" is also up there, as is "on that day, five years ago". "farm boy", "electric de chocobo" and "cinco de chocobo" rank up there with some of the series' best chocobo themes, though not the best. that still goes to all the 13 game's iterations. "jenova" is also one of the series' best boss themes. "mark of the traitor", "gold saucer" and "cait sith's" theme, too. I love how the latter sounds similar to *SPOILERS* the turks’ theme, which foreshadows things well. "lifestream" is another personal favourite from the game that just does not get talked about enough. it's so calming and it's one of those songs that just screams "ps1" to me—moreso than maybe any other in the game. "great warrior" is another great track, as is "descendant of shinobi" which is easily a top 5 track in the game. it always cheers me up, just as "cid's theme" always gets me hyped up any time it plays. "words drowned by fireworks" and "buried in snow"—a fantastic snow town theme and almost as good a town theme as costa del sol. "the highwind rises" is one of the better airship themes too and "secret of the sea" is an excellent underwater theme. "provincial town", "other side of the mountain", "launching a dream into space" and "ending credits" round up the rest of the game's best tracks. there's some but's of the game I'm less fond of. the gameplay, for one, I'm a little more hit and miss with. I like some things like aspects of the Materia system and how much variety it has. I like how all the spells and summons look and I like the huge variety of items to use. I love the limit break system and how it can let you come back from a rough fight. Materia slots and how weapons change on your character model are also super nice to have and look at. there's just as much about the combat I don't like though, like how the Materia system results in the core cast kind of all playing the same bar their weapons and limit breaks. Some are much better than others, like cloud and tifa, and others are a lot worse like cait sith, who I found out in the last battle can actually cause a full party wipe. In addition Vincent loses control of himself for the whole duration. There's also how much of a pain it is to equip party members with it every time you swap, as well as the fact when the game force-swaps it you're left unable to access the materia if the party member left or how you can only target multiple targets with the all command. it's a lot of small things that build up to it not living up to how fun I think it should be, though when it does work it really works. things like how much depth there is with what you can do with the combat, tons of small optional abilities with multiple levels that all effect enemies differently like manipulate or enemy attack, things like steal and throw, dozens of summons and spells and niche status effects that make the battle system's potential feel downright limitless at times. aside from the combat you also have tons of little gimmicks and side stuff and minigames to do and they're all really cool, from full on side modes like the snowboarding and the g-bike and the full on tower defense mode and the chocobo racing. there are also fun little dungeon missions like having to keep your body heat as you climb a mountain or exploring a ship in disguise or having to put together an outfit for an infiltration mission. There's tons like this and it gives the game so much variety. It feels like every 20 mins you have a new gimmick to try out or a cool new non-combat mission to do. it's great and some bits like wutai even give you a good few hours worth of just random side things to do, like a battle tower and a big sidequest chain with yuffie and the turks. you can talk to the Turks on their off hours at the bar which is nice and there's some fun sights to see in a dungeon exclusive to it, set on a big mountain with huge statues. there's some cool set-piecey dungeons i liked a lot, too, like the junon prison break, the shinra tower climb, the space sequence (a personal favourite) or the final assault on midgar. They feel really cinematic for their time. i was really impressed by those. the one downside to it all, though, is how much is missable or poorly signposted. my first run through i entirely missed the costa del sol stuff because i left briefly to save and had to reload over an hour of gameplay just to see it. there's a bunch like this and it is a little bit annoying to deal with, same with all the missable items and side quests, none of which are ever really signposted at all. hell, i talked to some people today about a Zack scene the game has and none of them even knew what i was talking about despite that scene being core to the series going forward. none of them had ever found it or heard of it. there's a lot like that down to even entire party members being missable. the story, too, and how its conveyed I find a little, well, okay. so I love the story itself. I love its messages and themes and how you get to play as eco terrorists. I love how cool all the FMV's are, and I love this cast. I love shinra as villains and the Turks are some of my favourite villain groups in any RPG. I love when it gets existential and I love it's themes of psychosis and false memories (it's a very BPD game honestly). i love how emotional the game gets and how even on a replay things like *the aerith scene*, red XIII's dungeon or some of the cait sith stuff can still get me to cry, but there's the way its all told that I don't really love. this mainly occurs with how dialogue works, beyond certain static story scenes, which also vary with how much characters like Vincent and yuffie get dialogue since both are fully optional. you only get dialogue in dungeons and before fights for whoever is in your party. this means chunks of the cast for much of the game will feel just kind of perfunctory and underdeveloped. many do get development with forced story scenes later on like red xiii and tifa but characters like Vincent and yuffie get basically nothing outside of their optional side quests unless you use them. I would have hugely preferred if the whole cast was present for these scenes, instead of off doing their own things that you don't get to see. it means they never feel as cohesive a group as I'd like for them to be. it's especially a shame since i love this party. Cloud is a total cutie and i love his design. i alsoi like aerith a lot and i always keep her in my party because i like how she lightens the mood in most of the dungeons. tifa doesn't get as much time to shine as I'd like but her scenes are great especially once it gets in to the late game existential bits. cait sith is the best and i will not hear anyone say otherwise, his *SPOILERS* sacrifice ranks up there with the game's best scenes. cid being a bancho almost is great since that's one of my favourite archetypes and i love how he always smokes in battle. barret is great, too. dad of the year every year and he has basically all of the game's best lines. Vincent and yuffie are great, too, though they get so little spotlight here. they shine a lot more in the spinoffs, Vincent especially. the side cast too are great, the Turks especially with how they kind of bumble around and i like a lot of the optional stuff with them, like seeing them off duty in bars. reno is a top tier 1% husband and i love him and i keep a plushie of him on my shelf. i love Elena a lot, too. the shinra higher ups are great too. I love scarlet a lot. i like sepphy as a villain. He's such a constant unnerving presence and he works so well, although there was a little disappointment with sepphy. I like his design and i like how much of a *presence* he is in the story but compared to some other FF villains like kuja i just don't think he massively stands out to me in this first game. i mean, its legacy speaks for itself, too, with sequels like dirge of Cerberus, multiple remakes like with the current gen duology and ever crisis, battle royale games with first soldier, prequels like crisis core and before crisis, appearances in games like dissidia, ehrgeiz, chocobo racing becoming its own game and even in smash, anime OVA's, cameos in things like FF tactics, kingdom hearts, world of final fantasy and FF explorers. it's been ported to downright very system it can be, too—ps3 via ps1 classics, the original ps1 version both in its original Japanese and the expanded international (which added things like a new scene with Zack that is so pivotal it should have been there to begin with as part of the main story, more boss fights like with the weapons and changes to encounter rate and Materia), the old pc version by eidos, a ps4 version that added some nice cheat modes and a fast foreword and even some current gen versions based on that port. it's super accessible. it helps that it's one of the cheapest ps1 games so it won't break the bank to play, though its physical releases on current and last gen leave a lot to be desired, with ps4 and 5 never getting one and the switch one being fine on cart (if expensive in some regions) and a code in a box in others, which is a real shame and the game deserves better than that. i don't even really need to talk about the legacy of the people involved. i know it, you know it, but still like damn this had a real dream team involved. tetsuya nomura, the noted arch enemy of people terminally unable to have fun, bad boy Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yoshinori Kitase, music by Nobuo Uematsu, Yoshitaka Amano, Kazushige Nojima. They're some of the best people to ever work in this artform and they all collaborated on this. it's kind of wild to even think about. the game itself shows this well by just being one of the best games square made before the merger which is very impressive considering just how good their back catalogue is. suffice to say, yes you should play this. you probably already have and I'm just reaffirming your already existing feelings for the game. it's kind of a pointless article like that. I'm selling people on a game that does not need me to sell. It has always spoken for itself and if you somehow haven't played through it then what are you waiting for? get it on ebay and grab it like, now.