Pros: it's a great game with memorbile charecters, and a great battle system
Cons: the charecters look like there mix between popeye, lego, and anime rejects.
The bottom line: afkldsfjdaska;kasfjkl;asdjf;
Ok a couple of weeks ago I found this in a used game shop and at a good price. All ready owning it on PC I decided to give the playstation game a try. I figure it couldn’t hurt to try it after all the game is good, but the PC I played it on at the time had more bugs then a roach motel. After playing it I found that the playstation and the PC match up equally. They both have a few strength in weakness. The computer version had a higher resolution and a bit smoother looking sprites, but some of the strobe effects like the golden Chcobo’s wouldn’t work right. The Playstation also had a bit better instructions when it came to the controller has well with easy to understand instructions in a few key areas, it’s easy to figure out a puzzle when they tell you O, Square, X then it is Cancel, Menu, Confirm. Anyways on with the review.

Story.
Your Cloud Strife an ex first class solider of the evil Shinra cooperation. You have joined an eco terrorist group by the name of Avalanche. Seems that Shinra has gain a new pollution free energy called Mako, the only problem is that Mako is the planets life energy. In less stopped Shinra will destroy the planet. Later the game turns into a race to get to a promise land where an unlimited amount of mako energy is presumed to be located.

Charecters/the circus side show
Cloud
The main characters cool headed and a bit egoistical. Cloud join Avalanche because he owed Tifa a favor, has well has the fact that he could con the leader of the group Barret out of some quick cash. Cloud is the best all around stats and can use pretty much any Materia you set on him.

Barret.
Loud mouth trash talking and always-angry version of Mr. T with a gun arm. Barret is the leader of Avalanche and him along with Tifa, Jessie, Biggs and Wedge (yeap that would be a Star Wars reference) will destroy Shinra. But Barrets in it for personal reason to because Shinra destroyed his town years ago. Barret uses guns for his weapons and like the archer in previous Final Fantasy this means he can strike long distant targets. Bad news though is stats aren’t really great for most Materia and has weapon have few slots.

Aeris.
Cloud meets Aeris after he botches a mission for Avalanche. Seems like she is on the run from Shinra to, seeing how she is the last of an ancient race. Aeris has some strange magical powers to boot. The sad news is Aeris dies at the end of the first disc not because she’s a great character and it’s tragic (personally she was getting on my nerves so I was glad to see her get done in) but because she’s the greatest when it comes to support character. Having about zero on the physical stats Aeris won’t ever really score a kill with physical attacks. But equip her with magic and summon materia and watch the fire works. Her limit breaks are great when it comes to boosting the party stats.

Tifa.
Now character wise Tifa is a lot better then Aeris has she’s a kind and caring individual who always seems to add something to the team. Unfortunately when it comes to battling though I wish they would have killed her off instead. Tifa has average stats but her final weapon and limit breaks are weird. Her weapons go off the limit bar and if it’s close to full she’ll pack a punch, and so will her limit breaks, if your good on the slots. The fact that she can miss on a good amount of her limit breaks means you should leave her behind. But on the plus side she has nice boobs.

Red XII/Nanaki (can you spot the Star Wars word jumble in this one)
Red saves Aeris from Hojo early on in the game and while he might seem like a wild beast he has intelligence that surpasses that of an average human. The last of his kind and the protector of Cosmo Canyon. Red doesn’t have much to brag on his stats aren’t great neither are his weapons. Send this dog home to keep Tifa Company.

Yuffie.
Yuffie is not a required character rather you can get her in if you battle her near the Junon area and convince her to join. She’s selfish has she is cunning and she seems to be up to something when she join Cloud’s group. Yuffie isn’t the greatest character either but she’s worth having in your party. She can use material like steal and morph better then any other character and that makes her invaluable when it comes to item hunting.

Cait Sith
Yeap another Star Wars rip off and anybody familiar with the movies now that judging by his name this cat ain’t to be trusted. A cat that rides aboard a stuff doll, Cait Sith seems to have been employed by the golden saucer casino to give out fortunes, and he joins Cloud’s group to see if any of his predictions will come true. Cait Sith in battle is an odd ball character and defiantly an acquired taste. His limit breaks are slots like Tifa but all sorts of weird stuff an happen, he can even finish off an entire enemy army with one hit from his slots if your lucky to get the right combination, or finish off your group if your not so lucky. If you’re into some tricky fun take Cait Sith along

Vincent.
A man who was captured and experimented on by Hojo. Vincent may seem frail at first in till he opens up his limit break and starts to transform into classic movie monsters. His transformation are cool and powerful unfortunately you loose complete control of him when he does it so your always taking a gamble using him.

Cid.
The last member to join your group. Every Final Fantasy has to have a Cid in it this one seems to be popular enough for him to reappear in the remake of FF2 (it at least looks like him), and in Kingdom Hearts (of course that ain’t a stick he’s smoking in this one). Cid like all the other Cid’s before him is the pilot of the group who dreams of one day of going into space. Cid has some great stats and is a great character to have along when it comes to leveling up your materia.

Villains
No Final Fantasy game is complete without a cast of villains.

Rufus.
The new president of Shinra inc and if Barrett thought is old man was bad, Rufus is worse. Cold hearted and greedy Rufus is determined to get Shinra inc a secure hand on the world domination.

Hojo.
Probably the most villainous villain in the game. While he isn’t the one out to take over the world or anything like that. Hojo’s mad experiments have managed to hurt everyone in the group in some form or another.

Sephiroth.
The number 1 solider in Shinra in till he went mad and completely destroyed Cloud’s hometown of Niblehiem. Cold and completely ruthless Sephiroth seems to go out of the way to make Cloud’s life miserable. Even though he only appears here in there in the game when he appears you know someone is going to become shescobob in his ridiculously long sword.

Graphics.
The graphics on this aren’t really that impressive. In fact the characters look like anime, mixed in with Lego, mixed in with Popeye characters to get the out of battle segments. They almost look cute when they’re not shooting at something and saying every 4-letter word in the book.

In battle the graphics pick up a bit the backgrounds while still very polygonal at least look human. The animations for the battles are also well done. We also start to see what would be FF8 biggest flaw and that is spell animation being to cool but way the hell to long. There is only 2 spells that really had me tapping my toes and looking at my watch and that is knights of the round summons, and the Bhamut summons. But they are there.

There is some FMV scenes in there to, some of them look cool and very well life like considering it was made 7 years ago. Some just use bigger sprites then what we usually see in the over world scenes.

Sound.
Wow there is a lot of good music in this one. The tracks in this game are awesome and always fit the mood from tragic, to spooky, to happy. My only complaint is I wish there where more of them because there are a lot of repeated area when it comes to music.

Gameplay.
The game is simple enough to understand out of the 9 characters you get to put 3 in the group and equip them with weapons. Then battle and level up but there is a new twist to this area the limit breaks and the materia system.

I do believe limit breaks where introduced in this game (I haven’t played 5 and 6 yet even though I have anthologies collecting dust so many great games so little time) limit breaks build up energy the more the character get’s hit. Get hit enough and one will go off usually doing a supper move that does damage to the enemy (with the exception of Aeris who boosts the party’s strength in some way). The higher the level the more limit breaks you can learn, but the last ones usually have to be obtain a special way.

Then there is the new Materia system. Weapons and armor have slots where you can put little orbs that you can buy and obtain in. When equip they let your characters do special move. Green lets you use magic, red let’s you summon, yellow let’s you use support materia for moves like mug and morph, and blue and purple allow you to alter stats in some way. While anybody can equip any materia it’s not has all purpose and therefore no indivuality among characters has some people think it is. See the weapons and armor only have so many slots, and the slots also give out how many AP points the materia can get to level up (none, half, normal, double, and the rare triple). The more the Materia levels up the stronger it get’s to be, when it maxes out new materia will be born. Since Cid has a lot of double and triple materia on him he does great with the yellow and red materia since they take a while to level up. Aeris stats allow her to be better at green and red, and Yuffie ninja weapons allow her to use morph to it’s fullest capability.

So while there is no class system in the game there are still some limits to the materia you should equip to the group to get the most out of the materia and the character.

Chcobo racing.
The modern Final Fantasy games have some game you need to play to get the great items. In 8 it’s the card game, in 9 it’s Chocobo’s hunt and peck, and 10 it’s blitz ball. In this one it’s chocobo racing and breeding you can capture the chocobo’s by finding them in battle using a special materia. Then feed them to up their skills then race them. Once maxed in rank on racing you can then breed them. Special Chocob’s can be bred that will allow you to cross mountains and river, and even one that will let you go anywhere

Length.
Ok I am slow at RPG’s. Mainly because I like to goof off and look everywhere and talk to everybody at least 20 times, and it took me at least 60 hours to beat it this last time through. And about 70 hours my first time through. Strap yourselves in this one will last you awhile.

Final Recommendation.
FF7 is a great game that will last you quite a long time. Since you can get for a little over 10 dollars in most places it’s definitely not a bad buy. Now I am off to blow off some of the dust on my FF anthologies.

Check out my review of Final Fantasy Origins.


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