In preparation for the launch of the FF7 remake in the next few months I recently completed a play through of FF7, my first play through of the game since my original and only play through in 1997.

I like many other people, bought a Playstation solely to play FF7. People are somewhat familiar with the term "system seller" in regards to certain console exclusive titles, but FF7 was the original "system seller" and still the most powerful one to have ever existed. It really isn't an understatement to say that FF7 is perhaps one of the biggest reasons Sony succeeded with the Playstation. I was always a hardcore Nintendo fanboy and had owned no other systems and actively rooted against them. For me to break down and purchase a rival system was a big deal, but the allure of FF7 was just that strong.

I was a huge JRPG fan in the 90's, before the genre blew up (FF7 was largely responsible for that). JRPG's in the early to mid 90's had a very dedicated fan base but the games were still niche. Companies like ENIX couldn't figure out why Dragon Quest games sold insanely in Japan but subpar in the West. Squaresoft saw slightly more success with the Final Fantasy series and Chrono Trigger, etc. but they were still niche games. But word of mouth of the people who swore by them made them grow in popularity over time.

So as a hardocre JRPG fan, I had to get FF7. I fully completed it back in 1997 (did all sidequests, including killing the optional super bosses) and my original opinion was it was really great, but still not the best FF game. As a huge fan of FF4 and FF6, I wasn't as impressed with FF7 as some. Many people FF7 was the first FF game they played an often times their first JRPG. I think I was irked by how much praise it go for things prior Square games had already done but people didn't know about it.

However my opinion this time around was more pure. I didn't have any baggage so I could evaluate the game completely as it's own thing.

The Great

The soundtrack is amazing, one of the best sound tracks in video game history. One of the most significant things about video game moving to discs and away from cartridges was that you could have CD quality audio and a TON of tracks. Music takes up a lot of space compared to game data so music on cartridges was short midi loops or highly compressed and limited to just a few tracks. The FF7 OST covers 4 complete discs. There are beautifully composed tracks for specific moments or fights you only hear once in the game, as well as those tracks you hear over and over again that are also spectacular.

No real grinding. Older JRPG's unfortunately padded the length of the games by requiring a lot of grinding for levels or gold at various times. FF7 features virtually none of that. Your characters level up very quickly with just natural progression. As long as you don't run from every fight you will almost always be strong enough for your current place in the game without having to grind for anything. You also can run from battle much easier and faster than most older JRPG's and the enemy encounter rate is lower. The game flows much better than older JRPG's do for this reason.

Variety. Most JRPG's up to that point had a very simple gameplay template with almost no variety. FF7 introduces a wide variety of mini-games and little side activities very frequently, it keep things feeling interesting and fresh and engaging.

A more mature story. RPG's have always touched on more mature themes than most genres but FF7 took it to a new level. Free of Nintendo's censorship rules Square was able to tell a much more complicated, mature story than had ever been done in any video game ever up to that point. As a kid I remember being blown away by seeing cuss words in a video game.

Midgar. The atmosphere of the first ~25% of the game, that takes place entirely in the city of Midgar is incredible. For them to achieve that level of atmosphere and immersion and tone in 1997 is really amazing, it even comes through today despite the age. Probably the best setting for any RPG ever up to that point and a contender for best of all time. It's no surprise that part 1 of the FF7 remake is this portion of the game.

The Meh

The "other" party members. People remember the core central characters very well. Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith. These are the characters you immediately think of when you think of FF7. The other characters in the game kinda blow actually and there's a reason they pale in comparison to the others. Most of them simply get introduced too late in the story line for you care about. I'm not going to swap out Barret who I've been playing with the whole game for Vincent or Yuffie. Red is a weird dog creature thing, sorry not interested. Cait Sith is probably one of the dumbest characters in FF history and sticks out like a sore thumb in an otherwise serious game. Simply put, outside of the 4 characters you play with in Midgar early, the other characters feel underdeveloped, not as important, or just silly.

Non-Midgar doesn't live up to Midgar. The world of FF7 outside of Midgar is ok, there are some interesting things here and there, but it feels very standard JRPG and doesn't live up to the incredible atmosphere created in the early part of the game.

Materia hell. Materia is a double edged sword in FF7. It's an interesting system that allows creativity in how you build your party, but it also undermines character's roles. Your characters are usually just walking Materia slots. You can have any character do any role just by equipping them with Materia. By the end of the game, you're so overloaded with Materia that managing it becomes very tedious. Be prepared to spend 10 minutes in the menus if you decide to redo you Materia. Also an issue is that there are some Materia that are so obscenely powerful they trivialize the content after you get them. The good news is that you don't get these until very late in the game though.

Summon animations. The summon animations are extremely cool and showcase a ton of creativity and epicness. They are also extremely long and unskippable so once you've seen them a few times, at that point they become quite annoying. Even worse, summons are the most powerful attacks in the game, so you actually need to cast them quite a big the later stages of the game. The ability to skip them after you've seen them a few times, or a setting to turn them off or something, would have been very nice but oh well.

So yeah, definitely a great game, definitely worthy of all the praise it got back in the day. One of those historic games that changed how video games were perceived and what they could be. Still fundamentally a 90's JRPG but an extremely well done one.