Tom's Hardware Giveaway - Final Fantasy VII!

[AndrewJacksonZA]

I've never really gotten into the Final Fantasy series. I tried playing one or two demos that came on demo CDs from computer magazines in the mid-nineties but I just couldn't get into them. The side-by-side combat really, really put me off.

My favourite RPG so far is Fallout 2, followed closely by Fallout. The interaction between your character and the world, the story, the characters, the scripting - I just really think it's the best that I've experienced so far. I felt a definite connection to my characters and my party:

• ■I was miffed that I *had* to bring my wife along when I got married in the game (yes, you can get married!)
  ■I frikkin' restored to a save game after my character got addicted to strength-enhancing drugs (screw that!)
  ■I kicked ass when one of my characters was a professional boxer!
  ■I was a bit bummed when a child got killed in the crossfire and I got the blame when I wasn't even the person who killed the kid. It was a slaver who killed him AND I GOT BRANDED A CHILD KILLER!!! (In case you don't know, that's not a good thing...)
  ■I created an insanely strong character but made Intelligence my dump stat. Naturally, my character's dialog choices were extremely limited... At least many NPCs had pity on me. No, really, I mean it: their dialog changed (You don't get that in FO3.)

What gives Fallout another big boost in my opinion is the community around it. The work and input from the guys at No Mutants Allowed is simply fantastic. They were recently featured on Kotaku ( http://kotaku.com/the-relentless-champions-of-classic-fallout-1715984448 ) but they were kinda light on just how much time and effort some members like killap have put in to patch the game, as well as restore missing content that shipped with the game but were written out.

I also just prefer sci-fi to magic stories.

@bwohl: give FO2 a spin, you'll see that the world reacts in a far better fashion to you than FO3. It's also more realistic (as far as post-apocalyptic worlds that, thank the Lord, haven't happened go than FO3. Another nice thing is that combat outcomes are based on your character, not you and your own aiming with your mouse so it's more of a true RPG than FO3. If your character can't hit the broad side of a barn with a banjo, then good luck with assault rifle. You can buy it from GOG.com for almost nothing. Be sure to head on over to No Mutants Allowed and grab the Fallout 2 Restoration patch for it (it restores the "cut" content as mentioned above.) It's also available at it's creator's site, http://www.killap.net/

I actually have a little New Year's Day tradition that I've been doing for the past four or five years (I didn't do it this year though): I play a bit of Fallout 2.


Edit:
Right, I guess not many of you kids will know what "can't hit the broad side of a barn with a banjo" means. It means the person is absolutely terrible at aiming. Learn something today.

 

[yeungl]

I like FF7, but the story seems, broken when Aerith die. I played on PSOne

 

[shoe59]

My 1st memory of FF is watching my older brother play FF3 on NES. I was really intrigued as he selected which characters for his party; wizard, warrior, healer, etc. and also how they changed into more powerful versions as the game progressed (am I remembering this right?). I have never played a FF game, though.

My personal favorite RPGs would have to be Elder Scrolls: Oblivion / Skyrim -- because of the gigantic open world maps, fun leveling system, and impressive graphics and physics. Also, this is stupid, but Super Mario RPG on SNES I thought was awesome.

 

[squibbfire]

it yet still saddens me when the self-proclaimed hardcore gamers my age rattle on about generic games like Crash Bandicoot, Madden or Halo still haven’t given this special little game the time of day.

I hope I don't derail the discussion, but I'm not sure you're giving Halo its due, at least the original. Yes, it was incredibly popular and a lot of people played it ( maybe over-played it ), but it actually brought a lot of depth to the shooter genre that was mostly lacking back in 2001.
.

I wouldn't say it was super popular...at least not much as HALO 2...and if anything halo 2 brought a different multiplayer to the console not really anything storywise. Even HALO2 barely passed the 8+ million Goldeneye 007 sales numbers. I didn't own 007 but that and Half life, quake, unreal, sold several millions of copies and were already popular by the time the halo series came out...so if anything to most gamers Halo was just another game on the shelf albeit a heavily marketed one! I could see it being a game changing game if you were new to the game...but at the time there was already a market with console and pc FPS games.

 

[squibbfire]

Final Fantasy 7 had the best combat system and the materia system was the best ability and magic system they ever had!!

yes it was so clean and expansive...

 

[Branden]

FF7, it was the first epic RPG i played, and the one to which i compare all other RPGs.

 

[htrombley]

Zelda on the Nintendo was the first RPG I ever played and is still one of my favorites. I didn't have a Nintendo growing up, but every time I had the chance I would play Zelda at a friend's house.

 

[IdahoNetworkGuru]

As much as I loved FFVII (and I really did love it), I'd have to say my favorite was FFIII on the SNES (actually FFVI). It's story line and it's soundtrack (in all it's 16-bit glory) was so memorizing that it kept this kid up many nights waiting to see what would become of Terra and waiting for Kefka to get his due. I still think of the Aria at times. That's one they need to remake in HD!

 

[IMTECH]

The last FF game I played was on PS1 and I don't really remember much about it. It was so-so for me, but I did like the adventure it offered back in the days.

 

[tgsa]

Having joined the FF series late in the game, and missing a few others here and there. Due to some odd circumstances, I never finished FF7 which was my initial intro to the series. So, of the ones I've played, FF 12 was one of my favorites.

 

[SmoothE611]

My favorite RPG game Diablo 3.

 

[larkspur]

Final Fantasy for the NES (the original). 25 years of playing it and I still play it occasionally. I can't say that about any other game ever. Nothing like that feeling when you think you've got Chaos beat and then he NUKEs you twice in a row... ah, good times!

 

[jonroberts26]

How about Shining Force? I liked ff12 as well, but old rpgs were great.

 

[Danimal1q2w3]

My favorite final fantasy was ff9. As a kid I had heard of final fantasy but had no idea what I was missing. I borrowed ff9 from my friend and just popped it in my ps1 not knowing I was about to embark on a journey that would forever impact me. I fired it up and was fully immersed in the world. The characters were so relatable. It covered so many concepts of human emotion from love to humor to sadness to struggling to understand your existence to even hunger. I went from laughing out loud to crying to being depressed. It was an emotional roller coaster and I enjoyed every minute of it. Years after beating it I played through it a few more times over the years and decided to get a leg sleeve of the scene between Alexander and bahamut. Very glad I did. http://m.imgur.com/a/Q6UeV

 

[iStillWaters]

My favourite RPG has is a tie between Final Fantasy 7 and Vagrant Story. I still remember FF7 as the first RPG I even tried and I was instantly hooked. It remains one of the few games that I bothered to complete.

Vagrant Story was so unique in its gameplay and the story, I still keep wishing to go back and play it again. The Snowflies forest was so much fun.

Both these games had such iconic antagonists like Sephiroth and Sydney.

Another cool RPG type game that I could play till end was Parasite Eve. Would love to have these 3 games back on the latest H/W.

Cheers,
StillWaters

 

[bramenjam]

Never player FF, but landstalker on the megadrive/genesis was awesome! Good action RPG with plenty of story, quests, side quests, gear, and your very own pixie companion Friday. Truly a gem of a game. I eish they had made 7 sequels to that game...

 

[zakaron]

FF6 is my favorite. As an impressionable kid in high school, the trials and tribulations the characters went through really made you feel for them, but the overall theme of hope kept me wanting to press on. Each character was detailed and different; they all had personality and you felt like you got to know them. The graphics were top notch for what the SNES could produce. Even pixelated, the characters expressed emotion. And then there was the music... Mr. Uematsu created a masterpiece with every character, town, and event getting pulled into the game with his score. The soundtrack really struck a chord with me. Ok, that was lame, but I loved the music so much I bought the OST on a 3 disc set.

FF7 was memorable as well. I see I'm not the only one who bought the PC version and enjoyed the enhanced graphics courtesy of a Voodoo based card (mine at the time was the Voodoo 3 3500TV) and the yamaha midi synth which made another wonderful soundtrack stand out even more.

Perhaps the hardest RPG I recall completing was the 7th Saga. I finished the game as Esuna who had tremendous magic ability.

 

[mf Red]

FFVII is of course the best.

Growing up FFVIII was my favorite because it popped my Final Fantasy Cherry.

FF9 was awful. Zidane, ugh.
FF10 was decent Tidus was a little emo but kinda cool.
FF13 I got recently on my PC, but it's so damn linear it's not very interesting.
Have FF3 on my phone it's pretty neat but whatevs.

 

[Nick Arnold]

Final Fantasy VII is more than just a game to me. I've been made fun of for this by people who don't understand being a life-long gamer, or people who have never experienced the story of FF7.

FF7 got me through some of the hardest times of my life. As many do, I come from a pretty broken home. My entire life has been a confusing, emotional mess. I never met my birth father, who left my mother after she got pregnant with me. The man I called dad the first 23 years of my life was an emotionally abusive piece of work, to put it lightly. We moved all over the place. My younger siblings looked to me more than our parents, who were always at each other's throats. I remember days I would come home from school, in 4th grade, to see my baby brother and sister alone in the living room, our mother locked in the bathroom with a knife, crying and speaking of killing herself because she couldn't handle the pain anymore because of my "father".

Because of a lifetime of things such as this, I used video games as my escape. Final Fantasy VII was the first RPG I had ever played. It let me live as a whole different person, in a different world, with different people. I got to go on adventures, experience laughter, love, hate, sadness, and everything in between. My first playthrough I remember recording 120+ hours, just wandering around fighting things, talking to people, pretending I was Cloud, and my party members were the friends I didn't get to have in real life. When Aeris (Aerith) died, I cried for days. I was so connected to her. How could this happen? How could Sephiroth do this to me? Cloud's emotions were mine. His mission, his pain, his story. I wasn't playing as Cloud. I was Cloud.

Throughout the years, as everything in my life seemed to crumble around me in one way or another, I would pick up Final Fantasy VII and lose myself in another world. Not to ignore real life, but to help me escape the hardships for a few hours at a time, so I could come back and face them with a new perspective, a new outlook. Even now, just a few years from being 30, I have another save file started for the days where reality is just a little too much to handle. At the end of a hard day I can come home, kick my feet up and get lost in a world of Fantasy. Unfortunately my Playstation has seen better days, but it would be great to have the digital copy to play from my desktop or laptop whenever I want to escape reality.

 

[RedJaron]

Like others, I've actually managed to never play one. Baldur's gate and Icewind dale were so much better.

If you've never played any of them, how can you knowledgeably compare them to something else?

Final Fantasy VI.. The original one!!

You call the sixth installment the original one? Um . . .

As a side note, while FF VII was a pretty nice game, I still don't get how most people considers it the absolute best...
Drop in your opinion about it and help me understand, if you want

I talked a bit about that in my first comment ( back on page 1 ). I might repeat a bit of that here. It's not just about game quality. Demographics ( particularly age and money, ) and marketing play a big part. Let me explain. And I'm using numbers since repeating Roman numerals IV, VI, and VII is just asking for typos or people reading it wrong.

Most people consider the first FF game they played all the way through the very best. It's also uncommon for someone to play games on a console more than two generations old if they didn't play anything on it when it was still current. That means in discussions like this it comes down to how many people actually played the game within about five years of its original release. That means you have to consider how many people total were even involved in video gaming at the time. Since that number has gone up, you're going to end up with more people playing the later titles but simply missing out on the early ones.

Most often, FF 4, 6, 7, and 10 are brought up as Best FF Game. Let's start with FF4.

FF4 was released in 1991, and video games were still very much a kid thing ( at least in the USA ). The North America release also went through localization Hell, meaning we got a dumbed down version that lost some of its luster. So it's understandable if some people liked the game, but didn't love it. And most importantly, fewer people were playing video games in '91 compared to '94 when FF6 launched. That means when you have retrospectives years later, there's usually fewer people arguing for this title.

As a game, FF6 basically took all the great things from FF4 and then added to it. Square ramped up the team size and budget that went into the game and tried to polish everything about it. They also had a dedicated localization team in place so the FF6 across the globe was exactly as the development team wanted. So in terms of quality, FF6 is probably better than 4. However you're still dealing with about the same demographics as those who played FF4. Also at this point the term "RPG" still had some cultural stigma, as though the only RPGs were D&D and the weirdo loners dressing in costumes and talking about THAC0.

Now let's talk 1997 and FF7. It was just the start of a major shift in the industry. Square spent $45M making this game. That's more than was spent on most movies at the time. Probably more than was spent on every other FF game combined up until that point. FF7 also had a lot of new stuff which gives a big "ooooh and ahhhh!" factor to a game. It was on a new console, so people wanted the latest tech. It transitioned to 3D graphics. The new storage medium allowed a much bigger game and FMV. It'd been 10 years since the NES was released. Kids who had grown up with the NES were now approaching 20. And I bet most of them wanted a more "grown up" game. The darker, grittier world instead of the usual high fantasy met that desire. ( At least that's how it was for me. When FF1 came out I was reading Lloyd Alexander, but by FF7 it was Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, and Tolkien. ) Many of them were also on their own with disposable income. Kids that were born in the late 80s may have been too young to get FF4 and 6, but they were old enough to want FF7. So FF7 likely was the first trans-generational FF game, which really boosted the number of people playing it.

I think the biggest part of FF7's success was advertising. It had one of the biggest, most effective marketing campaigns any game had seen up to that point. I may be wrong, but I don't remember seeing a TV commercial for a game before that time. Commercials for a console itself, yes, but not for an individual game. It presented the game not as the nerdy, table-top dress-up, but as a cool, action-packed epic of both fantasy and science fiction. The game itself was pretty phenomenal so it could back up its marketing. And this was also the time the internet started really taking off, which only spread the word farther.

Fast-forward five years to 2002 and FF10 did a lot of things FF7 did. New console and next gen graphics make a good wow factor. The FMVs were even better looking, and now you had voice acting. Gaming was now mainstream. By this point, even the youngest children of the 80s were grown up and buying their own PS2s. Some of them had kids of their own that they were introducing to games. Those born in the 90s would have been too young for the PS1, but they wanted to play with the PS2.

Again, it's not about which game is actually the "best." It's about how many people played that game. I grew up a little poor. It took a while for me and siblings to save up to buy a used NES in 1989. My brother and I played FF1, but he was the one who actually beat it. I didn't have an SNES so I didn't get to play FF4 or FF6. I didn't have a PS1 so I thought I wouldn't get to play FF7 either. Then they ported it over and I saved up to buy it myself. When FF10 came out, I was old enough and on my own so I bought my own console.

Don't forget, there's a lot of nostalgia that factors in too. And as most of us know, new things seem awesome to us when we're kids, even if they're not really good. I've tried watching Knight Rider, A-Team, and Airwolf now and it's a painful affair ( thankfully MacGyver is still pretty good ). The genuinely good things from that time seem that much cooler to us. This can "ruin" us for other things that come down the pipe since the new experience will often pale compared to the memory of nostalgia, even if the new experience is measurably better in most ways. A lot of people still say FF1 is the best because it was their first.

My 1st memory of FF is watching my older brother play FF3 on NES. I was really intrigued as he selected which characters for his party; wizard, warrior, healer, etc. and also how they changed into more powerful versions as the game progressed (am I remembering this right?). I have never played a FF game, though.

Sounds like you're confusing the SNES and NES versions. FF1 had you pick for different party members that then got promoted later in the game. FF3 on SNES was actually FF 6 ( half of the first games never made it to the US back then ), and it had specific story characters.

And your avatar reminds me that my discs have been sitting in a bag for too long.

I wouldn't say it was super popular...at least not much as HALO 2...and if anything halo 2 brought a different multiplayer to the console not really anything storywise. Even HALO2 barely passed the 8+ million Goldeneye 007 sales numbers. I didn't own 007 but that and Half life, quake, unreal, sold several millions of copies and were already popular by the time the halo series came out...so if anything to most gamers Halo was just another game on the shelf albeit a heavily marketed one! I could see it being a game changing game if you were new to the game...but at the time there was already a market with console and pc FPS games.

You completely missed the point. You never make Thing A look better by tearing down Thing B. You're bemoaning that Chrono Trigger isn't as well-known as you think it should be. Fine. However, complaining that it isn't as well-known as other, more popular games comes off as whiny. Especially when some of those other games were actually pretty good on their own.

I specifically said Halo, not Halo 2. No, Halo 2 didn't bring anything new story-wise because the first Halo had already done that. Sure, there had been shooters on consoles before, but not many. Halo did for the XBox ( and consoles in general ) what Half-Life and Deus Ex did for computers. It showed that a first-person action game didn't have to be solely about more dakka ( yes, Unreal started it, but Half-Life cemented it ). You could have a good story, fleshed-out characters, puzzles and clever level-design. Halo was one of the first games I remember that gave you infinite lives by using automatic checkpoint saves ( and automatically loading on death ). Yes, GoldenEye did local deathmatch before Halo did, but Halo gave you local co-op to go through the single-player campaign. Halo had plenty of innovation and rightfully deserves to be as popular as it is.

Number of units sold does not equate to game quality, only to popularity. Exact same can be said for music. You already said this yourself when saying Chrono Trigger isn't well known. So don't try to use it as an excuse of why earlier games are so much better than Halo. If nothing else, don't compare PC game sales to console sales.

 

[SinxarKnights]

I have fond memories of Final Fantasy for NES. I leveled my guys to 999 health and always ran with a 2x warrior, black mage and white mage. But no I think my favorite of the series is FF VI (FFIII US). There was just something about the mix of steampunk and magic that really appealed to me. Not to mention the soundtrack is epic. I hated when your party got split up and you had to do those multiparty battles though.

You haven't played Final Fantasy until you've suplexed a train.

 

[RedJaron]

I have fond memories of Final Fantasy for NES. I leveled my guys to 999 health and always ran with a 2x warrior, black mage and white mage. But no I think my favorite of the series is FF IV (FFIII US). There was just something about the mix of steampunk and magic that really appealed to me. Not to mention the soundtrack is epic. I hated when your party got split up and you had to do those multiparty battles though.

You haven't played Final Fantasy until you've suplexed a train.

I usually did Warrior, Thief, White, and Black. Masamune + ninja + multiple strikes = gaming squealing.

You're confusing the SNES versions though. FF4 = FF2 USA and FF6 = FF3 USA. Since you're talking steampunk, I'm guessing you mean the latter.

 

[SinxarKnights]

I have fond memories of Final Fantasy for NES. I leveled my guys to 999 health and always ran with a 2x warrior, black mage and white mage. But no I think my favorite of the series is FF IV (FFIII US). There was just something about the mix of steampunk and magic that really appealed to me. Not to mention the soundtrack is epic. I hated when your party got split up and you had to do those multiparty battles though.

You haven't played Final Fantasy until you've suplexed a train.

I usually did Warrior, Thief, White, and Black. Masamune + ninja + multiple strikes = gaming squealing.

You're confusing the SNES versions though. FF4 = FF2 USA and FF6 = FF3 USA. Since you're talking steampunk, I'm guessing you mean the latter.

You are right. I meant 6 but wasn't thinking at the time.

I did like FFIV as well. I had it as FFII for SNES. That is the one with Cecil and Kain. I remember the final boss Zeromus would always wreck me when he would use that "Big Bang" skill repeatedly: YouTube Link.

 

[Guest]

I've never played any Final Fantasy game nor any RPG genre for that matter. I associate Final Fantasy games as the greatest RPG games, because i heard classmates talk such great things. I heard more about how realistic the graphics are than conversations on story. Don't know if it was Final Fantasy VII or VIII, but my friend kept mentioning how beautiful the main female character looked. He later became a fan of Japanese manga, keeping a secret stash of female characters that he himself made on a notebook.

 

[Vynavill]

@RedJaron
That's a pretty nice explanation you gave there (about my question on opinions why FF7 is considered the best), thank you.
I pretty much agree with everthing, but somehow still can't shake off the fact other episodes aren't receiving their due. I'm not specifically talking about 6, which I named my favourite in this dscussion, but even the older/newer ones.

That's most probably related to the people I asked to and the place I grew and live in, but I always get answered that the best are either 7 o 10.
I accept anything as long as there's a good reason, and plenty of the people I asked to (not to mention plenty of people who answered in this discussion) have one, but when someone tells you that he likes the game "Because Sephiroth" / "Because Yuna", it leaves a bad feeling behind, if you know what I mean. I'm even talking about people who played them all and didn't start out at 7/10, which contributes to that bad feeling...

Sure, as you said, some episodes were plagued by other issues, such as the localization hell that hit FF4, but they still shined of their own light.
Meh, I assume it's just me overthinking things


@jupiter
There are good chances your friend meant FF7. Tifa was possibly the most "(g)oogled" FF girl in the series, by both videogamers and "commoners", at least before Yuna and Rikku (FF10) made their appearance and perhaps followed by Rinoa (FF8), IMO.