I Finally Played Final Fantasy 7 in 2024...

have you ever missed out on or skipped a game that mini hail is a masterpiece something that I've covered extensively on my channel and the entire reason that I started my channel and the break the backlog series was to give myself a place to share my thoughts as I went through and finished titles from my never- ending backlog of video games because of my ADHD Fiel need for conent simulation much of my adolescence was filled with buying video games trying them once or twice or maybe not even at all putting them down and picking up something else and I was never really returning to previous titles that I had dropped this means that my stack of video games that I finished as a kid was minuscule and it's something that I'm really actively trying to remedy with this Channel and this specific series of reviews that challenge me to see any game that I play to the end unless I am thoroughly not enjoying myself we've covered good games a few meh games and thankfully no bad games yet but today we're going to be talking about a Legendary game welcome back to the channel pler troops and if you're new to the channel welcome to break the backlog the show where I sat down and provide my thoughts opinions and personal stories about a particular game that I've been playing today's game might be the biggest most recognizable and most influential title relative to its time that I have ever covered on this channel Final Fantasy 7 this is a game that at this point in time feels like it is one of the Millennium items to the Video Game World everyone knows someone who has played this game loved this game and can't stop talking or referencing it it's a game that sits at the top of many a top 10 list and it's cited as one of the jrpgs that made the genre popular to Western audiences it's been heaped with praise since its release now I myself have always loved the final fantasy series though after some reflecting recently I realized that I have finished a very small number of them most of which I wouldn't even call my favorite Final Fantasy titles I missed out on a lot of these earlier games as well with my entry into the series not coming until Final Fantasy 10 and 12 but the recent series of remakes of this game that are shaping up to be of the highest quality on their own right I wanted to take my time to play the game that started it all for the Final Fantasy 7 universe and see what made this story so revolutionary for gaming and why so many people site this game as not only being the best Final Fantasy game of all time but the best video game ever made I also thought it would be cool to play this one and get the full context of the story so that when I eventually do play the remak and the last game in the series whenever that happens I can see what has changed from the original concept and what a special game to Mark the 20th official break the backlog review thank you for being a part of this journey and this Channel and as always I hope you enjoy before we get started I just wanted to make a quick note that in an effort to not spoil the massive plot points for this game much of my footage will be from the earlier portions of my playthrough this may mean that some of the things that I talk about may not necessarily align with what's playing on screen and I just wanted to give you a heads up there okay without further Ado sit back relax and grab a snack as we break the backlog on the original Final Fantasy 7 Final Fantasy 7 marks the seventh title in the iconic Final Fantasy series of Japanese role playing games in which players follow the story of Cloud Strife as he joins Avalanche Avalanche is an eot terrorist group setting out to [ __ ] the Shen Corporation who essentially runs the governments of the world and is slowly draining the planet's life force Away by harnessing the Mako energy that dwells within it they use this to power their lifestyle everything from giant buildings to electronics just pretty much anything you can think of this journey eventually leads them to hunting down Sethro a powerful member of soldier who has plans to do immense damage to the planet in hopes of ascending to godhood the game was considered to be a groundbreaking title in its time and captivated Gamers and critics alike with many citing it as the game that popularized the series and the genre as a whole in the west it has been considered by many to be one of the best video games of all time and there's even fans who believe that everything after Final Fantasy 7 is where the series started to go downhill these are some pretty lofty and ambitious claims and opinions about this game so just what went into making one of the greatest video games of all time the year is 1994 and plans were being drawn up for the next entry in the Final Fantasy series Final Fantasy 7 started like as another 2D project whose aim was to be released on the Super Nintendo entertainment system or the super famicom in Japan however development would be paused while Square focused on tying up some loose ends on other projects namely Chrono Trigger when the planning eventually continued Square decided to shoot for a 3D game inste as a console Hardware had beginning to advance at a rapid Pace this led to the team having to decide between continuing their relationship with Nintendo and creating Final Fantasy 7 for the Nintendo 64 or Sony's new CD ROM driven console and first dip into the market the PlayStation I talked about this a bit in my playing only Nintendo 64 games for a week challenge video but the once massive amount of thirdparty games arriving on Nintendo's home consoles began to decline with the release of the Nintendo 64 and Playstation this was due to many things but namely that the cartridges were expensive and they just didn't have the storage capacity of the CD ROM which is what PlayStation used for all of its games many studios aligned with the PlayStation and this was Sony's real first dip into the console market like I said with squar being one of the largest companies to take a risk on this new console and this Final Fantasy game that they had been planning would be their first showing on the new Home console Square didn't waste a moment in moving forward with their plans tripling their Staffing acquiring workstations built for 3D graphics and even moving offices to house their bigger staff in a time when 20 to 30 people developing a game was more than Norm a development team of 100 to 150 was yet another risk that square was willing to take to make this game they had planned sheld and reignited a reality vice president of square USA at the time shinichiro kajitani went on record with polygon saying Square was always of the Mind that it would be best to commit 100% to just one thing so where for example Sega would buy a $10,000 machine Square would buy a $100,000 machine then we'd go out and recruit designers and programmers they would say Well we'd rather work with the $100,000 machine with all of its staff and Tech gathered Square set out to make this game in 1996 with a goal of only spending a year in development as these were some of the first 3D games ever made and on these new consoles there was definitely growing pains amongst the staff but they prevailed and continued to adapt and learn the New Direction the new technology of 3D not only improved the technical and development side of the game but it also provided a new medium for artists to work with that allowed them to include more polygons and higher quality characters well for the time much if not all of the character designing process has been attributed to tsia namora who would later go on to create and work on the Kingdom Hearts series it was tasked to him as it was believed that his Manga style of artwork would be a good fit for the more detailed models that the game could work with nuro would also move up within the company during the development of this game after being on the team since the development of Final Fantasy 5 I'd been involved with the series since Final Fantasy 5 and on Final Fantasy 5 and 6 I would always talk about plans and mention ideas to Katan but on seven that's when I took a bit more of a leadership role and started coming up with proposals and speaking more clearly about what I wanted to do in the game namor's work with yoshinori katas built upon the original concept that Final Fantasy Creator hironobu sakauchi had come up with which originally saw the game taking place in New York supposedly after going through the forge out came the story that has captivated Generations an emotionally charged narrative that covers mental health grief loss and identity issues with the characters designed the story written in the music composed by the wonderfully talented nabuo uatu who had been with square since 1986 the game was shaping up to be one that built upon the foundations of the series and drove it into the future now would all of these risks pay off and it turns out that they would indeed as Final Fantasy 7 became an international hit continuing its success in Japan while also thrusting the series and genre into the Western Limelight it won miname of of the Year Awards after releasing in 1997 by many different award shows and Publications and has remained at the top of many greatest video games of all time lists the influence that Final Fantasy 7 has had on gaming pop culture the jrpg genre and the final fantasy series cannot be understated the development of Final Fantasy 7 goes a lot deeper than this and there are more in-depth videos here on YouTube that you can check out I put some in the description below that I liked and that I watched in my research process but yeah go check these videos out there's a ton to know there's a lot of like a little fun tid and like the just the chaos of it all I also included the polygon article that I referenced for my interviews of the staff who worked on this game and their stories now let's move on to my review of my experience playing this game and how it holds up today up first through the visuals and I wanted to address something that's going to become noticeable as you watch the gameplay on screen throughout this video it might have already happened I haven't edited that part yet so just to be transparent I originally started playing with the original PS1 graphics on as I wanted to get the full experience this later changed as I continue my playthrough as I decided that I wanted to test out some of the graphical mods to see what the modding Community had cooked up for this game over the years and I just wanted to note that before I started covering the visuals as a whole for the most part I'm going to be reviewing the visuals as they are from their original style as unless you are playing on the PC this will be the way that you're going to be looking at the game and experiencing it also if you want to know what graphical mod I used to get this look of the field models or the battle models it's on the seventh heaven mod launcher and it's called the chibi field models and battle models by Nino style now I got to say while this graphical style was probably Cutting Edge for the time and it was influential in many ways by 2024 standards Final Fantasy 7 looks really rough which is sort of funny when you look back at older games when they supposedly push the boundaries of what could be shown on screen many times when games chase a more realistic approach to things our initial reaction is wao this is so real and then the effects of time hit the pixel art 2D Final Fantasy games May hold up a bit better today at least in this regard due to that age-old belief that stylized games that don't reality or realism tend to age better than games that do now while this game's visuals can be stiff clunky and even goofy at times there was something very nostalgic and cozy feeling about booting up a game that had this visual style I'm not going to sit here and try to change your mind that this game looks good in its normal art style I don't think that it holds up very well I'll just be honest but I did find it to be oddly Charming when I first started playing it I feel like I got to transport myself back to 1997 when Gamers would have gotten this game in their hands for the first time and putting my phone on do not disturb and just enjoying an original PlayStation game was a really cool experience now like I said eventually I opted to go with Nino Styles mod for graphics and this has made the game much more enjoyable as it turned all the Sprites into a more detailed design looking more like the Final Fantasy 9 Sprites than was possible at the time with this game when it originally was released that overall led to me enjoying the game and the character work that much more The Core Concepts of how these characters are designed from an art standpoint however is pure quality the portraits and concept art that tetsu and namoro worked on really did support the opinion that amora's art style would fit this style of RPG and I think that the art Direction on that front is part of what made this game so iconic cloud and seph being at the center of this narrative and then both being cool edgy dudes with huge swords as badass and everything from the choices in color to the overall direction of many of the characters is just really well done this cast of party members is one of the more diverse and interesting ones out there and the ability for the team to nail these Concepts that for each of them really solidified this as a memorable bunch in fact some of the designs are some of my favorites in the series so far from what I have played of Final Fantasy there's just a lot to love here in terms of the variety and interesting design angles and choices that I actually struggled to put together my final Squad and Revisited this topic many times before the end of the game as far as performance the seam version ran fine but was only able to break the locked 15 FPS with the help of once again the modern Community this actually made a really huge difference and in combination with the chibi style Sprites it really helped this game step a bit more into the modern look to help tell its story I only ran into issues with the frame rate during one portion of the game which was a puzzle that has you timing a run across the screen with wind and Magic energy that kind of flares up and if you have a 30 FPS or 60 FPS mod on it does break this puzzle and make it almost impossible to time this window as the wind effects don't really show up the way they're supposed to it wasn't until turning to the internet that I found out that this was a common issue amongst consoles and PC and to fix it you simply had to turn off your 60 FPS mod and play at 15 FPS until this puzzle was completed another thing I wanted to add is that that I did utilize a speed mod that allowed me to skip some of the cutcenes that I may have had to watch again because of dying before I got to save while I don't want to spoil too much of the story or late game things I will say this became vital in the final boss fight and all of you who have played this game know exactly what cut scene I'm talking about it's like 3 minutes every time the boss uses this ultimate move and I cannot imagine sitting through that cut scene without being able to speed it up I seriously Salute You Gamers of the 9s and early 2000s who were forced to sit through that move animation especially if it took you many tries to conquer the final boss fight that sounds abysmal and I am glad that I didn't subject myself to that unskippable cut scene a thousand times at its normal pace and I guess that's kind of the overall gist of the graphics here they are very dated and they can be really rough to look at at times though on PC with the help of mods this game really can shine in a way that makes the experience enjoyable and the character is more identifiable As you move through it for those on Console I do believe that this title has more bells and whistles of what comes with it a few of those being the ability to speed up the game like I said and the increased frame rate but with consoles outside of like jailbreaking your console you're stuck with the default field and battle models meaning that the mods I mentioned won't apply to you and you'll be stuck looking at polygon cloud and gang I don't think that this is a deal breaker however and we'll talk about why that is in a little bit as for the sound I opted to use no mods as I wanted to hear the soundtrack and game sounds as they were intended to be heard first up the soundtrack is beautifully done and still holds up very well in my opinion there are some really powerful songs here that evoke emotional tones and feelings with gritty cyberpunk tracks that capture the grime of the underground in midgar and the triumphant and iconic Fan Fair song that plays whenever the party wins a battle the soundtrack is packed to the brim with songs that manag to effectively cover the many different activities scenarios locations and story beats to the narrative seph rro theme for instance is an epic tune complete with an almost Gregorian chant sort of quality that made me feel like I was really in for the fight of my life the music that plays when piloting an Airship carries with it the tones of Adventure to match the winds that you're sailing upon there's a lot to love here and it makes sense why omatu is such a legendary composer there is a clear level of talent and skill here that managed to learn this new system of audio development where more quality sounds were achievable and make something this memorable right out of the gate right from the beginning the opening song made me feel like I was in for an adventure I wouldn't forget and these highs in the soundtrack continued throughout my experience as for the sound effects this one is a bit more of a mixed bag as there were obviously limitations to what sounds could be created for the effects the team needed the sounds of battle are mostly fine with sounds like the swing of Cloud's massive Buster sword making a metallic Screech as it slices into his foes or Barrett's machine gun likee arm and the sound of it metallically spinning as he's firing shots into enemies are good examples of this another cool use of sound within Final Fantasy 7 is when they use it in a more subtle way and when it's sometimes where a secret can be found or the solution to a puzzle I caught myself missing these more than once as these audio cues can be very subtle like I said and found them to be cool little indicators that were used in a way that didn't hold my hand or spoon feed things to me where the game sort of became a bit annoying is in the sounds that almost are too loud for the game which come by way of various summoning screeches and spells that have that same high pitch almost clipped audio quality some of these sounds like the Ultima spell or some of the Bahamut summonings are way too loud and downright annoying sometimes as they Screech and explode through the soundscape especially when you have to use them multiple times in a fight these sounds were off-putting to say the least and the repetition of them exacerbated the problem quite a bit thankfully these sounds don't represent a majority of what is found here and as I stated earlier the soundscape does a pretty good job of filling the void of voice acting with sounds that bring life to the world overall sound is pretty good but is mostly carried by the amazing soundtrack now on to the gameplay which was surprisingly Rob bust in terms of the sheer amount of things that you're able to do throughout the course of this game just like with the previous sections I want to talk about the mods that I use throughout this game before we dive too deep for transparency as well as to talk about the attitudes surrounding gatekeeping around games like this Final Fantasy 7 is a big game and its original release was split across three discs on the steam version of the game and I'm assuming the console versions are like this as well this is represented by splitting the game into three different parts whose conclusions will alert you to their ending and then ask you if you would like to save the game now I didn't begin using gameplay based mods for quality of life features until late in dis 2 almost the beginning of dis 3 and this was because originally I did want to preserve the experience and play this game the way that it would have been played had I picked it up in the '90s when it was released when I did decide to finally tap into these kind of mods and use some of the features that are also available on the console releases of the game it was because I realized that the fun I was having was beginning to WAN a bit as I was becoming fatigued with the more tedious elements of the game like the random encounter rates and the lengthy cut scenes that were unscared capable that would require me to watch them multiple times if I had gotten the party wiped out before getting to the next safe point I love seeing them on the first time I didn't necessarily want to see them three times I have never really enjoyed the random encounter mechanic and I much prefer the overall enemy Sprites that I can see and avoid if I want to so that grinding at my own pace is something that I'm allowed to do and it only needs to be engaged in when I feel like it now I know most of you will probably say this is whatever I don't really care I'm just glad you played the game but there is a part of the community around games like this that feel like this isn't experiencing the game at its fullest and that using quality of life features taints the original experience that the game was intended to have now Emily over on the Fantastic Channel orology talked about this back when she had played Final Fantasy 7 on her switch and explained that having some of these feelings of being a jrpg fraud or not playing this game the way that it was meant to be played and I'll link her video in the description below so please go to check her Channel out I've been a longtime viewer of her Channel and if you are into defeating your backlog like I am she's actually made resources like a Google spreadsheet that can help you randomize games to play and track how many games you've beaten it's awesome I use it all the time anyways back to Final Fantasy 7 I played this game for many of the same reasons that Emily did mainly to get the full context of the story before I eventually hop into the remix so that I can enjoy the changes and have the context as I navigate the world with the modern take on Final Fantasy 7 she also goes on to say that she wondered if using these features and a walkth through to push through the game to experience the story was really her playing the game or if it was more akin to watching a let's play at that point she makes a fantastic point though and saying that overall she does disagree with this thought process and that playing games doesn't have to look one way and I have to strongly agree with her there one of the most annoying parts of video games can be gatekeeping parts of fandoms who have built the game up to be a part of their personality so much that if you miss an item or don't do a 100% run or get every single centimeter of the map explored that somehow you haven't really played the game this can be incredibly frustrating for people trying to enter a community around a game to stay excited for it as it can be really disheartening to be told that you actually didn't play the game if you didn't find the Obscure cut scene where cloud falls into chocoo poop and how this is supposed to be an analogy for the evils of Mega capitalism and how no man ends up untainted by the evil poop of greed that's not a real thing at least I hope but I think you get my point there's no one way to experience a video game we are all different people at different stages in our lives with different stories emotions lived in experiences and time available which all goes into how much we can indulge in a game what we find important in it and how we enjoy it these personal context change what we take away from games as players and what we value I think that if you played this game as a kid when it first released then yeah it makes sense that you could have accomplished a lot in this game as there wasn't really the same amount of your time dedicated to other things like a full-time job or obligations like raising a family I also think that if you have those things and you've managed to play through this game and much of its content that it had to offer and that's awesome alternatively if you just wanted to experience a story and you crank up that level 9,999 feature on the console release of this game and just decimate everything in your path so you don't have to grind because your time is limited or you just want to fly through the game more power to you now the mods that I ended up relying on to speed along some of this gameplay were the AFF forementioned speed up mechanic turning off Random Encounters and I did use some of the EXP and AP boosters towards the end of the game to ensure that my party was a high enough level to beat the final boss and to have a few of the Spells up to Master Level so that I could sell them for Gil I finished the game in about 37 38 hours which included legitimately grinding and earning many of the cast ultimate weapons including clouds and grinding for clouds limit break omnis slash those were done yes with a speed up mechanic but with no other cheats on so I did do these legitimately as I said almost all of the mods I used that affected the gameplay were in the very final hours of my playthrough because I needed to catch up in experience after leaving the Random Encounters off for quite some time my personal take on my playthrough was that I wanted to preserve as much of me doing the actual work as possible just with speeding things up to get through the narrative as it was the main reason I was interested in this game from the get-go okay with all that transparency out of the way how was the game play play Final Fantasy 7 utilizes a pseudo turn-based system for combat known as the active Time battle system this system was originally implemented in Final Fantasy 4 and brought a bit of well activeness to the turn-based battle systems of before this was achieved by introducing timers on the party and enemies that when fully charged up allow either side to take actions this gauge is dependent on the speed stat in the game and can be quickened or slowed by in-game spells one of the main differences of this system versus other turnbas systems is that if you take too long to act like you get up to go to the bathroom or something the enemies will continue to attack you as their actions become available as far as combat itself goes party members all have weapon types that have various different options throughout the game that all offer different stats effects and slots to add materal to that allow the character to cast spells raise their stats and add new actions to their menu as well as summon massive creatures to unleash powerful attacks onto their enemies each party member has a basic attack function as well as the ability to use items and cast spells or use special actions should these material be equipped to them like I said figuring out how these Materia can play off each other or how they can affect stats is a very important part of the combat too many spell casting magic Materia may see a character strength stat and physical damage output plummet on the other side not having enough magic can limit the party's ability to Target enemy weaknesses or have vital healing magic to stay alive during prolonged fights there's also Materia that work in combination with magic Materia to provide extra attacks added effects and change the elemental damage that equiped character outputs I found The Balancing Act to be a really cool bit of strategy and there are tons of combinations that are possible that can make the characters really powerful within the party over time outside of combat the player can expect to travel a massive open world known as the planet who has many locals secrets and optional activities to take part in for instance a lot of the mini games take place in the gold saucer a casino like area of the game which the party can play games bet on chocoo races and fight in gladiatorial arena likee battles there's also optional bosses secret items to find chocobos to raise and areas of the map that can't be reached with without raising of said chocobos I was pleasantly surprised by just how much this game manages to fit into the journey by way of these distractions though I will admit I didn't engage in all of them equally or even some of them at all the ones that I did play through like the battle arena and some light chocoo race betting were fun distractions from the main story at times and offer me the ability to win some items that made my party much more powerful towards the end of the game the party has access to different modes of transportation throughout their Journey which starts on foot and ends in the skies with each vehicle unlocked a new portion of the map can be explored allowing for the natural progression wherein the player knows that the scale of where to search for the next story beat will only be contained within the areas that they can travel to if it isn't really clear on where to go that's something that does happen from time to time and while I didn't need a guide for most of this game there were times when I genuinely wasn't sure how to progress and would end up having to look it up this world is very large in scale and it's impressive for the time and the locations within the game can be extremely diverse in appearance climate and how the people view the world and have been affected by Shinra in incessant need to place reactors and harness Mao energy everywhere and that pretty much sums up the gameplay experience or at least much of what you do in Final Fantasy 7 so what did I think of it being a jrpg fan I was expecting the combat to be a focal point here and it was the active Time battle system works well here in my opinion and while it could be a bit slow at times modern quality of life changes have eased us quite a bit such as the speeding the game up I also enjoyed the Materia system and figuring out what combos worked well within my party I like the ability to make one part member play how I wanted them as far as materal went this meant that Barrett took on the role of back row healer for much of my earlier game which I just found to be kind of funny and I love things like this in games where characters don't look like the abilities that they would have and it's not like stereotypical so the big hulking Barrett with his fiery personality was just a Healer really for me now due to the ultimate like limit break attacks that some characters have access to there's obviously characters that are more suited to being healers than Barrett that have party wide heels or the ability to revive everybody that's been downed at once however I just found that the freedom of choice and the ability to raise the actual individual stats of a character to whatever you wanted to using these end-game items called sources to be an awesome addition that really gave this freedom of choice about the party and you never really felt like you were going to back yourself into a corner by not leveling up the whole entire cast I also really like that this game didn't hold my hand and once directions were given to me on where to go there wasn't a shining Beacon of light or a radio tower that I needed to climb to unlock the map so I could see a little finger that pointed directly to that location it helped me become more immersed and learn the world map a lot faster as a result and I found this to be something that fit The Adventurous nature of the game story the side activities that I did partake in were a bit grindy but overall were pretty fun I do feel like if I would have engaged more with the chocoo raising and racing I would have probably gotten burned out and just stopped eventually however like I said I didn't do a ton of the side contct outside of yui's quests in her Homeland and some of the late game ones to unlock the best weapons for the party members I will say the depth of which these mini games go to were pretty neat to see and having a whole chocoo betting and racing system was impressive considering the hardware and time that this game came out now what was invasive to my playthrough was the sheer amount of Random Encounters that I mentioned earlier I really do not enjoy this part of the game and i' I've never liked random encounter rates I obviously have pushed through a lot of games that have them but it's just not my favorite way of going about putting enemies in front of me and I don't like the feeling that I have to engage with an enemy in every like two to five steps that I take sometimes I was really thankful that there was an option in the mods to turn this off and I know the console release also has access to this as well some other issues I had with the portions of the game that I did not mod was the inefficiency of the menu system to be able to swap material and Equipment between party members you have to swap the various members in and out of your party and it can actually take a while to do this every time you want to switch up the party or the game forces you to take a certain character with you that you don't typically use sometimes the menus can just be a little tedious to work through the gameplay is yet another area that while it has elements that have aged decently like the combat Materia system exploration and the mini games can still be seen as struggling with the effects of Aging a lot of the quality of life changes are extremely useful in making this game more palatable for a younger more modern audience though I still feel like some of the issues that maybe can't be fixed on the console releases like the menus could be frustrating for people this could also extend to any of the things that I enjoyed easily as well now while I enjoyed things like the expiration not being handh holdy I could totally see how people who come into this game as their first Final Fantasy game because of the love and hypee around it might go into these things and find that they have to use a guide all the time to find out where to go to be confusing and kind of annoying from a vanilla no mod side of things I don't know if I would have been able to get through this game as efficiently or played it as much as I did and still found myself enjoying it had I not been able to skip the Random Encounters or speed through the long cut scenes that I would have to watch multiple times after dying with these quality of life features I did find myself really enjoying this game at times and I found it nostalgic to return to an older era of Gaming even with some of its quirks and flaws overall from a gameplay standpoint I do think a lot of my enjoyment of this game came down to the ability to mod the game and sidestep some of what would have been bigger complaints for me had I not been able to now this is where this game really flashes that legendary status the story of Final Fantasy 7 is so damn good as always I won't be covering too much of the story as I don't want to spoil it for those who may try this game I know it's older but I'm just not into that I want you to go out and play this game if you want to or try out the remakes that being being said I will be talking about the beginning portions of the game leading up to when the party leaves the main first city so if you do want to avoid spoilers go ahead and go to this Tim stamp or use the chapters to get to the next section of the review which should be the conclusion all right let's talk about the story our taale begins with a train ride into a moco reactor where cloud and the other members of avalanche launch an allout assault on the power plant cloud has recently been hired on after his childhood friend Tia tipped him off to the ECOT terrorist group and that they're looking for some muscle the leader of this group Barrett is suspicious of cloud throughout the mission because he was once employed by the Shinra company who owns all the reactors on the planet and is constantly draining the planet of its Mako energy effectively killing it Barrett and the crew really believe in their mission to save the environment and as such they have turned to blowing up these reactors in an effort to [ __ ] shinra's influence on the planet while Barrett reserves his praise of cloud and constantly harasses him over his past employment with Shinra it's his employment with this company that allowed Cloud to become a part of soldier a group of elite super soldiers who have much higher physical attributes than the average person that make him a massive addition to this team the small Squad Works their way through the reactor taking out Shen's forces and planting their bomb successfully before escaping it isn't long before they dive into another mission to take out yet another reactor though this time cloud is separated from the group during the escape and ends up falling to the slums below it is here where Cloud meets aith a girl who sells him flowers during the initial escape from the scene of the first reactor and a church as she's tending to her flower beds Cloud takes on the role of bodyguard and protects aith from Shinra as the two make their escape while cloud us out with aith avalanche's base is discovered by Shinra who's going to retaliate by destroying a support column to send a district of the upper City to crush the slums below this results in most of the Avalanche members being killed and Cloud Tia and Barrett escaping to chase down aith who had been captured in the chaos of all of this this leads them to the Shinra headquarters where they stealthily make their way through the massive building if you choose that you can also just run straight through the front doors and fight everybody but either way you make your way through the massive building in search for aith where it's revealed that aith is an ancient a being that is linked to a place known as the promised land Shinra have planned on using aith through various ways to reach the promised land and an effort to capture the massive Mao energy found within the huge energy source there known as the life stream after saving aith and meeting up with another being that was subjected to the twisted and evil experiments by Dr Hojo red 13 the party flees the Laboratories after getting captured and placed in holding cell Cloud awakes to find that all the doors to the cells have been opened after leaving their cells the party finds the Pres of Shinra had been murdered along Katana sticking out of his back this scene leads many to believe that the former legendary Soldier member SEO who has long been thought to be dead to be very much alive cloud and the Gang make their escape from Shinra headquarters and midgar as a whole and so Begins the adventure in the larger World in which the Party begins their pursuit of Sethro across the globe The Story covers themes of loss grief and identity issues in a way that is really powerful especially considering that many of the emotions being displayed are limited to text boxes as there is no voice acting now this isn't the first or last game that has ever achieved a strong emotional storytelling through solely text-based dialogue but whenever I come across games like this I always find it to be really impressive just what the power of writing and effective themes can do in games that have lower budgets or older titles like this Final Fantasy 7 really shines in its ability to tell a compelling narrative whose backdrop is saving the world and the effects that our actions have on our planet but the interpersonal relationships that form amongst the game's characters really help the foreground the more immediate Adventure happening along the way come through US strongly as well there are really clever twists and plays on the elements of mystery and what information that we can trust that we're being slowly fed as the story unravels from various angles the story as a whole is one thing that continued to have me excited to sit down and play this game day after day and it really did a great job of providing promises and pay off on those promises watching our party get closer throughout the adventure and being able to almost expect how specific characters will respond to different situations after spending so much time with them is a major Testament to how fantastic of a job the writers did at making not only a good story but characters that all have their own wants needs and personalities I know I said earlier I didn't really do a lot of the side content except for the ones that you know were focus around the characters and and learning more about them and getting their ultimate weapons and skills unlocked but these were really worth my time all in all the emotional narrative is one that tackles some themes that can be difficult to nail in any game and it does so by not necessarily focusing on the scholarly side or science of mental health for example but doing so on a human level in a way that all of us can feel for our cast and the heavy things of their they're struggling with the story was easily the best part of my first experience with Final Fantasy 7 and I just don't know what else to say about it I can't praise it enough of how good of a story this was and how good of a job it did of keeping me engaged throughout its runtime Final Fantasy 7 is a game with a rich history and one of the most well documented development stories in the gaming industry it has long been considered a game that everyone should play at least once and at the end of my journey as I put the controller down I was left with a feeling of accomplishment and gratitude that I decided to give this a chance before going into the remakes sure some of the gameplay features have aged a bit poorly and without the quality of life features I don't know if I would have been able to play this game as consistently as I had while it was my main focus game the visuals are dated and pretty rough on the eyes and some of the gameplay is grindy slow or unintuitive by today's standards however despite all of this there was something uniquely Charming about sitting down every day to boot this game up and shutting out the outside world there's something very cozy and inviting about a game with no micro transactions no online functionality and no pressure to log in out of fear of missing some kind of daily login bonus there's something very humanly comforting about turning to online guides or posts written by other players whenever I got stuck in the narrative and relying on my fellow Gamers to guide me through this game when I needed a hand rather than being force-fed information with glowing dots or a cluttered UI telling me exactly where to be and within all of these aging game mechanics and sometimes clunky presentation without the mods of course at the core of it all is a narrative whose heart beats with a streak of masterfully written theme steeped in human emotion and The Human Experience that we all go through and that's what I believe believe makes this game so easy to love and why it has burned its way into the hearts and minds of Gamers of many generations if you get the chance to experience the story of Final Fantasy 7 whether it be through the remix the original release watching somebody else play it looking up the story on YouTube I cannot recommend this game enough the story of this game is really special and when I put on my little cloak and pretend and imagine myself to be in the '90s while playing it I felt a unique coziness in my own little world taking time with this game that always felt like it was waiting for me to explore just a little bit more thank you for watching this video and if you enjoyed hearing me ramble about this legendary title Please Subscribe and leave a like make sure to hit that little notification Bell if you would like to be alerted when I post my next review what are your thoughts and experiences with Final Fantasy 7 as always I cannot wait to hear from you in the comments below until the next video take care of yourselves peace

Channel: PloopAChoopTV

Views: 3,439

Keywords: final fantasy 7, final fantasy 7 ps1, final fantasy 7 original, original final fantasy 7 review, ff7review, ff7 review, ff7 ps1 review, final fantasy 7 review, playing final fantasy 7 in 2024

Id: BI0n5FCxJoE

Length: 35min 19sec (2119 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 09 2024