To be fair, basing an article on hatred for Japanese RPGs on Final Fantasy VII is a little like basing an article on why automobiles suck on the Pinto.
So did the Pinto, shockingly enough. My parents had a Chevrolet Vega when I was a kid. It was, if you can even conceive of this, a sort of low-rent Pinto clone, obviously intended to capitalize on the Pinto's, um, success. :)
There is a lot of truth to that. I count myself one of those the article considers to be a sensible, rational gamer. FFVII isn't a good game. It isn't terrible (at least not "Beyond the Beyond" terrible) but there were contemporaries, RPGs from the same time frame, that are *much* better than FFVII. I count among them Persona, Suikoden and the original Wild ARMs, three of my top 10 console RPGs of all time.
It's a shame that FFVII is so damnably popular. See also "Neon Genesis Evangelion".
Ooh, I'd forgotten about Suikoden. That one was a winner.
And like the review says, FF6 (released in the US for SNES as FF3) was significantly better than FF7. Then again, FF8 was also significantly better than FF7. FF7 was... indifferent.
I liked all of the characters (ALL of them -- minor characters included.).
I liked the mishmash of fantasy and steampunk. I LOVED Midgar. I LOVED Shin-Ra. I LOVED the Gold Saucer. I loved the world they created.
I don't give two cents about graphics. They're not why I play the game, and the shifting between graphical styles didn't bother me at all.
I'm rather offended at the "dopey religious symbolism" comment. I don't think the author of the article knows much about Shinto, as many JRPGs with "dopey religious symbolism" are drawing on Shinto fundamentals. FF7 draws on Shinto concepts, though some are modified, and it's not nearly as heavily Shinto as some of the other games out there. Shinto is part and parcel of Japanese culture ... of course it's going to get worked with and into Japanese video games.
I liked the story, and I think it's rather supercilious to apply the lessons it teaches only to nerdy gamers. OK, gamers are going to be the target audience, but it speaks beyond that. And what is WRONG with the lesson it teaches? To come to grips with your inner demons and do the right thing? I mean, jeez, like that's a bad moral to teach ...
As for other games copying FF7 (and 8) ... yes, that's annoying, frustrating, and one of the worst things about JRPGs now. But you cannot blame that on FF7. That's not the game's fault. That's the fault of the people out there who decided that what made the game go was the stereotypes, which wasn't at all the case.
Now, I don't think FF7 is perfect. I didn't care for the comet falling throughout the whole game while you frittered your time away racing chocobos -- that was annoying. I didn't like the save-the-fortress minigame. (But thank god, it didn't have one of those stupid CCG minigames. Blech.) I thought the Wutai sidequest was ... er ... yeah whatever. I didn't bother trying to collect all the monster-attacks. (OK, I *did* get the Casa del Sol house, though!)
I still replay FF7, generally the first few hours that are all wrapped up in Midgar, because that is the section I like the best, sometimes further than that. I disagree that it has aged poorly. The gameplay is good, the characters are fun, the story isn't bad, and the atmosphere is fantastic, still.
IMO, FFVII has a lot of neat ideas. The failing for me is the railroading. Now, I don't hate games for being linear naratives. What I do dislike is games that railroad characters through the story rather than letting the characters tell me the story. I also dislike the kind of interminable digressions that form so much of the play time in FFVII -- although I suppose that is an aspect of the railroading. By contrast, FFXII has a linear plot and many digressions but neither are forced on players. You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, without feeling forced to do anything.
It wasn't the greatest game of all time, but it was FUN. And that's why I liked it and don't regret the time I spent on it. I thought Wild Arms was better, but FFVII was definitely worth playing.
I also seem to be the only person on the entire planet that didn't like Aeris in the least, and wasn't at all upset when she died. I liked Yuffie the most actually, and she was intended as a minor character.
FF7 was enjoyable to play. But having also played FF6 and many of the other great games around it, it was ultimately a disappointment. (Not as much of a disappointment as Xenogears, but still a disappointment.)
I should say that in some ways, the article is unfair in that the final fantasy series has never been about anything other than tapping into teenage angst and narcissism as a sales device. The plots have just varied in their qualities in relation to that object. It just so happens that FF7 accomplished that feat best of any FF game by being low brow in it's approach. FF3 and Chrono Trigger took a comparatively highbrow approach. FF7 really reached a mass audience by virtue of its lowest common denominator approach. It was easy to understand and relate to the broad archetypes in the game for most teenagers that would be buying a game like that. Squaresoft just really figured out where the market was and nailed the demographic. It's not like this was some catastrophic loss for the more "sophisticated" gamer. It didn't stop games like Fallout or Planescape: Torment from being made. And its not like other crappy but praised RPGs werent being made en masse before FF7 (Silver star story comes to mind). FF7 just hit on all the right notes. All FF7 really illustrated to me was that I had sort of outgrown that particular genre of RPGs and wanted something with more content. Sitting in smug judgment of the unsophisticated tastes of teenage gamers is kind of a silly eneterprise if you ask me. Nearly all of us went through a stage in our lives where a game like FF7 would have been appealing (or was appealing). It did a good job at what it was trying to do. Im sure I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had played it at 12 or 13 instead of 16.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-13 07:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-13 07:34 pm (UTC)True, but he does make the point that FF7 influenced many of the games that came after it, and not in particularly positive ways.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-13 11:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-13 08:04 pm (UTC)It's a shame that FFVII is so damnably popular. See also "Neon Genesis Evangelion".
Or... don't. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-14 01:43 am (UTC)And like the review says, FF6 (released in the US for SNES as FF3) was significantly better than FF7. Then again, FF8 was also significantly better than FF7. FF7 was... indifferent.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-13 09:35 pm (UTC)I liked the Materia system.
I liked all of the characters (ALL of them -- minor characters included.).
I liked the mishmash of fantasy and steampunk. I LOVED Midgar. I LOVED Shin-Ra. I LOVED the Gold Saucer. I loved the world they created.
I don't give two cents about graphics. They're not why I play the game, and the shifting between graphical styles didn't bother me at all.
I'm rather offended at the "dopey religious symbolism" comment. I don't think the author of the article knows much about Shinto, as many JRPGs with "dopey religious symbolism" are drawing on Shinto fundamentals. FF7 draws on Shinto concepts, though some are modified, and it's not nearly as heavily Shinto as some of the other games out there. Shinto is part and parcel of Japanese culture ... of course it's going to get worked with and into Japanese video games.
I liked the story, and I think it's rather supercilious to apply the lessons it teaches only to nerdy gamers. OK, gamers are going to be the target audience, but it speaks beyond that. And what is WRONG with the lesson it teaches? To come to grips with your inner demons and do the right thing? I mean, jeez, like that's a bad moral to teach ...
As for other games copying FF7 (and 8) ... yes, that's annoying, frustrating, and one of the worst things about JRPGs now. But you cannot blame that on FF7. That's not the game's fault. That's the fault of the people out there who decided that what made the game go was the stereotypes, which wasn't at all the case.
Now, I don't think FF7 is perfect. I didn't care for the comet falling throughout the whole game while you frittered your time away racing chocobos -- that was annoying. I didn't like the save-the-fortress minigame. (But thank god, it didn't have one of those stupid CCG minigames. Blech.) I thought the Wutai sidequest was ... er ... yeah whatever. I didn't bother trying to collect all the monster-attacks. (OK, I *did* get the Casa del Sol house, though!)
I still replay FF7, generally the first few hours that are all wrapped up in Midgar, because that is the section I like the best, sometimes further than that. I disagree that it has aged poorly. The gameplay is good, the characters are fun, the story isn't bad, and the atmosphere is fantastic, still.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-14 03:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-13 11:55 pm (UTC)It wasn't the greatest game of all time, but it was FUN. And that's why I liked it and don't regret the time I spent on it. I thought Wild Arms was better, but FFVII was definitely worth playing.
I also seem to be the only person on the entire planet that didn't like Aeris in the least, and wasn't at all upset when she died. I liked Yuffie the most actually, and she was intended as a minor character.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-14 01:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-14 05:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-14 06:21 am (UTC)