Rating: 8/10
Overview:
A small group of eco-fighters looks to stand up to the evil planet abusing mega company Shinra, when on their latest mission to destroy one of the companies Maco reactors they are joined by Ex mercenary Cloud Strife the fight gets whole lot bigger than just Shinra.
My Views
This was my very first Final Fantasy (FF) and I have been in love with the series ever since, it is the only game series that I still have all of my original release copies of the games, even if the consoles have long since left my house. It is one of my favourite in the series and since the release of FF15 was a huge disappointment to me (look out for my review on that) I decided to return to my JRPG roots. The following review will contain some spoilers but as the game is 22 years old as of the time of writing this review I in no way feel bad about it.
The first hour or so...
As with all FF games the first hour or so is a slog as it is with every game in the FF series. It follows Avalanche through there first mission with Cloud although the game implies that the rest of the team have known each other for awhile. The game will throw you straight into battle with two sets of guards without any tutorial but as it is a turn based game it gives you plenty of time to figure out what you have to do for yourself, and if in any doubt there is the great big attack button that the game is automatically already highlighted for you. From there a few tutorials follow and you procced through the mission and blow up a reactor in the power plant.
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Now the gameplay can be seen as basic at this point with one character only being able to attack and the other only having access to two spells, but it does a good job of introducing the player to the games main mechanics. Something to be aware of however is that this game was created for the PS1 and so each disc had very limited amount of memory, so there is no voice work in the game at all. you are going to be spending the entire game reading and some of the tutorials are quiet long winded which will no doubt put a lot of players off and I can safely say that I have never read them, and eventually I learnt the games more intricate mechanics through trial and error.
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Once you get through this hour though you can start to make more meaningful choices in battles.
The shackles of the next 2- 10 hours
Your time in Midgar, the starting city of the game, is very linier. Yes you have a couple of story choices in the game, like sneaking into the Don's home to save the main characters love interest but you are set on a path and have to follow the story beats through-out with very no real way of deterring from the path layed out before you. It's not as bad as it sounds though, you get new members added to your party including my favourite character Red XIII and you get to meet the real main villain of the game Sephiroth, the silver haired badass with a sword that I'm sure is long enough to reach the moon from the roof of my house.
A few amazingly fun little mini games are also introduced though out this part of the game that can be later replayed at the golden saucer and help to break up the combat and story heavy sections. after all of this however the game really opens up.
The real game, 10 hours and beyond
This is it, this is where the games goes from yeah this okay, to bloody hell what have I gotten myself into. You leave Midgar and enter the world map, now able to choice who is in your party and where you go on the map, I mean yes there is still a story to follow and to see all the map you will have to do the story but it still feels like a breath of fresh air. By this point you should understand how to use all character effectively in combat and also understand how the Materia system works (more on that later) and the game allows you to just freely move from epic story beat to epic story beat at your own pace with your favourite characters at your side the whole way, well until that scene that is still spoke about in hushed whispers on the internet. The one with our silver haired antagonist and the fair maiden in pink.
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Wait hang on.... Nope, I'm still not ready to talk about it.
Now I don't want to talk about the story to much more, because well frankly I don't really completely understand it but lets just say the battles get more intense and the stakes get higher and higher up until the climatic battle between Cloud and Sephiroth
The Gameplay
Now as I have previously mentioned combat is turn based and as such is slow as each characters bar charges everything else pauses until they have had there turn, although you can turn the game to run an active game so no-one pauses and as such can attack as soon as there bar charges. This slow approach allows you to plan your attacks, magic, buffs and maybe most importantly healing of your characters and (speaking from experience, of course) gives younger gamers room to breath as they have chance to work through there moves.
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Now this system is not perfect as you have no way of telling when its the enemies go, something that FF10 and onwards would rectify. but it never feels unfair or undeterminable after one round of attacks.
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Something that I feel is perfect however is the Materia system, oh it is perfection. gone are the class systems of old, or the predetermined character builds from other FF games, I'm looking at you 9 now any character can serve any role when it comes to magic be it healing, damage, buffing or de-buffing or even summoning of course the down side is the lowering of your total HP, but who needs HP when you can summon all versions of Bahamut with the same character one after the other. It something that the other games have never managed to match or even come close to, yes 10 and 13 eventually allowed for characters to be aby build you wanted but 7 is pretty much the only game that just goes "here you are, here's all the magic do what you want with it you glorified badass." to which my response was all ways "YEAH..... Give me give me." followed by all of my characters going super Saiyan (that's a Dragon ball Z reference in case you didn't get it).
My last thoughts
For me this is a 10/10 game but I am aware that for modern audiences the massive amount of reading and the slow combat could really put a dampener on their enjoyment, coupled with the fact that after 22 years I still can't fully explain the story I think overall an 8/10 seems fair.
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The last thing I want to say is that I am not looking forward to the FF7 rerelease as the game seems to have more in common with FF15 than the original game and as I would class 15 as a western RPG rather then a real final fantasy game, I am really really saddened by it. Maybe I'll be able to set the game to turn based but I can only go off of what I have seen in the trailers, like everyone else.
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Until next time... Toby