Final Fantasy VII: Overrated?

[Egami]

Going from sprites and tiles to models and CG was, actually, a pretty revolutionary move, and brought the art quality of locations, i think most would agree, definitively BETTER.

Great observations Bolivar.

I would say that VII did bring a revolution to the series and the RPG genre with those things you pointed out. It did set a new standard for RPGs in particular and games in general, there was no RPG like it before it. However, I feel that what VII did in this area was an improvement over what a previous Playstation game had already begun to explore. There may be others but Resident Evil released in 96 had pre-rendered backgrounds quite similar to those of VII with 3D character models (see a video here). I think it is safe to say that to a certain extent it paved the way for what was to come in VII.