I guess the first thing that popped out and grabbed me was the art design. It's just a really well designed world to me, whether you're in the belly of the beast that is Midgar or running through the open marshes on a Chocobo, it had great diversity and showed those places to an extent unparalleled for its time. But especially Midgar and even today I would argue that there hasn't been a better designed and represented place than that, there's still this overall ambience and feeling it conveys and I'll readily admit most of those feelings are still nostalgia not completely out of my system, even 12 years later.

I love the pacing of the game. Certain long stretches you're just completely immersed in a story, and even the battles convey what's going on. VII took IV's method of telling the story through the battles and exploded with it to the n-th degree.

And the battles in general are just insane. The dynamic camera angles took their cues from film, allowed Kitase to put his years of education as a film student to work, and made them a million times more epic than anything done previously with battles in Final Fantasy, or RPG's in general. I would say even after VIII, IX, and X ran with it, the camera movement is still the best in FFVII. It's not just visuals, but I feel it's the best and smoothest ATB system in the series. The option for "Recommended" setting in the menu is something every game should have, but only FFVII does. In most of the other games, your ATB bar fills up before you finish making a selection, and the system reverts to turn based instead. I think only FFV comes close. To top it off, the battle music is my favorite in the series.

Speaking of camera, the FMV's did make it amazing. Bringing those in for story moments made the games intensely more powerful than they had been before. There's stretches where all you do is watch a scene in all of the FF's before VII, just now it's much more powerful, much more emotional and potent.

Camera made this game better in so many ways. Even on the field screen it allowed the director to do different things in presenting the story to the player.

Which plays into the mini-games. I think it's undisputed that FFVII has the most and probably the best mini-games in the series. Even when you sneak past the gaurds in the Shinra building, waiting for them to pass a pillar before you go, that's a mini-game right there. Games that employ multiple scenarios where you do different things with the controller always seem to rise above their peers to me, and FFVII did it on multiple levels. The motorcycle chase was unbelievable, especially for its time.

Yes, I love the story, its chock full with literary techniques and themes, the music is incredibly emotive and employs a bunch of techniques, and the adventure, combat system, and locales were incredible. But it has so many artistic/aesthetic advantages before we even get to that, that's why it's (one of) my favorite game of all time. It did so many things that hadn't been done before, some of which hasn't been done better since.