The Game's difficulty is a joke

[edczxcvbnm]

The only way I beat Sephiroth on a stupidity run was through the use of W-Item. I was fighting him at a whopping level 45 and I think all of the characters beside cloud still had a level 1 limit break. I am pretty sure Cloud was only at level 2 but he might have still been at level one. I forgot to equip the one ribbon I had but I did have some stuff to help prevent a total raping. In the end it was a war of attrition as Sephiroth proceeded to blow up the universe an insane number of times. I eventually got into a groove when he ran out of MP and couldn't do anything.

Did I have Buhamut Zero? Yes but no one had enough MP to use it. I only used low level summons because they didn't cost much MP and that was early on in the game. Eventually their negative stat influence forced me to go with the only summon that mattered...Choco-mog! It would sometimes freeze enemies briefly and it does actually work on Sephiroth.

Screw Cloud's Level 2 limits. Those suck! Stick with Cross Slash as it sometimes freezes enemies as well. Plus level one limits happen every hit near the end of the game.

Overall this game is very easy. If you want a challenge just do a low level run. It makes a huge difference because you are not going to be leveling up Materia or limits due to lack of fighting in random battles. Hell you can ALMOST easily get through disk 1 fighting only bosses (only the Demon Wall takes effort because you can't beat him without grind stealing left arms from bombs on the bridge to Barretts hometown trout hole...screw that).

My lowest whatever try was level 38 I believe. The trick is to defeating the Jenova Synthesis in a certain way so you gain no experience. Kill it and bam! 5 levels :P

I do it because I find it still easy and somewhat challenging =D

[Mirage]

Yes, yes it is. It's by far the easiest game in the franchise and one of the easier RPG's ever made. That has always been Final Fantasy VII's biggest flaw. Thankfully, the superbly written narrative more than makes up for it. That game is played far more for its story than its gameplay (though, there are a lot of qualities in the game itself).

I disagree. It is not "by far" the easiest game. For an adult person who is used to RPGs, particularly JRPGs, I would say that all final fantasy games between (and including) 6 and 13 are relatively easy (excluding 11, that game can be pretty rough at times). While some of them have a bit of difficulty in the endgame, none of them are more than averagely difficult at most.

[Rostum]

Yes, yes it is.

Consider the demographic and the time it was released.

[Kenshin IV]

...You mean, the same demographic as every other Final Fantasy? As for time it was released, uh, I guess it was at the turning point of hard games into easy ones... Maybe?

I'm really not sure why either of those are relevant.

[VeloZer0]

The demographic of people who were new to RPGs.

[Kenshin IV]

I don't agree with that at all. The game was not made for that purpose -- if it was, they would not have started people out with a complicated system like the Materia system. No, I think people are too caught up now with how successful it has become, and have taken that to mean Square knew it was going to be that big of a hit over on our shore. They tried that with Mystic Quest and failed miserably -- the reason Seven got the attention it did was because of Sony's marketing.

Unfortunately, there really is no excuse for the game being as easy as it is, but that's okay -- everything has its flaws, and Seven has plenty to make up for its flaws.

[Mirage]

Materia isn't all that complicated. It's pretty easy to understand "to use fire magic, equip fire orb". Sure, there are many aspects with the materia system that a newbie might overlook, but they'll still be able to utilize a fair bit of it, and definitely enough to be able to complete the game.

Junctioning in FF8 is the same way. If you're a newbie, just press "auto" and you'll get through the game. Other than that, FF8 is also a relatively easy game, and I think someone can't really have played FF8 if they think FF7 is far easier.

[Kenshin IV]

For someone who's never touched an RPG before in their life, the concept of linking Materia and leveling it by a completely different experience system than what levels up your party members is not something one is going to grasp right off the bat. I know as an experienced RPG player it's tough to look at it from the perspective of a newbie, but they have to get used to everything from turn based battle, to inventory, to commands, and then to put a system like Materia on top of it is not easy to grasp all at once. That's why Mystic Quest was basic beyond basic.

The same goes doubly for the Junction system, which is beyond complicated to the point of being convoluted for a new comer. You're right, Eight isn't difficult either, but by that token neither is Six, Nine, Ten, or really any game past Final Fantasy V (which just so happened to be the end of the Sakaguchi era).

RPG's in general are difficult to make challenging, because as long as you level properly you're always going to be in good shape. Some just require you to grind more, and Final Fantasy VII is certainly not one of those games. It's also a game you can get by just holding down the attack command -- which diminishes the strategy aspect of combat. Believe me, no one defends Seven against it's unfair detractors more than me, but this is one area where there's a legit gripe (again, it's not the only game in the franchise to suffer from this, though).

[Mirage]

Not to brag, but the first time I played FF7 was at a friends house, and at the time, I had only played one single RPG in my life and that was FF5 (and back then I hadn't even completed it). Without a tutorial, just the (inrestrospect very incomplete) oral explanation from my friend who was stuck on the turks in the midgar underground. I looked at the materia and his equipment for a little while and reorganized some stuff, then beat the boss on my second try after that. Took me perhaps 30-60 minutes.

Maybe I'm just good at logic, but I never had any real problems understanding the materia system. I would rate the junction system in FF8 as a much more complex system to get into, and I must admit that for half of my first playthrough, i just auto-junctioned with attack stats.

[Kenshin IV]

It's entirely possible, of course, for someone to just be able and pick up and play these games, but getting back to what was said before, there is no way Seven was made with a new audience in mind. Even besides the way the game was made, it just would make no sense for a company to put that much money into a game and alienate their established fanbase (in this case, Japan) by trying to push it for an American audience, especially after they tried that with a spin-off game and failed. There was no guarantee they'd succeed, and if I remember right Seven had something like a 50 million dollar budget.

Now, of course they marketed the game differently here in America to try and push sales over here (even going so far as to keep it Final Fantasy "VII" as opposed to "IV"). I mean, they tried that once more with Dragon Quest VIII, and while it succeed to a point, Dragon Quest does not enjoy anywhere near the same success that Final Fantasy did after Seven.

[VeloZer0]

But that assumes FF7 was a radical departure in difficulty from previous installments. IMO it is about as difficult as FF6. Furthermore I think every FF since FF3 has been easier than it's predecessor, and even if you can't get behind that I think we can agree there is a trend-line from FF3 -> FF6 of the games getting easier.

[Bolivar]

No, I think people are too caught up now with how successful it has become, and have taken that to mean Square knew it was going to be that big of a hit over on our shore. They tried that with Mystic Quest and failed miserably -- the reason Seven got the attention it did was because of Sony's marketing.

If you look at developer interviews, especially at the time, those guys knew how special what they were working on was and how there wasn't anything else like it at the time. This wasn't Mystic Quest. RPGs may not have been popular in America at the time (they were) but I think they had an idea that once people saw the visuals and heard the music, it wasn't going to matter where they were from anymore. Plus anime was creating a huge demographic ready for this at the time.

But I agree with your point, and I think even Mirage will concede that (discounting EoFFers), the average American video game player who had not played RPGs, having item, armor, weapon, limit breaks, and a materia system (especially in 1997) were probably not easy to grasp at once. I know a lot of people who reminisce on playing VII at the time and say it was a hard game. I had played RPGs before, so it wasn't too difficult but at the age of 10 I still didn't have the advanced grasp on it I do today.

Not to brag, but the first time I played FF7 was at a friends house, and at the time, I had only played one single RPG in my life and that was FF5

How old were you/when was this? Because I don't think the FFV fanslation was even completed when VII was released and even if it was, what the hell were you doing playing FFV???

Anyway, I don't think VII is the easiest, at least undisputably. Most here will agree that FFVIII is far easier to break to an almost embarassing level. And FFVI becomes broken the moment you get Edgar, about an hour and a half into the game. There are some areas and bosses where you're challenged on your knowledge of the system, but FFVII has a few of those moments as well. FFX similarly has a few bosses that are a pain, but the ability to swap members in and out made the battles a Xenogears-esque series of one-hit kills. FFVII's problem is that the enemies don't scale well with the party's progression and abilities. If you just play through the story, you've probably already far outgrown them by the end of Disc 1. On my last playthrough, I ran from every random encounter in Mako Reactor 1, except maybe that machine, in order to get the better weapon for Barrett early on. It may not sound like much, but I found the difficulty far better balanced for the rest of the game.

Anyway, I think the real challenge from RPGs comes from how quickly you can beat the game. You can take the easy route by grinding or teleporting out of dungeons to find inns, but the real test is how do you conserve your resources to make it through everything straight through on your first time. The objective for developers is if they can make the game just challenging enough to make you think you can do it, but it's a risk. I think that's why Dragon Quest V is my favorite 2D RPG of all time.

[Jiro]

Could've been playing FFV from the anthology version. I don't know how old Mirage is/when he was born but the scenario isn't impossible. Also he might be able to read japanese, who knows.

[Mirage]

Not to brag, but the first time I played FF7 was at a friends house, and at the time, I had only played one single RPG in my life and that was FF5

How old were you/when was this? Because I don't think the FFV fanslation was even completed when VII was released and even if it was, what the hell were you doing playing FFV???

It wasn't on day 1, that's for sure. It was probably in 1999 or 2000, meaning I was somewhere around 14-15 years old.. And why wouldn't I play FFV? It's a fantastic game, and at the time, I didn't have a PS1 or any other consoles, so all I had was emulation on my PC.

[Rostum]

Just for the record, I first played FFVII when I was around 10-11 years old, and there had been nothing like it at all released in Australia before then. I managed to pick up the materia system easily enough for someone who was very young and had never played an RPG before.

I refuse to believe Kenshin knows what the developers had in mind when creating the game. However, all signs seem to point to them openingly marketing it to a wider demographic of players throughout more regions of the world. Though I can't say for sure since I came back to the previous Final Fantasies at a much older age, but I'd agree they got easier. Not to say that's a bad thing, at least for my first play through of VII it certainly wasn't.