Here's the last entry for this week

Here's my voice.


#6: FINAL FANTASY VII


I’m prepared to lose my audience again, I don’t care. Final Fantasy VII is very dear to me. Yes, it’s incredibly overhyped, it began some weird trends in RPGs, and attracted a whole lot of people we didn’t necessarily need in our fandom. And yes, Wolf, Xenogears and Vagrant Story did the unreliable narrator thing much better, I agree, and they’re both much better games, yes. But to me, FFVII is nothing short of awesome!

Though it wasn’t always like this. I remember it was the winter break around the time I was in fourth or fifth grade. My friend (whom I still keep in touch with) borrowed an old PSX from another classmate. When the break started, he came to visit me and brought the PS with him. Of course, one of the games he brought was FFVII. Having played all the SNES FFs, I was really eager to check out what this new 3D FF was like. What I saw didn’t impress me. In fact, I was turned off. The game looked ugly, was way too sci-fi for my tastes at the time, and you could only control three party members! Nevertheless, the image stayed in my head, and what initially looked terrible to me became this unattainable dream over time. Years later, I finally got the game on my PC. The graphics looked better, but the music was crappy MIDI quality. That said, I was still sucked in. I loved how creepy some elements were, like the night at the Shinra building, and I really appreciated how layered the story was. Too bad it seemed a bit rushed at the end, but I didn’t really mind at the time. And the steampunk setting really grew on me! Sadly, Aerith’s death had been spoiled to me many years before :/

I liked the materia system and loved customizing my characters into old-school-FF-style jobs. Limit breaks were a fun new addition, and the amount of things you could do in the Wonder Square was staggering. I’ve really put way too many hours into this game.

This was also the first FF my wife played, and it’s what got her into JRPGs (she exclusively played Western games before). Besides her, a couple of my friends played it as well, so it was actually this short period when we could all talk about an FF. Being able to share all my fandom theories and stuff with people I actually knew in real life was an incredible experience, and it’s probably one of the reasons why this game is this high on the list. I joined Eyes on FF soon after, so even though FFVII wasn’t my first, it’s definitely the game that made me an FF fan for life. I’m really glad Final Fantasy VII happened.