What Makes Final Fantasy VII Special?

[Forsaken Lover]

You can ask this about any thing that is crazy popular but I'm not coming at this from a position of attack. I love FFVII and feel it deserves all the hype. But it still behooves us to analyze these things, I think.

Was it merely a "right time/right place" situation?
Or was there something innate to FFVII's story/characters/mechanics/whatever that set it apart and made it have such a profound impact on video games?

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

I think the jump from VI to VII was the biggest visual jump in the series. To go from sprites to the 3D rendering was a huge deal. On top of that, everything about the content of the game was good. Great story, great characters, memorable music. All those things still hold up today.

[maybee]

It was alot of people's first Final Fantasy game and introduced them to the series, so for fans, it holds a special place in their hearts. And for Europeans, it was their first RPG, as we didn't get most classic RPG games, like Chrono Trigger on the SNES.

[Skyblade]

It's the nostalgia of being a gateway RPG for a lot of people, combined with the incredibly high quality content of the game itself. One of the greatest things which I feel often gets overlooked is merely the depth of the Planet. You explore this world in a lot more depth than you do in a lot of games even today. Social issues, economic woes, political impact... You get to see how the people shape the world, the impact that they and their decisions have on each other. You see pointless small acts of heroism, as well as random acts of jackassery. It all just adds up to being an incredible immersive world that people just want to learn more about. And few games have offered one to compete with FFVII on that scale.

[Galuf]

For us europeans it was prolly cos we had nothing of that scale before. We had like mario. Sonic. Doom. For everywhere else I dunno. Cos they got ffvi.

[Bubba]

It was alot of people's first Final Fantasy game and introduced them to the series, so for fans, it holds a special place in their hearts. And for Europeans, it was their first RPG, as we didn't get most classic RPG games, like Chrono Trigger on the SNES.

This perfectly sums it up for me.

The closest thing I'd played to an RPG at that point was Zelda. Once I'd played FFVII though I bought every PS1 RPG that I could get my hands on. Alundra, Breath of Fire 3, Vandal Hearts... they weren't a patch on my beloved FFVII though. I think the build up to the release of FFVIII was the most excited I've ever been for a game.