FFVII lives up to the hype if you're a trendwhore. The graphics were bad for their time, the music fails to live up to the standard Uematsu set for himself in FFVI, the plotline is severely cookie cutter, the characters are bland archetypes at best, the FMVs are shoddily done, the mini games are tedious and yet semi-required, and as a cherry on top, the translation was so horrible it's difficult to figure out just what the heck is going on at times. The only thing that doesn't suck about FFVII is its gameplay, which is simply generic. Sure, materia was a new concept, but it's not dissimilar enough from buying spells in stores to be groundbreaking. Even things like limit breaks which supposedly made the game unique had a very "been there, done that" feel, possibly because the idea was swiped right from the Street Fighter series. It's a fun game and all, but it's less than deserving of its own praise. The only reason people even seem to have for liking it so much is their maligned nostalgia for the first FF game they ever played, which was the seventh itteration of it. That's roughly the equivalent of discovering Good News For People Who Love Bad News and saying you've always been into Modest Mouse.