Why love Final Fantasy VII?

[auberginedreams]

***SPOILER WARNING***

I love this game so much I decided to register just to post in this thread. This is by far favorite game in the series. For me, my love for this game is completely based on the storyline. I couldn't care less about character customization, active time battle, materia system, or any of that. For me that is just a bonus. This Final Fantasy series is the only series that has ever really affected me emotionally. I *almost* cried when Aerith died, and I had already had it spoiled for me on several occasions.

I have always viewed this game as a sort of Shakespearian (sp?) tragedy, which is my favorite part of the game. I loved every minute of 6 until it had that stupid kiddish cop-out of an ending. In this game, the good-guys sort of win, but the planet is scarred by meteor, aerith is still dead, and sephiroth is only defeated in a physical sense.

The tragedy of aerith's death was perfect. Only a few hours ago she was on a "date" with cloud and as they sat on that ride in the gold saucer she says that she wants to get to know the "real" cloud. In the temple of the ancients she tells cloud that someday they'll look back on these hard times and laugh. She tells him in the sleeping forest that everything will be ok and that she'll take care of it. Then the last time you see her she's so optimistic and she's praying and she's stabbed in the heart from behind. And then you fight jenova and aerith's theme keeps playing to emphasize the emotion. And I almost cried when cloud carried her over the water to say goodbye for the last time.....alright I'm going to have to force myself to move onto another topic.

One of the best motifs throughout the story is that cloud keeps losing everyone he loves: Zack, his mother, Aerith. I always wonder why people critisize him for being so emo...he kind of has reason to be. Zack took a bullet and ultimately gave his life for cloud, but because of cloud's amnesia, his heroic deed goes unnoticed. It's just so sad, you can't help but feel sorry for all of cloud's losses. Sephiroth is always at fault, either directly or indirectly, and yet I can't help but sympathize with him. He was taken advantage of for research, created through horrible experiments, and fed false information about his identity. Sephiroth is doing what he honestly believes is right to avenge his mother, and that is where the real essence of the tragedy lies: there really is no one person to put the blame on. If anyone, the real villain would be hojo, who symbolically raped lucrecia in the name of science, turned vincent into a monster, killed aerith's parents, etc. And yet jenova is also at the center of everything. I could go on about this for 10 pages, but I'll spare you all my fanboyish rant.

If I had to sum up why I have such an irrational emotional attachment to this game, it would be because of how realistic it feels. It's not some cliched story where a single antagonist does something bad because he is inherently evil, and some protaganist saves the day just 'cause it's the right thing to do. Everyone, including the main antagonist, has experienced betrayl, tragedy, depression, loss, and guilt, and is ultimately trying to find peace. And at the end, nobody gets exactly what they want, and that is what I love about it.