The Darkside of FF7

[RedPouch]

Sephiroth had quite a bit of character development in the Kalm flashback.

No offense, but one flashback does not a character make. I don't think this little teaspoon of "character history" counts as characterization.

Sephiroth's aura of invincibility is quite justified. His name is almost mentioned from the beginning of the game. And always as the greatest SOLDIER who ever lived.

Yeah... trust me, I remember. Repeating dry japanese cliches without foundation doesn't count as characterization in my opinion though.

There's a huge build-up before you even know what he looks like.

I wouldn't have had any problem if they had kept it this way.

And Sephiroth's music is fairly epic. Definitely not the greatest song in the world (as some fanboys insist), but the entire composition gives an impression of an immensely powerful dark force.

I can't really agree on this one either. I found his theme pretty annoying, unfortunately. I think the synth instruments they chose for it were poor. Granted, this team was very new to the Playstation's capability of music, but I'm just throwing it out there.

His look is also quite intimidating, especially when he walks through a WALL OF FIRE in Nibelheim. And he carries a six-foot long katana. That definitely suggests some serious power.

Again, I don't mean to sound offensive but I just don't find it very intimidating to see a woman-haired freak walk through fire with a six-foot-katana. Maybe I've watched too much anime, but silly Japanese cliches like this are "sprinkled" in animes all the time. There are still many ways to make a character seem intimidating, but I do not find this to be one of them.

yup Khalin i do disagree, in Crisis Core he gets more Character Development

Oh, that's alright Elly. I'll concede this point to you because I actually haven't played Crisis Core, so you're probably right about that one. I'm pretty much just going off of FF VII itself and info related directly to this game without any other outside information. I guess since you bring this up, I'll clarify that as far as FF VII goes [not counting Crisis Core or any of the other FF VII spin-offs that he appeared in], he didn't get much characterization at all, which I just found a bit annoying. I don't think I'll say it was due to technology limitations either, because instead of wasting their time on annoying, ridiculous minigames [and there were an awful lot of them] and unimportant plot twists like Yuffie [sorry, I'm still not a fan], Square could've been using all of that space to sew some more characterization in for characters that are actually important to the story [like Sephiroth!]. They had 3 entire discs for goodness' sake.

i do have to agree though that Hojo was the true evil behind everything, Hojo was not a mad scientist, he was just straight out evil he cared for no one or anything beyond his work, the man had no morals...

Yeah. I actually think it was a good idea for Square to place him as a boss in the end-game time frame, since it certainly elevates some importance with him. It shows that they didn't lose focus on what many would consider to be the true villain here. Although this is off-topic, but they probably should've made him at least somewhat difficult to kill.

Well, isn't one of the revelations in Final Fantasy VII that the Sephiroth seen throughout the game is actually Jenova?

Correct. You technically never see the "real" him until you get to the crater [not counting the flashback].

As Elly mentioned, you see more character development for Sephiroth in other games, but Sephiroth has always had a large following for some reason.

You see so little of Sephiroth's actual character [again, a 10 minute flashback does not a character make], that it's odd to see that so many people like Sephiroth. However, being the forum community person I am, I noticed that generally the audience that enjoys Sephiroth are either young girls that usually tend to have this thing about CloudxSephiroth [but not always], or young boys that seem to have a fascination with woman-haired villains that wield odd-looking katanas and walk through fire. I'm aware that not all Sephiroth fans are in those categories, so no need to remind me!

And in defense of Kefka: At least he managed to do a huge number on the world [creating a post-apocalyptic environment] and kill more than one important character before biting the dust. Also, his personality in the entire game is quite present. However, Kefka still isn't my favourite FF villain, and I was only naming him as an example. There are still better ones than Kefka in my opinion.