Nibelheim Flashback

[Jiro]

The reason I like it to this day for the simple fact that it uses one of my favorite methods of getting a point across in video games: Using the actual gameplay to showcase a story point. The game builds up Sephiroth to be a bad ass super solider, and watching the amount of damage he dished out and capabilities the character had drove that point home. If he was capable of such feats five years ago as a "good" guy, imagine what he can do now!

I like that part too. Shame it's over in the first five minutes or so, and everything after it is nothing but linear exposition for an hour or two.

Yeah, I do agree. They tried some really smurfing cool things, which made Final Fantasy VII an even riskier project, but I just feel like it failed to hit the mark. The promise of open world exploration is immediately snatched away from you and you're immediately put into a linear flashback with a bunch of the options you've come to experience -- materia, etc -- locked off from you. It's a limiting approach. An excellent experiment, but placed and paced wrong, I think.