Final Fantasy VII

The Good
FF7 starts as a pretty addicting experience. I was hooked on my computer for many many hours as I started playing it. The musics were great (best part about the game), character types were alright and the atmosphere of the futuristic world was lovable. Graphics weren't very good (compared to later Square PS games such as Chrono Cross), but they weren't bad either. Especially the character models left some room for imagination so I was content with it.

The Bad
THIS PART CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS

After some 30 hours of playing, the game started getting very repetitive. This happens with most Japanese RPGs for me though. You have to fight random fights every once in a while with long battle animations. The fights required no planning, no reflexes, no any kind of skill and no luck as it was so easy. You simply had to watch the roughly same animation about 1000 times. It boggles my mind how so many people can stomach it, even enjoy it. I wouldn't have complained about the fighting system's simplicity if the fights had only played a small part in the game. Alas, you had to fight a lot.

The story was artificially fabricated to be way longer than necessary, so the characters ended up wandering from place to place in an illogical sequence. Yes, sequence -- that's the other part I hated. Almost nowhere was I presented any choices to make, so I don't know if this would really count as playing a role. During the latter part of the game there were several places you could visit in any order, and there were some voluntary quests you could take on, but that's it.

The characters seemed interesting at first, but they didn't develop. They didn't interact. They just followed my lead. In some rare occasions they talked to each other, hooray.. The setting was just perfect for some drama or a love triangle, but almost nothing happened.

Overall the game had such a mind-boggling amount of completely artificial new characters, illogical route planning, illogical puzzles and a main plot that was grossly exaggerated, that I was only left with my mouth open: "This is the game that was praised by so many?"

The Bottom Line
Too many pointless, easy fights, artificially over-lenghtened plot and no character development. If you're a fan of other Jap RPGs, you'll like this, but then again, you've probably already played this. If you're new to the genre, you'd have to try it to know if you like it, because I can't imagine what general group of people would find this game an enjoyable overall experience.