Final Fantasy VII Platinum

There I was with my new playstation which I had for Christmas. I remember the games I received with it quite clearly. Resident Evil 2, Crash Bandicoot 2, Worms, Gran Turismo and Die Hard Trilogy. Needless to say it didn't take me long to get very, very bored of these so off I went in search of good "next generation" gaming. And my search brought me to this masterpiece of a game.

My friends had been raving about it for months but to be honest it seemed quite boring and complicated to me. This seemed like a game more suited to the Japanese market. Not a game we Westerners should be playing...

Still I went ahead and purchased a copy, and from the off I was hooked. The opening FMV sequence I remember as breathtaking. We Start out looking at what appears to be a night sky filled with stars. The camera then moves to focus on the face of a girl (who you later discover is one of the main characters) before panning back over the city. The game title comes on then and lets you know that you're in for a world of adventure and excitement. As the camera then zooms back in on the city and follows the path of a train carrying our band of adventurers the FMV flows seamlessly into the in-game graphics and your journey starts.

The game itself is amazing in every aspect. The graphics for back then were revolutionary. It was one of the first fully 3D RPG's ever. The whole world was vibrant and full of colour, and some of the scenes were capable are bringing you close to tears. These days graphics have totally changed. We now have RPG's like Final Fantasy 10 which admittedly are beautiful that make the game look blocky and bland. The advancements made in graphical technology do nothing however to mar the awesome adventure in this game.

The story is perhaps to date, one of the most complex stories ever written for a computer game. Perhaps the only games to nearly compare are the other games in the Final Fantasy series; but even then most fans will agree that the story of 7 easily surpasses all the others. Most will also agree that this was one of the only games around at the time that provided you such a strong emotional attachment to the characters. Through the story and the many, many subplots that were worker in, you grew to know the history and life story of all the characters in the game. This provided you with an emotional attachment to them that could cut you deeper than any game I've ever experienced. When one of them hurt, you hurt. And as players of the game know, when a certain event occurs half way through the game, you will feel a strong sense of loss, that is pretty much unique among games.

The gameplay, though certainly not groundbreaking, certainly fit the game perfectly. The game operated on the perhaps legendary materia system. This worked by attaching magic stones (materia) into slots in your weapons and armour. Attaching this materia gave your characters certain powers and abilities that they otherwise did not have access to. Limit breaks were another important part of the gameplay in this game. These are what you might call extreme abilities that your characters accessed when they had built up a certain amount of stress. And of course, like many other RPG's Final Fantasy 7 took advantage of the XP based levelling system that allowed your characters to level up to level 99.

The sound in this game is also excellent. After not playing it for while you'll suddenly start to hear the fighting track in your head again and will even start humming it to yourself. Appearance of insanity be damned. Seriously the music of this game was so good and added such a lot to the environment of the game and the emotional attachment offered that a soundtrack CD was released and was purchased by thousands of fans.

The main thing I buy a game for however is not the graphics of the sound, but the lastability. And this game lasts a long long time. Playing it the first time through, if you do absolutely everything your looking at a good 200 hours. And you're almost guaranteed to play it through more than once. There are so many things to see in this game. So many towns and dungeons to visit, so many enemies to defeat and so many materia and spectacular weapons to discover, that you'll find youself playing it until late into the night. The best part is that if you ever get tired of playing the main game there are dozens of little minigames all played in a huge arcade that you enter halfway through (and that you can go back to anytime after). You can play snowboarding, motorbike racing and even a first person shooter game on a rollercoaster. This doesn't even scratch the surface though.

I can't finish this review without mentioning something that has been almost integral since the start of this series... chocobos. These are big birds like ostriches that you ride around. In most of the final fantasy games, preceding and succeeding number 7, that's pretty much all you can do. In 7 however you can undertake the daunting task of chocobo breeding! This involves breeding chocobos for the purpose of racing them. The depth of this is unexplainable but I'll just say that some very nice things can be uncovered by breeding chocobos, and will leave you to uncover the rest.

All in all, this is a fantastic game that is not to be missed. It completely revolutionised the RPG genre, and is remembered by millions of people as one of - if not THE - best RPG's of all time.

Practically every games console has graced my bedroom over the last 20 years. So you can imagine I've played every much-hyped game whatever the format. Sonic, Streetfighter 2, Super Mario, Wonderboy... good grief the list is endless. The one type of games I could not stand were Role-Playing games.

Then in 1997, Sony made a huge fuss about the release of Final Fantasy VII.

I, in all my gaming career have never seen anything like it and 7 years later, I still haven't seen and WILL NEVER see a better game. If you haven't played it then this is a game that will have you waking up in the middle of the night to continue the monumental quest set before you, missing meals, neglecting the Wife/Girlfriend, thinking about what you're going to do when you next get to play it when you're at School/Work and basically becoming a recluse to the outside world whilst your on it.

The storyline is so good, you'll be nodding your head in utter disbelief at how someone can have the brains to think up something like this in a film let alone a game. For example, the deepness of the plot as you set foot in the City of Ancients as Cloud has to deal with the power of Consciousness or the massive contribution Aeris plays and how unassuming her character is during the early stages of the game.

You basically feel the emotion and start to really feel for each character has the game unfolds, such is the powerful script. The music for each moment, character and town are quite remarkable and endearing, Gonaga, Cosmo Canyon, City of Ancients, Sephiroth and Jenova's scores spring to mind. The evil Sephiroth is simply the best and most powerful bad guy ever to grace any computer game. Think of an animated Darth Vader and you'll get the idea.

The game is vast and spread over 3 disks which wasn't even heard of for the Playstation back then. The graphics are still wonderful even in this day and age and the FMV sequences are to be massively admired.

Quite simply the is the best game EVER. It has the best storyline EVER. The best value for money EVER. The best baddie EVER. The best audio and music to a game EVER. The most deepest and varied gameplay EVER. The most emotional game for the gameplayer EVER.

This game took gaming to new heights in many ways and no game will ever have the same impact this game has had on many many people and other games since. Anybody who hasn't played this game will never understand how good it really is. The fact that there are 100+ reviews for this game and every one of them is given a 5/5 rating only begins to tell the story.

There is no game that will ever match this epic and it is truely unsurpassable.

I only just received Final Fantasy VII this morning after much deliberation over whether or not I should have ordered it. I have never played a Final Fantasy game before and although I had of course seen the series continue to grow from the PS1 to the PS2 I was never sure I would get into the games what with the turn based battles and magic spells combined with melee weapons.

Well after playing it for just over an hour or so I can't honestly think why I didn't invest my money in these games in the past. Sure it's pretty dated now with early PS1 graphics but the characters, even after an hour of play seem to fit so well within the story of a rising rebellion group who want to bring down an evil mega-corporation that is destroying the planet and lives of people.

Anyways, I'd best knuckle down and after hearing that this game can steal over 80 hours of your life I've got a long journey ahead of me. I can't wait to unravel the stories throughout this game and the others.

I hope my review has helped anyone overcome hesitation if they are deciding to purchase this fantastic game.