Funny story: I lent my copy of Final Fantasy 7 out to a friend, whom in exchange lent me another RPG called SaGa Frontier 2. I bought my own copy of SF2, intending to give my friend’s copy back to him. But, I never was able to get in contact with that guy again when I finally tried to get it back. That was about nine years ago, and it had been even longer since the last time I played FF7.
At the moment, I’m at home on vacation, and my friend who is really into RPGs tells me, “I wanna play through Final Fantasy 7, I’ve never beat it.” He wants to beat the game while I’m down at home, and my vacation has less than a week left. After taking two days to drill into his head that FF7 is a LONG-ass game, and that he better be ready to shut himself inside his house for a few days, he finally agreed to buckle down and really do it. Thus began the first time I’ve played Final Fantasy 7 in about eleven years.
One big thing that I’m doing differently from all the previous times I played FF7 is in the sidequests; that is, I’m doing verrry few. There are far too many good incentives in FF7 to simply forego doing ALL optional quests (two playable characters, for example), so I’m trying to pick and choose what stuff I do. The main point of this is that I don’t want to waste time (I mean, hell, we’re trying to beat FF7 in SIX days), and also that I don’t want to do any grinding. Not that FF7 is a grindey game or anything, but I’ve never played FF7 without doing a lot of grinding for levels, materia, and limit breaks. I’d like to see how the game’s balance holds up without buffing my characters to outrageous proportions.
And, so far, it’s working out pretty well. After just two days of playing, we’re at the Corel Prison (near the Gold Saucer), so that’s about halfway through disc 1. I have not needed to do any ‘grinding’ other than a few spots where you need to buy an item to progress the game (which never takes more than a few fights), and sitting around for about fifteen minutes to recruit Yuffie. Surprisingly, the game’s balance is not bad at all; random battles are pretty easy, even though the enemies hit pretty hard, and the bosses are kind of challenging, too. I’m surprised at how many boss fights I’ve almost died on (none yet, though!). I used to boast that FF7 was easy, but I guess when your strategy for victory is to grind your character until all that’s left is powder, you lack the perspective to make an honest assessment of a game’s difficulty. I’ve felt like this for quite some time, and this is why I tend to stay far away from grinding and sidequests in RPGs.
I’m also really surprised at just how fun the game is to play. In addition to being pretty challenging (or, at the very least, challenging for a Final Fantasy game), FF7 does two other things that so many traditional RPGs fail to grasp: Low encounter rate, and combat moves very fast, thanks mostly to the fact that characters have really high max MPs, encouraging the player to use powerful spells in battle. It’s funny that FF7 is the butt of jokes where summon spells take like 20 minutes, but Knights of the Round is like the only one. This game makes combat really speedy and convenient, without shoving it down your throat. I wonder how this is so hard for other RPGs, especially when a near perfect model on how to handle these things exists?
I do bemoan the lack of individuality in characters sometimes (though it’s moreso than I remembered when I was young), and I do think the system for getting Limit Breaks are stupid. Finish off sixty guys to get the next level? So, in other words, that means Cloud is going to be miles ahead of everyone cos he has the strongest physical attack, and one of the strongest magic attacks. I got to Lv.2 Limit Break with Cloud before some characters even got their second Lv.1 Limit Break. It’s nuts.
I’m happy, though, to see that FF7’s combat aged well after all. At least, in that respect, FF7 really withstands the test of time. In the graphics department? Not so much. I’ll probably do one more playthrough journal about the story, when I’ve had a chance to play through the majority (or all) of the game, and have formed a better opinion about it. While it’s true that I still remember the gist, it’s hard for me to critique a story when the last time I ‘read’ it, I was like twelve years old. Stay tuned.
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