Product Description

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10391 in Video Games
• Brand: Eidos
• Model: SFIN7PUS71
• Released on: 1998-04-19
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows 95
• Format: CD-ROM

Amazon.com Review
The enormous Playstation console smash hit Final Fantasy VII makes a successful debut on the personal computer, converted beautifully by designers Squaresoft and Eidos Interactive. Gamers familiar with Squaresoft's popular Final Fantasy series should have little trouble grasping the seventh title's action-packed, role-playing game play. However, Final Fantasy VII's excellent documentation and intuitive controls ensure that beginners won't feel overwhelmed.

Players assume the role of Cloud Strife, a defector of Shinra, the evil corporation maintaining control over the planet. As the game opens, Cloud joins "Avalanche," a resistance group determined to foil the corporation's diabolical plans. Final Fantasy VII features an extremely complex story line, offering many hours of game play (over 60 minutes of impressive cinematic sequences are also included).

Final Fantasy VII's game play involves exploration, puzzle solving, and real-time combat. Players control Cloud during exploration and take on additional party members for battle sequences, which include both fantastic weaponry and dazzling spells. While the graphics are top-notch--and support 3-D hardware accelerators to sharpen the character models--the sound effects won't impress many; Squaresoft made little effort to utilize a personal computer's sophisticated sound card to its potential.

Although deeply rooted in the limitations of the Playstation console (limited menu system, weak music, no voice-overs), Final Fantasy VII's highly addictive, easy-to-learn game play should provide adventure and role-playing fans many hours of enjoyment. --Doug Radcliffe

Pros:

• Epic story line
• Well-developed characters
• Beautiful graphics and spell effects
• Complex magic system

• Dialogue can get cheesy
• Weak sound
• Frustrating interface

GameSpot Review
SquareSoft's Final Fantasy VII was released on the PlayStation with much hype and fanfare, including television commercials and huge bus stop ads in metropolitan areas. For many months, it seemed Final Fantasy VII was the only game available for the PlayStation. For those who played it, this was practically the case. The game's epic storyline and impressive production values made for a game that kept one immersed for anywhere from 30 hours, "rushing" through, to more than twice that, exploring every available option.

The PC translation of Final Fantasy VII is fundamentally the same game as the PlayStation version, which makes for both its greatest strengths and its most frustrating weaknesses. There was obviously a great deal of attention spent improving the graphics, but other equally important areas - the sound, the interface - have been neglected.

Final Fantasy VII tells the story of a young mercenary named Cloud. At the outset of the game, Cloud has hired himself out to Avalanche, a revolutionary group set on sabotaging a huge corporation's plans to harvest all of the energy from the planet. Cloud is an ex-employee of Shinra Inc., the corporation in question. While the Avalanche members' intentions are noble, Cloud's are, it seems, strictly financial. Throughout the first segment of the game, Cloud works with Avalanche in the elevated city of Midgar and the slums that exist below it. Because of the events that transpire there, he must venture with them beyond Midgar, across the whole of the planet, where the story becomes much more complex.

This complexity is the heart of the game, and describing too much of the story would give it away. What makes Final Fantasy VII so involving, though, is not just the story it tells - the characters themselves are intriguing. Each of the main characters has interesting motivations and history. Much of the game is devoted to painting these portraits, with Cloud's being one of the focal points of the game. So as not to spoil anything, a simple understatement will have to suffice: Cloud is easily the most interesting and complex character ever presented in a game.

The game utilizes many different styles, depending on the event and the location. When wandering around cities, you play from an Alone in the Dark-style perspective, where different angles are used in different areas. When in the world map, you see everything from a birds-eye overhead view. In both cases, your party (made up of three of the available characters) is represented by a single character, usually Cloud. Combat is a hybrid of real-time and turn-based. It takes place in real time, but it takes a certain amount of time for your characters to perform moves. It's sort of a best-of-both-worlds scenario, where you must act quickly, but it's not a purely response-time-based situation.

The magic system is so complicated as to defy simple explanation. Your characters can be equipped with Materia, and different types of Materia have different properties. Some will allow you to heal characters during combat, others will summon deities to combat your opponents, and others will cast spells or add attributes to your characters. Materia can be coupled with other Materia to change its properties, and Materia gains experience along with your characters, allowing for more powerful spells, extended effects, or multiple castings during a single encounter. Understanding the way Materia works is one of the keys to playing the game, and it's a complex yet elegant system.

Aesthetically, the PC version of Final Fantasy VII exceeds the PlayStation version in one area: graphics. Support for 3D accelerators makes the characters look much more crisp and detailed than the console version. Combat sequences benefit the most. Quite simply, combat scenes in the PC version look incredible. Unfortunately, everything else is inferior. The music is MIDI, so the quality is completely dependent on the MIDI playback ability of your sound card. With the most common contemporary sound cards, this isn't good. As a result, the epic score of the game is reduced to something that sounds like the background music on a poorly designed Final Fantasy web page.

Not all of the graphics are superior: The rendered cutscenes, which were breathtaking on the PlayStation, are AVI files in the PC version - low-resolution, washed-out AVI files. The menu-driven interface, a necessity for the PlayStation controller, is presented here intact. No hotkeys, nothing. To play without a gamepad, you must use the number pad on the keyboard, which isn't a pleasant option. You can reallocate keys, but the options menu makes it difficult to understand exactly what function the different keys serve. If you plan on playing Final Fantasy VII on the PC, a gamepad is almost essential.

Of course, there are some problems that exist simply because of the nature of console RPGs. Many of these discrepancies will seem foreign to those who have never experienced them: the inability to save at any point when in certain locations, the random combat encounters that occur with no warning, and the strange moments in combat when huge monsters firing huge weapons do little damage, while your characters do twice as much damage with a single punch. And none of these compares to the adjustment many will have to make to accustom themselves to the fact that these cute little big-eyed characters are swearing, killing, and pondering the nature of their existence. But these are caveats, not criticisms.

The PC version of Final Fantasy VII could have been, and perhaps should have been, better than its PlayStation counterpart. But it isn't. The story is amazing, and the combat is fun, making it a good choice for open-minded computer role-playing fans or adventure game fans who don't mind a little action in their games. Perhaps it's unfair to criticize Final Fantasy VII for being merely great, but it's hard not to think a version tailored specifically for the PC could have been amazing. --Ron Dulin
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

From Maximum PC -- Subscribe now!
The archetypal RPG on the Sony PlayStation has finally made the jump to the PC, bringing with it enhanced graphics that 32-bit console owners can only dream about.

FF VII combines pre-rendered, stylized backgrounds with realtime gouraud-shaded texture-mapped polygons. Action takes place in a skillful weave of Alone In The Dark-esque camera angles and an active, cinematic camera-tracking system for its quasi-turn-based combat system. At 640x480/16-bit and using all those cool visual niceties Direct3D PC users are accustomed to, such as bilinear filtering, alpha-blending, and more, FF VII roars. Unfortunately, the developers opted not to re-render the gorgeous 320x240 PlayStation background artwork, resulting in pixelation. Also, the FMV suffers from massive artifacting.

As monsters are summoned and weapons discharged, the camera tracks to capture the action. Framerates on a pimped-out machine remain smooth and fast. But check carefully which D3D cards are supported, as Riva 128 owners are crying foul over FF VII's lack of hardware support.

Prepare to invest major time in FF VII. This four-CD brute contains much adventuring-while the main plot is linear, there are side quests aplenty (mainly for extra party members or super-secret weaponry and magic). The extraordinary combat system verges on the extreme, but it's the only way to pump up those characters and get them strong enough for the final confrontation.

Some folks may be turned off by the gameplay mechanics and big-headed anime character design-others will be offended by the game's adult situations and blatant stereotyping. But RPG lunatics lusting for a long adventure until the next Ultima, Wizardry, or Fallout should look no further than Final Fantasy VII-the cure for the common RPG. -Andrew Sanchez

Final Fantasy VII's pseudo realtime combat takes some getting used to, but the spell effects are well worth it.

Rating: 8/10

©1999 Maximum PC

Customer Reviews

On par with its predecessors
I am an avid Final Fantasy player, having been a fan since Final Fantasy 1 for the NES, and having played each game since, including Japanese versions not released in the U.S. Final Fantasy VII certainly was no disappointment.

Some other Final Fantasy games, such as 2 and 3 (Jap: 6), have better plots than VII; however, VII was certainly very close, and far exceeds the standards of most other RPGs. The plot in VII is more complicated than in its predecessors. Hordes of details are tightly interwoven in a magnificent latice. However, there are some scenes and characters that I will describe, for lack of a better word, as stupid. People who have played the game may recall Cate and the funhouse or Don's House of Love.

The graphics are superb, and the game engine is great. Battle scenes are realistic, the scenery is beautiful, and well-rendered full-screen MPEG videos are seamlessly integrated into the game. My only regret is that the controls in a 3D environment are a bit more challenging, especially if you're using the keyboard.

I can't say I like Materia or the new magic system, whereby a person knows only the magic spells corresponding to the limited number of Materia he or she equips. Furthermore, the game isn't nearly as challenging; I played it all the way through with only two deaths, and there are places to save the game all over the place, which means that even if you do die, you have as many chances as you'd like. The game doesn't necessitate purchasing any new equipment; the gear you find along the road will get you all the way through if you're good at battle tactics.

For the benefit of people who haven't played a Final Fantasy game before, I'll describe the basic workings. The game is an epic adventure centered around one character, but including about 7 others. It requires no coordination to play, since your success in turn-based battle depends on your strategy, not your timing. There is a good balance between the storyline and battle scenes, so you should enjoy the game regardless of which you like best. The game is really something, and it's fairly cheap. If you play one Final Fantasy game, make it this one. If you play two, get a Super NES and play 3 (6 in Japan) as well. Then play 8 or 2, or see if you can get your hands on 5.

Great for adventure gamers and RPG fans!
I've never played the Playstation version of this game and this was my first time playing any sort of Final Fantasy game. I originally purchased it to watch the computer animation but quickly fell in love with the world, the characters, and the dozens of things to do.

You start off playing Cloud (or whatever you decide to name him) and are an ex-soldier now fighting for a group called Avalanche who want to shut down a company called Shinra because they're using Mako energy to power the city. Mako energy is the life energy of every living thing on the planet and once its used up the planet will die. From there you're quickly plunged into a story about love, betrayal, duty, and saving the world.

I easily got 40+ hours of gameplay and the story blew me away. Every time yu think you know what's going on another clue pops up and blows everything else away. There's an even balance between combat and actual RPG where you talk to folks in towns.

This game also has great replayibility with dozens of sub-quests and side games to keep you busy. Can you raise a gold chocobo? Can you defeat all three weapons? Can you find all the mega-elixers? Can you gain the secret characters? Can you find everyone's super technique and ultimate weapons?

The story was amazingly detailed, the characters were all unique, and the game pulled no punches. I highly reccomend it.

Still My Favorite of the Series
As an avid fan of the Final Fantasy series, I have played most every game in the series. (Games after VIII yet included because I've yet to get myself a Playstation/PS2.) Overall, the quality of the Final Fantasy series is excellent, but Final Fantasy VII is still my favorite, beating out even the later Final Fantasy VIII. Final Fantasy VII has so many great qualities, among them:

Replayability: Anybody that says that they did everything there is to do in Final Fantasy VII the first time they played through is lying. There are so many different subquests. I don't wish to spoil them, but they involve dating, chocobos, minigames and so much more. Oh, and the Gold Saucer, which I won't spoil, but there hasn't been anything like it in any of the games I've played.

Plotline: My favorite of the Final Fantasy games I've played. Adventure, love, betrayal, deceit, intrigue, it's all there and more.

Battle System: One of the most well developed of the Final Fantasy games I've played.

To respond to a couple of the listed "cons," I personally did not find the interface to be all that frusturating. In fact, I find it a lot less frusturating than the interfaces of some of the earlier Final Fantasy games. It's not too difficult to figure out either and anything that may be unclear is cleared up in the provided and detailed instructions. As for the sound, anything that may be lacking in the sound department is more than made up for in the amazing music, which I find to be the most memorable and beautiful of the Final Fantasy games I've played.

Don't let its age and somewhat outdated graphics keep you from playing this game. Try it, you'll definitely find it worth your time.