Plot
The game's setting is similar to that of Final Fantasy VI's by presenting a world with considerably more advanced technology than the first five games in the series. Overall, the game's technology and society approximates that of an industrial or post-industrial science fiction. The world of Final Fantasy VII, referred to in the game as "The Planet", but retroactively named "Gaia", is composed of three main land masses. The eastern continent features the city of Midgar, an industrial metropolis that serves as the capital city of the world as it hosts headquarters of the Shinra Electric Power Company, which operates as the de facto world government. Other locations on the continent are Junon, Shinra's major military base; Fort Condor, a fort with a huge condor covering up a Mako reactor on top of it; a chocobo ranch; and Kalm, a small town inspired by medieval Europe.The western continent features most of the accessible areas, which include the Gold Saucer, an amusement park with Corel Prison below; Costa Del Sol, a seaside resort; Gongaga, a small town containing the remains of a destroyed Mako reactor; Nibelheim, a town residing at the base of Mt. Nibel; Rocket Town, the location of Shinra's failed rocket launch; and a settlement called Cosmo Canyon. Wutai, a village inspired by pre-modern Japan and China, is located on a large island off the western continent. The tribe inhabiting Cosmo Canyon emphasize living in harmony with nature and dedicating causes to the planet's well-being. Their settlement features an observatory and serves as a research facility for those who wish to participate in a philosophy known as the "Study of Planet Life", a lifestyle that encourages deference for nature and teaches the planet has a life of its own. The northernmost continent is a heavily glaciated landmass, and its few settlements include an excavation site; a ski resort; the mythical "City of the Ancients"; and the Northern Crater, where the game's climax takes place. There are also underwater locations accessible only by submarine; for example, a sunken Shinra plane transporter.
Final Fantasy VII begins with Cloud joining AVALANCHE in a series of raids against the Mako reactors surrounding the city of Midgar. Although the first mission is successful, AVALANCHE is trapped at another reactor during a subsequent raid. The reactor explodes, launching Cloud from the upper levels of Midgar into the slums below. He lands on a flower bed, where he is formally introduced to Aerith. Prompted by the arrival of Shinra's Turks operatives sent to capture Aerith, Cloud agrees to be Aerith's bodyguard and defends her from the Turks. After the Shinra discover the location of AVALANCHE's hideout, they destroy it by demolishing the entirety of Sector 7, killing its population and three members of AVALANCHE. The Turks also capture Aerith, who is revealed to be the last surviving "Cetra", a race closely attuned with the planet and previously thought extinct. President Shinra believes Aerith can lead him to the "Promised Land", a mythical land of fertility, where he expects to find Mako energy.
The remaining members of AVALANCHE infiltrate Shinra corporate headquarters to rescue Aerith. After freeing her and Red XIII, they escape because most of the personnel in the building, including the president, are killed by Sephiroth, a man presumed to be dead, who stated that he would never allow Shinra to claim the Promised Land. The party also learns that during Sephiroth's attack on Shinra, the headless body of a creature named "Jenova" disappeared from the building's research facility. While the president's son, Rufus Shinra, assumes control of the company, AVALANCHE pursues Sephiroth across the planet, fearing his intentions for the Promised Land may be more destructive than Shinra's. The party is joined by Cait Sith and Cid, and optionally by Vincent and Yuffie. The full scope of Sephiroth's plan is eventually revealed: if the world is significantly damaged, the Lifestream will gather in an attempt to heal the wound. Sephiroth intends to use a powerful spell called "Meteor" to cause this injury, and then merge with the planet's energy, allowing him to be reborn as a god and rule over the planet. Aerith sets off to stop Sephiroth on her own. AVALANCHE follow her to the northern continent, where they enter an ancient Cetra city. After finding Aerith praying to the planet for aid, Sephiroth fatally impales Aerith with his sword.Sephiroth kills Aerith in a scene which has been referred to as "the most shocking moment in video games". Influenced by Sephiroth, Cloud becomes suspicious of his memories and insists he is not a real human, but instead a specimen created from Jenova's genetic material by Professor Hojo. Jenova was an interstellar creature who crash landed on the planet roughly 2,000 years prior to the game's events. Jenova had intended to infect all living organisms on the planet with a virus inducing insanity and monstrous transformations; among its victims were most of the Cetra. Attempting to defend itself, the planet created giant monsters called "WEAPON". The majority of humans fled rather than fight Jenova; however, a small group of Cetra survivors managed to defeat and confine Jenova. Eventually, the remains of Jenova were unearthed by Professor Gast, a researcher for the Shinra Company. Mistaking the creature for a Cetra, Gast was given authorization to conduct an experiment to artificially produce a Cetra by combining cells from Jenova with the fetus of an unborn child. Sephiroth learned that he was the product of this experiment while on a Shinra mission in Cloud and Tifa's hometown, Nibelheim. He concluded that he was a Cetra who had been produced solely from Jenova's genetic material. He burned down Nibelheim, intending to kill all descendants of those he believed had abandoned his ancestors in the defense of the planet. Cloud confronted Sephiroth during this massacre, after which Sephiroth vanished under unknown circumstances and was presumed dead until his reappearance in the Shinra building. When AVALANCHE travels to the Northern Crater to confront Sephiroth, he tells Cloud that he was not in Nibelheim, showing him images of a SOLDIER with dark hair who occupies Cloud's place in his memories. Tifa is unable to refute Sephiroth's claims, and Sephiroth casts the Meteor spell, causing the planet to awaken the WEAPONs in response. During the earthquake that follows, Cloud is separated from his companions and falls into the Lifestream. As the meteor summoned by Sephiroth slowly approaches the planet, the Shinra Company focuses its efforts on protecting humanity from the WEAPONs, as well as defeating Sephiroth, in the hopes that this will dismiss Meteor itself. Meanwhile, the members of AVALANCHE find Cloud in a catatonic state on a tropical resort where he washed up following the casting of Meteor. The WEAPONs' destructive activity causes the island to split open, and Cloud and Tifa fall into the Lifestream, where she reconstructs Cloud's memories and learns the truth about his past. It is revealed that Cloud never succeeded in joining SOLDIER, and that the dark-haired SOLDIER from his memories was actually Aerith's first love and Cloud's best friend, Zack Fair, Zack, Tifa, and Cloud had fought Sephiroth during the burning of Nibelheim. Although Tifa and Zack were defeated, Cloud and Sephiroth severely wounded one another. After decapitating Jenova, Sephiroth was thrown into the Lifestream by Cloud, taking the creature's head with him. Rather than dying, his body and consciousness were crystallized in Mako inside Jenova's crater.
Cloud and Zack were among the wounded survivors who were apprehended by Shinra as part of a cover-up of Sephiroth's massacre. Professor Hojo subjected these survivors to an experiment, performing the same enhancements given to SOLDIER members—a procedure which included Mako showers and the injection of Jenova cells. All but Zack entered a comatose state, and nearly five years later, Zack broke free from his confinement and took Cloud with him. However, the alien Jenova cells in Cloud's body still allowed Sephiroth to modulate his behavior. Moreover, the cells' ability to duplicate information allowed Cloud's mind to construct a false persona built around Zack's behavior. This was prompted by Zack himself, who was killed outside Midgar by Shinra soldiers during the escape; he urged Cloud to live both their lives before passing on. Afterward, Tifa discovered Cloud, who was wearing a SOLDIER 1st Class uniform, and offered him a job with AVALANCHE. After Cloud awakens, it is revealed that Aerith, in her final moments, was casting the spell "Holy" with the White Materia, the only means of opposing Meteor. Although she succeeded, Sephiroth had since prevented the spell from taking effect. Deciding to protect humanity from the WEAPONs before approaching Sephiroth, Shinra and AVALANCHE destroy the WEAPONs, although nearly all of Shinra's executives are killed in the process. Among the few survivors are Reeve Tuesti, who is revealed to be the repentant controller of Cait Sith, and Professor Hojo, who is revealed to be Sephiroth's biological father. He explains that he and his wife were assistants to Professor Gast, and offered up their unborn child as a test subject to research involving Jenova. After finding out that Hojo is trying to help Sephiroth gain mastery over the Lifestream, AVALANCHE kills him. In their final assault against Sephiroth, the group travels through the Northern Crater to the planet's core. They defeat Sephiroth and free Holy, but the spell is unable to destroy Meteor alone. Selected as Meteor's target, Midgar is almost completely destroyed. However, the Lifestream rises from the planet to aid Holy in destroying the Meteor. During the epilogue, taking place 500 years after the game's events, Red XIII runs through a canyon with two cubs at his side. He proceeds up a cliff-face, which reveals a lush land of greenery where Midgar had once been.
Characters
The nine main playable characters in Final Fantasy VII are Cloud Strife, an unsociable mercenary who claims to be a former 1st Class member of Shinra's SOLDIER unit; Barret Wallace, the leader of the anti-Shinra rebel group AVALANCHE; Tifa Lockhart, a martial artist and childhood friend of Cloud's; Aerith Gainsborough, a flower merchant who has been pursued by Shinra's special operations unit, the Turks, since childhood; Red XIII, a wise lion-like creature who was experimented on by Shinra scientists; Cait Sith, a fortune-telling robotic cat who rides an animated moogle doll; Cid Highwind, a pilot whose dreams of being the first man in outer space were not realized; Yuffie Kisaragi, a young thief and a skillful ninja; and Vincent Valentine, a former member of Shinra's Turks unit who was experimented on thirty years before the start of the game. The game's main antagonist is Sephiroth, a former member of SOLDIER who reappears several years after disappearing in a battle in which he was concluded to have died.Gameplay
Like previous installments of the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy VII consists primarily of three major areas: an overworld map, field maps, and a battle screen. The overworld map is a 3D model, featuring a scaled-down version of the game's fictional world which the player navigates to travel between the game's locations. As with preceding games in the series, the world map can be traversed by foot, on Chocobos, airship, sea vessel (in this case, a submarine and a plane used as a boat), but it also includes an additional means of transportation—a buggy. On field maps, characters are directed across realistically scaled environments, consisting of 2D pre-rendered backgrounds which represent locations such as towns or forests. The battle screen is a 3D representation of an area, such as a building's interior or an open grassland, in which the player commands the characters in battles against CPU-controlled enemies. While characters are super deformed on maps, the character models are more realistic and normal-scaled in combat. Final Fantasy VII is the first game in the series to have character models with fully-rendered polygons rather than 2D sprites.
Initially, the player is restricted to the city of Midgar, but as the game progresses the entire world becomes accessible. Progression through the game's storyline is largely developed by way of scripted sequences, although pre-rendered cinematic cut scenes are also used often. During battle sequences, the game uses the Active Time Battle (ATB) system designed by Hiroyuki Ito first featured in Final Fantasy IV. Unlike previous games in the series, which allow 4-5 playable characters to participate in battle, Final Fantasy VII only allows three characters to be in the party at any time.
Final Fantasy VII's skill system is built around the use of materia (which any character can use)—magical orbs that are placed in special slots on weapons and armor, allowing players to customize their party's ability to use magic, summons, and special abilities. However, most magic-based materia also lowers an equipped character's physical attributes. In addition, certain types of materia can be combined in a fixed number of ways to enhance their effects or produce other abilities. Summon spells feature in the game, equippable as materia, with elaborately animated attacks.
A modified form of Final Fantasy VI's "Desperation Attacks" appears in Final Fantasy VII as the "Limit Break". Every playable character has a bar that gradually fills up as they suffer damage in battle. When the bar is completely filled, the character is able to unleash his or her Limit Break, a special attack which generally inflicts significantly more damage on enemies than normal attacks, or otherwise aids the party in battle. Unlike materia, each character has their own unique set of Limit Breaks, which are divided into four levels of strength, although one character, Cait Sith, only has two levels.
So there you have the most basic discription of this title. This is the game that fans fell in love with so hard that every game to follow will continuasly be compaired to this title. For a lot of the american fans of the game this was there first experience with the game, so I can understand the concept of theres no love like your first love. And VII was a first FF love for many a fan. Because of this Square (now dubed Square Enix) did a complete revamp of the game, coming out with many side stories to explain the in-depth nature of this world, I will touch on each project as well in this post later so keep reading!The main points of this game I would like to point out. We have evolved in a completely new direction with the game, the characters are no longer 2D sprites we have fully formed almost real looking polygonal characters, although they have an animeish feel to them. When traveling the world the characters have the look of what would happen if you took those 2D sprites and gave them substance, a head, arms, noticeable body traits but not quite as detailed as if you were looking at a CGI character render. While the Overworld map has stayed in place its now a scaled down 3D model of the cities and town and forests and mountains may look like in this world of Gaia. Even the battle screen has changed from a flat field, to a full 3D render of the area that the characters happen to be in. With this we still have different modes of transportation, the ever faithful Chocobo returning as well as the Airship, this one being piloted by Cid Highwind who has dubbed the ship after his dead wife Sierria. We also see implemented, a submarine, and a boat plane.
Within the towns we have vendors who sell weapons, armor, accessories and items. As well as Inn's where the characters can rest to regain HP and MP.
The characters gain experience with battle, and by gaining experience they also gain in level, raising the characters attack, defense, magic and health stats. The stats are also raised by equipping higher level gear, an then in turn using materia slots on the items also raise or sometimes lower specific stats.
FFVII turns away from the Crystals entirely, being replaced by orbs once more called Materia, materia are powers or abilities forged within the life force of the planet called the Lifestream. Characters can equip these crystal like orbs to learn magic or summons or abilities.
Summons return in this title in a completely new way, there are a specific set of summons in this game. Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh, Titan, Fat Chocobo, Pheonix, Choco/Mog, Odin, Kjata, Leviathan, Typhoon, Hades, Alexander, three different forms of Bahamut, Bahamut, Neo Bahamut, and Bahamut Zero, and lastly the infamous Knights of the Round. What made these summons so special, is the summon appears for one attack, which is seen almost in the way of a cut scene, the Knights of the Round lasting the longest. One of the cool things about the Materia system, is the Materia actually levels up as well, once the Materia is mastered, it created a duplicate of the Materia, so you could have Cloud, Tifa, and Cid in your party all equipped with Bahamut Zero, one of the higher level summons if you don't get Knights of the round, and all summon him one right after the other, and cause some serious damage to your enemy.
Another difference in this title is the Job classes have all but disappeared. Each character has basically a different fighting style.
Cloud Strife who wields a giant Buster Sword about the size of his body, his hack and slash techniques is how he cuts down his enemies.
Tifa Lockheart is a martial arts expert, her weapons are a gauntlet of sorts almost like a boxing glove for her fists.
Barret Wallace, who lost his right arm decided to replace it with a machine gun instead of a prosthetic. The weapons found for Barret tend to be different types of gun replacements for his arm.
Aerith Gainsborough who as a healer uses a staff to fight or what the game has dubbed as polearms.
Red XIII, who is actually the series first animal playable character and looks like a lion with flame on the end of his tail, uses his claws and teeth as weapons, with a tribal appearance he has feathers and beads wrapped inside his mane his only equip able weapon is more like an accessory for his mane, that raises his stats.
Cait Sith who rides atop his robot Mog, and is also a robot himself, also wields no weapon, his accessory is a Megaphone, so one will find new Megaphones for him.
Cid Higwind, captain of the Airship Sierria, wields a spear or lance, so his found and purchased weapons are a lance.
Vincent Valentine, a first for FF he is actually an optional player, you find him in a side quest and he joins your party, uses a hand gun.
Yuffie Kisaragi, the games other optional player, uses a giant Shuriken or Throwing Star.
This was a first for them as well, weapons in the past were linked usually to the Job class of that character, in this instalment the weapons are actually character specific.
On the subject of characters this game has some of the most memorable, starting with FF fans favorite villain. Sephiroth. Even I can admit the bad assness of this villain, and there has not been a villain like him since, but I wouldn't want there to be, hes one of a kind. And that's why he has made such an impact. Although none of the games prior or after feature a villain quite like him, they are still amazing games.
And the other most memorable is Aerith, her sweat an loving disposition, and innocence just made you fall in love with her. As well as the budding romance she had with Cloud, and then when you lease expect it, she is murdered right before your eyes, by the villain Sephiroth, another reason hes favored is his pure cold bloodedness. You actually feel sad for the loss of Aerith, she was such a monumental character an for a majority of the beginning of the game you spend it protecting her, so when she dies you almost feel like a failure, like you must have done something wrong in the game, there must be an alternate scene where she lives, but no she was meant to die.
And of course lastly you have the favored hero, Cloud, who due to experiments and trauma in his early stages of his story forgot who he really was and instead believed his life was lived a completely different way, who we later come to find was actually his best friend Zack Fair, who we also learn was actually Aeriths first love. He overcame the doubts in himself and in the end, saves Gaia from Sephiroth, proving to be every bit the SOLDIER Zack could not be cause he could not defeat Sephiroth.
A few of the minor things that made this game memorable were the side quest and mini games. There was of course the Golden Saucer an amusement park within the game, it housed the famous arcade like snowboard mini game, and Chocobo Racing. This was a huge implement in the game, also in this world there was a Chocobo Farm, in which you could catch Chocobos by means of battle and raise them, and as well race them! How this worked is you would catch a chocobo, and once caught you had different types of greens that you could feed them that would up there chances of winning races, there was one specific type of green that would basically make you a shoe in with the races (and of course it was the most expensive) You would feed the greens to the Chocobo, then race it, if you won a certain number of races the chocobos rank would then go up, shooting mostly for A class and above. There were also male and female chocobos that could be caught, once you got them both up to a specific rank you would breed them, and in some instances (if you did what you were supposed to do) would end up with a different colored Chocobo.
The Basic Wild Chocobo will always be Yellow, followed by the next class the Blue and Green Chocobo, each coming with a special ability that could actually be used on the world map. Blue Chocobos being nicknamed River Chocobos, can cross rivers. Green being dubbed Mountain Chocobos could traverse the mountain ranges but could not go through water. The next class up being the Black Chocobo, which could traverse through rivers and over the mountain ranges. Lastly the Golden Chocobo, which is why you would want to breed them, this Chocobo can go anywhere on the world map, and he is required if you wish to acquire the Knights of the Round Summon Materia and some of the casts ultimate weapons.
This game was also the first to initiate optional boss battles in the form of the WEAPONS that appear after Meteor is summoned. Ruby, Emerald, Diamond Weapons.
So as you can see, its understandable why this game would be loved, there is so much to it and it has so much depth. And you easily become attached to the characters. I have no problem stating that VII is probably one of the greatest titles in the FF franchise. I love it there is no doubt about that, and yes when I found out about the side projects that Square began working on I got excited. These side projects showed some beloved characters in new and invigorating ways. And they did it because fans screamed for more. But I think it got to a point where fans now want a remake of FFVII for the PS3 or future consoles and more of this world. But this really makes me touch on, how can it be the Final Fantasy of this world and these characters if it never ends becoming a legacy instead of a continuing project.
As this post turned out to be so long I am going to extend each individual FFVII project into its own post. If anything to just expand on my point of too much of a good thing makes people crazy and blind to the greatness that follows.
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