(This is supposed to be for Alex's Trials of Vizzed competition, but it's still a review, so...yeah)
Hello and welcome to a very special review. I'm supposed to create a post on my favorite video game for the Trials of Vizzed, so here it is. This is a game that I've had mixed feelings about reviewing, but I finally decided I was going to do it. Why? A week ago, I finished this game after last playing it when I was ten years old. And it really opened my eyes. Here, my favorite video game of all time; Final Fantasy VII. I have no other words for this introduction, so let's just jump right in.

In the late 90's, the talk o' the town was Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64. The Nintendo 64 and Playstation 1 were the two hot systems at the time. In 1998, you were either hearing about Ocarina of Time...or Final Fantasy VII. This game was huge! And back then, many people didn't even know about the previous Final Fantasy games, so this was Square Soft's (Or Square Enix's) comeback. Nowadays, Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy VII are known as one of the best games ever. Because of the success of Final Fantasy VII, Square Enix continued to make even more games in the franchise. I believe you've heard about Final Fantasy XIII? Yeah, forget that piece of crap. Today, Final Fantasy VII is considered one of the best, if not, the best game ever made. And I agree with the fandom who say this. But Pixel! Why IS this your favorite game, and why is THIS specific game known as the best? Well I can answer that. In my review for Final Fantasy VII...

Story: 10/10

I think this review would be more fitting if I start with this category. You'll see why. The plot of this game is a big reason on why this is considered the best game of all time. It's also a major reason of why a certain someone (*Cough* *Cough* *Haaaaacccck* Davideo7) likes this game so much. The story revolves around a gargantuan city known as Midgar. The president of Midgar, Shinra, as well as his corporation, plot to take over the city as well as the entire world. However, a small gang known as AVALANCHE, goes on a secret mission to stop Shinra and his mischievous plans. The story starts with AVALANCHE. Biggs, Jessie, Wedge, Barret, and Cloud Strife take a train to the location of one of the many reactors which is Midgar's source of power. Barret is the leader of AVALANCHE, and he's a bold one. He is very hostile, and he just keeps cursing the entire game (). Biggs is the tough member of AVALANCHE, never hesitating to do anything dangerous. Jessie is the brainy of the bunch. Wedge is just the fat loser. But who we care about is Cloud. Meet Cloud Strife, a former member of SOLDIER, the enemies of AVALANCHE. He used to be a top ranked soldier in SOLDIER, but quit to join AVALANCHE. Anyways, AVALANCHE retreats to their hideout, but when Cloud follows them, he runs into this flower merchant, Aeris Gainsborough. Aeris and Cloud have a bit of small talk, but then Cloud gets bombarded by Shinra's foot soldiers. Cloud escapes on a train and rushes to AVALANCHE's hideout. And so the adventure begins.

You may have not been impressed by this short summary of mine. You might be asking why I rated the story a ten out of ten. Well the truth is I didn't want to spoil too much of the game. You see, Final Fantasy VII has a plot where you DON'T want a spoiler (But you're most likely a person who has never played Final Fantasy, but knows who dies in the game anyways because of the giant internet hoax). Final Fantasy's story is beyond indescribable. Even the introduction I summarized will have you on the edge of your seat. Final Fantasy's story contains a lot of plot twists, which makes the story interesting. Throughout the game, you'll learn more about the city of Midgar and learn more about the characters themselves. Let me just say that Final Fantasy has a very deep story. What's interesting about the Final Fantasy VII plot is that you can relate to a lot of things. The residents of Midgar deal with things such as economic failure, crime, poverty, and murder. Well, so do we, us Earthlings. Because of this, it's very easy to connect to the characters. One thing that's great about this game is being able to connect to the characters in this game, and that happens. Throughout the game, people die, people deal with troubles in their lives, and there's always the humorous parts of the game like that one time you supposedly sneak into a whorehouse/torture chamber. Final Fantasy has a very emotional story, and don't be surprised if you get emotional as well. What if I told you a little girl DIES in this game? Sad, huh? (No, the little girl is not the one who started the internet hoax I mentioned earlier) Final Fantasy VII is honestly the only video game that's made me feel this way about the characters, and it just makes video games a more enjoyable experience, and I wish more games did this. There's other Final Fantasy games that do this like VIII and X, but VII was the game that affected me the most. I'm rating this story a 10/10 for it's creativity. There's also GREAT characters and a lot of them. Each character has their own unique personality, and you may relate to a lot of the characters. I can certainly say I can relate to Cloud Strife.

Graphics: 7/10

One flaw that everyone seems to acknowledge about this game is that it's mediocre graphically. First of all, graphics and sound don't really matter. And also, this game was released in 1997. Let that sink in for a moment. It was back when a lot of 3D games had low polygon count, like Mega Man 64 or other Playstation and Nintendo 64 games. And honestly, I have to say I kinda like the graphics in this game. Sure, the polygonal characters in the painted world of Final Fantasy VII is weird, but the visuals and backgrounds are stunning. They're actually well done, and some of the characters don't look too bad. However, the graphics in battle are much better. The characters are actual size and the backgrounds in battles are distinguished and beautiful. The character models are what I like the most about the graphics during combat though. They look more like their actual appearance, and it makes battles look really intense and exciting. A lot of people may really hate the graphics in this game, even though Square Enix kinda had to do a graphical downgrade to make this game big and long, but I legitimately enjoy the graphics, but they're not exactly perfect in my opinion. This game's character models always remind me of Quest 64 on the Nintendo 64. But other than that, the graphics are fairly decent.

Sound: 9/10

As you can tell from the rating I gave this category, I love the sound in this game. Let's start with the sound effects. I'm not really a big fan of the sound effects in this game. Some of them are decent, but a lot of them are really flawed. And the fact that the cinematic cutscenes in this game barely have sound bugs me. It really gives me the urge to just play my own sound effects when I'm watching a cutscene. But what about the music? The music is the reason I rated the sound a 9/10. The music makes you feel as if you're actually in the game. Not to mention the music is up-beat and catchy, and can give you that sense of nostalgia EVEN when you HAVEN'T grown up with this game. That's how good the music is. Mind you, there's no orchestrated music, but the sound chip in the Playstation must have been damn good because the music in this game is very good for 1997 standards. Pieces like "Don of the Slums" and the victory fanfare are two prime examples. The Final Fantasy VII soundtrack probably ranks second place on my list of best video game soundtracks. I actually highly recommend you listen to some of the songs, like "Don of the Slums." But overall, the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack is nothing like I've ever seen. But another game took the cake for the best video game soundtrack, but that's for another review...

Addictiveness: 9/10

I've realized lately that the turn-based RPG genre isn't exactly a lot of people's cup of tea. This isn't the game that got me into turn-based RPG's, but this genre is perfect for Final Fantasy (Which they didn't do for Final Fantasy XIII 2). Moving around in the world of Final Fantasy VII is just like playing Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time or any other 3D Zelda games like that, but in battle, it's entirely different. The only problem I have with the Final Fantasy series is the fact that the encounters are random like Pokemon or Dragon Warrior. However in combat, it's basically turn-based with a bit of a twist. When a character's "Wait" bar is full, then that person can attack. As you attack and get attacked, your "Limit" bar will fill up. When a character's "Limit" bar is full, that character can do a special attack, and these special attacks are beast! Not only do the other factors of this game make it really addicting, I can go on for hours talking about that, but the feeling of buying items and upgrading your characters and the fate of Midgar is in your fingertips make it a really addicting game. The turn-based style also adds up to how addicting the game is. Not to mention, the difficulty is just right so anybody can just pick this game up and play it, which is something a lot of RPGs lack: reasonable difficulty. The difficulty in Final Fantasy VII is just right for what point of the game you're at, but more on that later. But anyways, I feel as if if this game wasn't a turn-based RPG, it wouldn't be as addictive. However, you don't need to like RPGs to like this game, considering how good the other factors of this game are like (Story, music, graphics, etc).

Depth: 8/10

Characters:
Explaining all this game has to offer would be a lot, but I will try my best at doing this. This game offers a lot. I mean, this game is about 30-40 hours long if you literally plow through it. In fact, this game includes three discs. Final Fantasy VIII, IX, and Tactics span four discs, but still. This is certainly a long game. Let's start with the cast of characters. An advantage Final Fantasy has is the number of playable characters. In this game, you can play as the following characters: Cloud Strife, Aeris Gainsborough, Tifa Lockheart, Barret Wallace, Cait Sith, Yuffie, Cid Highwind and Vincent Valentine. All of these characters are unique in their own ways. Unlike a lot of RPG's that have uninteresting characters, or characters that are all emo.

Extra Stuff
To fill up space, mini-games were added. They're known as pointless among a lot of people, but they can be quite fun, like the Chocobo Racing. I like to think of it as the Goron racing in Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask. The mini-games can be fun if you're bored and have nothing to do, but other than that, that's about it. You can also breed your own "Chocobo." Raising Chocobo is actually really entertaining. It can also hel pyou out through your adventure and it gives you that sense of you being in charge of something, like games of the genres of SimCity, Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing, Tomodachi Life, etc. There's also side-quests that you can do in this game, however there isn't as many as there are in Final Fantasy IX. Side-quests can get you extra items and goodies, or get you items to complete other side-quests to then get more special rewards. I highly recommend doing these side-quests to get the items, not to mention they're actually really fun to complete. But they also give me that sense of helping somebody out. This game isn't just about defending the world from Shinra and Sephiroth, but also helping people through their problems. I know it's just a bunch of polygons, but why do these polygonal figure make me feel sorry for them?

Items+:
The items in this game are fairly standard. Each character uses their own weapon, and throughout the game, you can get upgrades to that weapon. Kinda like with the items in the game Earthbound. Each character will have their weapon and their pieces of armor to add extra protection. Since you can play as a lot of characters, buying equipment for everyone will cost you a lot of this game's currency, Gil. Something new that Final Fantasy brought to the curve is Materia, a way to upgrade your items by playing with balls...literally. Materia are magic orbs. They're supposedly used to upgrade your weapons. If Materia is used on a weapon, that weapon will be able to perform new tricks like using an Ice Spell. The only drawback is that some Materia can raise and also lower the weapon's stats, so be careful of what Materia you use. Materia can be found all over Midgar and even bought at stores.

Difficulty: 4/10

This game isn't really a difficult game at all to be honest. Like I stated earlier, this game's difficulty follows the pace at what you're travelling at. If you're at the very very beginning of the game, have fun! You'll be running into a bunch of one-hit-kill enemies, and that's also when the game is really linear. As the game progresses, the game requires a lot more strategy, is a lot less linear, and is more confusing, but honestly it really isn't much of an issue. Yes, on disc three, you need to have a good strategy, but other than that, this is not a hard game. It's actually a pretty easy game, considering it's a genre that's home to many difficult games. I don't know if it's because people were complaining that Final Fantasy I - VI were hard games, but it seems like Square Enix were being softies when it came to the difficult of this game. And Gil is also really easy to get. More so than any Final Fantasy game so far. When it comes to items and how much Gil you can get, you'll be rolling in the dough in no time. There are some enemies that can be a pain in the butt like the ghosts at the train station, but when you just grind out the verdict, Final Fantasy VII might be one of the easiest RPGs you could ever play. I'm not complaining, but if you're a hardcore gamer looking for a challenge, I wouldn't recommend this title. I would recommend Final Fantasy XII to those who like challenging games so much. And for this reason, the difficulty is only a 4/10. And what makes this game a joke is the fact that it's really easy to learn the controls. Most of the time, you don't even use the triangle button, or the shoulder buttons, and overall, it's just really easy to learn how the game functions.

Overall: 9.7/10

Overall, I'd rate this game a 9.7/10. As I said before, Final Fantasy VII is my favorite game of all time for many reasons. The difficulty is just right for this game. If this were a harder game, it would ruin the experience a bit for me. I like difficult games, but not necessarily difficult Final Fantasy games. And also, the graphics are good, but not outstanding. Next is the music. The soundtrack plays a major role in why I adore this game so much. And most of all, there's the story. The story line that made me say wow. Honestly, this story line doesn't fit the Final Fantasy series at all, but for some reason, it actually fits Final Fantasy more than the usual stereotypical Final Fantasy games. (IV and V) I think the futuristic and realism that this game contains makes it better. Usually from Final Fantasy, it's a rather medieval game, but not with Final Fantasy VII, which Square Enix has managed to use this as an advantage.

Thanks so much for reading my Final Fantasy VII review, and I will be making more Final Fantasy reviews in the future, I can guarantee that. I hope you enjoyed this one, and stay tuned for more reviews!

Not bad pixel a good review here. I was surprised when you summoned me for this. But good work. ^^

Hey, nice review man. I've never played the Final Fantasy series but you wrote in a way about them that I could understand it since a big part of your review was used for the story part. It's impressive that you have made two reviews in such a short time, I would never manage to do that myself. Keep up the good work!

juuldude : You've never played Final Fantasy? What are you doing with your life....?

A great review for a great game I enjoyed reading your review as much as I enjoyed playing the game. This is by far the best one of the series 

dang pixel, this was a long review. but I really liked it! it went into good detail and made sure that everything was accounted for.

Mega Mewtwo X : You should see my Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time review. But that one had a bit of flaws to it.

juuldude : Seriously. You've gotta play at least ONE Final Fantasy game. I'd recommend starting with VII or IV.

I did, that one probably took you 8 cans of baked beans and 4 days to finish, that was a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGGGG review.

Mega Mewtwo X : And by that you mean 20 minutes. xD

>.< 20 mins for 3000 words? no wonder I cant catch up to you on the tour de vizzed! lol.

PixelBrick : I'm doing great things with my life: Eating, breathing, drinking, sleeping, playing other games etc.
I will maybe try out one of the games after the TdV.