A Tattoo of One

Right now I am, for the first time ever, playing Final Fantasy VII. Actually, I had played it before, once at Seth's house and once again when I bought a shitty PC port of the game. I have no idea how I avoided playing this for so long but here I am and god damn, it's fun.

I've put in around 23 hours or so, some of that will be times that I've stepped away or managing materia and such. So far I can see real link between my Final Fantasy VI and VII. As most people know I have been a huge fan of VI for years, proudly claiming it as my favorite. I was a doubter for sure about VII. I didn't think that the game could actually live up to it's hype. It's one game though that no one should miss out on.

While check online to see other opinions I stumbled upon a lot of others claiming that the game is overhyped and read their list of complaints.

"Too old!"

"Worst graphics ever!"

"Just another stereotypical story of a lone hero..."

While I haven't even come close to beating the game, I can clearly see the influence it has on modern games. This game cast a shadow that other games have tried to break out from. To me, that seems like a great thing! It means that developers worked that much harder to make games that truly shine. Before I get off on a tangent though, I would like to clarify something.

To all of the loose argument against this game I just need to ask, does anyone remember when this game was made? Okay, the graphics are nothing like Final Fantasy VIII but consider that this game was in production at the very early days of 64-bit graphics. In fact, I think this game looks great. The summons are fantastic as well as the backgrounds. And as for claims that the game is outdated and stereotypical I am confused. Isn't there a first for everything? Even if the story has common elements as other games, so what? That's true with any medium. Dragon Ball is based of the Monkey King, Street Fighter and King of Fighters are based on martial arts, and Clueless is just a Jane Austen story! Everything in this world is built off of something else and this is even more true in games. I think that this game deserves all of the praise it's been given of the years.

Off to figure out the mystery of the Cetra...

Posted by Bryant Jackson at 4:26 PM