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Final Fantasy VII 15th Anniversary

Lots of good moments in that game, though my favorite would have to be the scenes you can get at Gold Saucer, comedy is one of my favorite things and going on a date with Barret well that has to be one of the funniest things to come out of ANY Final Fantasy (something I feel newer FF games forgot is that there was always some humor involved)

ff7-final-fantasy-7-cita-gold-saucer-barret.jpg

Oh Barret you cannot hide your true feelings
 
My favorite moment was when I finally maxed out all of Cloud's Stats at 255, acquired every single item in the game. The inventory screen had a set amount of spaces and I even kept a Battery from the beginning thinking I'd make the game go bonkers when I'd pick up the last itme because there was no more space left.
 
Chuck said:
Best RPG intro ever.

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OMG Loveless! I'm disappointed S-E never went ahead with a full Loveless stage production with Gackt in it. They should consider doing it this year. It would be a good way to drum up extra fan interest, and Nojima could write it! Mmmm...
 
My fave memory was helping a girl beat it. We talked over the phone for the entire final sequence. I had the game memorized so I talked her through 9 hours of the game until she beat it, lol...
 
patrickthehedgehog said:
Don't remake it. Just find the high resolution assets for the backgrounds (if they exist), upgrade character models and translate the game properly.
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This. I can't imagine how horrible some scenes would be with the adult-proportioned Advent Children style characters. Don Corneo's cross dressing, Chocobo Racing at the Golden Saucer, any of the minigames and sketch scenes really -- they'd look horrible. Add in horrendous voice acting and it's a recipe for disaster. I'd want a Bionic Commando Re-Armed style upgrade, not a complete overhaul.

I'd prefer FFVII-2 over any remake whatsoever as well. I'm pretending those other FFVII games don't exist. I'm talking a proper mainline effort.
 
Kagari said:
What are your favorite memories of it?
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Everything in Midgar. That city felt like such a cohesively written and inspired area in that game. It essentially was one of the traditional FF kingdoms, but FFVII's version of that is a city of skyscrapers, slum territories, and sleazy areas. It was very interesting. You have a world of the rich on top (which is explored a little bit in Crisis Core), and then you have the city below, which is littered with trash from above and people trying to make ends meet. The only places that provided solace--or at least seemed like it at the time--were the Sector 5 Church and Aeris's House... and the designs of those places were very nicely illustrated. Now if only the rest of Midgar were explorable!

Edit: now that I think about it, I probably have such a fondness of Midgar because my first exposure to FFVII was seeing my cousins go through most of the Midgar bits before I could even play it.

And yeah, I won't deny getting out of Midgar, seeing the world map, and hearing the map theme for the first time was just :O

I also have a soft spot for the City of the Ancients and Wutai. If only for their background design and music (and in the case of Wutai, the sidequest content~).
 
I think I was 9 years old at the time & I never touched an RPG before. A friend lent it to me... started playing it. My reaction: WTF is going on? Why can't I attack??? Why do I have to take turns???

Still have yet to to properly play an actual turn based videogame outside of M&M Clash of Heroes.

Anyways, my contribution to the thread. Kaz Hirai's message during the 10th anniversary 5 years ago:

ffvii23.jpg
 
I recall picking this up from a Circuit City in another state, well into last generation (IIRC that multiplayer Wario Ware game for the GC was new and exciting at the time, if that's any metric to go by). All I could do was look at the box and its contents until we finally got home and I could try it out. First day, ran through a good chunk of it without saving for one reason or another (either the memory card was full or missing, I forget which) reaching around the point where you had to cross-dress Cloud. The next day, ran through the same segment all over again, saving this time, and still enjoyed it.

Definitely liked my first run through this, although I never did beat Safer Sephiroth. One of these days...
 
My favourite memory is playing it in a friend's PS1 with no memory card, an hour or two every day after school. I think around the end of Midgar we had the power blink or his mother turned off the PS1 or something, hahahaha. He bought a memory card after that, thankfully.

duckroll said:
OMG Loveless! I'm disappointed S-E never went ahead with a full Loveless stage production with Gackt in it. They should consider doing it this year. It would be a good way to drum up extra fan interest, and Nojima could write it! Mmmm...
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Talk about rubbing salt in the wounds.

Edit: I didn't realize you could even see the "My Bloody Valentine" text on the Loveless posters, making the absurd Gackt play shit retcon even more ridiculous.
 
was my first rpg. i was blown away reaching the world map! always loved the end to disc one, Aeris always annoyed me and got in the way of tifa!

other fav moments, when tifa opens the blinds and you see they meteor for the 1st time, the flashback when cloud remembers and the fight against emerald weapon!
 
radioheadrule83 said:
This. I can't imagine how horrible some scenes would be with the adult-proportioned Advent Children style characters. Don Corneo's cross dressing, Chocobo Racing at the Golden Saucer, any of the minigames and sketch scenes really -- they'd look horrible.
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I'm not sure why an AC model cloud in female clothing would be anything but funny, and what's wrong with adult-proportioned chocobo racing? The riding looks fine in FF12 and 13.


Stumpokapow said:
My favourite memory is playing it in a friend's PS1 with no memory card, an hour or two every day after school. I think around the end of Midgar we had the power blink or his mother turned off the PS1 or something, hahahaha. He bought a memory card after that, thankfully.
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Similar situation! I got the game and a PS1 for Christmas with no memory card and played through the early game repeatedly for the next 4 days until I got a memory card for my birthday on the 29th.
 
Wow, 15 years sounds like quite a lot! Anyway, this game completely blew me away when I bought it at PAL launch. I'd played RPG's before, but nothing on this sort of scale. Getting off the train at the start, finding out there was more to the game than Midgar, the Aerith scene, the music. Just so many great memories of a game that, to this day, remains my favourite I've ever played.
 
Aeana said:
How come?
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Hmm. I played FFIII on the SNES but just couldn't get into it. When I purchased the PS1, I couldn't wait until FFVII came out, partially since it was the first FF game that included 3D models to a degree. Perhaps my hype pushed me to enjoy it more than I otherwise would have but it was the only FF game that I couldn't put down. The story, the visuals, it was just so immersive. I purchased FF8, 9, and 10 and pushed myself to complete at least half of the story, I just couldn't get into it as I did VII. Something about VII just was amazing.
 
I got a T-Shirt for preordering that game. It was a big deal back then. JRPGs were gaining momentum finally, and after FF7 came out, JRPGs were the golden ticket if you were a publisher.

I still wear my FFVII shirt out on sundays when nothing else is clean. It has holes, and is all faded. Gaming nerds always come up to me and talk to me about Aerith dying and how they cry every night to this day.
 
Oh yeah. The first time I played the game, I did not have a memory card. I played all the way up until you can fight the Lost Number in the Shinra mansion and died. Undeterred, I went and got a memory card and started over the next day.
 
Art direction and music remain my favourite in the series. The game just overflows with an endearingly cartoon charm and is certainly not fit for a remake with the disgusting style set by its spinoffs.
 
My favorite part has to be storming Shinra Tower and everything through escaping Midgar.

I also really loved the story arcs that every character who wasn't Cloud, Tifa, or Aeris got to themselves. Nanaki's was probably my favorite, and I wish he was more than just talking scenery when the party wasn't at Cosmo Canyon.
 
Despite this game's numerous problems that only became more apparent to me as I got older that people rail on it for to this day, I have more fond memories of this game an I probably think more fond of it than anything else. It had an impact on my 5th grade self unlike anything has since. If I had played it at a different time in my life it wouldn't have been as memorable to me. I can replay it over and over and never get tired of it.

I have way too many favorite moments to list them.
 
Man I can't even pinpoint one particular moment, I loved so much about this game and it's not nostalgia because I still play it from time to time thanks to PSN and enjoy it just as much.

-The whole starting Midgar section, then finding out just how damn small that portion of the game is in comparison to the entire game. Blew my mind.

-The Sephiroth flashback/story. Watching him 1 shot everything in battle and then freak out and kill everyone was great.

-The minigames, one of the few games where I actually enjoyed most of them. Snowboarding, the submarine, all of the gold saucer events/games and of course let's not forget the fort condor mini-RTS game.

-Aeris dying which pissed me off because up to that point she was one of the 3 characters I used all of the time, so I was left in a hole for a while catching up someone else.

There were so many more great moments and little extras in this game that I felt other FFs didn't match, even the other PS1 ones. But I can definitely pick the part that I hate the most, and still to this day hate playing through

-The part where you play as Tifa and you're in Cloud's mind trying to knock the derp out of him. It goes on far too long and their pasts are not very interesting.

edit: I also really love the soundtrack and can still recall pretty much every song from the game. I don't normally give a shit about video game music so that's how impressive I think the music was.
 
My favorite memory of the game is a certain puzzle: the one in the Shinra HQ Library where you have to figure out
which books don't belong on which shelves, and then how the numbers of the books and the corresponding characters in the titles of those books were used to make a password
. It wasn't really anything special, but was for me because I was an intermediate-level student of Japanese who was trying to play the original version. No one I knew was playing it (or could), and this was before widespread use of the internet and places like GameFAQs, so we importers were on our own, puzzle-wise.

I felt like a genius when I solved that!
 
Also, FFVII is the game that I had my longest gaming marathon on. I remember coming home from school and deciding that I wouldn't stop playing until I beat the game. Some 15 later after I defeated final boss Sephiroth, I did just that. I remember being so nauseous, tired, and looking out of my window seeing the sun rise. Never had a moment in game like that before or since.
 
I was 9 back then and I was too busy playing Suikoden I and Chrono Trigger to actually care about FFVII until a year after.

AHUAHUAHUAHUAHUAHUA
 
brandonh83 said:
I was a freshman in high school when this came out... can I take out my 401k yet?
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I was 9. lol. I used to go to the Toys R Us and play the bits at the demo station a lot!

But my first time playing it in full was with the PC version, so I was 10 when I finally got to play and beat it.

ULTROS! said:
I was 9 back then and I was too busy playing Suikoden I and Chrono Trigger to actually care about FFVII until a year after.

AHUAHUAHUAHUAHUAHUA
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*brofist*
 
I...have yet to finish this game even after owning it for about 10 years...I haven't even got off the first disc :/

I'm not sure what it was about it, but I couldn't stay interested in it. I liked the premise, I like the soundtrack and the gameplay is fine. But something about it didn't click. I think it might be the art style, not sure. The game's art is pretty horrific if you ask me, but I know that shouldn't be the basis of me not actually completing it.

I think back then it may have been the story as I was like 12 when I eventually bought it and probably wasn't paying too much attention, so I think if I had the time now I'd probably be able to get into it more and finish it. After all, I have completed Crisis Core and watched Advent Children several times.

Part of me wants there to be a remake so I could play it without the art being a problem, even if it were a Vita release...But I know that'll never happen so :/
 
My first memory of FFVII was going to a friend's place after school some time in late 1996. This was definitely before the game itself was released, but after Tobal No1 was out in Japan. Most of us didn't have Playstations at the time, but his brother did, and his brother also imported Tobal No1 and got the FFVII demo.

We gathered round the living room TV as he set the stuff up, and then we watched this CG FMV opening with animated 3D characters. It was really stunning and mindblowing at the time, especially with the Japanese art direction the game had, which couldn't be found in any English PC games at the time. Then Cloud got off the train, and.... you could CONTROL Cloud to move. But the entire background still looked like the FMV! Wow! Another amazing scene at the time I distinctly recall was the cutscene in the elevator with the Avalanche members. At the end of the conversion when the elevator doors opened, Cloud was just left there and he wasn't moving. I thought something was wrong with the cinematic, but it turns out you're supposed to move the character out of the elevator!

A lot of these things seem really silly these days, but the jump from the SNES/Genesis generation to the PSX generation back then was really something remarkable. There were a lot of presentation methods and direction concepts which weren't really applied to certain genres up until that point, and it was really refreshing and new to see games like that suddenly popping up. Definitely a game changer.
 
duckroll said:
My first memory of FFVII was going to a friend's place after school some time in late 1996. This was definitely before the game itself was released, but after Tobal No1 was out in Japan. Most of us didn't have Playstations at the time, but his brother did, and his brother also imported Tobal No1 and got the FFVII demo.

We gathered round the living room TV as he set the stuff up, and then we watched this CG FMV opening with animated 3D characters. It was really stunning and mindblowing at the time, especially with the Japanese art direction the game had, which couldn't be found in any English PC games at the time. Then Cloud got off the train, and.... you could CONTROL Cloud to move. But the entire background still looked like the FMV! Wow! Another amazing scene at the time I distinctly recall was the cutscene in the elevator with the Avalanche members. At the end of the conversion when the elevator doors opened, Cloud was just left there and he wasn't moving. I thought something was wrong with the cinematic, but it turns out you're supposed to move the character out of the elevator!

A lot of these things seem really silly these days, but the jump from the SNES/Genesis generation to the PSX generation back then was really something remarkable. There were a lot of presentation methods and direction concepts which weren't really applied to certain genres up until that point, and it was really refreshing and new to see games like that suddenly popping up. Definitely a game changer.
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those summons were fucking mindblowing at the time. i remember being excited everytime i found a new one. Knights of the Round made my mouth drop.
 
LiK said:
those summons were fucking mindblowing at the time. i remember being excited everytime i found a new one. Knights of the Round made my mouth drop.
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I was so bummed that I never was able to get KotR. In fact, I distinctly remember that I didn't get many of the top summons. I also remember that my characters were pretty low in terms of max HP & MP. It made it even more satisfying when I beat the game, tbh.
 
Aeana already touched on it but it's always nice seeing the Wutai segment being appreciated. Did anyone else - due to OCD - level Yuffie up to her highest limit so that they could use All Creation immediately? :P
 
Favorite moment: The mini-games. Holy shit the mini-games. Too bad about the rest of the game though.

I had played many JRPGs before and was never very impressed by VII.
 
FUN FF7 TRIVIA, BECAUSE I LIVE AND BREATH FF TRIVIA:

Midgar was originally New York, and there was no Cloud yet, his name was Joe. Nicknamed "Hot Blooded Detective" Joe, to be exact, and his partner was a "typical" hard boiled black cop named Bullet. They'd be chasing some terrorists who wanted to blow up the city.

iHwgH.png


This idea split in two, spawning Parasite Eve. Bullet became Barret, and Joe became Cloud, and THEY became the terrorists.

hShZ4.jpg


This is why Parasite Eve place in New York, they still kept that cop-buddy idea. Note Daniel Dollis' similarity to Barret. Single father, gruff, older male mentor type.

Boy, would FF7 be remembered differently if they HAD gone with hunting down terrorists who blew up New York...
 
Had 50 german mark back then. Everybody bought the pokemon games back then. Young blablurn bought the platinum edition of FF7. And he never looked back.

Random fact: bought the psn version last week and already started playing. I love this game so much.
 
I was seven and I'm pretty sure this was my first RPG. I had no concept of taking turnes to battle and it was such a foreign idea to me that I initially had an issue with the game. But I quickly grew to love it. And still do.
 
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