Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 53: Final Fantasy VII

(+) Yeah! (+)

Today we have a notable one, Final Fantasy VII. How would you rate the story on a scale from 1-10?

-

Previous Results:
Omori - 9.67 (6 votes)
Outer Wilds - 9.6 (21 votes)
Nier Automata - 9.25 (31 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations - 9.18 (33 votes)
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 9.1 (14 votes)
Umineko When They Cry - 8.82 (11 votes)
Return of the Obra Dinn - 8.72 (9 votes)
Xenogears - 8.71 (23 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.67 (31 votes)
Metal Gear Solid - 8.67 (27 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics - 8.65 (23 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.58 (12 votes)
Undertale - 8.53 (40 votes)
Yakuza: Like a Dragon - 8.4 (5 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.38 (54 votes)
Mass Effect 2 - 8.36 (27 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 8.35 (18 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.13 (39 votes)
The Last of Us - 8.13 (35 votes)
Doki Doki Literature Club - 7.9 (23 votes)
Bloodborne - 7.88 (20 votes)
Life is Strange - 7.85 (31 votes)
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - 7.67 (27 votes)
Bioshock - 7.64 (23 votes)
Celeste - 7.62 (25 votes)
Mass Effect - 7.35 (28 votes)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 7.26 (29 votes)
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - 7.25 (12 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.24 (28 votes)
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - 7.17 (23 votes)
Mass Effect 3 - 7.16 (21 votes)
Super Paper Mario - 7 (21 votes)
Hollow Knight - 6.98 (21 votes)
INSIDE - 6.93 (15 votes)
Death Stranding - 6.73 (13 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.69 (16 votes)
Dark Souls - 6.62 (20 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All - 6.66 (30 votes)
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - 6.6 (27 votes)
Valkyria Chronicles - 6.5 (16 votes)
DOOM (2016) - 6.15 (13 votes)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 6.1 (13 votes)
Star Fox 64 - 5.79 (24 votes)
Final Fantasy IV - 5.72 (29 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.26 (28 votes)
Final Fantasy XIII - 4.91 (27 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright - 4.83 (12 votes)
Fallout 3 - 4.76 (17 votes)
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty - 4.72 (9 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.43 (15 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - 3.46 (15 votes)
Starcraft II (overall) - 3.4 (5 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates (overall) - 3.32 (11 votes)
Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void - 2.83 (6 votes)
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) - 2.71 (14 votes)
Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm - 2.57 (7 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation - 2.33 (9 votes)
Tales of Zestiria - 2.14 (7 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name><rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

---

9.5/10

It has some minor flaws. Yuffie and Vincent being optional prevents them from being incorporated into the story at large. They never really explain what a clone actually is, so it causes some confusion about what Cloud is (although that could be a product of the localization more than a problem with the story itself).

But FFVII completely changed what I thought a video game story could be, and so I can't help but give it a near perfect score for that alone.

---

6.5/10

It's solid but it was never really able to grab me for whatever reason.
---

7/10

9.
---

8.8
---

10

9

lol at something worse than Revelation

---

6.5. Good scenario and characters, eh script ans bad translation.

---

I don't know if I'd actually hold a bad translation against the story. That's not the fault of the writing.

---

FF7 is a weird one in that, from a distance, I appreciate its story and what it was going for and how it changed gaming as a whole, but I was never able to connect to it on a personal level. I think it's good, but I don't actually like it very much.

This is why Remake's plot shenanigans disappointed me so much. I was hoping to get a fresh start on FF7, not FF7's weird pseudo-sequel.

---

7.5

7.5

Some parts of it, particularly in the 2nd half, are fluff, but it's still really good

---

6.5 feels about right

The opening act is near perfect. Everything after is still overall good(though with some peaks and valleys) until huge materia comes into play, when the game feels a bit rushed. I don't think the ending is that great. I'm looking forward to seeing how Remake handles this, once it gets to this part of the game in 15 years or so.

8.5

---

I'll give it an 8, I didn't get to play it until 2014 and was hooked for the entire game, so it holds up fairly well. However, I do think plenty of other FF games do it much better

---

7.5

---

9
---

8.5

Main story kind of sucks but its served by a great story teller that it ends off being extremely entertaining

9/10

The pacing is more akin to a TV show than a video game; as the main plot chugs carefully along with mystery and intrigue, care and craft is put into the game's richly detailed world & characters in episodic styles that sees all of its spectacular main cast grabbing the spotlight at one time or another. FF7 mingles with all sorts of genres through its lengthy run-time, with genuine laugh-out-loud comedy, intensive drama, thrilling action, and eldritch horrors capturing the imagination at every turn. FF7's most impressive ability is to go beyond its cartoony avatars by leveraging the natural cinematography of its gorgeous pre-renders to make every scene stand-out with kinetic action and exaggerated flair taken directly from anime especially, all without any voice acting as well. You end up defining the characters in your head even more so than the game does. Whether you're staring at the ruins of your former home from a small abandoned playground, mourning the tragic loss of a beloved friend, following the bloody trail of an unknown monster, or just getting your materia stolen by a gutsy thief, one thing you can't say is Final Fantasy VII lacks flair, style, and a sense of experimentation that still makes it one of the leading examples of how to do a video game story today.

---

UltimaterializerX posted...

They explain what a clone is right before WEAPON wakes up.

I didn't mean they don't explain what it is at all. They just don't do a good job of it.

---

7/10

a very fitting score

---

10

It actually is one of the best jrpg plots imo.

---

9

Suffers from the problems of over-complication and poor explanation (and a little melodrama) that are universal to FF games, but Final Fantasy VII is still a landmark title for the art of video game storytelling.

---

9

---

10

My favorite game of all time and also one of my favorite stories in a video game.

8.5/10

There are some moments of genuine stupidity (Tifa/Scarlet slap fight comes to mind) but most of the time the plot is really compelling, surprising, and interesting.

---

8

---

10

---

7.7!

There's lots of great stuff in this game of course, I particularly love how they use Midgar for the opening few hours. But generally I think it gets worse after the first disc. It does the same thing a lot of FFs do- has a really good tight single plotline that's pretty deep, well thought out and connects to all the characters... then keeps going for hours after that with a bunch of generic half-baked fantasy collectathon stuff that has no real meaning and just relies on the player's good will to keep chugging along to the end. Most of the cast completely falls to the wayside after Disc 1.

I'm in the minority here but I think Sephiroth is the absolute worst villain in this game. I find Shinra to be way more interesting and thematically strong, Jenova and the WEAPONs have a cool freaky eldritch vibe, but I just never felt anything positive towards Seph so when the game shifts away from Shinra entirely I kind of check out.

The cast is decent but many of them are completely irrelevant outside of their one little token sequence. Cloud and Tifa are the only ones who really get treated fairly from start to finish imo.

---

9.5/10

Great characters, great plot, great villain, great atmosphere, great moments, great, great, great.

---

Snake5555555555 posted...

The pacing is more akin to a TV show than a video game; as the main plot chugs carefully along with mystery and intrigue, care and craft is put into the game's richly detailed world & characters in episodic styles that sees all of its spectacular main cast grabbing the spotlight at one time or another. FF7 mingles with all sorts of genres through its lengthy run-time, with genuine laugh-out-loud comedy, intensive drama, thrilling action, and eldritch horrors capturing the imagination at every turn. FF7's most impressive ability is to go beyond its cartoony avatars by leveraging the natural cinematography of its gorgeous pre-renders to make every scene stand-out with kinetic action and exaggerated flair taken directly from anime especially, all without any voice acting as well. You end up defining the characters in your head even more so than the game does. Whether you're staring at the ruins of your former home from a small abandoned playground, mourning the tragic loss of a beloved friend, following the bloody trail of an unknown monster, or just getting your materia stolen by a gutsy thief, one thing you can't say is Final Fantasy VII lacks flair, style, and a sense of experimentation that still makes it one of the leading examples of how to do a video game story today.

This is what I miss about the pre-voice acting era. PS1 RPGs allowed you hear the dialogue (spoken or direct internal thoughts) in your head like when you're reading a book.

---

6.5/10

I loved it as a kid, but after Midgar, the breadcrumbs of Sephiroth are "hit and miss." Sephiroth himself is a valuable goal. The "mysterious force of nature" villain that is spoken of in legend. It gives Cloud and others a reason to travel Disc 1 (the best part of the game other than Midgar). A lot of characters get fleshed out at appropriate paces. Cloud's judgment comes into question.

And yes, the end of Disc 1 is iconic.

But the more I replay it, the more the writting staff's failures come to play. They had an issue with keeping Disc 2 and Disc 3 in the PSX era going strong. They built up so much steam, but bogged down VII, VIII, and IX with a lot of pseudo-science that masks, "We had an idea for a character, so here's some bullshit science to explain it."

It sounds good in theory, but how they handled Cloud was an excuse in stupidity. It isn't helped that back then, they didn't have the ability they do now with remake to make a "show don't tell" traumatic experience carry itself. They spend SEVERAL unskippable cutscenes going over Cloud's backstory, and instead of saying, "It's PTSD," it just comes off as a really stupid science mess to tie into Hojo's bullshit. *Don't get me started on Parasite Eve and MITOCHONDRIA MAKES ZOMBIES!" They spent five years in that sciency dumpster fire. FFX got them out of it by going full fantasy again.

The rest of the game follows the typical save the world stuff, and the ending just...dies.

I wanna like this game. It got me into FF and JRPGs as a whole. The each replay really drives home how an idea can be bogged down with stupid execution. FF as a whole loves to do some weird ass science/sci-fi/fantasy shenanigans. It really sucks it had to come at the cost of Midgar and Disc 1 really giving me something to sink my teeth into.

---

Disc 2 is the best disc in FFVIII

---

If they had skippable cutscenes maybe...

Both FF7 and FFX sorely needed them.

---

IX's best disc is either 2 or 3, but I agree with Strife2's overall points. Good post, well explained! Also agree with the stuff about Cloud's PTSD not being handled super well.

---

7

---

6

---

skipping cutscenes is for the weak

---

6

---

andylt posted...

I'm in the minority here but I think Sephiroth is the absolute worst villain in this game. I find Shinra to be way more interesting and thematically strong, Jenova and the WEAPONs have a cool freaky eldritch vibe, but I just never felt anything positive towards Seph so when the game shifts away from Shinra entirely I kind of check out.

I definitely agree with this. Shinra (and particularly Rufus) is one of the most compelling villains in any video game I've played; Seph is just a really strong dude with a sword. They handle it well but it's a step down.

---

Kenri posted...

Seph is just a really strong dude with a sword.

I mean yes if you want to oversimplify things to the max

and in that case Shinra is just Evil Corp

also once the game shifts away from Shinra entirely there's only the final dungeon left

---

7.7

caps

---

LeonhartFour posted...

and in that case Shinra is just Evil Corp

Evil Corp is still more interesting than dude with sword, especially in a JRPG, so

---

Kenri posted...

Evil Corp is still more interesting than dude with sword, especially in a JRPG, so

the point is that Seph is just dude with sword as much as Shinra is just Evil Corp

you're doing them both a disservice by reducing them to that because the game handles them both with more nuance than that

---

Leonhart4 posted...

Disc 2 is the best disc in FFVIII

Tough call. Discs 1, 2, and 3 were all excellent for different reasons (and 4 too, but it's so short that it might as well be considered an extension of Disc 3).

My memory is fuzzy on Disc 2. I distinctly remember the prison opening, then things ramping up with the Gardens going to war, Cid/NORG/Edea revelations, great Squall/Rinoa moments (especially if you select her for your team when the party splits up)... You may be right. Lot of action and great plot moments/revelations on Disc 2.

Disc 1 has the vivid worldbuilding, the SeeD missions, the train chase, the assassination attempt, and the uncompromising characterization of Squall as an isolated jerk who wants to be left the hell alone. People like to s*** on FF8, but you have to give the writers credit for committing to Squall as a heavily flawed character. If FF8 were a Hollywood movie, the screenwriters probably would've shown him rescuing puppies or something in order to soften him and make him "palatable" to a mass audience.

Disc 3 I love for how raw and wildly imaginative it is and for the emotional payoffs of Squall struggling to let his defenses down. People knock him for allowing Rinoa to be taken to the Sorceress Memorial, but that shows how conflicted he is. Even after literally going beyond the ends of the earth for her, he still struggles with his fear of abandonment. Then he needs one more nudge before going after her while this masterpiece plays:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr4eB0WOwN0

---

On the translation while I would say that everybody should use their own system for whether or not it factors in, it was a part of the experience for me as it formed the very basis of the English script and directly affected my enjoyment. It is also very disappointing that they never gave it a good new translation even though the PC one all the recent versions use is a lot better.

On Sephiroth he was always the weak link of the main cast for me. His first appearance is very effective, the flashback work really well despite his motives being frankly goofy, then his later appearances get increasingly less effective. The more he needs to actually carry the narrative the less he works.

With that said the real weakest character is easily Vincent. I played this game in 2006 so a good while after release but still closer to that than to today and he always seemed incredibly lame - you can criticise Sephiroth for being 90s cool but Vincent has nothing else to him. Its been funny seeing his popularity decrease over time as people realise this lol. However thus does not greatly affect my rating as he is such a small factor in the game.

---

Yeah Sephiroth is an extremely well-executed villain. If he comes across as 'dude with sword' it's because he spawned endless imitators who did a much worse job.

---