All ratings are out of 5 stars.
There’s this group called Avalanche fighting against a company called Shinra. Shinra is bad. (This is where my knowledge of the plot slips a bit- I never actually, umm... completed the game. I rarely ever do. Just a bad habit. But I watched my brother Sir Shadow do it many times.) Anyways... Shinra has been making Mako energy... but doing that has been killing the planet, cuz Mako is made by taking some of the planet’s life force... or something like that. Shinra has also been doing some pretty funky experiments involving infusing people with Mako energy (that’s kind of a mandatory thing when a person enlists into a program called Soldier.) They also have some weird headless critter locked in a room... that’d be JENOVA. I’m pretty confused about her, myself, so I won’t talk about her. Ok then... Shinra was trying to make the ultimate warrior, and succeeded with Sephiroth, a mysterious dude with a long sword (the "Masamune" from numerous Square games) who can kill. A lot. Well, he finds out something about how he was created that he shouldn’t have found out, and goes a bit crazy. He begins searching for some kind of Holy Land that he believes he has the right to enter. Leaves a big trail of blood on his way. So, that pretty much turns out to be the main point of the game: Stop Sephy.
Square starts you off right in the middle of some Avalanche mission. No easing you into the story here. You start as Cloud, a Soldier (people are always pointing out he has the "Mako glow" to his eyes.) Cloud once fought alongside Sephiroth, so when Sephy goes crazy, Cloud gets a bit concerned. Cloud also finds out an interesting factoid about his past, and consequently starts on his way to Sephy’s “kill ‘em all” state of mind. But... he stops and instead becomes Sephiroth’s biggest threat. Cuz now it’s personal. (Hm. From ally to greatest enemy... Makes ya wonder just what Cloud learned about his past, huh? Well I’m not gonna tell ya, so there!)
Now then, if you actually made it through all that, I commend you. As I said, complex plot. Back to the actual review of the game.
The music is superb. The best song (in most everybody’s opinion) being "One Winged Angel"- the song that goes along with the final battle. Nifty old Latin sung in a chanting way- how could it be bad? (Yeah, I’m being sarcastic.) Seriously, it is a neat song. The midi up there hardly does it justice. (By the way, why 5 songs? Cuz I couldn’t decide which to put up. I love music. But hey, it’s my review, I’ll do as I please.) The background music on The Updates Page is also from FF7. It’s called "Valley of the Fallen Star," also known as the Cosmo Canyon theme and Red XIII’s theme. And on the guestbook, that’s "Electric de Chocobo."
Now to the graphics. Back when the game was new, I’d say they were pretty good. The summoning spells and backgrounds are gorgeous, and the cinema scenes are beyond description. But the characters.... I dunno. Kinda polygonal, with blocky hands. But they weren’t terrible. Like I said, they were good at the time.
Next is the battle system, as I call it. The actual battles are normal, with menus: just choose what you want to do. But there’s this whole behind-the-scenes materia system you have to set up before you go into battle. It’s pretty neat. Materia are little circle thingies with different attributes that you put in slots, and you have more slots depending on your weapon. Sometimes the slots are linked, so you can link two types of materia. Materia is what allows you to cast spells and summon things. It’s kinda like solid Mako energy. Cool stuff.
I really have to learn to make these things shorter....
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