Well, since getting PS3, I decided to download this one and play it. I have it on disc too, but I had no PSX memory card space (I have a tendency to like to keep saves specific to certain locations in games, IE. just before Solaris in Xenogears, FF8 master save, etc...), and the game costs pennies anyway.
I am about to board the ship in Junon Harbour this is what I have to say about it:
Art:
1. Rendered background graphics, are really jumbled and confusing at times compared to later titles of similar style (most notably FF8 and 9 which are very clean in comparison). Luckily hitting select will pop up a tutorial map of the area which shows you where the exits are. Though it is still easy to miss items and stuff. Otherwise, they add much to the atmosphere of the title. The art here is very nice in many places like the slums, Kalm, Junon (lower city) and gives a very nice atmosphere to many of these places.
2. World map, full of pop-up. Essentially there were three stages in videogame development during this era that handled this sort of thing: first they left this pop up in, next they began fogging up the area, and finally began using 2D backgrounds to represent the distance and converted to polygons as the player came closer.
3. Character art is not very good, they look very poor nowadays, and don't hold up compared to many older titles. Battles look fairly good though.
4. FMV isn't smooth, it is almost as bad as the stuff they added into Chrono Trigger DS (luckily you can turn that off and view regular sprite scenes). The characters are very doll-like and lifeless looking in most scenes. This is the worst of the FF games by far, but also a first attempt so it it can be forgiven. The initial FMV opening where it flashes up above Midgar, and then smoothly transitions forward into the first gameplay scene is one of the exceptions, and is excellently done.
Audio
1. The music has moments of brilliance, but also some highly irritating tones sometimes hold for lengthy periods of time. It is really a mixed basket, and is the only FF game that has songs I really don't like listening to. It is similar sounding to FF6, and has some better stuff, but also a lot of worse stuff. One of the weaker soundtracks in the series.
2. Sound effects are nothing special, fairly standard mid-90's stuff.
Gameplay:
1. Battle system is as simple as it gets, you hold down the circle button (or X, as I switched it over to resemble mostly all post 97 games) and wait until the enemies are dead, sometimes heal and use magic. It is very unstrategic, but suitable for this game. Encounters have fairly high load times, animations in battle are higher than any other FF game.
2. Character Customization is similar to FF6 where you equip on armour, a weapon, and magic items that learn. It has shades of FF8 in it, where the user can combine materia to give weapons elemental abilities (in FF8, customization takes it higher, all stats are based on what is functioned to them, and statistical effects for all sorts of things can be added). Like FF8 as well, there are some special abilities that can be equipped (steal and such, but FF8 has many many more abilities). All in all, it is a logical center point between FF6 and FF8.
3. I already touched on my frustrations with navigation above in graphics.
4. Mini-games are very forced, and VERY annoying for the most part. They are very irritating at many times, such as forcing the character to restart the marching thing like 17 times before it finally allows the player to pass. There's also the Dolphin jump that took a lot of attempts. These were poorly thought out, and I hope removed in later versions of this game. One of the good minigames was the bike-run where you smash the enemies to the side of you with the sword.
5. Some complaints I have are that they removed auto-run from the game which was available in FF6. There are some other small complaints like that I have.
Plot:
1. Dialogue, is fairly clumsy. For example, this girl asked me if I was with he Shinra, and Barrett jumps out and yells at her "No! You got it wrong! We are fighting the Shinra!". There are also moments where the grammar is poor and plural and singular terms are mixed up, IE Aeris said something like "This are my home" fairly early on. Fo the most parrt it doesn't ruin anything, but it is VERY obvious that they'll have to rewrite 80% of the script for a remake, or the voice acting will sound retarded. There is a very notable gap in dialogue quality from 97 to 98. Xenogears, is much higher quality, and the Square games that follow it continue the trend. I notice these things because I generally like to do all the voice acting myself for those watching me play the game =)
2. Story, this is a BIG one. The game is standard Final Fantasy, completely fucked up =)
3. Setting is very cool. It has a very film noir feeling to it like a lot of FF8, and also a lot of steam-punk feeling stuff like FF6 and parts of FF8. It is one of the darkest Final Fantasy games overall; only the second half of FF6 really surpasses it significantly. I think setting is one of the strongest feature of this game.
4. Characters. You have Barrett who is a human greenpeace warmachine. Cloud who wears his hair over the left half of his face and is always sad about something. Sephiroth who is completely insane after he learns that he is a test tube baby. Aeris who wants always wants to help people with their sadness (even Rufus Shinra). Tifa who is over all my favourite character as she seems fairly level through the situations, and gets into some fucked up mischief =P
5. Also very strong are some of the scenes. They are very Dragon Questish: At one point a man complains about someone being in the washroom too long, when you open the door you find someone jacking off who yells at you to "CLOSE THE DOOR!"; You go to a gay gym to get a wig for Cloud as part of his cross dressing outfit to get into the Pimp Don Corneo's mansion so he can pick between himself, Cloud, and Aeris as the girl he wants to fuck that night - this is followed by Cloud being thrown to the lecherous thugs like a piece of meat who descend upon him before he jumps out and slaughters them. Brilliant, this sort of stuff is worthy of Oscar Wilde =P
Overall, I am enjoying this game about how much I did 12 years ago. Games like this one and the very first Final Fantasy obviously have their glaring weaknesses; but an experienced veteran can easily get around those and very much enjoy the title. I do, however, still feel this one was overrated back in the day. I would rank it around the middle in the series for the main series in terms of my own tastes. I only really disliked FF2 and the original SNES FF4 (and not completely, just because of some glaring annoyances that didn't exist in other RPGs of the time; and these were all fixed in later versions). I realize that my favourite portion of the game is over, but there are some other parts I like coming up later.
I am about to board the ship in Junon Harbour this is what I have to say about it:
Art:
1. Rendered background graphics, are really jumbled and confusing at times compared to later titles of similar style (most notably FF8 and 9 which are very clean in comparison). Luckily hitting select will pop up a tutorial map of the area which shows you where the exits are. Though it is still easy to miss items and stuff. Otherwise, they add much to the atmosphere of the title. The art here is very nice in many places like the slums, Kalm, Junon (lower city) and gives a very nice atmosphere to many of these places.
2. World map, full of pop-up. Essentially there were three stages in videogame development during this era that handled this sort of thing: first they left this pop up in, next they began fogging up the area, and finally began using 2D backgrounds to represent the distance and converted to polygons as the player came closer.
3. Character art is not very good, they look very poor nowadays, and don't hold up compared to many older titles. Battles look fairly good though.
4. FMV isn't smooth, it is almost as bad as the stuff they added into Chrono Trigger DS (luckily you can turn that off and view regular sprite scenes). The characters are very doll-like and lifeless looking in most scenes. This is the worst of the FF games by far, but also a first attempt so it it can be forgiven. The initial FMV opening where it flashes up above Midgar, and then smoothly transitions forward into the first gameplay scene is one of the exceptions, and is excellently done.
Audio
1. The music has moments of brilliance, but also some highly irritating tones sometimes hold for lengthy periods of time. It is really a mixed basket, and is the only FF game that has songs I really don't like listening to. It is similar sounding to FF6, and has some better stuff, but also a lot of worse stuff. One of the weaker soundtracks in the series.
2. Sound effects are nothing special, fairly standard mid-90's stuff.
Gameplay:
1. Battle system is as simple as it gets, you hold down the circle button (or X, as I switched it over to resemble mostly all post 97 games) and wait until the enemies are dead, sometimes heal and use magic. It is very unstrategic, but suitable for this game. Encounters have fairly high load times, animations in battle are higher than any other FF game.
2. Character Customization is similar to FF6 where you equip on armour, a weapon, and magic items that learn. It has shades of FF8 in it, where the user can combine materia to give weapons elemental abilities (in FF8, customization takes it higher, all stats are based on what is functioned to them, and statistical effects for all sorts of things can be added). Like FF8 as well, there are some special abilities that can be equipped (steal and such, but FF8 has many many more abilities). All in all, it is a logical center point between FF6 and FF8.
3. I already touched on my frustrations with navigation above in graphics.
4. Mini-games are very forced, and VERY annoying for the most part. They are very irritating at many times, such as forcing the character to restart the marching thing like 17 times before it finally allows the player to pass. There's also the Dolphin jump that took a lot of attempts. These were poorly thought out, and I hope removed in later versions of this game. One of the good minigames was the bike-run where you smash the enemies to the side of you with the sword.
5. Some complaints I have are that they removed auto-run from the game which was available in FF6. There are some other small complaints like that I have.
Plot:
1. Dialogue, is fairly clumsy. For example, this girl asked me if I was with he Shinra, and Barrett jumps out and yells at her "No! You got it wrong! We are fighting the Shinra!". There are also moments where the grammar is poor and plural and singular terms are mixed up, IE Aeris said something like "This are my home" fairly early on. Fo the most parrt it doesn't ruin anything, but it is VERY obvious that they'll have to rewrite 80% of the script for a remake, or the voice acting will sound retarded. There is a very notable gap in dialogue quality from 97 to 98. Xenogears, is much higher quality, and the Square games that follow it continue the trend. I notice these things because I generally like to do all the voice acting myself for those watching me play the game =)
2. Story, this is a BIG one. The game is standard Final Fantasy, completely fucked up =)
3. Setting is very cool. It has a very film noir feeling to it like a lot of FF8, and also a lot of steam-punk feeling stuff like FF6 and parts of FF8. It is one of the darkest Final Fantasy games overall; only the second half of FF6 really surpasses it significantly. I think setting is one of the strongest feature of this game.
4. Characters. You have Barrett who is a human greenpeace warmachine. Cloud who wears his hair over the left half of his face and is always sad about something. Sephiroth who is completely insane after he learns that he is a test tube baby. Aeris who wants always wants to help people with their sadness (even Rufus Shinra). Tifa who is over all my favourite character as she seems fairly level through the situations, and gets into some fucked up mischief =P
5. Also very strong are some of the scenes. They are very Dragon Questish: At one point a man complains about someone being in the washroom too long, when you open the door you find someone jacking off who yells at you to "CLOSE THE DOOR!"; You go to a gay gym to get a wig for Cloud as part of his cross dressing outfit to get into the Pimp Don Corneo's mansion so he can pick between himself, Cloud, and Aeris as the girl he wants to fuck that night - this is followed by Cloud being thrown to the lecherous thugs like a piece of meat who descend upon him before he jumps out and slaughters them. Brilliant, this sort of stuff is worthy of Oscar Wilde =P
Overall, I am enjoying this game about how much I did 12 years ago. Games like this one and the very first Final Fantasy obviously have their glaring weaknesses; but an experienced veteran can easily get around those and very much enjoy the title. I do, however, still feel this one was overrated back in the day. I would rank it around the middle in the series for the main series in terms of my own tastes. I only really disliked FF2 and the original SNES FF4 (and not completely, just because of some glaring annoyances that didn't exist in other RPGs of the time; and these were all fixed in later versions). I realize that my favourite portion of the game is over, but there are some other parts I like coming up later.
-Insert Inspiring Quote-
