inal Fantasy VII opens in the floating city of Midgar. The job at hand is planet salvation, and the salvating group is Avalanche, a motley crew of guerrillas led by Barret--a Mr. T. lookalike with a Gatling gun for an arm. It seems the inherently evil Shinra Inc., a mega corporation that is plundering the world's resources, has gone too far, and the simmering pot of grass-roots insurrection is set to boil over.
The story opens just after the protagonist--Cloud Strife, a blond mercenary with spiky hair--has joined Avalanche to aid the group in its assault on a Shinra reactor. Initially, Cloud is only interested in earning money to support his styling gel habit, but he stays on at the request of his childhood friend, Tifa. The plot grows, doubles back, and thickens as new characters are added and evil intents are uncovered. Suffice it to say the story would do E.E. "Doc" Smith proud.
Players control Cloud, Barret and a host of other characters--including two tiny-mouthed, big-eyed women named Aeris and Tifa--in their quest to speak millions of lines of dialogue, fight hundreds of enemies and save the world. Members of the party--often represented by Cloud's lone figure--are controlled by keyboard or joystick as they make their way through the Final Fantasy realm. The wandering is executed in two scales: the worldview, which is used to travel between cities, and the city view.
Combat is a turn-based real-time hybrid called Active Time Battle. And make no mistake about it, hostile encounters are frequent occurrences as players roam the game's four CD-ROMs. Nevertheless, computer-generated bad guys are the only perils here, as there is no multiplayer option. But they are enough. The character development, combat and story will slap at least 50 hours of game on most folk's plates.
Great press. Fair game.
Given the hoopla surrounding this game--the PlayStation version was universally hailed as one of the console market's greatest hits--it is surprisingly underwhelming as a PC title. Sure, the story is deep, but no more so than New World's Might and Magic VI. The cut-scene graphics are splendid, but, again, they pale in comparison to those in, say, MechCommander, Descent: Freespace or Starcraft. And the dialogue? Well it's best not to go there. Whether a poor translation from Japanese or just poor writing, it is normally tiresome, grammatically distracting and linear to a fault.
Inexplicably, however, the game works. The story, as tedious as its telling may be, draws in its audience. The characters may be trite, but gamers will find themselves bonding with them. What happens to Cloud, Tifa and Aeris--and what happens in the game--will matter.
The battles Avalanche faces are in no small part responsible for this sense of mattering. The system is as creative as it is exciting. Gamers blend magic--produced by nearly limitless combinations of something called Materia--with ancient swords and modern-day assault guns as they struggle to best Shinra's troops, boss monsters and other unnamed evils.
But all is not well in Final Fantasyville. The controls are clunky. What was Eidos thinking? Keyboards do not make console gamepads, and controlling the party with a clacking number pad is distracting at best, infuriating at worst. To add insult to controlling injury, the game would only run on one of two eligible machines SFWeekly tested it on. One reputable gaming magazine--Computer Game Strategy Plus--claimed the game failed to work on five of their seven machines. A problem appears to exist with the game's full-motion video routines, but whatever the glitch, prudent gamers may want to wait for the inevitable patch before sinking forty bucks into the product.
Is Final Fantasy VII worth the price of admission? Perhaps. Anime-style role-playing gamers will enjoy it. Others? Perhaps not.
