, maybe you've heard of it? While that game may actually never come out (kidding), there's still an entire backlog's worth of
games to experience. I've been in a Final Fantasy mood lately, so I've been playing quite a few of them actually. However, none happen to be
, probably the most famous and popular game in the series. It's a game I haven't played in the longest time, when I was a child and couldn't comprehend what was going on, so it's pretty much
playing it for the first time. While obviously I remember the big events that everyone knows, since I was so young the first time, it'll be interesting to see how different it really is and how much I
remember. I'm going to give a summary of what's happened as well some general commentary for every few hours I play. Without further ado, let's get started.
Final Fantasy VII casts you as Cloud, who is kind of a douchebag; he's the kind of douchebag that knows this quite well, and doesn't mind telling people so. He's the kind of guy that will tell you to your face that he doesn't care about what you're talking about right to your face. He used to be a member of a group called SOLDIER, which from what I can tell is a group of super soldiers (for lack of a better term) working for Shinra, a giant energy company that pretty much rules the world. Apparently they became so powerful by using the planet's lifeforce(?!) as energy. Let me just say, that seems like a pretty short-sighted and terrible plan. But anyway, Cloud also seems to have some sort of PTSD, since he has regular flashbacks. I'm sure this will be elaborated upon later, as well as the assumed "growth arc" turning Cloud from doucebag into slightly less douchey hero.
Cloud quit SOLDIER a while ago, and has now teamed up with AVALANCHE, a group of eco-terrorists created to oppose Shinra. Their grand plan is to destroy Shinra's many reactors, which are the things killing the planet. These reactors are in the city of Midgar, which seems like an awful place all around. There's smog, it's grimy, and the buildings (which seem to be made of trash to begin with) are falling apart. It also looks like Shinra is pretty much controlling the city as a police state, so that's fun.
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| Looks inviting |
Cloud is joined on his mission by Barret, who seems kind of cliche at this point. He's a tough guy who has one thing in his life that gives him a heart of gold; in this case, it's his daughter, Marlene, who is his main motivation for wanting to destroy Schinra. He's also pretty similar to Mr. T, but one of his arms is also a machine gun, so I guess he's cool. AVALANCHE's plan is to destroy Shinra reactors that are what's draining the planet. Again, these plans don't seem all that great; I mean, innoncent people are going to die here, right? They're
blowing these giant reactors up.
People will get caught in the blast radius. Also, if Shirna is the one source of power for Midgar, wouldn't destorying the reactors lead to Midgar losing all electricity, therefore leading to chaos?
AND if Midgar is essentially the government, destroying it would result in anarchy. To be fair I'm not one to hypothesize the implications of destroying the life of the planet, so maybe it balances out. Plus, AVANALCHE is a terrorist organization, so I guess it's not much of a concern. Cloud and Barret are also joined on this mission with fellow members Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, but they aren't much of a factor here, except Jessie gets stuck during the escape while the detonation countdown is going off, as one does.
So, Cloud and Barret complete their mission, but not before facing off against a robot scorpion thing. I'm fairly certain Cloud is trying to get himself killed during this fight; he tells you to attack the robo scorpion when it's tail is up, but then immediately after tells you that when this happens, scorpiobot will counter with its laster tail. Despite that, they manage to defeat the thing, and destroy the reactor.
Here we meet the third member of our group, Tifa, who's quite..."busty". Not Lara Croft triangle boob level, but her model is a clear indication that this was someone's first time creating a 3D character. She's a bartender at a place that also doubles as AVALANCHE's headquarters. Tifa's apparently Cloud's childhood friend, and I can't for the life of me figure out their relationship. Are they together? Not? Were they? I really have no idea what's going on between them. Tifa's also got some issues of her own, since one of Cloud's flashbacks showed that her father was killed by a (former?) SOLDIER named Sepiroth (I remember him!). She joins the group on their next mission to destroy another reactor. Cloud at first refuses to join, because apparently he doesn't care about the fate of the planet he lives on. Only after getting an offer of even more than before, he joins once again. (Side note: the money for cloud is coming out Marlene's COLLEGE FUND?!? WHAT?!?!).
This is obviously not my first
Final Fantasy game, so I'm quite used to the Active Time Battle System, so I won't go into too much detail here. Cliffnotes version, it's still turn based, but instead of going in a sequence, each character has a bar that gradually fills up before you can perform a command, giving the battles a faster pace. I happen like the ATB system a lot. The characters don't have defined classes (you'll see why below), but they each have their own weapon sets and abilities. Cloud uses his big-ass Buster Sword, and is the strongest attacker of the group. Barret uses his gun arm (as he should), and is pretty strong defensively. Tifa...punches things. Gotta give the girl credit for her moxie, but punching doesn't seem all that effective when fighting robots and such, but apparently she must have a super punch or something, because she
can kill robots and such with her fists, so what do I know? She' not quite as strong as Barret, but she's pretty damn close, so once again, props to you, girl. Her Limit Break also something has to do with slot machines, so there's that.
So, while I like the basic battle system, I'm not sure how I feel about the materia system just yet. Basically, materia are these objects that you can equip to your weapons and armor, not only giving you special abilities associated with that materia (like magic commands such as Fire and Cure), but also changing your stats as well. This is totally a personal thing, but I like when each character has a specific class and abilties, instead of you molding the character into whatever you want, as is the case here. There's also "special" materia, I guess, that changes the affect of the materia, but I haven't gotten any of those yet. I'm still trying to wrap my head about how materia functionally works in the world of this game, but that's probably overthinking things. (I can't help it! Do they just jam it into their weapons? And how does jamming an orb into the Buster Sword give you the ability to cast magic??) I also later found out that whenever a member leaves the party, the materia they had equipped reverts back to you? Weird, but nice.
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| You apparently get magic but shoving *this thing* into the Buster Sword |
So, it turns out that our trio has been caught in a trap set up by Shinra. Which, honestly, should have been seen ahead of time. Give yourself a few days before you try to blow up a reactor for a company you
attacked very very recenly. Long story short, Cloud gets separated from the group, and falls.
But don't worry! He managed to fall through a roof onto a flower bed! Said flower bed is growing in a church for some reason involving the grass I think? There's a girl tending to the flowers, who you actually met earlier in the story. This girl's name is Aeris, which means she's going to die. Aeris is also the nicest person in the world, so screw you Square. Cloud is his normal arrogant self, which leads Aeris to request Cloud be her bodyguard and escort her home. Turns out there's a reason she needs to be guarded; Shinra's after her, for reasons I don't think have been explained yet, other then those after her calling her an "ancient".
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| I hope nothing bad happens to her |
Aeris fights in battle using a giant staff, which I'm convinced re-uses a sound effect from Super Mario RPG. She's not a very good physical attacker, but an
excellent spellcaster. After Cloud returns her home, she decides to attach herself to Cloud, and join him on whatever quest he's on at the moment. The pair catch a glimpse of Tifa, who I
think became a prostitue?? But that doesn't seem like Tifa at all, so they decide to investigate.
And that's it for now!
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What are your opinions on
FFVII? Love it? Hate it? Utterly confused by it (like me!)? Let me know! Also don't forget to follow me on
Twitter if you want! And don't forget to subscribe to my
YouTube channel, which I'm currently working on a few videos for!
I'm gonna start with the obvious here. Frozen's gonna be in this game. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. How could it not? Frozen is not only the ninth highest-grossing film, it's also the highest-grossing animated film. While the hype may have died somewhat, Frozen was a phenomenon. How kids of certain generation see The Lion King as their film, many will see Frozen as their's. It's just too obvious. But I also think it has the potentially to work gameplay-wise as well. Not only are the snowy environments something we haven't really seen in a Kingdom Hearts game, but Elsa would also make a great party member, with her awesome ice powers. Plus, since Rapunzel's going to be a party member in this game, it would be really awesome to be able to get more than one female companion this time!
No, I'm not talking about the garbage-filled world that Wall-E starts off in (though that would be a cool concept). What I want to see is the Axiom, the ship that most of Wall-E's narrative takes place on. It could be flying around the world map, as the world they had previously inhabited become inhabitable. I just think the Axiom would be a cool setting to explore, it's so vast and many areas are distinct from each other. Plus, it could all culminate in a boss battle with Auto, the rogue robot piloting the ship.
This is another film that I feel is likely to show up. If not, it would be a huge missed opportunity. The setting of the film, 1920's New Orleans and its surrounding bayou, would just be something that would be so awesome to explore. This would probably necessitate the party's transformation into frogs (because of course), and battles with Dr. Facilier (and his voodoo spirits) could be some of the coolest in the series. 
First off, this film is beautiful. Running through the Scotland woods and mountains would be breathtaking. Plus, Merida and her bow are badass. And you could fight a bear. Also, now I'm picturing Sora fighting while on horseback and now I don't want anything else.
Oh, come on. This one's obvious. It's a freakin movie about video games. Honestly, my idea would be for this level to be exclusively set in the Sugar Rush video game, since that's where the bulk of the film takes place. Plus, it would take potential licensing issues out of this, since it would only be inhabited by original characters. The bright, candy-colored (no pun intended) visuals would look incredible on current-gen hardware. And Vanellope's glitching ability would just be cool gameplay-wise.
Kim Possible
Listen, I'm not really sure I want to see Sora & co. turned into cars. I just feel like this world would work well as a minigame-focused area, similar to 100 Acre Wood. I think Radiator Springs is a compelling enough setting on its own, and minigames involving racing different courses has the potential to be something really fun and different. That's honestly all I've got to say here.
