A friend of mine recently posted a status on his social networking site of choice about finally playing through Final Fantasy VIII. Other than the fact he's around eleven years late to the party, the status was a porterhouse in the lion's den. Six people commented on his status within thirty minutes, all of them boasting the previous Fantasy, and desecrating the very solid, fun, and engaging VIII.
 
I've never once understood the cognition behind this. And it happens when any other installment other than VII is mentioned. None of the Final Fantasies are bad games. All of them (even if it took some initial time) have enjoyed grand critical and public success (with XIII being debatable). Why badmouth a perfectly solid game just to highlight one in the series that's believed to be the apex?
 
I think a lot of it has to do with the removal of Yoshitaka Amano as character designer and the rise of Tetsuya Nomura. Nomura's style is significantly different from Amano's and gave a completely different feel to the setting of VII. And I don't believe anyone will really argue with me that the primary appeal of VII is the characters. No one cares what Cloud or Sephiroth's plight is, but rather that they're stoic. The ensemble cast of VI was fantastic, with very few characters standing out, but the whole working well and creating an engaging story. VII is a different kind of beast. Cloud, Sephiroth, Vincent, Tifa, Aeris, Red XIII, Yuffie, Cid, and Barret all appear to have individual cult followings (not to mention half of the members of Shin-Ra's Turks), whereas no one seems to applaud the story (which, in my opinion, started to wane in the second disc), graphics (which haven't aged well), or the Materia system (which stood out among a lot of the muck of that game).
 
All I'm simply complaining about is how VII, which was character-centric, can be held in much higher regard than many of the other installments which were game-centric. Sure, no one names Sabin as one of their favorite Final Fantasy stars, but that doesn't make his design any worse than Reno.
 
I know this stems from the same character flaw that causes 360 owners to berate PS3 owners (how pathetic is that in this day and age?), but maybe this'll provide some incite to what actually made VII different, and why it's inferior (but still an extremely solid title), or at least no better, than the other installments.