Quick Look: Final Fantasy VII [Switch]

I KNOW this Quick Look is going to piss me off.

EDIT: Oh, Jeff and Brad aren't here. Probably for the best :)

The best game ever made, though I've already bought it on three different systems. And the look of this port is a little wonky.

One of those games that look better at their original resolution. Don't show me those dirty polygons, they aren't even swimmy!

It's super fucked up that they still haven't patched out this horrible slur 20 years later.

Some Final Dantasy! I didn't play this until around 2001. The early parts with Jenova still spook me, especially that story when you first get out of Midgar.

I'm glad this exists as a Switch port for people who might be interested in playing it. FF7 hasn't aged well in some ways (like some of the dialogue in this very quicklook) but Cloud's struggles with his mental health and the general theme of environmentalism are still resonant today. And also, yeah, this game set the standard for RPG's going forward. Great quick look!

Do any of the other FF ports on switch have the fast forward and cheat modes? I'm particularly interested in IX and X.

That x3 and full health/limit break is just... nah.

I really do like this game, still, but am actually glad I didn't pick up this port. It all looks a bit too clean and odd, the battle transitions too are weird.

I still have the PSone version on my Vita, think I'll break that out again instead.

I got this at Sears when it came out. I got a Cloud t-shirt.

Coolest kid in school.

I'm with Vinny on the FF stuff. It's not like I think 7 was bad, but as a follow-up to 4 and 6 it suuuuuuuucked.

I can't wait to enjoy this classic turn-based gameplay in the FF7 remake coming up!....
Oh wait, I forgot; Turn-based gameplay is too OLD, they couldn't POSSIBLY make a turn based game nowadays...
Right.
Can't wait for Persona 5 Royal!

But which super huge endless staircase is better? FFVII or MGS?

FF7 still has such a killer soundtrack.

Vinny is right vis-a-vis people remembering the characters: the story is a lot better than people give it credit for and a lot of the derision came later due to its popularity

It's dark, strange, grimy, and pretty unique for an RPG of its era. FF7 deals with a bunch of topics you wouldn't imagine a AAA, big budget title would even glance sidelong at. There's a pretty good fan retranslation called Beacause that helps bring out a lot of the character and nuance that were lost in the original slapdash translation.

@vinny@danryckert The term you guys were looking for in regard to Square's plans of making multiple projects across different mediums is "polymorphic content". The name they had given to the Final Fantasy VII umbrella project was "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII".

FFVII memory time! I remember borrowing it from a friend in school, then chatting to him a day or so later about how it was interesting how the entire planet was covered in a city above it. I hadn't left Midgar at that point so when he told me it was just a city and you eventually go out into a bigger world I was so excited.

Also Vinny is right IX is the best.

For all the crap this game gets, I still think it's alright. I remember not having a Playstation and not only visiting a friend to see him play, but borrowing him VHS tapes of his gameplay - it really was my first Let's Play series, back in 1997. When the PC port was finally released in Europe I maxed the game clocks during the summer break. What an epic story.

FFVIII was a disappointment for me, and FFIX is probably the last one I liked.

This is my favorite game of all time. I remember playing this with my best friend spencer when it came out.

@beartaco Yeah you would think after coutless ports and whatnot a thing like this would have been picked up on.

finally!!!

This is a terrible looking remaster! What the hell have they done to the beloved playstation 1 graphics. Everything is blurry and aliased beyond recognition. I just don't see any graphical fidelity here at all. I remember when people complained about the FF 6 port on steam and mobile but that game looks sooo much better than whatever they thought of doing here. I was in middle school when this came out and watched a friend play through it but tales of phantasia was my jam but I thought the original looked so much better than this "remaster".

@chrisflavin: 9 does, yeah

Wow this remake looks like shit.

@meierthered: It's not really that important.

You know what I'm so tired of? Whenever someone doesn't like an old game, they go "Oh, I don't have the NOSTALGIA For it, clearly implying that the only reason some people do is that they do.

Like, I agree with a lot of his points! I like Character classes! Older FF games are fun! But there's no reason to imply that FF7 is only liked for Nostalga's sake. Good games stay good! I played Chrono Trigger for the first time over a decade before it came out and it was amazing. You don't need Nostalgia to explain why someone likes FF7.

Yeah! My favorite game EVER! <3

@beartaco It's kinda funny, though.

Do you really think games should be patching out things like this? Do you think books or films should do the same as they age? I think I'm of the opinion that works like these are representations of points in time, and they shouldn't be edited or altered to conform to the political correctness of any future point in time--that just feels like a never ending battle. That said I suppose in this particular case if work is already being done to the game to implement various quality of life enhancements, as well as general port work, perhaps they could have taken the time to reword some dialog as well. It is what it is, though.

And now a whole new generation can now realise this is a bad game.

Ah, just like how I remember it when I played it on the PC. Those ridiculous Eidos PC boxes!

The 3x speed and the health+limit cheat make this kinda tempting for me.

@meierthered: I don't think re-writing the past with modern morals is a good practice

I'm definitely in the fanbase for this. This was the first Final Fantasy I played and it blew my fucking mind. The last RPG i played before it was Secret of Mana so this was on a different level of storytelling and world building. I remember spending hours grinding out Cloud's best limit break in the arena and making snacks between summoning knights of the rounds during Weapon fights. So glad they put this out again.

while the smoothing seems a bit much, the other features look really nice, I may pick this up.

that remake is at least a long ways out, and I'm happy to see them Crisis Core-ify that thing but it seems nice to have a version like this at the ready.

FF7 is the game that convinced me to ask my parents for a Playstation instead of a Saturn and for that I'll always be thankful.

I like FF7 in the way that it was this sorta bridge between the "classic style" of FF4-FF6 and later games like FF8/FF10 where they streamlined some things and changed the battle system up a bit. It tried some new ideas (like those questionable minigames...) but still felt pretty rooted in the older games in a lot of other ways.

@jjweatherman: There are contexts in which a character using a slur is integral to the message. A lot of scenes in Blazing Saddles wouldn't make as much sense if you take the slurs out, for instance, as the point of those scenes is "hey check out what a racist piece of shit this character is!"

This is not one of those contexts. The point of the line in that screenshot was not "and here is where the player starts to see that maybe Tifa isn't such a great person," the point of the line is "Tifa is getting impatient".

That slur could be replaced with "baby" or "whiner" or "weakling" or "slowpoke" or any number of other words without compromising the meaning of the line in the slightest, while also taking out a word that makes a lot of people extremely uncomfortable.

No of course not using retarded as a slur for someone being stupid is not important when you have actual humans that are mental, physical or socially challenged.

I got disconnected from game news for a good while, and discovered FFVII later in life when I was thinking, "Hey, remember that NES RPG Final Fantasy? They should have made a sequel to that." So it was a little mind-blowing to me.

Starting with the (optional!) stairs by Shinra HQ was an interesting choice. I guess it gave them time for pre-game banter.

One of my favorite games of all time, although I do like IV and VI better. I cant think of a game I have beaten more times then this. BioShock? Link to the Past? Maybe.

I own so many damn versions of this game, I am hesitant to purchase it again. I have the original PS1 version as well as a sealed Japanese version(First game I ever imported, then realized it was region locked), I have the PSN version, which I used to play on my Vita, the PC port, the PS4 version. Sure I am missing one.

Ah who am I kidding, it will be great to play this on the switch. I think it was also just released on the Xbox? I have a problem.

"shortcut"

Haha, folk whine about everything these days huh? Helluva game despite some spotty (if typical for the time) localisation.

Looks like they took the original 480 resolution backgrounds and then just changed the image size to 1920 without doing any work to it at all.

@bloody_skirmish: I don't have nostalgia for this game. In 1997 I was paying a mortgage and raising children. I certainly didn't have money or time for a PS1. I came to the game much later and still feel that it is an objectively excellent game on it's own merits. My only complaint about it is that it was a little slow and plodding in places which the X3 speed up completely eliminates. Looking back at the history, this was a truly ground breaking stunner in the early days of the PS1 and was one of several titles that cemented Sony's position in gaming going forward.

@humanity: And I think that dates all the way back to the PC version that I played in 199... 7?

This game is life

Bit rude to babies, whiners and Slowpoke's don't you think?

Been playing this game again. I still think this game is great. Also, my opinion on Sephiroth as a villain has improved. I wonder if it was Kingdom Hearts that actually ruined that opinion. I don't know.

Anyway. This seems to be the PC version's translation. I don't know. But it seems more in line with what I remember than the version on the PS1 classic.

I remember my cousins had this game first and I thought Midgar was really really long cause every time I visited my cousins they would still be in Midgar. It took 5 hours on my current play-through with me messing around.

When I finally got the game (which I think we sold our Sega CD for?), I got it for PC and my Gateway 2000 from 1995 could barely run the game. It chugged. We could play up to the cutscene in Rockettown before the game would hard crash. It wasn't until my next computer that I was able to play through the game.

The the?

Even at release (I'm a couple of years older than Vinny, if that means anything) I really didn't get along with the difference in graphical style between open world, combat and FMV.

I'm one of those weirdos who likes FFVIII the most, and a big part of it was that it was more cohesive stylistically.

Bought the Switch version last week, put the same number of hours into it as Dan seems to, and hadn't a clue about the right stick stuff (I'd figured out the 3x and no encounters fortunately) until I watched the QL.

@dave_tacitus: At least that's one thing that the remake, should it ever come, will likely address. I think they made a reasonable choice, though, as FFVIII tried to pack in more detail than the PSX and poor old standard definition could handle.

This would be the game that finally sold me on RPGs after hating them for the longest while. Chrono Trigger sealed the deal. FF8 almost made me bail completely on the series. What crazy swings. The PS1 was a wonderful era for JRPGs.

I loved FF7 when it came out and distinctly remember not understanding what the fuck was going on with its story. When the remake was announced, I bought the Steam release and replayed FF7 for the first time and, I gotta say, 20 years worth of message board posts, fan theories, and reflection made the game and its story much more enjoyable. I really really love the theme of mistaken identity that permeates throughout the entire narrative. Like, I have no idea if that's what they were going for, but damn is it fascinating, weird, and creepy.

I was definitely one of those people that played this game at age 11 and swore it was the best game ever made, then I got into fighting games. Video game rpgs seem real boring now. Ttrpg great time tho imo.