Topic: Is Final Fantasy VII too dated?

Now if they could just scrap the entire series...

I didn't want to say anything without the actual quote...but I'm pretty sure he just said he wanted his character's hairstyles to reflect the character's basic personality traits. If that's what he said, that wouldn't be bad priorities, he's just making the hairstyle part of the character design process.

Lol, yeah. I probably did eagerly mischaracterise what he was saying. Maybe as a sign of frustration with how far my favourite series had fallen.
I'd say that that's still a bad set of priorities for someone who has directed a few games now. Look at the hairstyles in FF13 and how inch-perfect they are. That was a huge expenditure of time and money in a game that really needed resources directed to the pretty much every other aspect of the game instead (or if not resources, attention and consideration)

True enough, but if you're going to fail to have a good story, you should at least succeed at having good characters. I feel that FF7 accomplished this. Cloud is probably the worst character, and even he is alright most of the time. I can forgive a silly story as long as the characters are interesting. FF7, 9, and 12 had interesting characters. FF8, 10, and 13 had terrible characters.

As for Nomura's character designs, I think it's a shame, because he is capable of making appealing, more conservative character designs, but has instead chosen to go for the over-the-top pukey visual kei designs for most of his games. Having "hairstyles that match personality types" just... doesn't make any sense, especially when that hairstyle is usually "resembles exotic tropical fauna."

@SpookyMeths I hope by FF12's "interesting characters", you aren't referring to the main cast...

Actually, I think FFXII had a very interesting story that held back by its main characters, at least a bit. They don't feel particularly important to the story as I'm used to. It doesn't ruin it for me, though.

Besides Vaan being boring and not doing anything, I actually enjoyed the cast in 12. Balthier and Fran were stand outs of course, but everyone else was interesting enough.

And I agree that it had a good story too. I would call it a rare case in which ambitious storytelling in FF (or JPRGs in general) really paid off.

Right exactly. That's part of why that's a ridiculous thing to say.
In fact, if the hairstyles in FF13 tell you anything about their personalities, they just tell you that every character in this warzone is for some reason obsessed with their hair.

It's the hardest for me to go back to among the PS1 games alone. I can still regularly replay VIII, IX and Tactics with ease, but I always find it a chore to replay through VII

I actually found FFVII's early sections easier on a replay. Then again, when I first played it, a lot of games were incredibly frustrating for me to learn and make sense of. I just kinda hated the process of actually getting better at something.

Of course, the only thing that's changed since then is now I already know how to play.

FF 6 will always be the best in my opinion. I mean, it's really a fact more than an opinion, but I don't want to ruffle too many feathers

Well, graphically 6 is easier on the eyes than 7. It's also mostly easier to understand.

So I'd say it aged better. But I guess most SNES games aged rather well. At least compared to PSO games.

I totally agree. Why 7 gets so much praise is beyond me. Everyone acts like it's the greatest FF game ever when really it's only subpar.

I also felt it had better characters, better story, better bad guy.

That is the one downside of the PSO, though. Some great games like Chrono Cross are painful to play these days due to the ancient GFX.

Yeah but there are so many other ways to play them other then the PS. You have the SNES, GBA as well as Wii VC. They are also available on the Google play store. Then there is also emulators.

Chrono Cross was only on the Playstation, though.

Oops yeah my bad. I just read Chrono and right away thought of Trigger. Lol

Chrono Cross still looks fine to me. It's been ages since I've played it on a TV though. My last few playthroughs were on PSP/PSV.

Yea it looks better on a tiny screen because it isn't stretching out those blocky pixels.

Try it on a modern TV and its terrible.

I'd agree if you were saying that about Final Fantasy 6. :T

Seriously, though, while I wouldn't hold FF7 to the highest degree, I felt like FF7 had the greatest degree of character to it - it's witty writing, the bevy of interesting ideas peppered throughout the world, the frequent enough gimmicks to the gameplay while rarely changing the rules of the game to a drastic degree (unlike FF6, which changed genres over a dozen times throughout the game), and the hidden elements all made the game stand out to me. Plus, Materia is still by far the best Classless system Final Fantasy has ever produced, bar none. The only thing that hasn't aged well is the graphics, but if Ocarina of Time gets a free pass for graphics that looked bad even for 1998, and still call it one of the greatest games of all time, I don't see why people can't forgive some blurry textures and blocky models (the nearly unnavigable backrounds in certain sections is another story, though).

Besides, Tasuki, you played FF7 once when it came out. Do you even remember thing one about it without looking it up?

In the past 4 years I've tried to play FF7 multiple times, and every time give up. My opinion is that the game is either too dated to be worth playing, or just wasn't very good to start with and got a free pass because (a) it was the first 3D entry in the series, (b) it was such a massive game, or (c) mass market gamers who built up the reputation just didn't know any better.

I'm amazed that some people call the writing "witty", because for the 10+ hours I spent on the game before abandoning it writing (not just story, but actual writing) was one of my biggest gripes. Other things that really bugged me were the pre-rendered scenes where you could hardly tell where to go, the random and pointless mini-games that add nothing to story and often control very poorly, and the fact that the plot was a mess. Graphics have also aged terribly - although I have a hard time believing those characters models ever looked cool.

Some people have said they really liked the characters. I would agree on that point if the writing was better... but half the time I was grimacing whenever they talked so that even though characters should have been a high point that was kind of lost on me. Other things that I give the game credit for are a huge and (mostly) interesting world, solid combat system and the whole meteria implementation, and lots of secrets and bonus things to discover. Plot I'm kind of torn on. It's not bad, but the writing and the way it was laid out just killed it.