Topic: Is Final Fantasy VII too dated?

FFVI changes genres mid-game?

Anyway, about FFVII's writting, I had no idea of what was happening 50% of the time, and if many characters were on screen it was really hard to tell who was talking... So I don't know.

Yes. Twice it becomes an RTS, another time it's a stealth/adventure game, another time it's one-on-one battling with some fighting game-like mechanics...that's just the first 10 hours, too. The river section was annoying, too. Faily certain there's also some Chocobo Racing (chase sequence?) at some point, too.

Obviously none of these are permanent, they're out-of-nowhere pointless forced minigames. I hate that in most games. FF7 has a few of them, too, and they sucked, there as well. Especially that timed escape section, and the out-of-nowhere Motorcycle Road Rash section, that one was just weird...

I have played it twice and in none of those parts does it stop being a generic jrpg. You get to control more than one party "at the same time", but the game's controls and mechanics the same as before.

In fact, I think it's nice you get to use more than one party at times... Having that huge pool of characters available and all.

The one-on-one fighting is just an automated rpg battle, there's no additional mechanics added.

There's no chocobo I minigame though. The only similar part was that one with the train carts, but that one is more of a boss battle.

I was think of FF7's Chocobo catching sequence, that one had me stuck for ages. I'll admit that the beginning of FF7 is not that great, like, in general. I still can tolerate it a lot more than the entirety of FF6 up until halfway through The World of Ruin, though. Which is about as far as I gotten in the 6 or so times I've tried it...most of the time I stopped before or just after I get Shadow in my Party, because that is the single most frustrating sequence I've ever put up with repeatedly in an RPG and it never gets better even when I know what I'm doing.

What did you need to do in that part? I can't remember anything too frustrating there.

Anyway I agree that the world of ruin part of VI is really poor. You literally need to grind with the giant dinosaurs to beat the game, because you'll end up with a party in their early 40's at most after doing all the things you can do then.

That was the stealth/adventure sequence where you had to talk to towns people without being caught with by the guards, who just wandered around randomly. If you got caught, you had to start the entire sequence over again. It's like worst parts of King's Quest combined with the worst parts of Metal Gear. Which is to say it is Metal Gear, needlessly shoehorned into an RPG. Except you can't kill guards for no reason (seriously, I killed a bunch of Imperial Solders on the way to that town, yet the game game tells me my party can't take them on only during that sequence!).

Oh yeah that. Once you learn what to do it's kinda easy though. Just find the one odd guard and steal his clothes. From there you just follow the clues.

I did get stuck there on my first playthrough tough.

... Or it's not that part?

No, that was the part. I don't remember ever finding soldier's clothes, though...