300 Words or Less Review: Is Final Fantasy 7 Overrated?

Yep, we’re going here.

1997’s Final Fantasy VII is a record-breaker that people still want remade almost twenty years later. But, is it really a classic? I’m going to err on the site of overrated, but not in some (“hipster”) type of way.

For starters, yes, it was the first Final Fantasy on PlayStation. However, it wasn’t the best FF on the system. That honor, from graphics to storyline, would have to go to Final Fantasy IX. Get past Zidane’s monkey-boy design and you’ve got a game which blows Cloud and company away. Look it up.

Second, the graphics. Square’s “Lego men here, beautiful renders (for 1997) there” choice was poor. I guess the teams working on the game got pissed off and designed whatever-the-fuck they felt like to represent the characters. Granted, it’s not Wild Arms-levels of “ugly” (and I’m a WA fan), but it gets pretty bad.

Seriously…Wild Arms 1 was horrible to look at even in 1997.

Third, the writing’s kinda bad. You want to play a Final Fantasy VII game which gets writing, well, right? Play Crisis Core. But, there’s almost no way someone can sit here and say, in 2015 or 1997, that FF7’s story was “groundbreaking,” translation errors and/or Aerith death scene or not. In fact, it takes many tropes and stereotypes and does nothing new with them. These include:

A rag-tag team of misfits saving the world.
Barrett (comical black sidekick who’s kind of worthless).
Amnesia.
Big-breasted women (Tifa).
The Don Corneo mission, where a crossdressed Cloud may or may not have been sexually assaulted.
Sephiroth (Silver Haired Big Bad with Infinite Power and Mommy Issues)
Clones! (Cloud and Sephiroth)
Wise Natives (Red XIII’s Tribe)
And more!

I feel we look at FF7 with nostalgia-tinged glasses and make it a GOAT when truthfully? It’s a great game, but breaks no new ground–other than in its presentation.