Tagline: Final Fantasy VII is the best CRPG to have hit the market since the last installment of the Ultima series. Although the plot is railroaded, that’s not really the point – the story is excellent, the characters touch your heart, the gameplay is engaging, and the interface is intuitive and simple, but also powerful. This game is addictive.

Normally I’m fairly skeptical concerning computer roleplaying games. Of all the games I have ever played only the Ultima series of games ever really succeeded. It succeeded because Richard Garriott, the creator of the Ultima series, designed a series of games which slowly became more and more adept at modeling the real world. Because people behaved the way real people do (with varying daily schedules, speech patterns, and personalities), because no problem possessed a single solution (with a set of rules behind world interactions, allowing you to blow a door up if you can’t find the key to it), because there was more than one course which could be followed (with a deep, intriguing plot with sundry subplots and side plots included), because you got to really care about your traveling companions. For all these reasons and more it is easy when playing the Ultima series of games to simply let yourself slip into the role of the Avatar. Does it allow the same breadth as face-to-face gaming? No. But it does allow roleplaying, and it does give you some things which face-to-face gaming cannot. The Ultima series acknowledges its weaknesses and exploits its strengths. It may not be better at what paper-and-pencil roleplaying can do, but it isn’t a paper-and-pencil roleplaying game so I respect these games for doing what they do – you can’t expect a computer game to do the same things a traditional RPG does; nor should you try.

Now, here comes the surprise. Final Fantasy VII is a highly successful game, despite the fact that it fails to do almost everything which the Ultima series does so well. The world of FF7 is contrived, the plot is almost completely linear, and multiple solutions do not exist in most cases. But FF7 does do one thing right: It presents characters who you can care about, characters with distinct (although sometimes cliched) personalities. As an almost direct result FF7 succeeds; and it helps that although the plot is linear, it is a very interesting and dynamic plot. You shouldn’t approach FF7 so much as a roleplaying game as a movie in which you have some partial control over the main character.

THE GOOD STUFF

I’ve already pointed out a couple of things. The main strengths of this game are, in my opinion, the plot and the characters – which are really intertwined with each other. There were points in this game where I felt genuine sadness and genuine joy as the plot and the characters developed. This, more than anything else, was what made the game very addictive to me.

Another major strength of the game lies in the graphic department. The visuals are highly anime-influenced, imaginative, and effective. Definitely a treat, especially the magic spells.

Finally, this game has a fantastic interface. It was originally designed for the Sony Playstation before being later translated onto the computer (which is where I played it). Everything is controlled through a series of intuitive menus which are accessed from the numeric keypad. A template to lay over the keypad comes with the game, but you won’t need it for long – the controls are easily learned and, once committed to memory, the entire system is easily memorized. Players will find the combat system, in particular, to be highly entertaining – it’s abstracted, but this allows for a great deal of strategic planning which I find difficult to obtain in other games where the chaos of the battlefield usually means I have no chance to control what my characters are doing.

This is a fairly powerful combination for a game to have: Intuitive, powerful gameplay; interesting characters; compelling plotline; and excellent graphics all in the same package? I should already have you sold. Why aren’t you out buying the game yet?

THE BAD STUFF

I’m a strong proponent of not judging a product on things which it is not attempting to do. Obviously you would never critique a hammer by saying “it’s not a screwdriver”, but in the area of creativity (such as novels, music, television, film, roleplaying games, or computer games) it is all too easy to slip into critiquing a product because it is not the type of product you happen to like. So, on that level, I don’t think FF7 has any serious weaknesses: It sets out to do exactly what it excels at accomplishing.

That being said, I should reiterate that this is not a “roleplaying game” in the sense that you are given a role which you are then allowed to control with broad parameters. In this game you are given a role, but the course along which you are allowed to guide that role is fairly proscribed when all is said and done. But saying “this game sucks because you aren’t allowed to control the characters” is similar to critiquing, say, Babylon 5 because you weren’t allowed to control the actions of Sheridan. FF7 resides somewhere between mediums (such as television or film) where you aren’t allowed any control over the characters and the mediums (such as roleplaying) where you are. Its important to judge the game on that ground, but I think it fair to warn off those who won’t find that type of entertainment, well, entertaining.

CONCLUSION

Buy this game. ‘Nuff said.

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Company/Publisher: Squaresoft / EIDOS
Originally Posted: 1999/02/17

This review was first published thirteen years ago almost to the day. That’s really kind of weirding me out. Interesting how times turn, though: I’ve actually been replaying FF7 on my PS3 the past couple of weeks.

I know it’s cliche for people to say SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER was the first time they cried because of a video game. It wasn’t mine (Ultima VII: Serpent Isle beat it by half a decade), but it remains one of the most memorable moments in any fictional medium for me. There is a very fine art to putting me on rails in a video game and yet getting me to completely invest myself in the character: The experience is more akin to acting than to roleplaying, but when it succeeds it can be very, very powerful. And in FF7 it succeeded brilliantly.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

This is the fourth in a series of biographical profiles from alternate histories.
Go to Part 1

Thirty years before the Rise of Camelot there was born to the Duke of Tintagel and his wife, Igrayneh, twin daughters. One was named Morgan and the other was named Megan, the youngest of four sisters. Seven years later the Duke would be killed in battle while his nemesis, Uther Pendragon, came to his wife’s bed – mystically enchanted by the magician Merlin so as to assume the appearance of the Duke and so beguile the devoted Ingrayneh. In triumph Uther married Igrayneh and from their ignoble union was born Arthur.

Arthur’s youth is well known, but the fate of his half sisters is less so. Following Uther’s rise to power they were sent away from their mother and into marriage. Morgan was married to a northern lord. Megan was sent across the sea. Both, as if bound by the ties of birth, studied magic, earning for themselves the title of “Le Fey”. But where Morgan studied the black arts, Megan studied the white.

They would not cross paths again for forty years. Arthur, in triumph, had built the mighty walls of Camelot. The bitter, warped mind of Morgan had returned to him and conceived by her own half-brother a child. The child, called Mordred, manipulated and aided by his mother, would, in turn, return to Camelot intent upon its destruction. They would have succeeded, destroying mankind’s last best hope of escape from a dark age, had Megan Le Fey not returned from beyond the sea and joined her might with that of her brother Arthur to destroy the forces arrayed against Camelot.

In the years which followed, Arthur would lead the reunited Knights of the Round Table across much of the Known World. The world of today is one in which learned men have recaptured the ancient glories and the mystic arts have revealed to the common man the deeper mysteries of the world. Fey and man alike exist in mutual acknowledgment and brave new frontiers lying beyond the Mountains of the East, the Ocean of the West, and the Desert of the South lie yet to be explored.

This is the third in a series of biographical profiles from alternate histories.
Go to Part 1

William Boulle first ran for national office in 1956 as Adlai Stevenson’s running mate. Although they were handily defeated by the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket, Boulle distinguished himself as a strong campaigner – particularly in the early primary states. Boulle would run unsuccessfully in 1960 against John F. Kenendy and then retire from politics in 1964 when his senatorial term ran out. In 1968 Boulle emerged from retirement to once again attempt to capture the democratic nomination. His domestic and anti-war policies caught the imagination of the people and he proved immensely popular at the ballot box. Tragically, however, Boulle would be assassinated immediately after declaring victory in the California primary by Sirhan Sirhan. Bobby Kennedy would go on to win the nomination and, then, the general election against Richard Nixon.

Once in office Kennedy would bring the war in Vietnam to a quick, successful, diplomatic conclusion before the end of 1971. This course of action easily won him a second term of office in 1972. Historians agree, however, that Kennedy’s most important achievement was in embracing his brother’s vision and expanding the American space program. By 1976, when he had left office, man had stepped on Mars for the first time and the plans for orbital and lunar stations were well on their way to completion. Without his influence it is doubtful that mankind would have reached the stars as quickly as they did, or established the Outer Colonies by the end of the millennia.

Next: Megan Le Fey, Second Sister of King Arthur

This is the second in a series of biographical profiles from alternate histories.
Go to Part 1

By the time he was twenty-five Aurelieus had established himself as a philosophical genius, composing several important works which survive to the modern day. More importantly, however, was his ability as a military leader, because the year was 430 B.C. and the first skirmishes in the Peloponnesian War were just beginning. Under his adept leadership (using tactics which would later be immortalized in his Art of War) the Athenian forces quickly overwhelmed those of Sparta, cementing Athens preeminence in Greece for centuries to come.

Aurelieus died in 398 B.C., but he left behind him a unified Grecian state based around the power of Athenian rule. Within a hundred years Greece had come to dominate the eastern Mediterranean. In the third century, the Greek general Pyrrhus would invade the burgeoning Roman state. In reference to that campaign, the phrase “Pyrrhic Victory” has come to signify tremendous success, as Pyrrhus and his forces crushed any and all resistance. The only block to Athenian hegemony over the entirety of the known world was in the city-state of Carthage. Greece would eventually crush Carthagenian resistance during the Punic Wars, despite the tremendous success of Hannibal (who succeeded, through the use of his elephant-mounted troops, at coming to the very walls of Athens before being driven back).

Next: William Boulle, The Man Who Would Be President

Fourteen or fifteen years ago, Steve Jackson Games put out an open call for Who’s Who 2: More of Histories Most Intriguing Characters. The concept of the supplement was to provide background information for time-traveling campaigns, but what they were looking for with the open call were 200-400 word entries that could be dropped into the sidebar as “Who Might Have Been? A Who’s Who of Those Who Never Lived”. In other words, short bios of notable people from alternate histories.

My entries didn’t make the cut, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for ’em. So I present them here for what passes as posterity…

The year is 1932. Germany’s government is being crippled by debts incurred from the Versailles Treaty. The people, starving and unable to find food, turn desperately to a populist leader who can give them someone, anyone to blame. In a startling uprising at the polls they elect this leader, and his party, in an unprecedented landslide. Within a few short weeks this charismatic, influential man has solidified his grip on the center of German political power. The world pauses and catches its breath, waiting to see what course of action this man will take. His name is… Hans Adolpho.

Adolpho was born in 1899. He fought in the Great War and was sickened by the violence and death he saw all around him. After the war he travelled to Austria and then Italy, returning to Germany in 1925. There he joined the Einheit Party (German for Unity) and quickly rose through the ranks. His political message was simple: The German people should look to themselves for where the blame lay in their plight. Only by coming together in unity could they hope to save themselves. In 1932 he was elected Chancellor.

In 1935 he peacefully reunited Germany and Austria, forming the United Austro-German States. Using threat tactics in the Rhineland he succeeded in breaking the debt burdens imposed by the Versailles Treaty, then withdrew the troops and busied himself with rebuilding Germany. By 1941, when the Japanese attacked America at Pearl Harbor, Germany was a booming industrial economy who willingly assisted America in defeating Japan by early 1943. Adolpho’s last action before leaving office in 1952 (he was re-elected to the national office half a dozen times) was to form the Allied Force of the Springtime Invasion of Stalinist Russia, wiping Communism off the map by the end of the year.

Next: Aurelius, Emperor of Athens