Final Fantasy VII.

[elwen]

I beat Final Fantasy VII yesterday, at long last. [The "long last" is more about the time it took me to actually get around to playing it and not about actual gaming time, which was about 82 hours.]

It was . . . a decent game, I suppose. A bit too messed up and dark for my tastes. [Don't get me wrong. I love dark at times, but there were bits in FFVII that just creeped me out. In particular, the part where you follow the trail of blood up the floors in the Shinra HQ. After seeing Jenova's empty holding tank, my brain started conjuring all sorts of disturbing images of this blue, headless body crawling up the stairs with blood dripping everywhere. The monsters in that area were pretty grotesque, too, which only made things worse. Of course, it all turned out to be Sephiroth's handiwork, but I couldn't stand that background music anymore after that. The basement of the Shinra mansion in Nibelheim freaks me out, too, especially that two-headed humanoid monster that keeps flipping around, making the battles last extra-long. *shudder* Yeah, I'm a coward.]

And Advent Children doesn't make any more sense than it used to. XP


I don't remember as much about going through the game storyline anymore, so I won't spend too much time on that.

The materia system was kinda neat, but then, I tend to end up enjoying all of the various Final Fantasy spell/leveling systems. Yes, even junctioning. I think Final Fantasy VI was probably the worst, in that respect, though. Only because it made me unable to resist making everyone learn all the spells, even though such an exercise was mostly pointless. I'm not a big magic person, usually.

Early on in FFVII, I became enamoured of the Enemy Skill materia, so I mostly relied on that over magic materia. I mean, multi target spells of various elements, a MP recovering spell, and no stat reductions? Sign me up.

Considering how much I hated the stat reductions, I'm not sure why I never used summons over elemental spells, since HP reduction was more bearable in my mind than reductions in strength and vitality. Especially after getting HP Plus materia to counter it. But I ended up mastering everything anyway just for the sake of mastering them. And to get the Master Materias, which made me happy by having no stat reductions either. [Not to mention being able to pair All, MP Absorb, and/or HP Absorb with all of the spells at the same time. Easier than leveling up Mega-All, which I never did.]

But with all the leveling up and getting cool stuff, I'm not really sure what it got me. Thinking back, there was something oddly circular about the subquests:

- Breed a Gold Chocobo so I can get Mime and Knights of Round.

- Use Mime and Knights of Round to be cheap-ass about beating Emerald Weapon, so I can get the Master Materias.

- Use Mime and the Master Summon materia to beat Ruby Weapon, so I can get . . . a Gold Chocobo?!

[Beating Ruby Weapon also gave me the extra AP needed to master Knights of Round and get another Master Summon, which was obtained the "hard" way. :P]

And after that, for all that I was happy about having 2 Master Magic and 2 Master Summon materias, I don't think I actually used them. I should have just kept the extra mastered Phoenix for use with Final Attack.

Then again, if I hadn't bred a Gold Chocobo, I wouldn't have had enough GP to win Omnislash, and if I hadn't mastered 2 Mime materias to cheap out with Knights of Round, I probably wouldn't have leveled up enough to beat the game as easily as I did. As it was, I killed Sephiroth before he could use the infamous Fallen One on me, not to mention before I could start enjoying One Winged Angel. [Someone else mentioned having this problem, too, and then going back and fighting him again just to see his stuff. Was it you, nendil?] But afterwards I went to listen to Advent: One Winged Angel [and Tenrai ~Divinity I~ for good measure], so it's all good.

One thing I wonder is, what happens in that last "battle" if you don't have Omnislash? Or does it not matter what limit break you use? [As things were, I think I only ever used Omnislash once: against Emerald before starting on the Knights of Round cheapness. :P]

Leveling up is a weird thing for me. After going up against something I find really hard the first time, I'm always nervous when I run into that monster again, until suddenly sometime later I realize that I'm not having nearly as much trouble anymore. In FFVII, it was the Master Tonberries. Cloud was at the point where Everyone's Grudge took out most of his life, so he kept dying -- part of the reason I never got to use Omnislash -- and it was always really hard to keep him alive and kill the Tonberry before it got to one of my characters. I got more worried the longer I stayed in the area, since Cloud was delivering a majority of the kills, which meant Everyone's Grudge was quickly turning into a one-hit kill. But after a while, I realized that I could always kill the Tonberries before they killed Cloud. [Mainly by inflicting Stop on them before they could ever use Everyone's Grudge.] And then the dungeon wasn't so bad, although I still hated running into Tonberries because they didn't give nearly as much EXP and AP as the other monsters.

I have a similar story for FFX, wherein I kept fighting this one boss in the Monster Arena. [I'm too lazy to look it up, but it's the one that falls on its back and counterattacks with heavy damage and instant death whenever it's standing up.] At first, I'd barely drag myself out alive after half an hour of pounding at it with Aeons. But after a while, I realized it was only taking me 10 minutes or so a go, and I was doing most of the work with just the Weird Sisters, who made it out in decent shape, too. [I fought that thing a whole lot because it dropped good stuff, but only part of the time and in small amounts. It's the main reason my FFX game registers some 120 hours or so.]

I guess in the end I must have been "addicted" to FFVII in some sense, because after beating Ruby I felt really reluctant to go and beat the game. I wanted to do more stuff, but there was nothing left for me to do, except maybe level up more, but even that had gotten boring. [I usually don't level for the sake of leveling, but more for leveling up whatever else -- in this case, materia.] See, this game could have used a Monster Arena type thing.

But that's one game off of my "to play" list -- possibly the shortest of my lists among "to watch", "to read", and "to play". I probably just expected too much from it. Not just to grok why people love it so much, but also things like Cloud/Sephiroth fangirls, and Advent Children.

Oh, and I didn't manage to fit this in anywhere because I didn't talk about Aeris, but, I still remember when I was first spoiled about her death. I was at a friend's birthday party, and another friend had gotten her the PC version of FFVII. [This is the same friend who introduced me to Final Fantasy in general, when I watched him and his sister playing FFIV.] He was giving a brief overview of the gameplay and such, and then just casually added, "Oh, and there's this girl who dies halfway through." His sister scolded him afterwards, but the damage was done.

I think I probably completely forgot about that incident until years later, when I started playing FFs myself, and then somehow slowly worked towards the conclusion that it was this game he had been talking about. [I doubt I actually remembered the number from back then.] Of course, there's also Final Fantasy . . . um, well, I won't spoil that one. :P


Oh, and I might talk about characters and such at some point, but I'm not in the mood right now. You may prod me to do so in comments in you wish.

[On an unrelated note, I would like to point out my new gaming icon. I've long felt the need for one, but I just couldn't find or come up with anything. And this one's not even from a game. Bonus points to the first person besides smamole who identifies it without looking in my userinfo. :P]

Comments

[nendil.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was me. I was all paranoid and setting up my buffs and White Winds and all, and then Sephiroth hits me and Yuffie counterattacks and Cloud attacks and he's dead. ._.

I had to do it again just to see Supernova once.

And if you thought the Shinra mansion was creepy, you should check out this OCRemix. ::evil::

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

I think I had almost the exact same experience. I cast Regen on everyone with Tifa, and then he hits and Yuffie counterattacks twice, and Cloud 4x-Cuts him, and that's it. ._.;;

I haven't even gone through the FF7 OCRemixes yet. Hell if I'm going to start with the creepy ones. XO