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Most Overrated at GS... and FFVII

Gamespy is doing a top 25 overrated games expose of sorts..

Todays release featured FFVii (as well as Halo). FFVii ironically is #7 out of 25.

Judging from all the Cloud/Seph responses in some of the other threads here I'm assuming many will be quite shocked to see this...:)

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/sept.../index20.shtml

Quote:

In 1997 Sony Computer Entertainment America released one of the biggest games in console history: Final Fantasy VII. Though the series was adored by many hardcore gamers, it never had mass appeal until the seventh installment. Backed by a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign, the game generated more hype than any other Final Fantasy title to date. The game was a remarkable success that appealed to RPG enthusiasts (who have been waiting for years for a new Final Fantasy) and mainstream gamers. Sony sold millions of copies and Square became so synonymous with RPGs that even the average "guy on the bus" knew about the company.

While the success of the game was fantastic for Sony, Square, and the industry, it also left many with clouded (tee-hee) opinions of the game. For thousands (possibly millions) of gamers, FFVII was their introduction to the series. And, almost always, the first time you encounter something is the most memorable. Most FF aficionados will tell you that VII, while very good, is hardly the best game in the series. Yet many gamers feel otherwise -- check out the GameSpy Forums for proof. Many of the editors at GameSpy have played most of the FF games, and none of them think VII is anywhere near the best. In this case, the first time's the charm.

Psylancer: I very much enjoyed FFVII, but there are several FF games I enjoyed far more. To me, FFVI was the game that really elevated the series in every way but commercially. I loved the complexity of the "job system" in FFV. The "grid system," gameplay, and characters in FFX were fantastic. It's a relatively unpopular FF, but I found the characters in IX to be far more charming than the ones in VII. And, though it's a spinoff, FF Tactics is one of my favorite games of all time.

When I compare the components of VII to the other games, I just don't think it stacks up. The music is good, but Uematsu has composed better. Save for Yuffie, the characters weren't as memorable as other FF denizens. Gameplay has been done better in other FF games. The story is uneven and not as "epic" as other FF tales. The one thing I don't get at all is how people rave about the "materia system," which is the game's prevalent method of character customization and combat. It really deemphasizes individual characters and abilities. One of my buddies said, "Materia makes magic and abilities too interchangeable, so the characters fade away and just become materia slots. So the whole point of characters becomes their limit breaks, which is sort of lame."

ferricide: Final Fantasy VII is not my least favorite game in the series. It's nowhere near my favorite, either -- it rests squarely in the middle. I look at it as a very transitional game for both the series and the industry: It was an experiment, and like many experiments, it's fraught with a number of little failures and small successes. The result is something of a lovable mess. The bad: a horrid translation; squatty, miserable-looking characters in the exploration bits (even at the time -- really!); endless, irritating mini-games; a boring (if cool) antagonist and a nonsensical story (which is compounded by the aforementioned shoddy translation.) The good: creative, pioneering use of cinemas; a beautiful polygonal battle system; increased drama and tension in the story. That's not everything, but like I said -- experiments. Say what you will about Final Fantasy VIII -- personally, I like it a lot -- but it's a hell of a lot more consistent game.

Ben: Well, I have to disagree with my colleagues and leave myself open for flaming from every Final Fantasy freak in the world by saying that I didn't like Final Fantasy VII. At all. It just wasn't a good game, especially in its English incarnation.

I can only attribute its popularity to the cutting-edge (at the time) graphics and the heavy marketing push it got in the States. As a result, it drew in many people who had never played an RPG before, and made many of them longtime fans of the genre. ('Course, once in a while I also hear anecdotes about newbies who made it to the final dungeon without knowing what Materia was.)

That wasn't me, though. I was already very familiar with the genre, and I didn't like much of what Final Fantasy VII had to offer. The characters were paper-thin and the English writing / translation was among the worst ever. The music completely failed to take advantage of the CD-ROM medium, and the game's tepid MIDI score was hardly worthy of a soundtrack album ("One-Winged Angel" or not). Even the vaunted graphics weren't that great, with ugly dithered CG backgrounds, laughably spartan SD character models, and a battle system that limped along at 15 frames per second. And, let's not mention the plethora of annoying mini-games, and the insipid, insulting story with its utterly spectacular FMV non-ending.

So yeah, I guess you could say that I think Final Fantasy VII is overrated.

I recently completed X and am working through VII right now. VII was hyped up by friends for years, and I of course enjoy it, and Materia seemed very cool at first, but I think the editors make some very good points, especially concerning the materia system.

Curious to see some flames perhaps develop, or agreement.:)

Final Fantasy 7 is god.

obviously they dont want to admit 7 was the best, they live by a philisophy of if everyone else likes than i cant. and like the article said, its the first one you play that sticks with you.

FF7 isn't the best at all.

Hugely overrated.

Materia system...bah. Like the article says, it takes the indvidual value away from each of the characters.

battlemouth is right on target. "Shit, we're an ONLINE GAMING MAGAZINE, we need SOMETHING controversial to cover...let's say a bunch of games our readers like are overrated. That should keep the dorks coming back for more..."

I don't know how they can call characters like Cid and Sephiroth not as memorable as other FF characters. People don't just like this game because it was the first one they played, they like it because it keeps you going. You have to keep playing until you get that gold chocobo, or until you beat emerald weapon, or until you master all the materia. That's what keeps people coming back to any RPG. Just because FF7 has some of the best side-stuff, not to mention some classic gaming moments.....crap I lost my train of thought.
Anyway, FF7 is the best FF so far, besides Tactics. I'm sure even more people will disagree with that than FF7 being overrated.
I've rambled on long enough.

I definitely don't consider FF7 to be the best, I liked FF6, FF4, and FFX more than FF7. But you gotta admit, at the time it came out, it was excellent and wonderful.

Gamespy is stupid. I agree with The Clarkster, besides Tactics, FFVII is the best.

Penny Arcade always has something good to say about video game related stuff:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2003/20030919l.gif

Yea, I don't exactly know about this "Hype list" either

It's great, a classic and for them to not give it the respect it deserves is an outrage.

Gamespy can [insert self-censorship here]. ;) FFVII has VERY memorable characters in my opinion, and Aeris' death scene is probably one of the best scenes I've ever seen in a video game.

Go FFVII! Down with GameSpy! :lol:

I didn't enjoy it at all, not one bit, now FFIX is where it's at MUCH better story MUCH better fighting system MUCH more memorable characters.

The materia system was a terrible idea - however, many other systems are almost as bad:

FF III/VI(US) - While each character had a special ability, all characters could learn all spells and wear almost all equipment. So you had your designated spellcasters that had the same spells and the same equipment, and you had your attackers, all of whom attacked 4 or 8 times per round, did max damage, etc.

FF VIII - I'm surprised Gamespy didn't have anything to say about how the Junction system ignores the character altogether!. All that matters is the magic you draw and the abilities your GFs have learned. In addition, you can use items to customize your GFs with abilities - so you could have characters with the same stats, the same abilities, the same spells - all except limit breaks, which is exactly what materia did. Only now, the 'materia' is a summon monster. Oh, not to mention that FF VIII had invincibility items and the absolute most overpowered limit break system ever - the endgame was just Squall performing Lionheart as many times as possible on a boss that had 'Meltdown' used on it. *yawn*

FFX - It takes time, but you can give every character the exact same stats, abilities, and spells. The sphere grid is even worse than the materia system in this sense - for those that haven't played FFX, imagine being able to equip every materia you had on all characters simultaneously. That's exactly what FFX's sphere grid is.

FFIX is markedly different. Each character's active abilities are different, and for the most part the abilities are unique to them. You have a thief. You have a black mage. You have a white mage. You have a dragon knight. It's almost impossible to use your black mage as a fighter. He just doesn't have the stats and abilities for it - and you can't do anything about it.

FF VII was epic. It certainly followed the 'collect friends from around the world to stop the supervillain from pwning the world' storyboard rule. That's how it always is, and FF VII was no exception. You went all around the world, explored locales varying from the steel-and-smoke Midgar to the carved-rock Cosmo Canyon to the coral reef forgotten city of the Ancients.

And FF VII has Sephiroth. pwned gg thx. run and cry.

That said, it isn't my favorite FF - I liked both VI and X more. Or rather, I would have liked X more if the dubbing wasn't so terrible and the dialogue wasn't so cheesalicious.

Quote:

Originally posted by Kyo

FFIX is markedly different. Each character's active abilities are different, and for the most part the abilities are unique to them. You have a thief. You have a black mage. You have a white mage. You have a dragon knight. It's almost impossible to use your black mage as a fighter. He just doesn't have the stats and abilities for it - and you can't do anything about it.

This is why FFIX is the best. At least in my opinion. Plus in a fight Vivi would just dominate Sephiroth (again my own opinion)

It seems to me that a game that allowed for more customization of which way your characters went would be better. It's more fun equiping the fighters with magic or vice versa just to have some fun.

And nobody would dominate Sephiroth.

Final Fantasy VII is my favorite RPG. Not because everyone else liked it. Not because it has all its hype. But because it had a great story. Final Fantasy IX can't compare in story. For GameSpy to call it overrated because it has a bg following is just pathetic. It was a good game regardless of how many people liked it. And no, Vivi would not stand a chance versus Sephiroth. Doomsday has nothing on Super Nova. Gamespy needs to research what they call 'overrated games' a little better from now on.

I liked 7 the best. Mainly since the characters were very customizable and the story was cool. Then again I am more of a D&D fellow myself, I feel that FF is more like the tinker toy or role playing games.

Final Fantasy 7 and Super Mario RPG are tied for my two favorite RPG's ever, although there's only three RPG's I've ever liked (Chrono Trigger's a very distant 3rd). With that said, yes, FF7 was my first RPG, but I still catch myself playing it every now and then. I've never really played any of the other FF games (except the one with the Blitzball star, but I don't remember the name of it...I liked it for the hour I got to play it, does anyone know which one I'm talkin' about?). Either way though, whether lots of people really like it because it was many people's first RPG or not is a mute point: lots of people really like it! how can it be over-rated if there is a huge following for the game (its main hero and villian, Cloud and Sephiroth, were the two most popular characters in a tournament at GameFAQs.com this year...Cloud had beaten Bowser, Sonic, AND Link while Sephiroth decimated MARIO and MegaMan, so there is no question many people love them and their game)?

I'm curious to hear the Top 25 Over-Hyped Games. Stupid stupid GameSpy...

the one with Blitzball was FFX. The star was Tidus. He was about the only thing I didn't like in that game.

FFVII......... ahhhhhhhhh. to each their own, but overhyped? I don't think so.

it was the first Squaresoft game not on a Nintendo machine
it was one of the first multi disc games without real people
i felt like i knew every character besides Yuffie
they quest was pretty linear but it had dozens of extra hours of gameplay.
Sephiroth has got to be my personal favorite boss of all time.
Cloud was a complete fluke at the end and the best mind fuck of all time on a console when it came out.
Aeris... scene

not major or important? HUH? it's like saying Atari didn't pave ways.

now if you liked FFVII is another thing. i l o v e d it. that's me. but it was a major break through.

Halo was overhyped, but it did do wonders so....

While I think USA FF3 was better than FF7, I am amazed they put that game as one of the 25 most overated.

At the time it was released (5+ years ago) it was excellent.

Really I put it third on my RPG list right behind Chrono Trigger and FF3.

Definately overrated. Both 2 and 4 on SNES were better. Was FF7 a bad game? No it was still great, but the number of people saying its one of the greatest RPGs ever need to play more RPGs. Overrated doesn't mean its a bad game just that people have elevated it above its true status.

It was the first RPG game I seriously played. It was awesome. I would compare it to looking at the face of God.

It was Scrumptilescent......

Of course, thats just my opinion

I could've summed this up with one word....

Sephiroth.

But since you all must be paying rapt attention to this....I will say that that although I've owned a lot of Final Fantasy games, FF VII is the only one I was interested enough in to finish, something I've yet to do with an article at gamespy.....:D

Quote:

Originally posted by AntHackerX
FF7 isn't the best at all.

Hugely overrated.

Materia system...bah. Like the article says, it takes the indvidual value away from each of the characters.

Agreed. FFVII-FX2 are hugely overrated games.

FFVII wasn't overrated. At the time nothing was out there on console systems that could compare to it.

Only in retrospect can we see how much more can be pulled out of the playstation.

GameSpy simply wants to piss off gamers in order to get more media attention. Sadly enough, it works very well. Final Fantasy VII was not overrated in any aspect. It lived up to and surpassed the hype of every media article about it, it had easily the best RPG magic system I've ever dealt with, and the characters were all magnificently created in a way that each player becomes attached to them. I've played my fair share of Final Fantasy's (even the old-school ones) and I still say that FFVII and FFX are simply the best. They deliver the best stories and best developed characters out of the series. They don't own all in every aspect, but overall, they are simply the best damned RPGs you'll play on console. If you don't agree, that's alright. This isn't an argument about people forcing other gamers to like FFVII, this is an argument about it being overrated. And it's not. If you bought FFVII the day it came out, played it to death on your PS1, and got teary-eyed when Aeris died, then you know what I'm talking about. I've yet to play a game that had an impact on me like FFVII. FFX came close (as well as a few other non-Squaresoft RPGs), but FFVII still holds the throne. Long live Cloud, Vincent, Tifa, Red XIII, Rufus, the Turks, and all of the other characters that made FFVII the best. They'll always have a memory in my head that can't be surpassed.

PS: Halo wasn't overrated either.

-Lasereth

Quote:

Originally posted by kel
FFVII wasn't overrated. At the time nothing was out there on console systems that could compare to it.

Only in retrospect can we see how much more can be pulled out of the playstation.

Actually there was Suikoden...

Well, with pure story only in comparison, I have to agree with the Suikoden thing. All of those games have great stories. Instead of saving the world, you're saving your country or territory. Gives you a more realistic feel. Those games had some kick ass characters too. I played through the first one twice. :)

FF7 had the technilogical advantage when it was released though. Sure enough, nothing compared to it. The world had never seen anything like it.

-Lasereth

Quote:

Originally posted by Renegade
Definately overrated. Both 2 and 4 on SNES were better. Was FF7 a bad game? No it was still great, but the number of people saying its one of the greatest RPGs ever need to play more RPGs. Overrated doesn't mean its a bad game just that people have elevated it above its true status.

I've played plenty of RPG's, on SNES and all, and I still think FF7 was the best i've played.