@mamba219:I guess we'll have to disagree on this one then haha. Yes it does rely on the slow build up -> big set piece pattern but the downtime between the two is very minimal and the reasons for moving forward are clear at all times. Of course it never lives up to the pacing and tone set during Midgar on disk 1, but not much really can. Also plenty of shit happens between Kalm and Rocket Town. You visit Nibelheim with all the story hints there, there's the Mt Nibel sequence, you learn more about the Life Stream, the whole Cargo Ship sequence, all the crap that happens at the Gold Saucer, The Turks are further fleshed out, you encounter Yuffie, there's Red 13's story arc, Junon Harbour... There's always something varied happening that's pushing you forward and it's fairly constant too.

There's an argument to be made for the second half of disk 2 but even then it's only a slight slowing down before a huge ramp up near the end that disk.

@zombiepie Well if I didn't attempt it I can't ask you to do it. So here is what I remember doing when I played through FFVII. I'm sure I picked up some of the ultimate weapons because some of them are easy to obtain. The same can be said about some of the level 4 limit breaks. Getting them all is absurd so just go with your main party members. Attempting to take on the ruby/emerald weapons is worth doing too. Since you have Yuffie you might as well go to Wutai. Definitely worth picking up Vincent as well. Other than that ehh. Pretty sure I saw at least one part of Fort Condor side quest and I did end up with a blue chocobo somehow.

aw man. No Barretly?!

These controls are actually pretty close to the fairly standard jrpg on a keyboard controls.

Usually it is Z to confirm, X to cancel and C for menu, they just shifted everything right one. and hold Shift to run. Try and see if Esc works as menu and/or cancel and Enter works as confirm.

Note how the keys are all next to each other on the keyboard and is where you should place your left hand. Right hand is for controlling movement and menu navigation (page up and down).

Navigating 3d in a 2d environment is probably a lost art to the kids these days :p try Start or Assist and see if it will make the red/green arrows show up on places that you can enter in the map. But generally in these games you are constantly running into anything remotely interesting and see if you can interact with it.

Yes Cloud and crew are a "terrorist" group and Cloud is sort of an asshole...lots of shades of grey, but that surely beats simple stereotypical black and white, good guys vs bad guys story right?...No? Well shit.

Also there's seems to be a lot of issue with people understanding this kind of story telling where main character is meant to be a character in a story, not a representation of you, the player, it is a difficult line to walk, especially so in a game where the character itself also plays a critical role in the story. But do keep a critical eye on Cloud.

Heal is for status effects, Cure is for HP. The game gets more physical attack based as it goes on. Steal is handy. There are some equipment that could only be obtain by stealing or steal to get multiple pieces of. Eventually Steal gets master to Mug and you can attack and steal at the same time...it is actually worse at times since you could end up killing the enemy before successfully stealing something.

Indented portrait means the character is in the back row in combat. Back row characters take less damage (unless surprised). Close range character (Cloud, Tifa, etc.) suffers attack penalty if put in back row, long range characters does not (Yuffie, Barret with the right weapon). Check the weapon in equip tab to be sure.

Pacing is really not as bad as it seems, although arguably it gets worse when the world map opens up, but that's the price we pay for linear vs semi linear vs non linear and exploratory path. Lots of the pacing issue could be attributed to gameplay time and side quests (all that chocobo). Which probably lead to the following generation of JRPGs banking on long cut scenes and dialog...but some people complains about also.

You're not wrong, but I guess it depends on what you enjoy. To me, all of what you just described would be better served as optional sidequests - or something more commonly found in a very old-school type of RPG, where as you wander about the map you are faced with different varied challenges in each town you encounter that have little to nothing to do with the main plot. Final Fantasy VII is a weird game in that it straddles the line between these styles of game, unsuccessfully in my opinion. For a game with so much unavoidable dialogue and text, most of it is shockingly inane and serves little purpose. At least with old-school wanderlust RPGs, you weren't interrupted every five minutes with a one or two minute scene.

All I can tell you is, before I finally beat this game around 4 years ago, I'd tried and failed to get through the first disc like ten times. I rate it as one of the overall worst games I've finished for various reasons, and the second worst FF, after 8. It occupies a strange place in video gaming.

@mamba219: I think you hit on one of the more accurate descriptions of FFVII and its place in time: it is very representative of the transition between SNES-era RPGs and the more cinematic, set-piece-driven RPGs that came into being on the playstation.

However, I think that extends even more than just the world structure. To me that encapsulates a lot of the tone. An episode of Retronauts years ago touched on VII and one of the points raised was that "remember how in 16-bit RPGs a squatty little sprite would hop around in circles and that was supposed to convey emotion? FFVII still has a lot of that style to it," and I think that hits the nail on the head. Despite how aged and cartoony the graphics look now, I believe a lot of the over-the-top characterizations feel more out of place than they would with sprites, and magnify some of the tonal dissonance.

Obviously there are a lot of other problems with the story itself in terms of pacing that would be out of place no matter the time, though. The story really does not wait an adequate time to slow down or recover after a big crescendo. If the ideal flow of the narrative has a gentle to moderate slope after a major plot point, FFVII has a cliff. It almost seems like a lot of the "inane dialog" and those set pieces that you reference could have been used to pad those transitions out, but they stuck it all in one stretch and we're left with Jenova fight followed by hojo sunbathing and Aeris' death straight into snowboarding.

It's a very weird game and I really wish I could come to it fresh, but I'm too close to it at this point. Not to say that I think it's an amazing, untouchable game or anything, just that I know all the ins and outs so I have a hard time breaking down the story progression because I always know what it's driving towards. I'm super excited for this series to give a clean slate examination of it.

First off I just want to thank all of you for your input regarding my side quest conundrum. The input is greatly appreciated, even if it means that I will most likely play more of this game than I was originally willing to. Don't even get me started about how the keyboard controls for the Chocobo Racing have been mapped. I swear...I can't image that a real human being programmed this.

I never got around to thanking you for your comment.

MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! At least @thatpinguino and @mento told me how Chocobo Hot and Cold is decent minigame...that will make the pain go away.

I'M GONNA TRY IT AT THE COST OF MY PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH!

Yeah I think that I have managed to wrap my mind around the Materia in general. Last weekend I managed to acquire the "Aqualung" and "White Wind" Enemy Skills, and they seem legit. In fact, casting Aqualung was the first time I managed to inflict more than 1,000 points of damage on an enemy.

I also got something called "Big Guard," but I still don't know what any of these status effects mean.

Oh how about we "come clean" about our conversation about this issue from a while back? Like that time when you legitimately thought about sending me a PlayStation One in the mail, and I had to convince you that you were crazy for thinking that, and it would have been a waste of money.

Because that really happened.

The controls for Chocobo Racing are a complete turd sandwich with a roue of vomit to top it off.

What?

In Final Fantasy VIII you go from trying to pass your college exams to assassinating an evil witch in space time all over the span of a single story. In between all of this you end up having a concert at a hippie island, and listening to a sappy pop song in space.

Final Fantasy VIII has the most herky-jerky plot I have ever seen in my entire life. The game practically cannot decide on what its genre is for the entire game.

I enjoy grousing.

I guess at the end of the day we really all are the Seventh Final Fantasy.

For as much reverence as FF7 gets, a lot of it just seems like a goddamn mess. In fact, that seems to apply to most FFs past 7. I can't wait to see the remake re-do sections entirely for the sake of better pacing and come under fire from fanboy rage. Then again, I know that FFX is kind of bad in parts, but I have a love for that game that is completely fuelled by nostalgia. The only other FF I actually really dig FFXII outside of the asinine License Board system. I hope that the International Version (which is likely to be the target for the remaster) with its reworked Zodiac Board will fix the grievances I have with it.

While we're at it, is there any JRPG that has what someone would call 'good' writing (that is not based in a high school)? As much as I love SMT and I think it has more going for it with regards to story-telling, it's strength lies more in building atmosphere rather than super memorable characters.

Keep on trucking ZombiePie. Someone will remember your sacrifice(?).

@zombiepie: Okay, good. You have the two enemy skills that actually matter: White Wind and Big Guard.

I'm going to explain what both of them do in spoiled text.

White Wind: Obviously it heals you, but it heals the entire party for HP equal to the current HP of the caster. So if they cast White Wind with 1HP remaining, everyone will be healed 1HP.

Big Guard: It doubles your defense and magic defense, and also doubles your speed while it's at it. Haste alone makes it kind of insane, and the whole effect is well worth the massive MP cost. Save it for bosses.

I feel I should also clarify with FF9 that there is a lot less wrestling with the background and hunting for the right path than compared to FF7. Everything you can walk/through is pretty obvious. It'll just be way uglier. But control is WASD and mouse. You can straight up click around the environment like it's a point and click adventure.

Oddly enough, controller support is a bit shoddy. There isn't true analog like the original game had, just eight directions mapped to a stick.

Edit: @adequatelyprepared: It's less a JRPG and more an Action RPG, but I stand by my opinion that Nier had some of the better writing in the last generation. Even ignoring the (pretty good) plot, the dialog and banter for and between the characters is endearing and well done in a way I hadn't seen in a while, helped by some pretty exceptional voice work. Valkyria Chronicles is also pretty good in the story department, assuming you can tolerate when it gets all anime on you. Uh, skip the sequels.

Far be it for me to be a Final Fantasy VIII apologist, but at least you're constantly moving that batshit plot forward, rather than chasing after a mythical villain for 60% of the game while the plot does nothing.

Like don't get me wrong. Final Fantasy VIII is a steaming turd, and I hate it as much as you. But at least the thing keeps you guessing. There's literally no way to predict anything in that game.

Between Final Fantasy VII and VIII, I've never understood why the series is so beloved. This coming from someone who has beaten games 1-12 and considers 4, 6, and 9 very high class RPGs.

ive completed ff7 a few times and never felt any need to do anything optional other than the yuffie/vincent and general story stuff which was outlined above, the gold saucer stuff is boring and same for chocobos, ultimate weapons and limit breaks, its all just following guides and who needs that. you generally pick up the good enemy skills and you wont miss the ones you don't get

i also refuse to collect summons because they are pointless, in ff8 you have to collect them but i refuse to cast them, i would say that the only useful summon in the entire series was yojimbo in ffx, but ive not played through all of the snes ones so i guess they could have been useful there, i dont even remember them from ff12/13

I didn't see this mentioned but it's only mention in secondary material that the reason Aeris was left alone for so long by Shinra and the Turks was because of the "boyfriend." Since you said you watched Advent Children, he's actually there but they seem to think everyone played/watched all the side stuff because it isn't explained or commented on.

This is just how FF goes. They blame a lot of the nonsense in the game to a poor translation, which granted is true, but they just never explain anything well. The mystery adds to the game, right?

Maybe since it was more recent for you but now explain FF8's Time Compression to me cause I got nothing on that.

Man, I can't wait for this to happen all over again with the remake.

@crommi: I was gonna say the Eidos port I had when I was younger had wacky controls. But they worked alright for what they were. It's still much much easier to play on a controller though.

Also, I never realized that Texas thing before. That is really strange.