Wanted to play this game, and the actual game is pretty expensive if you want to buy it now. How's the PC version? Because you know, I can....sorta talk to some people....and get it.

I considered the PC version to be inferior to the Playstation version, similar with Final Fantasy XIII on the PS1 and PC.

The only difference is the character sprites have noses. The Playstation version doesn't.

I've heard that it has a few glitches that are not present in the PlayStation version.

Here's the GameSpot review of FFVII for the PC via Amazon, if it helps:

The PC translation of Final Fantasy VII is fundamentally the same game as the PlayStation version, which makes for both its greatest strengths and its most frustrating weaknesses. There was obviously a great deal of attention spent improving the graphics, but other equally important areas - the sound, the interface - have been neglected.

Aesthetically, the PC version of Final Fantasy VII exceeds the PlayStation version in one area: graphics. Support for 3D accelerators makes the characters look much more crisp and detailed than the console version. Combat sequences benefit the most. Quite simply, combat scenes in the PC version look incredible. Unfortunately, everything else is inferior. The music is MIDI, so the quality is completely dependent on the MIDI playback ability of your sound card. With the most common contemporary sound cards, this isn't good. As a result, the epic score of the game is reduced to something that sounds like the background music on a poorly designed Final Fantasy web page.

Not all of the graphics are superior: The rendered cutscenes, which were breathtaking on the PlayStation, are AVI files in the PC version - low-resolution, washed-out AVI files. The menu-driven interface, a necessity for the PlayStation controller, is presented here intact. No hotkeys, nothing. To play without a gamepad, you must use the number pad on the keyboard, which isn't a pleasant option. You can reallocate keys, but the options menu makes it difficult to understand exactly what function the different keys serve. If you plan on playing Final Fantasy VII on the PC, a gamepad is almost essential.

Of course, there are some problems that exist simply because of the nature of console RPGs. Many of these discrepancies will seem foreign to those who have never experienced them: the inability to save at any point when in certain locations, the random combat encounters that occur with no warning, and the strange moments in combat when huge monsters firing huge weapons do little damage, while your characters do twice as much damage with a single punch. And none of these compares to the adjustment many will have to make to accustom themselves to the fact that these cute little big-eyed characters are swearing, killing, and pondering the nature of their existence. But these are caveats, not criticisms.

The PC version of Final Fantasy VII could have been, and perhaps should have been, better than its PlayStation counterpart. But it isn't. The story is amazing, and the combat is fun, making it a good choice for open-minded computer role-playing fans or adventure game fans who don't mind a little action in their games. Perhaps it's unfair to criticize Final Fantasy VII for being merely great, but it's hard not to think a version tailored specifically for the PC could have been amazing.
--Ron Dulin

I'd just wait for the inevitable remake.

It's just as ugly with the same dated gameplay and lame story.

"Wanted to play this game, and the actual game is pretty expensive if you want to buy it now. How's the PC version? Because you know, I can....sorta talk to some people....and get it."

I'd say it's better.

The translation has been fixed, so while the story isn't magically better there are no typos or grammatically incorrect lines anymore. The text boxes are cleaned up from the PSOne version and the battle graphics are nice and crisp, even if they still have the same low res textures. Plus, there's none of that shimmering you see in PS1 games from the lack of perspective correction.

The controls, however, are garbage. It defaults to everything on the keypad, which is ridiculous. Hope you have a gamepad of some sort.

The music is also a mixed bag...I had an AWE 64 at the time so mine sounded better (or maybe just different) from the original, but the roland sample pack seems to emulate the original music faithfully enough. Still sounds kind of synthetic, but hey.

Also, the backgrounds are butt ugly, since they're still the same low res stuff from the original, making the cleaner 3D stuff look way out of place.

Don't write off the PC version quite so fast!

The PC version suffered from being inferior at launch, but thanks to a highly dedicated community of phenomenal modders and fans the PC version, with the correct mods, can be really awesome:






Did I mention you can put in your own custom music and totally bypass the incomparable music quality from the PC port?

Links:
http://wiki.qhimm.com/FF7/Technical/Customising
http://www.qhimm.com/

Holy shit. That looks pretty amazing. A bit jarring though, at least for those of us used to the "cute" character models. :)

Anybody know where to get the PC version cheap? No piracy.

The only thing that bugged me was they scrunched all of the controls to the Numpad.

Damn Tifa has some tig 'ol bitties.

It's not that bad...but it's weird playing it on a keyboard as to playing it on a PS1 controller.  Also considering that PC RPG's you use the mouse a lot, FFVII never uses a mouse, it's all keyboard.

It's just as shitty as the PS version.

Yeah, I played the modded version. Its not bad if you get it to work. Just google FF7 pc mods and you should find the site. You can swipe out the graphics and even the music but the body replacement is not 100% so some places are funny cos you would still have the new and old models interacting together and your normal model is better than most of the cutscenes.

"It's not that bad...but it's weird playing it on a keyboard as to playing it on a PS1 controller.  Also considering that PC RPG's you use the mouse a lot, FFVII never uses a mouse, it's all keyboard."

"Blueprint12 said:

"It's not that bad...but it's weird playing it on a keyboard as to playing it on a PS1 controller.  Also considering that PC RPG's you use the mouse a lot, FFVII never uses a mouse, it's all keyboard."

It wouldn't be hard to map the keyboard controls to a gamepad, eliminating this problem."