Final Fantasy VII - Why the Hype?

Spoiler free, for your convenience :) 

 Hey, all! 

So I'm on quite a high right now - within half an hour I finished both The Near Witch by VE Schwab and Final Fantasy VII (1997) on switch. My thoughts are kind of all over the place, so I decided to find a way to calm down. Thus, I made myself a cup of tea, put on my new blue-light blocking glasses (which is a beautiful invention, very useful in times when uni from home means you are staring at a screen 90% of the day), and start writing a new Why the Hype post! 

Oh, how I've missed writing these! 

Very, very simply put, Final Fantasy 7 doesn't sound lie something I would have picked up if it weren't for the 2 previous FF games I played. The story can be boiled down to: A group of ecoterrorists hire an ex-soldier to help blow up reactors that are soaking up the Earth's resources. They go on to try stopping a giant company from using up the Earth's resources, while the big bad evil guy tries to use these resources to become a god. 

It's absolutely fantastic. 

Square Enix and Dotemu managed to transmit an intriguing, poignant story through simple graphics and polygon characters. The story is beautifully paced, with great timing between reveals, and is really consistent. 

The characters each have their own charms, that I can only imagine will be enhanced during the remake! While I had the tendency to stick to playing with Cloud, Tifa and Barret, each of the others had really interesting mechanics, stories and attitudes. I had a lot of fun getting to know each and every one of them! Their troubles, priorities and ways of being felt relatable, and that's something I really loved. 

The gameplay itself is surprisingly smooth! While at first I had a hard time measuring my patience while waiting for each attack to be ready, it was easy to learn to use that to plan my next move. Walking around and knowing what was a real door and what wasn't was a real learning process, but there was one mechanic I really, really liked. 

Materia. 

For those who don't know, Materia is a marble-like sphere of super-concentrated magical Earth energy, that allows its user to use certain abilities. For example, if you equip a Fire materia, you get fire magic. Every weapon and piece of armor has a certain number of slots for materia, so you can customize character abilities. This mechanic is something I'd love to replicate in a game of my own, maybe someday in D&D! It was easily manageable and a lot of fun to play around with. 

So, why the FFVII hype? This game masterfully balances simple gameplay with an intriguing story, and fun mechanics with distinct characters. The story feels complete, and reaching the end is wholly satisfying, just like after finishing a good book. Even the music is something that just makes the game a unique experience that I cannot wait to go back to with the remake

Oh, and the final battle? Incredible in every way.  

I'm giving this 4.75 stars out of 5. A quarter star is missing because, being from '97, some things didn't age so well. However, I heard that the remake makes up for this several times over! 

Have fun