FINAL
FANTASY 7
The grass is always greener
somewhere else. For years, computer gamers have asked for
conversions of console role-playing games—ones that
are accessible and cute as well as fun—and their
wish has finally been granted. Final Fantasy VII, the
first 32-bit entry in Square’s celebrated RPG line,
has been converted from the PlayStation. Aside from a few
rough patches (some unique to this Windows 95
implementation, some inherited from the original game),
this four-CD epic is accessible, cute, fun, pretty, and
likely to keep you pleasantly occupied for a long time.
You’re cast as a mercenary named Cloud who’s
working for a resistance movement preparing to bomb one
of the reactors in the city of Midgar. Despite initially
being in it for the money, he stays the course. Along the
way he finds new allies and old friends, and his band of
freedom fighters escapes the city into the wide world.
What makes FFVII special is
variety. You’re given a good number of choices en
route—should you sneak into the Shinra HQ or just
knock on the front door?—so you never know quite
what’ll come next. I liked the combination of
fighting (in third-person 3D, but in the traditional face-off
style of console games), exploration, puzzle solving,
shopping, storytelling, and the exoticness of an
unpredictable plot. The game is driven by combat but not
dominated by it, and just when you get tired of bowling
over minions, a boss-level monster wanders along and
reacquaints you with the concept of death.
FFVII is also beautiful. The
rich environments, displayed from a range of perspectives,
were unlike anything the console world had seen, and they
stand up particularly well on a PC with a 3D accelerator.
The backdrops for the combat scenes seem to hold an inner
light, and the effects for magic spells and special moves
(often gorgeous) have a new momentousness.
It’s otherwise the same
game as on the PSX. I enjoyed its easygoing, large-print
interface and the ability to move everything I found
after combat into my collective inventory with the push
of a button. I liked the feeling of anticipation, which
never really went away.
On the other hand, you can save
only in certain special spots, which may not sit well
with computer RPG vets. The 3D characters are cute in
their spiky, huge-eyed anime way—I ultimately found
myself caring about them—but the occasional close-ups
make them look like Kewpie dolls with painted-on faces,
which worked against my acceptance of them.
The writing isn’t exactly
Hemingway, and while I got the Big Picture just fine, it
was occasionally difficult to understand exactly what the
writers meant in given situations. (Too bad the
characters don’t have their own voices.) Of course,
console players might tell you that very vagueness is
part of FFVII’s charm, and they’d be right.
Unfortunately, there’s no mouse control, and I had
some trouble with the graphics. On a PC with a Voodoo
Rush–based Intense 3D card, FFVII had a lot of
glitches in movement mode. With a Voodoo-based Righteous
3D card, it displayed a black screen during a number of
cut-scenes and all but the tail end of the sumptuous
rendered intro.
I guess even when the grass is
greener, you still have to deal with a few weeds. But not
so many, or so well rooted, as to wreck a charming, light
RPG.
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