Originally Posted by John McClane
Oh boy, you just did it now. I tell you there are several perfect games, but I will only tell you the one that had no downs the entire time you played it. Final Fantasy VII. Unless you played it, don't say there isn't a perfect game.
No Johnny, there is no perfect game, or everyone would be playing it, and only it. FF VII wasn't even close to perfect. It had MANY problems, but was so revolutionary it just didn't matter.
Consider these things about FF VII:
Pre-rendered backgrounds you couldn't interact with much
A steep learning curve for the materia system that turned a lot of gamers off (I loved it myself, but it did take some time to get the hang of things)
A ridiculously confusing storyline. I loved the story, but it certainly wasn't a clear narrative. I have seen many, many complaints about the story being to vague/convoluted. I don't really agree, but I spent a lot of time with the game and really got into it. If I had just sort of casually played the game, I would have been lost with the story. There are sites dedicated to explaining the plot, and they have pages and pages of random story threads, unfinished parts of the story, and stuff that still isn't explained. I enjoy a complex plot, but this was ridiculous. Jenova, Safer Sepharoth, Lucretia and Vincent, Bugehagen, Cloud's personality disorder, and on and on and on... I comend the writers for compiing so many ideas into one game, but you really need to play through it multiple times to get everything. And No way was I sitting through the whole thing more than twice. I must say I did really get into the story the second time through, and it is one of the best RPG stories, if not THE best ever. It just could be executed better.
Random battles - This facet of RPG games is now finally being phased out by game developers, and it's about time. Random battles = useless and annoying. I enjoyed the combat system in FFVII big time, but not enough to fight every five seconds while trying to explore. After I had completed the game, A frind of mine and I started it over and ran from exactly 4 out of 5 random battles, and our characters ended up just as powerful at the end, because you got such minimum experience from all the random battles for the first 3/4 of the game. I guess we just got sick of the battle music.
Summons - Although the summons were one of the cooler facets of the game, they got OLD. How many times could you watch Bahamut? Knights of the Round? I could make lunch while Knights of the Round was going off, and don't get me started on that spell Sepheroth used at the end. I think it took about 40 second for the animation to go off...40 seconds!! Every time he would do the spell, which was a lot, I would groan and fly to Zimbabwe and back. The final battle was SO monotonous. Square/Enix now has a "short mode" for the summons in the newer FF games, which is a good thing, and shows that clearly, there was a problem.
Ruby/Emerald Weapon - I hated these guys. But they weren't required to win so it isn't that big of a complaint. Still, more endless summon spells while I took naps in between. Yawn.
I feel that FFVII is one of the best RPGs ever made, but it by no stretch of the imagination, perfect. One of my favorites of all time though.
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