That's what I don't get. Like I said earlier as well, either, they have never played the game, played the game but never payed attention to the storyline, or they are just crazy.

^^^

i'd disagree that FFVII's graphics weren't its strong point and i'd disagree about the monkey in FFIX.

Give me a list of games made in FFVII's first year out and point out ANY that had better graphics. None.

FFIX was, in my opinion , the 2nd best game ever made in the FF series. The emotions playing that game where phenomenal. The graphics were nice for the time and the game went back to the origins of FF, what with the job-system tie in.

Just my 2 cents..

Its definitely one of the best in the FF series. The storyline was great, the music was amazing and the graphics.. well, I find it cute.

I have pretty much played them all, and every time I come back to FFVII

Hey guys and gals, I'm new here, but I can't resist offering up my own take on FFVII.

I don't know if I love FFVII so much because it was the first game in the series that I ever played, or if my memories of the experience really are true, but I just can't bring myself to say that there has been a better game than that one.

The Materia System was fun, difficult, and offered plenty of strategy in a time when the most popular games offered none. I had never seen such a thing before in my life, and I was awestruck at the potential of it. I imagined an inventory full of mastered materia, and the power I could wield against my enemies.

The gameplay itself was brilliant. I never had a problem with the random battles--though today, after playing 12's ADB system, it would be hard to go back to it--and I thought it added a sense of urgency and immediacy to every fight. Though random encounters lasted, I believe, all the way through FFX, FFVII somehow perfected the feeling of monsters sneaking up on you. I loved the ATB system, and never found a flaw in it. It never took away from the game, as FFXII's sometimes does.

I also loved how the developers led you to believe the game was linear as you progressed through Midgar, until you fatefully stepped outside it's borders, and into the giant Sandbox world...just...wow.

And of course, there's the storyline...wow, again.

I just never imagined a video game could be so deep. Cloud's struggles seemed at first to be nothing more than that of a frustrated former soldier who had been reduced to mercenary-for-hire status. But as the story progressed, I was thrown for a loop too many times after to count. From the idea that Shinra was actually as bad as Avalanch actually said they were--much worse, even--to the realization that Cloud was in fact never an elite member of SOLDIER, but a nervous rookie who could barely keep his pants dry...it all hit me like any classic twist in literature or cinema.

I still think that Sephiroth stands as the greatest villian to ever grace a video game. The unfortunate aspect of Sephiroth's reign of terror was that it was largely unrealized. I think while he had his destructive moments, Sephiroth should have been able to bring more havoc upon the land than he actually did. If there was one complaint about the mythos of FFVII, it would be that the people of the world do not ever truly know the face of their attacker, and never truly understand just how badass a man they were dealing with.

The only disappointing aspect of the game experience--to me, at least, and it did leave me quite upset--was the ending. I won't go into detail, because there are those of you reading this who have yet to beat it, I'm sure, but I just wish there had been more finality to it, especially considering that the game never spawned a direct sequal.

It pulled a "Sopranos" ten years before The Sopranos did!

Since FFVII, the games have grown more complex in both graphics and gameplay (and most recently, story) and in my opinion, all but one or two of the games have improved the gameplay. But none of them have, at least in my mind, gripped me the way VII's story did. It was more character-driven than the rest (though there was impending planetary doom) and I felt more connected to the characters in VII than any other that followed.

I think it helped tremendously that you could name the characters yourself. That is an underrated aspect of the game, and the biggest casualty of the voice-over era.

The only game, in my opinion, that can stand up storyline-wise to VII is X. I know it's probably cliche at this point to say that, but I believe it to be true. While I was eventually impressed by VIII, and awestruck by the scope of XII (I HATED IX, by the way. Just a piss-poor effort), the only other game that made me care about the characters was X. I really wanted to know more about Tidus, and Auron's character and story were brilliant. The whole world felt doomed, and I don't think there has ever been a more feared, more destructive, more legendary force in video games than the entity Sin. It was as perfect an effort as Square could give.

And although I loved the game, it still just didn't have the ring to it that VII did. Something about VII touched me deeply, and made me absolutely love every character in it. I modeled Cloud after myself, drawing parallels between us; my secret affection for a girl named Jen played as my own personal backstory to Yuffie; Aries, to me, was the sweet and lovely hippie girl named Nicole that I loved so very much; Barrett was my large friend Rich, who was quite similar to the real thing; Red XIII was given the namesake of my lost dog, Little Bit (A Great Dane standing at over 6' tall); and even Cait-Sith pulled enough of my heart strings to earn the name of my beloved Cat, Beeflet.

VII was the greatest videogame accomplishment thusfar.