FINAL FANTASY VII

                 Reviewed by Stefan Herber

Perhaps I should have completed this game before submitting the
review but I must be at least two thirds through by now by now so
I suppose I've played more of it than most commercial reviewers.

Us veterans of RPGs should be ever grateful to Eidos and the
manufacturers as Final Fantasy was of course the game that revived
the RPG in terms of commercial success and has led to the current
spate of games in this genre either being released or in the
planning stage. Does that mean it's any good however?

Well first things first. Is it an RPG?  I suppose so - characters
have stats (though I don't think you have any direct control over
them); you can buy and sell goods; magic is important; you do have
some control over the makeup of your party, though this is
restricted to who you can choose at specific intervals, and
there's plenty of stat-increasing combat. Generation of characters
and their skill advancement appears to be automatic unless I've
missed something.

What are the positives (so far)? The storyline is superb and
gripping and although futuristic includes all manner of monsters
never seen in an RPG before.  Combat is relatively easy except
against some of the bigger bosses where a specific strategy needs
to be formed - unfortunately there's no way of knowing whether
your spells will destroy or cure the specific beast.
Characterisation is at a level only seen in the later Ultima
games - that is praise enough. But..

Yes there are many downsides. Firstly the control system:  for
those of us more or less used to using a mouse this is very
fiddly. Indeed although I bought the game some time back my first
few attempts at playing it were aborted by this feature. I even
purchased a joypad which made things even worse. One has to be
exactly in the right place to open doors, manipulate objects etc.
- this is reminiscent of the bad old days of early graphic
adventures. Secondly the graphics - they are very much of the
Manga cartoon style but there are a number of FMV sequences which
I found very disappointing. How the magazine reviewers can slate
games like M&M6 for poor graphics and rave over this I don't know.
I personally am not too bothered by the standard of graphics in a
game but the criticism remains.

It's also very easy. Does that have something to do with its
Playstation background? There will probably be people out there
coming to lynch me for saying so but I associate the Playstation
as being a medium for children and teenagers with suitable
software to match while the PC is supposed to be for us
"grown-ups" (psychologists will probably say that us fans of RPGs
never grew up, but that's another argument entirely.)

All told however the very strong original plot and characters have
kept me absorbed despite the controls and after all that's what
RPGs and adventures are supposed to be about. I therefore can
recommend it to all lovers of the genre.

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