Real-time turn-based combat?
The combat in Final Fantasy VII might appear limited at first. Your party can never have more than three characters and there are only six slots for enemies. A character can basically attack, cast a spell, or use an inventory item. But the fighting is played for quick thrills rather than in-depth tactics. "It's turn-based, but it's also real time. It's what we call real time turn-based combat," Fujimoto says with a laugh at the paradox. "In a typical turn-based game you make all your moves and say 'OK, I'm done' and then the other guy makes his moves. But in this system, as you're making your moves, if you run out of time, the other guy's going to get his attack in right away. It's a matter of how fast you can think and how fast you can make decisions." Thus the limited options fit in quite well with the pace of the game. There are settings that let you either pause the game when you're scrolling through long lists of spells and inventory items or that let you arrange the lists according to your preference between combats. Characters develop specialized attacks called Limit Breaks that allow them to make spectacular "critical hits" after they've sustained a certain amount of damage; each character learns new Limit Breaks as he or she acquires experience. But it's the spell system that's the most crucial factor in battles.
This system is different from other RPGs in its emphasis on gems of solid Mako called Materia. Rather than each character learning spells, Materia are found and purchased, then mounted on a character's weapon or armor. Each gives a character a spell-like power or ability, which is cultivated by use. For instance, mount a Fire Materia on Cloud's sword and he can cast a fire attack. Each time he does this, the Fire Materia racks up Ability Points, until it eventually allows him to cast a more powerful fire attack. This seems straightforward, but it starts to get complicated when you link Materia. Stick an All Materia alongside the Fire Materia, and Cloud's fire attack will hit all opponents in a battle. Stick an Elemental Materia next to it, and Cloud's sword will inflict fire damage when it hits. Mount the Fire Materia and Elemental Materia on Cloud's armor and he'll be protected from fire attacks. Some will give your characters special abilities such as stealing items, sensing an enemy's statistics, or taking control of an enemy. This system of acquiring, mixing, matching, and nurturing your favorite Materia adds a great deal of customization to battles and gameplay.
The conversion
The battles, drawn with richly textured and animated polygons, are where Final Fantasy VII pushes the hardware envelope. "The battle system has a huge amount of polygons in there and getting the frame rate up to what you see in the PlayStation is pretty difficult, even with 3D cards," says Fujimoto, "We're working right now on the hardware version to try to make it work on all the chipsets. After we finish that we'll take a look at a software rendering version. Getting a good frame rate on the software version, especially with all the big monsters and big summon spells in the battle system, is probably our biggest challenge."
Although the conversion team has only been working with Direct 3D so far, Final Fantasy VII will have native support for various chipsets. "We've had conversations with all the 3D companies and everybody's very willing to send their engineers down here to help us with porting to [3Dfx's] Glide or the Rendition RRedline or whatever. I assume we'll have that support. Starting next year [1998], we'll have their engineers in here to work in their native APIs." In light of all the polygons and lighting effects in the battle system, the software version will most likely have a steep hardware requirement. "At this point, probably a Pentium 200," admits Fujimoto, "I don't think it will run very well on a 166. This is kind of troubling for the European market. So we're thinking maybe we can lower the polygon count or modify the artwork."
No change is good
As for changes since the PlayStation version, Fujimoto admits there aren't many. "Our goal was to make it as identical as possible to the PlayStation version," he says, "We thought if we wanted to make some enhancements later on, if we had time, we could, but they'd be simple things like adding mouse support on some of the mini-games. We might do simple things like being able to type your name in instead of entering it in with a keypad. We're thinking about things right now like saved games; we're thinking it might be nice to be able to type in a description." As it is, Final Fantasy VII is restricted to the console's save game system, in which you can only save in certain places. This is a limitation of consoles that shouldn't have to carry over into PCs; save points are plentiful, but there are parts that are tense merely because you haven't been able to save for a while. As for translating the PlayStation's controller to a PC, Fujimoto feels the keyboard is generally adequate. "We have mouse support on Condor War [a Warcraft-like mini-game], where it's obvious the mouse is better. But just navigating through the world we find that the mouse doesn't really work too well; the keyboard works better there. But the best input is with a gamepad." Otherwise, the only changes will be a bit of cleaning up in the American localization of the game, where some misspellings and twisted idioms will be combed out of the PlayStation version.
Final Fantasy VII is a misnomer—this is obviously a series with some staying power. Its success on American PlayStations has proved that it's not merely a Japanese phenomenon, although it is undeniably a console RPG. But with the disappointing quality of PC RPGs of late, it should be a welcome addition to hard drives long starved for powerful stories and strong characters.
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