A month ago, I couldnt care less for a company named Squaresoft. A month ago, i had absolutely no idea who is Nobuo Uematsu. A mont ago, I laughed at Japanese and Chinese culture, because all I could think of was stupid kung-fu flics. As from today, Squaresoft is my favorite computer games producing company, Nobuo Uematsu is far the best game-music composer and stupid kung-fu flics are NOT a sign of eastern-Asian culture. I never thought I could fall for any game like this (and expecially not now, when the games are getting dumber and Im not into ´em like before), but in the case of Squaresoft´s Final Fantasy VII it just cant be helped.

The Final Fantasy series is legendary. The first three games were for the Nintendo console, the next three for SuperNintendo. The seventh game was for Sony Playstation only, just a year ago, but ( THANKYOU, EIDOS) it had been converted for PC format as well. Well, that aint much of a surprise, since on the first day of Playstation version sale 120 THOUSAND !!!! of copies were sold. In short, Final Fantasy VII is the best selling game for Playstaion of all times, so Eidos interactive moved fast and bought the PC conversion rights. That is great, but it has one problem (and thats the only thing I can think of, and not say, that its perfect) - EIDOS programmers are lazy sons of bitches (ok, ok..maybe not) !!! On many computers the game wont even run. The hardware requirements are inadequate. The FMVs (full motion video) were left as they were (that means resolution is about 320x200). Eidos apparently forgot, that PC can handle high resolution videos with no problems. Music is only MIDI. That means worse quality and larger system usage than usually. The final blow is the controls layout and menus. But dont get me wrong ! All that I just said, doesnt affect the game AT ALL ( with the exception of the horrible sound system ). The music is still beautyful, so are the FMVs and the controls and menus are very convenient .But the truth is, that if Eidos didnt just copy the entire game and make a few TECHNICAL changes instead, Id be even more happy (well, i doubt I could be more happy about this game). Now for the game itself.

I had a strange feeling, that this game is going to be different, already during installation :-) During the installation, you can hear Prelude, the first sign of music perfection. The intro is very different from other games´ intros. It doesnt tell you anything, but it shows the mystical aspect of the game. Youll find out about the story during the game. All I´ll say is the tiny part of the story, which is written on the game´s cover. You play a young guy called...eh...well, you can choose the names of the main characters....he´s called Cloud as a default. Cloud joined a resistance group called AVALANCHE. AVALANCHE wants to destroy an evil company called Shinra INC, because its slowly devastating the Planet (propably Earth). In the beginning Cloud is just a mercenary. He does everything for money. But as the story unfolds, things get personal and he goes thru a change of heart, like noone else before. Now, this is just a TINY LITTLE part of the whole story. the story is the best part of the game. I cant describe it enough, because its SOO epic. You visit so many places, meet so many people. You get into space, underwater, in the center of the Planet, in a HUGE casino-like city, on the north pole and much much more. The story is far the best story ive ever seen, not only in a game, but also in a book or a movie. You will meet up to nince characters that join you in your quest. The tough Barret, beautyful Aeris, caring Tifa, always swearing Cid, brave dog-like (a hound !!) Red XII, odd Caith Sith, mysterious Vincent and young ninja Yuffie (i havent met her, though). The communication with those characters is the key aspect of the game. I asure you, that you WILL care about all your party members. They all have their own personalities and VERY complicated personalities. I dont take games seriously..i laugh when I play Carmageddon, i laugh when i read walktrhough for Harvester. But this game is so strong that it really made me feel everything. During the game i went thru every emotion i know of and it was for real.

The game itself is mix between my favorite genres. Role playing game and Adventure. Its more a RPG, though. Every person in your party has several chatacteristics, which rise by gathering experience points. You gain experience points in hundreds of battles youll get into. Very interesting is how much your characteristics will rise thru the game. At the end of the game i had 260 times !!! more health points that in the beginning. Thats what I call an advance...hehe. The battles are randomly generated. That means that you are wandering around the world map and suddenly the games stops and throws you in the battle mode. Battle mode is the only place ( and Chocobo racing, of course :-)), where its better if you have some good 3d accelarotor ( like Voodoo(2) or RivaTNT(128) chipset cards). The battle system is pretty revolutionary. Its half real time and half turn based. Depending to your equipment, you can do several things during one turn, like attack with your weapon, cast attack or curative magic, steal things from your enemies, sense their statistics and many other things. The graphical design of the battles is very good. The camera is floating and it always shows the plan from the most dramatic angle, so you have a movie-like feeling. The visual effects are state of the art. Turok and Incoming were the #1 games, when it comes to visual effects, but some spells from FFVII top those two games. Especially summon spells like Neo Bahamut ( ground beneath your enemies gets ripped off and floats up. The ceiling shreds open, letting blinding light rays on the battle plan. You see the enemies float up above the clouds, where they meet a HUGE and beautyful red dragon Bahamut. After a while he opnes his mouth and awesome rays of energy start forming by his head, then the screen fades to white and you hear a powerfull blast. Then you see a huge flame frying your enemies. Then the floating chunk of ground collapses and it sends them falling back down ). At the end your enemy uses the ultimate summon spell, which sends a comet to our solar system destroying !!! all planets even SUN !!! Enemies youll encounter vary from usual RPG adversaries (like goblins, dragons, human soliders, electronic guards) to very extraordinary ones ( walking light bulbs !! cactuses !!!! live pumpkins ?!!!). Everyone in the battle is neatly made up from many polygons and is also nicely animated.

The non-battle part of the game is devided between two modes. The first one is world map traveling, where you can freely save your game. You see Cloud from high above and you lead him through the huge world. The world is devided into several continents and you cant get on all of them from the beginning. When you reach one of many special locations like various cities, villages, mines and so, the game switches to another mode. If youve played games like Alone in the dark or Little big adventure, you know how this mode looks like. You see your party ( well, you see only Cloud, who represents the whole party) from various angles as it moves through BEAUTYFULY rendered locations. The game takes place in fantasy-techno enviroment ( swords, magic and middle age architecture combined with cyberpunk weapons, buildings and vehicles) Even if those backgrounds are in lo-res, like in the Playstation version, they are truly state-of-the-art. Some are even animated and few of them are even made out of a video clip ( those backgrounds ruin the computer´s performance, though :-) ). The characters are made in typical Japanese anime style (manga).Very often the game swithces to self controlling mode, like a video, but all made in the game´s engine, therefore no disc space is needed, like in case of FMVs. This no need for space lets the game include hundreds of these "videos".

Full motion video is another awesome feature of the game. Even if the files are in AVI format ( MPG would be much better) and in low resolution, the videos themselves are truly magnificent. First of all, the movies are working great together with the rendered backgrounds. You wont recognise the switch from the video to the game. The movies are rendered very good. The rendering doesnt seem unnatural, like in most of the games. Those were the technical aspects. The movies themselves are even better and what more, in my opinion they are the best FMVs ive seen. Monumental, thrilling, breathtaking. Those are just few words to describe the videos. When I saw FMVs like Junon assault, Sister ray VS The Weapon, Sepiroth´s descent into the flames, Escape from Shinra HQ and most of all the awesome outro ( the AVI file of the outro is 146 MB big !!!! thats almost a fourth of one CD !). The game stretches itself on 4 CD´s. The first CD includes the game itself (sounds, music, graphics, program) and on the remaining 3 CDs are FMVs. That means over 60 minutes of video files. In short, AWESOME.

Sounds are very disappointing feature of the game. It sends me to old Nintendo times. What a shame. Some battle commands, like summoning or some monumental spells could have great sound effects, no doubt. Oh well. On the other side, THE MUSIC IS EXTATIC. Unfortunately, Eidos seems to like Midi format. This format sounds good only on professional soundcards (I do not have anything like that), so many people wont appreciate this move. At least, Eidos made a deal with Yamaha software, which made a new software emulator of professional Midi soundcards exclusively for Final Fantasy VII. The program is awesome, thats true. My midis sound very cool, now. But it also overloads the system, making it very slow. So, if you wanna play the game with midis handled by the Yamaha driver, you better have a really good PC ( like PII and 64 or 128 megs of RAM). Technically, the music could have been managed better ( like CD-audio format). When you look at the music from the artistic point of view, the situation is completely different. The composer Nobuo Uematsu made the music for all Final Fantasy games and I hope he keeps on composing it for next FF games. When you hear tracks like FF theme, FF prelude, Tifa´s theme, Aeris´s theme, Holding memories in our hearts, Chocobo race, Blooming flowers in the church, One winged angel and much much more, you must agree, that Nobuo Uematsu is T-H-E C-O-M-P-O-S-E-R. Soon after the game release there were released 3 !! soundtracks for the game. The OST, which is incredibly a 4CD set !!!. The Reunion soundtrack, which includes best tracks from OST plus Theme, Aeris´s theme and One winged angel in orchestral versions. I love those tracks. The orchestrated theme is the best instrumental song (together with Twin Peaks theme :-), in my opinion. As I said for the FMVs. In short, AWESOME.

Thats just about it. I could talk about this game for hours, but I think Ive said enough. I´ll just write down some miscellanious facts.

• The game is (if you take only the part you actively play, not something like Daggerfall, where you stumble across the land for days and the story doesnt develop at all) propably the biggest, as well. It has a real time counter and my time was 48 hours (I played it three weeks, i was pretty fast). Yeah, this sounds like " what ? that is supposed to be long ?", but take in mind that I was following the story, i wasnt wandering around (to train my party members, catch Chocobos, etc.). So you could just think of it as you were in a cinema watching a fantastic movie, with the best story youve ever experienced, and this movie was 44 hours long !!! (and you would enjoy every last moment of it) ( Ive substracted 4 hours, which i spent traveling, fighting and the time I left the game, when I needed to do something, but the counter kept on timing.)
• Lots of prestigeous computer gaming magazines have praised this game and some of them gave it " Game of the month/year/ OF ALL TIMES " awards
• FF VIII is on the way. I´m gonna buy it as soon as it gets here, theres no question about that. Square soft. released a playable demo for the Playstation already. Ss president also said, that FFVIII is going to be much better than FVII ( that means better storyline and techincal part of the game). I find it hard to believe, because FFVII is a game of my dreams. I really cant think of anything better. But, if it actually IS better than FFVII, i think im gonna be outta reach for SOME TIME (its supposed to be much bigger than FFVII) or maybe Ill die by the PC (with a smile on my face, of course), who knows :-)
• You can download all the midis and few MP3s at this site : Music files

I cant rate this game, like I couldnt rate The Best of... by U2. I have the same reason, id have to go higher than the maximum rating. Oh well. I hope I make a review of something I dont adore THIS much.