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Originally Posted by Ultra Mantis
It's a shame FF12's story and characters were abysmal, the monster hunter sidequest was better than the main game. Loved the detail they put into the bestiary too.
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I liked the fact that the characters weren't strictly shoehorned into "story intended" classes in 12. If you wanted to make Fran a badass, bunnyeared warrior princess, you could do that... granted you know which direction to unlock.
I agree with the sidequest being better than the game, though. It's also the only saving grace for 8 with me. I have yet to get "into" the title, because it didn't engage me from jump. I play the card game a few times at Balam, and then get bored and shut it off. Makes me wish they had Hope in that game. I wouldn't be missing anything. Incidentially, if 9 had Triple Triad and not that random-ass Tetra Master game and also toned down the random battle count a bit, it would make FFIX my favorite of all time (it's already close).
And the engaging part actually is one of the reasons for the popularity of 7. In fact, the story started the second you jump off the train. You're already kicking ass
Like Kt said, it was a justification for buying a Playstation along with Metal Gear and Resident Evil 2. "Well done" CG was relatively new, and that helped. Pumping polygons into what used to be a 2d affair helped. Extensive A-List marketing- something unheard of for RPGs, helped. A top notch score helped. Scope in terms of actual game size (OMG! IT'S THREE DISCS!!!) and content therein. Midgar was huge, you spend a huge chunk of time there, and THEN the whole damn world opens up for you. There's a bunch of shit to do on the side, like breed birds to ride, defend a mountain, and play in an arcade/casino. The characters you meet, for the most part, each had their own charm (though the optional two either had that stereotypical Japanese "cute girl with spirit" that's honestly fucking annoying, and the brooding badass that you find by accident that only has minor stake in the plot if you even find him).
About that flower girl: true, it wasn't the first game to kill off people- major people (For example: Crystalis, anyone? First one that got me... MULTIPLE important people got slaughtered at a point 3/4ths through the game; it even rendered one of your abilities USELESS) Yeah, Aeris/Aerith's death affected a lot of people... but that's partially because they actually made her a bound character. You see her from jump. You spend half the game "protecting" her and setting up a love triangle between her, Cloud, and Tits McPuncheverything. You didn't really expect her to go all Obi-Wan mid-game. The other part to that is the fact that she gets a bad-ass weapon early on you can jam full of materia, so that feeling of loss was amplified when all that grinding went to waste.
I will agree that Final Fantasy VII being an untouchable sacred cow is a bit much, it had its flaws like the control scheme changing from fixed screen to fixed screen and unskippable summons (first 3 times you see Knights of the Round after doing all that shit to get it is AWESOME, around the 10th time, you almost don't want to use it anymore unless you're about to go make a sandwich) but it was a game changer in ways that GTA3 or Halo would eventually be.
If Square were to follow their own logic, they would have to somehow do the same thing again. But when you've already done something as monumental as bring RPG's to the forefront and make them as "cool" as action platformers (at the time), make the jump from 2d to 3d, and have a story that keeps people from beginning to end, how do you "improve" upon that? The remake would NEVER come to light.
That was way more than I intended to write. -_-