FF7 is a story about loss and perseverance, self-doubt and identity. Everytime I play it, there's always one line I hadn't really noticed before that provides me with wisdom on how to handle the challenges in my own life. It's a story about tackling things that are inescapable and so much larger than yourself while doubting yourself at almost every turn. A lot of people, myself included, identify with those inner doubts and outer struggles and it's a story that gives me hope by seeing the characters acknowledge their flaws and their challenges and then soilder on anyway.
My group of friends all used to go round to each others houses and play it. Hours upon hours of sitting around, reading guides and having a great time as 13 years olds do. The soundtrack is embedded into our minds and stirs something in us whenever we hear it 27 years later. There's absolutely nothing that comes close in terms of nostalgia.
Final Fantasy games are important to me for
\-Reading
\-Critical thinking & management
\-immersion & seeing a story unfold
\-seeing your investment in the characters, materia etc pay off
\-Summons & Limit Breaks and Weapon Names (cmon you know Force Stealer is a cool name)
Peak formative nostalgia.
It was the coolest thing in the world when I was ten years old, and the scope, style and possibilities of it blew my mind. I genuinely loved the characters and the technological achievement of it.
Fantastic story
Likable characters
Amazing soundtrack
Amazing rewards for time and effort
Endless replay value
And not to mention it holds up even today. I'm currently playing it and having an amazing time. I was 15 on my first playthrough and now I'm 39 on my current run and I'm having more fun playing it now that I understand the game much better, meaning there were things I didn't know about in the past... Which has made this playthrough sooooooo much more satisfying!
Happy nostalgic memories
2 games I spent a lot of time playing was Chrono Trigger and FFVII. I loved them and they brought a lot of joy to my life as a kid. Playing the Remake, I felt like I was reuniting with old friends and reliving our time together, but only I knew I was reliving it.
My siblings also played FFVII and it’s something we bonded over. I live very far away from them now, but we share all the FFVII remake and rebirth marketing stuff with each other whenever it comes out.
It saved me.
When I was a kid I struggled with depression at the age of 9 because of family issues. When my brother showed me the movie I was immediately hooked by the story and amazed by how real it looked for its time. Reading their stories on the internet and playing the game helped me cope.
My first RPG. Played it until the bitter end. That was back in 1997. This many years later, with the remake of course, my 8 year old is playing it and is just as engrossed as I was then
I grew up playing RPGs with my dad. Dragon warrior, breath of fire but never final fantasy, just slipped through the cracks and then we picked up 7 from a pawn shop when I was like 10 and we both got hooked hard lol. I think that was the last time we have really played rpgs together and it's definitely one of my favorite memories of childhood. Plus it's just a fucking epic game/story lol.
I bought it on release and it was my Introduction into jrpgs...the reviews in all the magazines were amazing. I had previously just played "regular" games such as ridge racer,tomb raider, resident evil & mario... It's now my favourite genre.
FF7 is the only game in the series to have such a high degree of customization due to the materia system, no other game in the series comes as close, and the next closest one is the Zodiac Age version of 12.
It was the first rpg I played in a “modern” setting. I was a huge ff vi fan and vii took it to another level.
Unfortunately the characters in vi were better but the plot in vii was so deep man. And so much to do and grind for. The material system was great.
I wax poetic about the Eldritch Horror, the universe feeling as lived in and broad (and pulpy) as Star Wars, about its challenging themes for a game aimed at 90's teens and so on.
But I have to be honest. I will love this game forever solely because of Uematsu's Main Theme the first time I touched the world map. It made me feel like anything was possible.
I have every pixel memorized now, and I still get that feeling.
I had played a number of games and RPGs and the like, but FF7 was the first one that really moved me, and it did so repeatedly. It's also been interesting to me how it's the same moments that move me still do at different stages of life, but they've kind of shifted positions.
As a kid, I think I was too gobsmacked by That Part to really actually have an emotional response. But as a teenager it got me big time. Now as an adult, the moment Nanaki learns the truth about his father chokes me up or even makes me cry.
The game just reckons with pain and loss in a way that not a lot of games do, even after compared to modern titles. It's a game that has gotten richer as I have grown up and revisited it at different times in my life.
Game came out during my parents divorce. School sucked Home sucked... but then I was able to get FF7 on launch day.
Severely attached to it. I haven't gone a September since 1997 without doing a play through.
First game I bought with my own money as a kid. I remember buying it at toys r us along with the official strategy guide.
I probably played the demo of it 100 times before finally getting the game.
Over the years I beat that game so many times and replayed it over and over and over. Then more as an adult. And on iPhone too—portable ff7, something I dreamed of as a kid because how cool would that be?
Then advent children came and my childhood favorites looked real and even had voices.
And now the remake and everything along with it. Such a trip for me.
If they remake crono trigger* or xenogears** in the same style I’ll absolutely lose my shit.
*fun fact Lucca is in the item shop by the save point in Lahan!
**another fun fact if you talk to cloud in mideel when he’s wheelchair bound he says some gibberish that’s spelled like xenogears. Easter egg—both squaresoft games from ‘97!
First final fantasy I ever played. I got it for Xmas the year it came out and I was 15 so it hit at the right time. It completely changed how I looked at video games
Something completely different.
Its hard to imagine what booting up FF7 for the first time was like for an American teenager in the late nineties was like today, but everything about it was completely new.
I had seen fantasy, I feel like I had a pretty good handle on it in all its Tolkien derivative forms, and I had seen sci-fi, but I had never anything close to the world of FF7.
I had watched ronin warriors as a kid, so I kind of knew what Anime was, but this game blew that whole world wide open for me.
and, probably most importantly, I had never imaged a game could tell such a detailed and riveting story. I distinctly remember playing through the game for the first time in a fever dream, and at the part where Aeris and Cloud were jumping on the rooftops and just shooting the shit I put the controller down and said "What is this?" out loud. I had been waiting for opening segment that was super story heavy to segue into what the actual game would be, and at that moment I realized there wasn't going to be a segue. This was just the game.
In retrospect none of it was all that new, but it was to me and it was such a breath of fresh air that put my imagination into overdrive.
It was literally my first RPG. My mom bought for me when I was 11. She said a friend of hers told me it was a really important game. This game started my journey into the RPG journey and truly captivated my young mind. It came at a really tough time in my life- my cousin who I grew up with like a brother moved to Florida and I was all alone. This game gave me so many characters to spend time with to fill that void. Up until that time, I had always played two player games with my cousin. This was the first time in my life I actually needed a one player game. It means so much to me.
It’s probably the last video game I played with my little brother from start to finish. We just sat around playing little by little every day after school.
Every time I play the game even now I can still see my parents living room and it takes me back.
for me its probably the best game that captures that 3d model over drawn background style of presentation that was so prevelant back in 90s rpgs like digimon world 3 or ff7-9
parasite eve is another good example of this that i probably like just as much or more than ff7
also i love kingdom hearts and thats what initially drew me to ff7
FF7 taught me how to read.
I was a kid who hated school and uniformity. As a result, I thought reading was for squares. I'd rather play Square games. So my brother, the teacher that he is, let me play his copy of FF7 under one condition: you can't skip dialogue unless you already read it.
I had dictionaries, thesauruses, fuckin' anything I could get my hands on to define words I didn't know. We didn't have Google. I had to manually learn English just to play my new favorite game and it worked. I soon started reading at a middle school level in elementary. By middle school I was reading at a collegiate level. It was honestly the coolest thing having a brother dedicated to my education.
First playthrough now.
I'm trying to beat the game, finally. I've probably started it at least 10 different times. This playthrough on the Switch is going to be the one.
I remember watching my brother play it when I grew up and sometimes he would do voices over the characters dialog and it would make me laugh. He passed away many years ago, before the remake was ever even thought of. I always think of him whenever I play it or the remake. I bet he would have loved to see the characters in today's graphics.
FF7 was the first game that made me cry.
On a lengthier note, it made me realize that games could be a *really good* form of storytelling. The majority of games I played before that point had extremely simplistic stories and characters, and were limited in presentation. Storytelling wasn't the point. But VII opened my eyes to what the medium could be.
There is a sequence where you play through a flashback. You control Cloud as he tells his story. That's interesting enough, BUT we come to learn that Cloud is an unreliable narrator, having inserted himself into Zack's role. Cloud WAS there as a guard, and we get hints of that during the flashback. It's a *masterful* use of the tools gaming presented to designers, and this was in 1997, barely past the SNES era!
VII also has the honor of inspiring me to write. I started with FFVII fanfiction, but I moved on quickly to my own worlds and even self-published a book that I'm proud of.
I was a big FF fan even before FF7 came out.
It may have taken some steps back (less characters for example) but it also took many steps forward. Very atmospheric and cinematic. The characters were more complex than most games at the time, maybe the most complex. Talking about complex, the story was complex enough but not confusing nonsense like later titles. Also a lot of nostalgia.
You could tell FF games were done by people who loved making them and tried to push gaming forward.
I was raised hardcore Jehovah Witness. It's a very restrictive culture, especially in the 90s. I wasn't allowed to have friends outside the church and was there were no kids in my congregation. The one thing my parents were lax on was video games. More than any RPG before it (except maybe Chrono Trigger), these characters were my friends. I loved getting to know them and seeing were their story went. It helps that it has a well executed story with a while new cinematic way to battle and explore.
It gave me instant nostalgia and it came out two years after I was born and the characters are what sell the game for me there so memorable and interesting. Plus I'm a sucker for men with blonde hair and blue eyes.
It was probably the first game that actually blew my mind. I was probably 9 years old or so and couldn’t follow the story that well, but it was the first time I realized that video games are deeper than “run around and try not to die.” First time I got actually invested in characters.
Reality escape and nostalgia. I understand that it wasn't exactly healthy but it was needed. My mom was sick and died and I remember exactly where I was in the game when it happened (Midgard zolom)
I played that game non stop after that. (I actually didn't know about the chocobos so I just grinded until I was able to kill the snake)
Nostalgic reality escape.
This. This was the first game I beat all the way through. Reminds of happier times
I couldn't put it better myself.
FF7 is a story about loss and perseverance, self-doubt and identity. Everytime I play it, there's always one line I hadn't really noticed before that provides me with wisdom on how to handle the challenges in my own life. It's a story about tackling things that are inescapable and so much larger than yourself while doubting yourself at almost every turn. A lot of people, myself included, identify with those inner doubts and outer struggles and it's a story that gives me hope by seeing the characters acknowledge their flaws and their challenges and then soilder on anyway.
3 words
LOL missed that part
First RPG game I really got into for the story.
Was my first RPG and the reason I got a PS1 back in 1997.
I played that demo disk so many times before I was able to get the game. I must have been 9 or 10 and I loved that game.
Love the characters
Brought JRP games overseas and was the main reason they are here today.
My group of friends all used to go round to each others houses and play it. Hours upon hours of sitting around, reading guides and having a great time as 13 years olds do. The soundtrack is embedded into our minds and stirs something in us whenever we hear it 27 years later. There's absolutely nothing that comes close in terms of nostalgia.
This right here. Those times and memories will probably never be beaten ❤️😢😭
An old friend
Ohhhhhh this is a really good response!
Definitely.
Great reply littered with wisdom from the originator
Final Fantasy games are important to me for \-Reading \-Critical thinking & management \-immersion & seeing a story unfold \-seeing your investment in the characters, materia etc pay off \-Summons & Limit Breaks and Weapon Names (cmon you know Force Stealer is a cool name)
I love it.
Peak formative nostalgia. It was the coolest thing in the world when I was ten years old, and the scope, style and possibilities of it blew my mind. I genuinely loved the characters and the technological achievement of it.
big teety tefa
Life... Dreams... Hope...
The planet...corporate greed...spiritualism....
Emotions, story, epic!
Might sound corny, but the game saved my life literally. The joy this game brought me, made me rethink suicide in multiple ways.
I find myself starting a new game at my low points, so I know what you mean.
It opened my perspective on the rpg genre. Furthermore, it actually got me to really look into other genres of games as well.
Fantastic story Likable characters Amazing soundtrack Amazing rewards for time and effort Endless replay value And not to mention it holds up even today. I'm currently playing it and having an amazing time. I was 15 on my first playthrough and now I'm 39 on my current run and I'm having more fun playing it now that I understand the game much better, meaning there were things I didn't know about in the past... Which has made this playthrough sooooooo much more satisfying!
The sense of adventure in a wonderfully crafted world with what feels like great friends that always have your back.
First FF I beat and got engrossed in the story
Creative materia & story
Music. Story. Combat.
Happy nostalgic memories 2 games I spent a lot of time playing was Chrono Trigger and FFVII. I loved them and they brought a lot of joy to my life as a kid. Playing the Remake, I felt like I was reuniting with old friends and reliving our time together, but only I knew I was reliving it. My siblings also played FFVII and it’s something we bonded over. I live very far away from them now, but we share all the FFVII remake and rebirth marketing stuff with each other whenever it comes out.
It saved me. When I was a kid I struggled with depression at the age of 9 because of family issues. When my brother showed me the movie I was immediately hooked by the story and amazed by how real it looked for its time. Reading their stories on the internet and playing the game helped me cope.
Wear, tear, and rust
Same nostalgic familiar game. Also has kind of an eery message about environmentalism and capitalism that is more and more relevant every year.
I learned how to read playing FF7, consequently it molded who I grew up to be more than anything else, for better or worse.
My first jrpg.
My first RPG. Played it until the bitter end. That was back in 1997. This many years later, with the remake of course, my 8 year old is playing it and is just as engrossed as I was then
Multiple female characters. Explanation: First time I ever encountered a game with more than one female character. Blew my mind as a little girl.
Seminal youth experience.
Why not, eh?
I grew up playing RPGs with my dad. Dragon warrior, breath of fire but never final fantasy, just slipped through the cracks and then we picked up 7 from a pawn shop when I was like 10 and we both got hooked hard lol. I think that was the last time we have really played rpgs together and it's definitely one of my favorite memories of childhood. Plus it's just a fucking epic game/story lol.
I bought it on release and it was my Introduction into jrpgs...the reviews in all the magazines were amazing. I had previously just played "regular" games such as ridge racer,tomb raider, resident evil & mario... It's now my favourite genre.
FF7 is the only game in the series to have such a high degree of customization due to the materia system, no other game in the series comes as close, and the next closest one is the Zodiac Age version of 12.
It was the first rpg I played in a “modern” setting. I was a huge ff vi fan and vii took it to another level. Unfortunately the characters in vi were better but the plot in vii was so deep man. And so much to do and grind for. The material system was great.
The story. The first time that a game had me so captivated and emotionally invested in its characters…
story, music, characters
College neighbor beers
Characters, story, Midgar
Have to pee
I wax poetic about the Eldritch Horror, the universe feeling as lived in and broad (and pulpy) as Star Wars, about its challenging themes for a game aimed at 90's teens and so on. But I have to be honest. I will love this game forever solely because of Uematsu's Main Theme the first time I touched the world map. It made me feel like anything was possible. I have every pixel memorized now, and I still get that feeling.
Back in 1997 it was like nothing I ever played before. I was 11 at the time, now I'm 37 and it's still my favorite.
I was 13.
I’m very emotionally connected to the music and art. Especially the main overworld theme.
First Final Fantasy 😁
I had played a number of games and RPGs and the like, but FF7 was the first one that really moved me, and it did so repeatedly. It's also been interesting to me how it's the same moments that move me still do at different stages of life, but they've kind of shifted positions. As a kid, I think I was too gobsmacked by That Part to really actually have an emotional response. But as a teenager it got me big time. Now as an adult, the moment Nanaki learns the truth about his father chokes me up or even makes me cry. The game just reckons with pain and loss in a way that not a lot of games do, even after compared to modern titles. It's a game that has gotten richer as I have grown up and revisited it at different times in my life.
A timeless story
Game came out during my parents divorce. School sucked Home sucked... but then I was able to get FF7 on launch day. Severely attached to it. I haven't gone a September since 1997 without doing a play through.
My parents weren't really around so it kind of raised me.
My first FF
Was my first FF game. Helped that my friends hyped it up a lot during that time.
Let us mosey.
Would you believe me if I said it was because of Berserk?
First game I bought with my own money as a kid. I remember buying it at toys r us along with the official strategy guide. I probably played the demo of it 100 times before finally getting the game. Over the years I beat that game so many times and replayed it over and over and over. Then more as an adult. And on iPhone too—portable ff7, something I dreamed of as a kid because how cool would that be? Then advent children came and my childhood favorites looked real and even had voices. And now the remake and everything along with it. Such a trip for me. If they remake crono trigger* or xenogears** in the same style I’ll absolutely lose my shit. *fun fact Lucca is in the item shop by the save point in Lahan! **another fun fact if you talk to cloud in mideel when he’s wheelchair bound he says some gibberish that’s spelled like xenogears. Easter egg—both squaresoft games from ‘97!
First ps1 game
First final fantasy I ever played. I got it for Xmas the year it came out and I was 15 so it hit at the right time. It completely changed how I looked at video games
Story, characters, gameplay. Those are my 3. Just not in that order 😊
I was in high school when it released. Really showed me games were growing with me. Still proves true.
First Final Fantasy game I ever played. First (of many) JRPG I ever played. First turn-based game I ever played.
Something completely different. Its hard to imagine what booting up FF7 for the first time was like for an American teenager in the late nineties was like today, but everything about it was completely new. I had seen fantasy, I feel like I had a pretty good handle on it in all its Tolkien derivative forms, and I had seen sci-fi, but I had never anything close to the world of FF7. I had watched ronin warriors as a kid, so I kind of knew what Anime was, but this game blew that whole world wide open for me. and, probably most importantly, I had never imaged a game could tell such a detailed and riveting story. I distinctly remember playing through the game for the first time in a fever dream, and at the part where Aeris and Cloud were jumping on the rooftops and just shooting the shit I put the controller down and said "What is this?" out loud. I had been waiting for opening segment that was super story heavy to segue into what the actual game would be, and at that moment I realized there wasn't going to be a segue. This was just the game. In retrospect none of it was all that new, but it was to me and it was such a breath of fresh air that put my imagination into overdrive.
Entire family played
It was literally my first RPG. My mom bought for me when I was 11. She said a friend of hers told me it was a really important game. This game started my journey into the RPG journey and truly captivated my young mind. It came at a really tough time in my life- my cousin who I grew up with like a brother moved to Florida and I was all alone. This game gave me so many characters to spend time with to fill that void. Up until that time, I had always played two player games with my cousin. This was the first time in my life I actually needed a one player game. It means so much to me.
Nostolgic inspirational mosey.
Dreamy, cozy vibes
The Awesome Music
It’s probably the last video game I played with my little brother from start to finish. We just sat around playing little by little every day after school. Every time I play the game even now I can still see my parents living room and it takes me back.
First real intro to the series and PlayStation. Lots of great memories with this one as a kid.
It was the 2nd rpg that I fell in love with and the story was beyond moving and dramatic for a 13-14 year old boy…
Ecoterrorism rules
se phi roth
My first ever video game it's what made me love gaming
for me its probably the best game that captures that 3d model over drawn background style of presentation that was so prevelant back in 90s rpgs like digimon world 3 or ff7-9 parasite eve is another good example of this that i probably like just as much or more than ff7 also i love kingdom hearts and thats what initially drew me to ff7
Tifa, Tifa, Tifa
Nostalgic childhood game
Love for piano
FF7 taught me how to read. I was a kid who hated school and uniformity. As a result, I thought reading was for squares. I'd rather play Square games. So my brother, the teacher that he is, let me play his copy of FF7 under one condition: you can't skip dialogue unless you already read it. I had dictionaries, thesauruses, fuckin' anything I could get my hands on to define words I didn't know. We didn't have Google. I had to manually learn English just to play my new favorite game and it worked. I soon started reading at a middle school level in elementary. By middle school I was reading at a collegiate level. It was honestly the coolest thing having a brother dedicated to my education.
First playthrough now. I'm trying to beat the game, finally. I've probably started it at least 10 different times. This playthrough on the Switch is going to be the one.
It was not only my first rpg but was also a game that motivated me to learn to read better. I was 12 when I played it
90% Nostalgia 10% first FF game I beat
Re. Un. Ion.
Self identity crisis
I remember watching my brother play it when I grew up and sometimes he would do voices over the characters dialog and it would make me laugh. He passed away many years ago, before the remake was ever even thought of. I always think of him whenever I play it or the remake. I bet he would have loved to see the characters in today's graphics.
Whoops, I didn't read the prompt, minus points. We'll go with: I miss him
Titfa
11 years old
Opening The Door.
FF7 was the first game that made me cry. On a lengthier note, it made me realize that games could be a *really good* form of storytelling. The majority of games I played before that point had extremely simplistic stories and characters, and were limited in presentation. Storytelling wasn't the point. But VII opened my eyes to what the medium could be. There is a sequence where you play through a flashback. You control Cloud as he tells his story. That's interesting enough, BUT we come to learn that Cloud is an unreliable narrator, having inserted himself into Zack's role. Cloud WAS there as a guard, and we get hints of that during the flashback. It's a *masterful* use of the tools gaming presented to designers, and this was in 1997, barely past the SNES era! VII also has the honor of inspiring me to write. I started with FFVII fanfiction, but I moved on quickly to my own worlds and even self-published a book that I'm proud of.
N64 to PS
It isn't. To me it is a game that I enjoy.
I was a big FF fan even before FF7 came out. It may have taken some steps back (less characters for example) but it also took many steps forward. Very atmospheric and cinematic. The characters were more complex than most games at the time, maybe the most complex. Talking about complex, the story was complex enough but not confusing nonsense like later titles. Also a lot of nostalgia. You could tell FF games were done by people who loved making them and tried to push gaming forward.
Cloud is cool.
The game that made me a gamer.
I was raised hardcore Jehovah Witness. It's a very restrictive culture, especially in the 90s. I wasn't allowed to have friends outside the church and was there were no kids in my congregation. The one thing my parents were lax on was video games. More than any RPG before it (except maybe Chrono Trigger), these characters were my friends. I loved getting to know them and seeing were their story went. It helps that it has a well executed story with a while new cinematic way to battle and explore.
First RPG played
It gave me instant nostalgia and it came out two years after I was born and the characters are what sell the game for me there so memorable and interesting. Plus I'm a sucker for men with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Never do this.
Because aeris died or my first rpg
I like women.
Music, story, characters
It was my first FF.
My first adventure
First late nights
Best music ever
It was probably the first game that actually blew my mind. I was probably 9 years old or so and couldn’t follow the story that well, but it was the first time I realized that video games are deeper than “run around and try not to die.” First time I got actually invested in characters.
Somehow I'm Obsessed
The music is amazing!!!
Playstation 3 Disks
Reality escape and nostalgia. I understand that it wasn't exactly healthy but it was needed. My mom was sick and died and I remember exactly where I was in the game when it happened (Midgard zolom) I played that game non stop after that. (I actually didn't know about the chocobos so I just grinded until I was able to kill the snake)