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Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII Battle

Final Fantasy VII Summon
Battles are slick, easy to control, and packed to bursting with outrageous effects		 Final Fantasy VII Highwind Never a company to miss a marketing opportunity, SquareSoft has capitalized on the minor differences between the Japanese and US versions of FFVII, and will release FFVII International in Japan this month
When the SNES RPG Final Fantasy III (see Retroview, page 125) topped the US charts some three years ago, receiving rave reviews from , every magazine in the process, the Japanese-styled RPG looked all set for great things in the west, ultimately that success never really happened, and despite the odd sporadic translation and a hardcore following, it's taken FFIll's successor, now on the PlayStation, to make the gaming world comprehensively aware of RPGs again.
For all its slickness, Final Fantasy VII still follows the golden rule of all Japanese console role-playing games: the player works through a pre-ordained storyline which is punctuated with frequent battles fought via a menu system. Many characters and a wealth of cleverly designed subplots and quests which the player can potentially opt to
undertake may all help to disguise the game's linear nature, but ultimately, once the final boss has been defeated and the tare is resolved, there is very little to bring anyone but-the die-hard fanatic back for another go
But while most Japanese RPGs have been happy to adopt an if-it's-not-broken-don't-fix-it attitude in bringing
their titles across from the 16 bit days, FFVII has decided to divorce itself almost entirely from its predecessors and tic the whole genre on its head. Taking its cue from a more movie-like perspective, the game seems to delight in pushing almost every boundary of the console RPG forward while still being able to keep the flavor of the original titles in tact. Not content with merely jamming its three-CDs' content with a sprawling adventure, the game constantly strives to surprise the player, and ends up succeeding in just about every department imaginable.
Final Fantasy VII Magic
Although still turn-based, the battles in FFVII can still get as hectic as any
out-and-out RPG-styled action game
 Final Fantasy VII Chocobo Final Fantasy VII Attack
Final Fantasy VII Train Final Fantasy VII Adventure Final Fantasy VII CID
The incredibly detailed backdrops that impress so much in FFVII aren't merely for show - they're also highly interactive. The trainyard includes a puzzle that sees players shunting locos around so that the party can progress  
Leading the way, initially, are a seemingly endless array of astonishingly complex realtime and prerendered graphic sequences. That Square had nearly every silicon Graphics machine in Japan working flat out to create them is no surprise, with the smallest shop, in the most out-of-the-way village, packed with as much detail as the most important location. Meanwhile, everything is cleverly layered to allow the realtime, Gouraud-shaded characters to move in and around them as if they were proper 3D structures. The FMV that usually heralds the death knell for interactivity is either restricted to brief cut-scenes lhat load almost instantly and drop in at appropriately dramatic moments, or at times is even combined with both backdrops and characters.
While most non-RPG fans will cite the frequent random-battle encounters and stop-start combat system as common Japanese RPG problems, FFVII builds on Square's patented Active Time Battle system and has had the surprise attacks wisely toned down for its western release. While it's possible for beginners to restrict fights to a simple taking-turns structure, at its realtime fastest, with dramatic camera angles sweeping around the graphics, battles can elevate to almost action-game status.
while the storage space that the CD format has afforded FFVII has been exploited to the full by Square's graphic designers, just as much attention seems to have been lavished upon expanding the limitations of genre itself. The standard RPG formula (seen in previous Final Fantasies and countless other Japanese role-playing games - of battling through maze-like dungeons with a boss encounter and plot development at the end) has been replaced by a much faster, event-filled story that twists and turns from one location to trie next. Even the most unassuming character can be crucial to major events that are necessary to the main thrust of the story (an important development for western gamers not familiar with ponderous exploration).
Although FFVII has been tweaked somewhat for its western version (including additional monsters and even such niceties as markers indicating entrances and exits from a scene), it's admirable that Square has kept what might be seen as the game's unique 'japaneseness'. All of the original's 'adult' scenes have been left intact, and even the six-character limit previously inflicted on protagonists' names has been extended to nine, allowing the original Japanese names to be kept. And even if some of the dialogue's Americanisms tend to grate after a while, it does attempt to recompense in making up for the English text's inability to convey as much meaning as the original Japanese.
The 'interactive movie' has long been a dirty term to anyone who values a playable videogame, but FFVII succeeds in coming closer than any title yet. The highly complex, melodramatic story and excellently orchestrated chip music really do combine to make players feel real empathy with the characters. This is hardly the easiest of feats and a task usually shied away from by the action/comedy-orientated western graphic adventures. Anyone prepared to commit the admittedly lengthy time it takes to play Final Fantasy VII through to its conclusion will be well rewarded by what is most probably the most wholly entertaining title the PlayStation has to yet to offer. The only problem seems to be that even if its success does start a console-RPG avalanche, players will probably have to wait until Final Fantasy VIII to experience the genre on this mighty scale again.