Until an hour ago I thought Virtue's Last Reward was about as good as a sequel to 999 could aspire to be. The magic of the first game, the tricks and the spark that fueled it could really only carry it for a single entry. Now that I've just reached the ending of this game, I'm assured that turning 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors into a franchise was a massive mistake. All because of VLR's ending. Or more accurately, its lack thereof.

999 worked not just because of its brilliance in game design and in how the platform of the ds enhanced the storytelling, but because it was expansive enough to clear up its biggest mysteries while maintaining the restraint to leave enough mysteries and unknown variables.

A sequel not just in terms of themes, gameplay or gimmicks but also in terms of storytelling has to take Schrödinger's cat out of the box and dissect it in front of us, the players, especially for fans of the previous one who want to know what those familiar (or not so familiar) faces are doing in their second show.

The result is a game that, while not at all lacking in substance, spends all of its time warming up for a final sprint, leading up to a final leap that doesn't actually come. At least, not until you buy the next entry in the Zero Escape Trilogy! Zero Time Dilemma! Drama! Action! Mystery! Don't you want to know how the story ends???

"History repeats itself, first as a stone cold banger of a vn, second as the parody of itself" -2Pac

“THE JRPG AT THE END OF THE WORLD”

Dude, I straight up didn’t know there were different Limit Breaks the first time I played this game.

I feel an incredible amount of shame typing that now. It’s not like the game hides it. It’s literally one of the options in the pause menu! I have no excuse.

What’s even crazier is that I still got through all of FF7 without a hitch until the very end. I really screwed up everything at Northern Cave. They gave me the Save Point and I used it immediately instead of before Sephiroth. I assumed they would give me another Save Point for some reason? Like I really thought the gimmick of the area was that I would be able to create my own save points. I was wrong.

Well, anyways, I played this on my PlayStation 5 and got to Sephiroth and got my ass kicked so hard that I gave up and turned on cheats to finish the game.

In hindsight, I can only assume that I was probably very drunk and just wanted to finish the game that night.

After my first playthrough I immediately started Final Fantasy VII Remake, and the crazy high production values, wild real-time battle system, and the new soundtrack arrangements blew me away. FF7 became a dim memory.

For my second and most recent playthrough, I opted for the PC version on Steam. I also decided to download a few mods to spice things up a little. Although my final score will not factor in these mods, I’d like to discuss them here.

I used this Steam guide although I opted out of using some suggested mods, specifically any using AI upscaled imagery. Although my stance on AI “art” is that it’s bad, my stance on AI upscaled imagery is that it’s fine, I guess, as long as it doesn’t look like crap. Unfortunately all of the AI upscaled backgrounds/FMVs for Final Fantasy VII look like crap. Doubly so if you choose the 30fps interpolated option which gives a lot of FMVs this ugly fake motion blur effect that makes everything look like it's been smeared in vaseline.

The image quality for the AI upscaled backgrounds/FMVs is also spotty at best, and straight up wrong at worst. “Wrong,” because the intended purpose of AI upscaling is to add clarity and detail, but in this instance the original image actually loses a lot of detail. The sequence where Cloud and Cid escape on the Tiny Bronco, for example, there’s a shot where the Tiny Bronco comes towards the camera – but for some reason, whatever program was used couldn’t interpret the Tiny Bronco as separate from the background, and as a result I couldn’t see the Tiny Bronco until it was already halfway towards the screen.

That, for me, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Don’t use AI upscaled images/videos. Trust me.

Additionally, I decided not to use Echo-S 7, Symphonic Remasters, or Gameplay Tweaks and Cheats (tried to keep the experience as vanilla as possible).

Everything else in this Steam guide is solid. The Ninostyle Chibi / Ninostyle Battle models add a lot of good detail. The Ninostyle Battle models perfectly capture the essence of Tetsuya Nomura's iconic concept art.

My favorite mod was definitely Cosmo Memory, which adds a good amount of ambience, soundscapes, and footsteps that greatly enhanced the overall atmosphere. Strongly recommend playing with this one.

Playing through Final Fantasy VII now, I’m surprised Square has never attempted a more traditional remaster. I assumed FFVII Ever Crisis was Square’s answer to the vocal fraction of the fanbase demanding a more traditional turn-based remaster until I found out that it was a gacha cashgrab. I’ve never touched Ever Crisis but I can definitely understand the perspective that it was created in bad faith, and the fact that it’s also being released in chapters doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in its continued support for the coming years.

But also, using AI upscaling to render the backgrounds/FMVs at 4K is not the “remaster” many online denizens would like you to believe it is. In this case especially, what you’re getting is essentially a glorified pixel smoothing filter.

It’s frustrating too, because they could release a traditional FFVII remaster today, and all would be forgiven. FFVII with Ever Crisis graphics (no gacha), some much-needed QoL improvements for UI, menus, etc. and maybe a toggle between old and new graphics like in the Master Chief Collection. That’s all you’d need.

Anyways, I’m writing this today to tell you that FFVII still holds up.

It’s still a phenomenal game. This was my first Final Fantasy when I played it a few years ago and it immediately made me want to jump into the remake after I’d finished it, which was also a phenomenal game in its own right. It also made me want to jump into FFXVI which was FINE.

To me, this is (almost) the ideal turn-based JRPG. Heavily story-driven, quickly paced, with a battle/magic system that eases you into its complexity over time.

Materia is FFVII’s main attraction and it adds a completely new dimension to abilities and spellcasting. Materia can be assigned to individual characters and has its own discrete leveling systems attached. Have a character with a certain materia equipped and it accrues AP (basically XP for materia) unlocking stronger spells/abilities, additional uses of the same ability, and even more materia once you fully master one.

Again, this is the only true, numbered mainline Final Fantasy game I’ve played (besides FFXVI) so I don't really have any other frame of reference. I’ve heard about the job system in earlier entries and, from what I understand, materia is like an abstraction layer above(below?) that idea – instead of roles, FFVII gives players the freedom to build their own kinds of classes (think Call of Duty multiplayer loadouts if you’re a zoomer like me).

Need a dedicated healer? Give a character the restore materia. Use the heal/revive materia to counteract negative status effects and revive teammates instead of using Phoenix Down. Even better, pair these materia with the All Materia so you can heal/cure/revive all your teammates at once.

Maybe you need a tank? Give a character the Cover materia. If you want to maximize their efficiency, load them with the Counter Attack materia. Better yet, pair them with multiple Counter Attack materia – or use the Counter/Counter Magic materia for additional counter attacks. Pair Counter Attack with 2x/4x cut for maximum efficiency.

Maybe you want a tank AND a healer. Go for it! With the right equipment/materia you can load up on restore materia, and counter attack materia, and if you know what you’re doing, you can even use Added Effect or Elemental materia to imbue your attacks with fire/ice/bolt damage, or a chance to cause Instant Death. The game lets you go crazy with it. Dual class or triple class or quadruple class. Do what you want!

It’s unfortunate that the best materia isn’t available until much later in the game. Every time I wanted to try out a new materia combo, I found myself needing to trek to some odd corner of the world map. I even bred a Golden Chocobo to get Knights of the Round and hardly used it! You don’t get the 2x cut materia until you get a submarine which is at the very end of the game. I wanted to get the Final Attack materia and had to grind at the Battle Square for hours at the Golden Saucer (you’re not allowed to leave, otherwise all the points you earn reset, which is dumb and annoying!) and once I finally got it, I hardly used it! I paired it with Phoenix and then I never died so it saw zero use for the remainder of my playtime. Unfortunate.

Anyways, the materia system pretty much carries the gameplay through to the finish line. It gives every area and each encounter a lot of flavor. Players have to ask themselves, “What are enemies weak to?” and “Should I use the materia I have to give myself an offensive edge, or a defensive advantage?”

It’s telling that there are so many instances where the story necessitates splitting up Scooby-Doo style, kicking party members to the wayside and returning any equipped materia to your inventory. Clearly, the game wants you to experiment with different combinations, and so it frequently scrambles your loadouts to force you into trying out new things.

Now, this… can get a little ridiculous, if I'm being honest. It feels like every few hours you’ll reach another story beat, and then the game hits the materia combo reset button. This wouldn’t be so bad if the materia menu UI was a little cleaner – and this goes back to what I said about a potential FF7 remaster adding some well overdue QoL improvements – as while items can be easily rearranged, materia cannot. This can be doubly annoying if you have multiple materia with the same names, and have to cursor over them to distinguish one from another. There NEEDS to be an easier way for players to navigate this menu.

Overall though, I think the turn-based combat and mechanical complexity on offer here is great! It’s at least varied and freeform enough to not lose its flavor in the fifty-odd hours it took me to get through the main story + a good amount of side content.

One thing that FF7 does well is keeping up its brisk pace. There’s a good amount of regular “dungeon” type areas where enemies will attack the player in random encounters, but for every dungeon there’s usually an associated town/hub where some important story beats occur. Best examples of these I can think of are Wall Market and the Golden Saucer; one is a longer, story-focused section where the main goal is to sneak into Don Corneo’s mansion, the other is a carnival-type hub with a lot of smaller minigames. The ebb and flow of the story and the combat feels natural. Neither element overtakes or overpowers the other.

The story of Final Fantasy VII might also be – genuinely – one of the most profound narratives I’ve experienced in a game. Although many have shared similar sentiments regarding many other games, and although many have also shared similar sentiments regarding this game specifically, there is something remarkable in the experience of Final Fantasy VII that is difficult to put to text.

There’s a million things I could talk about here, but I’ll narrow it down to one:

Cloud Strife. What’s up with this guy?

Literally everything I’d seen/heard about FFVII had led me to believe this guy was just a stoic badass anime pretty boy (and uh, spoiler alert: he is). In reality, dude is just traumatized and suffers from major depersonalization for 90% of the game.

Actually, Cloud Strife might be the best example I can think of when discussing the “character vs avatar” problem in games. I’m not sure what their original idea was back in ‘97 but, to me, letting players name their characters seems like a type of personalization that’s almost inappropriate nowadays. Like naming your Aerith COOLRANCH or something might be funny at the time but hardly ever does it feel like you, the player, have drastically altered the circumstances of the game itself. Sure, she’s COOLRANCH but she looks and talks and acts like Aerith so it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

Cloud is an interesting case because he’s the main player character and there’s a lot of interesting dialogue options and in-game choices that give players some sense of control over him. The aloof, uncaring dialogue options usually contain an excessive amount of biting edge – unusually cruel and out-of-character for no reason.

When Biggs asks Cloud (with his dying breath!) if he doesn’t care what happens to the planet, players can choose to respond, “Nope, not interested”.

During the Nibelheim flashback, players can make Cloud go through Tifa’s closet – presumably admitting this to Tifa and the rest of his party as he’s telling this story. It’s super weird, but it’s supposed to be super weird. The game’s not just doing a funny ha-ha pervert Cloud moment (at least not straightforwardly), it’s trying to highlight that it would be really weird for Cloud to do that, and it would be really weird for Cloud to admit he did that, and it would be really weird for Cloud to admit he did that when it doesn’t pertain to what’s happening in the flashback in the first place.

Well, if you’re still reading this, I assume you’ve already played FFVII. I hope you’ve played FFVII already! I’m about to spoil most (if not all) of it.

Before I knew anything about FFVII, I knew that Aerith died. I think I was spoiled by a ScrewAttack Top 10 or something (I found it). I didn’t really care at the time because I was younger and I had zero interest in JRPGs, let alone Final Fantasy. My friend Garrett described Aerith’s death as the “I am your father” moment of video games. Even if you haven’t played the game, you already know it’s coming.

It’s a surreal experience when you’re actually 25 hours deep though. On my first playthrough even, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop – is it going to happen here? Will it happen here? Even on this most recent playthrough, I could feel my stomach tightening when I descended those final stairs.

This is where it happens, I think.

It doesn’t hit me. It’s almost like it washes over me, in waves.

What I didn’t realize then, and what I think is a tremendous storytelling moment that isn’t really part of the conversation anymore, is how the game wrestles control away from the player right before it happens. Previously, Sephiroth forces Cloud to attack Aerith at the Temple of the Ancients. At the Forgotten City, as Cloud approaches Aerith, he also begins to lose control again – although this time, the game won’t continue until the player themselves presses the buttons to attack Aerith.

I mean, it might sound a little silly now. Obviously, you need to interact and keep playing the game to progress. But it’s specifically how the game seems like it wants you – the player – to be the one who delivers the finishing blow, which feels unbelievably and uncharacteristically cruel. When you’re spared of that cruelty, Sephiroth delivering the finishing blow feels only like the inevitable has come to pass. As if nature itself is coming to take its course.

In a meta-sense, Aerith’s death represents both a narrative focal point for both the characters and the players alike. Obviously I wasn’t part of the FFVII fandom during the late 90s (I was literally not born yet when this game was released), but I’m no stranger to reading stories/accounts of people trying to find a way to “save” Aerith from her fate at the hands of Sephiroth. I can’t be 100% certain what the culture was like at the time because I wasn’t there. But I could imagine some players remaining in disbelief, perhaps some fully expecting Aerith to return in some grandiose manner, returning from the dead, or saved in another playthrough if/when the correct prerequisites were met.

There’s something about this line of thinking, that maybe Aerith isn’t really gone for good, comparable to how many handle the actual loss of a loved one. Maybe they’re not really gone. Maybe they’ll come back.

Players know better now. Aerith doesn’t come back. We don’t save her.

The loss doesn’t sting anymore. There was someone there and now there’s not.

Aerith’s death followed hours later by the reunion at the Northern Crater is the perfect one-two punch that TKOs Cloud for the first chunk of Act 3. Cloud’s mental breakdown remains one of the big highlights of FFVII.

Going back to the idea of “character vs avatar,” although obviously Cloud is supposed to be a stoic badass, the game really hammers in the idea that Cloud is not a stoic badass at heart. As early as Wall Market, the story won’t progress unless Cloud emasculates himself by wearing women’s clothes. Also consider how mentally weak the game postures Cloud as during its second act, where he is manipulated by Sephiroth into hurting and almost killing Aerith, and eventually hand delivers the black materia to him.

All this comes to a head when it’s revealed that Cloud wasn’t even SOLDIER first class, but a low-ranking grunt – his weapon, outfit, and mannerisms based on Zack, the actual soldier he’d mistakenly believed himself to be (I haven’t played Crisis Core, so some of this nuance may be lost on me… I’ll play it someday soon).

Although I’m aware the in-game, in-universe reason for this plot contrivance is something to do with the Jenova Project or whatever, it more or less directly translates to Cloud having the Worst Identity Crisis of All Time. From a player’s perspective, however, this might be one of the most unique instances of a game attempting to “bridge the gap,” so to speak, between characters and players – by illustrating the “gap” in question.

Cloud may appear pathetic to an outsider, whose depersonalization is so severe that he genuinely believes himself to be somebody that he isn’t. Does this not feel like the game holding a proverbial mirror up to the player? As if the game is saying, “Hey, you like Cloud, right? You want to be like Cloud? How about now? Do you still want to be like Cloud? You want to pretend to be somebody you’re not?” It is genuinely uncomfortable! What’s even stranger is that Cloud somehow comes out on the other end of this situation as the Undisputed Badass and Cooler Character Than Sephrioth anyways. How he actually defeats Sephiroth at Nibelheim (and later the Northern Crater) cements him as a de facto Badass.

It’s one of those moments where, if you’re a very thorough and detail-oriented person, you might ask yourself what the point of all this even is. Cloud thinking he’s Zack doesn’t really contribute to the overarching plot, I suppose. Cloud is still a Shonen protagonist that can survive being stabbed through the chest, or falling from hundreds of feet, or having his mind broken by an ancient extraterrestrial, etc.

I think it matters because it’s a test of our faith in him.

Although Cloud puts up walls around himself when Sephiroth psychologically assaults him with images of Nibelheim, eventually he starts to crack. Eventually Cloud’s self-perception breaks and he realizes that he wasn’t able to keep his promise to Tifa, allowing Sephiroth to mortally wound her in Nibelheim. Later, we fail to save Aerith, although she’s not as lucky as Tifa and succumbs to her wounds shortly after.

Later on, we learn that Cloud technically does save Tifa and defeats Sephiroth at Nibelheim (at least for the time being), and this revelation restores both our confidence in Cloud, and Cloud’s confidence in himself.

Cloud saves Tifa in the same way Aerith saves the world when her prayer reaches Holy. It’s true that neither Cloud needed to believe he was someone that he wasn’t, nor did Aerith need to die for her prayer to work. These details are intrinsic.

No matter what, “when it's time for this planet to die, you'll understand that you know absolutely nothing… It may be tomorrow, or 100 years from now... But it's not long off.”

There’s this pervasive mood in FFVII that is unlike any other game I’ve played. Especially towards the end when Meteor appears looming overhead. There’s this feeling that our characters are at the end of the world. We’re reminded several times over, too, that no matter what the outcome of our actions here are, the world is going to end sooner or later. We’re only delaying the inevitable. But there’s also the unmistakable matter of fact that if we don’t do anything here and now, there won’t be anything worth fighting for.

So, it’s true the world’s going to end someday. But that doesn’t invalidate the struggles our characters go through. It doesn’t delegitimize the sacrifices they make in order to defeat Sephiroth.

The fact that FFVII may be – at its core – just another JRPG where your objective is to kill God, defy fate, whatever, pales in comparison to the fact that its story, the actual linear sequence of events leading from Midgar to Northern Crater, centers on disparate people coming to terms with their pasts and resolving to fight for a brighter future. That’s what FFVII is all about.

It’s not about Sephiroth, really. It’s not about Jenova or Shinra. These are the stand-ins. Icons for unimaginable destruction. Demons from the past threatening this world’s future.

As Cloud says towards the end of the game, “I think we all are fighting for ourselves. For ourselves...and that someone... something...whatever it is, that's important to us. That's what we're fighting for. That's why we keep up this battle for the planet.”

It’s the culmination of Cloud’s entire character. Beginning as an uncaring mercenary, subsequently intertwined with Avalanche because of Tifa (the only tangible connection he has to his past), creating new connections with Aerith, contending with his past in the form of Sephiroth, and then forced to confront his past(Sephiroth) when it affects his future(Aerith).

From uncaring mercenary to unlikely hero. From first class impostor to saving the world.

As the final battle comes to a head against the One-Winged Angel, Sephiroth himself, the vocal accompaniment – lyrics derived from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana – reminds us that we are not only fighting against Sephritoh, but fate itself. There is an inexplicable feeling that we’re fighting a battle we’ve no chance of winning.

But at this moment, this one spectacular moment – as the Godhead of destruction rends planets and stars from the sky to wipe you and your friends from the face of the Earth – Cloud fights further. Did we push beyond the limits of Godhood? Did we unshackle ourselves from the chains of fate?

Or were we just lucky?

Was this our willpower? Or was it a miracle?

Was it divine intervention? Or was it fate?

The funniest thing happened as Cloud stared down Sephiroth in a black void while I stared down at a flashing, neon rainbow Limit Break icon at full capacity: I didn’t hit the button. Sephiroth took his first swing and Cloud retaliated because I’d equipped the Counter Attack materia – or I thought that’s what saved me. It turns out that Cloud will always counter attack if Sephiroth strikes first in this sequence.

Perhaps ours wasn’t the greater will. Maybe we made it here through determination alone, even if fate deals the final blow.

Maybe this is Sephiroth’s ultimate victory: the gnawing feeling that even after everything, we’re still not done here.

One day, this planet will die. All this returns to nothing.

The post-credits scene, a whopping five hundred years after the initial events of FFVII, sees Red XIII traveling to the ruins of Midgar as nature appears to have long since reclaimed the sprawling megalopolis.

Although fans didn’t receive additional information surrounding the status of FFVII’s main cast until Advent Children (which I have watched) and Dirge of Cerberus (which I have played), the original ending was surprisingly ambiguous. Did anyone survive? Does humanity persist? Is the world on the brink of extinction? Are those echoes we hear as the title card fades into darkness the ghosts of children, or signs of new life?

Even if we know the definitive answer now, there’s a wistful quality to it all. The husk of Midgar is a skeleton. Our characters have long since returned to the Lifestream. Life goes on.

One of the most beautiful, haunting, and iconic stories in the medium to date. If you can forgive the archaic design in some areas, you may even fall in love.