After years of having this in my "will play eventually" list (one may call it a Backlogged), I finally got the itch, and only 2 months before the second part of the remake releases! I played this as much as I could so I could play the remake so I could play the SEQUEL to the remake, and now here I am! And, yeah, it was fun.
The story was about what I expected, alright, but I feel as though I didn't "get" some things, some things didn't make too much sense, I and I still don't understand some people's intentions. It might be just a me thing, and the story is still okay, but there aren't many people outside the main party whom I cared about, and even IN the main party, I could only name a few I care more more. There are also a lot of problems with its translation/localization, like them flip-flopping between "Shinra" and "THE Shinra" and the way Barrett spoke, which just annoyed me. I also feel like Sephiroth is a bit overrated as a villain, as he's cool, but not that cool, and I didn't really "understand him" but maybe that was the point. Despite all of this, the game still had great writing at points! My favorite scene of the game was Cloud and Tifa alone together before Disc 3, and the story was still alright, but I guess it didn't grab me as much as I wanted it to.
I had a lot of fun with the gameplay. I had no idea this game featured a "Active Time Battle" turn-based system, so imagine how shocked I was when I got in my first battle! After that though, I came to love the gameplay of the game. I had a blast with how it played, Materia was fun, and I'm glad the game let you tweak how the fights work, I made it so everything in the game would stop when I was in a menu, for example. The environments were a little confusing, but I eventually got the hang of it and pressing the button that showed exits/doors was really helpful. I didn't expect all the minigames in this game at first, which were a fun change of pace, if not a little lackluster. I also enjoyed the world map and all you ways you get to traverse it. However, because this game came out on the PS1, there is still quite a bit of archaic design which definitely made me shake my head at first. Random encounters, extra things they came either tells you little or NOTHING about, having to go out of your way to do things, and what might be worst, optional party members. It might be worst just because in material outside the game, at least from what I know, the party members are just THERE, so people who didn't manage to find them will be confused as all hell. Still though, besides the old design choices, I still had tons of fun playing the game.
The music is iconic and great. The battle theme, boss theme, the various cutscene songs, are pretty nice. But, of course, I have to say, One Winged Angel is stellar. That is all.
A good game which I can for sure see how it blew up when it came out. I can definitely see why people at the time were IN LOVE with this game, and were blown away. Even I got blown away at some things in this game almost 30 years later! This game surely is iconic for a reason, even if some aspects of it have aged poorly, it is still good to play today.
The story was about what I expected, alright, but I feel as though I didn't "get" some things, some things didn't make too much sense, I and I still don't understand some people's intentions. It might be just a me thing, and the story is still okay, but there aren't many people outside the main party whom I cared about, and even IN the main party, I could only name a few I care more more. There are also a lot of problems with its translation/localization, like them flip-flopping between "Shinra" and "THE Shinra" and the way Barrett spoke, which just annoyed me. I also feel like Sephiroth is a bit overrated as a villain, as he's cool, but not that cool, and I didn't really "understand him" but maybe that was the point. Despite all of this, the game still had great writing at points! My favorite scene of the game was Cloud and Tifa alone together before Disc 3, and the story was still alright, but I guess it didn't grab me as much as I wanted it to.
I had a lot of fun with the gameplay. I had no idea this game featured a "Active Time Battle" turn-based system, so imagine how shocked I was when I got in my first battle! After that though, I came to love the gameplay of the game. I had a blast with how it played, Materia was fun, and I'm glad the game let you tweak how the fights work, I made it so everything in the game would stop when I was in a menu, for example. The environments were a little confusing, but I eventually got the hang of it and pressing the button that showed exits/doors was really helpful. I didn't expect all the minigames in this game at first, which were a fun change of pace, if not a little lackluster. I also enjoyed the world map and all you ways you get to traverse it. However, because this game came out on the PS1, there is still quite a bit of archaic design which definitely made me shake my head at first. Random encounters, extra things they came either tells you little or NOTHING about, having to go out of your way to do things, and what might be worst, optional party members. It might be worst just because in material outside the game, at least from what I know, the party members are just THERE, so people who didn't manage to find them will be confused as all hell. Still though, besides the old design choices, I still had tons of fun playing the game.
The music is iconic and great. The battle theme, boss theme, the various cutscene songs, are pretty nice. But, of course, I have to say, One Winged Angel is stellar. That is all.
A good game which I can for sure see how it blew up when it came out. I can definitely see why people at the time were IN LOVE with this game, and were blown away. Even I got blown away at some things in this game almost 30 years later! This game surely is iconic for a reason, even if some aspects of it have aged poorly, it is still good to play today.