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Final Fantasy 7 is what some people call the best of the best of the FF series. It is the first FF game ever to debut on both the PSX and the PC. It is also the first of the series to use 3D graphics. Many PC gamers were kind of skeptical in the success of the port. It was actually a huge success for both systems. The game sold more than 3 million copies worldwide and brought up about 45 million dollars in sales. Eidos Interactive published the game for the PC. Nothing much was different from the PSX and PC version. The PC had support for D3D and 3Dfx cards and makes the graphics look much cleaner. The addition of the Yamaha XG-Midi music made it sound better too. Other than the graphics and sound, the PC and PSX version are the same, still the same save locations and FMVs. PC Gamer gave it a 90% and many other organizations loved it. The story begins with a former SOLDIER member, Cloud Strife, who "joined" the rebel faction AVALANCHE to get his revenge on Shinra who he formerly worked for. He helps Barrett, the leader of Avalanche, to destroy a couple of Mako reactors for a couple of bucks. He then gets more involved with the rebel faction because his "friend" Tifa is part of the faction and Cloud wants to protect her. Shinra then takes the offensive on the rebels, so they blow up a plate in Midgar so the people can blame the rebels for it. They then get caught on a supposedly routine reactor raiding. They get imprisoned in Shinra HQ just to find out that the "super-soulja" Sephiroth came back and killed the Shinra prez. His son, Rufus, then takes the presidency and gives out different orders to hunt down Sephiroth and Avalanche. The story goes on from there, but I won't reveal all of it. Play the game and find out. The game plays like the previous FF games. Except that you can only use 3 characters in a battle, unlike 4 in the previous ones. The battle system is in Active Time Battle (ATB) where you have to wait for the timer to fill in before choosing an action. The 3D graphics are a first for the FF series, back then that is. The graphics are really sharp and clean, and the spell effects and summons are AWESOME. Especially with 3D acceleration. The Magic system works straightforward. Characters must acquire little colored orbs called Materia. The orbs hold a certain type of magic, like lighting or fire. The more you use it, the more XP it will receive. The same thing with the Summons. The Materia is junction to a weapon where it can be leveled up. The game plays like any RpG. Follow the story and kill monsters to level up and get gold and items. The graphics are just plain amazing, whether software-rendered or accelerated (Only PC Owners can use hardware acceleration). It only supports older cards though like Voodoo 2, Voodoo Rush, and ATI Rage 128 cards. nVidia card owners have to get a patch to get D3D acceleration. The magic effects are very cool, the lighting is nice and it has lots of color. Very sharp and clean, no disconnected polys. Summons and Limit Breaks are best experienced with hardware acceleration. See OmniSlash with a 3Dfx card, and you'll see. The sound is cool and crisp. Even though it doesn't support A3D or EAX, it sounds nice. The music isn't played with real instruments, but its still cool. You can either use XG-Midi or regular Midi for the music (PC feature only).
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