The seventh entry in the immensely popular
Final Fantasy series.
Easily one of the most famous games of its time,
Final Fantasy VII helped extend console
RPGs into the mainstream gamer community (for better or worse, depending on which fandoms you ask) during the PlayStation's reign.
It proved successful enough to spawn a raft of
Spin Offs, collectively known as the "
Compilation of Final Fantasy VII": There was
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, a full-length CG animated
movie, and
Final Fantasy VII: Last Order, an
OAV version of two flashbacks from the game. There were several spin-off games, including
Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerebus for PS2,
Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core on the PSP, and
Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis on cell-phones. And there were, of course, scads of merchandise.
Considering how lucrative it has proven, one
prevalent rumor is Square is going to do a remake of the game for a next generation console or PSP. Certainly, they could make a mint if they did so. As it stands, the PSP firmware allows PS1 games to be bought, downloaded, and played on the go, and a technology demo of the PlayStation 3 famously remade the opening animation for the PS3 hardware. Also, the first six games have already been remade several times; it's only natural that the 3D games get the same treatment eventually. Announcing the release of the
Final Fantasy VII remake is a very popular (to the point of being overdone) April Fool.
Characters:
As for the villains there's
Dr Hojo,
Sephiroth,
Jenova,
the Turks and
Rufus Shinra.
Few people completely grasp the plot at the first playthrough - even for a RPG, this game can get extremely complicated. Also, this game is probably the world's biggest victim of
Hype Aversion.
This game contains examples of:
- The Ace (Zack)
- Alas Poor Villain (Kadaj)
- Alien Scrappy (Cait Sith)
- Anticlimax Boss (Final final duel with Sephiroth)
- Apathetic Citizens (To the point where one NPC muses that the destruction of an entire sector of Midgar is annoying because the kickup of dust ruined the soup he was cooking outside. I am not freaking kidding you.
- Artificial Limbs (Barrett)
- Badass Longcoat (Sephiroth, though he's a villain rather than a hero)
- BFS (Cloud and Sephiroth each have one.)
- Blind Idiot Translation ("This guy are sick", among other mistakes.)
- Bolivian Army Ending (in Crisis Core)
- Bonus Boss (The Weapons)
- Bosom Buddies
- Character Development (Both very good, in the original game and Crisis Core, and rather bad, in the rest of the Compilation)
- Chivalrous Pervert (Zack)
- Cluster F Bomb (Barret and Cid have a tendency to launch into these. The harsher curse words are censored, since this game has a "T" rating.)
- Cosmic Keystone (The Lifestream)
- CPR Clean Pretty Reliable
- Derelict Graveyard (Of trains.)
- Domed Hometown (Midgar)
- Doomed Hometown (Nibelheim)
- Draco In Leather Pants (Sephiroth appears to have surpassed many of the other characters in popularity across the Final Fantasy fandom because he's so damn "bish". Never mind that he, you know, almost destroyed an entire planet.)
- Ensemble Darkhorse: (Vincent)
- Eviler Than Thou (Sephiroth and Shinra)
- Gaiden Game (Dirge of Cerebus, Crisis Core, and Before Crisis.)
- Gameplay And Story Segregation (Aerith, especially)
- Golden Saucer
- Goldfish Poop Gang (The Turks, who get their own game in Before Crisis, as well as their own theme tune.)
- Guest Star Party Member (Sephiroth, during the "Young Cloud" flashback sequence. Practically invincible, and can chop anything in two with his BFS.)
- Heroic Sacrifice (Horrifically subverted by Aeris' death, but played straight by Cait Sith, who sacrifices himself to let the heroes escape the Temple of the Ancients - But because he's a remotely controlled robot, he comes right back not ten minutes later.)
- Perhaps the biggest twist of the knife is that Cait Sith's sacrifice comes right before Aerith's death. Since Cait Sith's is treated as no big deal, the real death of Aerith is that much more shocking.
- Hot Skitty On Wailord Action (Chocobo breeding.)
- Infinity Plus One Sword (Every character save Aerith has an ultimate weapon that has eight linked Materia slots and provides additional combat benefits. For instance, Cloud's Ultima Weapon and Cait Sith's HP Shout gain strength when their HP is high.)
- Aerith gets hers much earlier (for obvious reasons), but it has only seven linked Materia Slots.
- Inevitable Tournament
- Intellectual Animal (Red XIII)
- It Was His Sled (A certain event at the end of Disc 1...)
- Kill Sat (One of Barret's Level 3 Limit Breaks)
- Last Of His Kind (Aerith is last of the Ancients.)
- Let Them Die Happy (Kadaj's death
- The Lifestream (The game from which the term sprung.)
- Limit Break (The originals!)
- Mac Guffin Delivery Service (Cloud, under Sephiroth's control, does this multiple times during the plot.)
- Magitek (Mako power)
- Martin Guerre (Cloud taking over Zack's shtick)
- Mind Screw (thanks in part to the Blind Idiot Translation)
- Mysterious Waif (Aerith)
- Not Compensating For Anything
- Ominous Latin Chanting (Estuans interius, ira vehementi, Sephiroth! Noli manare, manare in memoria, nole manare, manare in memoria, Sephiroth!)
- One Winged Angel (Sephiroth is the origin of the term.)
- Optional Party Member (Yuffie, Vincent)
- Overly Long Fighting Animation: All of the summons. One Winged Angel!Sephiroth's ultimate attack, "Supernova", takes this beyond ridiculous levels.
- Pieta Plagiarism
- Plotline Death (Aerith)
- Powers As Programs (Materia)
- Psychopathic Manchild (Kadaj, though he is rather young. And Loz, who fits the description a little better.)
- Redemption In The Rain
- Relationship Values
- Role Playing Game
- Scary Black Man (Barrett)
- Schala Lives (An ever-rumored quest to bring back Aerith. Discussed in more detail on the Heroic Sacrifice entry.)
- Sequential Boss (Sephiroth, Hojo)
- Slap On The Wrist Nuke (Many a summon, and Sephiroth's solar system shattering attack)
- Staff Chick (Aerith)
- Sticks To The Back (Cloud's BFS)
- Storming The Castle
- Swiss Army Appendage (Barrett)
- That One Sidequest (Most people will be sent into shiverfits just by mentioning the Emerald Weapon)
- The Chessmaster (Rufus Shinra manages to pull the wool over Kadaj's eyes for the entire movie.)
- The Scrappy (Cait Sith and Yuffie)
- The Toblerone (Barret and Cid embody the trope.)
- Those Two Guys (Biggs and Wedge of AVALANCHE. Throw Jessie in, and they become Those Two Guys And A Girl. Reno and Rude are a good example in The Movie.)
- Tykebomb (Sephiroth and Kadaj)
- Unexpected Genre Change (The bike, snowboarding and submarine battle sequences. These are eventually unlocked as minigames in the Golden Saucer.)
- Villain Sue: Genesis from Crisis Core.
- What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome
- White Haired Pretty Boy (Lots of 'em.)
- Wutai (The trope's namesake)
- Wutai Theft (Again, the name came from here.)
