Coding Well Forum

I'm playing FF7 right now. I'm 6-7 hours in, and I'm getting a little sick of random battles.
The story is good though, although it's pretty similar to Akira. I'm not sure why I'm the only one on the internet who seems to have noticed this, but I must presume it's one of those little things fans forget to make their favorite game seem like more of a precious little snowflake.
Squall is not as emo as I had been led to believe by some sources. He's still the archetypical grim and slightly angsty hero who makes rounds in a lot of anime. IE: If cloud was older and/or more gray-haired he'd be voiced by Crispen Freeman.
Still, I like it. It's not nearly as brilliant and original as everyone claims, but it's very good.

But the battles are freaking annoying. Most battles have absolutely no context in the world. For example, you walk through a corporate headquarters, and get attacked by mutant grasshoppers. WTF is up with that?
I'm still not a fan of the Active Time Battle System either. I like real time (The Tales Series), or turn based (most other FF games), the hybrid is a pain. I'm really getting of how every battle is the same deal. Occasionally, the battles hint a Chrono trigger-like fight that takes some brains to win, but most are just thing like 'fire does 10% more damage'.

Baldur's Gate II showed you can have genius story and let the player make meaningful choices. The only choices I make in FF7 are thing like what Materia I use, or whether I fight a few guards or take the (far too many) stairs.

Like my impression of FF8, playing FF7 is like watching a really good anime. An anime that has no dub of any kind, and every so often forces you to play a really boring video game to watch more of the really good anime.

Yeah, the only reason anyone would play Final Fantasy is for the story. The gameplay really isn't worthwhile at all. And as for comparing it to Akira, I really don't see that at all. Have you even made it out of Midgar yet?

Just got out.
It's not a ripoff of Akira, but I find all the stuff with Jenova and Sephiroth to be very much in the same school. Maybe it's just the vaults, I don't know.

But yeah, the game play is distinctly average. The Materia system is pretty cool, although it's permutations in games like Golden Sun's Djin system and Paper Mario's Badge System.

The random battles are still getting to me. Random battles why I never finish RPGs. Except Bioware style RPGs, I don't beat those because I forget to play them.