I get down on myself for this type of a thing, and XII isn't the only one I've strayed from. I feel guilt. I call myself a fan of the franchise, but the truth is I can't finish a storyline to save my life. Well, to save my life, certainly I could, I'm being colorful. And I have managed to get through IV, IX, X.
I think what I'm getting at is though these stories are epic in scale, they're convoluted in structure and in most cases, poorly translated. I don't just mean language, specifically (though it's there and it's hilarious), but there are cultural ideas and attitudes that somehow get lost on the boat to the West. To me at least, it seems that it isn't until late in the franchise that we get to see any sort of depth or creativity in our characters. The thing is, the story is a bonus if it's tolerable.
"It's all about the micromanagement," my friend Cheating Sandy would say. And he's right. The reason I can play these games 70 - 110 hours each isn't because of the story, it's all in the micromanagement. Give me a party of 5 + kick ass characters with fully customizable weapons, accessories, abilities, magic, etc. and I'm happy.
Which will bring me to part VII. The core gameplay system is as you'd expect, Square's weird take on traditional D&D dice rolling, turn based, gameplay with emphasis on exploration and a storyline with probably one or more crystals. They throw in a brilliant amendment to the rules/plot device dubbed 'Materia', and somehow, probably something to do with aesthetics (the way it looks like a shiny colorful superball, the *sch-tink* noise it makes when you attach it to armor or weapons), I can't help but instantly fall in love with it. I need Materia cell-phone charms right away.
The world I'm put into is different this time, though, not like the light green meadows, dark green forests, tan deserts, brown mountains (you can't go over those yet) I'm used to from installments I - VI. Granted, the Famicom and Super Famicom pale in comparison to the PS1, but even so, I'd like to think that developers took huge risks in this games production. The world, however linear, is totally explorable, and I use 'totally', like 'that girl is totally finger-able.' It's a gritty, post apoc look they were going for, a little like Mad Max or Bladerunner I think, but definitely not like Waterworld. This is opposed to the more traditional, medeivally-type shit we're used to, but it doesn't mean it's good. But here's where they get me: It actually IS good. I'm still trying to put my finger on it, and even fleshing it out in this article hasn't seemed to help, but everytime I pick up this game, I'm somehow touched by the story (gay). There will be a scene, or a piece of dialogue (silent, mind you, in a window with a color that I invented, thanks to Config) that somehow shoots through all the crappy translating and ricochets off all the other, more expensively produced modern type RPGS, and hits me right between the eyes (zap). The story is all at once scary, hilarious and intelligent.
There's a ton of fan service here, though, which I'm a sucker for. Ask anyone and they'll tell you I'm like a slightly overweight farsighted white girl with long strawberry blonde hair and a kitty-eared stocking cap. But let's break it down: You get to control a Vampire (check), a Gun-Arm Dude (check), a Ninja (check), a Martial Arts Chick (check), a Cat (weird), and a Strangely Effeminate Blonde Guy (check). Sign me up. Currently I'm through almost all of the second disk, which is further than when I played it in high-school, so a lot of it is new material for me. It's fucking gripping. And I will finish it.
As a post script, I should mention that I actually did finish FFXII somewhere in the middle of this post, and yes, again, I was touched.
I give Final Fantasy VII a "Dick" out of "Balls".
