Part 1: In which we put rose-tinted glasses

Chapter 1 - In which we put rose-tinted glasses



Squaresoft was a great company, shame it ended.



And this is the first thing we see.

Back in '97 I remember my friends going apeshit that you could have characters done in CGI now.







Who names their bar "Goblin's Bar"?



And so our adventure begins.
I think it's pretty neat that for once we're starting in a big city instead of running away from a small one.



This is Midgar. Don't worry, it looks much bigger from the inside, once you get past the fact there's a building the size of Mt. Everest in it.



This opening has everything, even trains.



I like this shot. You can come back to it later and you'll see a lot of the pre-rendered areas in it.

All in all it's a good opening. Square did a version of it for the PS3, which is pretty neat and I recommend for everyone to watch:

It's also the closest thing we'll ever have to a remake because FF7 fans can't ever have nice things.



A bunch of people wearing bandanas jump off the train and kick some of the guards.



And this is our protagonist doing his first action in the game: Stealing a potion off a knocked guard.

Unfortunately our protagonist doesn't believe in all this alternative medicine stuff so he's just gathering them to sell later, possibly on eBay.



The guards don't like that he's stealing their drinks.



This is the first battle, in which we learn our protagonist is an Ex-SOLDIER. He also wears a huge sword. It's a pretty effective intro if you think about it, FF7 is the closest thing to a ROOOLLING STAAART that we have on J-RPGs.

Also, the OST starts out awesome. Around 1:10 is when the opening music ends. The music keeps playing even during battles, which is pretty neat.



For the most part, FF7 is a really easy game. You can see that the enemy barely scratches you and although this is the first fight of the game, it never gets much harder than this.

You can break this game hilariously as a result, although not as hilariously as you can break FF8 if you set your heart to it.



We win the fight and move on.



Jessie: "SOLDIER? Aren't they the enemy? What's he doing with us in AVALANCHE?"
Biggs: "Hold it, Jessie. He WAS in SOLDIER. He quit them and now is one of us."

And with that the Caps Lock Brigade concludes the expository dialogue.



Biggs is the guy who looks like a skinny Rambo. The chick trying to open the door is Jessie. The fat dude on the corner is Wedge.

When I was a kid I never realized Jessie was a chick, the polygons didn't reveal much and my English wasn't good enough to deduct.



And this is our protagonist, Mr. Cloud.



Damn, son.



"Our target's the North Mako Reactor. We'll meet on the bridge in front of it."

You can see that these folks are up to no good but whatever their plan is they clearly don't have much experience doing it.



Jaime Lannister, I want you to be my royal guard.



FF7 is a show of potentially offensive racial stereotypes and man, Barret is the king of them. I think they modelled Barret on Mr.T. Barret is the leader of AVALANCHE.



Cloud: What the HELL are you talking about?





I love these backgrounds. The sign alternates between "WARNING" and "INTRUDER" so the whole place knows we're here already.

An interesting bit of trivia is that FF7 had backgrounds rendered in slightly higher resolution than FF8, because of disc space.



The Reactor bridge. You can see the whole thing is floating and there's a lot of buildings down there. Pretty unsettling scenery.



Once you get inside the reactor, this music starts playing. It's very fitting.







Mako as we know is the planet's blood. The concept of Mako as the world's energy was reused in the Final Fantasy movie (Spirits Within) and to an extent in FF9 and FF10/10-2. It's not original to FF7, however, but it's too early for us to talk about it.



Cloud being delicate as usual.

What we know is that our band of heroes are actually off to do, well, things that are not so heroic.

After that Barret decides he'll follow you around to keep a close eye. Jessie and Biggs are 1337 h4x0rs and crack the code to open the doors in a CSI fashion.

Exploring a bit the reactor we find a Phoenix Down. These are used to revive fallen members. They kinda come in handy as they're expensive items and you don't find many of them around.







God damn it Cloud.

So we learn that Barret is a huge hippie gone wild. You can kinda understand Cloud here. I mean, he probably thinks that Barret's new age talk is complete bullshit and he probably thinks these guys are crazy too. You have to be pretty crazy to think the powerplants are draining mystical energy from the planet that keeps it alive.







Cloud starts with two spells - Bolt and Ice. Machines are typically weak to Electricity, so they take double damage from Bolt.

At the party menu we can access "Magic" but we can't do anything about it now. All we know is that Cloud is not just an elite mercenary, he's also a wizard.



And down we go further in the reactor.



WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?



We find yet another potion lying around. Why would someone working in a reactor bring a potion though? Why not some soda, or water? Maybe the working conditions are really bad and you get hurt all the time. I'll go with that.

At any rate Cloud takes it to sell later because he ain't drinking anything.



Our first Save-Point. While a Save-Point doesn't always indicate that there's an incoming boss, the opposite is true - there's always a Save-Point before a boss. Well, mostly, but it doesn't hurt to get ourselves ready.





See that pink bar that turned green? That's the Limit Bar. Every time you get punched by an enemy you fill a bit of it. When the bar is full your Attack Command is replaced by Limit, which is a special attack. Each character has different limits.

With some exceptions, each character has 7 unique limits that you unlock over time. There are 4 sets of limits, so for example if you're locked to the first set you can choose between the first and second limits whenever the command pops up, etc. Most of the time Limits are just special attacks that do much more damage than usual.

The rate at which your limit bar increases also changes depending on which limit set your character is locked into. At the first set this is very low, around 45% of your maximum HP for Cloud and Barret, so you're bound to see at least four limits between them before you die unless you screw up horribly.

Barret's first limit 'Big Shot' is slightly more powerful than Cloud's, but in practice they deal similar damage at our current level.

With that in mind, we fight some more enemies to fill our Limit Bar.



On the bridge to plant the bomb we find something on the ground. We can't do anything about it yet though, we'll find more about it later.



I really ought to play the Japanese version to see if I feel sorry or anger towards the translation team, but I'll give them the benefit of doubt.



There's a Zero Wing joke here somewhere.



Woah.



Apparently our main character is hearing voices.

"What's wrong?"
"Huh?"


BOSS TIME - Guard Scorpion

Our first boss fight comes out of nowhere, the Guard Scorpion.



Before attacking, Guard Scorpion will do a "Search Scope" movement to lock himself a target. The next move will be an attack to that target, then it will move on to Search Scope again.



As you may have noticed we have the Limit Breaks still active from last battle. You can do that - as long as you don't use them, that bar will remain active for as long as you want. We also haven't healed prior to the battle because healing is for sissies.



FF7 has a lot of bosses, mind that. A LOT. And most of them come out of nowhere too.





This is Guard Scorpion's gimmick - After two turns it will rise up its tail. During that, it will have increased defense but it won't do anything, so you have some turns to heal up. On the other hand if you attack it will counter-attack with Tail Laser, which inflicts massive amounts of damage.

The only real danger is if you queue up two attacks while Guard Scorpion has its Tail movement queued up already. The boss will get into counter-attack mode before your attacks go out and you'll take two tail lasers in a row, which is about half of your maximum HP and a potential Game Over.

The other danger comes from the script. The full script is "Barret, be careful. Attack while it's tail's up. It's gonna counterattack with its laser." which is pretty stupid because it can lead you to think you should actually ATTACK while the tail is up, which is never a good idea.

There's not much you can do wrong though. It's the first boss fight in the game and your choice of commands are very limited.



We beat him in a most humiliating way.



Our loot is a new gun for Barret. Yay~!





Oh crap.



The counter keeps running everywhere - in the field, in battles, even in the menu.



Oh look, it's Jessie. Hi Jessie!

At this point I decide to run away from battles. HP is very low so it's a little risky.



As it turns out, you can't leave the place without talking to Jessie



I think Jessie is gonna be a love interest to Cloud. I mean, they work together, she is a geek, and we already have the cliché of him risking himself to save her



I remember to equip the Assault Gun we just got.



The cool thing about the weapons is that they all have their own individual graphics that change in battle. The official artworks are pretty cool too. For example, this is the gattling gun:



And this is the Assault Gun:



Most Barret weapons are long-range so you can attack enemies on the back-row and do the same amount damage. Non-Long-Range weapons would only do half. Alternatively, you can also choose to put your characters in the back row and take only half physical damage. It's incredibly powerful if you're focusing on magic.



We manage to run out with 2 minutes left. It's pretty hard to run out of time unless you miss Jessie and can't really find her.



BOOOOOM.







And Jessie blows up the exit. Mission successful!

AVALANCHE 1 x SHINRA 0




NEXT TIME:

More Love Interests! Reactors! Flowers! Flashbacks! Slums! Paychecks!





Chapter 1 Bugs & Bytes:

Immediately after you start the game, right before the first battle, if you open the menu and check you'll see that Cloud is on Level 6, has 610 experience and needs 645 experience to Level 7, so 35 more. This is a bug that is auto-corrected on the first battle, when you see that Cloud needs in fact just 6 points to Level 7.



Cool Music we listened to in this Chapter:

FF6,7,8 and 9 are all games with most excellent OSTs. Although which has the best is pointless to argue, FF7 has a great soundtrack that greatly adds to the mood of the game.

Opening Theme + Bombing Mission - The game intro which jumps straight into the Rolling Start music.
Mako Reactor - The music we listen to during the reactor level.