The original Final Fantasy VII was released on this day in 1997 in Japan. If you are not familiar with Final Fantasy or JRPGs in general, you have still at least heard about FFVII. Even if you don’t know a lot about video games, but you love classical music, you will recognise Sephiroth’s epic theme, One Winged Angel. FFVII had such a huge impact on not just gamers, that I think we can easily say FFVII is one of the greatest video games of all time.

I grew up in Hungary, and the country being to the east from the Berlin Wall pretty much defined our economic situation. Only rich kids had consoles, at least real consoles, the rest of us had to do with a cheap Chinese knock-off Sega Mega Drive. And even if you were one of the lucky ones, getting games for it wasn’t as easy as in the west. 

I was 12 years old when FFVII came out, and my friend’s brother had a Playstation and was playing FFVII when I was visiting them. Before that I only saw games like Tetris and Super Mario so a game having a story blew my mind. The text was in German which I was learning at school so I knew a little bit of it, but still had to sit there with a dictionary to translate a lot of the words. I got grounded for staying over past my bedtime, but no regrets.

Final Fantasy VII has had a huge impact on my life, and I wouldn’t be making content or working in the games industry today without this game.

What is Final Fantasy? For me, it is the story. I didn’t have an easy childhood, and these games were my getaway from the harsh reality. Given the financial situation and the not so easy access to games, I was collecting videos of the cutscenes so I could watch those even if I didn’t have the means to play the games themselves. This is how I know the story of FFIX and FFX.

And if you want to know who is my favourite character from FFVII and why, check out the latest Just About Community Podcast episode:

When I saw FFVII Advent Children I was thinking how cool it would have been if the game looked like this. So when the first announcement of the Remake project came out and I saw those graphics straight out of Advent Children in an actual playable game, I was losing my mind.

The second part of the Remake project, FFVII Rebirth came out last year, but we finally got the PC version a week ago, and we have to talk about it. I like my single player RPGs on console, and I haven’t bought any FF games before on PC apart from FFXIV. I got the collectors edition for Rebirth on my PS5 which was over £300, so buying the game again for PC was really not justified. But I did it. Along with a new CPU (which to be fair I was planning for a while). Why? Because the game looks absolutely incredible. I’ve seen footage from the PS5 Pro, but I didn’t see the point of getting one as it wouldn’t make a difference on my dumb TV screen. But the PC version on my RTX 4070 in 2k resolution does.

Here are a few comparison screenshots from the PS5 and the PC version of the game running on the best possible settings:

But it’s not just the look of the game which makes it worth buying it on PC. A lot of people like to use various mods and either wait for a PC version or buy a second copy of the game for PC just so they can use them. I will leave it to everyone’s own preference what type of mods they like, as for myself I thought fine, glamour is the real endgame, it will be nice to dress the characters into outfits from the FFVII Ever Crisis mobile game because look at this gorgeous winter coat for Aerith:

But there are mods I didn’t know existed and they put this game on a completely different level.

Fancy having characters fighting with you who are not playable in certain parts of the game? There’s a mod for that too…

If you like your hard mode gameplay, I definitely recommend checking out BlitzZ for some materia loadout guides btw!

But the mod which blew my mind and is an absolute must for every lore enthusiast is the free cam mod, which will let you zoom out to the limits of the game and move the camera around freely. Why is this so special? Because you can discover tiny details which are normally off camera and it makes you wonder why did the devs make these if no one was going to be able to see them anyway? Are they pre-made renders for Part 3? Or easter eggs?

Here is a stream from my friend Prof Noctis exploring some areas from a completely new point of view and finding details on the Highwind airship which made him and the research assistants of the class look up Egyptian mythology in the middle of the stream. The Highland discovery is around 1:12:20

So happy birthday Final Fantasy VII, I will be spending my weekend exploring this huge and beautiful open world map again! If you haven’t played a Final Fantasy game yet, then do yourself a favour and start with the FFVII Remake project. We might have years to wait for Part 3 which might not be fun for those who are not familiar with the story, but based on how the first 2 parts were, it will be worth it, trust me.

What are your favourite memories of the game? Let us know in the comments below!