I'd honestly like to know why it's so highly regarded. This isn't flamebait, this isn't me trying to be a troll. I just remember not liking it as a child, when I had thoroughly enjoyed FF6/3.

Well, you get to fight a house. How many games let you fight a house?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abnkwyKRqWo

Maximo vs Army of Zin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYEXjq4tCAQ

Tread lightly, my friend. We don't just diss FFVII like that.

My point being I absolutely agree with you. I guess I'm way too hard to please, when it comes to video games.

That was impressively quick! Thanks!

You literally fight a church in Xenosaga!

We'll literally have to fight Squeenix for a GOG'd release.

(I haven't played it in years so there may be some inaccuracies while my mind blends together every RPG I've ever played, but I'll try to describe why I rate it so highly.)

The best way I can describe it is that it took together the gameplay elements I enjoyed from the RPGs of the previous generation, added a few more and wrapped the entire thing up in an overall package which appealed strongly to my personal tastes.

Regarding gameplay design I really liked the materia system for handling skills and magic etc. I would have liked to have seen this developed more in future games in a different way, the way it was handled in the following games seemed like a step backwards in my opinion, particularly the 'draw magic' stuff used in 8.

Difficulty and pacing was tuned well I thought and I didn't really find it all that grindy except for when going for the optional bosses which were tuned so so tightly, it felt like an amazing achievement to kill them.

I know people have mixed feelings about this and will probably argue that it was shit but I also got pulled into the plot and the character development. I don't get into games on that level so much now, probably because I'm older but maybe also because I didn't have the internet spoiling key plot points 30 minutes after the game was released back then.

I thought the atmosphere was great, graphically there were elements which may not have been amazing, particularly character models but it didn't ruin it for me personally and the soundtrack was top notch.

It may not have aged all that gracefully, and I have no doubts it's not to everyone's taste. Random battles were sort of out of control, summons took half an hour and looking back it did have many flaws - but for what I was looking for in gaming at that point and compared to console RPGs which came before it, it delivered the perfect experience. I won't argue with anyone who dislikes it, popular games will always conjure divisive opinions but I'll always consider it one of my favourite games.

same here, if you have enjoyed final fantasy 3 (6), then the others just fall short of the epic story and fantasy element, ff7 felt more like scifi the fantasy

Context is late 1997.

The good, it was a major step for your average player with CG movies, intriguing and involving storyline, 3 CD''s of lenghty RPG, a badass villain, very diverse cast of characters and environments, mind blowing 3D graphics in battle, gorgeous 2D scenes in exploration, smart materia system, superb musical score etc..

The bad, awful French translation work, technical aspect over the actual content in terms of plot and lore in comparison to FF6, while on its own and a decent US localization i see nothing but worthwhile pleasing entertainment with this game.

Back when it came out is was pretty cool for a playthrough. However, while it was fun, I didn't regard it as a watershed game then, and there's no way I'd spend that many hours today re-playing it when there are so many other games. A lot I've regarded as better.

Last time I replayed it, I thought it was a good game I still enjoyed, but by no means anything fantastic.

FF VII was for a lot of gamers the first game with any kind of substance, so it's a point of nostalgia for lots of people. It came out when the first PlayStation was still relatively new and there was this huge audience of new gamers who were teens/young adults (just in the perfect age for the FF melodrama) and who had not played anything but mainstream console games, so a game with a storyline was something new.

I tried it last year for the first time - I couldn't stand the random encounters, they're just too annoying for me in this game. Same happened with FFVI. I see no point in those battles cos ultimately there is no reward - they just give me some gil that I don't care for, and auto-leveling up. FFX however I loved - I always had motivation to fight cos of the Sphere Grid.

For some it was their first RPG experience, myself included. Final Fantasy VII and Suikoden were the games that got me as a platformer obsessed kid into the RPG genre though admittedly, I mostly played JRPG games for years until recent times where I was able to warm up to Western RPGs and their complexity. Though at the time when I played it, I thought it was a pretty massive and dare I say, "epic" game. 3 discs of content and, at the time, a pretty intriguing plot. Of course that was me as a child and preteen speaking about it and as I grew older, I outgrew my love for Final Fantasy VII and JRPGs altogether in favor of games like The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and even though I was late to the party, Ultima.

I should add that I did indeed play the earlier Final Fantasy games after VII, VIII, and X and I have to say I did enjoy the first game a lot but sadly I played them when my JRPG interest started to die down so I don't regard them as well as many others do.

I find the story and the actual game structure itself as great today as they were then, but what does bother me is the use of poorly rendered 3D characters against shitty pre-rendered backgrounds, and the massive jumps in quality and style of the characters between cut-scenes.

FF9 went some way to making the pre-rendered background thing bearable, but FF7 and FF8 just looked terrible and were horrible to play. Having to press select to find the exits on a screen just stinks of lazy game design.