How do you like Final Fantasy VII??

pennyliu123

pennyliu123

Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
I've spent the whole year to translate FF7 into Chinese, I think it is one of the best RPG games in the world. I know it is very popular in US, but I don't know if it is popular in Europe, I want to make friends with some FF7 fans here--- if there are some...
 
Whenever people call games like Final Fantasy RPGs, I laugh. It's not a "true" RPG in my opinion (of course, neither is Baldur's Gate). That said, I hate the battle system. I hate hate hate the menus: am I playing a game or am I fiddling with my browser settings? I absolutely love the materia system though; I spent many hours experimenting with materia combinations until I had Final Attack-Phoenix, Final Attack-Knights of the Round, MP Absorb-Master Summon as the basic kill-everything setup. Another thing I found really good was the story line; yes, I know it was too linear and had the stupid obligatory love story, but the truth is, it was still awesome. Don't want to mention any spoilers here, but the start of disc two is my favorite part. In the end, though, I'm a fan who spent many, many hundreds of hours running about in Final Fantasy VII (I had to do something between the time I got a Playstation and the time I found a PnP RPG group).
 
Yeah, the story is awsome...
Most Chinese gamers, or, Asian gamers think that the story is most important to a RPG.
The story of FF7 let us think of many things, we were deeply moved by the game, so we love that game...
 
pennyliu123 said:
Most Chinese gamers, or, Asian gamers think that the story is most important to a RPG.
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I don't know if this is true. I'm thinking of most Japanese games here, but it seems anymore that most RPGs are just to appeal to the "OMG sooo kawaii I know three Japanese words ^__^" crowd. Final Fantasy IX, X and especially X-2 were guilty of this. Square-Enix has yet to release a good or even decent game.

That said, have you played Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits? I haven't played the others (because $70 American is too much money for me), but that game has a very deep storyline, and lets you play two conflicting sides of a story.
 
Most of the more story-driven games are exported regularly, though ones like Square's Treasure Hunter G and parts of their library, Enix's, and others, there are a lot of titles that defy the story-driven part in more ways than commonly shoveled out by SquareSoft.

With interest in Japanese culture, many in Europe and N. America are importing more of the quality titles that are more than a combat simulator with a dragging story. The reason why the bland story-in-a-bottle approach isn't working anymore is because it has been done to death and the market isn't much interested in them anymore.

Sorry, but I really did find the story in FFVII to be the typical kill-by-numbers empty gameplay with a story trying to stretch out the boredom of the combat system. The Final Fantasy games have been repetitive, and revising it into a different story isn't really helping the formula, neither is rehashing the combat systems. Hence why they had to do a re-realse of the more memorable untranslated titles because they were smart enough to see what was imported to another country. Unfortunately, a bit of their work is questionable, given the release of Star Ocean III in Japan and then the re-realease, and then the American release. It could have used a lot more polish and the memorable characters from the previous games, rather than Primary Color Hair Party and The Sideshow.

I did like FFV a bit more because you could choose what everyone trains into, allowing for a bit of a different style. Treasure Hunter G was a more tactical game, one of the sources in conjunction with FFV to create Final Fantasy Tactics - a good move, as the playstyles and mechanics did comliment each other. After FFVI, the characters were usually nothing more than what they were wearing/limit breaks/summons/etc. until X, I think. But by then, a lot of the fans were a bit jaded at the assumption that they would buy anything they put out, so now they are going for more involving games.

...or are trying to. Drakenguard was a nice engine test, but the next time they should make sure they have an involving game rather than a really budget version of Dynasty Warriors 4 with Dragons.
 
hmm... Thanks for your reply, your opinion is quite "new" to me.

Chinese game players have missed many great RPG games, just because the distance of language. FF7 is such an "old" game, but there are quit a few "old" players do not catch the whole meaning of the game even after they have played it for several times. And some "new" players do not like that game just because they can't understand it well, though the English words used in FF7 is not so hard...

Only the best and the most popular game, just like fallout2, will be translated into Chinese---by the fans, not by the game producer, because they don't think they can make a lot of money in China market...

Some English ARPG(like Diablo) , or Sports game(like FIFA or NFS), Shooting game(Half Life CS) are popular in China, too. The reason is there are not so many words in the game need to be understand, and the game is more about control than a long story. But most Chinese RPG players still could only enjoy the RPG produced by Japan , Korea, or China itself, and most of the games are all of one style, just like FF7. FF7 is one of the best of that style, I could say.

When I have the time, I don't have the chance to played many good games, but when I have the chance, I have little time to do this, sigh...

Fortunately, young players in China can use English much better than "old" players. Wish they could enjoy more English game than I, one of the "old" players ...
 
pennyliu123 said:
hmm... Thanks for your reply, your opinion is quite "new" to me.
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You have good observations as well.

Fortunately, young players in China can use English much better than "old" players. Wish they could enjoy more English game than I, one of the "old" players ...
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I am often wishing that younger N. American gamers could understand that the cloning of game mechanics into one style isn't doing artistic expression any favors. It does not help market variety, either. When everything is the same, then only the really popular ones stand out like you have mentioned. A bit interesting how such things would turn towards each other given the different markets. The Chinese could use more variety but only gets those titles popular enough to be deemed worthy of translation if it's required (usually by fans as you have noted), and often of a certain type, but the N. American market is so busy trying to clone off everything until the gameplay is an uninspired mess with a few "flashy" things added in for hype and few developers/publishers daring to not play the clone & hype game.
 
*tosses in two cents*

I know this might sound a little outlandish...

But might it be easier to translate it from Japanese instead? Considering at the very least, you won't have to deal with the text being translated twice. That would cut out a lot of translation errors, even if it's not easier to translate from Japanese. I don't know, I can't speak or read either.
 
In fact, my partners and I transtlated the text of FF7 both from English and Japanese, to avoid misunderstanding.

In China, few people can speak Japanese unless they've learned it in University or have studied it for a long time all by themselves.

But we have English lessons since high school, now in some big cities of China, even the children can speak quite a few English words.
 
So you translated the original Japanese version of Final Fantasy VII? Interesting. Were there any real differences between that version and the English version? I know that, a lot of the time, certain things are taken out that are considered too "risque" for people in the States. About the only thing that comes to my mind, though, from Final Fantasy VII that would seem like it had been edited was the implied sex scene between Cloud and Tifa.
 
DevilsAdvocate said:
About the only thing that comes to my mind, though, from Final Fantasy VII that would seem like it had been edited was the implied sex scene between Cloud and Tifa.
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Sorry, but we don't find any "real"differences like "the implied sex scene". In fact, Tifa's feeling to Cloud can be not so good, if you hurt her in the game for too many times. And, Cloud is a shy boy, while Tifa is shy, too. Personally, I don't think they have any sex scene before the last fight----of course, I don't want to deny the possibility :)

But there're many little differences in the dialogues, and sometimes the content of English version is completely wrong,so I have to edit the tranlation for a long time...

An apparent difference between English version and the Japnese version is like this: In English version, everyone call himself or herself as "I", but in Japanese, Cid and Barret is rude when they call themselves, while Tifa, Aeris or Yuffie call themselves with humility. And their words are of different manners, that could hardly completely be translated into English.
 
Back when FF7 first came out, I didn't play it on the basis of graphics alone... it seemed that Square was trying to mix the old graphics style (square-sprite characters) with polygons... everyone just ended up looking like Legos.

These days, I'm thinking that once I can spare the money, I'll pick up a Playstation and give it a shot.
 
I liked the game, but I do recognise that pretty much everything said against it is true. That said, I was about 14 when I played it, so there's some excuse ;).

I liked the graphics, they were distinctive and much better than the poor attempt at realistic characters in FFVIII.
 
Big_T_UK said:
I liked the game, but I do recognise that pretty much everything said against it is true. That said, I was about 14 when I played it, so there's some excuse :wink: .

I liked the graphics, they were distinctive and much better than the poor attempt at realistic characters in FFVIII.
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Hmm.. I played FF7 when I was 18, so I don't have any excuse... :oops:

Yes, the 3D graphics in FF7 may feel odd at first sight, but they are cute. I don't like the graphics of FFVIII either.

And I think the musics in FF7 is just excellent.
 
Just posting to say i'm one of the few chosen ones who liked FF VIII. I don't know if i'd consider it better than VII, but i always tought it was pretty good by jRPG standards
(wich is good, since every game following those standards isn't worthy of holding the roll of toilet paper a game like Fallout, Planescape or civ 2 would use to clean his proverbbial ass, but anyway)
 
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