Final Fantasy VII (1997)

Playing the original right after Remake in time for Rebirth's PC release. Also playing it with the Shinra Archeology translation excluding the cut content.

It took me 3 hours to get to the end of Midgar which is 9 times less than it took me to beat the Remake with all sidequests done. And yet I appreciate how both are paced on the surface level. (Even if Remake has its hiccups with it)

Playing this section made me appreciate Remake's iteration of the Sector 5 slums more compared to the original. How the children are an important part of this area, wanting to be heroes themselves. I see it as part of Remake's metanarrative of defying fate and expectations and passing the torch to a newer generation for when Avalanche leaves Midgard/the devs making the Remake trilogy.

Also really enjoying myself playing this version on the go with how to the point it all is.

Think i'm going to shuffle things up a bit and do the 7 platinum before 4, 5 and 6. This keeps it more interesting for me :)

Shouldn't take long because i could probably play this game with my eyes closed :D Then after that i will either finish the 'golden era' (so 8 and 9) or continue with 4, 5 and 6.

Jenova is the real antagonist and Sephiroth is her pawn. I will die on this hill. Yes, I know the creators have said otherwise. I don't really care. I think it's way more interesting to have a psychic alien wizard controlling an angsty soldier man. Even if her body gets destroyed, her psychic influence lingers. That shit is scarier than a sexy angel man with a giant rock fixation.

Let me have this.

Starting my little blogging thread here... My history with Final Fantasy VII was on quite a winding path...

• My first exposure to Final Fantasy was through a friend's son, who was playing through this game on Playstation back in the late 90's. That's when my fascination for the franchise took off.
• As I had none of the gaming consoles, my computer at the time (2000-2003) could only handle emulator games for SNES or earlier, so Final Fantasy VI was the first game I played through. The experience was well worth, so I played IV & V and even the demo of VII; that was the JRPG fever I was on.
• When my parents decided to buy me a game, the store had some of my wishlisted games. Though Final Fantasy VII was there, I ended up picking Age of Empires Gold Edition, which I spent plenty of time on.
• I finally started out on the full game of FFVII a few years later, which actually was downloaded the buccaneer way. Didn't get further than the astronomy scene when the game got locked, as it happens for the pirated version.
• At 2013, I finally bought the actual game on Steam and made my way through until the middle of disc 2/3. I don't know why, but I dropped it when other games got my focus. (which was beginning of my backlog habits)
• Finally beginning this year, I started the game that has been my #1 bucket list game for a part of my life. This time, I followed a Steam guide to get a bunch of mods to enhance the gameplay experience, including Echo-S. It's currently running as I write this post.
• Having the prequels and the first remake in my library, I figured that playing through the original would serve as an incentive to finish it before playing through the FFVII universe in a chronological fashion (Ever Crisis, Crisis Core, Remake Intergrade, then Rebirth).