FFVII Hype

First off, this post is NOT about whether Final Fantasy VII is a good or bad game. I'm not a fan of it, and I'm not going to deny that that fact might affect my view on the hype surrounding the game, but that's not what this is about. I'm not attacking the game, so please don't comment to "educate" me on how awesome it is.

See that disclaimer right there, which you probably read right before this sentence? That's real, it's not for demonstration purposes. At the same time, think about it. If I didn't have that disclaimer, I'd be getting emails and phone calls and whatnot about how terrible I am, and how wrong this post is. They probably still will. Would I need such a disclaimer if I was talking about other games? Not at all. Not even if I was talking about equally or more popular games, like Ocarina of Time or even Super Mario Bros.

Many (not all, but many) Final Fantasy VII fans are just way too full of righteous indignation. It's the most cosplayed, fanarted, fanfic'd, and religiously-devoted game out there. If you say one bad thing about the game, people will hunt you down. People see it as the pinnacle of gaming perfection. It's not the best-selling game ever (Wii Sports, Super Mario Bros. 3, or Pokemon R/B depending on who you ask) or even the highest reviewed (Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time), but FFVII worshippers insist that those stats are meaningless. The fact is, everyone has different taste in games, and you can't get angry when people disagree with you.

It is a lot like a religion. Its superiority is treated as fact without evidence, its presence is fought for, and if anyone attacks it, people get severely angry.

Again, it's not whether it's a good or a bad game. It's that it isn't as good as many act like it is. NO game is as good as these people act like FF VII is. The characters, while compelling, are stereotypical; Aeris' death, while emotional, is part of a cutscene and thus no more of a milestone as a character dying in a movie. The gameplay is pretty much the same as any other turn-based RPG. Because of the perspective used, the fact that it was 3D didn't make a significant difference. These facts don't make it a bad game, or even a worse game, but they make it just as imperfect as any other game, and doesn't deserve to be treated better than any other imperfect game. No game is immune from criticism.

"That's easy to say about a game you hate," you may say, "so why don't you point out any flaws in YOUR favorite game?" Well, I will. Even for when it came out, Ocarina of Time's graphics weren't great. The storyline was basically the same as the previous game, Link to the Past. The characters were not all that compelling. See where I'm going with this? If someone posts in a blog that the storyline in Ocarina of Time was completely unoriginal, I'm not going to go ballistic on them. If someone says it's a bad game and genuinely believes that after having actually played it, I can respectfully disagree. If they say it's a bad game in retaliation for me not liking a game they like without actually giving it a chance, it's a different story.

I say this because the obsessive FF VII fans tend to do just that. Because they're so worried about FF VII being knocked off its pedestal, they'll go on sites like metacritic and give 0 out of 10 reviews to excellent games that are often compared to FFVII. That's how a game like Ocarina of Time, posessing equal critical and fan acclaim as FFVII, can have a fan review that says it's the worst game ever.

I bring up Ocarina of Time specifically because it's the game FFVII uberfans always put down to make FFVII seem better. You may not love the game, but giving it a 0 review is just ridiculous. Games like E.T. deserve 0 reviews, not games like OoT. It's because Ocarina of Time came out around the same general time period, and was on the opposite console. Nobody can honestly say that either game deserves to be called terrible, but people will do it to put the other on a pedestal. It's ridiculous.

Some of these morons are just people who like the game a bit too much and fail to see anything wrong with it, much like a mother with her baby. Others are rabid Sony fanboys who want to believe it is proof of Sony's superiority, and in order to be proof of that, it has to be the #1 perfect game. This doesn't make a lot of sense, considering the game was made by Square-Enix, but it seems to happen anyway.

Now, I'm no psychologist; I'm not sure about the reasons I've listed here. But after a lot of observation, they seem to be correct.