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I am one of those folk who gets sorely tired of hearing about Final Fantasy VII. I understand it was a great game, and I appreciate it's role in expanding the popularity of both the Final Fantasy series and RPGs in general. But at the end of the day, whenever I see it on a top ten list or read yet another forum posting espousing it as the catharsis of gaming, I find myself asking, “Why?”
There are a lot of great games out there, many with better stories, and more heart wrenching moments than the much over-worshiped “Aerith gutting” scene. Even within the franchise itself, one can find a slew of scenes whose only flaw when compared to FFVII is that they weren't in “gorgeous” 3D at a time when 3D was still a novelty.
ake FFVI, for instance. I could go on for hours about the sheer number of ways this game is superior to FFVII. Everything about this game just reeks of greatness, and there are more than a few scenes that easily compare or exceed the most poignant that VII has to offer. The ghost train, the opera, General Leo's death, the end of the freaking world: so much happens so coherently in this game, it constantly boggles my mind that anyone would pick the messy plot of FFVII over it. But alas, my opinion is not everyone's.
Going back further one can render other examples. Aerith's death was stirring largely because she was a major character that had participated in the player's party. Killing a character off like this was far from unprecedented in the series though. Compare the relatively early death of Aerith to the that of Galuf in FFV. Granted, Final Fantasy V is no opus of story, and its characters were largely flat caricatures, but one would be hard pressed to not think it shocking when Galuf was killed three quarters of the way through the game. I mean, it's not too uncommon for a character to be killed before or during a final battle, but Galuf dies long before any of this. And he goes down so much cooler than Aerith does.
After your party gets soundly walloped by main baddie Exdeath, Galuf, determined to put the jerk down gets back up and takes him on single handedly. After he wins the fight, he's hurt so badly that the party's attempts at healing him are useless. He's just too far gone. It's a classic, down in a blaze of glory moment (cue Bon Jovi).
It's not that I dislike FFVII. It just sometimes bothers me the way so many other games, even in its own series get lost in its shadow. Maybe I just don't get it. I did always prefer VIII after all, and by most accounts that alone means there's something terribly wrong with me.
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