Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy 7 was released 1997. It was the first game in the Final Fantasy series to be produced for the Sony PlayStation and use 3D computer graphics, with fully rendered characters and prerendered backgrounds. The game was a major success, and remains arguably the most popular title in the series.
Final Fantasy VII is a largely menu-driven role-playing game. Initially, the player is restricted to the city of Midgar, but as the game progresses, more of the fantasy world becomes accessible, and the scripted adventure sequences gradually give way to more freedom and opportunities to explore. At several points in the story, the game is developed by entirely scripted dramatic sequences, some of which are quite long. These sequences cannot be skipped or shortened, and require frequent player interaction for them to proceed.
During its turn-based battle sequences, the game uses the same Active Time Battle (ATB) system used in the three Final Fantasy games preceding it. Unlike previous games in the series, which traditionally allowed for a maximum of 4-5 friendly characters to participate in battle, Final Fantasy VII allows for only three characters to be present in the party — and, therefore, to take part in battle — at any one time.
Final Fantasy VII's skill system uses materia, magic orbs which are placed in special slots on weapons and armor. Materia allows characters to access magic spells, special commands and skills, and a variety of other abilities. Materia abilities can be combined in a fixed number of ways, and strategic use of their combinations can decrease the difficulty of battles.
Every playable character has a "limit bar" which gradually fills up every time the character suffers damage in battle. When the limit bar is completely filled, that character has access to his or her Limit Break, a special attack which generally inflicts much more damage on an enemy than normal physical attacks, or otherwise aids the party in battle.
Final Fantasy VII also popularized the inclusion of extremely difficult optional bosses. Late in the game, a series of powerful monsters called weapons appear; the player must confront several of them during the plot, but two (Ruby weapon and Emerald weapon) can only be encountered if the player chooses to fight them. The gameplay challenge presented by the two optional bosses actually exceeds the challenge of the game's final script-oriented boss fights. Ruby weapon, for instance, can instantly and unpreventably kill any character with one of its attacks, and has exactly ten times as many Hit Points (HP) as the final boss, while Emerald weapon can potentially kill all three characters with one attack (an attack which deals damage directionally proportionate to the number of materia orbs each character currently possesses), and has more than twelve times as much HP as the final boss. These weapons only appeared in the NTSC, PAL and International versions of the game, being distinctly absent in the Japanese original.
The main playable characters in Final Fantasy VII are Cloud Strife, Aerith Gainsborough, Barret Wallace, Tifa Lockhart, Red XIII, Cait Sith, Cid Highwind, and two secret characters: Vincent Valentine and Yuffie Kisaragi. Sephiroth is also an in-party character during a flashback, but cannot be controlled or developed.
Notable characters in Shin-Ra are Reeve (Head of Urban Development), Hojo (Head of the Science Department), Palmer (Head of Space Exploration), Heidegger (Head of the Public Safety Maintenance), Scarlet (Head of Weapons Development), President Shinra, his son Rufus and members of a covert unit called "the Turks" (Elena, Rude, Reno and Tseng).