I've played all the Final Fantasy games (minus the GameBoy games, or Mystic Quest) up to FF8, and I can't really tell why one (you) would consider the earlier FF games better than FF7. Because of 2D sprite graphics?

As far as I remember, I found FF7 a pretty similar experience as the earlier ones, only much flashier (3D graphics, full-motion video etc.). Or then I just don't remember that clearly anymore.

Actually I never got the huge popularity of the entire FF series. Sure, they are good computer RPGs. But by far not the best.

Like many runaway successes, it was just in the right place at the right time.

While in my personal opinion, 3/VI IS the best over-all story and Final Fantasy game, the major popularity with Seven is that it has the distinction of being the first 3D Final Fantasy. It was, in a way, revolutionary to Final Fantasy at the time. Now, 3D FF games are a dime a dozen, and getting worse with each one... So we look at FF7 with tinted glasses, remembering how fun it was to play it. Right now? The graphics are considered dated, and the glaring plot and translation issues stand out, but they didn't before, and they don't always show as clearly in our memories.

Final Fantasy Six has a wonderful story, and was fun to play... But no one would remember it as having 'revolutionary' features. It wasn't the first 3D, it was simply the last 2D. So while it was a better story, it is arguably NOT a better gameplay.

Arguably. Again, I love final fantasy 3/VI. I have bought it in many formats... And I rather feel Final Fantasy Seven borrowed IT'S plot VERY heavily from Six... But Seven is higher regarded because of where it took it's plot. To a whole 'New Dimension' as it would be...

I liked the tone of FF6 more, and I also found the characters more entertaining. I suspect that it mainly has to do with the fact that it was the first game of its kind that a lot of people played. It is not uncommon to hear people who have played the earlier FFs before FF7 to say that those are better, but FF7 reached a wider audience than the previous ones, and it shaped the view that a lot of people now have of the genre.
It is not all that uncommon to hear people say something like "It was my first X and I still think it is the best" on the internet, when talking about games. And FF7 fits into that category for a lot of people. And if you look at the games that you used to play when you were younger, I'm certain that you'll find a few cases where the first game you played of a given type was so influential that you for a long time considered it to be the hallmark of the genre.

Personally, I'm not a big FF fan these days. I quite simply find most JRPGs to be boring, but I have played 4(2), 6(3), 7, 8 & 9, and I did for a long time consider 6(3) to be the best one in the series, probably because it was the first game of its type that I actually played, and as I already had experience with that type of games when FF7 was released, it just did not impress me the same way that I'm sure it impressed a lot of people who had never played anything like it before. These days I consider 9 to be the best.

Personally, even at a young age, I was kind of a writing snob. My grandmother introduced me to Tolkien when I was very young, and before she died she had read me the entire LOTR series and The Hobbit.


So in a way, I understand the "It was my first, and I like it best" argument, as that's probably why I enjoy LOTR this much to this day, though I do acknowledge that it has pacing issues.


In any case, I think my major problem with FF7, now that I'm running my old physical copy in ePSXe, was the music. I find it entirely tolerable muted. Was the sound quality really this bad, or is it just my old speakers and the emulator? I don't have any problems with Metal Gear Solid's sound, though. FF7's music just seems to screech out of my speakers in Don Corneo's mansion, though.