My Favorite and Least Favorite Things about Final Fantasy VII

Story and Setting

• Favorite Town Outside of Midgar: Cosmo Canyon! The most unique setting and layout of all the FF7 towns, poignant scenes with important plot points, Bugenhagen's incredible observatory, friendly locals, and the #1 best materia shop in the entire game with those sweet, sweet HP Plus and MP Plus materia. Also awesome theme music!
• Town I'd Least Want to Visit If It Were Real: The reconstructed Nibelheim. Very creepy with locals who gaslight Cloud and Tifa and who really seem like they want them dead for questioning them. I would not want to live there or visit any longer than necessary. Hell, in retrospect, I'm surprised that they didn't try killing my party in the middle of the night when we stayed at the inn there (solely to restore HP and MP).
• Most Beautiful Setting: I thought that the Forgotten Capital was absolutely gorgeous. I can only imagine what it would have looked like when it was still inhabited. I would love to visit it if it were real and am really looking forward to seeing what they did with it in Rebirth once I finally break down and buy it.
• Favorite Quest: I loved the second visit to the Gold Saucer, particularly the date (which, in my case, tends to be with Aeris/Aerith) and Cait Sith's/Reeve's betrayal scene.
• Least Favorite Quest: I hated the wild goose chase around Wutai looking for Yuffie. I didn't entirely hate Wutai—I loved the scenery, the Turks scenes, that hilarious Don Corneo scene, and the shack with all the cats—but the wild goose chase drove me crazy. I had to consult walkthroughs too many times, which is not something I enjoy doing because I feel like they break my immersion.
• Most Harrowing Quest: The whole way to the North Pole, I really felt like I was going to get killed before I reached the crater. It really is amazing how an old video game can make you empathize so much with the characters that you really feel like you're in danger when Cloud is climbing a mountain while suffering from hypothermia or running through seemingly endless snow fields without a map.
• Favorite Dungeon: Tie between the cave inside Cosmo Canyon and the Temple of the Ancients. The cave was especially challenging during my first playthrough and forced me to experiment with new battle techniques as I ran low on MP, which led me to clean out most of my item inventory. The boss was also super-cool and more difficult than I expected. The Temple of the Ancients had a really, really cool maze and puzzles; I especially loved the clock!
• Least Favorite Dungeon: I thought the Mythril Mines were kind of meh, the Turks cutscene notwithstanding. Weak enemies, no boss, and no puzzles.

Characters

• Favorite Party Member (as a character): I love them all except for Yuffie, but, if I had to choose my favorite, I would choose Cait Sith, because (1) I love cats, (2) I think he's funny, and (3) I really love Reeve, the double agent who adventures with the good guys and eventually decides to side with them for real. Reeve is cool, but Reeve playing an anthropomorphic tuxedo cat is even cooler. Red XIII is a very close second: I love his character arc, I love his design, and I love the funny part where he disguises himself poorly as a human and does that goofy dance while trying to stand on two legs.
• Least Favorite Party Member (as a character): Oh, god, Yuffie! She's so immature (even compared to myself at her age) and so shallow compared to everyone else. When she complained about being bored at the bonfire at Cosmo Canyon where everyone was discussing how to save the Planet, I imagine that every other member of Avalanche started wondering if it was a mistake letting her join; I know that I would have. Then, when she stole our materia(!), I was pissed! Granted, she did give it back and she did apologize, but I could never remember exactly which materia belonged to whom before she stole it, which made battles confusing for a while since I couldn't get it right and had to relearn who had what. (If I decide to play through Wutai again, I'm going to write down who has what materia before I land on the continent to avoid this problem.) I agree with every word of this hilarious old rant about her, except for the bit about her music because I thought her theme was fine. (That part was probably just what we would now call BEC anyway.)
• Favorite Party Member (to play): Aeris/Aerith, because of her Limit Break. During my first playthrough, I relied so heavily on Healing Wind while Aerith was alive that I missed it when she died. (Starting in my next playthrough, I made sure to get a Cure and All materia early on to give to Tifa so that I wouldn't have that problem.)
• Least Favorite Party Member (to play): Surprisingly, Cait Sith, because he has low attack points and not much defense for a character not made of flesh and blood. His Limit Breaks and all those materia slots on his megaphones were cool, though.
• Second Favorite Villain After Rufus: Jenova. So mysterious, so manipulative, so creepy! I feel like she gets unjustly overshadowed by Sephiroth, despite being the motivation and possessing force behind the death and destruction that he wrought. Jenova is the main villain; Sephiroth is only a puppet (if a very badass and beautiful one). I also love Hojo as a villain.
• Least Favorite Villain: I found Don Corneo the hardest to take seriously out of all the antagonists (save for Palmer, but he's very clearly intended as comic relief and little more). I don't know how much of Don Corneo's character was intended for laughs and how much wasn't, but his "squashed tomatoes" line in Wutai is the epitome of narm. (Indeed, that whole scene is very silly and feels very much like an action-movie-death-trap-parody scene from a 1990s/early 2000s cartoon. I laughed my ass off at it.) Despite dripping with sleaze, he never quite succeeds in exuding the kind of menace that I think he should. I found his minions more menacing.
• Favorite Alternate Names for Party Members: In both of my playthroughs, I named Cait Sith after a certain charismatic black and white cat from my adolescence and young adulthood: The Sween the first time around and just Sween the second (to avoid certain awkward bits of dialogue referring to "another The Sween" and such). During my first playthrough, I chose the name Nanaki for Red XIII on the naming screen; the scriptwriter clearly didn't foresee that anyone would do this, or else he would have had the denizens of Cosmo Canyon call him an alternate name in their dialogue so that it would make sense for Avalanche to be surprised by his real name. For the second playthrough, however, I decided to name him T-Bear after my favorite orange Tedder Tot (RIP). <3 As my gaming buddy, the Tedder Tot insisted. ;)

Game Mechanics

• Favorite Limit Break: Aeris's Healing Wind, because I like being able to heal my entire party at once.
• Least Favorite Limit Break: I did not like letting Vincent go into berserker mode, because it meant not being able to choose what attacks of his to use for the rest of the battle. I decided I hated it when I battled that dragon on Mt. Nibel, and Galian Beast!Vincent kept alternating between attacking the dragon and inadvertently healing it via Beast Flare. Thankfully, Aeris was in my party at the time, and I could paralyze the dragon using her Seal Evil Limit Break so it didn't kill us. I ended up having Vincent do magic attacks during boss battles when his Limit Break meter filled up; I reserved his berserk attacks for ordinary enemies so that it didn't screw up my boss battle strategies.
• Favorite Materia: Neo-Bahamut. Enough said. However, if I had gotten Knights of the Round, that probably would have become my favorite instead. I also love Choco/Mog, because the cartoon chocobos and mog are adorable and I love a little cartoon slapstick every now and then. I just love Summon Materia, period. During my second playthrough, I found that I also enjoyed hunting for enemy skills. Tifa, Red XIII, and Cid had Enemy Skill Materia that time around and they acquired some good ones (especially Trine, which I love).
• Least Favorite Materia: I hated Cover, because it meant that the character I equipped it to (usually Cloud) suffered more damage and died too often. During my second playthrough, I sold Cover almost right after I found it to someone in the Sector 5 slums for 1 gil, and the only part of that I regret is that I didn't check to see what they were offering for it before I sold it.
• Favorite Minigame: Rufus's welcoming parade and send-off, because I kept screwing up both times I played through (and somehow did better the time I played it while drunk) and laughed my ass off at the tanking TV ratings and angry NPC reactions. (Seriously, I don't understand why the ratings would decline because of a SOLDIER fucking around. Surely many of the people in the world of FF7 find that sort of thing funny, so I would think the ratings would go up because of people calling/instant-messaging their family and friends to tell them to tune in to the SOLDIER acting drunk and marching out of time. I know I would.)
• Least Favorite Minigame: I found the controls for the submarine minigame so confusing. The fact that the Steam version of FF7 (the version I played) refers to the buttons as [OK], [CANCEL], [SWITCH], etc. meant that I mostly had to figure out which button was which by trial and error to begin with, but I found it hardest to keep the button controls straight when I played the submarine minigame.
• Stupidest Gameplay Mistake: I never noticed the Limit menu during my first playthrough, which meant that, up until the ending when Cloud uses Omnislash on Sephiroth, I only used Level 1 Limit Breaks for everyone. I remember being so confused when it said that my party members learned new attacks that they never used, and why I could never get Red XIII to learn Cosmo Memory after winning it from Lost Number. By my second playthrough, however, I knew better.

Fandom

• Favorite Ship: Rufus/Reeve, followed closely by Tseng/Rufus. Reno/Rufus is also growing on me as I slowly discover more Reno/Rufus fan material that doesn't suck. (Sadly, I've read more bad Reno/Rufus than good Reno/Rufus, despite liking the idea of the pairing. In contrast, I've enjoyed most of the Tseng/Rufus and all of the Rufus/Reeve that I've read.) Also, although I haven't read any fanfic or doujinshi about it, I ship Cloud, Tifa, and Barret together. I firmly believe that, at some point after the events of the game, the three of them formed a throuple.
• Least Favorite Ship: Vincent/Yuffie—or, really, Yuffie with anyone who's more than two years older than her. She's sixteen! Vincent is in his sixties! Enough said. I'll probably never have the stomach to read Sink to the Bottom With You despite its good reviews, and I'm okay with that. There is also another vintage fanfic sequel whose name I don't remember, that I refuse to read because the author ships, of all possible characters, Reeve(!) with her. I don't know how old he is in the fic, but, according to the FF wiki, Reeve is thirty-five. (Personally, I ship Yuffie with her materia. It seems to be the only thing she really loves. :p) My second least favorite ship is AeriSeph, because the idea of Aeris/Aerith getting romantically involved with the man who kills her disgusts me. I refuse to read anything with that pairing.
• Favorite Fanfic: The Conscience of the King! (See my page about my favorite FF7 fanfics for more info.)
• Least Favorite Fanfic: Whatever this was supposed to be. On one hand, I hate to be too critical of it because I think the author was really young when they wrote it (though they're probably pushing forty now and may not even remember writing it), but, on the other hand, it's really bad. The unfinished story portrays Rufus as a water elemental who can read animals' minds and who is also a "seamstress" [sic], and its plot seems to be loosely inspired by the direct-to-video sequel to Disney's Little Mermaid. Only good thing I can say about it (save that it made me laugh and relieved my boredom one Sunday afternoon) is that I like the idea of Rufus being into sewing, even though I can't see him being caught dead in the outfit described unless he lost a bet. I imagine him sitting behind a state-of-the-art Shinra sewing machine, meticulously stitching one white fabric belt after another, cursing up a blue streak when he inevitably pricks his finger on one of the pins and leaves the tiniest blood stain on the expensive designer fabric.
• Favorite Extant Fansite: Nibelheim: The Shinra Mansion. Two incredible fanfic novels (I Know What's Beneath the Snow Fields and La Mer) with extras, a Vincent shrine, a choose-your-own-adventure browser game, and all sorts of hidden goodies like adorable, adoptable character dolls: this site is loaded with awesome things everywhere you look! The site owner even has a vintage-style website on the same domain (but, for whatever reason, not linked to on the Nibelheim site) all about the history of FF7 and its fandom.
• Favorite Defunct Fansite: The original Technomancy site. I haven't read all the fics there yet, but most of the ones I have read are wonderful! I've also discovered a lot of great songs thanks to these ladies and their unofficial FF7 soundtrack.
• Favorite Doujinshi: Eighth Deadly Sin (1998) by Ice Breaker. I purchased this Tseng/Rufus doujin (along with four others) over Easter weekend in 2024. I think the art is absolutely gorgeous, especially of the leading men! It has Rufus, Tseng, Reeve, Reno, Scarlet, Dark Nation (though without her tentacle), brief cameos by President Shinra and Cait Sith, tons of Rufus outfits for the motherlode in fashion inspiration (he has the best wardrobe!), and lots and lots of retro bishie-tastic artwork! I love it! <3 Other favorites of mine include Amecoco's comic strips, particularly the "Idiot Dad"/"Doting Dad" (Oyabaka) series with its rare (mostly) positive portrayal of President Shinra as a doting father. The best way I can describe the way they make me feel is anemoia for my favorite character's past, although I think I appreciate his "idiot dad" more than he ever did. Yet another is the Reno/Rufus doujin False Moon (1998) by Kuroshiro Goubunko, about the lead-up to Rufus's death, which most OG fans believed was for real. The artwork is beautiful and the story is very emotional and dramatic. I've written more about all of them here.

Miscellaneous

• Favorite BGM: "One-Winged Angel," "Rufus's Welcoming Ceremony," and "Cosmo Canyon," in that order. To call "One-Winged Angel" amazing would be an understatement. When Sephiroth is performing his Supernova attack with the song playing in the background, I felt terror, as though I were actually literally watching planets be destroyed before my eyes. It's awe- inspiring. "Rufus's Welcoming Ceremony" makes me happy, not just because I love Rufus, but also because I like marches. I think that, if Square Enix ever opens up a theme park based on their games, they should make a Shinra- themed carousel that plays the song (preferably this arrangement) on repeat. (Hell, if I ever opened an amusement park, I would have it playing on repeat on my carousel until they threatened to sue me. :p Only then would I switch to Sousa or some other similar music that's in the public domain.) I love the 1970s folk-rock sound of "Cosmo Canyon" with its synthesized electric guitar and Native American-influenced pentatonic scale; it's super-cool and fits the setting perfectly.
• Least Favorite BGM: I do not like the Icicle Inn theme. It hurts my ears. I like pretty much every theme in the game except for that one.
• Part That Aged the Worst: The part where Tifa tells Barret he's "acting like a retard." The casual ableism of the 1990s is really jarring in retrospect.
• Funniest Censorship: Censoring the line where Tifa calls Scarlet a "wench." I interpreted the symbols to instead mean the stronger "bitch," meaning that Square's attempt at censorship completely backfired. Changing "Fuck" to "Pyck" on the billboard in Corel Prison was also funny, in this case for looking so random. I guess the players were supposed to assume that Pyck was someone's name?
• Funniest Official Merchandise: The Rufus cup, which is so funny to me for so many reasons that I'll explain on a future webpage about baffling and cursed FF merchandise. Second place would go to the towels of various characters, which I suppose are intended for anyone who wants to rub their favorite FF7 bishonen against themselves in the least sexy way possible.
• Most Disappointing Thing: Learning that "Rufus's Welcoming Ceremony" did, in fact, have official lyrics, and that said lyrics were terrible and did not do the greatness of the music justice at all. ("Rufus, Rufus Shinra / We are Shinra Company," etc. sung by one of the NPCs in the Junon base locker room.) The lyrics provided in the original game read like the sort of bullshit someone might absent-mindedly sing along to an instrumental track while sweeping the floor. They have, however, redone the English lyrics for Rebirth, which read as a lot less half-assed than those in the original (excessive "oh, oh, oh, oh, oh"'s notwithstanding—but hey, maybe the Shinra grunts are having a collective orgasm over Rufus).