To me FF7 holds a special place in my heart. I'm not saying this because I blindly and irrationally call it the best game EVER without thinking about it, but because it was the first RPG that I ever played that I actually enjoyed. To this day, I still love JRPG's and sadly, there seems to be diminishing returns in favor of more profitable shovel ware or generic FPS games. FF7 still holds one of the greatest stories developed in a game by a company past its prime. So to some is this game overrated...yes. To me is it overrated...no. There truly has to be something to a game if people are arguing over whether or not it is the best game ever. If it was horrible, mediocre, or even just really good at best...we wouldn't be having this conversation!

was the first game i ever played and i loved it i still play it to this day its my favorite game of all time and i don't think its overrated

G4, now this? When did the gaming media decide that it was trendy to attack FFVII?

I read the responses, and I read the writer's responses to them. He does a great job of countering every point with a sales pitch, thus completely ignoring what the readers are trying to tell him. He's a great salesman. Although, his responses were all of the same tired equation: A. Acknowledge the reader's point isn't stupid + B. Counter point with a skewed sales pitch along the lines of asking another question about "is this [insert oblivious sales pitch] not true as well?"

Case in point--to deny that the word "overrated" doesn't have negative connotation, is to put a gargantuan neon sign on your back that states "I'M SELLING SOMETHING!"
I'm sure that line of BS would make sense to (for example) NY Giants fans when you say that the 2008 super bowl champ Giants, that beat the much vaunted undefeated Patriots for the crown, are overrated...but hey, they had "merit" though.

Instead of coming across as level headed masters of their craft writers, IGN and G4 and anyone else that hops on this bandwagon of bashing sound more like pius, self-righteous, plum smuggling douches.

All the hate, bashing and anti-FFVII sentiment will N-E-V-E-R put me off this game. Busy on my 7th playthrough now and I still get goosebumps.

LONG LIVE FFVII!!! It might not be 'teh best RPG', but all this bashing and attention it receives just proves that this is still a formidable title and franchise after 12 years. Get a grip, people. Let the the bashing continue and keep on playing.

story is a one of a kind...
very deep an touching
great gameplay
great graphics for its time

what more can u ask for

TELL ME

Good, because this game alone, stepped out of the shadows, of it's bigger brothers, creating a vast new setting, that no other Final Fantasy, or RPG, had done yet. Everything put into this game was jaw dropping, non-believers, sign your names, with lies.

no, Halo in other hand is overrated

But I always felt that Final Fantasy 8 was the better game of that era. But that's just ME. Whereas a lot of people hated the junction system, I loved it when I figured it out how to really make it work.

Meh FF7 is practically the bridge for pre-16-bit RPGs to the RPGs we have today, end of story, give it its props and stop hating

FF7 did a lot the rpg genre in the industry but that's it ...

The game was well made but it's not the best ...EVER ...i'm saying that it isn't the greatest .. but after playing ff7 you should try something different in the same style ... My first FF was ff5 and i enjoyed almost all FF ( except 8 and 10 ) FF7 is great... great really ..but some people seems to think you can't do better than that ... that's not true at all ..in fact FF7 is really outmatched by many games today

What should be said about FF7 is that it is a necessary step when you want to play rpgs ... like chrono trigger but most people stay only on FF7( or FF ) instead to exploring the deeps of the rpg genre ..
There are many GREAT RPGS ( J-RPGS ) beside final fantasy

I am currently playing, for the first time, two games that have been named as some of the best ever - FFVII and Half Life 2. While I'm not too far into FFVII(just found Red XIII), its already obvious why people love it so much. Yeah its dated, but I can appreciate it for what it was. I love the style and atmosphere.

I have to say though, Half Life 2 is not what I expected, it just seems to drag.

Outside of G4, it seems to me that a lot of the people that are bashing FF7 now are people who were very young or possibly not even born when it originally came out. To these people, it is near impossible to draw the kind of excitement about this game as it did back in '97. I think we all remember those first visuals and TV ads that left us with our mouths gaping and then turning them to a sly smile while mouthing "What the F was that?!?