This is why I couldn't get into FF VII. I tried playing that after PS:T because I was aching for some more well-written games and kept hearing about the awesome story of FFVII... well... compared to PS:T the dialogue just looked like they were taken from a kindergarten book. I tried to get through it, but ended up uninstalling it :(.

Final Fantasy 6 uses the levity to add to the tragedy, the game makes you laugh but it gives the player something to lose when things go wrong, Japanese storytelling is very big on using humor and comedy to add to the tragedy when it occurs. FF6 does it best for RPGs but Even movies and anime use the tool well, such as Cowboy Bebop and the Seven Samurai. Having humor can really make the sad parts better when done right.

The first time, I had never seen a story told with the graphics like ffvii, so it was like a ride to the second disc, but mostly throughout I found myself continuing on only for the Victory Fanfare, it's like a sedative drug that you stim to so you keep battling

Ha, I thought I would catch you with that! But seriously, it shifts very slowly until one very distinct event, and then the game takes on a totally fresh narrative format that no other game has even come close to touching since. It's well worth it, believe me.

Shinra until relatively recently was an arms developer (they're now a power company thanks to their discovery of mako but that's not important). SOLDIER operatives aren't regular soldiers. They're agents of the Shinra Power Electric Company, the products of a super soldier development research project (spun off another project but I won't spoil everything) . Maybe you could think of them as something similar to Halo's Spartans who have absolutely nothing to do with Greeks. They feel more like the augmented agents in Deus Ex however.

A terrorist who seeks to disrupt Shinra should rightly fear this elite force. They were crucial in winning the war with Wutai and are idolized by the public but not much is known about them. Encountering Soldier is unlikely for the common mook however. It is the regular security that protects the peace.

Shinra isn't the military nor do they rule the world. They are just an extremely powerful corporation with huge influence. At least officially.

FF7 was written from the perspective of terrorists. The story has evolved over the years to not be quite as black and white as that, probably to the chagrin of many.

mea culpa - 'SOLDIER' as a word probably doesn't as sound mundane and boring to a native Japanese speaker as it does an English one. Supposedly FF6's heroine was originally named 'Tina' because it sounded exotic. XD

Square had a falling out with the person who did FF4 & 6's localization and decided to do it in house, to almost comedic effect. ("We'll do it right this time!")


Edit: Believe it or not, FFVII was one of the inspirations for Planescape Torment.

Part of the thing that I like about JRPGs is that most of them tend to mix in goofy and strange elements into their stories, unlike most WRPGs which are usually a lot more serious.

So yeah, don't try to make sense of it. Just enjoy the strangeness of it all.

Ok, so just for fun, I translated the part that I am currently on. :-p

What do you think?

Maybe I should do it for the entire game and turn it into a comic book format... haha :-)

I second the advice to switch to the GBA version, the translation is much better. For the record, the reason the translation is bad is size constraints. Japanese is a lot more efficient in terms of the ratio of characters to meaning. As a result, they had a really hard job fitting enough meaning into the English version (the Japanese version already filled the cartridge).

The GBA version has been retranslated with the size restraints lifted and is supposed to be, for the most part, a lot better.

I always considered FF VI to be hugely overrated. I still prefer IV to this day, making me the minority of course.

That IGN list had Ultima 7 ranked in the 50s... meaning the list is completely invalid anyway.

I always love it when the evil overlord himself must go through a dungeon full of deadly traps everyday.

In one game that is used to another effect. A pragmatic race put a logic puzzle in a dungeon. One guy always tells the truth, one always lies. You know the thing. The right solution?
Ignore the both doors and take the secret door at the opposite wall. Whoever is allowed to pass should know that anyway. The rest can go into the traps.

If you are new to JPRGs, don't be surprised if everything feels odd. There's a reason people talk separately of CRPGs and JPRGs (or at least used to, nowadays RPGs are more and more crossplatform).

Expect lots of silliness and over-the-top stuff. So, just try to open your mind, and keep repeating "I am not playing a computer RPG, I am not playing a computer RPG, I am not playing a computer RPG...". In the best case, you might even enjoy it a bit.

I personally am somewhat neutral when it comes to JRPGs. While I mostly prefer CRPGs (because they are more familiar to me), I don't consider JPRGs "good" or "bad". Sometimes they might be somewhat enjoyable, sometimes they irritate me. Just like with almost any genres I guess. There are still several JRPGs I intend to try out, both on PSOne and PS2.

(I've earlier played the whole Final Fantasy series from FF1 to FF8 through, except for Mystic Quest which I couldn't care less, nor any Gameboy versions/spinoffs.)

I almost always find JRPGs to overstay their welcome. There is not enough gameplay variety or story in them to justify their length. That being said, I did enjoy Final Fantasy VI (though mainly the first half, second half just dragged), and Super Mario RPG (which was fun/funny all the way thorugh)

FF VII though, that never did it for me. It suffered from all the common JRPG issues:
Overly lengthy (it got incredibly repetitive towards the end), poor translation and annoying characters.

And that part that made everyone cry? I thought it felt too forced to make me cry.

8 was good in theory, but it had some rather serious flaws, and again, too long for its story.

9 was cute, but again, too long, not enough variety. I did like the main characters though, and the story was, for the most part, well told.

Basically, if JRPGs kept the amount of story that they have, and were 20h long, then I would probably play them quite often. But it feels like they are trying to inflate 20h worth of content into a 50h game most of the time. The whole system of drawing spells from enemies. That got incredibly tedious, in particular towards the later game, where you would only draw one or two of each spell on each attempt.
Also, the main character was rather boring. He lacked any real emotional depth

I've played FF XII and VII.

VII in particular, has some crazy crap in there. Stuff you just can't, and are not intended to, take seriously. The kinds of stuff and enemies that just breaks all immersion.

But there's an amazing amounts of stuff in there, and amazing amount of amazingly great stuff. Seriously. But it requires mental adjustment to get it.

And I played VII two years ago, so no rose tint in my glasses. The graphics were maybe great at the time, now they're just abnormally horrible. Mostly.