Ode to Final Fantasy VII Part III

Finally!!  I’ve had a busy few weeks away from the computer and so I’ve been putting off this last installment in the series.  But I’m really excited to try something new after this, so I thought it was high time I give you what you all wanted.  The stunning conclusion to my Ode to Final Fantasy VII.  Until I do a sequel, or something.

To those who were upset that I didn’t highlight Tifa, Yuffie or Vincent, I’m sorry.  I know!  I love them too.  But I said in the beginning I was going to pick and choose, and they have unfortunately had to sit on the side lines.  Still I encourage you to share your favorite moments with their songs and characters in the comments section.

You can find a playlist of all the tracks from part III HERE.

 

So, we last left off with one of the best moments in gaming.  Let’s move on to the aftermath.

I’m going to be honest, I’m skipping past the beginning of Disc 2.  The Snow caves are really beautiful but they angered the hell out of me.  Collapsing in the snow and time limits and all that.

Who Am I

This is where Final Fantasy VII’s plot starts to go insane.  You trek through ice and snow in the hunt for Sephiroth and finally find his body buried in a block of ice underground.  JENOVA – Ghost – Sephiroth starts sharing all these insane plot points and your mind is like, “WOAH!”  Then you LOSE CLOUD!!  It was like Chrono Trigger all over again!  This is really a music blog, so I’m not going to go into all the minute details of FFVII’s plot.  I will simply point out that this music is perfectly named.  Whenever they played it, you knew they were explaining some crazy out of this world plot twist in the game that just made you go, “This game is amazing!!  I don’t know fully what is going on, but, wow!”

This also relates to one of my favorite parts of the game.  Finally finding Cloud in a wheelchair, in a small town and he has lost his mind!!!!  Then Ultimate Weapon attacks, the town is destroyed, and Tifa falls into the Lifestream with Cloud, where she enters his mind!  Finding out all about Cloud’s past, and just how crazy and twisted it is, was definitely one of my favorite experiences in the game.  It’s like you and Cloud both discover who you really are in those scenes.  It even has these small scenes of Cloud as a child playing with Tifa.  Just amazing.

Weapon Raid

This is where FFVII did something super cool.  Most Final Fantasy games have super powerful endgame, optional, bosses.  FFVII made sure they tied into the games plot.  It made them ten times more ferocious.  Who can forget when the underwater Fish Weapon attacks the city of Junon?  The music on Disc 2 just has this feeling of, watch out, things just went crazy!

Highwind Takes to The Skies

AIRSHIP!!!  The moment you get an airship in a Final Fantasy is always amazing.  First of all, it means you no longer have to walk all around that giant world map… You can freaking FLY!!  The other thing is you also usually get introduced to the game’s airship theme!  Almost every Final Fantasy has an awesome discovering the world airship theme.  They have to be cool because you will be hearing them a lot as you fly around the world doing side quests and such.  This may be my favorite airship theme in Final Fantasy…

A Secret Sleeping in the Deep

I also really like the submarine theme.  In total contrast to the airship theme, it is calming and ambient.  FFVII’s submarine was a lot of fun, as you could explore an entire world down there; finding a sunken ship and fighting the terrifying Emerald Weapon.

Sending a Dream into the Universe

Disc 2 is harder to write about in relation to the plot because everyone’s experience is a little different.  Definitely more open ended, it focuses on gathering the Huge Materia.  It’s definitely one of my favorite moments on Disc 2, when you fly into space on a rocket ship!  I also really like the little strumming acoustic guitar in this song.

Mako Cannon – The Destruction of Shinra

Definitely reaching the end of the game here.  Cloud is once again in tow after recovering his mind, Diamond Weapon Attacks Shinra!  Who can’t remember repeatedly ramming their airship into Diamond Weapon as he slowly walked closer and closer to Midgar??  Or when they fire the Mako Cannon straight through his body!   Diamond Weapon was awesome!  So was storming Midgar!

Judgement Day

Last Level Theme!  I loved the Northern Crater.  I think it was a really great final dungeon.  Lots of different paths to choose from.  Party splitting.  Climbing deeper and deeper into this crater with Lifestream blowing up towards you.  Lots of sub-bosses. Oh, and a great theme!

Jenova Absolute

I really like the remixed JENOVA music for the final fight with her.  Remixed boss music for end game bosses always makes the conflict feel so much more intense!

Birth of a God

It stinks that most people forget this theme because of the one that comes right after it.  Birth of a God is a great boss battle theme.  It definitely has a lot of that prog rock vibe that becomes prominent in FFVIII’s battle themes.  It is more subtle than One Winged Angel, but the parts with the bell that starts around 1:25 are some of my favorite music in the game.

One Winged Angel

Even though this song only play for like 7 minutes in the entire game, it has become probably the most recognized track from the music of Final Fantasy VII.  It’s easy to see why.  It had a freaking chorus!!!  Singing in latin!!!  I really don’t think there is a better Final Boss Theme in all of videogames.  Please, please prove me wrong!  There are some that come close!  “Dancing Mad” from FFVI and “Lavos Theme” from Chrono Trigger come to mind the quickest, but I think neither is as good as One Winged Angel. Not to mention the hundreds of covers of this song by real orchestras since then.

Actually, my favorite memories of this song have nothing to do with Final Fantasy VII.  One memory comes from a time playing Halo 2, back when you could name your player whatever you wanted.  One of our characters was named Sephiroth and two of my friends faced off in a one-on-one tournament and every time my friend got a kill he would sing the choral part of the Sephiroth theme, you know, where they go “SEPHIROTH!”  I went to my computer and started playing this song to encourage him.  When I hear this, I still think of that.

The second is the greatest moment in a little game, some of you may know, called KINGDOM HEARTS!  Hell yes!  Definitely my favorite super boss in all of videogames is Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts.  Lots of games have super bosses but most of them just have tons of hit point and it’s more of an endurance race than anything else.  Sephiroth was different.  He was FUN to fight against!  Yes, it is true that he had so much health that they ran out of colors to use for additional bars of health.  So when you first started fighting him, you couldn’t even tell if you were damaging him.  Then the length of his sword was just so crazy it made you laugh.  This is a boss that the first time you fought him he would teleport at you, make one swipe and you’d think, “OH!  I died…”  He was also the best way to level up at the end of the game, so while beating him was ridiculously hard, each time you leveled up he got a little easier.  It didn’t help that he also had a move that would take away all your magic and leave you with one health, which he would then follow up by teleport slashing you!  If you’ve never seen this fight before, you can definitely check it out on youtube but it won’t fully capture the magic.  That’s because the boss is super hard, so the only people posting videos are those who are like, “Oh, I’m really good, and I can be really cheap and beat him without getting hurt and I’m level 100”.  You won’t see the thousands of people that he destroys because they didn’t post videos of them losing terribly.

That is my greatest memory of Sephiroth.  He wasn’t hard for me in FFVII and he also didn’t look as cool since he was in strange God form.  In Kingdom Hearts, he looked liked human Sephiroth, with the all black clothes, except that he also had a giant black angel wing!  I remember sitting there for hours fighting him and listening to this theme.  Awesome times.

World Crisis

I decided to just post the music over the ending of the game, so you could watch and remember.  World Crisis is a really long song that has many themes built into it based on what’s happening in that last scene.  I remembered being hugely disappointed in Final Fantasy VII’s ending.  No closure!  Especially after being spoiled by FFVI’s ending where they told exactly what became of every character!  Don’t get me wrong, when that life stream music starts up and you see Aerith’s death given purpose in helping protect the planet from Meteor, that’s amazing!  But then what??

That’s why I LOVED Advent Children.  To me, it perfectly continued the storyline of FFVII, capturing all the subtleties of the main characters and finally providing us a perfect ending for the series.  FFVII was an amazing game, but it wasn’t until almost eight years later that I was able to fully appreciated it.  That, plus the release of Crisis Core.  If you haven’t seen that movie or played that game and you’re a huge fan of FFVII, then you MUST!  They will completely enhance your experience with this game and add a lot of respect to it.

Staff Roll

So that’s it.  I hope you enjoyed my 3 part Ode to Final Fantasy VII.  Please like it, share it, comment on it.  Tell me what you loved.  Let me know here or in the  suggestions area on my site, what games you hope I work on next.  Once again, thanks for reading!!