I’ve played my share of modern role-playing games, so I think I’ve got some credibility in the field. I obsess and constantly debate them. Having said that, it’s then safe to say that Final Fantasy VII is too difficult, and not just the turn-by-turn gameplay, which in itself is an acquired taste. The way developers build the games of today have a way of almost inebriating modern-day gamers with luxury and convenience, preventing them from enjoying the rich historical precursors to games of today.

Unclear Direction

One common argument is that modern games are too dumbed down for the average gamer to understand the relative complexities of older games, like Final Fantasy VII. You’re probably wondering where I come up with these friendly, biting accusations. Come on a journey with me, and you shall be enlightened to why FF7 isn’t as great as your childhood remembers.

What’s the first RPG that pops into your mind? Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? How about Dragon Age: Origins? Maybe an MMO, like World of Warcraft? Now, ask yourself, what do these kind of games have in common? A basic quest log; that wonderful little thing that tells you how many quests you have opened, discovered, and where you need to go. In my first (and last) attempt at Final Fantasy VII, I constantly struggled to keep track of what needed to be done, and where. There’s just so many distractions in the world of Midgar.. Even when I managed to keep my focus on the game, I was usually lost, but not just from unclear goals.

Going Slightly Mad

Similar to the problem of a missing quest log is the lack of a mini-map. If having a quest log is the first course of elder design, going with a mini-map is the second helping. If an absentee mini-map wasn’t bad enough, there’s also no form of fast travel, minus the airships and boats much later in the game. Reflecting, modern gamers really love to be babied. When working through a world this expansive, it seems natural that the creators would put in a mini map to orient the player. Such is not the case for Final Fantasy VII.

Most spaces are easy enough to navigate, but each area is arranged in a series, like a maze made of puzzle pieces. The problem though, is that while you’re getting lost in this puzzle made of mazes you lose your mind. One wrong turn and you’re trying to find your way back to where you started, and trying to remember where you were going in the first place.

Playing off getting lost, the enemies you encounter for battle are almost all ghosts. It’s like you are walking through a cemetery, singing a lovely little song to yourself, when BAM!… you’re ambushed by a weird ass, evil house. Dealing with insane enemies like this for hours on end would be enough to drive even the sanest gamers bonkers.

Being constantly assaulted by demented enemies combined with constantly getting lost and running around the same area for god knows how long leads to a terrible cycle of annoyance and frustration. Compared to modern games, it’s all slightly terrifying. At one point, when they add on a timer, you’re in for a hell of a time. The maze gets even more confusing because you are stressing about getting out in time, which leads to minor heart attacks every time you get attacked.

Basically, retro games are screwed. The longer a game has been out, the more likely it is there will be a group of people that will not be able to handle it. Imagine League of Legends in 30 years. Or the Halo series. Games are becoming easier and easier. So let’s blame everyone and hope for better.

Although not said outright, BioWare highlights this relationship between organics and AIs in the Mass Effect trilogy. By building a world where creating new AIs is illegal, BioWare sets the scene for existing artificial intelligences to establish themselves free from the control of their creators, and core to the Mass Effect universe is the idea that AIs can search for peace with organic races. The designs and the roles of the Catalyst, Reapers, geth, and EDI all support this theme.

AIs are prevalent in every aspect of the trilogy, which gives BioWare an adequate platform to make a stand about AIs that is contrary to most fictions. Uniquely, Mass Effect AIs want peace with organic races. Only external control causes the various AIs to behave aggressively. Without that control, they cease any aggression. This stance on AI is never explicitly mentioned, meaning we need to take a deeper look at each AI in order to comprehend what BioWare is trying to say about AI.

Compulsory Fears

The player – and the player’s avatar Commander Shepard – first experiences the AI through a prothean beacon. The long-extinct Protheans built the beacons as a warning against the Reapers, massive destructive machines, which eliminate most organic matter from the galaxy every 50,000 years. From the outset, nothing solid is known about the Reapers, so the player naturally fears the unknown alien aggressors. Players finish Mass Effect 1 with a few dim facts, like that the Reapers are a species of ancient, organic machines. Those few who acknowledge the Reapers’ existence are terrified by them. Even through the trilogy’s final chapter, Reaper-induced alarm hangs heavy over the characters until the end, where the role of AI is finally explained.

The AIs of Mass Effect

Catalyst and the Reapers

Chronologically, the first AI created in the Mass Effect universe is The Catalyst. There may have been other insignificant AIs built before the Catalyst, but they hold no literary purpose beyond demonstrating previous conflicts between synthetics and organics. The Leviathans, an ancient, aquatic species, built The Catalyst to prevent the endless cycle of war. Unbeknownst to the Leviathans, the Catalyst constructed the Reapers to begin a cycle of harvesting advanced species as the ‘solution’ to organic/synthetic conflict. The Catalyst’s first victim was its own creators. By destroying the Leviathans, the Reapers removed the line of external control, and in turn reduced their own aggression. The Catalyst fell out of common knowledge and, over the millennia, disappeared from myth. Through a chain of control, The Catalyst was aggressive because of Leviathan control. Following this, the control over the Reapers leads to their individual aggression. That secret control by The Catalyst is what justifies why the Reapers continue to be aggressive.

The Geth

While the Reapers and the Catalyst are the overarching enemy of the Mass Effect universe, the geth are the most prominent and expansive type of AI. The geth conform to classic AI literature: they nearly purged their creators, the quarians, from the galaxy. When the geth began to network together and learn on their own, the quarians began executing all geth. A select few quarians chose to protect the geth, and stood up for them, stating there was no reason for the extermination. They argued that while the geth had begun to learn and to disobey, the geth never went on the offensive except to protect other geth. The hostility from the quarians forced the geth to become aggressive in order to survive. Notably, geth forces spared the retreating Quarians. Again, we see AIs driven to violence by external control. The conflict eventually led to a galactic law banning production of new AIs.

We see another side of the geth through Legion, a Geth that speaks for all Geth, whom Shepard encounters in Mass Effect 2. Legion adopts his name from this quotation from Mark 5:9, “My name is Legion: for we are many.” Legion helps Shepard in Mass Effect 2, and notes that Shepard is the first organic to not be hostile when face-to-face with a geth. Ultimately, Shepard serves as a mediator between Legion and the surviving quarians, brokering a plan that saves both species. Through Legion’s guidance, Commander Shepard discovers the truth behind the geth and quarian war; that the quarians fired the first shots, not the geth. Legion transfers an advanced program into the surrounding geth to grant them individual sentience, allowing them to fall in line with the Commander to fight alongside organics in the deciding battle with the Reapers. Since they are no longer being controlled or attacked, the geth refrain from aggression towards organic species, and thus eliminate the threat of AI waging war on organics. The only aggression they show is the same type of aggression shown by organics; they ally with organics, and choose to fight alongside them against the larger threat of the Reapers. By making artificial intelligence destructive at first and then slowly warming up the player to the idea of AI being peaceful and helpful, perception transitions from the earlier mindset of fear, to understanding.

EDI, a Human AI

Near the beginning of Mass Effect 2, the player is introduced to the Enhanced Defense Intelligence (EDI), who serves the Commander as an information source and cyber-warfare defense. In Mass Effect 3, Shepard finds out that EDI was born from a virtual intelligence that went rogue. When placed on Shepard’s ship and away from direct control, EDI shows no signs of aggression, unlike the VI she was born from. EDI’s behavior changes since there is no direct control over her, following the theme of AI freedom directly correlating to peace. Near the end of Mass Effect 2, the virtual “shackles” that kept EDI from having total control over the Normandy are removed. By doing so, the crew frees EDI from the last portion of external control. Later, in Mass Effect 3, EDI takes over a humanoid-robot body. Her behavior in this body expresses that the last trace of her aggression has vanished. She has become more than an AI, and has become a being in her own right.

It is only through freedom that AIs are allowed to seek peace.

Let’s start with the good. The story is entertaining at first, even a little funny. Despite the fact I was rolling my eyes, I managed to chuckle every now and then. The game opens with you being told that your character, who, since it’s never specified, must be Oozi, is a “delivery alien”. Everything is going well, until nothing is. Oozi crashes on a planet, which I assume to be Earth, and loses his ship and equipment. For the rest of the game you’ll be hopping around like a rabbit on Red Bull in the search for all his lost goodies.

For that first bit of story, it’s mildly interesting. It isn’t until after the first stage that all the plot points and levels begin to run together. Level design, enemies, and all the palettes are identical, making the game awfully predictable. Every stage has the exact same set-up, with individual levels always the same. Level 1 is collecting stars, 2 is finding a piece of equipment that allows you to do something new yet not entirely new, levels 3-5 have you adjust to different enemies and new moves, and level 6 is just a boss fight. With so few differences between stages, the gameplay feels repetitive and boring.

As a way to acclimate the player to the mechanics of Oozi, the game makes liberal use of hints to the point of absurdity. For the first stage, the game pretends that its levels are well thought-out and features several well-placed hint signs. The charade of smart design falls apart when the exact same enemies have the exact same hints in every successive stage. What was once a helpful guide, turned into a boring, seemingly automatic generation. Related to the faulty hint system, when slightly different enemies start to pop up there is no hint if they’ll hurt when you jump on them, or if you same tactics of “crush it with your feet” still apply. Because of this, hints feel either unhelpful or used so often that they become an inconvenience and an all around annoyance.

The next problem I ran into was the difficulty, which stems mostly from the game’s inability to offer helpful advice or intuitive solutions for problems. The first stage feels exactly how it should; easy to the point of it being silly while still using basic challenges to teach the core gameplay, like figuring out the button combination to pass an obstacle. This was a fine way to start, but it goes down the tube as things progress. Specifically, the difficulty doesn’t really ramp up as the game progresses. The only major difference from level to level is their length, and even that doesn’t change much. Sometimes you can speed through a level without losing health or touching a single enemy, but other times you pound your head, stuck on one section. Since each level chunk and obstacle is an interchangeable block set up in almost the same way as every preceding level, gameplay never really gets more difficult, just different.

To make it even worse, the health system is entirely broken. When playing on easy, your health is replenished at every checkpoint, which is often enough to make health almost meaningless. Play on normal, though, and you gain a heart, up to three, for every 2,000 points you earn. This makes the game significantly more difficult, and this discrepancy between difficulties is deplorable due to the lack of middle ground. On normal, Oozi is so frustrating that it is near impossible to play more than one level at a time, but it’s a sleepwalk on easy. I can’t even imagine how frustrating hard would be; it’s a lose-lose situation.

On the plus side, the audio cues elicit child-like amusement. There is no way to convey how painfully stupid they are, but neither can you keep yourself from giving a short, joyful laugh when a new sound shows up. I don’t know how many times I caught myself bouncing around on bubbles just to hear them pop. Some of the fun does come out of rocketing into the air with next to no way to control Oozi’s movements, almost like the Sonic the Hedgehog games of yesteryear. The fun of this aside, when you lose sight of the ground you’re usually screwed. But, the noise he made when he landed right on a spike forced a smirk to creep across my face every time.

For the final note, we have the biggest ploy of all. I’ve alluded to it before, but stage to stage it’s nothing more than a repaint and re-skin of previous stages, rearranged. Level design doesn’t vary and the changes are slight inconveniences instead of added difficulty. It’s like they thought that adding a moving wall would make the entire sequence that much more complicated, when really it’s more annoying than fun. I’ve got to break it to Awesome Games Studios they did go out of their way to make obstacles too easy around or too complicated.

To put it simply this game is bad.

4.5 out of 10.