FINAL FANTASY VII
Moderate overall intensityWhat's in it
Turn-based combat against monsters and human soldiers is stylized on blocky character models, but scripted story scenes show blood, including a party member and a corporate president each impaled on a sword.
Alcohol is served in bars the player visits and one main character smokes cigarettes on screen throughout the story.
A named party member is killed on screen, a bombing kills people, and the plot depicts human experimentation, a village massacre, and the near-extinction of a people.
The player belongs to an eco-terrorist group and carries out reactor bombings and sabotage as part of the story.
The Honeybee Inn, a brothel in the Wall Market district, is shown in the world and can be entered by the player.
The Wall Market chapter is built on innuendo and propositions — a crime boss selecting a 'bride' and a suggestive parlour visit — but no sexual activity is shown.
Dialogue includes profanity, chiefly from one character, ranging from mild words like 'damn' and 'hell' to symbol-censored expletives.
The Gold Saucer amusement park lets the player wager in-game points on chocobo races, with currency that cannot be cashed out.
The Honeybee Inn and Wall Market feature revealing costumes and a men's communal bath scene, with no explicit exposure.
A few unsettling scenes occur, notably a trail of blood leading to slain bodies inside a corporate headquarters.
Beasts and creatures are fought and killed as ordinary random-encounter combat.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Final Fantasy VII is a Japanese-style role-playing game in which you control Cloud Strife, a mercenary who joins the group AVALANCHE to stop the Shinra corporation from draining the planet's life force, and later pursues the superhuman Sephiroth. Play alternates between exploring a world map and towns, advancing a long story, and menu-driven turn-based battles against monsters and human enemies where damage is shown as numbers. Combat is stylized, but cinematic story scenes depict blood and death, including the on-screen killing of a party member and a massacre of a village. The world includes an adult red-light district with innuendo, a sequence where the hero cross-dresses to infiltrate a lecherous crime boss's mansion, a chain-smoking character, bars serving alcohol, an amusement park with casino-style gambling using in-game points, and profanity in dialogue. The player's group carries out reactor bombings framed as sabotage against the corporation.
How it's framed
The game treats its heavy material seriously rather than gleefully: the group's bombings are shown to carry a human cost that characters argue over, and loss, death, and trauma are given emotional weight and mourned rather than celebrated. The adult district and cross-dressing scenes are played for comedy and mild titillation. Violence is directed at monsters and a corporate-military enemy and is rewarded with experience and money in the usual RPG fashion.
Details
- Developer
- Square Enix
- Publisher
- Square Enix
- Released
- 1997
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