Final Fantasy VII the greatest RPG of all time?

Greatest ever.  Far from the best though.

Babe Ruth of J-RPGs

Let me say this first.  Final Fantasy VII is the greatest RPG of all time.  There, I said it.  However, do not confuse the word great with the word best.  If I ask somone who the greatest baseball player of all time is, chances are I'll hear the name Babe Ruth.  Agreed.  But is George Herman Ruth the best baseball player of all time?  Probably not.  Mickey Mantle was a far better player than the Babe, but Ruth turned himself into a figure that was bigger than the game of baseball, and therefore great.  This is exactly how I think of Final Fantasy VII.  I do not believe for one second it is the best RPG ever made, but for everything that it accomplished for role playing games as a whole, as well as putting the Final Fantasy franchise on the Mount Rushmore of video game IPs.  

Faked everyone out, totally not happening!

Also never happened.

Many gamers are youngins, so let's look at a bit of history, and I promise to not get too wordy here because I can talk about this topic for days.  Final Fantasy VII was the first Final Fantasy title to not appear on a Nintendo console.  Most fans of the franchise, like myself, were planning on getting the Nintendo 64 upon it's launch because we ready for the next Final Fantasy to be made available on that console.  In fact, there was even a playable demo at some trade shows of that FF would be like on the the Nintendo 64 hardware, staring Shadow, Locke and Terra from Final Fantasy VI.  However, what we were in store for was completely different.  Squaresoft announced that Final Fantasy VII was going to be released on the Sony Playstation, not the Nintendo 64.  From the time it was announced until the time it was released in North America, it was nearly impossible to open a gaming magazine without seeing new updates about what Final Fantasy VII was going to have in store for gamers.  Fans of the franchise were waiting on pins and needles, while other games, who hadn't played a FF before, were becoming more and more interested in playing it.  This was easily one of the most hyped games ever, and 90% of that was due to the gaming media.  In November before it's launch, Squaresoft packed in a playable demo of the game in with 3D fighter Tobal No. 1, and it did not fail to impress people everywhere.

While it might have happened before (and if it did, I don't remember hearing about it) the release of FFVII was massive success, beating out the top grossing Hollywood movie that week, G.I. Jane in gross sales.  Sony managed to take a Final Fantasy game and turn it into a major event, and because of that, I believe to this day Final Fantasy remains as a legendary video game series.  This makes it the greatest because it took a franchise..no..wait...an entire flipping genre of games in North America, and made other companies take a look at the RPG, and everyone wanted a piece of the pie.  Because of the success of Final Fantasy VII, more role playing game are released here to this very day.  Etch that in stone, and try to deny it all you want to, but that is the truth.  100%.  Game over.  

FFVII went on to become a major franchise for Square.  Characters from the game would make an appearance in Namco's Ehrgeiz, a 3D Fighter that really only sold because it had the FF characters in it.  Spin off franchise Kindgom Hearts would see tons of FFVII appearances, including the ongoing saga between Cloud and Sephiroth.  There would be many spin off games too, including the PSP exclusive Crisis Core, and PS2 third person shooter, Dirge of Cerberus.  The series even had a full fledged sequel CGI movie, Advent Children (which many argue should have been released in theaters over the ill fated Spirits Within movie...which I agree with, even if both movies were flawed).

Someone eats his spinach...

 
That being said, it's far from the best, and while we owe a lot to the release of this game, we can also attribute some pretty serious problems to it too.  That's not saying the game is bad, because it isn't.  It's not as good, in my opinion, as any of the Super Nintendo entries, but for in and what it is, Final Fantasy VII is a viable "number" for the franchise.  The best and worst parts about the game were really the same.  It changed everything!  Due to it's success, Squaresoft was convinced that the direction they were going was the correct one, and they would abandon the "old style" they had used to swoon the hearts of gamers the years prior.  While it did share some of the same things going for it that previous installments had, such as the battle system and memorable characters, the story had some serious plot holes.  When compared to the stories of the more classic titles, like IV and VI, many old schoolers were disappointed that the same amount of care was put into this massive title.

Bad Ass, Inc.

The allure of VII is, in my opinion, due to two things.  The first is the main big bad of the game, the silver maned pretty boy, Sephiroth.  If nothing else, Sephiroth was merciless and stylish.  He had the air of a bad ass, so the guys loved him, and since he was a pretty boy, the gals loved him too.  He actually was one of the more developed bad guys in the Final Fantasy universe as well, even when compared to some of the older bad guys.  For instance, FFVI's Kefka was just an evil dude.  There was very little back story about him.  Sephiroth was far more tragic of a character with a rather well done back story.  The second thing is the relationship between the main character, Cloud, and the flirty flower girl, Aerith.  (I, myself, am a Tifa fan, so screw off Aerith)  There was a build up to this, and the game brilliantly handled the "date" that could be done, where depending on choices made through the player could accumulate affection from Aerith, Tifa, and the ninja girl, Yuffie (and if you treated all three of them like crap, your date was with Barrett, foo'!)  This theme was such a hit within the game, Squaresoft turned the overall theme of the next Final Fantasy, VIII, to love.  (Of course, they removed the choice of affection from that game, only giving you once choice..but that's another rant..for another time.)

Overall, I don't believe for one second that FFVII is the best game ever made.  Hell, it's not even the best game in it's respective franchise.  However, it's greatness cannot be denied.  Most RPGs that come out to this day, such as the Tales games, the Xeno titles, and various other Japanese RPGs.