Sony threw a truck load of money into marketing.
When I was in high school I recall taking a bus to school once and the entire bus was covered in a FF7 advertisement.
Early JRPGs felt comfortably Western to me because they just lifted the Tolkien-esque medieval fantasy vibe whole cloth.
But FF7 felt like a totally random pastiche of genres that were jammed together in such an unusual combination that I could only imagine someone from another culture thinking to combine them.
Like making an apple pie with hotdogs in it. Yes, nominally it would be super American, but no American would ever think to put those together in that way.
Final Fantasy was already a guaranteed hit in Japan, but the success in the west can be greatly attributed to a successful marketing campaign by Sony.
Additionally, the non-medieval theme really helped setting it apart. There were guns, cars, televisions, and motorcycles!
It's fascinating to recall the TV commercial in North America featuring the motorcycle cinematic scene, which, ironically, constituted only 2 minutes of the game 50+ hours of gameplay.
Regardless, FF7 was an exceptional game that truly showcased the remarkable progress in video game development, appealing to a wider audience.
I still have goosebumps thinking about the first chapter of the game. It really was something when it came out.
FF7 took it to the next level graphically but kept everything good about the gameplay.. I didn't play it until it was ported to PC, and the 3d accelerated video cards made it look much nicer than it even did on the PSX. It was a masterpiece of a game, the character development was extremely engaging and memorable. And the cinematics of Aerith dying, or Sephiroth walking through the flames... I had never seen anything like that up to that point.
FF7 and Zelda64 (ocarina of time) were the last games I really got into before I shifted to wasting all of my time on the internet instead of video games. I feel like games haven't been as good since that era, but it's probably mostly me that has changed.
> FF7 took it to the next level graphically but kept everything good about the gameplay
Respectfully disagree. FF7 is not an S-tier JRPG by any means. It was a regression from FF6 in that it was linear, had very 2D characters, inferior story and boss, and the fighting system was really basic and lame. But it turned a generation onto the genre and I played it recently and it has aged well in some ways. The Chocobo stuff was great and Golden Saucer for its time was amazing. So a good game but not a great one. Even in the list above quite a few are better. Xenogears in particular.
FF7 is iconic though and easily the most important game in the fanchise. Cloud is iconic even if he's sort of lame IMO.
> I feel like games haven't been as good since that era, but it's probably mostly me that has changed.
I'd agree that Ocarina of Time was probably the most anticipated game I've ever had. But modern games are amazing. They're just better in every way. I don't play nearly as much as I used to but games are just so refined and built on so many years of knowledge now.
The menus and ATB are obviously basically a straight port over, materia are pretty much an adjustment of the similar re-slottable espers from 6 that taught magic, characters' limit breaks from 7 are sometimes clearly based on the unique abilities from 6 (Tifa's for example basically combining Setzer's slots with references to Sabin's martial arts), limit breaks themselves being an evolution of 6's desperation attacks..., even some really specific stuff like the opera house rafters vs. Aerith's chapel.
And then even items like the Atma Weapon or choices like using some thing like Ragnarok to create a weapon or a spell. Totally up to the players style.
Everyone has a different story on how they got through FF6. FF7 was linear.
And yes the Opera House - quite possibly the peak of 16-bit RPG gaming. Absolutely beautifully done.
The FF7 remake is really good FWIW.
Sometimes I think about how weird it was that a JRPG was somehow the most important game launch of its era in America. Everyone bought that game and I'm not sure why. It's a fine game if you're a JRPG fan, and they did a great job moving it away from the usual themes, but it's so weird that it caught on with so many people that had never even heard of the genre or wouldn't have wanted to play a JRPG before.
Was it the FMVs during summons? Why was that particular FF game so culturally relevant unlike any before or after? It was so successful that there was a bubble of JRPGs put into the mainstream for awhile there in the late 90's.