Final Fantasy VII's Minigames

Ah yes, I wanted to talk more about minigames considering how annoyed I am at a lot of them, particularly in Breath of Fire 3 where some of the worst ones were required. So, what did Final Fantasy VII have in store. Well, a few required ones, some of which thankfully aren't necessarily scored, plus an entire minigame zone which is of course optional. It's not without it's more annoying ones though, but the vast majority of the minigames are actually pretty decent.

I think the best overall minigame is the Fort Condor scenarios, which all have different timeframes for when they become available. It's a real-time tactical battle with several units of advantages and disadvantages, and putting a new unit in battle costs money. Thing is, this is Final Fantasy. I'm liable to be grinding and that gets me in a lot of moolah, so these battles are honestly piss easy. The last one of course is what gets the Phoenix materia in this game, and for some reason it's possible to get two copies of it.

A whole slew of events before the Gold Saucer and Fort Condor have a few minigames to put up. There's only one minigame during the Wall Market subquest, which is squatting and that's actually pretty easy. The biking minigame to escape from Midgard is pretty decent, although it's hard to actually hit enemies here. You're not really scored on it, and characters here have plenty of HP to survive even on a first try, although there is a boss at the end. The ones in Junon are the worst, but for some dumb reason, they made friggin' CPR into a minigame before that.

So the Junon minigames with the ratings are the worst ones out of the whole bunch, both for being mandatory and obnoxious at the same time. Great, put Cloud in the soldier outfit, and have him ready to run into the soldier march, doing the commands just right. Apparently, setting text scrolling to default seems to be the way to correctly do it, but even then, ratings are likely to be stiff. And then there's the sendoff one, which in all honestly takes forever. It amazes me that Rufus is gonna stare at your group while the guy just brings commands, except he does it very quickly and it gets insanely difficult to keep up. Also wrong turns ruin it completely.

Thankfully the Gold Saucer minigames aren't really required, with the exception of the submarine and snowboarding ones, but those are unlocked after story events and you aren't really scored on neither then. Alongside them is the bike game which is also available, this time scored. The other games aren't anything to write home about. Arm wrestling is just button mashing. The ball minigame has a nice timing aspect that's easy to figure out. The Mog minigame is a complete waste of time as is the fortune telling. The 3-D fighter? Would be interesting except you can never beat the fifth opponent ever, which is not a good thing for any minigame. Unwinnable situations are a no-no. The other squares have other things to them, like Battle Square is honestly pretty self-explanatory and is how to get Cloud's last limit break. The other's aren't minigame-esque at all except for Speed Square, which has a very fun shooter, and Chocobo Square.

Now Chocobo breeding honestly is a pain in the ass, but pretty much required for these ordeals known as Chocobo racing. Yep, gotta catch one with a lure, put it to a farm, feed it greens so it can "grow" per se. Or go ahead and catch a different color one because those will be a lot better to use. Pretty much what I do in these races is hold a button down. It seems that I always pick the auto option, and due to my chocobo stats, I win each time. Don't even race against that Joe guy to be honest. All I really do is find the guide for getting the Gold Chocobo and follow it. All I end up doing is getting the Knights of Round summon. I don't even want to bother with the rest.

So Final Fantasy VII's minigames are an obvious mixed bag, but the vast majority of them are not really required. They had to make some of their more annoying ones like the Junon ones required though. The other required ones end up in the Gold Saucer (land of optional minigames, naturally) but aren't scored when you have to do them. And at least some of them were decent enough in my book.