The big Final Fantasy news just hasn’t stopped coming this week! You might say it’s an AVALANCHE! Speaking of AVALANCHE, the world of Final Fantasy VII has made headlines once again!
After a downloadable PC re-release was made available on Square Enix’s own website last year, in commemoration of the landmark RPG’s fifteenth anniversary, it appears that highly-favoured PC game service, Steam has now followed suit. Final Fantasy VII has just been made available on Steam for the slight added price of $11.99, a couple of dollars more than what the game is offered for on the Square Enix site and PlayStation Store. This re-release does compensate however with the addition of Steam Achievements. Beyond that, the game is completely unchanged from its original PlayStation incarnation, beyond a pixel touch-up or two.
Originally released in 1997, Final Fantasy VII made its debut on the original PlayStation, where it went on to become perhaps the most successful game of all time on Sony’s debut console. So much so in fact that the game was credited with starting a ‘Japanese RPG Boom’ that lasted even throughout much of the PlayStation 2 era! Even today, Final Fantasy VII remains the most downloaded PS One Classic on the PlayStation Store (where it is sold for $9.99), freely playable across PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and the last-gen PlayStation Portable.
While Final Fantasy VII is mainly associated with and purchased for PlayStation devices, it’s no stranger to PC re-releases. Before the digital re-release on the Square Enix website and Steam, a retail PC release was published by Eidos in 1998, who would ironically be absorbed by Square Enix years later. This Eidos-published release was quite functional, but was criticized for audio issues and poor optimization to the PC platform. Thankfully, the recent digital re-releases are much better optimized to playing on PC, in case you’re still interested in the game, but don’t own any PlayStation hardware.
Final Fantasy VII can now be downloaded at your leisure off of Steam, the Square Enix website and the PS One Classics catalogue on the PlayStation Store, where it ranges between $10-$12. As a reminder, series fans who pre-order their copy of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, releasing on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on February 11th, 2014, will also get Final Fantasy VII protagonist, Cloud Strife’s costume, victory pose and abilities downloadable for Lightning.
Eggplante will continue providing any and all news related to Final Fantasy VII, the Final Fantasy series and all other RPG essentials, as it drops!