Reviewing Monsters - Final Fantasy VII, Part 1

I did a review of Final Fantasy XIII's monsters when I played through the game late last year, and I basically knew nothing about the lore or the monsters and did a bit of a reaction and review through them as I played through the game. It was interestingly simple and hard at the same time because there was... little to no lore about the monsters in the game, and the most of what I could get are generalized bits that would apply to most if not all the monsters of that kind, or simply stuff I had to infer from their name, appearance and behaviour. It probably was one of the projects I had the most fun with, for the most part because it was so different from most of the other reviewing monsters stuff I've done, most of which (like Pokemon, Pikmin, Digimon or D&D) had entire sourcebooks and encyclopedia pages, whereas even those with lighter lore (like Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh) had flavour text at least half the time. So this is the 'big project' that I was hinting at before, because I know that this is going to take quite a while. And then it got pushed a bit on the backburner because I did a lot of stuff behind the scenes to fix a lot of the broken image links in the Pokemon articles. 

So, Final Fantasy VII! The game that redefined a chapter of the history of J-RPG genre, and everyone and their mother's favourite Final Fantasy game. It was so good, the first one-third of the game was remade into a PS4 game! ...which I can't play because I don't own a PS4 and have no plans on buying one, but I do have a Steam and a computer, so I bought the original FFVII from Steam last year. This year, I finally got to playing it.

It's... interesting going back to a PS1 game after spending the past couple of years playing modern games, let's put it that way. I tried to actually do a text-based Let's Play for a bit before realizing that, no, I'm just giving myself a lot of undue stress by recording every single thing I do in a video game. But reviewing monsters? I can do that. 

So yeah. I've been enjoying myself and working on this article for a while, updating it as I play through chunks of the game. It's a fun ride, even if it is pretty dated and anyone younger picking up this game would probably be baffled. I have been thoroughly and utterly spoiled about the game's two or three biggest twists out of context -- but honestly, other than That Huge Thing at the end of the first disc and the final boss fight, I'm otherwise unspoiled. Plus it's still going to be fun talking about the monsters!

This will primarily talk about the monsters of the original 1997 version of the game, but because I'm not an ignoramus and I can google what they look like, I'll put the images of the 1997 versions of the enemies and the 2019 remake versions of the enemies side-by-side. I will note that the 2019 version does have a bestiary with little blurbs, so I'll draw a little bit from that to talk about any enemy that it would apply to. 

MP / Security Officer

Insert an obligatory "look at how far video game graphics have come" comment here. But, you know, look at how far video game graphics have come! Called MP (apparently short for Military Police) in original FFVII and various variants of "Security Officer" in the remake, these are the goons for the huge super-company called Shinra, who is basically the big bad guy destroying the world. We'll talk about them more, because at this point in the game we really don't find out much about them other than they own a big huge tower and our heroes are introduced as a group of rebels about to destroy their planet-destroying Mako energy reactor. It's the '90's, the environmentalist message (which are not wrong!) is pretty heavy at the time. At the time of writing I'm a bit ahead of this chunk of monsters, but not by that much. 

Anyway, these are the generic Stormtroopers, disposable enemy goons, they have guns, and they have cool sci-fi helmets with three red laser dot-eye things. They die to a single hit of Cloud's big-ass sword, and are basically the tutorial enemy. The humanoid enemies, as far as my friends tell me, have a bigger presence in the remake. Anyway, I never talk too much about humanoid enemies anyway. Moving on!

Guard Hound / Guard Dog

Some guards show up with "Guard Hounds", but instead of just being huge Dobermans like what I'd expect, they are straight-up monster wolves with a huge whip growing out of their back. The remake version also has this, and they look more like... well, a more generic sort of beast than any sort of actual real-life breed of dog. There's also a neat sense of bizarre anatomical proportions even with the polygons of the original 1997 model. Mostly because it reminds me of a D&D Displacer Beast. Shinra also dabbles in bio-engineering, don't you know, and these are the most tame of their creations. Or, at least, I think they are? It's a Final Fantasy world, so these might just be naturally occurring beasts for all I know. 

The actual game never shows any of these enemies outside of battle scenes (1997 video game, guys, you don't know how great it is to see enemies in the overworld nowadays) but the concept art seems to imply that these Guard Hounds' names are more literal than it seems, with their eyes doubling as a searchlight. I love it, it's literally a guard dog equipped more than just a dog's senses to be a guard. 

First Ray / Sentry Ray

Called the "First Ray" in both the 1997 version and both Japanese versions, and the "Sentry Ray" in the remake, this one is... it's just a hilariously chunky laser cannon turret. Very sci-fi, very much 'Rule of Cool' instead of anything practical. Not a whole ton to say here, but it's a sci-fi super-company with infinite resources, of course they are going to have cannons. I will just give kudos to the remake team for actually keeping kooky designs like the First Ray basically faithfully updated, losing perhaps only the bright colours -- and even then it's just muted. If the FFVII remake was done by a team that's obsessed with realism this thing would be much, much more boring-looking. 

Grunt / Shock Trooper

Not long into the raid on the No. 1 Reactor, your party stumbles upon these guys, and they look like armoured humans but... there's just something off. Is it just part of the exaggerated art style, or the blocky graphics, or are they not meant to be human? They look like humans in bodysuits, and that sure is a cool helmet with a single red eyeball... but are those giant gauntlets part of their anatomy, or just chunks of armour they wear? And those claws on the feet? The remake makes it a lot less ambiguous, actually having them crawl around like wacky ghouls that remind me of Resident Evil Lickers. So they definitely lost some amount of humanity.

None of their names are particularly descriptive, though, and imply that they're just soldiers in Shinra's private army. Their original Japanese name, sento'in, translates roughly to 'combatant' or 'soldier', and both 'grunt' and 'shock-trooper' are honestly close enough translations. Are these, then, modified Shinra employees? We may never know. They're just a bit more tough than the one-shot-one-kill MP's, and the kanji on their arms translate to "flammable". It's a trick. These guys are not. Fire attacks don't do extra damage to these guys. 

Mono Drive

And this here is the enemy that was the main reason why I wanted to include the 2019 remake artwork here. The 1997 "Mono Drive" was just a weird... thing. It's just like some sort of jellyfish or umbrella, flying above the ground, and shouts "warning, warning" before flying and stabbing you with its center stinger. Without even a name to understand what this thing is called (their names don't show up in-game, unless I'm missing something?), let alone any sort of lore, I just brushed it off as just a weird one-off enemy. Like those enemies you kill and ignore in like, a Mario or Megaman game. 

But look at the 2019 version, though! Those aren't just petals, they are clumps of... hair? And it's still floating and being weird, but the creepiest thing is that its pretty unremarkable pink center is actually a fleshy eyeball in this version. It's a flying eyeball, and it attacks you by drilling into you! I'm not sure how much of these 2019 versions are actually them working off of what they intended to do in 1997, and how much is just improving an existing model, but either way, what a weird flying eye plant umbrella enemy! Identified by the remake as an 'artificial life' these are 'bionic sentries' that are equipped with artificial intelligence. No real idea why they look like flying eyeball flowers, but okay. Okay, that sure is an interesting way to make a floating drone. 

Sweeper

More robots! From the games that I play and review on this site (XIII and VII) you'd think all the Final Fantasies are filled with robots, huh? They're not -- a lot of them are actually just more old-school fantasy... or at least the ones I've seen, IX and XII, are pretty heavily fantasy-based! But not VII, no! It's urban steampunk something-something, so Shinra's got a lot of robots! Sweeper's far, far more interesting than if they just had a generic robot-man, yeah? It's just a cool looking guard robot, and those long pointy boots gives them a nice hint of whimsy. It's hard to tell in this still image, but the grill on the front side of the Sweeper's head-body and those little exhaust vents on the back kind of move around in its idle animation, and the impression does make it feel like a funky steampunk machine. Not a bad guard robot, it looks tough and it's got two big-ass gun arms. 

Guard Scorpion / Scorpion Sentinel

First boss! The first boss in the Number One Reactor, the Guard Scorpion (renamed Scorpion Sentinel in the remake) is a pretty cool giant scorpion robot, huh? I like everything about this guy. Giant robo-bug legs, a giant scorpion stinger, chukny arms that jut out of a headless body with turrets attached to it? Obviously, the FFVII remake turned it into a whole elaborate video game boss (just like most other bosses in the game) but the original 1997 version was basically a simple starter boss that either shoots you or shoots you a lot. Thanks to a terrible mistranslation, though, I failed at this fight a lot -- it should be "don't attack it when its tail is up, or it'll counterattack", but the game omits the 'don't', meaning I keep attacking when it raises its stinger tail up and it kept laser-beaming me in the face. Damn translations! Thank god for online guides!

Anyway, not a whole ton to say here, it sure is a pretty cool giant enemy bug robot for the first boss! I really really really like robots, but I really can't think of much to say beyond "hey, it looks pretty fucking damn cool!'

Grashtrike

Some of these names... I don't really know what they mean. Like "Grashtrike" here! Mind you, I can't see any of their names until I look up the Wiki for the enemies that appear in each area, and it kinda feels nostalgic! It feels like back in the day when all the lore you can find about a game's bestiary and even setting comes from the game manuals and game guides. Anyway, while there is a fair chunk of characterization and story dropped between the 'dungeons', we're focusing on the monsters. And here we start off with a bunch of monsters that our party of eco-terrorists fight in the train tunnels. It's... it's some sort of bug monster, but it doesn't have any real traditional legs, has a scorpion tail, a mosquito head, and huge mantis claws. Also, it shoots silk like a Bug Pokemon's String Shot! It sure is a weird bug monster living in a sewer...

But I wouldn't have geeked out as much about it if I didn't quite realize just how utterly awesome the mental image that the designers had for this creature, as seen in the 2020 remake! 1997 Grashtrike was pretty cool already, some sort of chimeric insect beast, but the 2020 version makes it look even weirder. actually having quasi-realistic mantis claws that aren't exaggerated into scythes and instead focusing more on the tips of the claws is cool, and the bloated belly (which still looks like an insect abdomen) makes this creature look so much more creepier. And while I saw a mosquito face in the original pixelated 1997 version, that jagged proboscis, the feathered moth-like antennae and those glowing eyes... yeah, both versions of Grashtrike are pretty damn awesome bug monsters! The remake gives them a backstory, identifying them as mutants created by the Mako radiation (the phlebotonium energy that the Shinra evil megacorp use), and even including a 'Queen' variant and a dedicated sub-area for them!

Rocket Launcher / Sentry Launcher

More turrets! They're really here mostly for completion's sake, and they're just missile pods. A lot more mundane looking than the wackier "First Ray" up above, and it's bizarre that Shinra would fill up an entire underground train service tunnel with missile pods. Or... well, I guess it's Shinra. They're nuts.

Chuse Tank / Terpsicolt

What... what is a 'Chuse Tank'? I googled 'chuse', and it is just a weird way to say 'choose'? Its remake's dub name, Terpsicolt, means... 'pleasure colt'? the horse part, I get. But they are just random floating giant seahorses that appear in... an underground train tunnel and a Mako reactor. Okay? I'm not questioning or complaining about the giant floating seahorse, but... but at the same time, why? It attacks with the 'claw' that is on its tail, which is jointed like a tail. 

You'd think that this is the sort of an enemy that the remake would toss out or replace with something more suited to the location, but Square Enix is committed in adapting and expanding upon everything in the original game, and I have to give them kudos on that. The Terpiscolt's bio isn't anything interesting, just noting that they like dark places and detect prey via vibrations... but look at that model! Look at that human ribcage on its thorax, and its 'waist' looks like a human waist, like some poor sod somehow got the lower half of their legs fused together into a creepy chitinous claw, and their upper body got turned into a spiky demon seahorse head. The game bestiary doesn't tell us that these are mutated Shinra experiments, but knowing that Dr. Hojo exists in this game means that it's likely that the Chuse Tanks are probably just failed experiments. That casts a lot more disturbing of a light on the 'pleasure colt' name...

Blugu

Called 'Poissocute' in the original Japanese version, these are... these are flying fishes that somehow populate the same areas that the Chuse Tank does. Why is a flying fat fish- you know what? I'm just going to assume "Shinra did it" for the existence of all these enemies. Both versions are pretty bizarre-looking with very fun faces. Original 1997 Blugu is a lot spikier, with spiky wings and that mass of spiny barbs on its underside. And its face! The flat yellow eyes and the little fangs in its mouth? Yeah, that's a weirdo-cute face. I absolutely love that FFVII just gives no fucks. Floating seahorses and spiky bat-pufferfish Fuzors just simply exist in this setting alongside robots and stormtroopers. 

Remake Blugu, on the other hand, has so much of a weirder set of features, wings that look more like fish fins and less jagged spikes, but that face. That :o face. Remake Blugu looks just so surprised and confused and panicked at the three angry RPG heroes about to murder it and its friends. No! 

Special Combatant / Elite Shock Trooper

It's a PS1 game, so of course there's going to be repeat enemies. These guys are red, and they patrol the No. 5 Reactor! This is the first of these reviews so I'll be separating them, but in the future if they show up in close proximity to each other I'll group the repaints together with their original version. We have two pictures of each enemy thanks to the remakes, though, so I'll keep them separate for now. The Special Combatant's arm gauntlet kanji reads "arguing is useless".

Blood Taste / Bloodhound

A repaint of the Guard Hound, this one is red, like blood! The remake version actually has a very nice texture, some extra spikes and more pointed ears, but the 1997 version, of course, looks exactly the same. 

Smogger

Like all enemies in the 1997 version, Smogger doesn't really have much in lieu of explanation beyond being just a weirdo Shinra robot, but the 2020 version tells us that the Smogger is a repair robot with an 'auto-repair function', and its weird state is because it's using scrap material to put itself back together. I like that its entire head is a weird asymmetrical pipe, and one of its arm is also a huge pipe. As its name suggests, it emits 'smog' that can poison your characters. I love how kooky all these robots look. Between the Sweeper and the Smogger, they really could've gone for something more serious, but they decide to go with more exaggerated proportions and I love it.

I don't want to go "look at the fancy graphics" or anything, but I really absolutely love just how dented and dinged Remake!Smogger's darker green textures look, and how rusty the edges of the pipes are. 

Proto Machinegun

These don't exist in the remake! I guess they realized that too many generic turrets are boring? If they're going to cut out anything, I'm glad it's one of the turrets and not the floating land-based seahorse. Not much to say about this one. I like the visual look of a multi-barrel gun, and those are always cool.

Air Buster

Parsed as "Airbuster" in the 1997 version, this "techno-soldier" dude is the final boss of the No. 5 Reactor, and you even get a bit of a introduction with President Shinra of the Shinra Corporation siccing it on you. The original 1997 version is more or less just a giant robot man with a tiny head and a flat tank-like bottom. It's like a more threatening version of one of those toy robots you The remake version is a lot more elaborate, looking more like a Transformer of sorts, and having a more explicit hovercraft lower body. I kind of like the chunkiness of the original version, but I can't deny how gosh-darned cool the remake's Air Buster is. 

It sure is a cool big robot! Again, I don't have much to say about robots beyond just describing its anatomy. But I am really excited about these robots. He's a bit more mundane compared to Sweeper, Smogger or Guard-Scorpion, but he's still neat! He's actually not very impressive in the 1997 version, but the 2020 version made it so badass that your characters have to go on a side-quest to sabotage it so that you have a fighting chance. 

Hedgehog Pie

So this is the start of a new sub-area, the Sector 5 Slums. It's a typical urban slum area in an RPG, so there are a lot less Shinra goons and robots and more just... wild creatures. the first you meet (in a dilapidated church for some reason) is the Hedgehog Pie, who really only has the back-spines in common with a hedgehog. Hedgehog Pie otherwise looks like a generic fanged squat monster, some sort of gremlin troll thing. They can cast fire spells, too, in addition to bouncing around and stabbing you with their spiky back. Later spin-offs of FFVII would give the Hedgehog Pies increasingly frog-like qualities, which I suppose you can get from the fat belly and the vague shape of the limbs. In the 2020 remake they're just straight-up humanoid frog monsters with a huge tongue. Not a whole ton to say here, it sure is a spiky frog man! I think we've seen weirder, even at this point in the game. 

Whole Eater / Gorger

Whoa, this one is cool! Both versions! I really liked the gigantic circular lamprey fang with eyes all around it, and the thin whip-like worm body and spidery legs of the original Whole Eater, but the remake's "Gorger" has a far more armoured sandworm-like look, less prominent eyes and chunkier lower legs also looks great. Again, a huge, huge fan of any sort of bizarre beast that resembles many real life creatures, while not specifically being obviously "oh, it's a worm". I absolutely love the mottled anatomy going on, and the bizarre tree-bark-like legs. It looks like a weird monstrous rock-lamprey fusion, and probably one of the cooler creatures from the remake.

Like the Hedgehog Pie, these show up in the Sector 5 and Sector 6 areas as Cloud and Aeris Aerith エアリス travel through them. Very cool looking, and they feel far more like the sort of vermin and creatures that would hung out in a junkyard-themed slum. 

Vice

It's now Vice, which is apparently a recurring designation for enemies in Final Fantasy. In other games they are thieves with giant sickles, but in FFVII they're just regular dudes with a little piece of paper serving as a mask. They are the first enemy that will try and steal things from you, and you have to kill them quickly before they escape. Not much to say here, it's just a dude. 

In the 2020 remake, the Vice enemies are absent, but you get to fight a gang called "Beck's Badasses" that's a recurring antagonist in the areas that would correspond to the ones where you fight the Vice. They went from being generic forgettable enemies to a shitty Team Rocket, that made them a lot more memorable!

Hell House

YES! HELL HOUSE! Probably one of my favourite enemies in the game, these just show up randomly out of nowhere on the pathway that connects Sector 5 and Sector 6, filled with fallen piles of metal, broken street and even hints of giant robot arms. And then randomly you fight one of these things, which is... a literal house. Which will open its house and shoot missiles or smoke at you. Beat it up enough and with an attack called "Suicide Drop", revealing its true form. It's got a bunch of robotic legs, arms, sword-arms, rocket thrusters on its back, chunks of its walls and roof move around, and it's got an eyeless mannequin doll head clattering in front of it. What is this. I have so many questions, and it has some of the most delightful animations as it attacks you. It's a robot house. A robot house. Someone in Shinra (presumably?) built a lot of these, enough to make it into a recurring enemy running around in the junkyard. Are they self-replicating? Are they prototypes for other Shinra robots? Who knows what they are? I love them. 

In the remake, the Hell House is given a HUGE upgrade, being turned into the final boss of the Corneo Colosseum questline (which doesn't exist in the original), being noted to be a mysterious creature that Don Corneo just happens to own. It's got a badass boss theme and relatively complex boss techniques, including the ability to actually fly around in glorious 3-D, abduct Cloud or Aerith and take it into its own body, and the announcers of the colosseum had a great time making hammy house puns. I love this. This isn't the Resident Evil 3 remake team, which cut out something as relatively mundane as a giant zombie worm. They knew that the Hell House was ridiculous, but instead doubled down on its ridiculousness, making it even more ridiculous yet badass at the same time. Easily my favourite enemy concept in the game so far. Look at this thing!

Corneo's Lackey (also, Scotch)

An optional enemy in the Wall Market segment (I played it blind, so I didn't get the 'perfect' crossdressing that would allow me to skip this fight) is a bunch of Corneo Lackeys and a cheongsam-wearing NPC, Scotch. Despite having a unique overworld model, Scotch just shows up as the generic jacketed goon with a bayonet. Shame. You have beat up Don Corneo's goons if Cloud isn't chosen for a part of the plot (long story), but the goons don't even look like gangsters or the vaguely Chinese-crime-boss vibe that Corneo's mansion has been going on. They just look like generic military men. Boo! Anyway, human enemies. Whatever. 

Caesar / Scissorclaw

Named "Caesar Scissor" in the original Japanese, these are encountered in the sewers... and... I like them! It'd be too easy and simple just to have a crab enemy, but these are crabs with actual angry fanged jaws, and I absolutely love that the claws actually sprout from the sides of the crab instead of its front. Such a simple change, and yet it makes the Caesar look so much more different. Again, I like this sort of changes that makes it truly look like a 'crab monster' instead of just 'a weird crab'. 

Sahagin

Hanging out in the sewers are the Sahagin, which, obviously, borrow their names from D&D's Sahuagin. As I find out while reviewing FFXIII, the original Final Fantasy game had some monsters that are lifted directly from D&D, among them the Sahuagin and the Otyugh ("Ochu" in FF). The first five Final Fantasy games have depicted them as fish-people that are closer to their D&D inspiration, but FFVII turned them into turtle-men! Sort of! I get a very strong kappa-vibe from them, too, and I love just how utterly lanky they are. Maybe it's TMNT influencing me, but you'd think that turtle-men would be lanky and awkward, but these have really huge lower arms and a generally much more interesting anatomy. Their turtle shells allow them to do a 'defend' ability, which reduces most damage to 1. 

The remake makes the Sahagin a lot more interesting, making their anatomy a bit more explicitly weird. Sure, they have turtle shells, but their head is a delightful mix of reptilian and amphibian, and it's got weird frog feet and claws that look somewhat crocodilian. I really like this, these Sahagin are a fun mixture of just strange amphibious reptilians and amphibians. I love it the most, I feel, when Final Fantasy originally draws from D&D or something but puts such a different twist while keeping the essence of the monster pretty similar. 

Aps / Abzu

Our third boss, Abzu (Aps in the original, but more properly translated by the remake as Abzu, the name for a primeval sea in Mesopotamian myths) is a bizarre creature that just randomly shows up in the sewers as a boss, and look at that original Abzu! It's this giant ogre-troll creature, but with the face like a squashed pig or bulldog, a giant warty hunchback, a massive snake tongue, two horns jutting out of the hunchback, and a strangely furred tail. And it's neon-blue! It looks monstrous, and yet the chains and the general look of it just makes it look so, so wretched and pathetic that you actually do feel sorry for it. 

Remake's Abzu goes a bit too much in making it look 'cool', I think. All the details are still the same, and I can even more clearly spot the goat-feet that I didn't realize in the 1997 model, but the new version of Abzu instead just looks just a bit too... badass, I feel. Don't get me wrong, it's still a cool horned kaiju monster, but it lacks a lot of the wretched "this is a thing that was horribly mutated" vibe of the original 1997 Abzu, and instead gives the vibe of "whoa, what a cool gorilla-reptile creature!" The remake makes it a bit more obvious that Abzu is basically a pet of Don Corneo, kept in the sewers to dispose of enemies like Jabba the Hutt's Rancor. 

___________________________________________

That's where I've played up to at this moment. This was kind of fun, playing through the game then looking up how the remake ends up re-imagining or simply just showcases the original intent of the the monsters. The first bit of the game is admittedly a bit slower in terms of monster designs thanks to mostly being just robots and soldiers, but there are still a bunch of fun creatures here and there! I did a bit of a digging to see if I missed anything, and... well, I don't think I did, at least in the 1997 version -- the remake does add a bunch of new enemy variants thanks to the expansion it did to a lot of the levels, as well as a bunch of new enemies (like the fate-guarding shadow specter things) but we'll not be covering those just yet. Maybe after I finish the original 1997 game, I'll tack on a special segment to talk about the new remake enemies? Anyway, next up, g-g-g-ghosts!