every time i go back to one of the classic FFs (snes/ps1 era mainly) i'm just struck by how good the pacing is in the early hours. this is something that a lot of throwbacks like bravely and octopath struggle with. those old FFs are just constantly sending you from iconic set piece to iconic set piece in their opening hours, with little to no reason to grind unless you purposefully choose to do so. the ps1 games are so eager to show you the next cool prerendered background they came up with. you can play for just an hour and really feel like you've made some progress in that time
the entire Midgar section of FF7 was so good, like, just spending the entire first few hours of the game laser focused on one really small location, in detail, not just abstracting away a city or village as a few houses across 1-2 screens but an actual place you can spend real time in and learn the like, different texture of the different locales without once touching a distanced, representational, bird's eye overworld map. the entire time you spend there is a real space and serves as a microcosm for one facet of the conflict that's going to spread out into the wider world when you ultimately leave
they made that whole section cool, you can tell there was so much care and work that went into making that entire hours-long city as an extended establishing shot land, it was really something special
(which isn't to downplay any of the other FFs from this era - IX is one of my favourites overall and VI was so ambitious for its time, but the opening hours of VII just embody this so hard)
