Final Fantasy VII moved the series to 3D, shifted its setting from medieval fantasy to industrial science fiction, and introduced the series to a Western mainstream audience at a scale no JRPG had previously reached.
Follows: Final Fantasy VI
Before Final Fantasy VII, JRPGs were a niche genre in the West. Chrono Trigger had sold well; Final Fantasy VI had its audience. But neither had penetrated mainstream Western gaming culture. Final Fantasy VII changed this through a combination of Sony's marketing investment — expensive television advertising, prominent placement in PlayStation campaigns — and a game that translated its Japanese fantasy elements into a science-fiction aesthetic more legible to Western players.
Midgar, the game's opening city, reads as a Blade Runner-influenced dystopia: slums beneath plates that block sunlight from the poor, a Shinra Corporation draining the planet's life force, a mercenary protagonist with PTSD-inflected memory problems. These were not the dragons-and-crystals conceits of earlier Final Fantasy games. Western players who had never played an RPG were engaged by the premise. The game's success established JRPGs as a legitimate mainstream category on PlayStation.