Final Fantasy 7 Hits Steam

Square Enix's PSOne classic Final Fantasy 7 unexpectedly arrived on Steam this morning. The role-playing game's been updated to work with modern PC's and also sports a few new features.

Final Fantasy 7 begins in the city of Midgar. Midgar is powered by Mako reactors that are slowly bleeding away the planet's energy. Cloud, a mercenary, is hired by rebel group AVALANCHE to strike at these reactors. This puts Cloud and AVALANCHE in direct conflict with the Shinra Corporation, the powerful company that rules over Midgar with an iron fist.

In keeping with Final Fantasy tradition, FF7's story turns out to be much deeper than expected. The conflict between this corporation and rebel group quickly becomes a globe-trotting quest to save the world. The campaign spans about 40 hours, though you'll probably spend more time with the game than that due to all the optional side content.

The Steam version of FF7 is the same as the last year's re-release. Cloud saves will allow you to continue your game on up to three different PC's. There are 36 achievements for you to earn as well.

The slightly controversial Character Booster makes a return as well. The Booster will allow you to boost your hit points, magic points, or Gil (money) to maximum whenever you want. This can trivialize fights but, really, who cares at this point? The game's 16 years old. It's not like beating Emerald Weapon is a rare accomplishment by now.

While this is essentially a re-release of the 1998 PC version, there were still some improvements made to the game's visuals and sound. As a result, you have to have a relatively modern system to run it. You need a 2GHz processor, 1GB RAM and a Direct X 9.0c-compatible graphics card. You'll also need 3GB of hard drive space. The game supports Windows XP, Vista and 7.

This isn't the complete high-def remake that fans have been clamoring for. Square Enix has said in the past that an HD version is a possibility but the company's been noncommittal. The sales from these re-releases - Steam's already got about 1,600 players in-game this morning - may remind them of the great demand for a remake, though.