It’s too easy to say such success is part of the recent revival of -- and hunger for -- computer role-playing games. While that may hold true to some extent, FF7 is role-playing only in its most basic form: Certain characters can be renamed, and winning battles does add experience points, which in turn boost characters’ performance. But those points can’t really be used to mold characters, nor can the many items, weapons and armor.

The player will hardly think about such factors during the game. Instead, the storyline immediately sucks characters into this odd new world.

The player is Cloud, a former government soldier who has fallen in with a small group of rebels called AVALANCHE. The rebels want to stop Shinra Inc., a corporation that rules the world, from sucking something called Mako power out of the planet. See, if too much power gets sucked, the planet dies.

Of course, this is a Japanese game, so there’s a good bit of soap-opera thrown in as well. Cloud’s childhood friend Tifa, now all grown up and as buxom as Eidos adventurer Lara Croft, is a member of AVALANCHE. But Cloud is also attracted to Aeris, a flower girl who just happens to wield a mean staff and might just be some sort of higher life form.

Luckily, this is readily apparent despite one of FF7’s first port failings: the dialogue. Rather than adding voice actors to the PC version, Squaresoft kept the same badly translated dialogue. Most of the grammar is just confusing, though Barret -- the Mr. T-esque leader of AVALANCHE – talks (and curses) like a 1970s blaxploitation character. It alternates between humorous and offensive.

Also held over from the console version is the save feature. To save in the cities, the player must find a glowing question mark called, easily enough, a Save Point. (Players can save at any time on the world map.) While this is occasionally annoying, Save Points are provided before most grueling battles.

Again, despite these failings, FF7 is quite fun. Much of the game is played from a top-down camera angle, with the player interacting with other characters and, every so often, being sucked into battle with Shinra agents or nasty creatures.

These battle scenes start with a side view, but the camera swirls and dips during special attacks. It’s a nice effect.

Battle is real-time. Each character has a Time counter; that character can attack when the bar fills up. The character’s attack time is only disrupted by paralyzing spells, making for some nice strategy: Staggering attacks leaves some players available to defend others. Attacking all at once packs a wallop, though it tends to leave characters idle while waiting for the Time counter to refill.

Magic, called Materia here, is a large part of combat. Characters can attach Materia to weapons or amor before the battle; different kinds of Materia do different things. Some reduce damage, while others open up elemental attacks like Fire or Lightning. Still more Materia grants special moves, like Steal or Mug.

Be careful, though: Some types of Materia, while granting beneficial powers, also reduce factors like hit points or attack strength.

To sum up, Final Fantasy VII suffers from severe consolitis, porting a game from console to PC without fully utilizing the strengths of the home computer. Yet it remains an engaging, fun entry into the RPG revival. It’s a great escape.