Final Fantasy VII

The first FF on the Playstation. The first FF released for PCs. The first FF to feature 3D graphics and fully animated movie clips. Quite probably the best-selling Final Fantasy game ever made. 1997's release of Final Fantasy VII brought the series to vast numbers of people who had never before played it on the Nintendo consoles, and made more die-hard fanatics than any FF before or since. While not the only game in the series to have a related game (X has a direct sequel, and XII has a sequel in production), VII has three spin-off games, two films, and two novellas based on it. It catapulted the silver-haired prettyboy phenomenon into rabid popularity, is prone to some truly terrible translation gaffes, and has caused innumerable other works to suffer by comparison. It features the most popular incarnation of Cid—and the only one that's a main, playable character—the most popular villain, and one of the most popular main characters of any game. Love it or hate it, Final Fantasy VII is a powerful force in the game world, and will remain so for some time.

Shinra Power is a monolithic corporation with direct control over the city-state of Midgar, and indirect control over the majority of the world. Mako is the concentrated lifeforce of the planet, and the energy source mined and distributed by Shinra. SOLDIERs are the elite of Shinra's army, created by saturating ordinary people with high concentrations of mako and keeping the ones that survive the process. Cloud Strife is a SOLDIER-turned-mercenary with massive gaps in his memory who joins an eco-terrorist group called AVALANCHE—headed by Barret Wallace—at the request of his childhood friend, Tifa. After planting a bomb that destroys one of the eight mako reactors in Midgar, Cloud meets Aerith (mistranslated in the game as Aeris), an innocent young woman being pursued by the Turks, Shinra's enforcers. Finding out why Shinra wants her is only the beginning, as it seems that Sephiroth—Shinra's leading general, most accomplished SOLDIER, and presumed corpse for the last five years—is alive, insane, and more powerful than ever.

Images:

Cloud
Tifa
Barret
Aerith
Cid
The famous Sephiroth scene
Cloud and Sephiroth on the poster for the movie Advent Children
Sephiroth as seen in Crisis Core
Rufus Shinra and the Turks: Elena, Tseng, Rude, and Reno
Rude and Reno as they appear in Advent Children
Vincent Valentine in Dirge of Cerberus
The original game intro compared to the tech demo remake for the PS3
Eminence Symphony Orchestra performing Sephiroth's theme song