Ehrgeiz: God Bless The Ring

[moogles on mescaline]

People seem to think that the only FF fighting game is Dissidia. Well, for those of us "old-schoolers", do you guys remember a game called Ehrgeiz, a fighting game released by Squaresoft waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day? It was well-known for including a few select VII characters (IIRC, Cloud, Zack, Sephiroth, Tifa, Yuffie, Vincent, and Red XIII/Django were playable).

It seems to me Dissidia really follows up on the overall gameplay of Ehrgeiz and improved on it tenfold, but I am in no way saying that one is better than the other. Both are fucking greaaaat.

Now if they'd only make a FF Fighter based on the Tekken 4 engine...

 

[Ilyena]

I do remember playing this game and it was okay, nothing spectacular though. I don't think it counts as an FF fighting game though. I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended to be; it was just a fighter made by Square. The inclusion of FFVII characters was likely to get people to buy it due to FFVII's personality. Weren't the FFVII characters only available after you unlocked them?

I could be wrong. It's been a while. xD

 

[West]

I remember finding this at my local video store and renting it for the sole reason that I heard you could play as FFVII characters and I thought that was really neat, despite the fact that I had barely grazed the tip of the iceberg when it came to playing FFVII itself. (Now that I think about it, I think there was a period of time during which I was really into FFVII, even though I have yet to finish the first disc.)

But since it was so long ago and I only played it the one time, I don't remember much about the game at all, other than that I thought it was pretty mediocre. Even so, I'm glad I got a chance to play it. Seems like one of those games that're pretty rare these days.

Also: the Wikipedia article on the game says that Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth were available to play at the start. Also Red XIII wasn't actually included, but the alternate costume of another dog/wolf-like character [Django] had similar characteristics to Red XIII. Vincent, Yuffie, and Zack were hidden characters that needed to be unlocked. But I didn't play the game nearly enough to accomplish that.

 

[Ilyena]

Ah, I knew there were some that were unlockable. In fact, I remember playing with Sephiroth and Cloud. I don't remember whether I played with any other characters.

I'd like to play it again just for the heck of it, tbh.

 

[moogles on mescaline]

For its time it was AMAZINGGGG. The movement was pretty smooth and the inclusion of the VII characters was very appealing... plus they got Cloud's Omnislash down pretty well for an attack. The other characters included I heard were from other Squaresoft games, but I'd never heard of them. Godhand, for instance, is extremely familiar.

 

[SapphireStar]

Alas I never played it But I do remember seeing it. It would be nice to have a Final Fantasy fighter game, think some fans may have made one already? But yeah, love to see Aeris and Tifa have a scrap XD

 

[Clo-bot]

I loved this game when I was young, haha! I don't think I would have patience for the linear battle system anymore, though.

I don't think Django was Red XIII though....

 

[Dionysos]

I have this game and I'm glad I bought it when I saw it as I would probably never have been able to buy it again unless I hunted hard for it.

The gameplay was ok, but nothing special, but it was the concept that had me excited. I loved playing as FF characters. The mini-games were quite good and varied too. Racing in a circuit, beach racing and hurdling, a type of block game, and handicap games and such. There was a fair bit to do... And they had an RPG dungeon explorer game within it too but I found it quite hard to get into, and it didn't contain any FF characters. It was still fun though.

As for the Django = Nanaki thing... I know I was wrong but I always used to tell myself that Django was Nanaki's father, Seto. I thought that his normal white fur was meant to be him

Spoiler

petrified

, and the red fur was what he looked like beforehand. I was wrong, as I forgot at the time that I played the game that his name was Seto, and not Django, but it made sense to me as a kid and I really wanted it to be Red XIII's daddy. The red fur as an alternate costume is deliberate though, and is meant to give reference to the race that Nanaki belongs to. One of his attacks in his moveset is named after one of Red XIII's limit breaks too, I believe, so there is meant to be a connection. I now like to imagine that he must be Nanaki's uncle, but I know thinking such is silly and other than being of a referential nature there is likely nothing else linking Django to Nanaki.

I do remember playing this game and it was okay, nothing spectacular though. I don't think it counts as an FF fighting game though. I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended to be; it was just a fighter made by Square. The inclusion of FFVII characters was likely to get people to buy it due to FFVII's personality.

I think this is true. I used to fool myself into thinking that the other characters were from FF games that I hadn't played yet, but I realised that this was wrong and that the focus of the game wasn't on FF at all. The cutscenes only ever showed the original characters for the game, and the FF characters were essentially only cameos added to increase sales.