Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy VII is the 1997 PlayStation role-playing game that pulled the genre into the mainstream. You play Cloud, a mercenary hired by an eco-terrorist group fighting a corporation that drains the planet for power. The story turns on memory, identity, and a villain named Sephiroth who is still the reference point decades later. The graphics are blocky polygons over painted backgrounds, dated now in the obvious ways. The writing, the score by Nobuo Uematsu, and the weight of its big turns are not dated at all.