Just tell your friend they are both equally mediocre and run of the mill RPGs

which game is better to u then?

Too many to list honestly, but they're pretty decent

id have to say 7 since i despised 9
but im not jumping on the 7 bandwagon either, i still think its highly overated

In this comparison, FF7 takes the cake.

FF7 had the best story - probably of all videogames ever made, of course this is altered by preferences, but many seem to have taken this view, and I tend to agree. FF7 didn't have the best of characters, but the characters of FF9 are completely horrible. Don't get me wrong, I love FF9, but the characters just weren't the same quality as FF7 - and especially FF8, which featured some of the best characters in videogame history, imo.

.. explain what u liked so much about ff7s storyline please tell..

The incredible size of it is one factor. It would take me hours to retell the story of it.
The complications of the characters, are they good/bad ? (seph especially)
Also the fact that you had so much control over the story, it was the first game to feature a completely free 3D world.
The whole lifestream aspect was great, it brought back the idea of Gaia to a lot of people.
The loss of a main character like Aeris is absolutely one-of-a-kind in my books still.

Loads more to point out I'm sure, but it's getting late, I need my bed.

The characters are only complicated to the eyes of children, same with the vastness of the story, it's not all that vast, it is just a whole lot of sillyness.

And how is Aeris dying one of a kind? It was done MANY years earlier by a game called Phantasy Star which i'm sure you have never played, and many other RPGs as well.

The lifestream malarky is just a repackaging of Mana from Secret of Mana series games, it really wasn't anything new either; really don't know what you're talking about with the gaia thing. And you don't have control over the story, FF7 is a very linear game, and also the game is not 3D, the game is 2D, only the world map and battle sequences could be called 3D and they were very crude and not impressive graphically, the really nice graphics in FF7 are mostly during the CGI cutscenes, those are pretty great.

Of course the characters are complicated. Plenty of people still haven't figured out the complete backgrounds of all the characters, not children, that's really just wrong.
And you can't really deny it's vast by saying it's silly, even if a vast story is silly, it's still vast, and silly is still a personal opinion.

I haven't played Phantasy Star, because I didn't like what I've heard about it, I know the game and I know some characters from it. And these "many other RPGS" seems far-fetched to me. None of these (including Phantasy Star) have brought up the same feelings like upon the death of Aeris. I'm not saying no one has ever died in a game before, I'm pointing out the fact that many were touched by this moment, which again seems to point at great storytelling.

Lifestream shouldn't be compared with Mana imo, if you don't know what the Gaia hypothesis is, I suggest you Wiki it.

And I know the game is not made in 3D, I did not state this either. I was pointing out the fact that you have an entire planet in 3D (world map,yes) to explore, which FF7 was the first game to bring to the video game scene.
The 3D world is very free, and the beginning of the game is quite linear yes, but that kind of makes sense. Later in the game you get a world of oppotunities, and like I stated, for the first time in video game history, had a 3D world to explore.

And I completely disagree when you say that the graphics were poor at the time of release. The graphics style put some limitations to it I agree, but worked very well, and at the time, it wasn't bad at all (not mindblowing like the dance scene of FF8, but good).

I suggest you wiki less often xD especially since it seems your knowledge of some sort of similarity is directly taken from it "The 1997 console role-playing game, Final Fantasy VII features a paradigm of so-called Lifestream, also appearing in the 2001 film, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within as the 'Dr. Sid's Gaia Theory' (these theories look almost identical due to the same scenario writers, Hironobu Sakaguchi and Kazushige Nojima). According to it, all living beings are given some 'spirital energy' by the spirit of the Planet (Gaia) prior to birth, live out their lives, and then die, with the energy then returning to the Planet. Entire Planet (or Gaia) is really a single living organism with its own consciousness and will."

But really that whole paragraph there is just overanalysis, people looking far too hard to find connections in a game, when really it's just a simple, cliche "we are all one with the planet" captain planet angle. Again, nothing about the story or characters are difficult to comprehend, the game was made for children and it was mostly played by children when it was released, I played it and beat it when I was 10 when it came out, and even with the horrid "hahaha its not me you've been fighting its CLONES!" plot "twist" that was a complete load of absurd bull and the most lame and overused plot device in history, I understood it quite well. And I understand it to be a poorly written story full of holes and inconsistancies, as well as ludacris, naive notions and cliche elements.

Aeris dying made me laugh, not cry, everything about it was bananas. There aren't a whole ton of sidequests in FF7, it's very linear. The graphics varied quite a bit, but were mostly very blocky and poorly textured, besides the cutscenes which were a big part of what made the game famous. The game world isn't vast; FF5 was vast, it had 2 whole worlds and more, FF6 was vast, it had two worlds, a before and after.