~  Final Fantasy VII  ~ 
The first highly detailed Shiva! She really looks Indian this time with the bindi. It's exactly like a FF6 Shiva with longer hair and slightly more coverage (because of the changing camera angles). I think this one set the new standards for the direction of her character and camera angles.

There's not much backstory to the Summons in FF7, some are regarded as mysterious gods who were worshipped while some are simply found lying around in a junk yard. You get the Materia for Shiva (by default) after a scene in Junon where Cloud saves the life of a little girl named Priscilla.

Attacks
Shiva's only attack is Diamond Dust, a powerful Ice-Elemental (cold air attribute) attack on all enemies. With snow whirling from the sky and concentrating the cold air towards her hand, Shiva gathers and blows it away. Her breath creates a snowstorm which causes everything around to freeze.

The Fundamental Attack Power is 24 and it costs 32 MP to use. It does most damage on Fire-Elemental enemies. Initially you can only Summon her one time per battle and it's a mid-level strengthed Summon in this game.

Materia
With Shiva's Materia equipped, any party member can summon her during battle for a certain amount of times by using up MP. The statistics of the party member will also change a little in favor of magic: MAGIC +01, MAXHP -02%, MAXMP +02%.

LVL   USAGE   AP  
1
2
3
4
5
1 time
2 times
3 times
4 times
5 times
0
4000
15000
30000
50000

You can combo the Shiva Materia with an Elemental Materia in order to have Ice attacks or Ice defense (Elemental LVL1 = half damage, LVL2 = no damage, LVL3 = healed by damage).

Before Crisis
Shiva also appears as a usable Materia in the Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis spinoff game for mobile phones. To get the Shiva materia, you must take photos of (dark) blue objects to create Blizzard materias. Once you have created four Blizzards, you can create Shiva.

Gallery