Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Grows on you"

FFVII is such an addictive game for me,because it's world,story and characters drew me in so much.FFVII is the game that got me into RPGs.

The story is about an ex soldier named Cloud Strife,who joins a group of rebels named AVALANCHE as a mercenary,and AVALANCHE are trying to stop a company named Shinra(Shinra oppress the people in their world,and are draining their world's resources for profit,and their world is dying and is becoming polluted).

For a while,it seems like stopping Shinra is your main goal(your group of characters will go around blowing up Shinra reactors),until...


SPOILER BELOW

Sephiroth enters the story and slaughters the Shinra company,and Sephiroth is responsible for slaughtering entire towns and burning them to the ground and he has plans to make himself become almost invincible by making an comet hit their world and when their planet heals itself,he will steal it's lifestream energy.

END OF SPOILER

The game has a love triangle,and psychological and emotional moments,for example

SPOILERS BELOW

Barett has to choose between paying Cloud to assist AVALANCHE or saving the money for his daughter to go to school,and it's such a tough decision,because Barett can either let the world die or have to sacrifise his daughter being able to go to school.

Shinra made a higher level of Midgar collapse on the lower level,killing MANY people in retaliation for AVALANCHE's rebellion.

You'll need to give CPR to a little girl who's drowned.

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Characters in the story will die,one of your party members will turn out to be a spy,ancient races and legendary,nature filled worlds come into the story,so does JENOVA and the history of Cloud,Sephiroth,and the other characters are slowly revealed and a well paced way(to keep the characters interesting and just like real people,they don't want to reveal everything about them at once),and they often have deep and troubled pasts.Some very epic and cruel things happen in the story,not just to the party memebers,but the people in their world too.

Right from the opening scene,I was hooked because...

SPOILER BELOW

I saw Cloud leaping from the training and fighting past the Shinra soliders,and I just knew it would be something epic.

END OF SPOILER

Also,I like how you start the game in a dark,pollued city named Midgar,but you'll travel through the country side,and to a beautiful tropical resort,and you'll see other places that have been polluted by Shinra,and you'll travel through the desert,and visit theme parks(and can actually play the games),many towns(even a haunted house),through snowy regions,caves,forest,ancient ruins,to the center of the Earth.

Besides Cloud and Sephiroth,the other characters include:-

Your party characters:

Barret,a muscular,slightly bulky black man,who has a machine-gun replacing his right hand that he lost.He's the leader of AVALANCHE.He will have to confront some demons from his past,and he's always tense and grumpy,but it's because he's worried about the fate of is world and about his daughter.

Tifa Lockheart,who is a beautiful,busty brunette woman who has been close friends with Cloud for a long time and has spent a lot of intimate moments with Cloud and has feelings for him.

Aeris,a beautiful,brunette girl who sells flowers and likes to work at a garden.

SPOILER BELOW

Aeris is the last member of a ancient race,and Aeris knows how to get to a place that's filled with nature,and Shinra want to get to that place so they're trying to kidnap Aeris and she asks Cloud to be her bodyguard and he agrees.Cloud also has feelings for Aeris,and when she joins their group,a love triangle develops.

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RED XIII,is a creature that looks like a mixture of a lion and wolf.He was used a research experiment by Shinra until he was freed by the group.

Cat Sith,a little,fortune telling cat,who rides on top of a mechanical,walking thing.

Cid,who wanted to be the first man in space.He is the guy in their group who knows how to use high tech/scientific things.

There's also optional characters that can join your party too.

The main villains are Sephiroth and the Shinra employees.

There's some interesting and creative NPC's in the game too.

As for the gameplay,the battles are turn based and use an active time battle system so,enemies will keep attacking you if you don't take your turn quickly,but you can program your next turn quickly to make the battles go faster and you can wait and allow an enemy to have a turn before you so you so you can see which character might need to be healed.

You'll travel from place to place and town to town and let he story unfold,and fight bosses and will be attacked by random enemies in some places.

You have levelling up to do,and not only do your characters level up,but their spells(materia)do too.You can make any character become a powerful black mage/white mage and any character can summon a creature to do a lot of damage,but summoning can be used much less than materia.

There is also limit breaks which allow your characters to do powerful attacks/series of attacks.You can do a limit break when the LB gauge is filled,and it increase when that character takes or inflicts damage.Limit breaks are extremely powerful and can be crucial to boss fights.

There is some interesting sidequests and mini games you can do.You can do a sidequest which involves breeding a particular type of Chocobo(which is time consuming),so you can use it to reach a place that would otherwise be inaccessible,so you can gain an extemely powerful summon.You can buy your own place in the tropical resort,play games at the arcade(include mini arcade games).Some minigames or tasks are required for the story,such as chocobo racing,using a submarine to hunt an enemy before time expires,creating an army of robots to defeat another army of robots,disguising yourself as a woman,weight lifting,looking at beautiful views of the galaxy through a telescope,learning how to march properly,eating at a diner and telling he chef his food was good,ok or tastes like dogfood,and you can influence who Cloud goes on a date with,and it's a nice scene when he is on the ride with that person at the themepark.

There's other little things about the game that I liked,such as when you're at a store on a farm,and the children explained their prices are very expensive because their parents died and they are going through tough times.

And how you must give CPR to a child who has nearly drowned(using a mini game style technique)/

The characters may look blocky and have a weird proportion,but it gives them character,such as Cloud having is way over the top spikey hair from,and Barret looking a bit fat compared to his movie counterpart.Tifa having her unusual large breasts,and the object that Cat Sith rides looking clumsy but cute.

I like the detail and atmosphere in Midgar,such as seeing how people live in the city slums and as if they live in poverty and how Midgar is designed with different levels built on top of eachother and it looks futuristic.The reactors in Midgar make it look pollued,and the dark sky and old style cars driving around remind me of a 1940's film noir type movie.

The tropical resort has beautiful water,palm trees,nice sand and you can even see people swimming in the water.The ancient ruins have vegetation growing through them showing nobody has lived there for a long time and you have the little,traditional style country towns.

The cinematics are exciting and

SPOILERS BELOW

I love the scene when the characters are trying to get away from the Shinra reactor before it explodes you'll see a cinematic explosion and news reports of it on the TV.

I like the scene when Cloud is surrounded by the Shinra soldiers,and he jumps onto the moving train.

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I like the cutscene with the AVALANCHE members riding the train and on their way to their next mission and talking to eachother,it just felt like it was building up to something epic,and it did.

The battle theme music is enjoyable too.

FFVII is one of the most addictive game I have played and you need to play it, whether you're an RPG fan or not,because this game got me into RPGs,and it might get you into them too.