How did you first found out about Final Fantasy VII? What made you get addicted to it?

To me, it was a long time ago *picture goes wavy*. I was a little 14 year old lass (this is 2001-2, 'kay?). At the time I was just being introduced to a new, fantastic world - Dragonlance. If anyone has read the famous Tracy/Weiss saga, they'll be going "aaaah" right about now. I was introduced to a character that answers the name of Raistlin Majere. He was non-fundamentally evil, very cynical and powerful. He also had long white hair and carried a magical staff. Well, it was love at first sight.
Exploring the internet back in those days (especially Quizzila) have benefited me with learning of other long white haired men carrying a weapon - Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha, and.. well, Sephiroth. Again, it was love at first site. So, slowly my interests took a turn towards the Japanese Anime cultur, which opened my eyes to a brave new world. And while digging into this I learned about Sephiroth (mainly that he had a couple of screws loose and was very strong and was the mortal enemy of one Cloud Strife) and that he was from a show (so I thought back at the time) that's called Final Fantasy. And I kept seeing Final Fantasy everywhere I went. So the knowledge of that phrase stuck in my mind without being fully explored (whatever info I had was from various fanbases for Final Fantasy. Nothing solid and reliable, cause I didn't know about Wikipedia...I'm not sure it even existed back then..).
Years went by.
I was strolling on an Anime BT site and saw Final Fantasy VII Advent Children for download. So I did. And then I watched it.
..
.
Voooooosh!

I became addicted. Heavily. The plot was so interesting, the CGI was MINDBLOWING, and there was Sephiroth - and I love that guy! But I understood jacks**t about it, thinking "what the hell just happened? Who's THAT guy, and what does he have to do with Cloud? Materia-what? Why does that talking cat wears a crown?"

N00b.

But then, there was Wikipedia, and just like in the Old Testament, it explained the creation of the World.
At this stage I was hooked on this like a fanatic.

A year or so later, I saw a new title bearing the name of "Final Fantasy VII - Last Order". So I downloaded it too. This has made things even more confusing for me. "Nibelheim accident? Turks? Jenova? A-what?"

But as time went by, more and more things clicked into place, and my enthusiasm for Final Fantasy VII has grown sevenfold.

And then there was Advent Children Complete. Which I first seen about six months ago, and still make a habit of going down on my knees to worship before I rewatch it.

Some more time has passed by, and I learned about Dirge of Cerberus. And bought the game. Which - I'm not entirely sure WHY- was only initiated six months after it was bought - I'm sorry to all you DoC hardcore fans out there, but this game doesn't represent the main plot of the compilation - and it didn't prove much of a plot-benefiter.

And now there is Crisis Core. I'm completely in love - from the tip of my nose down to my toenails. The runner up on my list after Kingdom Hearts II.

-
And as a final note, Final Fantasy VII has made a huge impact on my life (both as a teen and as an adult), and I am honored to be in it circle of fans.
The plot, which is so intricate and deep, the complexity of the world and characters, it's something that you usually don't get in this sort of thing. Truly awe-inspiring.

Ijou! (damn, that was longer than a fanfic..)


And you?

I was in a a bar and a guy I worked with came in with a newly bought copy of the game. He was excited and told me that it was on 3 discs. And that was that.

Seeing Last Order before playing the game must have been confusing.

Also... Raistlin rocks! The Twins trilogy were my favourite reads back then, even if they were somewhat unoriginal. Fond memories. "aaaah" :)

Ahh good times :) when I was just a lad looking for my game addiction my father said now son this choice deserves deliberation (i love Muppet's tresure island)...

Yup, I was just a pup back then and my dad brought home my first games console and a shiney new game, PSOne and FFVII watching him play through it I fell in love with the story and the characters (Although i was very confused, being only 6 at the time) but a few years later I rediscovered it's magic and i've been playing it through like once a year...Usually at Christmas time when I'm most nostalgic :)

How did you first found out about Final Fantasy VII? What made you get addicted to it?

Back in 1997, when I purchased my PlayStation. Final Fantasy VII was the second game I bought for it (Transformers Beast Wars was first... and subsequently was the first game I sold.). At the time I thought it was a great game, and even now I still consider it to be a 'good' game. Addicted to it? Not really, as I ended up enjoying FFVIII far more than VII.

Add in Crisis Core, Before Crisis, Dirge of Cerberus as well as Last Order and Advent Children... along with all the incessant fanboys who rave about how FFVII is the second coming of Christ, I don't like FFVII as much as I used to, especially when said fanboys compare every other RPG (whether JRPG or WRPG) to it and state that FFVII still is the 'bestest game evah made'. Those 'people' (I use that word loosely), them I despise and due to their moronic praise even today, of a game thirteen years old now... grow up.


At the time I was just being introduced to a new, fantastic world - Dragonlance. If anyone has read the famous Tracy/Weiss saga, they'll be going "aaaah" right about now. I was introduced to a character that answers the name of Raistlin Majere. He was non-fundamentally evil, very cynical and powerful. He also had long white hair and carried a magical staff.

Came rather late to that series eh? I was into Dragonlance back when I was in High school in the early 1990's (Same with Forgotten Realms and Dragonrealm). Raistlin Majere is quite a tragic character imo, but also inherently evil during the Chronicles saga. The reason Raistlin's hair is white (as well as his skin tone being a golden color and the pupils of his eyes the shape of hourglasses) was due to the pact he made with the evil archmage turned lich, Fistandantilus (Who he ends up learning and then training under in the Dragonlance Legends saga) during the Test in the Tower of High Sorcery in Wayreth Forest. Eventually Raistlin finds redemption initially during his nephew, Palin's, test (who he also bequeathed his magic staff, the Staff of Magius, to) and subsequently in the final Dragonlance Chronicles novella, Dragons of Summer Flame.

I can't even remember exactly. I believe that after playing Legend of Dragoon (my first RPG) I asked my mum for a whole bunch of RPG's for my b-day (or maybe it was christmas). Anywhoo one of those was FFVII. I fell in love with FF and played VIII at my friends place everytime I went there...never actually got another FF game though until X

Came rather late to that series eh? .

Yeah, I was 14 back in 2002.
I love Dragonlance. I've got the entire series (from Soulforge to Summer Flame, and a solitary Dwarven Depths, which I still haven't finished yet.). The Legends are my favorite of the lot, probably because it focuses on Raistlin and Dalamar as an added bonus.

Have you read Weis & Hickman's other series that isn't dragon lance? I enjoyed it, and I think the first book is called Dragon Wing.

Have you read Weis & Hickman's other series that isn't dragon lance? I enjoyed it, and I think the first book is called Dragon Wing.

I heard something about this series, but I've yet to read it. I've been focusing on local literature recently, and sort of neglected the Fantasy genre. Also I'm a lazy bum and spend 80% of my waking hours on the PlayStation :)

Well, I first sat down to play FFVII when my dad randomly bought it for me one night when I was in the fourth grade. At the time, the only other FF title I'd played was IV, so you can imagine what a huge shift in pace that was; boy was it ever. I think the first thing to cross my mind was, "Now I need all the others!" but of course VII did grip me and I was very into it. I still am today if I let myself. It's a great game, and while not the best ever, it sure does have its own charm, just as every FF does. And I can tell you right now, I never once placed it on a silver platter like everyone else did. Soon after I had IX, then VIII, then X, then I&II Dawn of Souls for GBA . . . and still, not once did I ever consider VII in the same raging fanboy mindset everybody else was, which is why I still, to this day, fail to understand that way of thinking. It caught me off guard, honestly, to see just how much praise it got over all the others. Why? What was it that made it superior to the rest of the series? Who knows. Lord knows I don't even want to. But I'm getting ahead of myself; I can say in all honesty that I love FFVII to this day, even if my feelings of it are slightly altered by all the fanboys who worship it like a god. It's still a fun experience; all the glitchy, MIDI music, blocky characters, funky sound effects, memorable tunes; forget the fanboys. FFVII is not Christ's rebirth, but it is definitely an awesome game.

FFVII is not Christ's rebirth, but it is definitely an awesome game.

The first part some fanboys would strongly disagree with (those being the prepubescent fanatical fanboys, who get off of seeing Cloud in a dress). Awesome game? No... not by a long shot.

It was a good game way back when, but now it has no charm. To many raves about the game forced me into picking it apart. (I was the guy who figured out how to escape the world map). It has a brilliant story yes, but gameplay? Not anymore.

Did you know you can obtain 6 ribbons on Disc 1.
There is a way to revive the bitch Aerith without modding/Cheating, but that is kept by Square and only about 3 people worldwide have had the 'privalige'.
Ride an airship or chocobo up and down enough times on the world map and fall right through.
All of the toy soldiers don't allow you to play as Sephiroth when you give them to Dio, they allow you to get a replica Masamune after a special battle in the arena.

Yeah, Its not that good and if they ever remake the game I'll tear it apart like a honeybear at feeding time :)

Well, let's be fair here. . . . Aside from the raging, rabid fanboys who take the game far too seriously as though it were the only piece of media or entertainment they'd ever been exposed to, FFVII is . . . really not that bad. Like Techchild said, it has no charm, but only if you allow those said fanboys to ruin the experience. I can still sit down and play it today and focus myself back into the world I lived in back on the first day I tried it out; a world where I wasn't exposed to people very often (at least not by choice), and where I had absolutely no friends who were into RPGs like I was. So I had nothing but my own opinion to go by, not those of scores of others interfering with my mind. I think if you can do just that . . . you'll be alright enjoying it. Let yourself exist with the current post-Advent Children fanbase, you'll hate it.

My Ex Drug dealing godfather loved playing video games and with the money he made he bought pretty much any game he wanted. I was 8 at the time and I opened up the case for FF VII and I saw the manual. It didn't have any words like any other game and the case was too big. Back then I thought that most PS1 games were supposed to fit on just one disc but I was wrong. I played the older ones like II and III (North American Final Fantasies) but now a Final Fantasy in 3D? It blew my mind. I stole that copy from him but he didn't care. He just bought another one. Then stopped dealing drugs.

It's quite amazing to learn how many people here hate fanpeople for ruining their experience by idolizing this game.
I have to admit I'm with you on that (I actually stopped watching some shows I used to really like just because there was such a buzz around them at the time, like Death Note or Naruto and such), but it's pretty sad to let a bunch of rotten apples ruin your Thing.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm done being mopy about it. You can't let your fun be reduced to a restricted and anonymous space where no fanboy can infiltrate. Do whatever makes you feel good, people!

Anyway, wow, I didn't expect my topic to get this much popularity. Thanks, everyone : )

I played it in 1997 US release date can't remember the exact day & I was 12-13 yrs old YaY!

For Christmas in '97, I got a PS1. My sister and I pooled our money together to buy a memory card and we'd rent the game every weekend.

For my birthday she bought it for me.

I think I'll play through it again, leaving the glitches alone. Though I'm expecting to get to the Final boss at level 30/35

All of the toy soldiers don't allow you to play as Sephiroth when you give them to Dio, they allow you to get a replica Masamune after a special battle in the arena.

You can never obtain the entire set of toy soldiers.

The replica Masamune is a random prize along with "Tissue" and the toy soldier.

You can obtain 24 out of 36. There are 2 ways to obtain Masamune, and no way to equip it without mods/cheats.

i got interested in FF7 after my brother told my mom to buy it off the Playstation Store, since we played all of the old Final Fantasy games and i instantly became engrossed in the storyline and the characters and the music. And no i'm not an obseesed fangirl there are better games right now like Super Mario Galaxy and SSBB

i use to love FF games...i started FF7 when my mate showed a new game to play..

First I was really into Kingdom Hearts. I always saw Cloud and Tifa and all those people but never got who they were. Thats when my brother and I bought Advent Children and watched it. At first I didn't get t, but I did a lot of research and became OBSESSED. I have counted and watched it over 300 times and one time I watched it backwards! Then A friend told me the game was for download for the psp. So I got it and beat it. Now I don't really like kigdom hearts. Then I found out I was in love with Rufus Shinra *sighs* and that's how I became addicted to the drug known as Final Fantasy 7.

When I was young , I was going threw my neighbors games and I seen the cover of the game , " Cloud with his huge beast buster sword " right then and their, I was deeply drawn to the FF7 World and never got out of it .

I reckon mine started the same as EVERYONE else who has ever played the game I promise you. It was a nice opening video which then went to Cloud jumping off a train. Thats how mine started.

My first was really FF8 all the way back in 2000, or wast it 2001? I really can't remember. It was close to 2000 nevertheless. For ff7 however it was around 2004-2005 during 2 weeks at summer in upper basement of house on a horrible tv that had issues with colors, but ff7 turned out one of the rare games that didn't have the usual pal/ntsc compatibility issue ( good times) There is a chance i touched it in 2003 but I couldn't beat the first boss ( lol ) so I waited 2 years (summers) because the ps1 was at summer place. And yea it proved to be a really entertaining game, much diverse. Probably why its so popular.

I first played Final Fantasy games on the NES. My mom sold the NES and all the games so I forgot about Final Fantasy for a while until my brother bought my other brother Final Fantasy VIII. I loved the game, so when my aunt took me to the store to buy a game, I bought Final Fantasy VII. This was around the time Final Fantasy IX came out.

It took me a few years to get around to playing it though.

My best friend growing up was *OBSESSED* with the game. SUPER obsessed. At first I had NO clue what the big deal about was, then I played it. Fell in love. And all after all this time, its become my obsession too!! I love the game. I even went out of my way to buy a PSP just to get Crisis Core so I could continue the story-err, prequel.

I believe I was in 5th grade when my brothers and I first saw the commercials for Final Fantasy VII. Not even a week later, we went to Blockbuster to rent it until we finally received it for Christmas. This was the first turn-based/random encounter RPG I had ever played, and it took me quite some time to understand what the hell I was doing. Hell, my first run through, I hardly knew what Materia did. But after I had a vague idea of the mechanics of the game, I rather enjoyed the characters, story, and the boss battles. Cloud, Tifa, Sephiroth, & Barrett (probably because he swore) were my favorite characters. The FMV's blew me away. I remember my brothers and I would jam up our memory cards with save files of the point right before each FMV. Video game music was always just background music to me before this game. I loved the music in this game. "Those Chosen by the Planet" always gave me the chills, "Those who Fight" never got old, "FFVII Main Theme" would always put a smile on my face and "One Winged Angel" made my heart beat quicker than any fanboy you know =0. The summons & limit breaks were another factor to making this game so great to me. Truly creative and enjoyable to watch. Emerald WEAPON & Ruby WEAPON, chocobo breeding, & the secret materia caves were some main factors to bring me back to the game after a few run throughs. I played the game up until I was a junior in high school. I loved the game.

Oh, how I miss the times when we would all huddle around my brother's 12 inch TV in excitement over the Safer Sephiroth battle then almost have a tear in my eye from watching that last FMV.

Is I a fanboy yet? =0

I believe I was in 5th grade when my brothers and I first saw the commercials for Final Fantasy VII. Not even a week later, we went to Blockbuster to rent it until we finally received it for Christmas. This was the first turn-based/random encounter RPG I had ever played, and it took me quite some time to understand what the hell I was doing. Hell, my first run through, I hardly knew what Materia did. But after I had a vague idea of the mechanics of the game, I rather enjoyed the characters, story, and the boss battles. Cloud, Tifa, Sephiroth, & Barrett (probably because he swore) were my favorite characters. The FMV's blew me away. I remember my brothers and I would jam up our memory cards with save files of the point right before each FMV. Video game music was always just background music to me before this game. I loved the music in this game. "Those Chosen by the Planet" always gave me the chills, "Those who Fight" never got old, "FFVII Main Theme" would always put a smile on my face and "One Winged Angel" made my heart beat quicker than any fanboy you know =0. The summons & limit breaks were another factor to making this game so great to me. Truly creative and enjoyable to watch. Emerald WEAPON & Ruby WEAPON, chocobo breeding, & the secret materia caves were some main factors to bring me back to the game after a few run throughs. I played the game up until I was a junior in high school. I loved the game.

Oh, how I miss the times when we would all huddle around my brother's 12 inch TV in excitement over the Safer Sephiroth battle then almost have a tear in my eye from watching that last FMV.

Is I a fanboy yet? =0

Yes, yes you are.

=)

I remember seeing the television just getting punched with Final Fantasy VII commercials around Christmas time the year it was released.

I was still pretty young then, I asked for the game for Christmas and that was that... One of my older sisters friends showed me how to play it (I didn't understand how RPGs worked back then) and I was hooked the second she showed me summoning magic (she had her own memory card with her and was pretty far through the game).

Well, I was intrigued by the appearances in Kingdom Hearts. So I did some research and found out what it was all about. My mom said we had it but turns out she sold it or it went missing. Fast forward a couple years, and I used the powers of the internet and watched Advent children. I loved it. So then, for my Birthday, i got a PSP and Crisis Core. I played that and loved it. So now I am planning on getting an SD card bigger than 32 mb, and getting the game off the network.

I was nine years old when I played Final Fantasy VII, my first turn based RPG.

Big bro borrowed and brought home Final Fantasy VII. I would watch him play and I got interested.
Gradually, I came to love the game and love it still.

I first got into FFVII about two years ago. Before this, I had always just liked the 2D Final Fantasy games. Well I saw the game on the PlayStation Store and so I figured with all the praise I hear about the game, I might as well give it a shot. I did and loved it.

I got into it... half my life ago, lol!
I saw it at a Games n' Babbage(?) and decided to buy it at random because I thought the front cover looked cool and it seemed interesting a bit after reading the backside with the intro/summary/whatever.
Loads and loads of fun, a year later I bought FFVIII to continue the fun, and thus I became acquainted with FF.

I was a big Crash Bandicoot guy and just heavily getting into fantasy books. Around this time, my birthday, someone got me Final Fantasy 7. I had no other games because I was poor at the time so I said why the fuck not and played it. It wasn't like any game I'd ever played and I don't believe I understood anything about the game as I played it (turnbasedwut?). It was only 200 hours later that I realized I played a game for 200 hours and had shit tons of fun with it. It was an epic story too, and what I loved most about it is how they brought different parts of the world to life. Wutai was different from Rocket town was different from Costa del Sol and they all had a unique personality about them. I loved it.

I must have been about 13, but ten years on I'm still loving it. If there are a load of fanboys that ruined it for people that's a shame. I think I just got something quite emotional and personal from the game, and never really gave a shit about trying to get everyone's limit breaks or killing emerald weapon in under 2 minutes or whatever. Just an awesome story and the music had a massive part to play. Gotta love the epic cutscenes too

FF7 was the first RPG I ever played. I was nine years old, and I still have fond memories of playing it on the PC with my friends watching over my shoulder. Not long after, a friend's older brother introduced me to the SNES games, but I didn't try those till I was done with FF7 (I played very slowly, I wasn't allowed to use the computer for more than 2 hrs a day, so it probably took me a few months). I went on to complete FF6, FF5 and FF4 (yes in that order, lol).

I even bought a Playstation for the sole purpose of playing FF8... which was all right, the graphics were gorgeous but I never really got into the story, same with FF9 (I'm a very story-oriented RPG player). FFX was also good but I never completed it, it didn't hold my attention and my interest in the series waned after that. I know FF11 is an MMO, but I barely have any idea what FF12 is about. FF13 I actually wanted to try, even if I don't have a lot of time for games now, but it ended up looking more like a really long movie than an RPG, so I decided not to.

FF6 and FF7 are probably my favourite FFs of all time. Suikoden II, fav RPG overall, but FF7 has a special place in my heart. I don't like the changes to the story the compilation is making, but seeing the characters brought to life in ACC was just amazing. :)

I didnt get to play this game until 2000 or 2001 i think i randomly picked it up in a cash converters, took it home, played it for about 20 minutes and thought god this game is crap, and put it to one side. Then some time later i noticed my brother playing it and thought wow it has a real storyline to it and everything il give it another go, and pretty soon i was totally hooked on it. To this day its still my favorite one and i have played 4,6,7,8,9 and 10 in depth. One thing thats puzzling me though, maybe i havent spent enough time on final fantasy forums but where are these rabid final fantasy 7 fanboys that iv heard so much about??? I have only ever met final fantasy 6 fanboys with their hate filled elitist opinions said as fact.

I must have been 10 or 11 when I first saw it at a friend's house. He showed me the game, the part in the beginning right after the boss fight with Guard Scorpion and the time limit with Reactor 1's detonation. I remember being completely amazed that you were given the option to help rescue Jessie (I was very sheltered as a child and had only seen Magic School Bus and Mario video games; no RPGs of any kind at that point). I bought two separate copies but neither would work on my computer (piece of shit Gateway can suck my balls).

So I didn't get a chance to actually play it until the first semester of my senior year of high school. For some reason, the game kept coming up in conversations I had with a different friend who said he had the game. I asked him if I could borrow it, not believing that he'd actually remember to bring it to school. But he stayed true to his word and let me borrow his copy of the game until I finished it. Needless to say, my experience with this game came very late.

i think i was about 5 or 6 when i got my playstation. My first 2 games were Spyro 2 Gateway to glimmer and Final Fantasy Seven. I think it was about 1997 or 1998. not quite sure but i got it at a very early age and my dad and me played it ever since. My dad more than i did but i did play it accaissionally. (sry if anything is spelt wrong or something. i'm half german half english ^^) But i bought it last year for PSP for 10 € and i've just started playing it again after finishing crisis core again ^^

I played Kingdom Hearts and started swooning over Cloud... Then I looked him up and BAM! FFVII!

I was in an institution for learning a career at 17,and i heard nothing but raves about this game,and being called the best game ever,so one day i went to a local store and bought it and thought it was ok at best.

I first heard of FFVII when I went to a friend's house in 1998, he was playing some other RPG (possibly FFVIII or Lunar) on his PSX. I saw FFVII on his shelf.

However, I did not get to buy or play it until in 2004.

Wouldn't of been FFVIII you're friend was playing in 1998 BasilCulex. FFVIII was released 09/09/1999, so more than likely was Lunar or any other RPG.

Wouldn't of been FFVIII you're friend was playing in 1998 BasilCulex. FFVIII was released 09/09/1999, so more than likely was Lunar or any other RPG.

Yeah, now that I think of it, the graphics were more of a 2D like, so it couldnt of been FFVIII. Might of been BoF3 as well xD.

I think it was during my highschool days that a lot of my friends started discussing on how to get this Materia or if there was a way to save Aeris. After that, I got curious and picked up the game and started playing it. After that, well, the rest is history :P

back in 2002 for me. i got interested in the series after renting Chocobo Racing at a Blockbuster one time. i happened to like the game a lot and later on, found a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics at a target and wanted to play it as a new experience for me. i ended up liking that and eventually drew my attention to the local Gamestop which had a used copy of FFVII at the time. it was my 3rd game from that series. i do remember playin the demo of FFVIII which i barely got through multiple times the year before all that.

I was a big side-scrolling/platformer player and wanted to try something new. I borrowed FFIX from a friend who said it was really good back in 2002-2003. My first intro to FF series and rpg's in general and I loved it. After finishing that one he let me borrow VII and after that I had to play them all, well most of them anyways :)

well it started for me when i played FFVII dirge of cerberus, and after that i got into FFVII and most of FF

I had just started high school. Bought the game for a steal off of a mate...... then disappeared for a week.

well it started for me when i played FFVII dirge of cerberus, and after that i got into FFVII and most of FF

Wait... Dirge of Shiterus was the first you played? My condolences for playing a shitty game which rewrote Vincent's origin story, made by a group of idiots who had nothing at all to do with the original.

honestly I remember being at walmart(?) not long after the release and being that i wasnt ever allowed to buy many videogames, this one stood out because hello...3 disks! "what value!", i convinced my mom. i had seen one commercial prior, had no idea what an rpg was or what it was about. it was even on sale! started it up and i was honestly confused haha. it looked great when movies were playing and like shat otherwise. but i fell in love with everything. i was horrible at it. the brady guide followed and it took me longer than any game i had ever played to beat. everything about the game stuck to me, to this day its my favorite game. flaws and all. heck im listening to the ost as i type.

I played the original ff7 and was hyped.

It all started for me back in grade school, when I was younger. I had a huge crush on this chick Crystal that was mutual, and she helped me get into it. I went and bought it due to her. From the beginning of my first play through I loved the game. After that I always kept up to date on any and every Square game that came out, being addicted to FF7. I got EVERYTHING in it, twice. The rare materia and all. (Which still to this day is my favorite FF.) At free time in school I would draw / sketch characters that I made up or that were characters in games. I even copied a Game Informer (I think) cover back then that had Tidus on the cover with his sword that came out great when FFX just came out, looked almost identical. Good old childhood memories. Back in the day when FF7, and Metal Gear, and Twisted Metal were all new great games to me. Again as I'm older now I'm playing FF7 again, lmfao.

I was 14 and had just gotten my first "PlayStation one" for Christmas and along with it were FF7, 8, 9 and Tactics. With a plether of other Greatest hits games. FF7 was the first i played and hooked me with it's storyline , gameplay and protagonist ( Cloud, my hero ). I have peen hooked ever since. I have downloaded it to mp Ps3/psp and over all have cleared it a total of 25 times, working on 26 atm. :)

I somehow obtained the FFVII Demo Disk back when I was in the 7th Grade and I loved the Hell out of it. I played that Demo like 20 times and one day I saw FFVII sitting in the bargain bin at Walmart for $19.99 so I purchased it with some money I had saved up from doing chores and stuff. I had played FFVIII though prior to experiencing FFVII and at the time I wasn't aware that they were all seperate games and I was confused as to why Squall and the rest of the crew weren't in it. xD

When I was in Middle School, I loaned my Chrono Cross, which at that moment was the best RPG I had ever played, and I got borrowed Final Fantasy VII... I had lots of fun ;)

For me it started by renting it over and over when it was released and then finally getting it for Christmas the next year. Ahhh my favorite game ever! I just wish the SE store would accept my credit card so I could buy the remake.

it started for me when i heard the soundtracks and went to a used game store where i found a copy of final fantasy vii, and i played it and i got hooked, so i had to get more, and one christmas i got advent children for a present, then i saw that and i was hooked, so i found the advent children figures the year after i got the movie, which i got cloud for my birthday, and vincent for christmas, and i found crisis core at a electronics store for 5 bucks, and i played that, and i got myself a zack figure for the next b-day present, and then i found dirge of cerberus for 8 bucks at another game store so i picked it up, the most recent purchase was advent children complete which i got from best buy for 11 bucks

Although FFVII was not my introduction to the FF series, JRPGs or even RPGs in general, it was the first FF game I really took the time to experience (my first FF title was an imported US SNES copy of FFIV). It was my brother's copy of the game, and the day he got it he disappeared into his room for six hours. When he finally emerged exhausted he lent me the PSX and the game for the night.... and I was hooked.

I ended up buying it off him after constantly hassling him to borrow the game, along with buying my own PSX and memory card eventually as well later in mid 1998 (my original save file I lost when he reformatted his memory card to sell his console). But I still have my 'second' save file from 1998.

Looking back, I think half the reason I liked FFVII so much was because of Midgar. I'm a huge fan of steampunk/retro-futurism and I loved Midgar's design the moment I first saw Aeris in Sector 8, and Cloud and AVALANCHE jumping off the train to bomb the Number 1 Reactor (a train pulled by a steam locomotive no less!). I loved the rest of FFVII's world too, but it was Midgar that really got me hooked into the game. I felt cheated that I couldn't explore the whole of the city, or even the upper plate other than the few scripted instances as part of the storyline, but I loved what there was.

Sadly I didn't like the revisions made to Midgar's appearance in the Compilation (trying to make it more 'high tech' than 'steampunk'), so the original game will always be superior to these cheap tie-ins to me. :)

Also, I'll love Aeris for ever. ;)

one time on the way home from a student night, fell and injured my back; spent a few weeks in hospital and then had to wear a brace for a few months when i got out. so when i got back home from hospital, my housemates, who'd nearly been all evicted in my absence, lol, were really nice to me and helped look after me until i recovered fully. a couple of them were big fans of FF7 and they'd bought a PS from a second hand gamestore in town, which has closed down now sadly, when i went back to chester to visit a few mates.

anyway, blah blah, basically they brought games from home and so did i because we now had a working PS in the house. oh joy; anyway, i could have caught up on my studies while i was recovering but, naturlich, i decided to get into some retro gaming instead. and one of those 2 had brought a copy of FF7 from home, and they thought it would be fun to introduce me to the game, and they got to relive the game from a fresh perspective as i played through it for the first time. they showed me the ropes as i played through midgar, meeting aeris, fighting big old shinra, on the trail of sephiroth, facing off against rufus etc. and i just fell in love, the game was entrancing.

there was a strange scene when it got to aeris getting kebabed by seph - i was dumbfounded, and quite pissed off, because her healing limit breaks are really useful, and besides i liked her, i always had her in my party. one of the 2, ted, was in hysterics, because being an evil genius he'd encouraged my interest in the game and was waiting for this moment and my dismay at what he considered to be one of the great trolls of gaming history, the other guy phil was actually weeping - this is our third year of uni - and another housemate of ours, ruth, was just sat there drinking some wine, hanging out with us, and utterly bemused at this 'stupid fucking game' i was playing and the visceral reactions to that awful moment in it.

so yeah anyway, i continued playing through quite far, but not all the way; when i got home from uni i got my own copy and played it on my own PS, and completed everything, including getting a gold chocobo and beating emerald and ruby weapons, which were both much tougher then sephiroth at the end, which always pisses me off when i think about it - if they're so fucking boss, and they literally exist to take out twats like sephiroth and jenova, then it's a spectacular fail on the planet's part not to send them after THE REASON THEY EXIST, instead leaving them to tool around in the desert and at the bottom of the fucking sea. pricks.

... aaaaaanyway i rewatched advent children, which i actually saw a full year before i played FF7, but wasn't really concentrating on because we were all stoned as fuck when we watched it, and then i saw last order, and then played dirge of cerberus, which is a pretty big let down and almost entirely loses the essence of what made FF7 so engrossing and charming in the first place, but which i still own and am yet to finish but have an obsessively completionist save game waiting to be continued, and i also bought crisis core, which i knew almost everything about before i got it, and which also looks to lack some of that essential FF7ness, but which i still plan to play anyway.

... i can't help but overelaborate with annoying essays on this forum, i'm really sorry. that's that anyway, that's how i got into FF7, and i'm so glad i did. it's one of the great stories in gaming history, with some fantastic twists that genuinely shift the paradigm after the initial parts of the game suck you into the story headfirst, and allied to one of my all time favourite game scores and an inadvertedly magical and charming system of character models, game environments, method of tracking the character's movement and general graphics which provide definitive proof for me that while photo-realistic and complex graphics can be stunning and conducive to a game's quality, they really aren't an absolute necessity. i love the characters, good and bad; maybe cait sith is pushing it, but then you've got people like palmer and barret. and there's something fascinating about the really unobvious and untypical, unheroic missions you have to complete, that give the characters depth and complexity - you basically start as a mercenary helping a terrorist group - lolWUT - and you proceed to cross dress to impress a local pimp, take a bath with some easy rider stereotypes, spend prolonged periods gambling, breed, raise, race etc. some mutlicoloured ostriches - and so on.

ok i'm done. fucking love FF7. x

it was back in 2001, i was in my first highschool years, that epoch of videogames all the time, and our cousin lend us ff7 to me and my brother for the psx one, it was actually the first rpg i played

Played the FF7 demo disc, liked it so much that I went to Funcoland (Now Gamestop) and bought me a copy. =)