I just beat Final Fantasy 7 about a week ago. Now before you condemn me for playing it 12 years late, you're wrong. I was only 5 years late. That's right. I started playing this game in 2001.....7 years ago, and I just now vanquished Sephiroth. How does this happen you ask? (no one asked, but I'll pretend they did) Well let's start with my introduction to Midgar.

As a Nintendo faithful growing up, the N64 was my only option for that generation. It was also when I began to see more of the video game industry than what was on my local Blockbuster's shelves. And like nearly every gamer of the time, one commercial in particular absolutely blew me away.......


But it wasn't to be. The Playstation was a foreign creature. Cloud and the mysteriously robot-like Shinra building were mere fantasies percolating in my gaming subconscious. Fast-forward 5 years later to 2001 when I went away to college and blew a quarter of the spending money I'd saved from my crappy job at Panera Bread on a PS2 and none other than the ultimate epic......The Bouncer! Yeah yeah, so I was a sucker for pretty pretty cut scenes, but that's another story.

This being my first major gaming purchase with my own money, I felt seriously empowered. So much so that when I discovered my PS2 could actually play PS1 games, there was one game on my mind that I simply had to try......Final........Fantasy........8? Best Buy and their lovely Greatest Hits section failed me. Having felt that I NEEDED something walking out of there, I figured one Final Fantasy is as good as another, right? Yeahhhh. To be honest, I liked Squall, I'm still in love with Rinoa, and the way that all the characters were forced to deal with their own personal insecurities really clicked with me at the time. With that said, I was seriously embarrassed to play this game in front of my roommate. Endless text conversations (".....whatever"), hours of drawing magic, 5 minute long summons, yeah this game takes some patience, even for a Final Fantasy.

Despite my best efforts to keep my relationship with Squall a secret, a guy that lived across the hall from me found me playing it one day. Basically, his reaction was "8 is the worst one! Why are you playing that?" From there he proceeded to pull me away from the game, load up FF7 on his own PS2, and show me proof of how awesome it is by way of asking 12 knights he happens to know to dice a certain long white haired Yaoi to pieces........SOLD!

This is running quite a bit longer than I intended, so I've decided to call this part one and end it here.

Upcoming in Part 2!
How it took so fricking long to beat this game, what it meant to finally beat it, Dirge of Cerebrus: the unbeatable sequel, and more!