When you first played through you thought...

[Unlucky]

^I thought it's a direct sequel too (but didn't think Tifa is Rinoa- Rinoa is too lame ). I remember playing while desperately looking for some kind of connection between the two games.

I did think Seifer is Rufus, though

 

[JBedford]

Wasn't Johnny the one who wrote the letter to Tifa?

Johnny isn't from Nibelheim, he lived with his parents in the Sector 7 slums. Everything he says is a mistranslation. His "childhood friend" line is in reference to Cloud being Tifa's childhood friend.

And assumptions that Johnny wrote the letter derive from player's believing he is Cloud/Tifa's childhood friend, therefore from Nibelheim, and since the person in the letter left for Midgar and Johnny is in Midgar, it makes sense. But more likely the letter was written by one of the three unnamed kids in the Lifestream flashbacks.

I think I might have discovered a lot of this from TLS articles.

 

[Poe-Lantern]

Everything he says is a mistranslation.

This...I can believe. Say hello, Jenova.

I need to start snooping around this website a bit more.

 

[Lex]

^Please do

Also, thats a frakkin awesome avatar and username.

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

One thing I'll admit when I played the original game is that I was as oblivious as Cloud to Tifa and Aerith's affections for him. I didn't realize Aerith had the hots for him until she asked Cait Sith how compatible they are. I didn't realize Tifa digged him until the Lifestream sequence. I'm a bit embarrassed for not noticing these earlier, especially when I played through again and noticed how obvious it was. I was especially embarrassed that I didn't realize Tifa had the hots for Cloud when I played Crisis Core, which I had played before FFVII btw, since that one letter made it really obvious, though in my defense I didn't know about Cloud's promise to Tifa so the letter just confused me, and I came away from it thinking "Ok, so Tifa likes blond guys I guess?" and didn't realize it was a specific blond guy she liked. I came in already knowing Aerith died, as well as that Cloud's memories were not his own, and that Cloud has had a crush on Tifa since childhood, so the reveal during the Lifestream sequence wasn't that big of a shocker to me. I was surprised a how early Aerith's death was, as well as at how short discs 2 and 3 were. I can't rmeber which date i got first, but I'm pretty sure it was either the Tifa one or the Barret one. I know I wanted to see both at the time since I had already developed a fanboy crush on Tifa thanks to CC, not to mention the Tifa date is the easiest to get for me, but I also thought it was funny you could date a dude and wanted to see what the Cloud/Barret date was like(while it wasn't funny in the way I expected, I did find the Barret date to be hilarious, and it's my favorite out of all of them). I do know I followed a walkthrough when I first played, because I wanted 100% completion. I was also surprised at how poor the character graphics were. The graphics were good otherwise, but those blocky character models were just...ugh, and the people didn't even look realistic in FMVs, due to a lack of realistic and consistent proportions. And so there, that's what my first experience with FFVII was like.

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

Resisting the temptation to try and put Poe-Lantern in a bottle now

 

[Poe-Lantern]

You can try. Don't stare for too long. *Weird-ass giggle*

 

[SirVival]

Woah, Sir, that's really quite interesting. I can't even begin to imagine how I might have interpreted the game based on sight alone, not knowing the language that it was in.

Well, that's not entirely true. We did have some kind of communication going on with other geeks like myself, who for example told me that Tifa was not the sister of Cloud. Or how to find that fcking Lunar Harp. We never had any clear idea about the story, but we shared our knowledge about ''mysterious" things, as in cloud's nailbaseballbat weapon, sidecharacters and how to get limit breaks. We actually had a small club going on, whose purpose was to unreveal everything around FF7. Hah those were some good times. The group is long gone and the world of FF7 so expanded (not in a good way), that I'm pretty much clueless about everything else except OG.

• I thought the fish in the City of the Ancients had something to do with reviving Aeris, which I never thought was possible but I remember this made me think something about it.

Oh I remember that feeling! I was actually so obsessed with that fish. What the actual fuck anyway, why a Fish? I remember one friend of mine telling me, if you level up until lvl 99 before the end of 1st disc, mainly fighting against fish-type enemies, you could revive aeris. I tried this two times, the last one was very hardcore, both times I was not successful and gosh I hope I had used my time better. Im happy not to be the only one!

 

[JayM]

My most vivid memory from my first playthrough was Aeris's Death - because my mother completely ruined it for me.

Like a lot of parents she was always tolerant of mine and my little sister's geekery, but never really shared in it; we were obsessed with this game, so she knew all of the characters' names and their relationships and some of the story, but she had no emotional attachment to them whatsoever.

So Aeris dies. Me and little sister are all O_O at the screen. Mom starts cracking jokes.

Most of these were related to Tifa and Aeris's rivalry over Cloud, but the one that really made us bust a gut was when Cloud first picks Aeris up - Mom says "C'MON, DUMP HER IN THE WATER, CLOUD!!"

And then he does.

Needless to say, the emotional resonance was kind of lost (though later replays of the scene produced the appropriate amount of sad).

Other things...

I hated Cid. And Barret. And Red XIII. The latter two I think were because of their respective sidequests, but I have no idea what turned me off to Cid.

I had to use a walkthrough to find out where to go after I acquired the Tiny Bronco, and for some reason remember the walkthrough saying TIFA died at the end of Disc One...so for some time I thought the date mechanics also affected who Sephiroth killed.

When I encountered Sephiroth in the Nibelheim basement in that one optional scene, it caught me completely by surprise, and I was sure he was going to kill me. When he threw the Destruct materia, I was so keyed-up I actually screamed. My sister still teases me about this.

Like a few other people in this thread, I also thought Sephiroth was supposed to join you at some point. I actually didn't realize until he killed Aeris that he was going to be the endgame villain - after all, AVALANCHE was gunning for the same people he was, and they were the Good Guys. I thought he was basically a more violent version of Aeris, a Cetra who'd been abused and imprisoned by Shinra. I spent the escape from the Shinra building onward thinking that he was sort of a "mentor," that he'd tell you all the plot twists and your True Mission once you caught up to him. ...which turned out to be correct, though RATHER DIFFERENT from what I was imagining.

Oh, and I had a moment of zen the first time I ever heard Cloud's Theme on the worldmap, where all of my thoughts sort of stopped and I just let the character stand there while I listened. I think that moment was what cemented this game in my Favorites list forever.

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

While I cannot understand the dislike for Red, Barrett or Cid, there is just too much in the above post that needs thanking

 

[JayM]

I had awful taste, that's the only way I can explain it. I hated Cloud for awhile too.

 

[Unlucky]

I always thought 'Cloud' was a misspelling of 'Claude', because really, Cloud is such a stupid name.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I always thought 'Cloud' was a misspelling of 'Claude', because really, Cloud is such a stupid name.

Thanked for the irony.


I remember hating Cloud for a while myself. Took a while before I understood what a different character he was post-Lifestream sequence from who he had been at the beginning -- and why all of it made him so interesting.

 

[JayM]

Girlfriend and I were actually talking about this over dinner. Cloud's one of those characters you kinda have to put effort into understanding, I think; he's not easily slotted into a particular stereotype, so getting to know him's more like getting to know a person, rather than a character. If that makes sense. XD

 

[clowd]

For the longest time I thought Red XIII meant Red 8 and thats what we called him. The CG image of Barret holding Marlene in front of the flowers at Aerith's church. I remember seeing this alot because the first copy of FFVII I had was a scratched up rental that could not load up the first CG sequence, so we tried multiple discs which brought up the CG images and this image always striked me as odd because Barret (I had no idea who it was at the time) looked headless. I thought he was holding his head on his shoulder but that was Marlene. I also thought I could get all those different colored chocobos from other riders like the white or purple ones and I tried I also remember a false rumor that said you could get the tiny bronco on disc 2. I tried. We thought Cid sucked when we first got him. He eventuall became a staple character in future playthroughs About those CG images you see when changing discs again. I thought the one that showed Cid on the Tin Bronco had a castle in the background. I thought the rocket was a castle edit: stupid PS3 browser got rid of all the paragraphs

 

[Unlucky]

For the longest time I thought Red XIII meant Red 8 and thats what we called him.

Haha I thought I was the only one. I'm obviously not paying enough attention to him.

 

[ForceStealer]

I knew a kid that called him Red 8 too, come on people, it's clearly an X and the cover the game has a V on it!

 

[Cthulhu]

I'm probably stupid, but wtf is XIII supposed to mean otherwise? Eksiii?

 

[ForceStealer]

13?

 

[Cthulhu]

Oh wait. Stupid confirmed,

 

[Jiro]

All I remember was fucking Materia Keeper is impossible. Fucking hell that boss stumped me for the longest time and I cannot fathom why. I know I tried some of the stupid rumours because what kid doesn't want to believe in that stuff.

Reaching the World Map for the first time was amazing. I mean, all of Shinra HQ is awesome, and then you're rewarded with this huge world... And then you get Kalm and I played that part at night so the flashback was enhanced and it gave me nightmares man. I still hate that part, it's unnerving despite the fact you can't lose at it.

Oh and I once played FFVII for 21 hours straight and that was my first time getting through Gaea's Cliff and so on, so that was pretty cool. That was probably the first time I ever experienced a hang over and I was like 11 (?) and never had alcohol.

 

[Gym Leader Devil]

The materia keeper was a bitch for a lot of us. My only excuse is I kept bringing Vincent like a moron when his only limit break was Galian Beast

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

That was a pretty epic trolling right there.

 

[Lex]

I never had issues with Materia Keeper. I appreciate how difficult a boss he can be now, after the race with Flint.

My first time through my problem was a whole lot more embarrassing - Gi Nattak. I couldn't get past him. I didn't really know how anything worked like levelling and stuff (I was 8, I don't think I understood most of it aside from bits of the story) so had no idea about undead enemy types etc, and instead of just levelling there I started the whole game again! I was stuck on Gi Nattak for months :/

 

[ForceStealer]

I didn't get stuck on Gi Nattak, but I do always remember it as the first time I used a Megalixir. (On myself, no I didn't know the Phoenix Down thing)