Final Fantasy VII is easily my favorite Final Fantasy game, and I know them all. I own FFIV,V,VI,VII,VIII,IX, and X and have beaten FFVII,VIII,IX,and X and this one is the best. I have to recommend it to everyone, RPG fan or not. Squaresoft was at it's prime in this period what with FFVII & Xenogears, my favorite Squaresoft games. The battle format is the tried and true Active form (you have a "Active Time Battle" gauge that fills and when it fills, the character can attack. Enemies don't have to wait for you to use your turn to use theirs). There are tons of commands (Ex. Attack, Deathblow, Magic, Item, Morph, Steal, Mime, etc.) but many require Materia to use. Materia is what you insert into your weapon and armors empty Materia slots to gain the Materias ability while it is equipped. You gain AP as well as EXP and Gil ($) after winning a fight. AP levels up your equipped Materia. It is important not to overload your character with Materia though, because as Cloud says in a tutorial, "It acts as a double-sided sword. While it gives you abilities, it also can subtract from your stats." The story starts small as a rebel group AVALANCHE fighting the Shinra Corporation that is turning the only huge city on Gaia, Midgar, into one big industrial market. They are putting up Mako Reactors that suck the energy from the Earth and convert it to power. AVALANCHE destroys a couple of these in missions and Shinra devises a plan. 18 year old Cloud is just joining AVALANCHE, but reluctantly; he is very cruel hearted and troubled do to his past in the beginning, but that changes. Quickly the scheme becomes much more grandiose as Sephiroth gets involved. AVALANCHE falls apart and the core members and a few other characters leave to follow Sephiroth, while Shinra searches for "the Promised Land," a land with tons of Mako energy. The story is serious. A main character even dies at the climax of the first disc. It leads you through tons of places and aquaints you with many people. Of course the ever popular Biggs and Wedge return, as does Cid (you may not get this if you aren't big for Final Fantasy games). The Limit Breaks are cool. During battle there is a gauge called Limit Break which fills when you are attacked. When it fills all the way, you can use Limit Breaks which are very strong attacks. You learn new ones by using previous ones or a variety of other ways for certain characters. The status effects such as Poison or Mute are used. The ammount of Materia is staggering. The summons are great, but one stands out as fairly impossible to not be a one hit kill, besides on Safer Sephiroth if he has on Wall, or Emerald and Ruby Weapon regardless. This summon is common knowledge for Final Fantasy enthusiasts, Knights of the Round, where 13 knights attack the enemies. If you have a good magic stat, they do a good 9000 damage per attack (9000 x 13 = 117,000 damage). The graphics are standout awesome for their time, but nowadays they aren't special and the character designs are a disaster, but again, they were awesome back in the days. The sound is top notch with awesome music. Just like Xenogears, it's one of those few games where I like the music. There are a few huge [disappointments] (the chocobo battle music) and a few instant favorites (the Safer Sephiroth music, "One Winged Angel"). The game length is about 40-50 hours, but you'll keep playing it to get to level 99 and complete every last side quest (like me!) and clock in 70 hours if you have one ounce of common sense. The control is flawless except for the X for cancel and Circle for confirm, but that can be fixed with the customizable controls very easily. I just can't believe that you're still reading this review! Buy the game already, you won't regret it.