How to play Final Fantasy 7
How I did it: I tried probably about 4-5 times over a six year period to get into the game, but kept losing interest. What finally worked? I played along with my best friend. We live thousands of miles apart, but we'd try to play at the same pace and would discuss our progress/thoughts about the game on AIM. Much fun, and I'd love to play other games that way.
Lessons & tips: I was a little disappointed at how easy the endgame turned out to be. But that was because a mutual friend of ours is a HUGE fan of the game, and kept telling us all the cool items to get. It took a lot of leveling up to get said items, so by the time I got to the endgame my characters were up in the 90s. I wouldn't choose to do it that way again.
Personally, I am someone who likes to play Final Fantasy games for the story. Because I was working on getting cool items, I felt distracted from the story at times. I wish I had known less about the cool items and just let the story guide me through the game.
Resources: DON'T USE THE OFFICIAL GUIDE!! It's really not very good, and it has TONS of spoilers for the game. It pretty much summarizes the storyline instead of tell you how to play it. WTF? I highly recommend GameFaqs instead. I also really like Caves of Narshe (http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/). They're really great about not spoiling the story, and have good tips.
