This guy are nerd.

Final Fantasy VII. Ever hear of that game?

I was in my senior year of high school when that game was released. I loved Final Fantasy 3 for the SNES so when I heard about the hype for this game I eventually preordered it. I got a Cloud tshirt when I preordered at Babbage's and waited. I might have insisted on the game as a birthday gift. Anyway, I somehow convinced my dad to pick up the game on the night it was released, and I wore the tshirt when we picked it up. I spent the next two weeks to a month in video game bliss.

Cue several years later. My opinion of the game is a bit more nuanced. While the game seemed fresh then, I now see it a badly written game. I don't hate the game, but boy it could use a rewrite.

I bring this up because I was discussing this with Lita last night. Lita HATES Final Fantasy VII. "Ebert hate North" hate. I tried to convince her to play Final Fantasy 3/6, but I couldn't get her to do it for a long time. Anyway, I brought up something shameful that I actually did while playing the game.

Anyone who has played the game knows that there is a dating sequence towards the end of disc one. You can go on a date with Tifa, Aeris, Yuffie, or Barret. Tifa and Aeris are easy to get, and I already got those two, but I really wanted to see Yuffie on a date. I was a fan of her at the time. Now, you get to go on these dates based on the conversations you have. During conversations you choose certain lines and other characters react to you. Neither the horrible official strategy guide nor the excellent unofficial strategy guide helped you with the dating stuff, so what was I going to do? Yes, gamefaqs was around, but I didn't have constant access to the internet at the time. Plus, I didn't think a guide existed. So what did I do?



I took some of my old high school notebooks and wrote down every conversation in the game that had a choice. This page shows the beginning of the first such conversation, when Cloud first meets Aeris. Not only did I get every branch, but I also redid sections of the game with different supporting characters to see their reactions. Overall I used three different notebooks, but I could only find this one.



As, you can see, I marked the choices with letters. I used double letters when 26 wasn't enough. After I was finished getting every conversation I could find, I played through the game and in the back of the third notebook I kept track of every choice I made. (A, D, G...AH...CI...etc.) I must have tried three or more times and failed each time. These attempts probably averaged about 11-12 hours.

Finally, my sister solved the problem. She printed out a gamefaq guide that told you how the dating system worked and how to get Yuffie. So my notebook thing waste of time. I did add the poin values for some of the conversations to my notes. I also started to write down the whole date scene, but at that poin I think even I had my limits. I'm sure that part remains unfinished.

So there you go. Proof that I have contempt for my free time.

By the way, nerd poins for you if you get what my title refers to.