I’m now almost 18 hours into Final Fantasy VII and I’ve done a lot of interesting things: I’ve raced Chocobos, infiltrated a corporation headquarters, fought alongside a giant animated toy directed by a kat and a made friends with a killer dog/lion(?), I fought all sorts of crazy enemies, from carrots to giant acorns, golems, giant flies, spiders, birds, robots etc, and even a dragon. I’ve acquired more items and magic abilities and I’ve been cruising around in a land vehicle. One of the more annoying things I had to do was jump off a dolphin unto a ledge. That took me 15 minutes of trying before I resorted to YouTube.

Another time I went to the internet for help was when I couldn’t get over a slippery puddle. Turns out you have to walk slowly. I don’t know how long it would have taken me to figure that out. And in these kind of games you are always in a hurry and always anxious for the next random encounter. Not very relaxing.

I’ve just encountered Sephiroth again and he conveniently told me that he was going north. This game is still very linear. At one point the game told me that there was nothing to do now and that I should come back later.

I’m now “stuck” at Mount Nibel. I’ve gone down some pipes and jumped down a ledge with no way to get back up again. I’ve trudged up the mountain and went again to the Mako reactor, but there’s nothing to do there. I’ve picked up some goodies and gained experience, so I would rather not go back to a previous save. There must be some way out of here, but I can’t find it. And there’s no place to save here, so if Sony decides to do yet another firmware update, it’s back to that save anyway. I don’t like all these random encounters and I don’t like not being able to save anywhere.