I think I was a little younger when I first borrowed the game off a friend, having never played a Final Fantasy game before. I kept getting stuck right at the start at Guard Scorpion (the way the text boxes split up the text made it seem like you were being told to attack when the tail was up, not avoid attacking). That was such an ordeal in itself to young me that getting past that felt like I’d already played a whole game in itself. Eventually progressed and went through the whole Midgar section, falling in love with the game completely. It just seemed massive in a way that no other game that I’d played up until then had.
My next significant roadblock was Sample: HO512. I remember going into school and telling my friend how much I was struggling. When he asked how far into the game I was, I said something like “Oh I’m in the Shinra building, I think I’m near the end of the game now,” to which he obviously laughed.
When I eventually got past that and got out of Midgar for the first time my poor little mind was blown to pieces. I’ll never forget that feeling of awe and realisation that this massive experience I’d just gone through was basically only the prologue.
(In hindsight not sure how I hadn’t clocked the 2 additional discs, maybe I’d only borrowed one off that friend.)
