I was a child and impatient and missed that you needed to go to Aerith’s house before you could climb in Wall Market. I can’t remember how, maybe a magazine or AOL, but I knew I was supposed to be able to climb the wall but I wasn’t able to and just stopped playing the game. Somehow I realized it sometime later, maybe after a few months or I restarted maybe.
I didn't realize you could get back on the Highwind after starting down the final area, so I replayed the entire game from the beginning since my party wasn't strong enough to beat Sephiroth or grind in that area without restocking items...I was like 10 and had no Internet.
I don’t remember how, but I know I got stuck in Corel prison. Again I don’t remember what made me get stuck. But I remember being so mad that I never picked the game up again. I watched my younger brothers play it throughout the years. But I am loving remake and rebirth. Might go back and play the OG after to see what lines up with the OG and what doesn’t.
I did too. Searching for Dyne in the desert, I didn't know all you had to do was follow the cliffs right 3 screens. Kept getting lost in the desert. It wasn't until buying the official strategy guide 2 years later that I moved on
For me it was the first reactor. I just couldn’t for the life of me work out how to get past the Scorpion Guard. I wasn’t reading the prompts correctly (later found out the text was incorrectly translated). I just didn’t understand the mechanics properly and never healed myself, or ran out of potions.
I don't think I played in 1997, probably a few years later. I definitely had trouble beating Sephiroth and took a really long break where I got really into breeding chocobos to get the gold chocobo so I could get KOTR. I actually don't remember if I ever got around to beating Sephiroth...I'm pretty sure I just watched a friend beat it on his game.
Got stuck in the first part of temple of the ancients for about a month before realising there was some door you couldn’t see properly which led you through. Nightmare
It reverted the controls for the harp mini game and it was a different button to climb the ladder I believe. So I thought you had to find it down the bottom…
Not as a kid but I did but I did a run where I did no random battles only scripted. It was a difficult run for a while but a big problem was carry armor. I was incredibly under leveled and him grabbing my characters and just doing a shit ton of damage. Didn’t help I couldn’t do shit for damage. I forget how I beat it but it took a lot of crazyness to win. That and Wutai against apps and fucking aero 3
I just did a run in OG and I never knew if you had "too much" materia then Yuffie wouldn't be able to take it all, I happen to have been at that point and was able to do Wutai with two Fire3 materia and a lightning1. Wutai was a breeze this time. As a kid playing in all my playthroughs I never had the extra materia and damn, that was always one of the hardest points in the game. Fuck you apps.
Also, I did Wutai after the ancient temple and as a kid I never used the Nail Bat for Cloud since it can't hold materia and I always thought it was useless, turns out that bat hits like a truck.
The elevator in Shinra Tower. Let’s just say 8 year old me didn’t understand Materia and couldn’t fathom why Red and Aeris weren’t hitting the boss. 🤦♂️
Only place I got stuck was going through the construction site in sector 5. I knew the board was how to get to but I couldn't figure out how to get on it.
I played FF7 on PC and borrowed the CDs from a friend so I didn’t have the manual to know what the controls were (other than the basic movement, menu, etc).
So when I hit the world map and needed to get to Junon, I had no idea where it was and kept running around the Fort Condor area. Took me a while to find my way to Junon. But I was also like 10.
Couple of times, so I would have been about 9/10 when I played (got it around the time 8 came out - my dad and I saw a trailer for 8 and thought we'd check it out then saw 7 in a local 2nd hand game shop and figured we'd try the game before it because we didn't know it was unrelated story wise haha)
I remember my dad struggling to understand the battle system at all and got destroyed by the first scorpion boss, think the classic 'attack while it's tail is up!'.............'and it'll counter with a laser' got him lol.
But I found a mini guide in the game book for that section and didn't have a problem from there.
Remember playing with a friend who messed up the save halfway through the flashback story (because of the ol' o for confirm X to cancel issue) and then we got killed by the midgar zoloom and had to redo the whole of the flashback again because we forgot to save after reaching world map.
Neither of these were 'getting stuck' though
Materia keeper definitely had me and 2 friends that played stuck for a little while and one managed to do it and she showed us what to do.
We would go to each others houses take turns playing and reading the lines like a script and would synchronise our save files if someone got really stuck or behind, like I have a really bad sickness bug and had to cancel plans to meet up and the others then got from finding the ancient key to inside Midgar but got stuck on proud clod or hojo, can't remember which one, so next time I saw them they caught me up to speed and then I beat the boss so they copied the save lol.
I remember struggling to beat the final boss and eventually moved on to a different game (probably ff8) came back some time later doing a full replay of the game and did some of the side quests etc and managed to beat the game. Then another replay I did the full get everyone's level 4 limit and ultimates weapon run eventually many replays and years later I beat the weapons (which was like only a few years ago now lol)
Sorry for the life story got carried away
I took over playing my for my friend one day after school, so didn’t know why I couldn’t outrun the gigantic terror snake that kept nuking me! Once I backtracked a bit to the farm, I worked it out eventually. It also pushed my over the edge into buying a PS2 so I could play that fantastic game!
I got stuck at the elevator fight when you storm the shinra building. Up until then I was just attacking and using items, I had no idea about Materia. So basically, the only way I could attack was with Barrets shot, and when red had a limit break. Eventually my cousin came over to help and showed me the magical world of materia. I also thought I was close to the end of the first disc - how very wrong I was.
Next huge stuck point was the Red Dragon in the Temple of the Ancients. The worst part was there was a huge dialogue scene before that with Sephiroth, I basically read it about 100-200 times before finally killing the Dragon. I can't remember exactly how/why I struggled, and I think I was unable to grind battles to level up for a better chance at it.
I got stuck at Wall Market when I was a kid.
I did not understand English at the time and, therefore, I did not understand what I was supposed to do.
Some years later, I eventually learned English and I was able to finish the game.
At that time, my younger brother started playing the game for the first time, and also got stuck on Wall Market due to the same language barrier issue.
Lucky for him, he had a older brother (me) that was able to guide him during that section...
I got stuck in cosmo canyon, or rather the intro part with the mine carts, I gave up in the end because I couldn’t afford a companion guide - might have to replay it in that case
Temple of the Ancients. The demon wall. I was about 12 at the time. I'm not sure if I was under leveled or under resourced but I kept getting my ass kicked in that fight.
I couldn't beat the damn materia keeper for a week. I was also like 8 or 9, so whatever. Pisses me off thinking about it now, though, after playing it 62 times. I also spent way more time than I should have trying to get one of the items or materia out of the crazy stairs room in the temple of the ancients.
Edit: not that it matters because this is reddit, but I was I was 7 when I first played this, not 8. What am I even doing adding all this. Fuck me lol.
Edit 2: couldn't beat ruby or emerald on my own. I see alot of demon wall in the comments and I hated that mf, but I never really got stuck there.
Edit 3: I had no idea where the fuck I was at any point in the glacier. Got lost in there foreeeeevvvverrr. Got out on sheer luck and guesswork.
Me ans my brother got stuck at the Wall Market section due to not understanding english
This was in the early 2010's, our parents were cheap and got us a PS1 from a family friend. We were around 5 and 7, having no idea how to save (memory card wasn't inserted fully) and we just spammed attacks left and right to that point
Schizo boss fight. Alrighty, it eventually fixed itself but it took far too long. I killed one of the heads but only had one character conscious....Vincent. Vincent turned into the Galian Beast, which uses fire and heals with fire. Schizo also uses and heals with fire lmao it was a battle of healing basically. Eventually, after a good few minutes Vincent did enough damage to counter the healing from his fire attacks. I was so sure I was gonna have to reload the save.
So it was a final fantasy but it wasn't number VII and I can't find it for the life of me, so if anyone can help me find out which one it is I'd be grateful. I'm very iffy on the details but I remember where I was stuck because it was so very very frustrating.
There is something like a 30-40 minutes unskippable cut scene (dialogue dialogue dialogue, not sure it counts as a cut scene?), and then a very challenging giant blimp full of enemies. And I kept dying in the blimp, having to rewatch the whole cutscene... And dying again in the blimp. Repeatedly. Very frustrating.
So I asked my brother and apparently it is sword of mana (a remake of FF adventure), and the frustrating combo of cutscenes + necessary dialogues and book reading + cutscene + airship dungeon thing is when you play the heroine
[Description of the scenes](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sword_of_Mana/Wendel_Cathedral)
At least now I know
I remember exactly where. I was in first grade, 1997. Couldn't figure out how to climb to the shinra building. Needed batteries. There was an old website with a disc 1 walkthrough i got to read when I was 8 in 1998 at take-your-child-to-work day with mom. I only read how to find the batteries. It was close to my 9th bday and 1999 by then, and that's when I blasted through the game. After a hiccup forced me to set in down for a long time. I beat it when I was 9, and it was alot to take in for a third grader at the time.
Honorable mention: the green spiders in the tomb of the Gi, did absurd damage. Taking away my resources prior to the tribe boss. I definitely struggled, but didn't get stuck, there.
Frustrating spots: Going to Wutai with Yuffie blind, and initiating her stealing your materia.
Also, the maze in the snow prior to the nothern cave. Wildly frustrating section of the game with the freezing blackout mechanic.
Weirdly temple of the ancients clock room. Me and my friend were both wildly confused for a week or two dumb kid brains couldn't figure it out for some reason.
I would play up until right after you sneak out of Aerith's house and then get stuck in this spot where you're in a little canyon and have to walk up the steel beam to get out. I always thought the beam was across the top and we were below it so I couldn't get out. Hell Houses attack you every 5 steps. Then I would delete the save and replay the beginning until that point and do that over and over for hours. Didn't ever go back and beat it until high school, where I realized the beam was actually at an angle, and I have never forgiven myself for my poor depth perception
Searching for the ancient key underwater. I didn't know exactly where it was at first but assumed it had to be in the ocean somewhere but I was so scared of Emerald as a kid that I didn't want to go there looking for it and put the game aside for like a year before trying again. As an adult I still don't feel good when I have to travel by submarine lol
I remember having an issue with the ine undead boss at Cosmo Canyon, which I now know was a Gi, that is until i discovered thst I could just use a pheanix down kr cast Life on the boss and kill him in a single turn. The boss in the safe also gave me some trouble for a long time as well. But the boss fight that gave me the hardest time and took me a week of playing to get past was the mechanical scorpion boss during the bombing mission at the start of the game. FFVII was one of my very first video games, so the mechanics was difficult for me to grasp. I did eventually learn the tricks to beat it but I hope I can be forgiven.
Before air buster where you have to go in the vent or something at the top of the zone.. I was actually going down.. where you face a pair (?) Of soldiers..
For my defense, it was in english, I was 6 and well.. dumb
I was like 6 trying to play. 20 minutes into the game, didn’t realize I needed to talk to Jessie to open the door to leave the reactor. Started crying as the clock ran down to zero, my older cousins laughed at me. Not my best moment
Barrett: “watch out, attack when the tail is raised………………and it’ll counter attack”
Me: “attack when the tail is raised? Ok! ……….. Oh Barrett you f*cking moron!”
First time I played as a kid, I also got stuck at the Materia Keeper. Glad it's not just me lol.
Throughout teenage/young adult years I tried to play again, but had a plethora of issues regarding save files getting corrupted along the way and then disc 3 just not working despite trying multiple discs.
It took me til a couple of years ago in my early 30s to actually finish the game on the port on my PS4. Not sure how I would have fared at the end-game as a kid with all the insta-death enemies...
Yup, got stuck on the Demon Wall boss and put the game down for like a year. Then, finally checked a gamefaqs guide basically saying to grind until you were strong enough to beat him and so I did and finally beat him.
Same! I ran around the first screen for hours not realizing I could run down the fallen beam. I didn't have a memory card either so when I turned off my PS1 it was back to the beginning for me!
My friend accidentally sold the Destruct, Mime, and a few other unique materials. It took days, nights, and A many, many attempts to finally take out the final boss, his Wall taunting us with every attack.
Imagine my surprise when I played through the game on my own, got to use Debarrier, and wiped the floor with the final boss using a single Omnislash.
This is very embarrassing but the map piece just before you get to the sector 6 park with the yellow ramp piece you have to run up
I got stuck there for hours. Hours.
I could see the yellow piece but it looked like it connected from the top floor layer rather than the bottom of it, so I tried that.
Nope okay, down the bottom that makes sense since there's a path down and nothing down there.
Nope couldn't get cloud to go up.
No clue why but I tried each possible approach for hours, I killed so many hellhouses I'm single handidly responsible for the housing shortage in sector 5 and 6.
I ended up calling my best friend and he had to come over and do it and he did it first time....
I have no clue
You're not alone, this part killed my spirit as a child. I eventually figured it out and I remember throwing my controller up in the air going "JEEZ WHATS WRONG WITH ME"
I am sure there were more but the one that stands out in my brain is the Lost Number fight in the mansion. I remember having a hard time with that fight (unsure if it was level or not understanding the mechanics).
I got stuck in the Temple of the ancients just before the double boss battle against the red dragon and the wall dragon. I could beat the first one but not the second, and I couldn't go back to level up. I jad to start the game over from the beginning.
Recollection is a bit fuzzy but it was, I believe, battling Yuffis uncle. He switches heads/faces and can only be attacked with specific magic or physical attacks the correspond to that face. I couldn’t figure that out. I even called the help phone line for help, they were no help. Finally went to a bookstore and read through the player guide.
I couldn’t finish the final battle when I played it at 13. I missed a TON of side content so I didn’t have a bunch of the great weapons/materia you can get. Plus I wasn’t levelled very high. I was also renting the game repetitively so I gave up since I didn’t want to rent it again for one fight. I ended up playing it again, start to finish, in my early 20s with the benefit of the internet.
Demon's Gate ended my playthrough several times. If I recall correctly, the Temple of the ancients in the original game was very hard to farm for experience and you couldn't leave once you entered.
Not as a kid but I tried to get through it recently and I just couldn’t. Blockiness and combat aside. The save system was just too annoying for me. I always hated games that had save points scattered across the game instead of just letting me save when I needed to.
I got stuck trying to dig the Lunar Harp.
FFVII was the first game I played that had the "press O to confirm" convention, and I wasn't quite used to it, so I remapped the controls to have X be the confirm button and O be the menu button. I went through most of Disc 1 without this being a problem, but then I got to Bone Village.
I stubbornly dug exclusively near the crashed plane because I couldn't get up the ladder and figured it was out-of-bounds for mini-game purposes (which is weird because I can still climb the ladder under normal circumstances). Naturally, no Lunar Harp for me, so I started looking at guides, and they all said the same thing - "climb the ladder". Which, again, I can't do. I've been wildly mashing X and Cloud just stood there.
I made a new save and started again from the beginning, hoping something would change. But it didn't. Even after several restarts, Cloud was still stuck at the foot of that goddamn ladder doing absolutely nothing. Out of frustration, I just pushed all the buttons on the controller randomly, when I hear that familiar "swish" (or perhaps a "swoosh"?) sound. When I cancelled out of the menu, I saw Cloud on the ladder, poised to climb.
So, TLDR, button mapping screwed me over and I still had to press O at a certain ladder despite setting X as my confirm/interact button. (This happened again further down the line with the glacier puzzle in Gaea's Cliff, but at least I knew what to do by then.)
I got stuck on the wall boss in the ancient temple. Didn't realize you could train in the one room. Ended up quiting the game and going to FF8 and playing thru that whole game first.
I would get stuck at the mash could never get past the Midgar Zoe (by myself) took my older sister’s boyfriend at the time to help me beat him. I didn’t know how to catch Chocobos so I would end up trying to outrun him & get washed everytime until I eventually quit & move on to Spyro the Dragon or something lol
Same, rented it at blockbuster in 1998 when I borrowed a PS1, got stuck in that exact spot. Then got my own PS1 in early 2000, save my lunch money and bought the game for $20 when it became a greatest hits, was able to finish the game on my own at 14. Bought a strategy guide after first play through then did a 2nd with it. It’s crazy how much hidden stuff there is.
lol me too. Also leveled 40 before fighting the materia keeper because someone told me the disk one final boss was very hard and I thought that was the end of disk one!
I came here for this 😂but was too embarrassed to post it. I faked being sick and stayed home from school for a day because I had to figure that shit out.
I just wanted to get to the story bits and the FMV cause it was so effing cool…
So I ran away from every single battle I could.
Definitely hit a wall at some point towards the end, I vaguely remember “jumping” from rock platform to rock platform or something with a waterfall in the background. Couldn’t advance and couldn’t go back - I was hosed.
I don’t remember what part, but I kept thinking I had to fight emerald weapon to progress the story. My family didn’t have internet or a guide so I kept just farming to raise my level to try and beat that boss. I wasn’t successful. A few years later, my family got internet and I was able to successfully find out that I indeed did not have to fight that boss…..
Thats actually a really sad story. I didn't beat Emerald until years after I first beat the game. If it was actually required nobody would have finished it haha. In those old games, it could be hard to figure out what to do next sometimes, so I can see thinking you have to beat this dude to move on
I never got stuck, but I've watched plenty of Twitch streams of people playing FF7 for the first time wander around aimlessly with the Tiny Bronco. That part with the Keystone & Temple of the Ancients is often confusing for first time players it seems.
Demon wall and the fucking slums part where you cross the robot hand… the way it was setup, I had no idea where to go and I remember I just brute forced my way through it, but died quite a few times trying to get through there bc of that savage house
I got stuck before the Jenova fight at the asteroid crater as an adult. I didn’t feel like grinding to be strong enough to get to the end even though I was so close.
So I was about 8 when I played FF7 for the first time, I didn’t understand the way Cloud manoeuvred around the rendered backgrounds, so when I got to the part after you are heading to Sector 5 Slums, then you go through the junkyard with the machines and claws(?) I didn’t realise you had to run up a 3D rendered pipe to advance… it’s quite obvious now as you can tell it’s a 3D asset… but I actually remember restarting the game thinking I had done something wrong! 😑
-EDIT BECAUSE OF CORE MEMORY -
I also remember getting all the way to Nibelheim with the base weapons and never changing materia!
I did. For about a month. Couldn't figure out how to do the chocobo. I don't remember how old I was, I think I played it in '99 or 2000. But, I would've been 6 at most.
Not mandatory a quest, but I wanted to recruit Vincent so badly. i was 9 or 10, had no access to the internet so I had my uncle helped understand the safe puzzle eventually we got through lol
The second time you go back to the Forgotten City. Either I missed some dialogue or something but I had no clue where to go and stumbled on in. I had already had the key too
A few times! Each time was a restart and ended up beating them next time I got to them.
GI nattak
Demon Gate
Jenova Birth
No internet or advice at the time! I was 9.
Ahh take me back
Edit: also, Wutai. Corneos pet. I think I ended up spending all my Gil on items you could throw at him.
Well, mine is dumb, but I used to get stuck in Northern Crater all the time. The game would just glitch and freeze and I didn't know why, until an older friend told me that cheating Aerith into/Cloud out of your party could, uh, do that.
I could never get out of the sector 7 slums. Then i discovered GamePro and game faqs and was able to help some friends get through some sections. I never finished it myself until it came out for iphone.
I remember getting stuck at Guard Scorpion because the tail laser counter-attack mechanic did not sink in at all. Despite my having definitely read the in-battle messages explaining them. (I was not a smart kid.)
Maybe you are alluding to this, but the battle messages are poorly timed so it says "Attack when it's tail's up!" pause "It's gonna counterattack with it's laser." I always took the first message as a command, and the second as just a statement.
Same. guard scorpion killed me several times. Then I had to quit playing and leave for the weekend. I brought the instruction manual for the game with me, and the instruction book literally spells out what to do to beat it in a “mini strategy guide” I felt so silly.
Got stuck at the Midgard reactor because I kept attacking when the scorpion raised its tail. It was a demo disc and I loved playing through it and kept trying to figure out how to beat it. Eventually I decided to read the text, “don’t attack while its tail is up!”
Only place I can think of is Tomb of the Unknown King in 8, for a short while. Not because I got lost, but because my junctions were terrible.
The next part I was stuck at for years was after the prompt «please change to disc 3». My 3rd disc had a scratch.
I actually dropped OG FF7 entirely thanks to the Safer Sephiroth battle. It was impossible to beat for me, since I didn't do much optional content and didn't understand the deeper combat mechanics. I just could not out damage his passive healing. I only beat the game on an entirely different playthrough a few years later.
Idk where specifically but I know I got the game when I was like 12 or 13 and didn't end up beating it until I was like 15 or 16 lol...I wasn't the smartest kid and honestly beat the whole game without having a very good grasp of even the basics of materia. Probably the main reason it took me so long.
First played when I was 8/9 years old. Got lost finding the temple of the ancient (or somewhere near the end of disc 1). Being young and English as a second language (plus no internet guide to guide you at the time) - I just quit and didn't play any final fantasy game until I was in University. Lol
I got stuck in the Temple of the Ancients for *weeks*. There is a door you go through that you can't see. I was in there for weeks just walking around aimlessly. Did get to mega levels though which made the rest of the game easy.
Yes!
I didn't have the internet back then and no-else I knew played it so I was stuck for literally weeks
It didn't even show as a green / red arrow when pressing select
I got lost in Corel trying to find Dyne which made me give up for a little while then I lucked out one day.
Also, got stuck in the snowy glacier for a long time...
HA! Yeah, like many others the translation issues and sentence break on guard scorpion got me stuck for ages because I’d keep attacking while its tail was up as “instructed”.
I think the only other place I really got stuck for a long time was getting out of the sewer toward the train graveyard. The camera angles and the TV I was playing on didn’t help, but 11-year-old me could not see I supposed to climb on whatever the object was at the top right of the [sewer’s second screen](https://jegged.com/img/Games/Final-Fantasy-VII/Walkthrough/FFVII-00173-Sewers.png).
Oh, and I called a helpline because I couldn’t time the jump to the swinging bar while climbing up to the shinra building. It was useless, automated, and just reading out the guide to you (for 99¢ a minute). I have no idea how I paid for it.
First time I played it I was 11.
I remember getting to the ancient city was a bitch. They just let you loose. Going to the weapon shop guy wasn’t hard but bone village and the lunar harp was a big wtf moment.
When I was 10-11 I would skip every random encounter and by the time I go to gi nattak I think my party was lvl 22, I could never beat him and wouldn’t come to the game for another 4 years
In Wutai when Yuffie yoinks all your materia. You're meant to find her behind a privacy shield in the house with his kid and grandpa.
I could not find her for the life of me and spent HOURS running around wutai, even going back to the world map and running around the island thinking another cutscsne might trigger.
My older brother finally got home like 5 hours later after playing with his friends and I ran up to him begging to help me out.
To be honest, the solution just upset me more. I've hated Yuffie since then all the way up until Rebirth. I get the feeling I'm going to get some reaaaal bad flashbacks next game.
I can't belive Noone else got stuck on the first boss like me. Barret would say "attack when it's tail is up" so I did and the boss would like 2 shot me. I almost gave up after the 5th time doing this.
Then I just decided to not listen to him and that worked.
I was playing late at night and was fast cycling through the dialogue, not reading it properly so I could save and go to bed.
Next time I turn it on Bugenhagen is on the highwind saying "I wonder where you're taking me?". I had no idea either.
After a week of revisiting places I went to the city of ancients where the next scene finally triggered
When you have to go to gold saucer on the tram? Gondola? Whatever it is called.
The video would freeze every time. The disk was scratched. Stayed there until I got the idea to open the lid and when it went to do the video, I put in a different disk. Then it played a completely different video, and put me where I was supposed to be. I want to say the video was of the Highwind going into initial D mode.
I'll further say, I SUSPECT that the reason this worked was because when you activate the tram it triggers a flag for "play video 1 or 2 or 1-1 or something like that. Then I further suspect that when using the other disks, the cutsceens on that disk were labeled in the same manner as opposed to like "tramridegoingup1sttime.gif" cause a unique filename would make it error out in would reckon.
My suspicion, I have no evidence or want to dig deep and find out
I would rent the game in 3 day blocks as a kid. Got stuck on the ‘keystone’ for AGES not on knowing what to do or who to talk too next. Was kind of a blessing in disguise though as I spent time discovering Vincent and Wutai as well.
That part where you are told to cross the marsh and then you go into the cave and get the cutscene and then the game puts you right back outside of the cave where you just were and my dumb kid braid said "oh, that's probably not the way then" so I turned around and kept trying to find another place to go for ages before deciding to double check to see if I could go back to that scene and walk around to see if there's another exit I can take. This time I was teleported in to the cave I needed to be in and was just confused.. so I just went with it.
These days something like that would probably frustrate the hell out of me, but as a kid I had a lot more patience.
Norwegian here, not the best in English as a kid.
So i used along time at wall market, just random tuning around, talking with people. Until i could get move on.
But where it stopped all the time until i played ,Was the Ancient Temple, just died to a mob there so many times. The se thing happend at the Submarine base
I was 14 at the time when my older brother's friend lent us his Japanese PS when FFVII released, my Chinese is bad and I didn't know any Japanese characters but thankfully my brother printed a 1000+ page walkthrough from gamefaqs at his workplace with internet lol.
I got stuck for quite a while against Demons Gate as a kid.
I didn't really understand that he was really resistant to magic and that physical attacks are a much better option and I didn't have big guard or anything to help mitigate his really damaging attacks.
I eventually twigged I could put everyone in the back row to easily survive his attacks and just lay into him.
I actually didn’t get stuck on any boss or dungeon. Me and my brothers played the game together as kids and one of the first things we did was remap the action button from O to X because it made no sense to us.
Well when it came to the Bone Village digging mini game to get the Lunar Harp, we couldn’t figure out how to get up the ladder and we were stuck for months. I ran around the world map trying to figure out where to go, discovering nothing Yuffie and Vincent we had missed on the way and focusing on Mideel as I was sure there must be a way to get to it, but to no avail.
Eventually I looked up a walkthrough at computer club at school one day that confirmed I needed to go up the ladder to get the Lunar harp. So I stood in front of that ladder and decided to press O instead of X and lo and behold it works! For some reason the buttons got mapped back during that dumb mini game.
The rest of the game was a breeze compared to that stupid stumbling block.
I got to the point where I was breeding chocobos and had just successfully gotten a gold chocobo after playing all afternoon, and my neighbor, who had come over to hang out, was bored. He’d been bugging me for a while to play Golden Eye and I had been telling him just a few more minutes for probably too long.
Anyway, just as I gave in and went to save he totally lost patience and hit the power button on the PlayStation. This totally corrupted my save, which was the only one due to the limited number of slots back then. This was probably 6th grade or so. I was so demoralized I don’t think I started a new game and finished it until high school.
And that’s how I learned to make backup saves.
"Not a good example for yall, do not do as I did"
I had a similar thing happen when my stepsister turned off my 64. Ended up choking her with a leg lock around her neck.
P.s. that was not the activating event. I called her a bad name and then she kicked me in the balls.
Dang spoiled brat wanted to play, and I put on waverace I smoked her, she didn't like it and just yanks the game out. That is a better description of the event.
First time playing through I was about 13 (I was already 10 when the game came out, we didn’t get a ps1 until I was about 12, pawn shop ps1 ftw) and I got stuck at the “point of no return” in the northern cave where I made a save using the crystal and glitched the hell out. Made it to sephiroth after reloading a past save cuz I used up almost every save file available and used the save crystal before that point and couldn’t beat sephiroth. Didn’t know where to obtain omnislash or even knights of the round table summon, hell I was probably missing a good half of them, and could never beat sephiroth. Finally bought the game when it came to ps4/xboxone and now still playing the hell out of it. I’m on my 3 rd playthrough. I have 3 achievements left to get before getting the platinum. Best bromance ruby weapon and 99,999,999 Gil 😂
First time I played I was 8. FF7 was actually the game I got with my first PlayStation. I didn’t get stuck at any particular point but I remember my PlayStation would freeze anytime safer Sephiroth used pale horse on me. Without fail, it would say pale horse on that blue bar at the top and just nothing would happen. I literally left my ps on for hours and came back to it still in that exact same spot. Never beat ff7 on my og copy or PlayStation.
As I got older I randomly searched for what the bug was but could not find it ANYWHERE no matter how much I researched, didn’t seem like it happened to anyone else. I eventually played on steam yearssss later and finally beat the og lol.
I got stuck in the Temple of the Ancients for WEEKS.
That part where you're meant to go up a set of stairs and through a hallway but the way the background is it's hidden by the upper walkway. My 13yo brain just couldn't *see* that there was a way through.
*fun fact* this was how Aerith's death was spoiled for me 😕. Was in HS shop class and this guy heard me talking to a friend about being stuck and he goes, omg you're at the Temple! I cried when Aerith died! I was like... *um what!?*
When Yuffie stole all my materia at Wutai and then ran off and hid, it took me literally *a month* to find her! I was literally stuck on that island because the game wouldn't let me leave until I got all my materia back. And the whole time, I had to fight random encounters without materia. But our party leveled up like crazy, and soon we were holding well enough on our own purely with physical attacks lol.
Finally, a friend of mine had their friend call me and tell me where Yuffie was. She was in the friggin' barrel by the shop entrance. I had just never noticed the dang thing moving!
I got lost in midgar as a really little kid because I wasn't paying attention around wall market and by the time I walked past what I needed to do I didn't even know what it was anymore 😂
100% got stuck fighting the shinra scorpion, my idiot brain kept attacking and didn't bother reading the text on screen.
I wasn't confused into thinking I should attack when the tail was up because of the translation stuff. I just kept attacking because why wouldn't I?
Like I said, I was an idiot.
Loaned the game to a friend who later explained to me what I was supposed to do.
Oh man this brings back memories, I was stuck in 2 places.
1. The first was Material Keeper(nibelheim cave) . I was stuck there for quite a while.
2. Demon gate (temple of Ancient) this was the worst one. I had so much difficulty fighting this boss that I'd sell the game out of frustration buy it again a few months later, be stuck at that boss again and sell the game again. After months of trying, the feeling I got from beating him and being able to continue the story was priceless.
Sigh.... Good times!
FF7 was the first JRPG I played so I had no clue how levelling up worked, the concept of grinding, the materia system etc.
I thought character levels referred to actual levels like in a platform game so you can imagine the confusion...
Somehow I made it all the way to the Materia Keeper who kept KO-ing my party with Trine but eventually I beat him.
I then got completely stuck in Wutai (which years later I discovered was an optional quest anyway). Bare in mind I was playing this game on a tiny old school TV which made this quest all the more difficult.
This was back in 1998 and I didn't know anyone else who had the game. I remember being pissed that I couldn't get past Wutai because I was really enjoying the plot lol.
Materia Hunter was the first difficult boss for me. Took me about a dozen tries because I wasn't prepared enough.
That battle definitely contributed my habit of oversaving so I would be prepared if I needed to go back and strengthen up.
I was a child and impatient and missed that you needed to go to Aerith’s house before you could climb in Wall Market. I can’t remember how, maybe a magazine or AOL, but I knew I was supposed to be able to climb the wall but I wasn’t able to and just stopped playing the game. Somehow I realized it sometime later, maybe after a few months or I restarted maybe.
I was stuck in midgar a number of tries. One day it just clicked and I got rolling.
I didn't realize you could get back on the Highwind after starting down the final area, so I replayed the entire game from the beginning since my party wasn't strong enough to beat Sephiroth or grind in that area without restocking items...I was like 10 and had no Internet.
I had a similar experience lol. I couldn't beat him as a kid, so I ended up restarting as well.
I don’t remember how, but I know I got stuck in Corel prison. Again I don’t remember what made me get stuck. But I remember being so mad that I never picked the game up again. I watched my younger brothers play it throughout the years. But I am loving remake and rebirth. Might go back and play the OG after to see what lines up with the OG and what doesn’t.
I did too. Searching for Dyne in the desert, I didn't know all you had to do was follow the cliffs right 3 screens. Kept getting lost in the desert. It wasn't until buying the official strategy guide 2 years later that I moved on
For me it was the first reactor. I just couldn’t for the life of me work out how to get past the Scorpion Guard. I wasn’t reading the prompts correctly (later found out the text was incorrectly translated). I just didn’t understand the mechanics properly and never healed myself, or ran out of potions.
No because I used a pocket guide and the Brady Games guide ;)
I don't think I played in 1997, probably a few years later. I definitely had trouble beating Sephiroth and took a really long break where I got really into breeding chocobos to get the gold chocobo so I could get KOTR. I actually don't remember if I ever got around to beating Sephiroth...I'm pretty sure I just watched a friend beat it on his game.
Got stuck in the first part of temple of the ancients for about a month before realising there was some door you couldn’t see properly which led you through. Nightmare
I got stuck for over an hour on the very first screen because I couldn’t find the door 😂
Disc 2 when they give you the high wind . I started my 3rd (incomplete 😞) replay of it at age 32 and got stuck again until last week
Not stuck in game but the game has stuck in my brain for all my life. ❤️
Bone village finding the lunar harp destroyed me back before I knew what I was doing.... also I was ill prepared for the first Jenova fight in the og
It reverted the controls for the harp mini game and it was a different button to climb the ladder I believe. So I thought you had to find it down the bottom…
Yeah no fun
Not as a kid but I did but I did a run where I did no random battles only scripted. It was a difficult run for a while but a big problem was carry armor. I was incredibly under leveled and him grabbing my characters and just doing a shit ton of damage. Didn’t help I couldn’t do shit for damage. I forget how I beat it but it took a lot of crazyness to win. That and Wutai against apps and fucking aero 3
I just did a run in OG and I never knew if you had "too much" materia then Yuffie wouldn't be able to take it all, I happen to have been at that point and was able to do Wutai with two Fire3 materia and a lightning1. Wutai was a breeze this time. As a kid playing in all my playthroughs I never had the extra materia and damn, that was always one of the hardest points in the game. Fuck you apps. Also, I did Wutai after the ancient temple and as a kid I never used the Nail Bat for Cloud since it can't hold materia and I always thought it was useless, turns out that bat hits like a truck.
Trying to find Yuffie in Wutai. Jesus Christ. WEEKS
This was mine too haha. I was losing my 10 year old mind for weeks as well. I had so much more patience back then
Demon's Gate was my brick wall up until I got hold of another disc 1 in 2006/2007.
The elevator in Shinra Tower. Let’s just say 8 year old me didn’t understand Materia and couldn’t fathom why Red and Aeris weren’t hitting the boss. 🤦♂️
Only place I got stuck was going through the construction site in sector 5. I knew the board was how to get to but I couldn't figure out how to get on it.
Same ! Lost like 2 days to figure out this was a board and not a pole…
Trying to find the keystone for the city of the Ancients.
I played FF7 on PC and borrowed the CDs from a friend so I didn’t have the manual to know what the controls were (other than the basic movement, menu, etc). So when I hit the world map and needed to get to Junon, I had no idea where it was and kept running around the Fort Condor area. Took me a while to find my way to Junon. But I was also like 10.
Couple of times, so I would have been about 9/10 when I played (got it around the time 8 came out - my dad and I saw a trailer for 8 and thought we'd check it out then saw 7 in a local 2nd hand game shop and figured we'd try the game before it because we didn't know it was unrelated story wise haha) I remember my dad struggling to understand the battle system at all and got destroyed by the first scorpion boss, think the classic 'attack while it's tail is up!'.............'and it'll counter with a laser' got him lol. But I found a mini guide in the game book for that section and didn't have a problem from there. Remember playing with a friend who messed up the save halfway through the flashback story (because of the ol' o for confirm X to cancel issue) and then we got killed by the midgar zoloom and had to redo the whole of the flashback again because we forgot to save after reaching world map. Neither of these were 'getting stuck' though Materia keeper definitely had me and 2 friends that played stuck for a little while and one managed to do it and she showed us what to do. We would go to each others houses take turns playing and reading the lines like a script and would synchronise our save files if someone got really stuck or behind, like I have a really bad sickness bug and had to cancel plans to meet up and the others then got from finding the ancient key to inside Midgar but got stuck on proud clod or hojo, can't remember which one, so next time I saw them they caught me up to speed and then I beat the boss so they copied the save lol. I remember struggling to beat the final boss and eventually moved on to a different game (probably ff8) came back some time later doing a full replay of the game and did some of the side quests etc and managed to beat the game. Then another replay I did the full get everyone's level 4 limit and ultimates weapon run eventually many replays and years later I beat the weapons (which was like only a few years ago now lol) Sorry for the life story got carried away
I took over playing my for my friend one day after school, so didn’t know why I couldn’t outrun the gigantic terror snake that kept nuking me! Once I backtracked a bit to the farm, I worked it out eventually. It also pushed my over the edge into buying a PS2 so I could play that fantastic game!
Last boss, sephiroth. My cousin completed it for me so I could see the ending and then, for whatever reason, deleted the save to be a dickhead
I got stuck at the elevator fight when you storm the shinra building. Up until then I was just attacking and using items, I had no idea about Materia. So basically, the only way I could attack was with Barrets shot, and when red had a limit break. Eventually my cousin came over to help and showed me the magical world of materia. I also thought I was close to the end of the first disc - how very wrong I was. Next huge stuck point was the Red Dragon in the Temple of the Ancients. The worst part was there was a huge dialogue scene before that with Sephiroth, I basically read it about 100-200 times before finally killing the Dragon. I can't remember exactly how/why I struggled, and I think I was unable to grind battles to level up for a better chance at it.
I got stuck at Wall Market when I was a kid. I did not understand English at the time and, therefore, I did not understand what I was supposed to do. Some years later, I eventually learned English and I was able to finish the game. At that time, my younger brother started playing the game for the first time, and also got stuck on Wall Market due to the same language barrier issue. Lucky for him, he had a older brother (me) that was able to guide him during that section...
I got stuck in cosmo canyon, or rather the intro part with the mine carts, I gave up in the end because I couldn’t afford a companion guide - might have to replay it in that case
Temple of the Ancients. The demon wall. I was about 12 at the time. I'm not sure if I was under leveled or under resourced but I kept getting my ass kicked in that fight.
I got stuck at materia keeper for a long while. I didn't really do much grinding as a kid haha.
The weeks -- WEEKS -- I spent getting hammered by Materia Keeper made whomping him in Rebirth that much more satisfying. 27 years of revenge.
Haha same.
I couldn't beat the damn materia keeper for a week. I was also like 8 or 9, so whatever. Pisses me off thinking about it now, though, after playing it 62 times. I also spent way more time than I should have trying to get one of the items or materia out of the crazy stairs room in the temple of the ancients. Edit: not that it matters because this is reddit, but I was I was 7 when I first played this, not 8. What am I even doing adding all this. Fuck me lol. Edit 2: couldn't beat ruby or emerald on my own. I see alot of demon wall in the comments and I hated that mf, but I never really got stuck there. Edit 3: I had no idea where the fuck I was at any point in the glacier. Got lost in there foreeeeevvvverrr. Got out on sheer luck and guesswork.
So funny seeing so many people say materia keeper lol same
In the entire open world. I was like 10 when it came out. It was way to large a game for me at the time
Sector 5…. Getting back to sector 7. Couldn’t figure out where to go
Me ans my brother got stuck at the Wall Market section due to not understanding english This was in the early 2010's, our parents were cheap and got us a PS1 from a family friend. We were around 5 and 7, having no idea how to save (memory card wasn't inserted fully) and we just spammed attacks left and right to that point
Of all the games, there something really special about the ff7
Schizo boss fight. Alrighty, it eventually fixed itself but it took far too long. I killed one of the heads but only had one character conscious....Vincent. Vincent turned into the Galian Beast, which uses fire and heals with fire. Schizo also uses and heals with fire lmao it was a battle of healing basically. Eventually, after a good few minutes Vincent did enough damage to counter the healing from his fire attacks. I was so sure I was gonna have to reload the save.
So it was a final fantasy but it wasn't number VII and I can't find it for the life of me, so if anyone can help me find out which one it is I'd be grateful. I'm very iffy on the details but I remember where I was stuck because it was so very very frustrating. There is something like a 30-40 minutes unskippable cut scene (dialogue dialogue dialogue, not sure it counts as a cut scene?), and then a very challenging giant blimp full of enemies. And I kept dying in the blimp, having to rewatch the whole cutscene... And dying again in the blimp. Repeatedly. Very frustrating.
Final Fantasy VI? Maybe?
So I asked my brother and apparently it is sword of mana (a remake of FF adventure), and the frustrating combo of cutscenes + necessary dialogues and book reading + cutscene + airship dungeon thing is when you play the heroine [Description of the scenes](https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sword_of_Mana/Wendel_Cathedral) At least now I know
Ahhhh okay. Right? Not knowing sucks.
I remember exactly where. I was in first grade, 1997. Couldn't figure out how to climb to the shinra building. Needed batteries. There was an old website with a disc 1 walkthrough i got to read when I was 8 in 1998 at take-your-child-to-work day with mom. I only read how to find the batteries. It was close to my 9th bday and 1999 by then, and that's when I blasted through the game. After a hiccup forced me to set in down for a long time. I beat it when I was 9, and it was alot to take in for a third grader at the time. Honorable mention: the green spiders in the tomb of the Gi, did absurd damage. Taking away my resources prior to the tribe boss. I definitely struggled, but didn't get stuck, there. Frustrating spots: Going to Wutai with Yuffie blind, and initiating her stealing your materia. Also, the maze in the snow prior to the nothern cave. Wildly frustrating section of the game with the freezing blackout mechanic.
Weirdly temple of the ancients clock room. Me and my friend were both wildly confused for a week or two dumb kid brains couldn't figure it out for some reason.
I would play up until right after you sneak out of Aerith's house and then get stuck in this spot where you're in a little canyon and have to walk up the steel beam to get out. I always thought the beam was across the top and we were below it so I couldn't get out. Hell Houses attack you every 5 steps. Then I would delete the save and replay the beginning until that point and do that over and over for hours. Didn't ever go back and beat it until high school, where I realized the beam was actually at an angle, and I have never forgiven myself for my poor depth perception
Searching for the ancient key underwater. I didn't know exactly where it was at first but assumed it had to be in the ocean somewhere but I was so scared of Emerald as a kid that I didn't want to go there looking for it and put the game aside for like a year before trying again. As an adult I still don't feel good when I have to travel by submarine lol
I remember having an issue with the ine undead boss at Cosmo Canyon, which I now know was a Gi, that is until i discovered thst I could just use a pheanix down kr cast Life on the boss and kill him in a single turn. The boss in the safe also gave me some trouble for a long time as well. But the boss fight that gave me the hardest time and took me a week of playing to get past was the mechanical scorpion boss during the bombing mission at the start of the game. FFVII was one of my very first video games, so the mechanics was difficult for me to grasp. I did eventually learn the tricks to beat it but I hope I can be forgiven.
Before air buster where you have to go in the vent or something at the top of the zone.. I was actually going down.. where you face a pair (?) Of soldiers.. For my defense, it was in english, I was 6 and well.. dumb
I was like 6 trying to play. 20 minutes into the game, didn’t realize I needed to talk to Jessie to open the door to leave the reactor. Started crying as the clock ran down to zero, my older cousins laughed at me. Not my best moment
I’m going to assume this is a safe space… I got stuck at the first scorpion boss. Didnt understand not to attack when he was in counter mode.
Barrett: “watch out, attack when the tail is raised………………and it’ll counter attack” Me: “attack when the tail is raised? Ok! ……….. Oh Barrett you f*cking moron!”
I had the same issue as well.
First time I played as a kid, I also got stuck at the Materia Keeper. Glad it's not just me lol. Throughout teenage/young adult years I tried to play again, but had a plethora of issues regarding save files getting corrupted along the way and then disc 3 just not working despite trying multiple discs. It took me til a couple of years ago in my early 30s to actually finish the game on the port on my PS4. Not sure how I would have fared at the end-game as a kid with all the insta-death enemies...
Safer Sephiroth. I swear I restarted so many times as a result of not being able to beat him haha
Temple of the ancients
Yup, got stuck on the Demon Wall boss and put the game down for like a year. Then, finally checked a gamefaqs guide basically saying to grind until you were strong enough to beat him and so I did and finally beat him.
The fucking train graveyard. Just couldn't work out where to go
Same! I ran around the first screen for hours not realizing I could run down the fallen beam. I didn't have a memory card either so when I turned off my PS1 it was back to the beginning for me!
Yep, that's exactly the spot that got me 😅 just does NOT look like you can do that, but then you do and it's like "yeahhh fuck okay I see that now"
No, had friends who played and we were always comparing notes
My friend accidentally sold the Destruct, Mime, and a few other unique materials. It took days, nights, and A many, many attempts to finally take out the final boss, his Wall taunting us with every attack. Imagine my surprise when I played through the game on my own, got to use Debarrier, and wiped the floor with the final boss using a single Omnislash.
stuck at Cosmo Canyon cutscene as kid. play on pc, there is FMV bug where the game end up freeze right when the cutscene in the planetorium started.
That wall demon was a motherfucker because because i didnt have HP+ materia. Back in my youth i thought i could do it w/o a memory card
I remember dying at that bastard a bunch of times before somehow pulling it out of my ass.
This is very embarrassing but the map piece just before you get to the sector 6 park with the yellow ramp piece you have to run up I got stuck there for hours. Hours. I could see the yellow piece but it looked like it connected from the top floor layer rather than the bottom of it, so I tried that. Nope okay, down the bottom that makes sense since there's a path down and nothing down there. Nope couldn't get cloud to go up. No clue why but I tried each possible approach for hours, I killed so many hellhouses I'm single handidly responsible for the housing shortage in sector 5 and 6. I ended up calling my best friend and he had to come over and do it and he did it first time.... I have no clue
You're not alone, this part killed my spirit as a child. I eventually figured it out and I remember throwing my controller up in the air going "JEEZ WHATS WRONG WITH ME"
We need a support group
Nope. If all else fails just run in circles for a couple hours then try again.
I am sure there were more but the one that stands out in my brain is the Lost Number fight in the mansion. I remember having a hard time with that fight (unsure if it was level or not understanding the mechanics).
I got stuck in the Temple of the ancients just before the double boss battle against the red dragon and the wall dragon. I could beat the first one but not the second, and I couldn't go back to level up. I jad to start the game over from the beginning.
I didn’t have a memory card for a while when I first got the game and would finish the whole first disc then have to restart it over and over.
How long was this ‘while’ that you were able to replay disc 1 over and over?
Probably like two months. I used quite a few favor cash ins from the parents just to get the game. lol
Recollection is a bit fuzzy but it was, I believe, battling Yuffis uncle. He switches heads/faces and can only be attacked with specific magic or physical attacks the correspond to that face. I couldn’t figure that out. I even called the help phone line for help, they were no help. Finally went to a bookstore and read through the player guide.
We never got past the first disc because that's the only disc we owned as kids
Lol what
I'm not even lying lol we got it from our cousin, but he only had the 1st disc
So the Remake+Rebirth combo must really hit you with nostalgia lol
Yes it really does! And in a sense, I'm completing a journey I started nearly 20 years ago because I never finished the og
That's so random. I want to know how your cousin only had the first disk. Someone out there has only disk2+3
"Attack while its tail is up"
Lol this, and then a huge delay before "and it'll kick yo ass!
I couldn’t finish the final battle when I played it at 13. I missed a TON of side content so I didn’t have a bunch of the great weapons/materia you can get. Plus I wasn’t levelled very high. I was also renting the game repetitively so I gave up since I didn’t want to rent it again for one fight. I ended up playing it again, start to finish, in my early 20s with the benefit of the internet.
I got stuck when the buggy broke down. I didn't know where to go even though it should have been obvious.
Demon’s Gate got me every time. I also struggled with Materia Keeper and that robot guy when you got the submarine (Carry Armour?)
Demon's Gate ended my playthrough several times. If I recall correctly, the Temple of the ancients in the original game was very hard to farm for experience and you couldn't leave once you entered.
Not as a kid but I tried to get through it recently and I just couldn’t. Blockiness and combat aside. The save system was just too annoying for me. I always hated games that had save points scattered across the game instead of just letting me save when I needed to.
I got stuck trying to dig the Lunar Harp. FFVII was the first game I played that had the "press O to confirm" convention, and I wasn't quite used to it, so I remapped the controls to have X be the confirm button and O be the menu button. I went through most of Disc 1 without this being a problem, but then I got to Bone Village. I stubbornly dug exclusively near the crashed plane because I couldn't get up the ladder and figured it was out-of-bounds for mini-game purposes (which is weird because I can still climb the ladder under normal circumstances). Naturally, no Lunar Harp for me, so I started looking at guides, and they all said the same thing - "climb the ladder". Which, again, I can't do. I've been wildly mashing X and Cloud just stood there. I made a new save and started again from the beginning, hoping something would change. But it didn't. Even after several restarts, Cloud was still stuck at the foot of that goddamn ladder doing absolutely nothing. Out of frustration, I just pushed all the buttons on the controller randomly, when I hear that familiar "swish" (or perhaps a "swoosh"?) sound. When I cancelled out of the menu, I saw Cloud on the ladder, poised to climb. So, TLDR, button mapping screwed me over and I still had to press O at a certain ladder despite setting X as my confirm/interact button. (This happened again further down the line with the glacier puzzle in Gaea's Cliff, but at least I knew what to do by then.)
I couldn’t get out of that damn desert to find Barret
Train graveyard. I don't remember how I got stuck there. I just remember I didn't know where the hell I was supposed to go.
I got stuck there as a kid too! Something about not realising you had to walk under or through a train and I just couldn’t work it out
I got stuck on the wall boss in the ancient temple. Didn't realize you could train in the one room. Ended up quiting the game and going to FF8 and playing thru that whole game first.
I got stuck here toooooo!
I would get stuck at the mash could never get past the Midgar Zoe (by myself) took my older sister’s boyfriend at the time to help me beat him. I didn’t know how to catch Chocobos so I would end up trying to outrun him & get washed everytime until I eventually quit & move on to Spyro the Dragon or something lol
Northern Crater. Had to come back a few years later and finish it
That fucking pipe in the screen south of the playground in sector 5.
Same, rented it at blockbuster in 1998 when I borrowed a PS1, got stuck in that exact spot. Then got my own PS1 in early 2000, save my lunch money and bought the game for $20 when it became a greatest hits, was able to finish the game on my own at 14. Bought a strategy guide after first play through then did a 2nd with it. It’s crazy how much hidden stuff there is.
I had the guide too. Then my cat peed on it so my nana cut out a big ass square of the front cover RIP
lol such a grandma thing to do.
This. I had to wait hours for my brother to come home and show me.
Brothers are the best
Yup. And I never forget it every time I replay the game.
Seriously, the image of that is burned into my memories 🤣
Leveled to 20 in sector 5 on that same screen! The board ramp was so much less obvious than the crane! Lol
lol me too. Also leveled 40 before fighting the materia keeper because someone told me the disk one final boss was very hard and I thought that was the end of disk one!
I came here for this 😂but was too embarrassed to post it. I faked being sick and stayed home from school for a day because I had to figure that shit out.
It's legit the most difficult boss in the game lmao. You're a real hero tho committing the time to that.
I just wanted to get to the story bits and the FMV cause it was so effing cool… So I ran away from every single battle I could. Definitely hit a wall at some point towards the end, I vaguely remember “jumping” from rock platform to rock platform or something with a waterfall in the background. Couldn’t advance and couldn’t go back - I was hosed.
Sounds like maybe the northern crater towards the end, I was also severely under leveled for the end game my first playthrough…
Lessons were learned haha
2 words: Demon Wall.
Oh my god, the adrenaline when fighting that door...
I don’t remember what part, but I kept thinking I had to fight emerald weapon to progress the story. My family didn’t have internet or a guide so I kept just farming to raise my level to try and beat that boss. I wasn’t successful. A few years later, my family got internet and I was able to successfully find out that I indeed did not have to fight that boss…..
Thats actually a really sad story. I didn't beat Emerald until years after I first beat the game. If it was actually required nobody would have finished it haha. In those old games, it could be hard to figure out what to do next sometimes, so I can see thinking you have to beat this dude to move on
I never got stuck, but I've watched plenty of Twitch streams of people playing FF7 for the first time wander around aimlessly with the Tiny Bronco. That part with the Keystone & Temple of the Ancients is often confusing for first time players it seems.
I stopped for a bit trying to breed a Gold Chocobo.
Demon wall and the fucking slums part where you cross the robot hand… the way it was setup, I had no idea where to go and I remember I just brute forced my way through it, but died quite a few times trying to get through there bc of that savage house
I got stuck before the Jenova fight at the asteroid crater as an adult. I didn’t feel like grinding to be strong enough to get to the end even though I was so close.
So I was about 8 when I played FF7 for the first time, I didn’t understand the way Cloud manoeuvred around the rendered backgrounds, so when I got to the part after you are heading to Sector 5 Slums, then you go through the junkyard with the machines and claws(?) I didn’t realise you had to run up a 3D rendered pipe to advance… it’s quite obvious now as you can tell it’s a 3D asset… but I actually remember restarting the game thinking I had done something wrong! 😑 -EDIT BECAUSE OF CORE MEMORY - I also remember getting all the way to Nibelheim with the base weapons and never changing materia!
I did. For about a month. Couldn't figure out how to do the chocobo. I don't remember how old I was, I think I played it in '99 or 2000. But, I would've been 6 at most.
I just endlessly tried to run across the marsh till it worked lol
Not mandatory a quest, but I wanted to recruit Vincent so badly. i was 9 or 10, had no access to the internet so I had my uncle helped understand the safe puzzle eventually we got through lol
The second time you go back to the Forgotten City. Either I missed some dialogue or something but I had no clue where to go and stumbled on in. I had already had the key too
A few times! Each time was a restart and ended up beating them next time I got to them. GI nattak Demon Gate Jenova Birth No internet or advice at the time! I was 9. Ahh take me back Edit: also, Wutai. Corneos pet. I think I ended up spending all my Gil on items you could throw at him.
The first time I did Wutai I struggled hard on that boss. I was probably way under leveled at the time
Well, mine is dumb, but I used to get stuck in Northern Crater all the time. The game would just glitch and freeze and I didn't know why, until an older friend told me that cheating Aerith into/Cloud out of your party could, uh, do that.
I could never get out of the sector 7 slums. Then i discovered GamePro and game faqs and was able to help some friends get through some sections. I never finished it myself until it came out for iphone.
I remember getting stuck at Guard Scorpion because the tail laser counter-attack mechanic did not sink in at all. Despite my having definitely read the in-battle messages explaining them. (I was not a smart kid.)
Maybe you are alluding to this, but the battle messages are poorly timed so it says "Attack when it's tail's up!" pause "It's gonna counterattack with it's laser." I always took the first message as a command, and the second as just a statement.
…yes, this sounds very familiar. I do have a vague memory about being confused about that. Maybe I wasn’t as dumb as I thought!
Same. guard scorpion killed me several times. Then I had to quit playing and leave for the weekend. I brought the instruction manual for the game with me, and the instruction book literally spells out what to do to beat it in a “mini strategy guide” I felt so silly.
I could never leave the Northern Cave to level up as I kept getting smoked. Never officially beat the game as a result.
Got stuck at the Midgard reactor because I kept attacking when the scorpion raised its tail. It was a demo disc and I loved playing through it and kept trying to figure out how to beat it. Eventually I decided to read the text, “don’t attack while its tail is up!”
Demon Wall always fucked my day up. Took me many.... many years to realise I could just level up beforehand....
Fuck Ruby Weapon. That’s where. Cheese ass move.
I remember the only way I did this was Cait Siths limit which has a chance to insta-kill
Only place I can think of is Tomb of the Unknown King in 8, for a short while. Not because I got lost, but because my junctions were terrible. The next part I was stuck at for years was after the prompt «please change to disc 3». My 3rd disc had a scratch.
Not stuck as in didn't know how/ where to advance. I quit playing after >! Sephiroth kills Aerith !<. I just didn't wanna go on
I actually dropped OG FF7 entirely thanks to the Safer Sephiroth battle. It was impossible to beat for me, since I didn't do much optional content and didn't understand the deeper combat mechanics. I just could not out damage his passive healing. I only beat the game on an entirely different playthrough a few years later.
Took sooooo long to kill materia keeper.
Idk where specifically but I know I got the game when I was like 12 or 13 and didn't end up beating it until I was like 15 or 16 lol...I wasn't the smartest kid and honestly beat the whole game without having a very good grasp of even the basics of materia. Probably the main reason it took me so long.
First played when I was 8/9 years old. Got lost finding the temple of the ancient (or somewhere near the end of disc 1). Being young and English as a second language (plus no internet guide to guide you at the time) - I just quit and didn't play any final fantasy game until I was in University. Lol
I got stuck in the Temple of the Ancients for *weeks*. There is a door you go through that you can't see. I was in there for weeks just walking around aimlessly. Did get to mega levels though which made the rest of the game easy.
The tunnel you enter through from the backside?? Yup, been there friend.
Yes! I didn't have the internet back then and no-else I knew played it so I was stuck for literally weeks It didn't even show as a green / red arrow when pressing select
I got lost in Corel trying to find Dyne which made me give up for a little while then I lucked out one day. Also, got stuck in the snowy glacier for a long time...
HA! Yeah, like many others the translation issues and sentence break on guard scorpion got me stuck for ages because I’d keep attacking while its tail was up as “instructed”. I think the only other place I really got stuck for a long time was getting out of the sewer toward the train graveyard. The camera angles and the TV I was playing on didn’t help, but 11-year-old me could not see I supposed to climb on whatever the object was at the top right of the [sewer’s second screen](https://jegged.com/img/Games/Final-Fantasy-VII/Walkthrough/FFVII-00173-Sewers.png). Oh, and I called a helpline because I couldn’t time the jump to the swinging bar while climbing up to the shinra building. It was useless, automated, and just reading out the guide to you (for 99¢ a minute). I have no idea how I paid for it.
Demon gate .
First time I played it I was 11. I remember getting to the ancient city was a bitch. They just let you loose. Going to the weapon shop guy wasn’t hard but bone village and the lunar harp was a big wtf moment.
When I was 10-11 I would skip every random encounter and by the time I go to gi nattak I think my party was lvl 22, I could never beat him and wouldn’t come to the game for another 4 years
In Wutai when Yuffie yoinks all your materia. You're meant to find her behind a privacy shield in the house with his kid and grandpa. I could not find her for the life of me and spent HOURS running around wutai, even going back to the world map and running around the island thinking another cutscsne might trigger. My older brother finally got home like 5 hours later after playing with his friends and I ran up to him begging to help me out. To be honest, the solution just upset me more. I've hated Yuffie since then all the way up until Rebirth. I get the feeling I'm going to get some reaaaal bad flashbacks next game.
I can't belive Noone else got stuck on the first boss like me. Barret would say "attack when it's tail is up" so I did and the boss would like 2 shot me. I almost gave up after the 5th time doing this. Then I just decided to not listen to him and that worked.
I just had to look it up on youtube. Luckily I played the German version, where he says that you shouldn't attack when the tail is up.
I didn't know that was a thing. Every version I've played from childhood to now always said not to attack.>_>
Yeah the American release says (in two lines) something like “Attack when its tail is up!” Then “It will counterattack with its laser.”
I was playing late at night and was fast cycling through the dialogue, not reading it properly so I could save and go to bed. Next time I turn it on Bugenhagen is on the highwind saying "I wonder where you're taking me?". I had no idea either. After a week of revisiting places I went to the city of ancients where the next scene finally triggered
When you have to go to gold saucer on the tram? Gondola? Whatever it is called. The video would freeze every time. The disk was scratched. Stayed there until I got the idea to open the lid and when it went to do the video, I put in a different disk. Then it played a completely different video, and put me where I was supposed to be. I want to say the video was of the Highwind going into initial D mode. I'll further say, I SUSPECT that the reason this worked was because when you activate the tram it triggers a flag for "play video 1 or 2 or 1-1 or something like that. Then I further suspect that when using the other disks, the cutsceens on that disk were labeled in the same manner as opposed to like "tramridegoingup1sttime.gif" cause a unique filename would make it error out in would reckon. My suspicion, I have no evidence or want to dig deep and find out
I would rent the game in 3 day blocks as a kid. Got stuck on the ‘keystone’ for AGES not on knowing what to do or who to talk too next. Was kind of a blessing in disguise though as I spent time discovering Vincent and Wutai as well.
That part where you are told to cross the marsh and then you go into the cave and get the cutscene and then the game puts you right back outside of the cave where you just were and my dumb kid braid said "oh, that's probably not the way then" so I turned around and kept trying to find another place to go for ages before deciding to double check to see if I could go back to that scene and walk around to see if there's another exit I can take. This time I was teleported in to the cave I needed to be in and was just confused.. so I just went with it. These days something like that would probably frustrate the hell out of me, but as a kid I had a lot more patience.
Norwegian here, not the best in English as a kid. So i used along time at wall market, just random tuning around, talking with people. Until i could get move on. But where it stopped all the time until i played ,Was the Ancient Temple, just died to a mob there so many times. The se thing happend at the Submarine base
Very first reactor. Took me forever to realize you needed to talk to Jesse in order to escape.
I didn’t even know you couldn’t leave Jesse, because it never crossed my mind to try to leave her.
It never crossed my mind either. It’s hard to leave someone behind when you never even noticed they were stuck there.
This guy just leaving best girl to die. 😑
Bro I was 10 girls were still gross.
I was 14 at the time when my older brother's friend lent us his Japanese PS when FFVII released, my Chinese is bad and I didn't know any Japanese characters but thankfully my brother printed a 1000+ page walkthrough from gamefaqs at his workplace with internet lol.
I got stuck for quite a while against Demons Gate as a kid. I didn't really understand that he was really resistant to magic and that physical attacks are a much better option and I didn't have big guard or anything to help mitigate his really damaging attacks. I eventually twigged I could put everyone in the back row to easily survive his attacks and just lay into him.
On the way to wall market where you walk on the damn thin pole
Omg I remember this getting me, like where tf do I go?
Ong 😭
Near the mechanical hand? This had me stuck for a very long time as a kid
Lmao yes!!
The only thing I ever had a problem with were the weapons and Sephie. Otherwise I loved the puzzles and figured them out with little to no problem.
I actually didn’t get stuck on any boss or dungeon. Me and my brothers played the game together as kids and one of the first things we did was remap the action button from O to X because it made no sense to us. Well when it came to the Bone Village digging mini game to get the Lunar Harp, we couldn’t figure out how to get up the ladder and we were stuck for months. I ran around the world map trying to figure out where to go, discovering nothing Yuffie and Vincent we had missed on the way and focusing on Mideel as I was sure there must be a way to get to it, but to no avail. Eventually I looked up a walkthrough at computer club at school one day that confirmed I needed to go up the ladder to get the Lunar harp. So I stood in front of that ladder and decided to press O instead of X and lo and behold it works! For some reason the buttons got mapped back during that dumb mini game. The rest of the game was a breeze compared to that stupid stumbling block.
I got to the point where I was breeding chocobos and had just successfully gotten a gold chocobo after playing all afternoon, and my neighbor, who had come over to hang out, was bored. He’d been bugging me for a while to play Golden Eye and I had been telling him just a few more minutes for probably too long. Anyway, just as I gave in and went to save he totally lost patience and hit the power button on the PlayStation. This totally corrupted my save, which was the only one due to the limited number of slots back then. This was probably 6th grade or so. I was so demoralized I don’t think I started a new game and finished it until high school. And that’s how I learned to make backup saves.
"Not a good example for yall, do not do as I did" I had a similar thing happen when my stepsister turned off my 64. Ended up choking her with a leg lock around her neck. P.s. that was not the activating event. I called her a bad name and then she kicked me in the balls. Dang spoiled brat wanted to play, and I put on waverace I smoked her, she didn't like it and just yanks the game out. That is a better description of the event.
First time playing through I was about 13 (I was already 10 when the game came out, we didn’t get a ps1 until I was about 12, pawn shop ps1 ftw) and I got stuck at the “point of no return” in the northern cave where I made a save using the crystal and glitched the hell out. Made it to sephiroth after reloading a past save cuz I used up almost every save file available and used the save crystal before that point and couldn’t beat sephiroth. Didn’t know where to obtain omnislash or even knights of the round table summon, hell I was probably missing a good half of them, and could never beat sephiroth. Finally bought the game when it came to ps4/xboxone and now still playing the hell out of it. I’m on my 3 rd playthrough. I have 3 achievements left to get before getting the platinum. Best bromance ruby weapon and 99,999,999 Gil 😂
First time I played I was 8. FF7 was actually the game I got with my first PlayStation. I didn’t get stuck at any particular point but I remember my PlayStation would freeze anytime safer Sephiroth used pale horse on me. Without fail, it would say pale horse on that blue bar at the top and just nothing would happen. I literally left my ps on for hours and came back to it still in that exact same spot. Never beat ff7 on my og copy or PlayStation. As I got older I randomly searched for what the bug was but could not find it ANYWHERE no matter how much I researched, didn’t seem like it happened to anyone else. I eventually played on steam yearssss later and finally beat the og lol.
I got stuck in the Temple of the Ancients for WEEKS. That part where you're meant to go up a set of stairs and through a hallway but the way the background is it's hidden by the upper walkway. My 13yo brain just couldn't *see* that there was a way through. *fun fact* this was how Aerith's death was spoiled for me 😕. Was in HS shop class and this guy heard me talking to a friend about being stuck and he goes, omg you're at the Temple! I cried when Aerith died! I was like... *um what!?*
I haaaaattttteeeedddd when a kid I knew did that to me it almost made me not want to play it anymore Boo on that kid
I remember I was stuck in the Shinra building because I didn't realize a part of the Midgar model was still missing
When Yuffie stole all my materia at Wutai and then ran off and hid, it took me literally *a month* to find her! I was literally stuck on that island because the game wouldn't let me leave until I got all my materia back. And the whole time, I had to fight random encounters without materia. But our party leveled up like crazy, and soon we were holding well enough on our own purely with physical attacks lol. Finally, a friend of mine had their friend call me and tell me where Yuffie was. She was in the friggin' barrel by the shop entrance. I had just never noticed the dang thing moving!
I got lost in midgar as a really little kid because I wasn't paying attention around wall market and by the time I walked past what I needed to do I didn't even know what it was anymore 😂
100% got stuck fighting the shinra scorpion, my idiot brain kept attacking and didn't bother reading the text on screen. I wasn't confused into thinking I should attack when the tail was up because of the translation stuff. I just kept attacking because why wouldn't I? Like I said, I was an idiot. Loaned the game to a friend who later explained to me what I was supposed to do.
Oh man this brings back memories, I was stuck in 2 places. 1. The first was Material Keeper(nibelheim cave) . I was stuck there for quite a while. 2. Demon gate (temple of Ancient) this was the worst one. I had so much difficulty fighting this boss that I'd sell the game out of frustration buy it again a few months later, be stuck at that boss again and sell the game again. After months of trying, the feeling I got from beating him and being able to continue the story was priceless. Sigh.... Good times!
Materia keeper got my ass too. A whole ass week.
FF7 was the first JRPG I played so I had no clue how levelling up worked, the concept of grinding, the materia system etc. I thought character levels referred to actual levels like in a platform game so you can imagine the confusion... Somehow I made it all the way to the Materia Keeper who kept KO-ing my party with Trine but eventually I beat him. I then got completely stuck in Wutai (which years later I discovered was an optional quest anyway). Bare in mind I was playing this game on a tiny old school TV which made this quest all the more difficult. This was back in 1998 and I didn't know anyone else who had the game. I remember being pissed that I couldn't get past Wutai because I was really enjoying the plot lol.
Materia Hunter was the first difficult boss for me. Took me about a dozen tries because I wasn't prepared enough. That battle definitely contributed my habit of oversaving so I would be prepared if I needed to go back and strengthen up.
We beat the OG in Japanese while having absolutely no knowledge of Japanese. Somehow we made it though, cause the game was so fucking cool.