wow. I'm not a JRPG guy. the absolute farthest I'd go would be pokemon but that's it. so I guess you could say this was my first real JRPG. while its not perfect and still has tons of issues like annoying checkpoints, cryptic gameplay, random encounters, stupid difficulty spikes and combat that can be very slow at times, I was able to look past those issues because the story, characters and music were all so great. easily the best soundtrack on the ps1. I was completely floored by the story and the characters even if it is super overly complicated. But I rooted for them all the way. The huge twists like Aerith getting fucking murdered (even when I knew it was gonna happen) left me in shock and awe, Cloud's memories and the climax involving sephiroth were all just so big and huge and I was just sucked in. And yet despite that, the game never took itself too seriously. It kinda had that zelda atmosphere to it, with funny characters, goofy villains and some winks at the audience. I still wouldn't call myself a JRPG guy, I mean most of them I still think are WAY too long, stupid, melodramatic, and the first one I tried was FFXIII and that game kinda poisoned me on the genre, but I can now say that I'm willing to try more games in the series.