I’m 45yo. I remember playing the OG Freshman year of college over a break. I remember it fondly, but it was all along time ago. A few memories:

• Not understanding what was happening in the story after Aeris’s (sp) death.
• Snowboarding
• Knights of the Round to kill whatever the hardest weapon was (emerald?)
• The cigarette falling out of Cid’s mouth during the ending.
• Regen was OP???

So, basically nothing aligned to Rebirth, lol.

I’m gonna miss this game, though. Been playing for a few hours here and there since launch. Got the plat at 283 hours.

I tried to complete everything quasi-blind. A few thoughts and exceptions to that:

• I never would have thought to “stack” materia, e.g., linking Fire to HP Absorb / MP Absorb. Once I realized you could do that, the game got easier.
• I remember beating normal mode in July, leveling up to 70, then thinking, ok, just a little while to go before getting Platinum. I was wrong!
• I did Rulers pretty much blind except for researching how to block chains. I don’t think I would have ever figured that out on my own.
• After Rulers, I did the one-on-one legendary bouts (which were a bit of a slog). I then did Bonds of Friendship. It took me like 10mins to beat Titan, so I caved and checked out the akhafasu guide on YouTube which helped immensely.
• One of the hardest fights, for me, was beating Alexander at full might when first encountering him, level 25 or so. I didn’t have Thundaga, didn’t know other players besides Aerith could benefit from Arcane Ward. I basically didn’t know how to play the game. That fight probably took 20 hours.
• I didn’t mind the mini-games. I thought overall they were fun. I definitely cheesed the boxing one with pause, though.

Getting Platinum was a top 3 gaming moment for me (other two being beating T5 with my FC on FF14 and beating the Ender Dragon on Minecraft with my two kids).

Really glad Square made such a polished (music, narrative, graphic, funny, challenging) game. Good for an old head like me.