Like with many games that have been created, there have also been many games that were bootlegged afterwards. However, one of the most pleasing bootlegs to this day is a recreation of Final Fantasy VII. Final Fantasy VII for NES is a rather unique experience in itself, almost completely modifying the build of the original Final Fantasy VII and instead giving it a more FFI-FFV kind of build. However, there are still a drastic number of changes that make this one stand out from all the rest. Let us take a quick look at what I mean:

★Starting out with just the overall build of Final Fantasy VII versus its NES bootleg, we see a drastic change in the layout of the game, as well as actions and visuals. Now, remember this, it is a NES game after all, so expecting top of the line visuals is more insane than jumping off of a mountain without a parachute. For the visual aspect of the game, the graphics have been pixelated down to the standard visuals of the first Final Fantasy, however, because such effort has gone into the patched version of this, one can honestly view it as an upgrade to the standard NES appearance.

★Next off, we have a few more changes to the gameplay. Starting with the monsters you encounter. Unlike the real Final Fantasy VII, monsters in the NES version level up equal to your team's overall level and regardless of where you are at, the enemies remain randomized (rather than specific monsters in specific areas). This not only throws off the gamer, but provides the gamer an opportunity to see every single enemy in the game, regardless of where they are at. In addition to this, the stats of the enemies will always remain slightly higher than the level of the team, thus providing a little more of a challenge to the player.

★Now we will be discussing the bosses. Similar to the original, the bosses in this game are all the same (excluding a few changes here and there), depending on if you have the most recent patch for this bootleg, you will encounter bosses that aren't even a boss at all. Then, in addition to this, most of the bosses are obnoxiously overpowered. However, the bosses do not change in level in comparison to the team, so higher level team will most likely win (as long as they don't get wrecked by standard enemies).

★Next up is the materia and equipment. As with the original, there is a wide variety of materia and equipment available, however, unlike the original, there is also a drastic change to the way all of this works. Starting off this irritation, we have weapons that can increase in level (much similar to games such as King's Field 2). As the level of the weapon increases, so does the damage it deals, same thing goes for materia. But, unlike in the original, materia is very limited, leaving you only able to equip one materia at a time. Also, everything is accessible from any shop in the game, however, as the armor increases, it's cost also increases tenfold. And last but not least, despite there being a wide variety of armor, armor is limited to its weight properties, leaving certain characters able to only access certain kinds of armor, and each armor adding different stats.

★Finally, we have our characters. Once again, depending on if you patched this game (using the patch from RomHacking), determines what characters are available. However, even with the patch, Yuffie and Vincent are still unavailable. Oh, and as an added bonus, limit breaks no longer exist (for the most part). Each character is pretty much equal to each other, meaning you can have an entire team of replicas if you wanted to.

So, as an overall view of this game, it is indeed an interesting piece of work, bit without the patch (from RomHacking), your odds of even playing it completely are slim to none (as the unpatched version has hundreds of game breaking errors).

With the patch, this game is an 8 out of 10.
Without the patch, this game is a 4 out of 10.