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I have a confession to make: I have never played Final Fantasy VII (FFVII) before.

Now, before all you fans out there start brandishing your Buster Swords or going Chaos on me, please hear me out. While I will not know firsthand how wonderful the original game is and why it still continues to be one of the most successful Final Fantasy games, let this be a review of a game-based movie from a non-gamer's perspective and understand how the other side of the universe thinks of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children.

A friend of mine introduced me to Advent Children, claiming that the graphics were exceptional and the fight scenes brilliantly crafted. When I laid eyes on it, I agreed wholeheartedly, for the first thing that took my breath away was the visuals.

They are stunning. Gorgeous. Absolutely impressive. The amount of realism and detail in the graphics from texture of the ground, the lighting of the various scenes and to the movement of the characters was unprecedented. The battle scenes are indeed spectacular. While they definitely defy all laws of Physics, I say, who cares? To date, I doubt that there has been any other animated feature film that has reached such a high level of CGI mastery as Advent Children. In this aspect, Square Enix has truly outdone itself and raised the bar of CGI excellence.

Plot-wise, however, Advent Children would be fairly confusing to people who have never played FFVII. This sense of confusion sets in right from the beginning. Straight after the opening sequence, there is the line '498 years ago' appearing on screen. 498 years ago? Uh, what? After doing much research, I finally realised that the opening sequence was actually a reanimation of the original FFVII game epilogue that was set 500 years after the end of the game. Still, there is a brief introduction to orientate the viewer about the situation in Gaia (the name of the planet in FFVII) two years ago, when Sephiroth (the game's main villain) tried to destroy the planet, and the present situation in Gaia now. However, it still lacks enough information on the varied characters of the Final Fantasy VII world, which plays a large part in understanding how Advent Children ticks. The explanation of the new disease, Geostigma, that's plaguing Gaia in Advent Children is also confusing without prior knowledge of the alien entity, JENOVA, who is the root of the conflicts in FFVII and Advent Children.

There is also little character development for the most part of the movie, save for the protagonist Cloud Strife (it is Cloud's story after all) and, to a small extent, the new main villain, Kadaj. Most of Cloud's party from the original game make relatively short appearances, while the role of the two most frequently appearing Turks, Reno and Rude, seem to be mainly there for providing comic relief. The other two villains alongside Kadaj, Yazoo and Loz, play secondary roles to Kadaj and have considerably less screen time and dialogue.

However, it is easy to overlook these shortcomings of Advent Children for the movie was mainly meant for fans of the game to enjoy. As mentioned earlier, there's more than enough visual eye-candy (and that's not entirely just a reference to the pretty boy characters in Advent Children) to go around. Another fact is that the movie, staying true to the franchise of Final Fantasy as a whole, has an awesome soundtrack. Many of the music tracks in Advent Children are remixes or piano versions of their original counterparts from the game's original soundtrack, with familiar melodies of Tifa's Theme, Aerith's Theme, Those Who Fight and J-E-N-O-V-A, as well as specially composed music for the movie, such as Cloud Smiles. The music adds to the atmosphere of the different scenes, making your heart race in anticipation or calming you down with its soothing qualities. The piece that caught my attention most, though, was the remix of the iconic One-Winged Angel (one of Sephiroth's themes in FFVII), Advent: One-Winged Angel. The music is a flawless combination of orchestral music with a rock band to create a darker and heavier feel to the original piece that is perfectly fitting of the scene during which it was played Cloud's final showdown with Sephiroth.

For all its realistic graphics, Final Fantasy VII Advent Children is still an animated film. Just as actors bring characters to life in live-action movies, the voice actors bring characters to life in animated shows. Having first watched Advent Children in its original Japanese dub with subtitles, I fell in love with the voice actors. A good majority of the Japanese cast, especially those voicing the main characters, are well-known voice actors in the Japanese anime industry, and their experience clearly translates over to the excellent voicing of Advent Children's various characters. The English cast also exceeded my expectations, mainly because it is quite common for English dubbing (or dubbing of any other language) of anime to go horribly wrong. In this aspect, Square Enix has done well to ensure the audio quality of the movie is not compromised.

With gorgeous graphics, an amazing repertoire of music and a stellar voice cast, Advent Children is definitely a treat for fans of Final Fantasy VII and provides closure to the abrupt ending of the original game.

As for non-gamers? Consider me taken.

The official site of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children can be found here.

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