Item description:

This game was originally created by Shenzhen Nanjing Technology around 2006. Winning battles rewards you with a random amount of Exp, and gil equal to a percentage of that EXP.

Playable Characters
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Cloud Strife
Barret Wallace
Tifa Lockheart
Aeris Gainsborough
Red XIII (Nanaki)
Cait Sith
Cid Highwind

Sorry, No Yuffie or Vincent...Yet:)

Earning Experience
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There are 4 kinds of Exp and Levels.

Character Exp = EXP is given to all characters participating in a battle, regardless if a character is dead. Level-Ups increase all stats for that character. Max level for characters is 100.

Materia Exp = This is earned as a spell is used, every time Materia levels up, more spells are learned. Max level for Materia is 9.

Spell Exp = This is also earned as a spell is used. Level-Ups increase its power of that spell, but you must visit a magic shop to upgrade the spell. Max level for a spell is 20.

Weapon Exp = This is earned as a weapon is used. Level-Ups increase the power of the weapon, but you must visit a Weapon shop to upgrade the weapon. Max level for a weapon is 20.

Status attributes
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Hit Points (HP) = Endurance
Strength (Str) = Physical Strength
Vitality (Vit) = Physical Defense
Intelligence (Int) = Magic Strength
Spirit (Spr) = Magic Defense
Agility (Agl) = Affects turn order

Armor Classes
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Each character can equip certain armor types. The different types are:

Cloth
Leather
Mail
Plate

Materia
-------
There are 7 kinds of materia, each one is brought in by each character.
* Fire (RedXIII)
* Water (Cid)
* Bolt (Cloud)
* Wind (Tifa)
* Earth (Barret)
* Light (Aerith)
* Ice (Cait Sith)

About This Hack

This is a complete overhaul of Shenzhen Nanjing's game.

First I'll go into the changes made during the original FFVII Upgrade Project by the super awesome Lindblum back in 2008.

From the original version, Lindblum translated all dialog, character names, enemy names, equipment names, item names, item descriptions, menu text, and battle text. Now some things did have to be abbreviated due to size constraints. The font was improved, the game was rebalanced make the game faster and easier. And spell graphics were changed.

Along with these changes Lindblum also made these changes:

Made it possible for the character to run by holding B while moving.

While riding a chocobo, the chocobo music will play.

He made the songs "Those chosen by the planet" and "Ahead on our Way" that are used in this game.

***And best of all, Lindblum created a weapon shop that you can use to purchase weapons!

Then Tsumai hacked the music engine to allow looping and branching to save space when making custom music. and Tsumai also created the standard battle music and the "Prelude" song for this game.

Dr. Mario for creating the enemy sprites for Soldier, Guard Scorpion, Air Buster, Safer Sephiroth, and "Bizaro Sephiroth. He also created many of the mugshots used in this game.

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Now I'll go into the changes made for the current project and thank those who have made contributions or this project. I picked up the project in 2009 and 4 years later, the game is now complete.

Thanks to Lindblum for creating the English patch along with the other improvements you've made.

Thanks to Chpexo for:

Creating the title screen logo.
Creating the Mug Shots for the main characters, Yuffie, Marlene, Priscilla, and Sephiroth.
For creating the song "Underneath the Rotting Pizza".

And thanks to Vivify93 and Chpexo for making Tifa, Cloud, and Aerith's battle stance sprites.

Thanks to Dizzy9 for:

Removing the HP restore upon leveling up. (Originally, when a character leveled up, their HP and MP was completely replenished.)

Altering the Phoenix Down item so it will only revive a character with a fraction of their HP rather than with full HP.

Fixing the enemy difficulty setting issue with the world map.
(The strength of enemies was decided by each screen of the world map. Originally, the world map was split in half. So, for example, enemies around the Northern crater would be as strong as the enemies at Costa Del Sol.)

And best of all! Dizzy9 added new battle animations to the battle system! Now separate animations are called when using Items and Magic!

Originally there were only 3 animations sprites for the characters:
Battle stance
Attack/Magic/Item (All 3 shared the same sprite)
Death Sprite

I want to thank Sirasu and his group (They are creating a FFVII NES demake for the PC titled FF7FC)
They created most of the enemy sprites used in this game along with the Field sprites for Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aeris, Cid, RedXIII, Cait Sith, Yuffie, Shinra Guard, Don Corneo, Sephiroth, Zack, Hojo, Rufus, Reno, Rude, Wedge, Chocobo, Priscilla, and several of the towns people. They also made some of the Map graphics used in this game.

Thanks to Keithisgood for creating the ending dialogue for this game and the dialogue for Shera while she was explaining what occured with Cid and the rocket.

Thanks to Vincent7 for playing through the game looking for bugs.

And thanks to DarkMew5 who made the improvements to RedXIII's original battle stance sprite.

Now, onto the changes I made:

*Cait Sith has been added back into the game after the Temple of the Ancients. (originally, the other Cait Sith does not appear and join the party at the Temple of the Ancients). Events and dialogue have also been altered so he will be fully a part of the rest of the game.

*All map graphics have been altered and layouts have been changed to be more faithful to the PS1 version.

*The world map was completely redone to match the PS1 version.

*All character and NPC sprites were replaced.

*All character battle sprites have been redone. Plus I made the Magic and Item sprites for the characters.
(Thanks to Vivify93 and Chpexo for creating the battle stance sprites for Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa)

*A better ending was added that included ending screens based on the ending in the PS1 version.

*I made it so MP is no longer restored when leveling up, this makes MP restore items much more usefull.

*I completely redid the stat growths for the characters, enemies, and bosses.

*Redid enemy groups and fixed the issue with text overflowing onto the enemy graphics.

*Changes have been made to the dialogue to fix spelling errors, and to fix parts that did not make much sense. (Such as Barret telling the group that they will meet on the bridge in front of the reactor, while they were on the bridge in front of the reactor.)
*Also quite a bit of text has been added that was not originally in the game.

*I improved many of the events in this game and created many of them from scratch.

*Redid the strength bonuses given by armor and weapons, also increased the amount of power weapons gain by leveling up.

*Increased power magic gains from leveling up.

*Altered some of the effects of items.

*Added the Battle Colluseum to Gold Saucer.

*Added 8 extra hidden bosses into the game.

*Added a Magic shop, Weapon shop, and Item shop to Shinra HQ.

*Changed the colors of Numbers that appear in battles.
Amounts of HP restored during battle now appear as green.
"Miss" is displayed in yellow
and damage recieved and dealt is shown as white.

*Moved the location of these numbers to make them more visible.

*Changed the party layout on the battle screen so the characters are in a diagnal line rather than a straight line. (No special reason for this, I just think it looks better.)

*Altered the looks of menus a bit to make the blue color brighter and made the borders thinner.

*Added dialogue to explain bits of the story that were learned in Disc 2 and 3 of the original game. (Since most of disc 2 and 3 were cut out of the NES version.)

*I created and added the following songs into the game:
(Originally, this game only had I think 8 songs, thanks to a great deal of empty space, there is now a total of 29 songs.)

Hurry
FF7 Main theme
Those who Fight Further
Victory theme
Valley of the Fallen Star
Mark of the Traitor
Chocobo theme
Anxious Heart
Oppressed People
Tifa's theme
Gold Saucer
Don of the Slums
Infiltrating Shinra Tower
Lurking in the Darkness
Parochial Town
Aerith's theme
You can hear the Cry of the Planet
Shinra Company
Costa Del Sol
Reunion
Burried in the Snow
Off the Edge of Despair
Great Warrior
It's Difficult to Stand on Two Feet, isn't it?

Known Issues

The only thing I've noticed, every now and then, the auto tile for water appears glitched. This has only happened a few times in my whole time of playing.

Other than that, I don't know of any other issues in the game. Me, Vincent7, and others have gone through the game to find bugs, and I think just about everything has been found. If anyone finds any bugs, please let me know. Send me a PM through Romhacking.net I'm listed as Lugia2009

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I am including patches for both Lindblum's English translation of this game and my Hack of this game.

The patches that will be included are:

* Final Fantasy VII Advent Children (Finished Version)- This patch is to be used with the original untouched Chinese version of the game.

*FF7-English Patched - This is Lindblum's english patch for the game. This patch is to be used with the original untouched Chinese version of the game.