"I hope the story is good cause the Animation is state of the art." If you haven't played FF7, then you may not get much bang from it story-wise. They had written the movie specifically for the fans, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but they made little effort to extend a hand to audiences who would not be familiar to FF7. Therefore, the significance and dramatic impact of the events in the film and would probably be lost on most audiences which is a shame.

The visuals were quite spectacular and the movie is incredible from a technical standpoint. But IMO, I found the animation direction just a little too much on the "gimmicky" side of things. It's like they pulled every CG trick in the book they could think of and threw it in there for no other reason other than because they could. Reminds me of an old saying: Just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean you should do it... ;-)

While it results in some spectacular and intricate action sequences (I could frame-step through it all day), it also results in visual sensory overload and things can become confusing to follow. The impression I was left with was that they replaced valuable screen time that could have been used to tell a decent story with a lot of eye candy.

I watched the film specifically for its eye candy, so it's not a huge sticking point with me, but I don't think it's particularly good film making policy to sacrifice telling a good story (ultimately, what a film is supposed to do) for fluff.

I didn't hate FF:AC by any stretch but I wouldn't exactly heartily recommend it to non-fans either. However, I would recommend that anyone into CG/animation should consider adding it to their collection--- or at least watch it once.

-n