I’ll be the first to admit fandom: I played the SNES games obsessively, and I’ve finished the playstation ones. And really, without knowing the playstation games this movie will make little sense to you. It is assumed you know the characters and their backstory.

That said, this movie is like a hour and a half of beautifully made cutscene. Fantastic animation. The hair and cloth are rendered in painstaking detail and behave beautifully, billowing in the wind and moving quite naturally. The fight scenes are stunning.

In short, if you know/love Final Fantasy and/or exquisite computer-generated graphics you’ll love this. Otherwise, probably not. It was a fun ride for me.