LEGEND CREATION - NO. 7 CLOUD STRIFE

This is the review of "Legend Creation - No. 7 Cloud Strife", a large size action figure in the region of those from Hot Toys or similar scale produced by a third party manufacturer which I believe is from China.

I don't know much about the producer or anything else related to it but I know this character is from "Final Fantasy VII", a popular 1997 role-playing video game developed by Square for the PlayStation console and and the animation film "Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children (2005).

Anyway, let's go straight to the review, first the massive box/packaging and the box art:

My hand can only cover a quarter the box:

And now, out of the box:

You will get all this stuff:

And now the 10 inch (about 25.4cm) tall figure, Cloud Strife:

The sculpt, detailing and finishing quality is quite good actually, coming from an unknown Chinese factory. I'm quite happy with it. 

Articulation wise, for a typical figure at this scale, it's not bad but not great either but even when we look at the more premium segment like those 1/6 scale figures from Hot Toys, they don't offered much on the articulation department either. As long as you don't expect for "SH Figuarts" or "Figma" level of articulation, I think this is quite decent.

The optional left arm and optional hands:

And of course, the highlights of this figure is basically all these swords that comes with it, these 6 sets of swords called "Fusion Sword":

And of course this iconic "Buster Sword"

The "Fusion Sword" is composed of six swords that assemble into a single large sword with a shape identical to the Buster Sword. The individual swords consist of the main blade, a hollow front blade, a pair of back blades, and a pair of side blades. Cloud carries the weapons in a harness on his back, the handles emerging from the sides for him to reach behind him and draw them. The harness only has slots for four blades in Advent Children, but in other media and merchandise, it usually has six slots to hold the full set.

I found this picture below from Google Search explaining about the theory of how Fusion Sword combines becoming Buster Sword:

Note: I do not claim any rights for the above picture of "Fushion Sword" combination theory. All rights belong to the owner.

Let's have a look at the iconic "Buster Sword":

"Buster Sword" is Cloud Strife's trademark weapon, and was wielded before him by Zack Fair and Angeal Hewley (in Sony PSP video game - "Final Fantasy Crisis Core"). The Buster Sword serves as an iconic image for Cloud and Final Fantasy VII due to its massive size and is wielded by Cloud in most of his appearances.

The detailing and finishing of the all the swords are good but far from excellent because I spotted a few notable minor paint chip here and there. Then again, this figure is quite cheap, about USD42.00 (about EUR36.00 / SGD57.00 / JPY 4,632.00) so I guess we get what we paid for, though I'm not sure either if this is only happened to my specific unit or is this normal throughout the finished products.

There's a harness behind the figure with 4 slots only so you can do this:

Would be better if we can have 6 slots but yeah, it is what it is...

Action/display base is provided, you need to do some simple assembly and screwing here and there, it's not difficult and this is the result: 

And now, just for fun sake, it's posing time for some extra photos and to my surprise, I don't really need to use the action/display base while doing the photo shooting because the figure seems to be able to stand still on it own without the need of any support from the action/display base:

Overall, yes this is a knock off copy of that "Play Arts Kai" figures series thus justify the cheaper price but then again the quality is far from terrible and truth be told, I'm quite pleased with it actually. If you dislike it and only prefers to get the original, then by all means go ahead and buy them but for those who are low on budget and can only afford certain amount of price bracket, then you may consider this accordingly.

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