Final Fantasy VII has been hailed as one of the greatest role-playing video games of all time. Released for the PlayStation in 1997 and remade for modern PlayStation consoles in 2020, it follows a tale of the mercenary protagonist Cloud Strife, known early in the adventure to carry an enormous broadsword called the Buster Sword. It’s iconic. It’s massive. And it’s been replicated with LEGO bricks in 1:1 scale by Kevin Wanner (Brick Ninja).

Kevin Wanner poses with the buster sword, which measures 6 feet long and over 1 foot wide.

Kevin mentions he based his LEGO Buster Sword model on the version appearing in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Any sizable LEGO build has its challenges with stability; on Kevin’s Buster Sword, the largest stability challenge was incorporating the negative space low on the blade. He kept these holes to place Materia upgrades in these slots—an awesome play feature in addition to creating powerful poses!

The LEGO Buster Sword on its display stand, materia inserted into the slots.

I’m always interested in how other builders handle the structural and aesthetic challenges presented by building at this scale. Kevin shared with us at BrickNerd some of his progress photos from the design process. Take a look at the gallery below, which shows critical structure points like the Materia slots and the connection point of the hilt to the blade. The sword weighs 10.75 lb (about 5kg), which stresses these spots greatly.

Finally, Kevin has a video demonstrating the stability of his replica on Instagram. One could possibly cleverly hide design shortcomings in photos. But in video, there’s nothing to hide behind!

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What other massive objects have you seen made in 1:1 scale? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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