Game - Final Fantasy 7, Day 52
Hours Played/Hours Total - 16 hrs / 70 hrs
Starting Point - Nearby Junon.
Current Goal - Return to the City of the Ancients and figure out what Aeris was doing. Stop Sephiroth at some point. Save the world!
What Happened - Hoo boy! I am closing in on the ending. If I don't wrap it up on this day...I'll be wrapping it up on the next! Expect a lot of side questing going down during this post. Enough with the foreword, on with the...rest of the words!
Despite my current need to head for the Ancient's Capital, I felt like exploring for a while. I took the submarine and searched the depths of...the planet. Not too much to see down there really. The biggest things are Emerald Weapon and a downed Shinra airplane. So I set my sights on the downed plane. Once inside, I am treated to a plethora of new fun items!...It also houses some of the hardest encounters in the game. Before getting too far in, I met up with everybody's favorite! The Turks! Reno and Rude were here to recover some of the cargo it was carrying, and they weren't about to let us take off with it. BOSS BATTLE TIME - TURKS STYLE!
Yeah, they get a lot of repeating battles, and I whoop them every single time. That and they tend to just run off after I beat them. They are just big pansies, and this time wasn't different. Reno and Rude approached and started attacking. I don't really have any details of their abilities though...because it ended fairly fast. I gave my recently acquired Bahamut ZERO a try! (Yeah, I forgot to mention it in the last post. My bad!) It's the ULTIMATE Bahamut for the ULTIMATE player (although one might question the even remote need for THREE Bahamuts). The game zooms out into space. From there, we see a giant silver dragon shooting through space. It takes position above the planet and blasts a giant angry dragon blast! How it manages to pinpoint them without hitting us...who knows! However, the effects were quite devastating. With the damage taking its toll, I managed to finish them off quickly and easily.
With them out of the way, I was allowed to claim all the goodies located in the cargo room. The items of greatest value and notice was the Hades summon materia and Cid's 4th Limit Break item, Highwind. Can't wait to see it! Because funny enough, despite multiple playthroughs, I've never actually seen every single person's 4th Limit. I quickly changed that while exploring the downed plane though. I had Tifa and Barret at first, and I got to see both of their Final Limits (Final Heaven and Catastrophe respectively). Once I had seen those, I was actually just down to two people needing their 4th Limit Breaks...Cid and Vincent! I had to go retrieve Vincent's final limit item real quick though. I got out of the plane and traveled back to the waterfall cave where we met Lucretia before. She was gone now, but she left behind Vincent's Ultimate Weapon (Death Penalty) and Final Limit Break (Chaos). With these in hand, I made my way back to the Gelinka Plane for some training and farming! This was a loooong spree of farming too. I spent quite a bit of time down there, but the overall benefits were astounding. By the time I left, I had over half a million in Gil, and I had mastered several new sets of materia (mostly the regular, green kind). Thankfully, when I finally left the plane, I had finally gotten everybody their Final Limit Breaks. Woo! New goal achieved! I don't think I had all of them last time. Anyways, with my business on the plane done, it was time to make way to the City of the Ancients.
Once there, I simply needed to look around and try to figure out what Aeris was doing here. There was only one section of the capital that I had not explored yet. So I made my way to this giant circular area. In the middle was a large crystal of sorts, Bugenhagen started talking about something with the planet. He said that it mentioned Holy. It seems there is a Holy materia, and that if we were able to use it, it would protect the planet from Meteor. The only thing is...Holy had a chance of wiping out everything. Apparently it was up to the planet what Holy saved and eliminated. However, the bigger problem is...where would it be? Cloud remembered Aeris having a materia with her when she died, and he said that Holy was gone. However, further inspection of the crystal platform revealed something about a Key and Music box. Bugenhagen figured the key we found was such, and that it would do something with this crystal and a nearby platform. He inserted it for us, and then a tunnel of water appeared around the crystal. Going inside this tunnel revealed that the crystal was some form of projector. It needed the water to be able to project the image. What it revealed is that Aeris had managed to pray for and activated Holy to protect the planet. Question is...why wasn't Holy gone off and destroyed Meteor? Cloud and group figure that Sephiroth is the one stopping Holy from happening, so they definitely have to deal with him. Before we get to him though, something else was starting to unfold...
Cait Sith gave the group a call and revealed that things were going down at Shinra. They had moved the giant cannon from Junon over to another location. He hints at it being relocated to Midgar, and then the game SHOWS its new location at Midgar. The group at Shinra are shown discussing the plan for it. They plan to use the cannon to attack Sephiroth at the Northern Crater. With this in mind, I was getting ready to head back to Midgar, but just as I was leaving the Forgotten Capital...Disaster strikes! Nearby Midgar, one of the Weapons appear out of the water and is making its way towards the city. The group asks Cait Sith if the Sister Ray (name of the cannon) was ready. It didn't seem to be, so the group decided to intercept Weapon (Diamond Weapon to be exact) for...BOSS BATTLE TIME! For this battle, my lineup consisted of Cloud, Yuffie, and Red XIII. My first action (as always) was a round of Big Guard. After that, I set off to attack him, but I quickly found out that physical attacks were completely worthless. Thus, I had to follow up with whatever magic I had on hand. I was a bit limited since I was focused on mastering all the Green Materia I could. Thankfully, I made sure each character had at least ONE of the top tier Green Materia (Contain, Comet, Ultima, etc). It took a bit, but with the Big Guard up, I managed to defeat Diamond Weapon...sort of. It wasn't really defeated, it was simply "over." Upon its defeat, Weapon started moving in a different direction. It had sensed something and was focused on that. The group followed after it with the Highwind, and at that time, the Sister Ray finally shot off.
The cannon's attack was a massive laser blast that flew all the way from Midgar to the Northern Crater. Along the way, Diamond Weapon attempted to stop the laser blast with...energy blasts of its own. Obviously, it isn't that smart, so its efforts were futile. The laser blast tore through Diamond Weapon and made its way to the Northern Crater. The attack managed to shatter Sephiroth's energy barrier around the crater. So...it was finally time for the group to assault Sephiroth directly! However, the final battle was to be delayed a bit further. Cait Sith reported in some new happenings from Midgar. Turns out...Weapon's attack had some effect. The blasts hit all across Midgar, and one of them struck the place where Rufus was. As it seemed, Rufus was dead, but even worse than that, the reactors were starting to overbuild energy (I believe...it was something along that line). After the giant cannon fired, they were needing to cool down and hold back for the moment. The remaining heads of Shinra (Reevus, Heidegger, and Scarlet) were trying to figure out what was going on. Hojo had overridden their control and was planning to force the reactors to blow. Around this time, it is let known that Cait Sith is Reevus. He pleads with the rest of the group to help save Midgar. Otherwise, it would blow up soon and kill everyone there. (There was also some discussion between Cait Sith and Barret about his first reactor hit. I forget where it timed in with all this, but it was basically pointing out that he killed people when he blew it up.) Despite their dislike for Shinra, the group planned to head to Midgar and save it from whatever Hojo was planning.
Before heading into Midgar (which I know to be about the end of Disc 2), I ran about stocking up on some items and trying to get in some last minute levels and quests. Many things are still available on Disc 3, but I wanted to get a bit done here first. While running the errands, I finally decided to break down and start working on getting the legendary Gold Chocobo! Now, this isn't really that hard of a quest, but it is very much a time suck to do it. I'm not going to go into details because this took me around EIGHT HOURS to fully complete. The basic idea is breeding select Chocobos to get specific results. On top of this, you have to race them all to improve their quality. Before the process is said and done, you have to race EIGHT chocobos around TEN times each! The guide said I could get away with less, but I didn't want to take a chance. So it was a giant process of catching, feeding, racing, breeding, and then repeat. After all of this time, money, and effort wasted, I finally came out with a Gold Chocobo! AAAAWWW YEAAAH! With the Gold Chocobo in hand, I was able to access some of the games well hidden treasures. Among these, I was able to get the HP<->MP Materia (swaps their values), the Mime materia (repeats the action of the last character), and the all-powerful and awesome Knights of the Round summon materia. The final item is really the only reason to even GET a Gold chocobo. It does like 10+ attacks from these random nights (each doing quite a bit for me...at LEAST 6000!). That's about it for Gold Chocobo business...or so I thought.
There was one other place I was able to get to with my Gold Chocobo (named Gold). There's a small place really close by Cosmo Canyon, but it is located atop one of the mountain/plateau areas. You might ask about the Highwind, but it can only land on grass areas and the entire top of these parts are forest. Oh well, I climbed up with Gold and explored the ANCIENT FOREST! Oooooo! It's a small place to explore, but the trick here is that it is a puzzle of sorts. There are strange plants all around and a couple of different animals and objects. Basically, you throw the animals or objects into the strange plants and use this to cross the forest. I could explain the entirety of how and what, but I feel like this is mostly unnecessary. If you are just super curious, you can look it up in a guide. Remember! It's called the Ancient Forest! Clearing the forest earned me a few petty items as well as a weapon for Cloud (with TRIPLE growth!) and the Typhoon summon. With these in hand, it was finally time to assault Midgar!
After spending more than enough time on my side business, I finally made way to Midgar and parachuted in. My team choice for this missions...Cloud, Vincent, and Barret. Once down on the ground, we had to go underground to make our way to the Sister Ray. While exploring the tunnels, I found a couple of items including a special materia called W-Item. This allows you to use two items a turn rather than just one. However, the TRUE benefit of W-Item is that you can use it as part of a trick. The trick (known as the W-Item Trick of course) allows you to quickly multiply your items through use of a error in the game. Basically, you can take any one item and multiply it during battle. I don't plan to use it a whole lot, but I might take some advantage of it. Moving along, before I could go any further, I had to deal with BOSS BATTLE TIME! It was time to fight our old friends the Turks...for one last battle. It was our final match of Cloud, Vincent, and Barret versus Reno, Rude, and Elena. This could have been a challenging and interesting battle, but I'm tired of fighting all these people. I summoned Knights of the Round (after stealing their equipment) and defeated them in one attack (persay...). After that, the Turks ran off, and it was time to find that cannon.
Before running straight to the cannon, I made a little detour to a place I haven't seen since the beginning of the game...the Shinra HQ building. There wasn't anything really extra to do there, but there were a few items to pick up from earlier. One of which was Cait Sith's Ultimate Weapon, HP Shout! I gathered up what I could from here, and then I made my way back underground. From there, I was just a short distance to the Sister Ray. However, I wasn't about to get there without at least ONE more boss battle! Just as we were getting close, a giant robot comes in to crash the party. Heidegger and Scarlet had brought around their ultimate anti-WEAPON weapon, and they were going to give us a taste of its power. BOSS BATTLE TIME! This giant robot, known as the Proud Clod, was a huge opponent. He looked to be quite formidable...and he was! I didn't kill him very fast at all. It took me a bit longer than I thought, but it was also not really dishing anything out. I used my best spells (I didn't use Knights this time though) and was easily able to topple this anti-WEAPON weapon. He was an awesome looking boss, but he didn't have much behind him. Upon defeat, the Proud Clod went up with a massive explosion (assuming it killed both Heidegger and Scarlet).
It was time to confront Hojo!...after a small set of stairs. Thanks to a guide tip, I knew to bring Barret along. You see, as you are climbing the steps, there is a chest that only appears if you have Barret. The chest contains his Ultimate Weapon, Missing Score. I grabbed it and ran on up to face off with Hojo. You see...he was here trying to give Sephiroth all the power he could from the Mako Reactors. The group questioned why he was even doing it. It is then that Hojo reveals that he is Sephiroth's father! Dun dun duuuuuuun! (That's what I would be thinking, but I kind of already knew this...Seriously. I'm pretty sure the game mentions it earlier on OR at least hints at it so much that it is obvious. Whatever...back to the post.) The group finds this shocking, but it doesn't matter...because we are about to have BOSS BATTLE TIME! Hojo warns the group that he has injected himself with Jenova cells. I'm assuming this means we will have a challenge, but I didn't. Again, this boss battle didn't really prove its worth at all. I didn't even try to use Knights of the Round! I just kept with general magic and abilities. Hojo is composed of three different forms. His initial form looks like himself but with odd skin. All this form does is throw monsters at you. I waste him and his monsters...time for Form 2! This one is a giant monstrosity blob thinger! It looks quite menacing, but it really didn't get a chance to attack since I smacked it around with powerfulness. Then it was Form 3! I saved up Vincent's Final Limit Chaos for this. His final form was some sort of alien-looking thing. It had an attack that allowed it to lash out with 4 separate attacks on one character, but that didn't end up doing a much. A few rounds later, Hojo was done for, and Midgar was safe...for now.
After that, the group re-grouped on the Highwind. It seems we were finally ready to go and face off against the final threat...Sephiroth. There was only a few days until Meteor would hit the planet. Cloud stood up and gave a speech at this point. He told everybody to return home to figure out what they were fighting for. He wanted them to have a reason to fight because he had his...destroy Sephiroth and save the planet. The group split up to figure out what they needed to. Cloud and Tifa stayed because they had nowhere to go. They spent the night together (one might think in a certain way, but there aren't any details). The two awaken and find that everyone has returned to take part in the final battle. However, Cid got curious about a switch on the Highwind and hit it. Turns out...the Highwind could transform into a jet mode of some sort. All the propellers fell off and jet engines burst out for speed and power! The crew of the ship returned to help out as well and control was finally returned back to me. Before taking on Sephiroth, I had a few small goals in mind...First of those goals was defeating Ultimate Weapon!
As far as Ultimate Weapon is concerned, he's a fairly easy extra boss. The problem is that you have to fly all over the damn planet trying to catch him (similar to Doom Gaze in FF6). You have to crash into him multiple times just so he'll find a spot to land. Once he lands, you can finally challenge him, but he'll just run away after taking so much damage. However, his HP stays the same even if he runs off. Eventually, he made his way to a spot above Cosmo Canyon for...BOSS BATTLE TIME! Ultimate Weapon was nothing to scoff at. He only had a few attacks, but they were all fairly powerful. I did my usual Big Guard opener, but then I slipped in with whatever magic to chip away. When he was flying, I couldn't attack him physically with most characters (minus ranged weapons of course). I just threw Ultima, Flare, and anything else I could manage his way, including summons as well! I finished him off with Cloud's Limit Omnislash. As Ultimate Weapon was about to die, he unleashed his final attack of Shadow Flare on Cloud. It killed Cloud, but I gained the Enemy Skill out of it. With Ultimate Weapon dead, it dropped Cloud's Ultimate Weapon... Ultimate Weapon (Yeah, they went really clever on that one). It also returned to the planet and left a small crater in its death. The crater would have given me access to the Ancient Forest had I not already gotten there with Gold. After that, I made a quick pit stop at Cosmo Canyon for another Ultimate Weapon.
Taking Red XIII along, I entered Cosmo Canyon. The guy at the entrance said something about Bugenhagen not feeling well, so we went up to see him. As I entered his house, Red XIII went on ahead, but the other two went back outside. /begin sad time Red XIII went over to his grandpa. They talked for a bit, and Bugehagen encouraged him to not just stay in the valley like he had promised to. Bugenhagen told Red XIII to go out and explore the world, and that by doing so...he might find a mate. He handed Red XIII his Ultimate Weapon, Limited Moon, and he... passed on. Red XIII didn't tell the group about it, but it was obvious by the way he talked. /end sad time With that sad task out of the way, I decided to pick up and challenge a few more side bosses. This game has three big side bosses: Ultimate Weapon, Ruby Weapon, and Emerald Weapon. The first one is fairly easy and rewards you with an Ultimate Weapon (already mentioned). The other two offer a massive challenge, great experience, and special items that can be traded for some pretty powerful stuff. However, my previous experience with both of those monstrosities was pretty bad. I have yet to beat them in the past, and unfortunately, I failed to beat them this time as well. My first try was against Ruby Weapon.
This post is getting on, so I'll try to keep this section short. Ruby Weapon is a giant red bastard who swims in the sand around the Gold Saucer. The first thing before you even fight him...you have to kill two party members. If you go in full force, he stays invincible as long as his arms are up. So I go in, he throws his arms down, and I revive everybody. I tried a few strategies suggested by the guide. The easiest one for me was constantly stunning him, but that fails if you can't keep everything stunned. On top of this, he has super powerful attacks that easily wipe out one character. EVEN WORSE, he casts Ultima as a counter to summons, and this ends with everybody dying unless they are maxed out. I tried 3 more times to beat him. On my fourth try, I actually managed to deal some decent damage to the guy. With the use of Knights of the Round and Mime (allowed me to keep doing it for free), I put quite a dent in him...but then he killed me. I gave up on Ruby Weapon at this point. I went ahead and made my way under the ocean to attempt Emerald Weapon. Emerald Weapon has its own loopholes to jump through. First off, if you don't use Underwater materia, you are limited to 20 minutes under the water. Past that, he has a special move that does 1111 damage per materia on your character. This means I have to limit myself on materia. Once I figured I had a good enough setup, I went in the water and attacked Emerald Weapon! However...this went even worse than Ruby. He killed me in a matter of no time, and I forgot the Underwater materia. At this point, I was kind of frustrated with the game. I was ready to beat it, so I gave up on both Weapons and went straight to the North Cave.
At the North Cave, I fully equipped everyone with their Ultimate Weapon and a set of materia. This proved pointless later, but I'll get to that. With my final party set (Cloud, Yuffie, and Red XIII), I began my descent into the vast deepness of the planet. It wasn't super complicated, but there were a lot of items to be found on the way down. Too many if you ask me...There were even some exclusive materia down there! (Honestly, that kind of makes me mad. It's on the doorstep of the ending, and I'd have to LEAVE that doorstep to get it leveled up and such.) The majority of the items included super items like Elixers or power-up items like Power Source and Magic Source (they boost your stats). Eventually, I hit a splitting path. I had to split the entire group up and send them down different paths. I sent them in all directions and continued downward. Several caverns later, I found myself and the rest of the group at the bottom of the cave. They handed over some items they found along the way, and I was ready...for the final area! We were right next to the core of the planet, and just as we tried to move in further, monsters started coming out from all directions. The group covered me as my select party continued downward. We faced several powerful monsters on the way down. I even gained a new Enemy Skill! (Literally... like 20 minutes before the end) Once at the bottom, it was time for the first of three FINAL BOSS BATTLE TIMES!
The first in the trio of BOSS BATTLES was with the final form of Jenova: Jenova Synthesis. It was easily defeated with Knights of the Round and a few super powered spells (namely Comet and Ultima). Next up was a crazy scene where everything around the group started to fall apart. Cloud passed by a bright light that he identified as Holy. However, when he finally came to, they were all surrounding a strange orb that seemed to contain Sephiroth. He was throwing the group all around with his power or something. At that point, I was given the choice to create two parties for the upcoming battle. I picked my main group (Cloud, Yuffie, and Red XIII) for the first party, and the second party was comprised of Barret, Tifa, and Cid. Thus began FINAL BOSS BATTLE NUMBER TWO! This round was against something known as Bizarro Sephiroth. It was a massive statue-like figure with several parts. (When I fought this before, I actually was allowed to have THREE parties. No idea what I did wrong...) As I destroyed its parts, I was switching back and forth between the two groups and slowly destroying him. It wasn't long before this form fell and gave way to FINAL BOSS BATTLE NUMBER THREE! THE END OF IT ALL!
This final form is the most infamous one. The most memorable part of this battle is the legendary theme song...One Winged Angel. You should look it up and give it a listen. It's pretty cool actually. Anyways, it was a fairly rough battle. He opened up by casting Wall on himself (a combo of Protect and Shell). I followed shortly after with Big Guard and Knights of the Round. This dealt out a decent portion of damage to him, but then I had to follow up with whatever I could muster (I only had one use of KotR). I was dealing some decent damage, and I wasn't even that bad off. But then...he crashed it down. He unleashed his infamous special move...Super Nova. The infamous part of this move is that the animation is two minutes long. It shows a large meteor of sorts shooting through all the planets (it destroys Neptune and Jupiter among others). That meteor flies into the sun and causes it to explode. This explosion takes out more planets and reaches this planet causing everybody a huge amount of damage. I'm curious how this little attack doesn't seem to DESTROY EVERYTHING EVER, but it just causes a large amount of damage to our little party. No big deal... After that attack, I was able to finish off Sephiroth shortly after. I just threw all the summons I could at him, and then I ended it all...with Omnislash! Safer Sephiroth (the name of this boss) was defeated, but that left the question...Would Holy activate to save the planet?
WARNING SPOILER STUFF AHEAD! It is the ending after all...
The group started clearing out of the hole, but then Cloud had another mind breaking situation. He sensed that Sephiroth was still alive, and an image projected from him and proceeded down into the Lifestream. At the core of it all, he saw Sephiroth again. STORY BOSS BATTLE! This is actually a pre-scripted battle event of sorts. You will always win, and Cloud will always end it with Omnislash (even if you didn't get it). Upon his defeat, Sephiroth was finally gone. And Cloud was helped out of the Lifestream by Aeris (or it suggests it at least). He awakens back with Tifa as everything starts to crumble around him. The rest of the group hadn't left yet, and they were all sitting there...wondering what would happen next. Just as they said that, the mako below began to erupt. The Highwind came flying down the shaft. They all climbed on it, and the Highwind was expelled out of the North Cave. It was falling apart, so Cid pulled the emergency switch. This changed the Highwind into a jet plane of sorts. They all watched on as Meteor was mere moments from hitting Midgar. Just as things looked bad, Holy erupted from the planet to stop Meteor. Everything seemed to be going well, but then it took a turn for the worse. Holy had stopped Meteor at first, but then it began to accelerate it. The group was starting to worry, and there was fear that the Meteor would destroy the entire planet, not just Midgar. All hope seemed lost...but then the Planet actually responded. The Lifestream shot out of the planet and put itself in the way of Meteor. Using its power, it seemed to be stopping it. Then the screen flashed white...and credits. (Yeaaah, just wait)
After the credits went by, the game showed "500 Years Later." It goes back down through the clouds and we see a group of creatures that look like Red XIII (One large one and a pair of cubs). They were running about and jumped onto a cliff. As the camera tilts upward, we see a glimpse of an overgrown ruins of Midgar in the distance. The End.
Well, that's all folks! It was a hell of a long post (too long! I apologize!), but I've finally beaten Final Fantasy 7. It feels good to get back through this game...It may not be the best Final Fantasy, but it certainly leaves an impact on you. I won't say anymore for now, but you will be reading more when I get my final thoughts put up here soon! That's it for FF7! Stay tuned for more.
Ending Point - End of Final Fantasy 7.
Current Party -
- Cloud - Level 76
- Yuffie - Level 69
- Red XIII - Level 69
Next Goals - Start Final Fantasy 8!
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
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