Yeah, I had ended up picking up the same attitude at some point in the rest of this Let's Play, but FF7 is, it turns out, a game where money matters more than in previous games and where I have found myself regularly running out of funds without being able to fully upgrade my party, so status effect consumables ended up being an afterthought or a "nice to have" thing more than regular purchases.
For the best that you aren't currently playing Pathologic then.
...I'm going to make a once-in-a-lifetime exception to my "no sequels where all the victorious characters of the original have become sad fuckups/antagonists" for this one idea, please fund it immediately
Didn't we totally establish that Cyan is secretly an Isekai protag who already had his adventures before the game started? At least, I think there was a joke like that somewhere in the FFVI LP for how this old samurai man ended up in some castle kingdom.
A rabbi is lying on his deathbed. His wisest disciple kneels be-
side the old rabbi, the second-wisest behind him, the third-wisest
behind, and so on, down the length of the bed, into the hall,
down the stairs, and out into the street where the simplest stu-
dent is at the back of the line.
The wisest student leans over and in a soft, reverent voice asks,
"Great Rabbi, before you go to be with God, please tell us:
What is the meaning of life?"
The rabbi raises his head a little, slowly opens his eyes, draws a
rattling breath, and with great effort says, "Life... Life is... is
like... a river." He shuts his eyes, dropping his head back onto
the pillow.
The wisest student turns to the student behind him and says,
"The Rabbi says life is like a river!" That student turns to the
one behind him and repeats this wisdom, and so on and so forth,
out of the room, down the hall, down the stairs, and outside to
the end of the line, until the second-simplest student turns to the
simplest and says "The Rabbi says life is like a river!"
The simplest student, realizing he has no one to tell, contem-
plates it silently. After a moment, he taps the student ahead of
him on the shoulder and says "Excuse me, but... why is life like a
river?"
This message gets passed up to the front of the line, until the
second-wisest whispers in the wisest student's ear: "Moishe wants
to know why life is like a river." The wisest student leans over
the Rabbi and again, soft and reverently, he said, "Great Rabbi,
your students have brought forth a question! Please, O wise one,
tell us: why is life like a river?"
The old rabbi raises his head again, slowly opens his eyes, draws
another rattling breath, and says... "Okay, so it's not like a
river…."
(from here)
Well, they do flow to the ocean and are replenished by rainfall which in many areas is ocean water, so it's only a bit of a simplification. And also I would have said it the other way 'round.
...I'm going to make a once-in-a-lifetime exception to my "no sequels where all the victorious characters of the original have become sad fuckups/antagonists" for this one idea, please fund it immediately
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game that I opened to get on with the main story and ended up running around doing random stuff for like two hours!
So, it turns out there was more stuff to do in Wutai, some of it of plot relevance, so let's backtrack a little: Do you remember Lord Godo, the local ruler(?) who spends his time asleep? As was pointed to me by an astute reader, he has a lot of easily missable dialogue that you get by repeatedly talking to him after he tells you that you're free to rest in his estate, dialogue which is only available before we get Yuffie back on the team.
Specifically, if we talk to him again, Cloud implicitly (the dialogue is unmarked) asks him about Yuffie, and Godo denies knowing anyone by that name… Then, if we insist, starts getting a little heated about it.
His goofy dialogue tick (which might have been meant to represent snoring?) disappears as he finally gets up to address us angrily.
Godo: "...Never seen you around here before…" Godo: "Lately, I've been seeing a lot of Shinra soldiers around here… You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Godo: "I don't care who you are. But, if you're in trouble with the Shinra, I'm going to ask you to leave. I don't want the Shinra hanging around here looking over my shoulder." Voice: "What's with you, you coward?"
At this point, Yuffie drops from the ceiling to confront Godo!
Godo: "Yuffie!" Yuffie: "You scared of the Shinra? Then why don't you just bow down and obey them like all the other towns?" Yuffie: "Those guys [ie, us] are the ones who are really fighting the Shinra!" Godo: "Shut up! What would you know about this?" Yuffie: "You got beat once, so what? That's it? What happened to the mighty Wutai I used to know?" Godo: "No kid like you's going to talk to me like that! You keep acting like that! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" Yuffie: "That's my style! And it's my business, not yours! Don't try and dictate what I should do!" Godo: "Style? Dictate? Why all those fancy words? You're a rotten daughter!" Yuffie: "Hmph! You're a sad excuse for a father!!"
[She storms out; Godo turns to his window, not looking at us.] Godo: "...Take your things and get out of here now. For the good of Wutai, we cannot stand up to Shinra."
Well! That was instructive. I kinda suspected Yuffie was Godo's daughter, but there was very little to back this up previously… Because I'd missed the dialogue that makes it explicit. She is a Teenage Runaway Ninja Princess, and she still doesn't get any respect from Cloud and the others. How incredibly rude. This is lèse-majesté and should be punished accordingly.
[Sounds of La Marseillaise echoing in the distance]
SWIFTLY MOVING ON. What's interesting from a worldbuilding perspective though, is that much of what I had ascribed to the actions of Shinra on a defeated Wutai appear to instead have been Godo's own actions… And from Yuffie saying 'why don't you just bow down and obey them like all the other towns,' I can see the logic at play, I think; Godo ensured Wutai's partial independence by defanging it himself. He's the one who started the turn of Wutai from major power to tourist trap, because by giving Shinra what they wanted, by making Wutai safe and nice and profitable, he avoided Shinra invading and straight-up taking over and making it the way they wanted it to be.
It's an understandable impulse, if one that, in the end, results in Wutai being rendered supine regardless. And, now that Shinra troops are running through the streets conducting their own investigations and arrests like they own the place, one that is made increasingly obvious as mere pretense. In the end, Shinra has the power in Wutai, not Wutai itself, and Yuffie is rebelling against that - and in doing so, essentially calling her father's actions misguided and futile, angering him, but he has no good retort, because she's right… She just also doesn't have a better solution to suggest herself beyond "try to steal all my friends' shit to fund a resistance."
With this flashback done, it's time to head back to the Current Timeline, where we have a challenge to tackle:
The Pagoda of the Gods.
Alright: We're going into this with a better setup. Gorkii is weak to Wind, so I've equipped Yuffie with the Choco/Mog Summon, not for the purposes of summoning it, but to pair it with the Elemental Materia so as to make her attacks Wind-type. I also give her Odin for one-timed damage paired to HP Absorb, a Restore Materia for self-healing, HP Plus and MP Plus, and Sense.
If all goes well, this should be overkill. Let's try it out!
As you can see, even past Gorkii's protective barrier, Yuffie's Wind-enhance attack can crit for 860 damage out of 3000. With that baseline, Odin is not even required, though still satisfying to cast.
As you can see from the fact that I won this fight in critical HP, it wasn't that easy. Or was it?
I don't think I've mentioned it before, but there is a crucial difference between FF7's Sense Materia and how Scan has worked in every game so far: It sticks.
If you cast Sense on an enemy, then it reveals that enemy's name, level, HP, MP, and elemental weaknesses… And then the HP stays revealed. Every time you target that enemy with an attack, you see what its current HP count is, and it updates after every attack, meaning gone are the days of back-of-napkin mid-fight naps to try and gauge where an enemy was based off what their HP count used to be. This is so much more convenient, and also more interesting, allowing for active strategizing based on accurate information instead of blind firing.
And in this case, this means I threw my last attack at Gorkii with Yuffie in critical HP because I knew he was at low enough health to be taken out in one hit; if he hadn't, I would simply have healed Yuffie, but that was a call I could make with confidence.
Now it's time to fight… Toph Beifong?
Weird sexism coming from a 6-years old girl, but okay.
This tiny little… child(?) who has been observing the fight, compliments us on our performance, then heads upstairs, where we find her(?) waiting for us in a dojo room identical to the one below; Yuffie asks 'who's next,' the kid asks her if she's blind and says she'll be our next opponent, declaring that she's "more of an adult than some bimbo girl!" then immediately says Yuffie getting angry at this is proof of her immaturity, calling her a brat and telling her the only thing she's good at is breathing.
Okay so I don't care if that kid is secretly a 500 year old immortal or whatever, they're going down.
…after we first leave the building, head back to Lord Godo's estate, rest everyone, then save at the Wutai Save Point, and then head back. Duh. I'm only stupid sometimes.
A third character appears, a woman with her hair in a bun who introduces herself as 'Chekov', who seems to act as referee/observer - it's a pattern that will reoccur, at each tier we fight the occupant of that tier while being monitored by the one from the tier above. Shake (the kid's name) shouts "Speed Change!" and turns into…
Penpen from Neon Genesis Evangelion???
Okay, so he's using the same model as a type of random mob we've encountered before, but I'm just. That's a penguin with a red crest and clawed wings. That's the NGE penguin. Who is named after famed English playwright Guillaume Secoue-la-Poire? Alongside two other possible-deities that are named after famous Russian playwrights??? I don't know, man.
Are the Pagoda Masters people who learned mystical arts that allow them to mantle a supernatural form in emulation of the specific Wutaian god they chose to follow, or are they these actual gods in the flesh? I am going to go forward with this post assuming the former if only because it makes things simpler and also it means I don't have to deal with one of the real, livng Wutaian gods being Penpen.
Beyond that, though, Shake can't back up its talk. It's got 4k HP, which is more than Gorkii, and its one noteworthy features, one being that he counters attacks with Rage Bomber, an explosive move that inflicts Fury. Fury is a two-sided status effect which causes attacks to miss more often but causes the Limit Break gauge to fill up much faster. This does not end well for Penpen.
Even taking into account that Yuffie only has LB1s unlocked (more on this in a bit), her Greased Lightning takes out over a fourth of Shake's health, and it happens several times, resulting in an easy victory.
Like, that's not just me, right? The hair style, the size, the 'head slightly down' posture, this looks like Toph.
In your face, kid. Today was a true and important lesson:
Wait a second though I have to check something.
…
"The Fury status reduces the character's hit rate for both physical and magical attacks by 3/10 (Steal is not affected), but also doubles the rate at which a character's Limit gauge fills; it can be a positive or negative status effect depending upon the situation. It can be achieved by using a Hyper, or through an enemy attack."
I… This whole time. I thought the drawback of Fury was that it increased damage taken. Not that it reduced attack accuracy. Oh my god.
HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT WE KNOW WHY I KEEP HAVING SUCH BAD LUCK WITH MISSED ATTACKS NOW
This is… fine.
(Even with Fury it's actually fairly rare for characters to miss at all… except against bosses, which is probably why it took me so long to notice.)
I'm still going to keep everyone hopped up on uppers though, for reasons that will be clear later in the update.
Chekhov, who observed the match, seems excited at the thought of finally meeting an opponent who can hurt her, and heads upstairs, where we meet her for our next match, overseen by the next guy in line, one Staniv.
Chekhov boasts that this is as far as we go yada yada, start the fight. If you're keeping track, it'll be no surprise that after "Power Change" and "Speed Change," Chekhov, representing the third god of the Five Mighty Gods, shouts "Magic Change!" and turns into a new form of her own.
Girl, what is this? What even the hell is this? I know you could have found something cooler.
Also, she's not even magic. Like, I haven't seen her cast a single spell. All she does is use Absorb, a weak move which drains some HP from Yuffie to give to her, and Stare Down, which inflicts paralysis. Without an item to grant paralysis immunity or other teammates to pick up the slack, Paralysis means I just twiddle my thumbs until the status effect ends on its own and I can play the game again. Awful design, but it doesn't even make this threatening. I equipped Yuffie with Enemy Skill, so now she can cast Big Guard and Beta, and Chekhov is dealt with with ease.
She did not live up to the hype.
Chekhov is amazed that she was beaten, Staniv relishes the chance to have to use his 'full power,' and we follow him to the 4th floor, where he declares that, though the Pagoda has five stories, the fourth floor is the highest anyone has ever reached - which is to say, he has never been defeated in battle. Weapon Change!
Staniv… is also not all that strong. HP scales linearly so far, so he's got a hefty (for a solo battle, anyway) 6k HP, which takes time to burn through, but Yuffie not only has access to Big Guard, she also has a lv 3 Restore Materia, which grants her access to Regen, a spell which causes her to regain HP at a constant rate. By layering Big Guard and Regen and attacking with Beta, Limit Breaks, and Odin, we are able to claim victory not quickly, but safely, ending the battle conclusively at full HP.
At this point my strategy is pretty well honed and feels like it'll carry me to the top. Staniv is stunned at his defeat, and each of the previous three pagoda masters file in, and each one compliments Yuffie on her progress and tells that now, she'll have to face "him," then all head upstairs.
Three guesses as to who 'he' is and the first two don't count.
As I do between each round no matter how confident I feel, I go back to Lord Godo's estate to rest, save, and come back for our final confrontation.
Lord Godo himself, Yuffie's own father, awaits at the top of the Pagoda. Each of the four masters waits around the room, saying nothing, waiting for the decisive match. This more than just a test of strength. It's a contest of ideas.
This, however, is much more of a surprise to Yuffie than it is to us.
Yuffie: "D… Dad!?" Godo: "I'm glad you made it this far, Yuffie!" Yuffie: "Why, why are you…" Godo: "I'll answer you by having you try your skills against me! Hold nothing back! Come as if you're trying to kill me! If you don't… Then I'll have to kill you!" Yuffie: "H… hey!" Godo: [Stepping forward in a combat stance] "What are you doing! OMNI-change!!"
…is that Asura?
Like, from FFIV? Remember that one? Wife of Leviathan? Both a boss fight and a summon? She was one of those summons that never appeared after her initial game, but I guess VII is repurposing some of the concepts behind her for Lord Godo.
Lord Godo has 10,000 HP, 4k more than Staniv, along with 1,000 MP, ensuring he has magic for days. Each of his three faces has a different moveset, and rotates his head in a random direction each turn before attacking. His Human face casts Cura on himself or status effects on Yuffie, his "Cheater" face uses spells like BIora or Graviga (which cuts HP by 75%), and his Beast face uses the Enemy Skill Trine and Beast Sword, a move that looks honestly pretty sick.
A shockwave that swallows the whole screen.
So, a wide variety of attack spells, self-healing, and heavy direct damage, with Graviga being a particular threat that bypasses Big Guard and punishes us for spending heavy resources on staying 'topped up' - burning a rare Elixir only to immediately lose 75% of our HP feels pretty bad. An interesting challenge!
OR IS IT.
Well, it is. Graviga aside, most of Godo's attacks can't do considerable damage to Yuffie. There's a window of vulnerability when Big Guard resets or when I run out of MP, but with timing and situational awareness, Yuffie can drag this fight out for an essentially arbitrary length of time, slowly burning through Godo's attacks. With the Fury status effect, Limit Breaks come out fast and often, for heavy damage.
This lasts until we bring Godo to under 4k HP, at which point he reveals his 'phase 2' mechanic, which is… Elegant in its simplicity.
While under 4k HP, Godo reacts to any attack by casting Cura on himself outside of his turn.
There's no per-turn limit on this. Which means if I attack Godo and hit him for 500 damage, and he casts Cura, healing 1,200 HP, then he comes out of it with +700 HP compared to where I was before, and I have negative progress; literally worse than if I had done nothing at all.
This… Proves… Tricky. I've beaten the rest of the five masters by using proper spell layers, not by outleveling them and using overwhelming high-value attacks. Odin hits for around 1,600 HP, but I already cast Odin in this fight. In desperation, I resort to Beta.
1,543 damage.
Hitting Yuffie's father with nuclear weapons lets us stay above the water, but only barely. Remember, this isn't "I dealt 1,500 damage in one attack, which is enough to surpass his healing!" It's "I dealt 1,500 damage in one attack, then he healed 1,200 damage, meaning I made a total of a 300 damage dent in his 4,000 HP."
And Beta isn't cheap either - and I don't immediately realize that Godo responds to every attack with a Cura; I initially try to find what doesn't trigger his counter, throwing around normal spells, summons, normal attacks, and limit breaks, trying to find the gap, and the result is that by the time I have it narrowed down to "Odin and Beta or nothing," he's… Back at nearly 5k HP.
It's possible I could have won this fight. But it would have been a slow, grueling endurance match in which I would only have gotten by burning all my ether supplies on spamming Beta fifteen times in a row. So… We're taking a L on this one.
Whatever Yuffie's dad was saying, he wasn't actually going to kill her - something which is hinted at mechanically in the fact that, at low HP, there's a small chance for him to cast Cura on Yuffie, rather than himself (not high enough to make a difference, though). So now he's flexing while Yuffie lies breathless and defeated on the ground. Godo tells Yuffie to come back when she has more training.
…
Fuck that. I don't need more training, I need a better strategy. Hey, wanna know something funny? Like other bosses fought under abnormal circumstances, Godo doesn't have standard immunities. For instance: Poison can affect him. And poison damage doesn't trigger counterattacks.
A single casting of Biora is enough to tag Godo with Poison. Poison does not have a duration; it lasts until the target succumbs or until they actively cure themselves with a status-healing effect. On enemies with a lot of HP that don't have poison immunity, that makes it a massively efficient means of dealing damage.
Once Godo has been tagged with Poison, we unleash the damage. As long as he's above 4k HP, we don't care much what we do on the offensive, as long as it hits him and doesn't consume an expendable limited resource like Odin casts - mostly that means using Beta. Meanwhile, we ensure Yuffie's survivability and action-efficiency by layering Big Guard and Regen, ensuring she is buffed on every defensive level, passively regains HP, and benefits from Haste to act faster. With Haste, we can afford to let Yuffie's HP get pretty close to the wire, because we can respond quickly to damage with a Cura that heals her to full HP or nearby. And once we break into Phase 2 and Godo starts self-healing, we use Odin, Beta and Limit Breaks - only attacks that deal more damage than Cura regens, while the poison continues to sap his strength.
A 2,200 critical hit is what seals the deal. Victory has been achieved through proper tactics and Materia arrangement. I could almost grow to like this system: It's not often that the Final Fantasy line has managed to make solo fights interesting. I have a bunch of issues with the Materia system, but the degree of flexibility it grants to a single character, who is given time to prepare for a battle ahead, is superior to even the combinatorial Job system of FFV.
…but that's for single characters. As a party, V's Job system creates identities that are easier to read and memorize and combine into a group synergy. I feel like VII's Materia system would have been better for a game that emphasized solo play, but that's not what Final Fantasy VII (or any of this era of FF games, for that matter) wants to be, should be, or is good at.
…I can kinda see why they went the way they did with Remake, though. Not that I think it was necessarily a good decision, but an Action RPG lends itself to focusing much more on a single character's playstyle while the rest of the party is handled by AI and the occasional hot swap, and Materia makes sense in that context, I think.
Yuffie and Godo are both lying on their back panting and staring at the ceiling now. I love that trope, I think it's always a great time when two people who went through an emotionally and physically harrowing duel are both so punch-drunk they can't stand anymore.
Yuffie: "O… old coot… Not… bad…" Godo: "You've… also… improved…" Yuffie: "Hah… Ha, ha…" Godo: "...Heh, heh…"
[They both laugh out loud; fade to black, they're both standing and facing each other again.] Godo: "It's time I gave this to you, Yuffie… This is Leviathan Materia. Take it." Staniv: "But, Lord Godo. Leviathan Materia should only be given to the person who conquers and takes over this Pagoda. That is our custom…" Yuffie: "CUSTOM, CUSTOM, CUSTOM… I'm so sick of hearing that! It's so stupid!" Gorky: "Silence, Miss Yuffie!" Yuffie: "Then what 'bout all of you? With all your power… Are you satisfied being cooped up in this tower?" Yuffie: "You too, dad! Just because you lost the war, you turned Wutai into a place like this!" Chekhov: "What do you mean?" Yuffie: "You turned Wutai into a cheesy resort town peddling to tourists… How dare you!? Da-Chao Statue and Leviathan are ashamed!" Godo: "..." Shake: "She IS a kid." Yuffie: "Wh, what did you say?" Godo: "Yuffie!! Forgive me… It's all my fault…" Gorky: "What are you saying, Lord Godo!" Godo: "Losing the war… Turning Wutai into this. It was all my fault…" Chekhov: "Lord Godo!" Godo: "Silence! Yuffie… I am the same now as I was before when I wanted war. But, after losing, I began to think…" Godo: "Is strength for beating enemies, or just something to show-off? Might begets might. The same as Shinra." Yuffie: "..." Godo: "I knew you were looking for Materia for the good of Wutai. But, the reason I hide my strength now, is also for the good of Wutai… And now, I realize both are necessary…" Godo: "Strength without determination means nothing. And determination without strength is equally useless…!" Godo: "You, there, please take Yuffie with you! I perceive that you all have both strength and determination!
Man, there's a lot to try and read between the lines here.
The idea that Wutai was a land in which people knew mystical techniques to turn into cool monster forms does a lot to explain why they were able to stand up to Midgar for a while, only to be eventually crushed by, I guess, the relentless bulldozer of modern military power, plus industrialized weaponized magic in the form of Materia mass production, plus their own mystical super-soldiers in the form of SOLDIER and Sephiroth; and I imagine it would have fed considerably into Sephiroth's mythos as this great war hero if he was routinely going up against Wutai officers who could turn into monsters.
Or maybe that's just the Pagoda Five, and maybe the Pagoda Five didn't actively take part in the war. That's not clear from the text! It's not clear whether they deal is that they led Wutai into war as these super-beings who gave the underdog nation a chance until Shinra started producing better superbeings and they were defeated and retreated into that tower where they've been figuratively eating depression ice cream out of the pot on the couch for ten years, or whether they never went out and fought and had to watch Wutai be crushed without being allowed by their rules and tradition to go out and fight, and had a maladaptive reaction in doubling down in sealing themselves even harder in reaction until people basically forgot about them. Either way, the trauma of the war led to Godo isolating himself from the world and turning Wutai into a tourist trap submitting entirely to Shinra's power, utterly despondent, spending his days sleeping.
Until his daughter ran off to try and find some means of rousing Wutai out of its complacency, some kind of weapon to start a rebellion with.
Ironically, she went out looking for Materia while the most powerful Materia we've yet encountered was right there; she went looking for strength while her father was (unbeknownst to her, apparently?) the master of a mystical combat style or, possibly, an actual god. Because it wasn't really about the specific resources, was it? It was about resolve, about mindset - "strength without determination, determination without strength." She had the determination, and went out looking for strength; those at home that had strength, lacked the determination to do anything with it.
In a way, you could say that all of them, these five masters inexplicably named after playwrights - Gorky, Shake, Chekhov, Staniv - and even Yuffie herself, each in their own way, whether by going out into the world or staying recluse, they were waiting for their leader, the greatest fighter in Wutai, to make a decision - whether to stir out of his complacency and do now what he failed to do ten years ago, or else entrust the future into the hands of another by giving his daughter their ultimate power, Leviathan, the Water God that Wutai once worshipped, now no longer mere legend but a weapon to wield for a righteous cause.
Each in their way, they were waiting for Godo.
…
…..
……..
Alright, now that you've hopefully finished groaning and/or are done throwing ripe tomatoes at my screen, let's move on.
Wait. No. One last thing. After the four masters and Cloud and the third party member have left, Godo asks his daughter to stay behind, just one moment, to have one last word with her.
Godo: "After their battle is over…" Godo: "Do you think they'll still want all their Materia?" Yuffie: "Dad…!" Godo: "Go! Fight till the end! But come back!" Godo: "With the Materia!" Yuffie: "Heh heh… You bet!"
I GUESS THE APPLE DOESN'T FALL THAT FAR FROM THE TREE HUH DOES IT
Fucking. Amazing. Anyway!
Wutai was a really interesting place and, given that last update's Yuffie Arc was almost entirely comedic, it's nice that she got an actual arc with character development and genuine emotional stakes. It wasn't a massive personal story or anything, but it partook of a genre I really like, the boss gauntlet/proving yourself through combat, the child having a duel with their parent to show that they've surpassed them, and the game actually had the confidence to make this a solo endeavour by Yuffie alone and managed to make it work.
It's kinda crazy to me that the same game can make "a long sequence where you lose your Materia on which the whole combat system rests" and "a boss gauntlet in which you play a single character in a game designed for party play" and make them both fun and cool, and meanwhile every time it tries to do a minigame-
So: Wutai good. Now on to the rest of the world.
Hey, a brief side-note; now that we can buy weapons in Wutai, I have equipped Cloud with the Muramasa. The Muramasa has shown up in previous games; it is, as befits the historical inspiration for its name, a katana. And…
Remember a while back ago when I had this comment to make about Sephiroth?
Article:
That is one enormous katana Sephiroth is wielding. Or, well, it's not altogether that big, it's just very long. (This ties into something I've remarked in the past in that it's difficult to make oversized anime katanas the way you can with any other type of sword or weapon; hammers that would be impossible to wield effectively in the real world parse as natural in fiction, but if you make a katana large it loses its aesthetic appeal, so making it very long like FromSoft's Washing Pole is your closest bet).
Cloud has, so far, had the visually distinct quirk of wielding comically oversized sword (which, to be clear, I think is 100% unambiguously sick and rad and has no fault). However, according to my theory, he can't wield an oversized katana; the only way to make such a weapon be huge and still visually code as a 'katana' would be a very long Washing Pole-style sword, and that aesthetic is already taken up by Sephiroth's Masamune. So, what will the Muramasa look like in Cloud's hands?
That's right.
A regular-sized freakin' katana.
The game breaks Cloud's big visual iconic thing and gives him a normal-sized weapon instead of all his giant swords, because my theory of visual katana identity is objectively correct.
Nailed it.
The northern continent of the planet is where we find, at a glance, its arctic biome; snowy mountains that are notably absent from the rest of the planet. We can't get to the snows, though; right now we are limited to landing in the south shore of the continent, enter a forest with an unusual coloration, and there find Bone Village, which looks like… A town for archeologists/paleontologists? Built amidst the remains of great skeletons and…
…I mean that's a fighter jet. That thing, right there, smashed in half against that giant skull, is a twin-engines fighter jet.
Did Shinra… like… try to go to war with the dinosaurs and retreat when giant beasts started snapping their planes out of the sky? The only other explanation I got is that this plane somehow crashed right on top of this ancient skeleton without damaging it at all, which seems a little too much left to chance. No, what we got here is a Godzilla vs F-14s situation.
Anyway, it turns out the locals have seen Sephiroth, who was looking for the Temple of the Ancients, which, it turns out, is on the other side of the globe, down south, a pyramid rising out of the forest, but which can't be entered without 'the Keystone.' The Bone Village people have heard that 'some rich guy' has it, which makes the Gold Saucer our most likely next destination.
We'll probably be revisiting Bone Village; there is a 'Sleeping Forest' beyond the village which can only be entered with an item known as the Lunar Harp. Or, well, we can enter it, it's right there, the problem is we have no way of making it through; a single forest screen repeats endlessly as we advance. So we turn around and leave.
Also, I'm running around Bone Village for a bit just to check out what kind of random encounters it has, and it takes a surprisingly long time, way more than in any other region. When we do find a monster, it's… This thing.
This is Vlakorados, a kind of dinosaur.
Dinosaurs have had an interesting history in Final Fantasy games. Sometimes, they're just random encounters, but often they have a special place - often being 'boss-type' random encounters, monsters that are rare to meet but deadly if encountered by chance, dating back all the way to the FF1 Tyrannosaur, and most recently with FFVI's inexplicable Ultima-casting Brachiosaur.
Vlakorados continues that tradition… Sort of. It's definitely exceptional; specifically, it is immune to Sense (meaning we don't know its HP, something that hasn't been the case with any enemy so far) and seems nearly impossible to kill. Having checked it on the wiki afterwards, Vlakorados has an astounding 33,000 HP, more than three times as much as Godo, making it by far the most resilient enemy in the game so far.
We can test Leviathan on him though!
Hell yeah.
Well, I've tested it before, but yeah, I can confirm Leviathan is a very powerful summon that can wipe most encounters - not this one, though. Not by a long shot.
Vlakorados is not dangerous, though. Its attacks are very weak, and it can be whittled down safely over time, as long as you keep your MP in check. At most, the uncertainty and resilience might make you panic a bit and throw wild haymakers that barely make a dent in its HP and end up costing you Ethers, as it did me, but at the end of the day, victory is easy… And worthless. It gives pitiful XP, AP and Gil, and we merely get a 'Carob Nut' item out of it.
A bizarre moment.
Onward!
We can see the Temple of the Ancients in the southern archipelago, and even enter it, but without the Keystone there's nothing to do there.
Alright, here's a fun fact:
Remember how we have the Buggy?
We've unlocked the Tiny Bronco, and it allows us to go most places the Buggy could, but not all. Specifically, if there's an inland area that is behind a river but isn't connected to the sea, and the river isn't connected to the sea either, then theoretically the Buggy could access it but the Tiny Bronco couldn't. That seems like a pretty weird corner case though, right?
The sequence I'm about to do was designed by insane people to sell Playstation Magazine walkthrough guides.
If we drive the Buggy to Costa del Sol, then take the Cargo Ship back to Junon, then we leave Junon in the Buggy. This allows us to bring the Buggy all the way back to the Eastern Continent.
Now that we have the Buggy on this side of the world, though, what do we do with it?
Well, we find an inland river that the Tiny Bronco can't go through because of waterfalls, we cross it, and we land on a small isolated area of the continent, where we find this cave, in which an old man is sleeping:
This guy talks in his sleep.
I don't know if you remember but there was this cave in one of the games that had this guy who told you statistics about your playthrough? This is VII's version of that guy, although he's pretty limited. He has three things to say: One, the number of time we escaped from battle (I'm guessing there's a Chicken Knife/Brave Blade equivalent in this game that I didn't prepare for. Ah, well.) He also tells us how many encounters we've had, total; the answer, at this point, is 347. And third, he says "Large Materia needs high level Materia," which I'm going to guess is related to the subplot about Scarlet seeking a 'Huge Materia' and has to do with reaching the Master level on our equipped Materia.
So! As it stands, kind of a nice easter egg without much more to it. We went all this way for that? Well, not so, dear reader. Here's the nonsense part where you need to either luck onto the cave at the right time or have someone tell you the step.
If you enter the cave when the last two digits of your number of encounter fight are equal, which is to say, any number like 344, 455, or 1266, then the old man wakes up and gives you a gift. Now, you might still think you got to the good stuff and not have it, because if the number is even, then he wakes up and gifts you with a Bolt Ring, which is an accessory that nullifies lightning damage. Great! Damage immunities are nice!
But what we really want here is for the two numbers to be odd, and for that we're going to need to leave the cave and then fight random encounters on the plain until we go from our starting 345 encounter to 355, and then go in.
For this, the old man wakes up, declares our encounter must be fate, and gives us Mythril.
Mythril! That's usually a much earlier thing - we went through the Mythril Mines much earlier in the game, but they were empty. We did get a Mythril Sword and Mythril Armlets earlier in the game though, and they're obsolete by this point; one might wonder what this is for. Well, maybe if we find a blacksmith, they'll be able to help us?
While I'm there, because I don't intend to ever do this full trip the long way round again, I grind the 11 additional battles to get to 366 encounters and get that Bolt Ring, and then I leave.
There's another, additional reason for me to do these encounters even here, in a region where enemies are so low-level that I effectively don't get any XP, AP or Gil from it. More on this later.
Now that we have the Mythril, we need to take the Buggy all the way back across the Eastern Continent, then across the ocean, then out from Costa del Sol back to a little cabin full of swords, which was previously empty, and the man inside.
This is the game's resident blacksmith, but we're not quite looking for a weapon from him, at least not yet. Instead, he serves as a secondary source of the same information we already got in Bone Village:
Blacksmith: "Huh? Oh another customer. You sure picked an out of the place way but… But if it's the Keystone you're looking for, you're too late. Don't have it." Cloud: "Keystone?" Blacksmith: What? You didn't come here for that? The Keystone is the key that unlocks the gate to a very old temple somewhere. You're not going to believe your ears, but I heard it was the Temple of the Ancients!" Cloud: "The Temple of the Ancients…" Blacksmith: "Kya hah hah hah… Don't take it too seriously! It's just a legend!" Cloud: "Where is this Keystone?" Blacksmith: "I sold it already. Yeah well, to tell the truth, I didn't really want to sell it but… That guy had a way about him that made you feel like it may not be a good idea NOT to sell it to him…" Cloud: "Who did you sell it to?" Blacksmith: "The manager of the Gold Saucer… think his name was 'Dio.' Said he was going to put it in his museum, then he took off out of here."
Okay, so I already suspected Gold Saucer was our next destination, but this confirms it. The blacksmith tells us that according to legend the Temple is the location of the "Ultimate Destruction Magic," but then immediately plays it off as a silly legend not to take seriously, but of course we know better, these things are always true in games. Finally, he laments that while all the weapons we can see here were made by him, he hasn't had any good material lately, and wonders if we could get him some Mythril. What luck! We have some!
He doesn't forge anything with it, he just tells us to help ourselves to one of two safes, and the one we pick contains an item called…
"Great Gospel."
This is a consumable which we cannot, at this time, use.
So hey! Let's talk about Limit Breaks!
Cloud just learned to fire meteors at people with his sword. Don't ask me how.
As we've mentioned before, there are multiple levels of Limit Breaks - four in specific. Due to FFXIV's naming conventions, I refer to those as LB1, LB2, LB3 and LB4. Every character starts with a single LB1, and every character (except Vincent) has two Limit Breaks at each level which unlock progressively. As far as I can tell (I didn't check in detail but it seems consistent), the parameters for unlocking Limit Breaks are as follow: The first LB of a given level unlocks after X enemies killed by this character specifically, then the second LB of that level unlocks after using the first LB Y many times, while the first LB of the next level unlocks after killing Z many opponents after unlocking the previous tier.
So Cloud starts with Braver. He unlocks Cross-Slash after using Braver 8 times. When he's killed 120 enemies in battle, he unlocks Blade Beam; once he's used Blade Beam 7 times, he unlocks Climhazzard. Once he's defeated 200 opponents after unlocking Blade Beam (not in total), he unlocks Meteorain. And once he has used Meteorain 6 times, he will unlock Finishing Touch, his second LB3… And stop there.
LBs are meant to be balanced by lower level LBs charging faster, but you generally want the highest level of LB you have access to - with exceptions? You select the level of LB you want, and then when a character hits Limit Break, you pick which of the two to use. So for instance, with Cloud having his Limit set at LB2, when he hits Limit Break I choose to either use Blade Beam, which deals heavy damage to one opponent and normal damage to all other opponents, or Climhazzard, which deals even higher damage but only to a single opponent.
In order to unlock a character's ultimate Limit Break, their single fourth level LB, their LB4, things are trickier. First, we have to unlock every Limit Break of the lower levels, and then we have to access a special item through the plot, and use that item on them.
So far, I have acquired three said items. Cosmo Memory was found in the safe in the Shinra Mansion, and is Red's unlock item. All Creation was the second item awarded for defeating Lord Godo, aside from the Leviathan Materia, and is Yuffie's. And Great Gospel, the item we just spent a whole-ass hour getting through a trek across the world and back, is Aerith's.
The thing is - at this stage, I can't use any of these items. Here's what Aerith's Limit sheet looks like:
Because I recently put Aerith in my party and equipped her with powerful magic to raise her enemy killed count and unlock LBs, she has unlocked Breath of the Earth and Planet Protector. I have never used any of these LBs, though, because Healing Wind was so efficient and the game never explained to me that I would need to grind LBs at some point, so she spent the whole game equipped with LB1s. So now I need to catch up. And because Limit Breaks are triggered by damage, I can't farm safely against weak mobs, I need to somehow find monsters that can hurt Aerith but not so bad that I risk losing, and keep doing that until she uses Breath of the Earth (which I simply don't care about) and Planet Protector (I don't even know what it does) until she's unlocked her second LB2 and her second LB3, and then I can use Great Gospel to unlock her LB4.
And then I have to do the same with Yuffie, and Red, and any other character whose LB4 I want. For the record, I'm not showing you Vincent or Cid's Limit Break sheets, because they're empty. Vincent has used Galian Beast twice in the game. Cid has never used a Limit Break. They haven't unlocked anything. Do I care enough about Cid to unlock all his LBs? Well, I guess I'm gonna have to, because from a quick look he's the origin for like, half of the skill name for Dragoons in later games?
And now you now why I still keep my party on uppers even after realizing my mistake about accuracy ratings: I want to keep those Limit Breaks flying so I can actually unlock them all before I die of old age. Winners do drugs!
…
My point with this long rambling interlude is that the Limit unlock system is, while not excessively complex, a huge pain in the ass that relies on frequent use of characters, getting the opportunity to use Limit Breaks often, grinding large numbers of enemies, as the prerequisite for a plot unlock. Cloud is going to get all of his LBs naturally simply by virtue of being the protagonist, he's already nearly there, but everyone else? God.
Well, Tifa should be easy due to the particular way her LBs work (they all trigger sequentially, you don't set her Limit at any given level, she uses everything), and I already know where to find her LB4 unlock item, I just haven't gotten around to it.
But yeah, this is why I spent half an hour wiping out low-level mobs around the sleeping guy's cave; not just for a measly Bolt Ring, but because it was as good an opportunity as any for Aerith/Yuffie/Tifa to clear fistful of opponents at a time.
We made solid progress - Aerith before this session only had her first LB2 and nothing else, and Yuffie only had her LB1s period - but… Yeah.
And that's our impromptu Limit Break lesson! A lot of you knew all about this and the part I probably omitted or got wrong but yeah. This is the main individual skill/character advancement system we have, in lieu of VI's character commands. And it's…
It matters. I want to say that. Characters in FFVII aren't purely cosmetic. Their stats vary, of course, but also the Limit Breaks have a genuine impact on gameplay, because they trigger often. If your party is composed of Tifa, Barret and Cloud with only LB1s in the early game, then they're just momentary damage bursts. But Aerith having the ability to heal the whole party in one go independent of Restore/All or to Silence and Stop all enemies matters, and Yuffie is actually a pretty flexible character at LB1 because she can choose between Greased Lightning, which is heavy single-target damage, and Clear Tranquil, a party-wide heal. That's some neat flexibility! Barret has Mindblow, which depletes an enemy's MP and offers some neat cheese strats for some opponents! And Vincent works in a really unique way.
It's maybe not as much mechanical characterization as I would have wished, but it does have a genuine impact.
AND ALL OF THIS BARELY TOOK US AN HOUR AND A HALF.
Then an extra twenty minutes to head back to the Tiny Bronco, sail back to the Western Continent, trek all the way back to Wutai, buy up-to-date weapons for everyone, and do the whole trip back again.
Listen, I don't know when I'm getting an airship. I'm not trusting 'oh it's coming soon probably!'
Anyway! We're done now. We can finally head back to the Golden Saucer, wave our Gold Ticket in front of the receptionist, and waltz in. No minigames this time though; we're heading straight for Battle Square, the attraction which Dyne shot up earlier in the game and which is now open and fully operational.
Weirdly, one of the receptionists mentions that both of the staff members who were shot survived. I say 'weirdly' because I'm not sure what purpose that serves to the story - is it meant to suggest that even after going off the deep end, Dyne still had enough of a moral instinct to pull his shots against civilians? Is it just because the game is worried we'll feel bad about the innocent staff members dying?
Anyway, Battle Square has its whole sub-system of points and rewards separate from the rest of Gold Saucer. We have to pay GP to enter a series of single matches in an arena (using Cloud exclusively), and then we get Battle Points based on how well we did. Battle points can be spent for special rewards (which include Cloud's LB4 unlock item, although it looks like it costs a prohibitive amount of points).
We don't have enough GP to enter at the time, though, so we'll just get on with the plot. Off to the side of Battle Square is Dio's little museum area!
Oh my god, he's got a giant painting of himself in the place of honor. What a man.
Most of the items there are whatever. I dig the old school diving suit and the batwing plane, everything else isn't high-res enough and doesn't have an interesting enough description to do much with ('Weekend Clock,' 'Kleine's Pot'). Instead, the conspicuously low-poly item sitting on top of the pedestal at the center is our goal: the Keystone. As we approach it…
Dio appears in all his speedo-clad glory. Completely unbothered by the fact that he THREW US INTO JAIL the last time we met, he chats with us. No, he's not willing to just let us borrow the Keystone, but he is grateful for the entertainment we provided with the Chocobo Race, and he's willing to do a similar trade again - we entertain him by taking part in the Battle Arena, and he rewards us with the Keystone. We even get to score Battle Points we can spend just like if we'd paid for the privilege, but for free! And we keep the Keystone even if we lose! Sweet!
As I think is probably obvious by now, I love gladiatorial matches, I love arenas, I love solo fights, I love boss gauntlets. I had a great time with Yuffie's fights with the five masters of the Pagoda, and I am more than happy to engage in the Battle Square with Cloud, who is like eight levels higher, and reap sick rewards for cruising to victory.
Let's do this.
Ten minutes later a miniaturized Cloud with halved HP, perma-Slow status, downscaled by ten levels and with his sword broken gets one-shot by a dragon.
…
Well I don't care that the plot progresses regardless of our loss and we get the Keystone anyway and there's a big plot sequence after I HAVE ALREADY ALT-F4'D OUT OF THE GAME, I AM RESETTING THIS BITCH WE ARE COMING BACK AND EATING THAT THING'S LUNCH MARK MY FUCKING WORDS-
Then an extra twenty minutes to head back to the Tiny Bronco, sail back to the Western Continent, trek all the way back to Wutai, buy up-to-date weapons for everyone, and do the whole trip back again.
AND ALL OF THIS BARELY TOOK US AN HOUR AND A HALF.
SWIFTLY MOVING ON. What's interesting from a worldbuilding perspective though, is that much of what I had ascribed to the actions of Shinra on a defeated Wutai appear to instead have been Godo's own actions… And from Yuffie saying 'why don't you just bow down and obey them like all the other towns,' I can see the logic at play, I think; Godo ensured Wutai's partial independence by defanging it himself. He's the one who started the turn of Wutai from major power to tourist trap, because by giving Shinra what they wanted, by making Wutai safe and nice and profitable, he avoided Shinra invading and straight-up taking over and making it the way they wanted it to be.
It's an understandable impulse, if one that, in the end, results in Wutai being rendered supine regardless. And, now that Shinra troops are running through the streets conducting their own investigations and arrests like they own the place, one that is made increasingly obvious as mere pretense. In the end, Shinra has the power in Wutai, not Wutai itself, and Yuffie is rebelling against that - and in doing so, essentially calling her father's actions misguided and futile, angering him, but he has no good retort, because she's right… She just also doesn't have a better solution to suggest herself beyond "try to steal all my friends' shit to fund a resistance."
Gives me vibes of "Japan pre-emptively surrendering when America and Company start Imperialing all over the eastern countries in order to try and remain an intact country", not gonna lie. Though that's probably part of the intent or inspiration, granted.
Yuffie not only has access to Big Guard, she also has a lv 3 Restore Materia, which grants her access to Regen, a spell which causes her to regain HP at a constant rate.
Oh hey, I was wondering around what level your materia were by now. Level 3 Restore isn't too bad, well on the road to mastery for that and presumably other materias as well.
A 2,200 critical hit is what seals the deal. Victory has been achieved through proper tactics and Materia arrangement. I could almost grow to like this system: It's not often that the Final Fantasy line has managed to make solo fights interesting. I have a bunch of issues with the Materia system, but the degree of flexibility it grants to a single character, who is given time to prepare for a battle ahead, is superior to even the combinatorial Job system of FFV.
…but that's for single characters. As a party, V's Job system creates identities that are easier to read and memorize and combine into a group synergy. I feel like VII's Materia system would have been better for a game that emphasized solo play, but that's not what Final Fantasy VII (or any of this era of FF games, for that matter) wants to be, should be, or is good at.
Yeah, FFV's job system is well beloved and often copied in various forms for a reason, and that's because it's a very good way of mixing character customization with letting your characters stand out a bit. There's been better takes in the decades since, don't get me wrong, but if we're talking Final Fantasy alone it blows the rest of the series so far out of the water.
Though yes, Materia do at least let you stack some cool shit on a single character.
It's kinda crazy to me that the same game can make "a long sequence where you lose your Materia on which the whole combat system rests" and "a boss gauntlet in which you play a single character in a game designed for party play" and make them both fun and cool, and meanwhile every time it tries to do a minigame-
Cloud: "Where is this Keystone?" Blacksmith: "I sold it already. Yeah well, to tell the truth, I didn't really want to sell it but… That guy had a way about him that made you feel like it may not be a good idea NOT to sell it to him…" Cloud: "Who did you sell it to?" Blacksmith: "The manager of the Gold Saucer… think his name was 'Dio.' Said he was going to put it in his museum, then he took off out of here."
Ah yes, such a great guy that Dio. I'm sure he would have been perfectly fine leaving this random blacksmith who lives all alone in the middle of nowhere alone if he didn't get what he wants, big rich man used to getting everything because he is rich that he is. No implications here, no sirree.
And then I have to do the same with Yuffie, and Red, and any other character whose LB4 I want. For the record, I'm not showing you Vincent or Cid's Limit Break sheets, because they're empty. Vincent has used Galian Beast twice in the game. Cid has never used a Limit Break. They haven't unlocked anything. Do I care enough about Cid to unlock all his LBs? Well, I guess I'm gonna have to, because from a quick look he's the origin for like, half of the skill name for Dragoons in later games?
Yeah, honestly unless you want to grind for super full completion? Probably just worry about getting your favorite characters up to their higher level limit breaks, and leaving the ones you don't plan to use anyways in the dust and just looking up a video for all of them towards the end of the LP.
It matters. I want to say that. Characters in FFVII aren't purely cosmetic. Their stats vary, of course, but also the Limit Breaks have a genuine impact on gameplay, because they trigger often. If your party is composed of Tifa, Barret and Cloud with only LB1s in the early game, then they're just momentary damage bursts. But Aerith having the ability to heal the whole party in one go independent of Restore/All or to Silence and Stop all enemies matters, and Yuffie is actually a pretty flexible character at LB1 because she can choose between Greased Lightning, which is heavy single-target damage, and Clear Tranquil, a party-wide heal. That's some neat flexibility! Barret has Mindblow, which depletes an enemy's MP and offers some neat cheese strats for some opponents! And Vincent works in a really unique way.
Yeah, while most characters generally just have various amounts of "does damage" Limit Breaks, there's enough flexibility to add a bit of uniqueness per character. Certainly more than FFVI's Desperation Attacks, which are almost all just "does big damage" and I've literally only had happen once ever in any playthrough in the first place, since that was before they solidified mechanics for regularly getting your limit breaks.
On a related note, recently got bored and looked up some "oh hey who's the best party members" and since a lot of the discussion came down to limit breaks: Other than Cloud who is of course mandatory and has great limits anyways, the ones who stand out the most are Aerith (sheer flexibility since she doesn't really use damage limit breaks), Yuffie (combination of good multi-hits and some support limits like Clear Tranquil), and Barret (Damage Number Go Up for some of his later ones, in particular). At least, that's what the breakdown said, and even then it's not like FFVII is a stupendously difficult game where you need to minmax for these specific party members. If you want to run around with Vincent and Cait Sith, nothing stopping you.
Ten minutes later a miniaturized Cloud with halved HP, perma-Slow status, downscaled by ten levels and with his sword broken gets one-shot by a dragon.
…
Well I don't care that the plot progresses regardless of our loss and we get the Keystone anyway and there's a big plot sequence after I HAVE ALREADY ALT-F4'D OUT OF THE GAME, I AM RESETTING THIS BITCH WE ARE COMING BACK AND EATING THAT THING'S LUNCH MARK MY FUCKING WORDS-
From what I remember, the main "overhaul" style of mod, New Threat, adds a passive to each party member for some additional mechanical characterization. For example, Tifa gets the sturdy ability from Pokémon. No, really. If she would die, she instead auto-revives with 1 hp, retaining statuses, limit gauge, and queued actions. Barrett gets a strength boost when hit while in the front line, or regains a small percentage of health when hit while in the back line. Aerith gets a cool one where she absorbs most magic attacks while defending, and slowly regens health as well.
We don't have enough GP to enter at the time, though, so we'll just get on with the plot. Off to the side of Battle Square is Dio's little museum area!
A good decision, if you snag clouds level 4 limit break that early you can kiss any challenge before disc 3 goodbye as cloud pretty much obliterates everything with one LB.
You can actually apparently collect a hundred more Mythril, and then cash them all it at once to get a hundred copies of what's in the other container. As soon as you've collected from both you're locked out of getting any more Mythril though.
You fool, why would you expect Fury's secondary effect to be the opposite of Sadness's? It's not like their main effects are opposites and they cancel each other out and works exactly the way you thought in the remake or anything. That would be craaaazy.
And because Limit Breaks are triggered by damage, I can't farm safely against weak mobs, I need to somehow find monsters that can hurt Aerith but not so bad that I risk losing, and keep doing that until she uses Breath of the Earth (which I simply don't care about) and Planet Protector (I don't even know what it does)
You fool, why would you expect Fury's secondary effect to be the opposite of Sadness's? It's not like their main effects are opposites and they cancel each other out and works exactly the way you thought in the remake or anything. That would be craaaazy.
If Fury, in addition to filling your limit bar twice as fast per damage taken, were to *also* increase how much damage you took, it would be *even more busted*.
While that is probably the expected route to victory, Reflect requires a LVL.3 Barrier materia (20,000 AP). Given that Rocket Town is the earliest source of that materia I'd say it's a fair assumption Omi doesn't have it levelled.
