Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, where the end is approaching.
Well, yeah, it's been approaching for a while. You
have looked up at the giant impending meteor coming to end us all, right?
Here, you can see Bahamut-ZERO deal 9,999 damage to Ruby, whereas Omnislash did a fraction of that. This reveals the solution to our predicament: We need Defense-ignoring attacks. They're the only way to punch through Ruby's staggering Defense and deal a meaningful chunk of its enormous health.
…you can also guess why this won't work. I can cast B-ZERO once, Knights of the Round once (to which it responds with Ultima for a team wipe), and I'll have dealt less than 100k damage total and will be down to moves that deal sub-thousand damage, against nearly a million HP.
Well, there's always mimic for things like that.
Aaaaand looking ahead, it turned out mimic was totally the answer, huh?
On the other hand like most Materia of its kind you need to sink a ton of AP into it to get it above a miserable 20% chance to trigger, so we're never going to use it.
This seems to be a pretty consistent problem with FFVII's endgame, tbh. "Oh boy, we saved all the coolest abilities and materia for last buuuut also they still take a shitload of AP so you aren't getting them unless you specifically go out of your way to grind." At least by comparison, FFV gave you all the classes (barring Mime) by the second world, and FFVI maxes out at 100 AP necessary for any particular spell.
The fact that a boosted version of Proud Clod is a fair opponent to Cloud fighting alone should tell you a lot about just how easy the game is in general, as a less powerful version of this boss was fought by an entire party at roughly the same level during the main story. Which, speaking of…
Yeaaaah, pretty much any Final Fantasy game with some degree of open customization can be busted wide open at some point or another, but FFVII does feel like it gets broken the soonest. FFV still needs to grind up particular job combos to reach that lategame "and then everyone was God Tier Freelancers/Mimes", FFVI you at least need to grab most of the World of Ruin party members to grab Locke to unlock the real killer stuff in Narshe.
Yes, you're no seeing things, that thing has a face on its butt and turns around to moon the opponent as part of its attack.
Typhoon always had the butt-face, pretty sure, it's just... a lot more noticeable when he's swooshing around in 3D.
Aaaaw. I really did think Bugenhagen might actually make it to the end of the story, with his heavily foreshadowed death being in the future/epilogue space. He didn't even die in a heroic sacrifice of some kind, but simply died of old age, in his home, kinda like… Yoda? Mark one more for Star Wars references, I guess.
Bugenhagen, throughout the game, was characterized chiefly by what I will call good-humoured pessimism. He's always been convinced that the Planet's days were numbered, that the end was coming, that even Shinra was only accelerating it, not causing it to begin with, that we were all doomed. He was pretty chill about it, he laughed and made jokes about mortality (his own and others'), about the end of the world, but I think he was, at his heart, depressed. That his good mood was a coping mechanism to deal with this looming fatality.
So Bugenhagen exchanging last words with Nanaki and verging both into mono no aware, the beauty of the transience of life and the worth in is impermanence, and a long-view reflection on the idea that life itself endures, will endure, and that this is not the end, is meaningful. It's his character arc, not just Nanaki's. It's not always that doomed mentor figure get an arc of their own, with progress and a resolution, but Bugenhagen did - he evolved, he changed, and he found peace in his last moments.
Of course, it's also the conclusion of Nanaki's arc; his grandfather gives him the validation he needed but couldn't ask for to look beyond just protecting one village, but to be the hope of renewal for his species, to be a witness for the Planet the world over.
I absolutely forgot that Bugenhagen passes. Or, you know, missed it entirely as a kid because optional scene + kid is stoopid we didn't literally watch him die onscreen then cut to a tombstone. Guess Nanaki's little "Grandpa went to the upstate farm" talk worked on me.
I'm not sure how he's supposed to find this life mate when he is supposedly the last of his kind but I'm sure there's some Hidden Village of Catdogs in the Ancient Forest that he'll run into in the Epilogue or something.
Ahahahahaha.
If you know, thread goers, you know. And Omi knows.
This is an utterly baffling move, and it's clearly meant to play as an emotional beat of the kind I just talked about, but it doesn't land because there is no reason for it to happen.
Seems Nanaki's pretty good at that, between this and the whole weird setup of Seto way back on your first visit to Cosmo Canyon.
Oh, and there's an old guy nostalgic for the rocket in Rocket Town who gives us Cid's ultimate weapon, whatever.
Ah Cid, ever the footnote of this playthrough.
The very first item we find around the edge of the crater is a Save Crystal. This is a unique item with a very special function: It can create a Save Point anywhere in the North Cave, but can only be used once. The North Cave otherwise has no save points whatsoever. The game is empowering us to choose where we think we would make the best use of a save point, which plays into a general 'resource management' vibe the final dungeon tries for, since a save point is also a place we can rest at. Ultimately we'll just plop it down on the very last screen before the point of no return, there's no reason to do anything else.
I usually dumped the crystal around the midpoint of the dungeon, myself. Left me near the best grinding spots, and less of a walk to get back out when I wanted to leave, only downside is whenever I wanted to refight Sephiroth I had to walk a few extra screens.
BAM. INSTANT RIBBON. NOW I HAVE ENOUGH TO OUTFIT MY WHOLE TEAM.
Now you have enough? How strange, Omi... I could have
sworn there were three ribbons total before this point!
You didn't... miss a Ribbon somewhere, did you?
You get what I mean, right? This whole thing is like this emotional exchange as the group splits off to pursue their own quests to defeat the big bad where they won't meet up again until after this is done and they've either succeeded or failed and died, instead of what it actually is, which is 'the group randomly deciding to split up to explore a bunch of caves before meeting up again.'
I kind of wonder if it's an artifact of those potential plot beats of killing off the other party members, since we already know that there was initially some discussion of killing off everyone not in the party during the Midgar raid.
…we're not going to use it either. As useful as free up all the space spent on All Materia on one character' sounds like, Mega All is, say it with me now, a level-based Materia. Which means it has a maximum of five uses (for a cost of 160,000 AP total) across all uses, and as it disables the normal attack command, even normal attacks will consume it, and as it stands now, it merely has one use per fight, period. I just… Don't have any use fr it right now.
Oh look, a pattern.
They are invincible unless given an Elixir, whereupon they prove incredibly easy to defeat, and reward us with 1000 AP per Magic Pot. Is 1000 AP worth an Elixir? In the grand scheme of things probably not, but I have a dozen Elixirs and Megalixirs both and I'll never use them all, so I feed the little critter happily. Other enemies unique to the swamp area include the Mover, tiny floating balls that give out a shitton of AP and can also be Morphed for Protect Rings. Neat!
Yep, right around here is where I usually dropped the save point, because best AP grind in the game no contest.
Ultimately the only reason was bragging rights. Not that I can brag all that much, considering the braindead strategy I employed, but a win is a win. Now I can know peace.
But can you
really know peace? After all, Emerald Weapon is still alive and kicking
Next Time: We confront Sephiroth for the last time.
Really? The last time? Are you suuuuure?
After all, No One's Ever Really Gone.
Omi mentioning that so far the endzone so far is just a slightly disappointing cave has me wondering...what *is* everyone's favorite FF End Zone? Not necessarily boss, but the environment/level specifically?
My endgame knowledge actually starts to drop off after FFVII because the next few games all got me with "reach near endgame then poof off and never play the game again" syndrome at some point or another, so I'll be going with FFV - I really like the changing environment of the void, and just the idea of you're running through all these areas absorbed into this massive interdimensional space and facing off against long-sealed away monsters from throughout long forgotten history.
Honorable mention to Pandemonium from FFII because damn that castle looks fine, and also it has banger music.
