Final Fantasy VII with Jobs Part II
Oct. 17th, 2023 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingAs explained in the first/previous post, I'm semi-attempting to condense the explanations of this run a bit so this segment goes from roughly when we left Midgar to roughly the end of Disc 1/Part 1. These sessions were played between January 25th and January 29th of 2022.
We are starting at Kalm. Kalm had a couple of new materia, and Red XIII had very recently joined us, so let's quickly discuss the current team's capabilities. We'll include Yuffie and the few extra materia before Junon.
As for the significance of the Enemy Skill materia, as this point we don't have a whole lot. We've basically got Matra Magic, Flamethrower, and Lv.4 Suicide. Having Long Range on Barret is questionably useful, but at the moment his best weapon is Atomic Scissors so it's helpful.
I found a few good uses for Lv.4 Suicide that I normally ignore when I have more abilities, including random enemies in the Mythril Mines and the overworld outside of Junon. I had never done this before, so that was novel. In a few cases they also happened to be enemies that I could steal good weapons from (Grand Glove for Tifa and Boomerang for Yuffie). I was a bit surprised at the challenge of some random battles in the overworld near Junon; normally they're no issue at all, but the enemies actually seemed fairly good on the offense. Perhaps this was because I was playing entirely at double speed.
Yuffie didn't have much to offer the team right away, but we recruited her before Junon anyway; we'll certainly want to access Wutai later, so why not?
The boss in lower Junon, Bottomswell, is normally a great candidate to hit with magic materia. Cloud and Tifa currently had no way to hit it at all other than thrown spellcasting items... or even a way to get rid of those disabling bubbles. It was going to be different than a vanilla playthrough, at least. I actually remembered that I had grenades here, so that was nice. Red XIII used Matra Magic a couple of times, which it turns out will will hit bubbles on party members. This fight didn't end up being tough.
CPR was considerably tougher than Bottomswell. It took me over a minute. Regardless, I am pretty sure I am better at CPR than the game's developers are.
In Junon, I purchased a Seal materia (mainly for Barret) and a Revive materia (for Cloud). I tried to do my best during Rufus' send-off but I had just switched controllers and accidentally started with the speed-up on, so I wasn't sure I'd do extremely well. Either of the top two prizes would be good for me, and I happened to get the top one - a Force Stealer. It was arguably better to get the HP Plus, but whatever.
On the ship, I stole some Shinra Betas. Against Jenova*Birth, I was pretty surprised when I had saved a Mindblow that did 0 MP of damage to it. We were (eventually) able to benefit from Lunatic High here, and the fight was generally easy given that we had some healing available.
My audio was all fixed up this time. I made a team of Cloud, Aeris and Blue Cid, and spent some time travelling the world learning Enemy Skills. We proceeded to the Gold Saucer to get the Keystone, and then quickly onto the Temple of the Ancients. I made sure to grab everything here. This provided Tifa the knight with her Morph ability and thus something to connect HP Absorb to, although with how weak Morph attacks generally are that feature is rather pointless.
Red Dragon was fine. My party was Cloud, Aeris and Black Cat. Against Demon Wall, I ended up using a consumable Spider Web to slow it, which worked great. Since we didn't have an E. Skill this time, we actually made use of Cloud's Barrier abilities. The fight was fine, although Aeris was singled-out a lot with the falling boulder attacks, including right after I had revived her, so she was dead at the end of the battle.
I took Cloud, Barret and Vincent through Coral Valley. It was a bit novel to be using some summon abilities. Aeris may or may not have still been dead from the Demon Wall and we fought Jenova*Life. Vincent used Galian Beast in this fight and Beast Flare was nice and strong. Although there are some ways to cheese this fight, like wearing a Water Ring, that didn't really end up being very necessary because it wasn't hard.
We ended up getting Magic Plus shortly after, which is useful for both white mage and black mage. We bought new weapons in Icicle Inn, which afford a few people some extra materia options, and then went snowboarding. We did Great Glacier normally, getting all the noteworthy items, and then I saved before Gaea's Cliff. This seems like a good time to end this segment since we're so shortly before the end of Disc 1/Part 1 at the end of play session 7.
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We are starting at Kalm. Kalm had a couple of new materia, and Red XIII had very recently joined us, so let's quickly discuss the current team's capabilities. We'll include Yuffie and the few extra materia before Junon.
| Party Member | Job | Materia |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud | White Mage | Restore, Heal, All |
| Barret | Ranger | Long Range, Poison |
| Tifa | Knight | Cover |
| Aeris | Freelancer | Steal, Sense, Fire, Ice, Lightning, All, Elemental |
| Red XIII | Mime | Enemy Skill |
| Yuffie | Time Mage | All |
As for the significance of the Enemy Skill materia, as this point we don't have a whole lot. We've basically got Matra Magic, Flamethrower, and Lv.4 Suicide. Having Long Range on Barret is questionably useful, but at the moment his best weapon is Atomic Scissors so it's helpful.
I found a few good uses for Lv.4 Suicide that I normally ignore when I have more abilities, including random enemies in the Mythril Mines and the overworld outside of Junon. I had never done this before, so that was novel. In a few cases they also happened to be enemies that I could steal good weapons from (Grand Glove for Tifa and Boomerang for Yuffie). I was a bit surprised at the challenge of some random battles in the overworld near Junon; normally they're no issue at all, but the enemies actually seemed fairly good on the offense. Perhaps this was because I was playing entirely at double speed.
Yuffie didn't have much to offer the team right away, but we recruited her before Junon anyway; we'll certainly want to access Wutai later, so why not?
The boss in lower Junon, Bottomswell, is normally a great candidate to hit with magic materia. Cloud and Tifa currently had no way to hit it at all other than thrown spellcasting items... or even a way to get rid of those disabling bubbles. It was going to be different than a vanilla playthrough, at least. I actually remembered that I had grenades here, so that was nice. Red XIII used Matra Magic a couple of times, which it turns out will will hit bubbles on party members. This fight didn't end up being tough.
CPR was considerably tougher than Bottomswell. It took me over a minute. Regardless, I am pretty sure I am better at CPR than the game's developers are.
In Junon, I purchased a Seal materia (mainly for Barret) and a Revive materia (for Cloud). I tried to do my best during Rufus' send-off but I had just switched controllers and accidentally started with the speed-up on, so I wasn't sure I'd do extremely well. Either of the top two prizes would be good for me, and I happened to get the top one - a Force Stealer. It was arguably better to get the HP Plus, but whatever.
On the ship, I stole some Shinra Betas. Against Jenova*Birth, I was pretty surprised when I had saved a Mindblow that did 0 MP of damage to it. We were (eventually) able to benefit from Lunatic High here, and the fight was generally easy given that we had some healing available.
Onto the new continent.
I had a near softlock in one of the tents in North Corel which I called "the scariest part of the run so far".
I recruited Cait Sith, who is a black mage, and renamed him Black Cat. As of right now, he can use Ice, Lightning, Fire, Earth, Transform, Poison, Seal and All. I gave him all of those, and then swapped Aeris' materia to the things nobody else was using like Throw, Sense and summons. I'm not really planning to intentionally utilize Aeris' freelancer capabilities - it was more of a just-in-case scenario. While I was in Corel Prison, I learned Laser. The Dyne battle was no big deal.
Getting the buggy was nice, though. This allowed us to use Aeris to Manipulate Beach Plugs and Zemzeletts to learn some of the very best Enemy Skills, Mighty Guard and White Wind. While on that trip back, when I was in Junon, I did the trick where I activated the switch near the Submarine Dock to fight mid-Disc-2 enemies. That was pretty hard, but I won a couple of them. It's hard to say whether there was serious benefit, though.
On the way back, I also decided to challenge a Harpy to learn Aqualung. I'll just get Beta later when it's faster and easier.
We stopped into Gongaga to beat up Reno and Rude and acquire Mystify and Time. This particular session ended with a save immediately outside of Cosmo Canyon.
This play session didn't seem to pick up my headset mic at all, which sucks. We were able to purchase HP Plus and MP Plus materia here, which can bring some minor benefit to several of our characters. More importantly, the Cave of the Gi includes the Gravity materia (which is good for Yuffie) and the Added Effect materia (which is an essential build component for Barret). Barret wasn't in my team for the dungeon though, instead I had Cloud, Red XIII and Cait Sith. When we got to Gi Nattak, I threw an X-Potion. Good fight.
Next, we went to Nibelheim. Perhaps the most noteworthy prize here was Vincent, who will act as our party's summoner, along with the Odin materia for him to use. We also got Destruct, which can give Barret a chance of instant death with his attacks using Added Effect. Getting Vincent required beating the optional boss Lost Number, who can be pretty tough for certain teams. I happen to have run into him with a party of Cloud, Cait Sith and Barret. We ended up fighting the "physical" version of the 2nd form on account of all of our magic-slinging. With more spells, limit breaks, and strong poison ticks, he wasn't that bad.
After recruiting Vincent - who I named Vinsumm as another bad job-based pun attempt - I put him in the party. This wouldn't last long, as I really wanted Trine for my Enemy Skill materia and the next boss, Materia Keeper, absorbs fire, which is an issue given the nature of Vincent's first Limit Break. For most of Mt. Nibel, I ended up using a team of Cloud, Yuffie (for the first time) and Aeris... switching to Cloud, Red XIII and Barret for the Materia Keeper. We were able to keep him poisoned, and with Mighty Guard keeping us safe it was a very manageable battle. We did indeed learn Trine.
I decided to save money by using Aeris to steal some Gold Armlets from the Dragons here, too. We spent a pretty long time here.
Rocket Town gives us access to Exit materia for Yuffie, and less importantly, the Barrier materia for Cloud. We got to enjoy the battle with Palmer, which is always a favourite of mine, and then we got access to some truly baffling transportation. Without a better idea, I renamed Cid "Blue Cid".
My first stop with the Tiny Bronco was Wutai. I decided to keep Vincent and Cid in the party here. Pick-ups here included HP Absorb (for Tifa, although it's a bit useless right now) and MP Absorb (for Cait Sith). The battle with Rapps is still done without materia, which means it's completely vanilla. I had Vincent turn into a Galian Beast which probably sped things up a bit.
I re-allocated everyone's materia and failed at the Pagoda Challenge before saving.
I had a near softlock in one of the tents in North Corel which I called "the scariest part of the run so far".
I recruited Cait Sith, who is a black mage, and renamed him Black Cat. As of right now, he can use Ice, Lightning, Fire, Earth, Transform, Poison, Seal and All. I gave him all of those, and then swapped Aeris' materia to the things nobody else was using like Throw, Sense and summons. I'm not really planning to intentionally utilize Aeris' freelancer capabilities - it was more of a just-in-case scenario. While I was in Corel Prison, I learned Laser. The Dyne battle was no big deal.
Getting the buggy was nice, though. This allowed us to use Aeris to Manipulate Beach Plugs and Zemzeletts to learn some of the very best Enemy Skills, Mighty Guard and White Wind. While on that trip back, when I was in Junon, I did the trick where I activated the switch near the Submarine Dock to fight mid-Disc-2 enemies. That was pretty hard, but I won a couple of them. It's hard to say whether there was serious benefit, though.
On the way back, I also decided to challenge a Harpy to learn Aqualung. I'll just get Beta later when it's faster and easier.
We stopped into Gongaga to beat up Reno and Rude and acquire Mystify and Time. This particular session ended with a save immediately outside of Cosmo Canyon.
This play session didn't seem to pick up my headset mic at all, which sucks. We were able to purchase HP Plus and MP Plus materia here, which can bring some minor benefit to several of our characters. More importantly, the Cave of the Gi includes the Gravity materia (which is good for Yuffie) and the Added Effect materia (which is an essential build component for Barret). Barret wasn't in my team for the dungeon though, instead I had Cloud, Red XIII and Cait Sith. When we got to Gi Nattak, I threw an X-Potion. Good fight.
Next, we went to Nibelheim. Perhaps the most noteworthy prize here was Vincent, who will act as our party's summoner, along with the Odin materia for him to use. We also got Destruct, which can give Barret a chance of instant death with his attacks using Added Effect. Getting Vincent required beating the optional boss Lost Number, who can be pretty tough for certain teams. I happen to have run into him with a party of Cloud, Cait Sith and Barret. We ended up fighting the "physical" version of the 2nd form on account of all of our magic-slinging. With more spells, limit breaks, and strong poison ticks, he wasn't that bad.
After recruiting Vincent - who I named Vinsumm as another bad job-based pun attempt - I put him in the party. This wouldn't last long, as I really wanted Trine for my Enemy Skill materia and the next boss, Materia Keeper, absorbs fire, which is an issue given the nature of Vincent's first Limit Break. For most of Mt. Nibel, I ended up using a team of Cloud, Yuffie (for the first time) and Aeris... switching to Cloud, Red XIII and Barret for the Materia Keeper. We were able to keep him poisoned, and with Mighty Guard keeping us safe it was a very manageable battle. We did indeed learn Trine.
I decided to save money by using Aeris to steal some Gold Armlets from the Dragons here, too. We spent a pretty long time here.
Rocket Town gives us access to Exit materia for Yuffie, and less importantly, the Barrier materia for Cloud. We got to enjoy the battle with Palmer, which is always a favourite of mine, and then we got access to some truly baffling transportation. Without a better idea, I renamed Cid "Blue Cid".
My first stop with the Tiny Bronco was Wutai. I decided to keep Vincent and Cid in the party here. Pick-ups here included HP Absorb (for Tifa, although it's a bit useless right now) and MP Absorb (for Cait Sith). The battle with Rapps is still done without materia, which means it's completely vanilla. I had Vincent turn into a Galian Beast which probably sped things up a bit.
I re-allocated everyone's materia and failed at the Pagoda Challenge before saving.
My audio was all fixed up this time. I made a team of Cloud, Aeris and Blue Cid, and spent some time travelling the world learning Enemy Skills. We proceeded to the Gold Saucer to get the Keystone, and then quickly onto the Temple of the Ancients. I made sure to grab everything here. This provided Tifa the knight with her Morph ability and thus something to connect HP Absorb to, although with how weak Morph attacks generally are that feature is rather pointless.
Red Dragon was fine. My party was Cloud, Aeris and Black Cat. Against Demon Wall, I ended up using a consumable Spider Web to slow it, which worked great. Since we didn't have an E. Skill this time, we actually made use of Cloud's Barrier abilities. The fight was fine, although Aeris was singled-out a lot with the falling boulder attacks, including right after I had revived her, so she was dead at the end of the battle.
I took Cloud, Barret and Vincent through Coral Valley. It was a bit novel to be using some summon abilities. Aeris may or may not have still been dead from the Demon Wall and we fought Jenova*Life. Vincent used Galian Beast in this fight and Beast Flare was nice and strong. Although there are some ways to cheese this fight, like wearing a Water Ring, that didn't really end up being very necessary because it wasn't hard.
We ended up getting Magic Plus shortly after, which is useful for both white mage and black mage. We bought new weapons in Icicle Inn, which afford a few people some extra materia options, and then went snowboarding. We did Great Glacier normally, getting all the noteworthy items, and then I saved before Gaea's Cliff. This seems like a good time to end this segment since we're so shortly before the end of Disc 1/Part 1 at the end of play session 7.
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