Final Fantasy VII with Jobs Part III
Oct. 18th, 2023 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingThis post starts with play session 8 near the end of Part 1/Disc 1 and the start of Part 2/Disc 2, with our initial load being right at the start of Gaea's Cliff. Session 8 was played on January 30th, 2022. Unfortunately, this 2022 FF7 with Jobs event was officially ending on January 31, 2022. I didn't really think I was going to make it in time. I had already accepted this fact... but I was going to try my best regardless.
Maybe we should start by once again acknowledging our current capabilities, keeping in mind this is based on the 2022 version of the rules.
Enemy Skills are pretty well up-to-date and we've picked up every summon materia we would normally have had the opportunity to grab at this point.
The trip up Gaea's Cliff was actually tricky; a Stilva wrecked the team with Magic Breath such that Vincent and Cloud died and Yuffie had to use her Escape spell. That may be the first time I've ever used that!
Two or three battles later, we got back-attacked by a Stilva and the outcome was faster and worse.
On our next trip, we were a bit more careful and we brought Blue Cid so that we could learn Magic Breath for ourselves. This was good in the short term although I got another Game Over to a Stilva on that next trip, too. Goodness. I have never had this kind of issue here before. For my third attempt, I used elemental armlets for safety and it went much better. Before the boss, we swapped Vincent for Yuffie, since she's more... controllable.
Schizo (maybe a bit insensitively-named?) was a pretty easy fight. Our elemental protections played a role, and Cid was keeping defenses up with Mighty Guard while refilling his MP as needed with Magic Hammer. We had Regen active, and mostly used Limit Breaks for damage.
For the Whirlwind Maze, we had Cloud, Yuffie and Tifa. I have barely used Tifa since Midgar, since the knight job is pretty terrible, so she still only has two of her Limit Breaks. The next boss is Jenova*Death, which I remembered using almost entirely fire attacks and I prepared based on that, so the fight was trivial. Tifa landed the finishing blow with a Somersault.
After this was... epic cutscene mania. And we're into Disc 2/Part 2 officially. For a while at this point, my oldest son, Wyldstar, joined me for some additional (very uninformed) commentary.
It's the first time in ages since I've had a completely prescribed party; fortunately, Barret, Cait Sith and Yuffie all have access to quite a few materia, so they aren't boring to play with. Escaping was all normal and now we had all kinds of freedom to grab goodies. I got Full Cure, a Zeio Nut, and some chocobo greens before heading to Mideel and getting Contain. Then we lose Tifa for a while.
We formed a team of Blue Cid, Barret and Yuffie and then stopped so Wyldstar could record a couple of videos for his channel.
This part was recorded late at night on January 30th, 2022... just one day before the challenge-as-written was going to end. I started by doing Fort Condor and intentionally losing the strategic battle. You know, I usually enjoy this minigame, but the fastest and easiest way to do this was to lose and fight Grand Horn. Grand Horn also drops the Imperial Guard which is a pretty nice defensive equip.
Next, it was onto Corel. I kept the same team and did the rather cool train sequence with them. Enemy Skills were helpful here, obviously including Mighty Guard but also Trine against the Eagle Gun.
We finished the sequence with a fair bit of time to spare. This gives us access to Barret's final Limit Break and the Ultima materia.
Jumping ahead, we went and got Cloud and Tifa back on the team. I made a team of Cloud, Blue Cid and Yuffie and outfitted them before heading to the Junon submarine dock. Carry Armor is the boss I dread most in this game. I've had so many dumb experiences with Cait Sith using his Transform Limit Break and then getting picked up, resulting in a game over. It's happened to me so often that it almost feels like the Transform slot result has some kind of cruel hardcoding. Anyway... yeah. Carry Armor can be tough in other ways, too.
The fight seemed like it was going well, with Mighty Guard and Regen mitigating most of the worst attacks, and using Magic Breath on the offense was quite strong. Naturally, things got considerably worse when both Cid and Yuffie ended up grappled leaving me with just my white mage, Cloud.
I didn't really know what to do. I had Cloud throw a Swift Bolt, which did pathetic damage. What ended up helping here, somehow, was that the armor damages picked-up characters when you attack it, so Yuffie died. With Yuffie dead, Cloud could revive her and was able to get the team back in order.
Something great that happened - accidentally - is that I didn't realize using Magic Hammer on Carry Armor to refill Cid's MP after using Magic Breath was going to prevent it from using its very strong Lapis Laser attack. With this, once we did knock its arms off, it literally had no combat options! I likened it to the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
This fight had me worried at the beginning; it was almost therapeutic that it ended the way it did.
I did the submarine mission in about 4 seconds.
With my new captured submarine, I visited Lucretia and the Gelnika. Gelnika enemies are really hard but the prizes are quite nice. Thankfully, I saved when I went in since I died to a random battle inside after a few input flubs. We beat Reno and Rude again with no problems. We had a great battle with a Serpent after the Turks where I used Magic Hammer three times and found that doing so took basically all of its combat options away.
Despite appearances, it turns out the enemies here aren't actually undead, so casting restorative spells like FullCure on them is not a great idea.
We tried to grab some random goodies and then went to Rocket Town. We had a game crash on our way up the rocket, which was pretty annoying, but thankfully I had been saving fairly often. The next ascent was done without issue.
Regarding the rocket's huge materia, I am not sure I ever did this as a minigame legitimately. I had kind of a vague muscle memory of playing this game so much over 20 years ago that I thought I could get it. And indeed I did!
Now it's time to return to Midgar. Right?
This tenth play session was on January 31, 2022 - literally the last day of the Final Fantasy VII with Jobs event. I was quite sure I wouldn't be getting it done, and this wasn't even a particularly long session. As my first stop, I went to Cosmo Canyon and got Bahamut ZERO. Then, I went to the City of the Ancients with Bugenhagen. Then the game crashed, so I did that whole thing again.
I got Diamond Weapon to walk directly over the Highwind and then engaged it in battle. Diamond Flash is a pretty nasty attack, but we weathered that. Probably because I would normally have done a bunch of sidequesting, I don't think I ever had a fight with Diamond Weapon that was so long or dangerous. We ended up winning with Cloud finishing him off with Climhazzard.
We dove into Midgar with the same team, Cloud, Barret and Yuffie. It was very exciting, and then I got another Game Over against some random losers somehow. The spinning blade enemies here inflict confusion, and Yuffie targetted herself with an attack when I was trying to get away.
I didn't think the next attempt was going to go any worse, but yeah, it went better. I still kept forgetting items and, without having looked up what these were and how valuable they might've been, I was backtracking for them a few times. I kept reminding myself, "This was never going to be a 100% game anyway".
We saved at the south end of the train tunnels, where we picked up W-Item (which we can't use). Right near the save point, Barret learned Angermax and thus, Catastrophe. Cloud is still using level 2 Limit Breaks, which is bizarre; in my typical, vanilla play Cloud often has Meteorain before Nibelheim! I guess this is evidence of how little a white mage contributes on the offense.
I'll wrap up this entry here, right before the end of Disc 2/Part 2 and the start of Disc 3/Part 3, and with two play sessions left. I guess that means I am not finishing the event before the deadline, sadly.
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Maybe we should start by once again acknowledging our current capabilities, keeping in mind this is based on the 2022 version of the rules.
| Party Member | Job | Materia |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud | White Mage | Restore, Heal, Revive, Mystify, Barrier, All, MP Plus, Magic Plus |
| Barret | Ranger | Poison, Seal, Mystify, Destruct, Added Effect, Long Range |
| Tifa | Knight | Morph, HP Absorb, Cover, HP Plus |
| Red XIII | Mime | Enemy Skill, Morph |
| Yuffie | Time Mage | Time, Gravity, Exit, Comet, All |
| Cait Sith | Black Mage | Ice, Lightning, Fire, Earth, Poison, Seal, Transform, All, MP Absorb, Magic Plus |
| Vincent | Summoner | All summon materia |
| Cid | Blue Mage | Enemy Skill, Sense, Manipulate |
Enemy Skills are pretty well up-to-date and we've picked up every summon materia we would normally have had the opportunity to grab at this point.
The trip up Gaea's Cliff was actually tricky; a Stilva wrecked the team with Magic Breath such that Vincent and Cloud died and Yuffie had to use her Escape spell. That may be the first time I've ever used that!
Two or three battles later, we got back-attacked by a Stilva and the outcome was faster and worse.
On our next trip, we were a bit more careful and we brought Blue Cid so that we could learn Magic Breath for ourselves. This was good in the short term although I got another Game Over to a Stilva on that next trip, too. Goodness. I have never had this kind of issue here before. For my third attempt, I used elemental armlets for safety and it went much better. Before the boss, we swapped Vincent for Yuffie, since she's more... controllable.
Schizo (maybe a bit insensitively-named?) was a pretty easy fight. Our elemental protections played a role, and Cid was keeping defenses up with Mighty Guard while refilling his MP as needed with Magic Hammer. We had Regen active, and mostly used Limit Breaks for damage.
For the Whirlwind Maze, we had Cloud, Yuffie and Tifa. I have barely used Tifa since Midgar, since the knight job is pretty terrible, so she still only has two of her Limit Breaks. The next boss is Jenova*Death, which I remembered using almost entirely fire attacks and I prepared based on that, so the fight was trivial. Tifa landed the finishing blow with a Somersault.
After this was... epic cutscene mania. And we're into Disc 2/Part 2 officially. For a while at this point, my oldest son, Wyldstar, joined me for some additional (very uninformed) commentary.
It's the first time in ages since I've had a completely prescribed party; fortunately, Barret, Cait Sith and Yuffie all have access to quite a few materia, so they aren't boring to play with. Escaping was all normal and now we had all kinds of freedom to grab goodies. I got Full Cure, a Zeio Nut, and some chocobo greens before heading to Mideel and getting Contain. Then we lose Tifa for a while.
We formed a team of Blue Cid, Barret and Yuffie and then stopped so Wyldstar could record a couple of videos for his channel.
This part was recorded late at night on January 30th, 2022... just one day before the challenge-as-written was going to end. I started by doing Fort Condor and intentionally losing the strategic battle. You know, I usually enjoy this minigame, but the fastest and easiest way to do this was to lose and fight Grand Horn. Grand Horn also drops the Imperial Guard which is a pretty nice defensive equip.
Next, it was onto Corel. I kept the same team and did the rather cool train sequence with them. Enemy Skills were helpful here, obviously including Mighty Guard but also Trine against the Eagle Gun.
We finished the sequence with a fair bit of time to spare. This gives us access to Barret's final Limit Break and the Ultima materia.
Jumping ahead, we went and got Cloud and Tifa back on the team. I made a team of Cloud, Blue Cid and Yuffie and outfitted them before heading to the Junon submarine dock. Carry Armor is the boss I dread most in this game. I've had so many dumb experiences with Cait Sith using his Transform Limit Break and then getting picked up, resulting in a game over. It's happened to me so often that it almost feels like the Transform slot result has some kind of cruel hardcoding. Anyway... yeah. Carry Armor can be tough in other ways, too.
The fight seemed like it was going well, with Mighty Guard and Regen mitigating most of the worst attacks, and using Magic Breath on the offense was quite strong. Naturally, things got considerably worse when both Cid and Yuffie ended up grappled leaving me with just my white mage, Cloud.
I didn't really know what to do. I had Cloud throw a Swift Bolt, which did pathetic damage. What ended up helping here, somehow, was that the armor damages picked-up characters when you attack it, so Yuffie died. With Yuffie dead, Cloud could revive her and was able to get the team back in order.
Something great that happened - accidentally - is that I didn't realize using Magic Hammer on Carry Armor to refill Cid's MP after using Magic Breath was going to prevent it from using its very strong Lapis Laser attack. With this, once we did knock its arms off, it literally had no combat options! I likened it to the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
This fight had me worried at the beginning; it was almost therapeutic that it ended the way it did.
I did the submarine mission in about 4 seconds.
With my new captured submarine, I visited Lucretia and the Gelnika. Gelnika enemies are really hard but the prizes are quite nice. Thankfully, I saved when I went in since I died to a random battle inside after a few input flubs. We beat Reno and Rude again with no problems. We had a great battle with a Serpent after the Turks where I used Magic Hammer three times and found that doing so took basically all of its combat options away.
Despite appearances, it turns out the enemies here aren't actually undead, so casting restorative spells like FullCure on them is not a great idea.
We tried to grab some random goodies and then went to Rocket Town. We had a game crash on our way up the rocket, which was pretty annoying, but thankfully I had been saving fairly often. The next ascent was done without issue.
Regarding the rocket's huge materia, I am not sure I ever did this as a minigame legitimately. I had kind of a vague muscle memory of playing this game so much over 20 years ago that I thought I could get it. And indeed I did!
Now it's time to return to Midgar. Right?
This tenth play session was on January 31, 2022 - literally the last day of the Final Fantasy VII with Jobs event. I was quite sure I wouldn't be getting it done, and this wasn't even a particularly long session. As my first stop, I went to Cosmo Canyon and got Bahamut ZERO. Then, I went to the City of the Ancients with Bugenhagen. Then the game crashed, so I did that whole thing again.
I got Diamond Weapon to walk directly over the Highwind and then engaged it in battle. Diamond Flash is a pretty nasty attack, but we weathered that. Probably because I would normally have done a bunch of sidequesting, I don't think I ever had a fight with Diamond Weapon that was so long or dangerous. We ended up winning with Cloud finishing him off with Climhazzard.
We dove into Midgar with the same team, Cloud, Barret and Yuffie. It was very exciting, and then I got another Game Over against some random losers somehow. The spinning blade enemies here inflict confusion, and Yuffie targetted herself with an attack when I was trying to get away.
I didn't think the next attempt was going to go any worse, but yeah, it went better. I still kept forgetting items and, without having looked up what these were and how valuable they might've been, I was backtracking for them a few times. I kept reminding myself, "This was never going to be a 100% game anyway".
We saved at the south end of the train tunnels, where we picked up W-Item (which we can't use). Right near the save point, Barret learned Angermax and thus, Catastrophe. Cloud is still using level 2 Limit Breaks, which is bizarre; in my typical, vanilla play Cloud often has Meteorain before Nibelheim! I guess this is evidence of how little a white mage contributes on the offense.
I'll wrap up this entry here, right before the end of Disc 2/Part 2 and the start of Disc 3/Part 3, and with two play sessions left. I guess that means I am not finishing the event before the deadline, sadly.
<< Start | < Previous | Index | Next >
