Final Fantasy VII Classic Jobs Part I
Jan. 8th, 2024 09:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingRevenantKioku of the Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta has, at some point in the last several months, switched models for the FF5 off-season such that there's some kind of gaming event each new month, each with a loose association with a charity. In December, for example, I played the Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge. January's charity gaming event, like in 2022 and 2023, is Final Fantasy VII with Jobs.
If you read my Year in Review post for 2023, you may have noticed that I had a ton of ideas and none of them were FF7. Well, when I found out about this event, I wondered if I could squeeze one of my classic jobs runs into it since it was happening anyway. I had recently received an invite to Bluesky and I reached out to RevenantKioku on there and asked if I could customize the jobs of my party. He said something to the effect of, "Sure, but donate to the charity." So I did! Lo and behold.
While FF7 wasn't really on my list for 2024 even just 10 days ago, now that RevenantKioku has done me this favour I feel rather committed to it.
So, how did I end up with these jobs? I wanted to do a strict party of knight, thief, white mage, black mage, as is usual for me. I made a spreadsheet of all of the forced parties throughout the game and found a way to make it work. I did give some consideration to character traits and theming and whatnot but priority #1 was having four jobs that never overlap.
There was more than one way for this to work, but this is what I settled on. In brief, Cloud gets forced into a party with every other character at some point, so his job needed to be unique. This includes the alternate leaders, Tifa and Cid, who are never forced to be together, so it made sense for Tifa and Cid to share a job. Cid and Barret are also forced to be together, so Barret needs a job distinct from Cloud, Cid, and Tifa. Things mostly slid together after that.
Note that in that final image of my jobs something weird happened where it shows Aeristh as "Black Mage" and Red XIII as "Freelancer". I don't know what's up with that. They had told me that Aeristh was going to remain listed as a Freelancer because that's a limitation of how the event page is set up, and things display correctly there.
Regardless, I'm limiting Aeristh (and Red XIII) to the black mage materia set. I'm also not going to allow my knight to use Restore because that just seems off to me.
In 2022 I had played FF7 with Jobs and, while I enjoyed it, I didn't manage to finish in time (i.e. before end of January). Honestly, I wish I could've started earlier to give myself a better chance this time, but holidays and some ramp-up with my work didn't allow me to start earlier than January 7th, 2024.
Given how little materia you have at the start of the game, this session trotting through Midgar up to the Train Graveyard felt very ordinary. All we could really do in the first reactor was attack. I considered job-based punny names and ended up calling Barret "Barriert" which might be a bit of a stretch. Just as in 2022, I attacked while the tail was up.
Having a fairly fresh memory of this game and given I was playing on my Switch, I made liberal use of the 3x speed feature, particularly to accelerate some of those very abundant cutscenes in the early game. It seemed obligatory that I name Tifa "Thiefa".
In Reactor 5, I still suck at the puzzle with the three switches. I don't really get what queue the game is supposed to be providing here, but I guess there's a rhythm to it. I tried to capture my lameness but I actually happened to hit the capture button on the successful attempt.
I fell down and met Aeristh. I struggled to name her but I settled on "Aerice". Aerice had to fight once or twice in the church and it was agonizingly slow given her weak attacks, so I ended up using one of my Deadly Waste items a bit early here.
Cloud and Aerice moseyed through Sector 6. I wanted to fight a house because I reminisced about goofing around here in my younger days getting Cloud his second limit break relatively early. The houses are pretty tough.
One could say that I forgot how to trigger the progression through Wall Market, but I thought I talked to the fella you have to chat with to proceed and just didn't, which resulted in my wandering aimlessly for about 5 minutes - although I did the cologne subquest early in the process. I actually did quite a lot of the possible tasks in Wall Market, including the Honeybee Inn things that I often skip.
This part was... weird. Honestly, it felt strange and uncomfortable now, I can't really recall or imagine what I was thinking playing this game as a teenager. Ah well. As I said, I think I got a near-perfect score for Cloud's crossdressing escapades and naturally he was chosen by Don Corneo.
Cloud, Thiefa and Aerice fell into the sewer. Wow, I guess Aps is only the third boss enemy in this game. With all of the sewer tsunamis that can fly around here I was somewhat concerned about my lack of healing, but I still had access to Aerice's Healing Wind limit break and that was enough.
I acquired the Steal materia for Thiefa, fought just a couple of battles in the Train Graveyard including stealing some Ghost Hands, used my only Tent (yikes) and saved up for the evening.
Index | Next >
If you read my Year in Review post for 2023, you may have noticed that I had a ton of ideas and none of them were FF7. Well, when I found out about this event, I wondered if I could squeeze one of my classic jobs runs into it since it was happening anyway. I had recently received an invite to Bluesky and I reached out to RevenantKioku on there and asked if I could customize the jobs of my party. He said something to the effect of, "Sure, but donate to the charity." So I did! Lo and behold.
While FF7 wasn't really on my list for 2024 even just 10 days ago, now that RevenantKioku has done me this favour I feel rather committed to it.
So, how did I end up with these jobs? I wanted to do a strict party of knight, thief, white mage, black mage, as is usual for me. I made a spreadsheet of all of the forced parties throughout the game and found a way to make it work. I did give some consideration to character traits and theming and whatnot but priority #1 was having four jobs that never overlap.
There was more than one way for this to work, but this is what I settled on. In brief, Cloud gets forced into a party with every other character at some point, so his job needed to be unique. This includes the alternate leaders, Tifa and Cid, who are never forced to be together, so it made sense for Tifa and Cid to share a job. Cid and Barret are also forced to be together, so Barret needs a job distinct from Cloud, Cid, and Tifa. Things mostly slid together after that.
Note that in that final image of my jobs something weird happened where it shows Aeristh as "Black Mage" and Red XIII as "Freelancer". I don't know what's up with that. They had told me that Aeristh was going to remain listed as a Freelancer because that's a limitation of how the event page is set up, and things display correctly there.
Regardless, I'm limiting Aeristh (and Red XIII) to the black mage materia set. I'm also not going to allow my knight to use Restore because that just seems off to me.
In 2022 I had played FF7 with Jobs and, while I enjoyed it, I didn't manage to finish in time (i.e. before end of January). Honestly, I wish I could've started earlier to give myself a better chance this time, but holidays and some ramp-up with my work didn't allow me to start earlier than January 7th, 2024.
Given how little materia you have at the start of the game, this session trotting through Midgar up to the Train Graveyard felt very ordinary. All we could really do in the first reactor was attack. I considered job-based punny names and ended up calling Barret "Barriert" which might be a bit of a stretch. Just as in 2022, I attacked while the tail was up.
Having a fairly fresh memory of this game and given I was playing on my Switch, I made liberal use of the 3x speed feature, particularly to accelerate some of those very abundant cutscenes in the early game. It seemed obligatory that I name Tifa "Thiefa".
In Reactor 5, I still suck at the puzzle with the three switches. I don't really get what queue the game is supposed to be providing here, but I guess there's a rhythm to it. I tried to capture my lameness but I actually happened to hit the capture button on the successful attempt.
I got a few Deadly Waste items in this area, too, that I swore to myself I'd remember for occasions like the eventual battle with Rufus.
Next up was Airbuster. Like in 2022, I recalled that this battle is generally faster and easier if you just attack, prioritizing back attacks, rather than casting spells. This was indeed the case, it was super quick.
Next up was Airbuster. Like in 2022, I recalled that this battle is generally faster and easier if you just attack, prioritizing back attacks, rather than casting spells. This was indeed the case, it was super quick.
I fell down and met Aeristh. I struggled to name her but I settled on "Aerice". Aerice had to fight once or twice in the church and it was agonizingly slow given her weak attacks, so I ended up using one of my Deadly Waste items a bit early here.
Cloud and Aerice moseyed through Sector 6. I wanted to fight a house because I reminisced about goofing around here in my younger days getting Cloud his second limit break relatively early. The houses are pretty tough.
One could say that I forgot how to trigger the progression through Wall Market, but I thought I talked to the fella you have to chat with to proceed and just didn't, which resulted in my wandering aimlessly for about 5 minutes - although I did the cologne subquest early in the process. I actually did quite a lot of the possible tasks in Wall Market, including the Honeybee Inn things that I often skip.
This part was... weird. Honestly, it felt strange and uncomfortable now, I can't really recall or imagine what I was thinking playing this game as a teenager. Ah well. As I said, I think I got a near-perfect score for Cloud's crossdressing escapades and naturally he was chosen by Don Corneo.
Cloud, Thiefa and Aerice fell into the sewer. Wow, I guess Aps is only the third boss enemy in this game. With all of the sewer tsunamis that can fly around here I was somewhat concerned about my lack of healing, but I still had access to Aerice's Healing Wind limit break and that was enough.
I acquired the Steal materia for Thiefa, fought just a couple of battles in the Train Graveyard including stealing some Ghost Hands, used my only Tent (yikes) and saved up for the evening.
Index | Next >
