Final Fantasy VII Classic Jobs Part IX
Jan. 25th, 2024 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingI had a few days of break and played this ninth session of Final Fantasy VII restricted to four "classic" jobs on January 24, 2024. There's about one week left to finish the game.
I didn't want to play for a particularly long time today, but I figured I could reasonably finish the rest of the Huge Materia quests. We had saved at Junon, so we went in. I looked at shops for a bit but eventually decided nothing there mattered. The Underwater Reactor area is actually very short and linear and the battles are easy; I tried stealing from some of the enemy soliders (I thought they might have Shinra Alpha armors) but I also didn't worry too much about it when I didn't succeed at this; they aren't great compared to some of the other options at endgame.
The Guard System enemies at least have really neat attack animations.
I had wanted a thief in the party (like Cid/Rancid) to try to steal, but I also wanted a black mage (like Red XIII/Black XII) for Carry Armor. I wasn't going to walk around without my white mage (Barret/Barriert)! I ended up misjudging the timing of how this short area works and I wandered into the Carry Armor fight with Cloud, Barriert and Rancid. Oh well.
I often worry about this battle. I've had so many deaths here, usually for stupid reasons. Lapis Laser, at least, is a strong attack, and this boss' ability to remove party members can wreck a strategy. I'd legitimately say it's the hardest normal boss in the game... but we had a generally easy battle. This was helped by Cloud and Barret using their newly-acquired level 4 limit breaks early in the fight, which certainly contributed to taking out Carry Armor's arms.
The other thing I tried was using Ghost Hands. Remember back in the 2nd session, I was stealing Ghost Hands in the Train Graveyard? I had such a great time stealing Carry Armor's MP with Magic Hammer back in 2022, which allowed me to completely disable its Lapis Laser. Well, it turns out that a Ghost Hand steals... 12 MP. 12. No, that wasn't going to help. We didn't really need the help though, we won.
After that, we did the submarine chase, with the usual result.
Though I wavered about what to do next between underwater things, Wutai, etc. I ended up just following the plot and heading to Rocket Town. We encountered Rude, which was easy, as usual, and stole his Zeidrich.
I thought I recalled the rocket materia password, but I didn't. I was able to kind of gradually figure it out with the stuff Cid was saying though, so no big deal.
I proceeded to Wutai to get the Oritsuru and Steal as Well. I did the pagoda, too, thinking I may want the All Creation manual eventually. It was quite easy; oddly, the hardest fight was the first. We ended up in an annoying healing loop against the final battle there, but using an M-Tentacles item helped us seal the deal.
It is funny how many typos and things they corrected in these newish ports while leaving this mess intact:
Seriously, what's going on here?
Since I was gathering limit manuals, I also headed back to Nibelheim to have a very unfair rematch with Lost Number to get the Cosmo Memory manual.
I did a couple of other minor errands like re-stocking items. Since the next plot point requires the key of the ancients that you need to find in the submarine, I saved up once again on the shore at Junon. We'll start with some underwater jobs next time, probably including the Gelnika.
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I didn't want to play for a particularly long time today, but I figured I could reasonably finish the rest of the Huge Materia quests. We had saved at Junon, so we went in. I looked at shops for a bit but eventually decided nothing there mattered. The Underwater Reactor area is actually very short and linear and the battles are easy; I tried stealing from some of the enemy soliders (I thought they might have Shinra Alpha armors) but I also didn't worry too much about it when I didn't succeed at this; they aren't great compared to some of the other options at endgame.
The Guard System enemies at least have really neat attack animations.
I had wanted a thief in the party (like Cid/Rancid) to try to steal, but I also wanted a black mage (like Red XIII/Black XII) for Carry Armor. I wasn't going to walk around without my white mage (Barret/Barriert)! I ended up misjudging the timing of how this short area works and I wandered into the Carry Armor fight with Cloud, Barriert and Rancid. Oh well.
I often worry about this battle. I've had so many deaths here, usually for stupid reasons. Lapis Laser, at least, is a strong attack, and this boss' ability to remove party members can wreck a strategy. I'd legitimately say it's the hardest normal boss in the game... but we had a generally easy battle. This was helped by Cloud and Barret using their newly-acquired level 4 limit breaks early in the fight, which certainly contributed to taking out Carry Armor's arms.
The other thing I tried was using Ghost Hands. Remember back in the 2nd session, I was stealing Ghost Hands in the Train Graveyard? I had such a great time stealing Carry Armor's MP with Magic Hammer back in 2022, which allowed me to completely disable its Lapis Laser. Well, it turns out that a Ghost Hand steals... 12 MP. 12. No, that wasn't going to help. We didn't really need the help though, we won.
After that, we did the submarine chase, with the usual result.
Though I wavered about what to do next between underwater things, Wutai, etc. I ended up just following the plot and heading to Rocket Town. We encountered Rude, which was easy, as usual, and stole his Zeidrich.
I thought I recalled the rocket materia password, but I didn't. I was able to kind of gradually figure it out with the stuff Cid was saying though, so no big deal.
I proceeded to Wutai to get the Oritsuru and Steal as Well. I did the pagoda, too, thinking I may want the All Creation manual eventually. It was quite easy; oddly, the hardest fight was the first. We ended up in an annoying healing loop against the final battle there, but using an M-Tentacles item helped us seal the deal.
It is funny how many typos and things they corrected in these newish ports while leaving this mess intact:
Seriously, what's going on here?
Since I was gathering limit manuals, I also headed back to Nibelheim to have a very unfair rematch with Lost Number to get the Cosmo Memory manual.
I did a couple of other minor errands like re-stocking items. Since the next plot point requires the key of the ancients that you need to find in the submarine, I saved up once again on the shore at Junon. We'll start with some underwater jobs next time, probably including the Gelnika.
