The RPG Duelling League
RPGDL Games => Game Design and Modifications => Topic started by: Tonfa on August 26, 2016, 09:01:21 PM
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Well, this has been ready for release for a while now and I've agonized over making a beautiful, perfect introduction post for it for days so instead just enjoy the game for now and the proper pleasantries later !!
Patch 1.00 - 8/26/2016
Download the TF7 patches for all three discs here. (http://www.rpgdl.com/TF7/TF7100.rar) This is for the PSX version of the game. You'll need a fresh ISO, the patch can be applied with PPF-O-Matic (http://www.rpgdl.com/LFT/PPF-O-Matic30.exe).
PCs, skillsets, equipment are much more distinct. Click for a large overview of the changes! (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wm-UtHdu5RNQvqzqwvqeD6g8jL0I0xad_kw8JqS9G2g)
Enemies fight back but won't force you to grind to level 99 in Reactor 1.
Thanks to Laggy for being the co-author, Qhimm forums for the tools, and any testers and all you cool people.
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[13:03] <Laggy> not advocating grinding to 99 in reactor 1 0/10 trash mod
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(http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/wolfenstein/images/e/ee/Wolfpsyched2.png/revision/latest?cb=20150401111818)
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Man, and I just started a replay of this a week ago. To restart or not to restart...
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Posting to say that I am definitely psyched about this and will certainly get around to playing it when I have time. Congrats, Tonfa!
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Aw, I don't get any special mentions :(? RIP.
On the plus side, everyone can now see the mighty power of SCOTCH. RICHARD about to claim more souls than a Valkyrie Profile game.
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Does this hack include enemies using instant death if you try to cheese them? Sorry Super Laggy RPG flashbacks.
Since you're using the Psone base, This guy are sick line is left alone right?
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Does this hack include enemies using instant death if you try to cheese them? Sorry Super Laggy RPG flashbacks.
my main contribution was enemy design so rip u eph
And yes it uses the PS1 lines since it's a PS1 ISO patch.
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Are the enemies in the train tunnel supposed to hit this hard? Like, they're just shy of OHKOing Tifa...
EDIT: yeah, and Rocket Launcher comes like 10 HP shy of OHKOing Cloud. seriously, wtf. It feels like an accidental out-of-depth situation, since the enemies in the actual reactor after them hit much less hard. >_> Also Airbuster was really nicely tuned, props on that fight.
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I am playing this. PSX emulation remains more annoying in 2017 than SNES emulation was 15 years ago; this is confusing.
Despite that I am having fun, which I wasn't sure if I would because I replayed FF7 somewhat recently and I figured that'd tide me over for a while.
Reactor 1: I died in the prologue because I got berserked by a motor drive when my HP was somewhat lowish. Mm you should probably throw in a save point if you're gonna do that. Or just remove this monster from the pre-Barret areas.
I reset against Guard Scorpion because Ethers become bad when used in battle. I figured "restores 100 MP / 25% MP" would mean "whichever is better", whoops. I still won but one of my PCs died and that annoyed me. Refight went cleanly, obviously much tougher than original GS but very fair for a first boss.
The differing item functionality based on where they're used is kinda odd design-wise. Not sure if it's good or bad, would have to play more.
I didn't have problems with the reactor tunnel that Reiska did but I also got into exactly one encounter and it wasn't the one he saw apparently. Oh FF7 and your incredibly short areas. Proto Machineguns in the reactor itself were nasty, though; they really wear you down. And I even wasted a MT poison on them. :( Back-row Barret ended up turtling with potions and OHKOing each of them in turn with a limit, kinda silly. (I then reset when I realise that FF7 doesn't revive between battles and PDowns are too valuable right now.) Airbuster was pretty fun; not too hard but I've always liked using back hits against him.
Cloud's physical game (including poor row-subject Braver) feels kinda weak early; I think I ran up against slash-resistant enemies at bad times. Failing to OHKO a Motor Drive stands out as memorably weaksauce. I guess the other two PCs have more fighter-ish builds so that's part of it; obviously he is fine at magic still. omg Cloud isn't OP any more, 0/10 game Tonfa.
HELL HOUSE did over 80% to front-row Cloud with Hell Bomber, yikes. Back row Aeris solos. After that I just put Cloud in the back since magic works perfectly fine here. Also man, Hell Houses give great rewards, loads of gil and a Hi-Potion. Gil is actually pretty tight early in FF7 now that I actually care about what I buy and wanted to make sure I was well-stocked on items! Haven't even bought any materia yet. Thanks for putting initial Fire on Aeris, good call.
I definitely like the greater PC stat/equipment variety! Stronger enemies are good too of course.
About to fight Scotch; RIP me.
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The more the merrier I guess.
Reactor 1: I too got berserked but it wasn't at low HP so nothing came of it. I kind of WTF'd at laser randoms for a bit but RICHARD informed me it was unannounced cHP damage so ok that's fine.
Guard Scorpion: I also blew an ether here mid-fight but no one died during the fight or the escape so everything went fine despite Cloud running out of MP because his physical is awful and not helped by my coming to the conclusion that leaving him in front row would be a spectacularly poor decision right now.
Reactor Tunnel: hey guize i found the rocket launchers and yes they actually can hurt that hard when they hit, though they whiff a fair amount and the high, high 2HKO to front row apparently is inconsistant? We managed to avoid drowning though. Blugus are also kind of annoying with Hell Bubbles inflicting sleep and being vaguely chufty but it's a short area.
Reactor 5: Again I blow through more MP than I probably had to and use all my ethers because I'm a huge dummy and go through a dungeon that is basically copypasted in a stupid manner. Will this continue to become a thing? Who knows. Nothing particularly overwhelming here (okay machine guns are MT which could be bad if you left 2/3rds of the party in the front row since that damage adds up), I just went about doing things like an idiot. Tifa continues to prove comparatively glassy due to needing to basically needing to be in front right now but not to the point of causing Problems.
Air Buster (1 reset): hey guize i dun remember what this does *manages to completely mishandle the fight, wipes* oh okay maybe don't -blindly- angle for back hits and rely on your one PD to bail you out this time. Then I end up having to use my one PD anyways because action delay meant I couldn't potion Cloud in time or something, w/e nothing unrecoverable and the fight was otherwise fine.
That bit before trying to Cloud a pretty lady: oh aeris comes with a free fire materia, rip 600 gil. I dick around with a Hell House for the sake of poor life decisions SCIENCE poor life decisions oh they can do MP damage and i blew through all my ethers like an idiot welp better hope i don't run into any more of those and surprisingly I don't.
time to make cloud pretty or fail and fight scotch in the attempt i guess
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Just FYI we really avoided adding physical resistances for the most part, only weaknesses. Cloud's physical game is legit kinda weak early on (but yes you are comparing him to two physical chars until Aeris).
In practice, during my playthroughs, I felt like you kept Cloud up if you wanted to make use of his limits and could deal with the extra damage coming in (this lends itself to being more efficient at times, especially once you get Cross-slash), or you could keep him back and just make him a dedicated mage early on, which is safer but more MP intensive. (Use Potions to heal OOB of course.) He gets a wider variety of weapons that'll let him emphasize physicals more as the game goes on, as well as FF7 being just naturally backloaded for physical setups outside of limits.
Item differences in and out of battle was a genius idea on Richard's part IMO. It may not be intuitive but it strongly reins in action economy effectiveness of using Items, which yeah you may never have cared in vanilla FF7 but they're actually quite incredibly good if left at their original values.
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Oh yeah I forgot to mention that the 5 minute reactor escape is great; it's actually tense instead of the joke it is in FF7o. I assume it's not much of an issue if you just run from everything, but still.
Scotch - I have back row mage Cloud and Scotch is certainly respectable but I win without too many issues.
Aps - Hey he's pretty fun, tsunami healing him turns it from a joke move into something that does serious pressure, POIZN adds up slowly and confuse can definitely be an unwanted complication, especially the time it hits Cloud right as he's casting Cure. :( Aeris' fire does its job well here, as do Tifa's rather nasty limits. Making them row-subject is a bit of a nerf in randoms (though the higher power makes up for it some) but yeah bosses no like.
I don't have too much to say about the sewers or train graveyard; enemies break out some new statuses (frog and mini) so that's fun. Ghosts are rather pathetic once you get on top of them but they certainly annoy before that, Deenglows are a good source of ethers (yes, I am stealing because this area isn't too hard and I respect the potential of needing these things later more than I would in FF7) and surprisingly tough to kill with magic due to multiple resistances. Generally Aeris' fire and Tifa's physicals/limits clean up pretty well as Cloud largely spams steal outside the odd timely Cross-Slash.
I get into one fight on the stairwell, it is easy. Makes that Jessie save point feel pointless! But then Reno is quite tough so it's appreciated.
Reno - Man, Slow-Numb. Can you even heal that at this point? Yikes. Pyramids taking 2-3 hits to take down totally changes the action economy of the move and it's now nasty even when you know what you're doing, and in general he throws out lots of status and pretty good damage. Back row is good protection from most of it but you can't get cocky about it due to Pyramid. I win first try but that's with one PC under pyramid (which fortunately does not deny exp/AP) and one person near the slow-numb countdown, so kinda close!
Hell House Redux - Oh there's the MP move Random was talking about, oh look MT blind + ... I guess that's what "Dual" is? RIP me, I escape with only Barret alive. Fear the Hell House.
Next up: climbing a shiny wire of hope
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You can steal Softs from the copter shinra dudes on the staircase if you need them for Reno. Obviously not mandatory as you saw, but yes.
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Is it the time to start talking about how legit genius split item functionality is again? Because yes. Potion/Ether working differently in battle and their functionality being flipped is hands down the best bit of design in TF7 in my opinion. It shift things up a ton in functionality like even as soon as you leave Midgard because if FF7 scaling and makes Potions and their ilk always relevant. Triage is a bit more of a thing in TF7 and watching tide bust out Potion late disc 1 was one of the more glorious bits of early testing. It wasn't as good as "something useless like an echo screen" but it was pretty good.
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Oh yeah I for one am finding the split functionality on healing items cool and good.
Scotch - so I failed at remembering how to make Cloud ~the prettiest~ and had to fight Scotch of the machine gun double act. Fortunately I learned from Tied getting rekt by Scotch and do things that don't get me wrecked by Scotch.
Aps - uh comet2 death counter, rip cloud. Front row continues to be rather dangerous here as Tifa is pretty close to being 2HKO'd, but at least it's not a waste and hey i feel at least somewhat vindicated by my waste of 600 gil on a reduntant fire materia. I fought some sewer randoms but nothing that did anything notable.
Train Graveyard - Cloud manages to be somewhat successful at stealing ethers from deenglows, this will surely be important later.
Stairwell/Reno - oh hey i remember seeing reno apply slow-numb in this, better steal softs i guess. Against Reno, Barret keeps getting stuck in the pyramid and between trying to juggle that, getting paralyzed-3HKO'd and the threat of SLOW-NUMB i nearly get wrecked but pull through anyways barely.
Shinra HQ - Fought the Sample-thingy, used the cauldron I got somewhere against it for sleep because four targets = a fair amount of pressure and it kills your MP and things Mini you, this works and we manage to avoid drowning yet again. Then I get wrecked by a warning board with a laser turret that does like ~500 + paralysis and then a machine gun finished me off, wipe count: 2. Moth Slicer ID blindsided me, little concerned about them in an already-harsh mob but there's readily available save points there so not a huge deal there. (Laggy tells me the ID is 4% so pretty much openly bad luck on my part since I wasn't farming them for Carbon Bangles)
~Escape~ -
myself before doing this: nah not gonna bother switching materia for the elevator fight, how bad could it be
myself during the elevator fight: rip all my phoenix downs
sooo yeah Aeris and Barret end up getting hit with Doom, die to timer running out, then Barret ends up dying something like three or four times again while I try to play damage control. Also burn through something useless like an echo screen twice because wave cannon shuts down 2/3rds my offense there.
Rufus turns out to be Scotch redux, only he starts off with less damage but has his cat thing buddy to pick up the slack while he laughs a bunch which evidently buffs his damage up to nearly triple at which point he becomes a faster Scotch that doesn't doubleact but crits more and can't be paralyzed by Cross Slash. Also strangly tanky to magic to the point where even back row physicals were better (Laggy tells me he's slash weak, which is fair enough). Would've gone better if I hadn't realized too late that using Deadly Wastes would speed up the fight a bit by getting rid of Dark Nation faster but oh well.
Motor Ball uses Reflect but past that it's pretty tame, which considering I was apparently in full scrubathon mode for the previous fights -and- RIDGE RACER I am fairly thankful for.
I then sell off the three accessories I got and a gun that no one can use because i'm poor and need the 7500 gil. Time to catch a chocobo I guess.
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we manage to avoid drowning yet again. Then I get wrecked by a warning board
IT WARNED YOU
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Facerolling into all the bads continues. RICHARDnomics proves inescapable.
Mythril Cave - two of the three randoms I run into here involve Ark Dragons, which deal ~400 with Sacred Fire, 2HKOing people not named Barret, and they have ~friends~. Oh well at least I get the thing learned off of them.
I decide to acquire an annoying ninja at this point because I dunno, maybe I want a source of MT healing that isn't tied to 1) a temp or 2) a currently OPB use of my one Recover materia. This involved a fair amount of running and resetting because while not -particularly- lethal the randoms take more effort than I would like to consistantly fight for the length of time required.
Bottomswell (1 reset) - weak to all physicals and starts regenerating if hit with magic okay sure game wait is that mini aaaaaaa and then I reset because I didn't have anything that could cure Mini on hand. Oops. Nothing too bad, just got rekt by not having something useless like a cornucopia. I come back to this with 20 and am probably going to regret doing that.
Jenova BIRTH (1 reset) - So we have a triple-act laser that does ~190 front/~95 back (2/3HKO if it focus fires but usually doesn't), Tail Laser for 240ish(? might be misremembering) MT, Stop, and Freeze, which is a 2HKO to anyone (though one person on my team can halve it thanks to Elemental) + Stop, and sometimes used with Aspil (so rip someone's MP). First attempt at this goes poorly, Cloud and Tifa both get stopped (stop followed directly after by freeze), Aeris gets gunned down with a mostly full limit bar, and attempts at recovery fail.
Well then. Second time this doesn't happen, though Tifa spends half the battle as a popsicle anyways.
Mt. Corel - Comparatively a breather, though Spiky Hell and its fixed 400 damage is a thing and I burn through my remaining ethers not having to put up with it more than I have to because summons are big MP hogs. Bombs are dicks though. At least ethers are buyable now just as soon as, y'know, I stop being poor.
Gold Saucer - I am too poor for minigames, RICHARDnomics continues to hold me firmly in its grasp. Prison randoms are mostly too annoying to fight but I do end up picking Matra Magic and Laser off from a pair of Death Claws.
Dyne - okay let's see how this goes uh crap barret does like no damage shooting him what else do i have on him oh E. Skill, E. Skill has to be better right. *Sacred Fire* *lol instakill* Welp. Didn't know that was a thing but sure I'll take it.
Chocobo Racing - remove chocobo racing
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Gongara (1 reset) - oh hi turks how are you ok sure let's fight and I try to fight it normally and nope, reset. Second time I remember I'm playing a FF game and start poking for holes oh hi Sleep sure glad you're here. Then I get back attacked by some dino tank thing sometime later but don't wipe to it.
Cosmo Canyon - I liked Garan's pillow better. Also poverty continues.
Cave of the Gi - Well this isn't too bad apart from having to back out after entering because I forgot to buy more Phoenix Downs, though 4x/5x Weg or w/e formations are kind of annoying if they don't get one-shotted with Ice2 or Shiva. Also yay AP gains, yay save prompting after clearing the spider webs.
Gi Nattak (1 reset) - Ah... slownumb + haste + silence. I kind of bungle handling the recovery getting a feel for the fight and end up getting prodded to death. Second time goes more smoothly.
Nibelheim - Some weirdo gave me a Mind Source despite the claim that all Sources were replaced with other consumeables?
Shinra Mansion - I end up fighting more randoms here than I'd like because I don't remember the safe combination and didn't want to spend time looking it up on the internet, though it does end up with two mastered Sense materia that I hock for cash so I can stop being poor.
Lost Number (1 reset) - ok this isn't so bad i won--oh he formchanged and is physicaling me aaaa stop berserking people please also stop critting for that matter oh everyone died. Second time I remember to 1) put Tifa in the back so she doesn't die to the physical form and 2) look through what I have that might be useful oh I have a couple Spider Webs sure let's use one nothing else seems to be working and then it's mostly a matter of pounding him with spells until he dies. Then I pick up some dumb edgelord.
Next time, drinking some goddamn tea.
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lost number magic form is much cooler but everyone is too afraid to use physicals :(
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Maybe you should have left in some effective physical strats Mister Lag"Nerf Atomic Scissors and Power Soul"gy
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And for the record I had neither of those things.
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Shinra Building. I actually get the Domino quiz on my first try, yay me. Randoms make me stay awake now which is nice, though I don't have too much to say about them. They're in a pretty good place overall. I win my one and only fight with a Warning Board but yeah they are rude.
H0512 - I have a fair bit of trouble with this one for whatever reason. 2 resets? Lots of enemies acting can make things tricky, the MP damage at the start of the fight makes that a real issue too. Star Pendant is useful here at least. I go for poison-all to take out the minions a bit faster. Steal has a pretty cool role in this fight, which is neat.
Hundred Gunner can go jump off a cliff out of a broken elevator shaft. Seriously, first design of this game that just pissed me off. First off, he nulls lightning because... fuck you, I guess? I mean he already immunes short-range physicals and poison, let's just pile on something else there while raising a middle finger to FF7 fans who think they were preparing for this fight? I ended up with a Red XIII who couldn't do anything but heal (or use my 1 grenade I guess). And then he uses MT death sentence when I was almost out of PDowns and... you can't go back and buy more if you saved after H0512? (Didn't want to go try to find steals.) C'mon. Every other boss you can usually avoid deaths if you're careful and play it right.
Aside from that he and Heli Gunner are pretty easy overall, not much to say. I win on my second try; it helps that MT death sentence only actually procs on one PC this time.
Rufus is cool though! Man that's a lot of pressure early on, I'm pretty much heal-locked. Fortunately I use the cheaty strategy of Magic Counter Cure which is a godsend in a solo fight. Eventually I prevail and send Dark Nation packing, at which point I'm low on MP and by now Rufus has buffed his damage to be kinda scary (especially on crits), so back-row physicals slowly get the job done, with a lot of healing.
One Restore max definitely looks justified now, since as is Magic Counter-Cure will have to compete with Cure-All.
Motor Ball has reflect which is rude, but out of pure chance it happens that Cloud has both Bio and the Star Pendant, so he can bounce spells off Motor Ball harmlessly to test for reflect wearing off. Once that happens the ice/bolt blitz takes him out, along with a few Tifa limits. This fight also makes me feel like a pro for setting Elemental-Fire. Otherwise Motor Ball isn't too much of an issue, which is good because no save point after the race.
Off to Kalm we go~
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Maybe you should have left in some effective physical strats Mister Lag"Nerf Atomic Scissors and Power Soul"gy
Look Laggy might be the fall guy but please direct all dunking on PC changes to me
Good catch on the source, will roll a fix to that and Dyne in the next patch
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Is 100% jokes with regards to Power Soul, tide was doing like damage cap on disc 1? That was too bonkers, but I would love it if there is an magic balance point that keeps it a relevant strat (I don't think there is without a clone of the weapon scales up).
Atomic Scissors is also mostly just, but it kind of opened up a space for Barret early disc 1 that he normally couldn't fill but I don't even remember what it was that was wonky. Too much attack power and it might have ignored row?
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Mt. Nibel - Fire2-All largely solves randoms, which I can now use fairly liberally thanks to being able to actually afford ethers now.
Materia Keeper (1 reset) - okay this seems manageable so long as nothing goes *MATERIALIZE* well okay i have 2 pcs now i just *HASTE* well fuck you too buddy. Second time doesn't actually go much better except this time I set Earth-Magic Counter and barely pull through with Red turtling with Hi-Potions and an Elixir. Seriously though being irreversibly down a PC is a little mean considering Haste and the 2HKOs that can be flying around.
Palmer - Is still Palmer but at least he can force PD use now? The evasion is cute.
Wutai Area - Thunder Beak or w/e MT does add up here so I wind out noping out of half the fights I get into here, though at least some of the enemies drop X-Potions for my trouble.
Rapps - Well Aero3 hurts at least. Granted a shitbrat stole all your materia so it would suck if the fight were actually hard.
Pagoda (something like 5 resets in total) - Probably should've waited a bit on this but w/e. Highlights include getting stuck on the third fight due to having problems sufficiently powering through the draining while being 3HKO before setting Poison-Added effect, getting wrecked by Trine, and then turtling with Hi-Potions and using only Greased Lightning against Godo because counter curing below half HP made other routes to progress difficult.
Next time, finding the plot again, surely a 90s villain won't go on about ethics in videogame journalism his mother
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Gold Saucer - oh hey the plot hi. Also I do Mog House and some shopping I forgot to do.
Temple of the Ancients - get knocked into pit, the ancient dragon pincer is somewhat rude but I manage.
Red Dragon + Blue Dragon (1 reset) - Blue Dragon Breath is p. annoying with its added paralysis oops I killed Red Dragon first and now I'm getting 2HKO'd okay let's not run into that next time. POIZN continues to be a friend
Demon Wall (3 resets) - Rocks and THE DEMON RUSH are brutal, Cave-in isn't much fun either, thank god Sephy throws that Barrier materia now instead of DESTRUCT, but I still get wrecked repeatedly by people dying at bad times and not really being able to properly recover. Attempt #4 I actually manage to time slots correctly and tear off a good chunk of HP which helps avoid drowning.
Sleeping Forest - Oh that's the enemy that counters magic with Comet ok that was amusing let's not do that again.
Jenova LIFE - Well I had Leviathan-Elemental and that Water Ring you literally got like 15 minutes ago so there's really not much to comment on. Cleansing Wave is cute I guess?
Next time, DISC 2
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Kalm - Oh hey you can control Sephiroth now, that's neat. And since healing is limited you kinda have to be awake during these fights maybe? A bit? Drain is a bailout if you get in too many at worst, I suppose. Still, hey, fun.
Minor issue that doesn't matter too much: you can use Radiance from the menu outside of battle. It targets allies but has no effect (doesn't even cost MP).
Choco-Mog and Matra Magic get big MP increases and enemies are better and hey they're still great moves. Mithril Mines is relatively uneventful, I run Magic Counter Sleep for a while for tempo.
Bottomswell - So I set up for ranged damage and magic and figure "what are the odds I'll need to buy Cornucopias", RIP me. Actually I almost win but eventually with everyone mini'd and my resources largely spent I screw up and die. Second try we bring Tifa back for smashies. I cast Berserk once I don't think she'll get another limit. And I actually have Cornucopias this time. Death counters in a game with FF7's "lol you get no exp if you get killed by one" remain stupid but again I don't actually suffer for this.
JENOVA*Birth - Freeze certainly hurts, triplecasting that with two gravity spells is something I see a lot and it's difficult to keep up with. Then she runs out of MP. I forget that you can heal stop which makes this hairier than it should be; once I remember that helps. Red's Lunatic High and Tifa's L1s both get a nice workout here.
On that note Cloud's limits feel like they may be a bit underpowered now? Barret has range, Tifa has power, Aeris has healing, Red has MT haste. Cloud currently feels like I'm way less excited to get his limit than other PCs, at least when the enemy blocks paralysis; they're a melee fighter's limits but he's not really that wonderful a melee fighter. Really looking forward to getting Blade Beam since that'll synergise with back-row magery.
-I'm not sure Atomic Scissors really deserves to be 0 slots? I was kinda interested in it until I saw that. You already give up range for it... granted, that's true of Cannon Ball as well. This is judging it as a storebought to be clear, since I am all fuck.dat to rare steals in this game.
Sandbagging the Rufus Sendoff ceremony is no longer optimal.
I respectfully disagree, I'm pretty sure? Nerfed HP Plus feels less interesting/useful to me at this point than a six-slot Cloud weapon. (This is based on Laggy telling me that you get a Force Stealer as the #2 prize now. I wanted that. :( )
Currently on Mt. Corel, first place with randoms worth talking about in a while! But I'll save that for when I'm done. I am currently running Counter-Steal which is kinda fun; definitely approve of increased availability for blue materia.
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I respectfully disagree, I'm pretty sure? Nerfed HP Plus feels less interesting/useful to me at this point than a six-slot Cloud weapon. (This is based on Laggy telling me that you get a Force Stealer as the #2 prize now. I wanted that. :( )
Is lying to players about things that change difficulty of hard mode hacks the new meta of hard mode hacks???????????
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Bit of an overall compilation of wishlist/proposed changes for Richard, including ones already noted in the thread:
- Up Cloud's Buster Sword from 18 to 22 Attack (to make Cloud's physical game actually viable in frontrow as opposed to being completely inferior to magic for the entirety of Midgar)
- Change the very first treasure chest in Reactor 1 with a Phoenix Down to contain 3-5 Phoenix Downs (to mitigate the pdown shortage that people tend to experience in Midgar, and give a starting stockpile; alternatively alter starting item quantities if this is possible)
- Change drop rate of Phoenix Downs on random encounters in Trail of Blood section to 100% (since you can't buy any before the boss gauntlet)
- Change Hundred Gunner to be neutral to Bolt as opposed to null (to address NEB's concern that setting Bolt as the only offensive spell renders a PC potentially useless)
- For Rufus' sendoff ceremony, add all previous tier rewards to higher tiers (so you don't actually lose anything for performing better and we can skip the question of who values Force Stealer or HP Plus more)
- Remove Dyne's Holy weakness
- Add Added Effect as a Bone Village dig if it is missed in Cave of the Gi (to prevent it from being permanently missable)
- Replace Mind Source given by NPC in Nibelheim with another item (Pdown???)
- Please check if Blue Light on Jenova LIFE is Ice-elemental (should be, but Random reported it being Water still)
More general suggestions:
- Stock up Materia shops to use all available slots (as per NEB's feedback) to avoid backtracking to get specific materia
- Up Barret's base accuracy from 90% to 95%? (general sentiment is that he feels a bit lacking and this in particular feels annoying to deal with when using him)
This is mostly to NEB, but re: Barret's early weapon options, e.g. Cannon Ball and Atomic Scissors. You actually can just run Cannon Ball as a backrow weapon as it offers more slots than Assault Gun and gives Mag +5. Atomic Scissors is pretty overpowered if you do steal it early (I know you don't ever care for that yourself but there are certainly playstyles that do nab those early on, and it's an easy to find encounter with no real risk of dying), and its placement at Junon is more of an afterthought than anything. Perfectly skippable if you do deign to play Barret backrow style due to Cannon Ball anyway. If it wasn't stealable I could certainly see the argument for adding a slot or two on it.
In general I am finding that NEB and Random favor conservative backrow setup on Cloud and in general much more than I did, but I had the advantage of having foreknowledge of what to expect from enemies so that makes sense. That said I would definitely lean towards rewarding/encouraging frontrow play on chars where both rows are viable since it is the riskier option by default, whether by making frontrow weapons more attractive or whatever.
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(general sentiment is that he feels a bit lacking and this in particular feels annoying to deal with when using him)
Re: this sentiment, I'd like people who have had a chance to play to offer their thoughts on all PCs they have used/not used and reasons for why, as well as thoughts on power level.
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re Atomic Scissors:
Atomic Scissors is stolen like... what, one boss and approximately a dozen random encounters prior to them being storebought? It's not that big a gap. If it had the Striking Staff's availability I'd agree with you, but as is, nope. It's stolen when the competition is the storebought Cannon Ball which is only 13 less power and actually has material slots.
The zero-slot weapons already present in FF7 (Nail Bat, etc.) had considerably larger power leads on their slotted competition, especially if you skipped Wutai, and even then many people don't use them, or only use them for Demon Wall.
Atomic Scissors badly needs something. Whether that's another ~10 power, long range, or materia slots, I dunno, but as is it's a significant part of what I felt like the game telling me not to use Barret post-Midgar and prior to getting the W Machine Gun, since Tifa does front-row brawling better and literally everyone does magic better.
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Going to take brief notes on stuff. I wasn't originally going to do so. Everything up to about Wall Market is from memory because I wasn't at that time.
Reactor: Ran from a fight because of berserk. Did not attack while the tail's up because I know Laggy was involved in boss design. Five minutes was just right, tense.
Copypasta Reactor: I thought I was going to wipe to air buster, but didn't. Ended with Cloud dead.
Sewer Surfin': One wipe. Two people died to Final Attack: Comet 2. I only had two phoenix downs. FML. Managed to limp through this section anyhow, mostly ran from fights, raised one person, and then my two surviving PCs got to go to...
Train Graveyard: I ran into the rarest possible encounters multiple times, according to Laggy, and got my ass handed to me. I managed to steal the guard stick and ran from the rest of the fights because I had two dead PCs.
Sector 7 "Pizza" Support: Five wipes to Reno. I spent all my money before this section. First Reno attempt is a hilarious mess in which I spend all my time breaking pyramids and accomplishing nothing. It is convenient that you can steal softs from the enemies here! I actually needed some advice from Laggy to get past the boss, I wasn't making good use of setup mechanics and was not handling pyramids well. I think I ultimately would've figured it out, but it would've taken several more attempts.
Shinra Building: Stealth is for chumps. If making Barrett seem like the most useful character at this phase of the game was a design goal, you nailed it. WARNING BOARD OMG. Elevator guards were surprisingly durable. I think there's a limit to how hard Hojo's Science Project can be considering the length of the scene you have to rewatch if you lose. One wipe, which was mostly a scouting run that allowed me to figure out the fight (I blew several turns using Sense); once I knew what was going on it wasn't bad.
Spent way too much time to steal two carbon bangles and a hardedge. Soldier: 3rd class dudes totally deserve the respect they get in the fluff now, holy crap.
Elevator boss: First attempt was foiled by Barrett and Red basically dying simultaneously right at the phase transition. Going into phase two with two dead people is unworkable. Second attempt was fine, although I do think phase one is a bit grindy. That thing has a lot of HP.
President Junior: This was a fun fight and there are clearly multiple ways to win it.
Highway Machine: Straightforward. Another fight that can't actually be that hard because having to replay the prior sequence is annoying. I'm pretty sure you can still lose if you aren't taking it seriously.
So far everything is engaging (you cannot autobattle your way through stuff, which is a low bar to clear, but we are comparing it to vanilla FF7). Bosses have been entertaining. Earlygame Cloud's physical is total garbage, which might be intended, but even if so...wow. Upon reflection, I cannot stress how glad I was that I took the time to steal his weapon upgrade in the Shinra building, although I'm sure the Rufus fight could've been handled completely with magic; motor ball just would've taken longer without lightning elemental hardedge physicals.
Earlygame Tifa hits like a wet noodle. Earlygame Barrett is kind of a monster. I don't think I've ever been so glad to have him in my party.
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Oh right, Disc 2 happened, I should throw an update together.
Forgotten Capital - SQUIRELLS throwing rocks for OHKO damage. I spend far too much time on a single screen trying to get a chest.
Gaea Cliffs - Very lengthy, also full of of things that vomit poison and follow that up with ID on their physical. I blow through like half my stock of ethers just to not deal with losing limit gauge and needing to revive people. I also nearly wipe to a Malboro before hitting one of the save points, that would've been pretty annoying.
Schizo (1 reset) - So he kind of hurts, which isn't helped by not using Barrier/Mbarrier, nothing about the fight that was actually too bad though.
Jenova DEATH - 60 seconds to live eh. I don't really set up well for this but at the very least I had Death Sentence blocking on Red (which I had there ages ago for... some reason) and it doesn't do a whole lot of damage on its own (granted, Doomsday also adds Dual) so remembering that I actually have options here (read as: I blow a Megalixir because Cloud and Red run out of MP and everyone is kind of whittled down, probably wasteful but RESOURCES EXIST TO BE CONSUMED) saves me a reset and having to do proper setup sitting through cutscenes again.
Junon redux - Oh it's a sequence with characters I've barely used... and Red still has my one Poison materia so I can't wallop the SOLDIER 2nds... and I'm down to like 10 ethers or so, nope running from everything. I dunno, nothing stands out as pls nerf but maybe force remove everyone's set materia if that's possible? Granted you can run from everything if you don't feel like fighting the mobs here is worth it so I'm not gonna be upset if that's too much to ask for.
Corel Reactor (2 resets) - uh crap i need someone to do what i've been having cloud doing uh okay hi vincent you're in and then I don't notice until the train fight sequence that I have him in the front row oops let's fix that. First reset was just me being dumb and forgetting I had Barrier to use for the boss, a bad thing to forget when one of your party members is being 2HKO'd! (I maaaaay have went overly heavy on the green with Vincent in fairness). Second reset one of the mobs does some gross doubleact (at least I think it was a doubleact) that involves critting Cid to death and then SMOG ALERT killing Vincent and aaaaa, needless to say this sequence was not my finest hour, but I muddle through.
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Atomic Scissors badly needs something. .... ~10 power, long range,
Why not both.png
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Materia -> Arrange -> Exchange allows you to remove materia from anyone at any time, which was true in vanilla as well. Didn't know this wasn't common knowledge, not sure how to communicate it in game if that is necessary.
also pls tell me about the pcs peeps
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oh well i feel dumb now
also pls tell me about the pcs peeps
at some point but I've mostly been using the same PCs since Midgar so I dunno how useful my feedback would be there.
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that is fine, like there is already some general consensus on things like 'cloud's physical game sucks, especially early on' etc.
Some food for thought:
- What PCs are you using and why did you decide to use them over other options (ergo, if you aren't using someone is there a particular reason why you passed over them?)
- How do you feel your current team performs relative to each other - who feels like MVP, who feels lacking?
- What's your general rationale behind materia setup on them, if any? Do you min/max your materia setup on magic users, set up +stat materia and command materia on your brawlers, etc.
- Thoughts on limits (new mults/effects, ease of acquire, etc.? Ever any time you've set your limit gauge below your current max level?) Like I remember you saying you picked up Yuffie to have access to Clear Tranquil, has that come up ever/did you end up ultimately not fielding her?
- Are there points in the game where you considered switching out PCs aside from being forced to for plot reasons?
- Has the new equipment restrictions on who can wear up ever factor into your decision making, or felt relevant to you during your setup? In a good or bad way?
Everyone has their own approach to PC setups in RPGs and one of the big things about TF7 is that the characters are supposed to be pretty distinctly differentiated from one another (as opposed to vanilla) so understanding the thought process behind why people are picking X PCs is important, as it's a fairly high priority design goal to make sure all of the choices feel compelling. Definitely this will become easier to evaluate further into the game, but how PCs stack up to each other during stretches of Disc 1/2 are pretty important (hell, you're like 2/3 through the game already, for instance.)
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Mt. Corel - Enemies here come in large numbers a lot so MT is quite good! Definitely have to manage MP for this though. Ethers are good. I don't have too much to say about individual enemies but you definitely have to be awake for them. Sleep is nice for those who counter, like bombs. (Sleep pretty great in general.)
The stash of 10 Phoenix Downs is huge in this game, compared to FF7 proper.
I play Mog House since I am pro at taking advice. Then I get thrown in prison.
Corel Prison - Death Claws are pretty legit, as are four of those motor enemies who spam Matra Magic all day every day. Choco-Mog confusing one of them to the rescue! I get Laser.
Dyne - After discovering his def is super-high, I use Barret's best magic attack, which is Sacred Fire, and Dyne dies instantly. K. Laggy informs me that he has a OHKO death counter which would have erased a good bit of a play time and non-trivial E Skill acquisition and I'm immediately very, very glad I lucked into this.
I has jeep + manipulate, now for E Skill hunting.
Harpy - LETZ GET AQUALUNG. <Harpy> You asked for it. *wipe*
Beachplugs - LETZ GET BIG GUARD. ... actually I have more to say about this one! Beachplugs are cool. They are physically immune with plenty of HP, but not unbeatable. On their turns they can cast Berserk or they can physical for 9999, and there are three of them. So, status to the rescue! Mini changes that 9999 into a 1. Esuna can heal Berserk, and anyway they run out of MP fast (they start with only a tiny fraction of their max, so presumably you now need to ether them to get Big Guard?). Sleep/Confuse also help. Finally, killing them efficiently is tricky due to their big HP... so Slownumb to the rescue! I do also kill one with poison and damage. Status, status everywhere. Sadly, they're now immune to Manipulate, because they're Level 99. You'd need either a HypnoCrown or to reach Level 50 for it to have a non-zero hit rate, I believe. Otherwise the rewards for winning are still negigible, but it feels good, man.
I also get White Wind which doesn't seem very useful? 50% of target's HP makes it rather weak in most situations, and very expensive, but it is only the second source of spammable MT healing, and it takes up a fraction of a materia slot instead of 2, so I guess I can't complain.
Turks - Let's talk these guys! They're fun. Manageable enough at first, though Turk Light's dual status definitely makes it that much harder to stay on top of healing. But once below half HP Rude starts healing Reno with Bolt2 (maybe I should have targetted Rude instead?) which is rather difficult to overcome, especially due to Reno now spamming Electroprod which is decent damage + slow. Ow. I have Lunatic High for haste so that helps a lot at least, a bit of a status war emerges. Silencing Rude and a couple timely DICE attacks against Rude and I win.
The Heavy Tanks in the reactor are rude! Big MT damage. Mini to the rescue again! Also despite knowing where Titan is I still need to look up a guide to find the right pixel, man some of the summons are obscure in this game.
I finally run into Yuffie at this point so that's cool.
I am saved at Cosmo Canyon. One complaint I have concerns Skeeskees. They hit me with slownumb, okay cool fine. (Not as funny as the earlier randoms who use it + haste, though.) I'm still gonna take 'em out... but then I realise with a start, a few turns later, that I can't control the character I'm waiting to finish them off with. Then I can't control another character. WTF?
Oh. One of their attacks randomly adds berserk. Which is fine, but... FF7 is stupid and doesn't actually show berserk on someone with slownumb because the latter is considered more important. Since the attack which inflicts berserk isn't obvious at all, I would definitely change this. Either have them manually cast berserk, or don't layer this with Slownumb.
I'll post about PCs later, since I have used everyone at least a bit so far (except Yuffie whom I just got).
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Okay, some run down on the PCs so far. (I'm through the Shinra Mansion, haven't opened the safe though.)
A disclaimer: who I actually used tends to be a combination of who I think will be effective, picking entirely randomly via dicerolls, and asking others in the room for suggestions (which in turn tends to result in me using Tifa).
All comments so far exclude Vincent and Cid, and will mostly exclude Yuffie since I got her late*.
*late = the first time she isn't a freaking 6.25% encounter
Cloud: One annoying consequence of the (very welcome) increase in PC differentiation is that it's now much more annoying to be stuck with Cloud. I think this would be true even if he were still the best PC, but instead he does feel somewhat nerfed. It feels like Cloud gets very few niches over other PCs.
-His physical game is typically kinda underwhelming. He lacks Tifa's crits and Red's weapon variety, as well as Barret and Yuffie's long range. It's capable and there is definitely tradeoff between back row and front row for him, which I suppose is fine.
-His magic is decent but not as good as in vanilla FF7. He gets a decent number of materia slots; his weapons should place him as #2 at this, but he misses out on key armours like the Four Slots and Platinum Bangle; if you miss the Shinra Beta he'll be 2 slots on armour behind everyone else except Tifa (until Corel) and Barret for a significant chunk of disc 1. As for his raw magic stat, he went from being essentially tied with Aeris for the top spot to #3 behind Aeris and Vincent, and I don't find his paltry MP edge makes up for that.
-Finally, his limits don't really impress. They only do damage, and they're row-subject, so if you decide to make Cloud a back-row caster type the L1's become super-underwhelming (and at 120 kills he's stuck there for a while). Against enemies vulnerable to paralysis a Cloud limit pretty much became "meh. Whatever" which is a terrible feeling.
Despite the fact that he's not terrible (in particular he's not bad at anything), Cloud does feel a touch underwhelming and it's made worse by the fact that he's forced. I'm not proposing you just uber him in a huge way, because I really like other PCs having niches he doesn't (e.g. better physicals, better magic, lots of HP, unique limits, etc.). If you just make him the best mage or the best fighter, well, that devalues the other PCs who are supposed to excel in those roles (especially because at this point in the game, there's only one Earring and only one Power Wrist).
But I feel like he needs a push somewhere. A couple possibilities:
-Improve his limits. Make me excited when Cloud gets a limit. Either let Braver ignore row or increase its multiplier. Increase Blade Beam's shockwave multiplier. etc. To some extent this is also Tifa's niche, and she should obviously win front-row damage when the player lines up the YEAHs, but Cloud being good at this too and in slightly different ways (reliability, targetability, long range) would be nice.
-Make him good at having linked slots. One thing I'm finding is that I often don't have the linked slots to use all the blue materia I'd like. Blue materia is cool! Cloud is supposed to be an expert in materia, and would probably know his way around it. Give him more linked slots on his weapons in general (particularly the Force Stealer) which would give him an edge over Aeris, who has more slots and more blasty power.
Barret: Barret has big HP and decent enough strength and long range. This is cool! Mind Blow might be able to cheap things out, but it hasn't really come up for me.
To pay for this, Barret has crappy magic. He also has few materia slots; his weapons don't provide many, typically, and he misses out on the better armours in this regard. Those are pretty notable weaknesses. And finally, he misses with his physical sometimes. Early in the game when Assault Gun is great this is fine but later on his power lead varies and it just feels like an annoying weakness that other PCs don't have to deal with (including Yuffie, so it's clearly not just a long-range balancer).
I don't end up using Barret much, as a result. I think he has a place, with his long-range physical damage (when he's stuck in short range he feels rather trashy, a bit more HP/non-crit damage than Tifa doesn't excuse everything else). I certainly don't think he's a terrible PC. But he's not someone I use super-often anyway.
I'd scrap the sub-100% hit and improve Atomic Scissors in some way, and I think that would basically fix him? Just remember that any stretch of the game where he's screwed over on materia slots, you need to have him make up for it in some other way, and a decently powerful back-row weapon seems like the only way to do it. (or a lot of enemies weak to shot I guess)
Tifa: I'm happy with Tifa. The 40-60% critical rate is an interesting niche. She doesn't have that much raw attack (high str but weak weapons) but criticals and great limit mulitpliers (though with risk) easily make her one of the best at that side of things. She wants to be in the front row but that fits with her wanting to get limits, and has enough HP that she doesn't feel like a glassy liability.
Her magic and materia slots are on the lower end but not terrible or anything, which fits pretty well. Since Barret is ranged and has even more HP I'm fine with him being worse at that.
The main place I moved a bit away from Tifa use is after Red gets the Seraph Comb, because that thing is amazing and makes me really want to concentrate on him as the fighter for a bit and give my other party slot to a mage. But Tifa still has better limit damage and more bulk, and it's perfectly reasonable to run both.
Aeris: Works as intended. If you're gonna have a temp in this system, better make her good. Magic! Does the job. Materia slots! Fairy Tale is great. Weapons which give Vit/Spr are interesting but feel like they miss the point a bit although they do have more linked slots so hey I guess you could run utility Aeris with one.
Limits are different in a lateral way, no way to pump out damage is bad but Seal Evil rules randoms and limit healing's value increases considerably with other sources of MT healing greatly limited, so I'm never gonna complain about them as an option. And since I just got it, thank you THANK YOU for fixing Breath of the Earth into something I actually want to use.
Anyway I use Aeris periodically when the mood strikes me and she works pretty well. She has clear weaknesses on lack of damage limits and poor HP but she's always a reasonable choice.
Red XIII: Man, his stats are just excellent all-around. There's not much to dislike about Red; his only bad stat is HP and even then he's only like 10% behind Cloud. (No, base vit/spr still don't matter.) Every weapon gets a different element! Find one which hits a weakness and watch an enemy hit by it explode. FF7 elemental weaknesses aren't that common so this isn't as OP as it could be, more neat. But regardles, he's the #2 mage and in compeition to be the #2 fighter. And he gets a MT haste limit which is amazing prior to getting Time.
Seraph Comb is still terrific on power when you get it, which is plot-appropriate so that's fine.
Just about the only negative thing to say about him is being row-subject limits his offensive potential on limits. Often enough I even use Lunatic High in randoms...
But yeah, if there's a PC who's in some danger of being too strong it's probably him. He reminds me a lot of vanilla Cloud in that he's better than most PCs at most things... not always the best but very strong overall. But since he isn't really the best at anything (barring base physicals for a window post-Seraph Comb?) maybe I shouldn't be too concerned because the ~powergamers~ may gravitate towards specialists.
Cait Sith: Is. Freaking. Weird.
I dunno what I expected you'd do with him. Good magic, bad speed, good HP? Exaggerate his existing stat build, in other words. When I first realised his magic was trash I had no idea what to make of him. And indeed he's kinda underwhelming in Corel Prison, although HP/MP keeps him from feeling awful.
But yeah pretty much every other weapon gives him some sort of weird unique niche. The White Megaphone has huge power for the time, but randomly adds Haste? Interesting synergy with Dispel; I'd have used it, except that Dispel is IMO too pricy on MP (you're already sacrificing a materia slot for an extremely situational spell, guys). It's light on materia slots so you kinda have to use it for this. Green Megaphone does gravity damage? Seems like it'd be quite potent if you twinked his Str, assuming that works, from the description (free 62.% gravity with a Power Wrist?). Black Megaphone does... magic damage? I've not experimented with that one; kinda curious. And then the Silver Megaphone does fixed 320* damage, pretty cool at my point though will obviously fall off, and its row-ignoring so that's cool.
*The in-game help claims it is 360.
Oh yeah and Dice is a pretty potent limit at my point, though that is definitely falling off.
I haven't actually used him that much but he definitely does look rather cool. And he tends to get enough materia slots/MP to run utility setups well, which is nice, so he isn't entirely about his gimmick.
Gonna pass on Yuffie comments for now.
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I would like to point out that I'm almost done with Disc 2 and still don't have Cloud's Lv3s. Feels bad man.
probably should actually talk about PCs though
Cloud: Yeah largly echoing NEB here, Climbhazzard is at least okay in front row? And yeah honestly finding him not great at having slots until the Enhance Sword.
Barret: Well he's certainly durable and doesn't give up much by back rowing it up, though the low accuracy is kind of mildly annoying and his offense against things not weak to Shot doesn't seem that great to warrant it?
Tifa: In a pretty good spot, I think. Bringing offense is cool, front-row only is less cool.
Aeris: Certainly good while you have her, MP healing on limits is woah what. Not really a ton to say though. Should've used Umbrella.
Red: Good offense, fast (for whatever this ends up being worth), a touch frail but not as much as he could be, also good limits (though row does hold the offensive ones back a bit until Earth Rave, still MT Haste), feels like gamebest PC.
Yuffie: Well I probably would be using her if I didn't have to run Cloud right now? HP kind of vaguely awful but the status game is cute when it works.
Cait: Seconding the "looked cool, but didn't really use" bit.
Vincent: Has slightly better magic than Red but doesn't seem to be much of a point otherwise? I guess the attack all guns have some potential against randoms but not really feeling it with dat strength, and I'd rather have Red's limits anyways. There's always MAGE PARTY I guess but greens have fallen off a fair bit now.
Cid: Uh he exists? Still having back row limits is cool, might actually be better than Barret if played that way but I can't rightly say since I haven't messed around that much.
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Oh, way late but I think I may have possibly false alarmed Blue Light not being Ice since I remember Cloud had an Aurora Armlet on there. Granted I'm pretty sure I didn't have ice blocking on Tifa though and she was still nulling it so maybe it's both? Sorry about that.
Underwater Reactor - Randoms seem fine here? A couple of them have a ton of health but Laser is a friend.
Carry Armor (something like 4 resets total): ok i got this okay nope i don't got this ok i got this oh hey i actually got then and then I wipe to machine gun pincer since the save point is in the sub and not outside it and have to redo this again, sigh. Cue Yakety Sax brought on by effective quadacting Lapis Laser + Lapis Gaze + arm poke + arm grab, getting blinded sure didn't help matters but eventually try to land Slow on it and oh hey it worked.
Rocket Town/Rude: Well Rude tripleacting Grand Spark was cute, nothing too bad though.
Diamond Weapon: oh i need itd here what do i have that does itd oh only comet uh well then better buckle up. It works but takes forever.
Gelnika/Turks: One of the Unknowns ends up annoying the crap out of me with it killing everyone's MP and I realize that I -really- should start making sure Tifa is blocking confuse at this point. Turks probably have their weakest showing here but it had to be somewhere.
Midgar (1 reset): Manholes are an annoying pain to fight due to confusion on their physicals and ultimately not worth it since their rewards are comparable to a single Cromwell for significantly more time/resources involved (or Crazy Saws, which in fairness also inflict confusion but also go down a lot easier) and XCannon, well...
[14:48] <AthenaGlory> ah...."XCannon"
[14:48] <AthenaGlory> its countdown move is the only thing it can do
[14:49] <AthenaGlory> and it did like 400 in vanilla
[14:49] <AthenaGlory> so, you know
[14:49] <RandomKesaranPasaran> so it had to be 9999 now.
[14:49] <AthenaGlory> yes
[14:49] <AthenaGlory> i can consider a funnier option if there is one
[14:49] <RandomKesaranPasaran> well everyone getting put to sleep first is a bit rude
Yeah. That's about where my issues with randoms end though, SOLDIER 1sts hit hella hard but have a level divisible by 4 so L4 Suicide is a friend, Shadow Makers would annoy me but Turbo Ethers convinced me otherwise, Behemoths are pretty open about the fact that they can straight up wreck people, Crazy Saws I mentioned but 2x Cut + lightning elemental physicals on Tifa provides a quickish out even if they could consistantly confuse like Manholes.
Turks, the grand finale (1 reset): Okay sure let's... oh Elena just OHKO'd Cloud from the back and then Rude doubleacted and dropped Red uh well then better throw Barrier up quickly next time, also probably a good idea to make sure Tifa doesn't heal Reno by accident <_>.
Proud Clod (1 reset): Okay this doesn't seem too bad oh it's charging for something what's it going to *Beam Cannon, 5500 damage* well fucking RIP, better have Mbarrier up when it starts doing that then (Red gets OHKO'd through it with my current setup anyways, that was fun), also good thing I kept Destruct on, that probably would've been another reset otherwise.
Hojo (1 reset): First form is still pretty harmless. Second form has good damage at least, the arm attack can drop some people if it gets doubleacted, better watch out for that. Third form... finding out that part of Combo also set Resist was a bad time since Frog + Berserk + Sleep = have a nice day! Oh it can drop people from full if the last hit crits. MT Demi3 isn't much fun either. So second time through I take the time on prior forms to set up Resist on everyone... and almost wipe anyways since not being able to throw up Barrier again = people start dropping to Combo = uh crap. Clutch Counter Attack + Counter-Deathblow happens though and we manage to avoid drowning, barely.
Next Time: Hey, that's Hell I'm walking into.
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For whatever it's worth, my opinion isn't worth a bucket of spit because I haven't played TF7, but re: Atomic Scissorsgate... meh. It's a goofy side weapon for Barret. I'd argue it *shouldn't* be pushed very hard and should be more a weird option for people who like being silly. If Barret is underpowered, then slightly buff his previous weapon (Cannonball?) so that it ages less badly if used when out of date, even if it means making him a little good for a time. Barret shouldn't be intruding too badly on Tifa's space as a front-line brawler.
If Scissors really does need a buff, it should be a goofy one, not back row or materia slots or raw power. Dexterity/Luck +10, Magic -10? Speedy critical scissors strike?
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Kalm: Plot.
My party right now is Aeris/Red. I figure abusing the OP temp PC is a reasonable thing to do and Lunatic High is bonkers. The big thing that's pushing me to use Aeris is the free MT healing due to being limited to one Restore. I would actually probably use her even if she had half as many materia slots (she has 6 at this point with Striking Staff + Titan Bangle). I briefly switched in Barrett because I stole a set of Atomic Scissors; his physical offensive output with them is impressive, but no materia slots is a really, really hard sell on him because all he brings to the party is that hard-hitting fight command.
Nobody needs any new equipment, but I pick up Mystify, Seal, and Heal as well as some more p-downs. Get Matra Magic (which feels fairly costed at 15 MP, by the way). Didn't save enough money for Choco Lure, so I backtracked to Kalm, doing a loop so that I could use the inn for healing KO'd party members instead of costly p-downs.
Birb Fort: Revive being buyable here is neat.
Is there any way to raise Yuffie's appearance rate? It only took me about 15 minutes to find her, but I think I got kind of lucky. I slot her in in place of Aeris because I'm biased towards long-range PCs, they have the same number of materia slots, and Yuffie also gets an MT healing limit. (I don't actually -like- Aeris that much as a character, honestly.)
Gyarados: I wiped to him with 26 HP left. Second go wasn't so bad, I did get lucky with Big Wave missing Cloud. His gimmick is funny. Having Sacred Fire for this was really nice.
That's not how CPR works.
Steal-as-Well is great! It turns Sense into a second Steal materia with a much longer animation!
Boat: Party is Yuffie/Red. I don't actually have Yuffie's MT heal limit yet. Both of them have their weapon upgrades from Junon (I don't have the Magic Comb). I see that the Wind Slash is kind of a sidegrade and decide it isn't going to help me win this fight.
Stop is nasty. Second wipe I set Ice=Elemental on Yuffie's armor and of course she doesn't get hit with Freeze once; instead, she spams it on Red (five times!). Got it on the third try, with Red actually playing medic for most of the fight while whittling her down with Yuffie's physicals and Cloud spamming Sacred Fire. Yuffie has STR Plus and the Hyper Wrist; Greased Lightning hits for ~340 damage. Hilariously, Yuffie learns Clear Tranquil after the fight. Keeping people topped off to avoid being killed by Freeze was the key here.
I get Tifa's next weapon upgrade in Costa Del Sol, consider slotting her in, decide I don't need two physical characters (I want to keep Yuffie), and therefore don't.
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Corel Mountain: Yuffie/Red. I have very little to say about this area. The cache of p-downs feels amazingly valuable now. There are a lot of largeish groups of fairly weak enemies (groups of 5 are not uncommon). Physical Yuffie with STR Plus is performing great for me at the moment. My first Bomb blew up on me, but the second one I neutralized with Sleep and stole its arm.
Desert Prison: Barrett/Cait, for the desert, because why not. Cait is super weird and I'm not entirely clear on what I'm supposed to do with him at this point, although I hear he has some gimmick weapons.
Dyne himself: What the fuck?
The progression of thoughts went something like: Oh, so that's how that works. Okay, let's try front-loading some damage for breathing room, I'll slap him with a Right Arm as soon as the fight starts. Okay, this isn't so bad, and ...whaaaaat? Well, okay, I'm dead now, let's try...
After about three deaths I made a save state because running back from the save point is really rather annoying and was consuming a lot of time. I still died a couple times after that, but mostly blame my own carelessness. Once I figured out the trigger for his overkill attack (or at least I think I did) I solved that problem by getting him down to about ~150 HP and then finishing him off with a Right Arm, which deals about ~160 damage. I had originally planned to get him down to ~100 HP before slapping on Reflect with my sole consumable source of that spell, but he wound up murdering me before I managed to put Reflect up, so...anyway, the Right Arm method was easier.
I inquired about the intended strategy for beating this guy and was like "oh." So okay, he's a puzzle boss, which is fine by me. However, since there's a bit of a walk from the save point to the fight, I didn't want to waste turns trying random stuff that might not work OR do any damage, so while I considered trying status effects, I felt like the chance that I'd be setting myself up for a wipe by equipping a useless materia was too high. My first plan to deal with Dyne after I knew what was going on was actually to Mindblow him until he didn't have enough MP to cast Radiance, but I abandoned that plan when I realized Mindblow only did about 18 MP damage and he has 150 MP. I actually think that if you want him to be a puzzle boss of that nature you should give him exactly 90 MP so that a single use of Mindblow shuts it off. I don't think MP damage should be the only solution to the puzzle, but I think that once you think to try that it should be easy to execute as opposed to needing to wait out attacks until you can Mindblow him 4+ times.
Also, this seems like it might be a bug. Albeit a hilarious bug.
http://imgur.com/a/GOfTo
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Cosmo Canyon: I'd totally take another HP Plus materia, but man, I am broke. We'll take Yuffie as our third into the Gi Cave, because she's performing well for me and I like her.
I'm starting to get Lv2 magic about now. Figured an ice-elemental physical Yuffie plus Red's new weapon would be pretty effective against most of the enemies in the cave, and I don't appear to have been wrong. The cut weakness on Sneaky Steps helps compensate for their pile of HP. I am using mage Cloud with the Force Stealer over the physical option. Yuffie is the first person to learn Lv2 limits! Red gets Destruct=Added Effect because he's the one with slots for it.
Gi Nattak kills me the first time because my setup is terrible for the encounter. That's an interesting element for him to null. Second attempt I make short work of him (Yuffie was set back to L1 limits because Landscaper is worthless in this fight). He's pretty fragile, I think.
Mansion/Lost Number: Cait/Yuffie. One wipe. Dice and Gravity are the stars of the show here, as was Elemental resist and accessory setup to reduce/negate the magic form's spells.
Uh, Dorky Faces scare the crap out of me with the MT confusion. I think that it's a relatively low chance of confuse, but MT confuse is still possibly super bad. The guillotine guy is funny. I only ran into the mirror enemies once and found myself massively confused by the fact that my own party had reflect, do their attacks set that status or something? The Black M-phone is a great weapon against them, by the way, not that they're all that hard to deal with in the first place.
I am slightly disappointed in the Black M-phone; I noticed it had 255% accuracy and tried a Deathblow setup with it. That actually did OK damage, but I was informed that the damage is still set by STR and not MAG. MAG is a hell of a lot easier to boost, so what I was hoping for was to load Cait down with other materia and smack stuff really hard with a magical physical. It's not -bad- but I wasn't overjoyed.
I have not tried the Green M-phone yet because while the premise is extremely interesting I don't think I can boost STR enough to be happy with it. If you could switch weapons mid-fight I'd be pulling it out for random Gravity-weak or otherwise high-HP enemies.
The White M-phone, though, is fantastic. The fixed 320 damage turns him into a long-ranged attacker with a huge HP pool, and I was pleasantly suprised by how many 640 damage crits he was putting out (Laggy: "Freaking RIP @ Cait's physical"), plus Dice is still reasonably good row-ignoring ITD damage, so...yeah, Cait is actually rocking face through this section of the game.
ArchBrian: Richard got me to use Cait Sith
ArchBrian: Somebody give that man a medal
Laggy: Man there wasn't anything wrong with Cait Sith >.>
ArchBrian: There is everything wrong with Cait Sith. I don't even care if he is usable/OK in the base game, there is just everything wrong with Cait Sith.
Laggy: Haters gonna hate
Mountain: Cait/Yuffie continues. As an interesting aside, Cloud still doesn't have L2 limits because he has spent most of the game either on MT healer duty or -opening- fights with Matra Magic to soften up groups rather than actually getting any kills, and his L1 limits are generally unimpressive. I had him front-rowed to take advantage of some Cut-weak enemy in the Cave of Gi, but upon grabbing the Rune Blade the guy earns a first-class trip to the back row. (Also, I actually have two sets of linked slots for him now, so I can set both Restore=All and some attack magic=All; maybe he'll catch up on kills soon).
LAY FLAT
The dragon is fun, acquired a couple gold armlets. Clearly he is supposed to be a pain to actually kill because he is immune to Gravity (I didn't try mini, now that I think about it). I actually really enjoy randoms that make using status effects and gravity-type attacks worthwhile, so having some tough enemies that reward finding ways to disable them instead of straight HP-based brawling is a whole lot of fun for me.
Materia Keeper: Started with Cait/Yuffie. Think it was three wipes. Ejecting a PC is mean, yo. For some reason I was confused and thought you'd disabled Barrier=All, but no, it's Time=All that doesn't work anymore. I actually switched to the TURK PARTY of Cait/Vincent because the HYDRA's 255% accuracy made him a better physical user (with Deathblow) than Yuffie and I wound up using a fun Reflect-based strategy to do a bunch of free damage. My successful attempt ended with Cloud ejected, Cait dead, and Vincent in Galian Beast form delivering the final blow with Beast Flare, which was suitably epic. Really challenging fight, really satisfying win.
Back-row Galian Beast Vincent's physical doing like 350 damage and Beast Flare doing 1100 at this point seems like a ton of damage, I'm impressed enough by that and the fact that for this stretch of the game he has a good Deathblow weapon that I'm going to keep him around for a bit.
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Cosmo Canyon: As usual I can't afford nearly enough of the cool weapons I would like to get. I run Red/Tifa for this dungeon. Summon gets a good workout clearing the larger formations of enemies. Hooray for some of the enemies here having elemental weaknesses, FF7 doesn't have nearly enough of those.
I come up with Clever Plans for Gi Nattak involving Elemental/Fire and generally end up feeling like my time is wasted because the will-o-wisps no longer use a fire attack, instead it's slow-numb? Fight's fun enough anyways, Sacred Fire gets a workout as I recall. Silence is thrown around so I get to feel smart for having one PC blocking that (due to it being on the Death Sentence blocker).
Shinra Mansion: I run Red/Aeris then Aeris/Cait. I get Aeris' L2 limit and it's actually useful, huzzah! Dorky Face MT confuse is certainly scary, putting confuse immunity on my best attacker goes a long way towards helping. Also hahaha if you confuse them, that's great. Also ran into Mirrors stealth inflicting reflect, not sure what I think about that. Ghirofelgo is no longer OHKOed by LASERBEAMS but it does good enough. Demi 2 can OHKO it? Almost worth the MP cost? Probably not, Laser brings 'em low enough for other people to finish for cheaper. Bats have a physical which isn't physical so Mini'ing them isn't total domination like it is for many fighters. I don't fight Yin/Yang. Did you remove them or did I get lucky? I hope you removed them because those animation times are an abomination. I also don't fight those rare guys who use ???, oh well.
Gravity is a junk materia by the way. Like Dispel that MP cost is seriously too high, between Laser and the Black Megaphone I have other sources of gravity damage that don't burn literally 20-25% of my MP bar.
Yay, Barrier!
Lost Number: His damage can certainly add up. After he turns red he gets seriously hard for my party to damage, Cait Sith's fixed 320 is all I can really do. Good enough.
Mt. Nibel: Dragons still owned by sleep. Lay Flat guys still have a lot of damage that can add up but glorious Fire weakness matters, Fire 2 All gets a workout. Not too much to say about the rest. I get the Powersoul. See? Unlike Atomic Scissors, here is a case where 0 materia slots makes sense. Death Sentence shenanigans ensue. I also get Vincent's first 255 hit weapon and it's... actually quite strong? Okay, Deathblow it is then. That + Steal as Well is pretty nifty.
Materia Keeper: Definitely one of the toughest bosses so far. His basic physical keeps barely one-shotting the people I revive with Life, and I assume my luck is awful for a while... then I realise that no, it does cHP/2 damage. Asshole. He also throws in a real physical attack which certainly hurts though fortunatelly not enough to OHKO front-row Tifa or back-row anyone, and has doubleactions sometimes to worry about. The offence adds up, I have trouble recovering against it especially when he doubles at a bad time. I kinda give up the fight when I get down to one PC and decide to throw a Spider Web at him for slow and hey it works. Burn an Elixir and then I'm actually able to recover. Materialize is a jerk move with how FF7 handles exp but I kinda like it anyway, I get Trine, victory with no resets somehow. Also thank you for making him not immune to fire so Vincent doesn't get super-trolled.
Palmer: well uh I come into this set up for physicals as per above and it really, really doesn't work as once again "perfect accuracy" in FF7 proves less than perfect. His offence is pretty good so I decide to use Rasp and run him out of MP. He promptly responds by spamming berserk and I don't react to this fast enough and thus lose. Well, by "lose" I mean "determine that it will take less time to restart the fight than wait for my berserked PCs to make hundreds of attacks until enough hit to bring him down".
I come back to the fight with the following:
-poison immunity
-reflect to send things back at him
-more magical damage in general
-berserk immunity on at least one PC
This is gross overkill and the fight is now a joke. Still, only boss to actally give me a reset outside Bottomswell and it's PALMER, I hope you're happy Tonfa.
Back to the Gold Saucer because I've run out of regular potions and the only place I can find that sells them is Corel. I forget that going back here locks Aeris into your party so I guess I'm doing Temple of Ancients before Wutai. I also try the arena and it goes hilariously badly. Maybe after I get a Ribbon. Maybe.
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Temple of the Ancients-
Oh look, things that actually have elemental weaknesses. Frogs get OHKOed by Shiva, Quake 2 MT sees a workout against... I forget their name. Powersoul/Death Sentence allows some heavy hits against bulkier Doorbulls. 8 Eyes I am terrified of because they hit damn hard for FF7 enemies in vanilla, so I abuse them with sleep, can't tell you much past that. The pincer by Ancient Dragons is scary except I get a Tifa limit immediately and that's basically that.
I get a Ribbon. Making it block positive status too makes it much less of a god accessory than FF7, though on the other hand this is going to make the arena even harder.... Still, a good choice. It's still great, let's be honest.
Red Dragon and secret friend - Well that's one way to make this boss better. Blue Dragon, you the real MVP, because Blue Dragon breath does decent MT damage AND causes Stop. This is rather brutal since there's no specific Stop-blocker, so Ribbon it is (I guess Added Effect Time would also work, I don't think of that because I'm using Added Effect for death sentence immunity). Anyway I don't have a Ribbon on the first run so eventually everyone is stopped at once and that's GG. Refights still aren't exactly easy because that's two sources of offence, Blue Dragon Breath is nasty enough even before Stop happens. Third fight I execute better and win. MT regen sees use for the first time. I kill Blue first of course, Red gets a bit better once he's alone (gaining MT) but it makes no real difference. First two-reset battle!
Not the last of course.
Demons Gate - Most FF7 bosses have pretty similar HP in TF7, for some reason this one gets tapped to get way more, like double any previous boss (though no more than the dragons together to be fair). Oh yeah and his damage is twice as high, and Petrifeye is Slow+Petrify (yes, they stack) instead of Slow-numb, yikes. So Esuna/Soft, then Haste/Hyper are needed to recover. I even try to slow him and it doesn't seem to work. So basically this boss is WAY BETTER than in vanilla and he was already probably the best boss in FF7 disc 1.
MT Barrier is my opening strategy and it certainly works well. Getting rid of Ribbon so it actually affects everyone proves necessary. I try MT MBarrier to deal with Cave-In but it weakens healing too much and proves a liability. Haste gets used though not on Death Sentence'd Tifa (other two PCs immune it via accessory and Added Effect Odin; I also block petrify via my one Jem Ring). Once Demon Rush starts getting used that's... ugly, since it almost OHKOs front-row Tifa in Barrier (so would OHKO many front-row PCs) and is a solid 2HKO to back-row Aeris, again in Barrier. Get Barrier or get out, lol you if you use a Ribbon I guess. Keeping that up and refreshing it if I die is essential. Barrier eats through MP fast so Breath of Earth is the preferred Aeris limit for this fight. Powersoul Tifa provides most of the offence along with a shot of Bahamut, not too different from normal. Definitely a fight where I ration my uses of MT Cure 2, fortunately Edincoat Cloud has enough magic that even his MT Cure is pretty good, so six shots of MT healing overall goes a long way. Lots of Hi-Potions get used too of course.
Four resets in total.
Dragon Armlet is still terrific and unnerfed, Gigas Armlet loses its drawback from vanilla so is just great. Yay new armour! The weapons from here are also a relatively powerful bunch, so I'm ready for Wutai. I also get my second mastered sense from this fight and I realise I never sold the first. I sell both, and uh I don't think I'll have any money troubles ever again.
Wutai arc is relatively uneventful by comparison, I run Cloud/Tifa/Red with their Temple weapons (Seraph Comb in Red's case). Cloud/Tifa's weapons are great since they raise speed a lot (Red's already fast) and have cool added status + crit rates, Gigas Armlet lets Tifa OHKO many randoms even without a crit. I actually use Potions in battle against the last surviving enemy once or twice which feels weird but hey that's how it works, good thing the rest of the game Cure is more efficient because I'd be annoyed if this were the only healing paradigm. Only randoms which really give me much trouble are those lightning-spamming birds in the world map mountain area (Dragon Armlet helps at least).
Rapps - Well Aero 2 certainly hurts and I spend a lot of the battle poisoned. Fortunately I have a reasonably bulky party so it's not a OHKO on anyone and nothing a couple Hi-Potions can't patch up. Lunatic High gets used almost immediately and is huge, Haste for everyone still great. There are a lots of really great item drops around here but I don't really use them. Not a completely trivial fight but way easier than the ones in the temple, and I imagine this is probably the case even if you do them in the opposite order I did.
And that's where I am now, I guess I'll look at the pagoda next, which means using Yuffie for the first time.
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Still, only boss to actally give me a reset outside Bottomswell and it's PALMER, I hope you're happy Tonfa.
<RICHARD> Working as intended
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I think Dragon Armlet is unique now? I remember there being a lot of desire for more of them and being denied. So diversity in your good armours!
AlsoStill, only boss to actally give me a reset outside Bottomswell and it's PALMER, I hope you're happy Tonfa.
<RICHARD> Working as intended
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Pagoda - I beat Gorky/Gorkii without much issue, then get to Shake. He kills me with some combination of Slow-Numb and berserk. I block slow-numb, twink for physicals, and decide to let berserk wreck him... but this time he uses berserk super-early and I can't win the slugfest. I decide I've had it with status, equip my Ribbon, and go to town. MP is limited and mostly gets used on Magic Counter Cure 2 as a way to gain a tempo advantage, otherwise Laser while it's good then physicals are my main offence. Works for this and the other non-Godo fights.
Godo is tougher because (a) Trine hurts and (b) dat counter healing; poor underlevelled Yuffie can't deal with it. I decide to set Destruct for Rasp so he can't use either (along with Elemental Lightning in the meantime); takes a while but it works. Unfortunately he does actually get nastier when out of MP in a different way because now he uses physicals every turn instead of wasting time on Bio2/Sleepel/Mini (all nulled by Ribbon). He has an MP drain but it's based on my current MP and once that's zero, haha no MP drain for you. Anyway I should have used Reflect instead probably; I wasn't sure if it would work and didn't want to risk a reset to find out but apparently it does.
Now to promptly never use either reward from the pagoda; I knew there was a reason I preferred leaving it to disc 2.
Coral Valley - Running Tifa/Red. Matra/Magic/Choco-Mog/MT sleep/Death Sentence/Powersoul is the order of the day. I don't have many problems. Apparently Comet death counters to MT magic death are a thing but I only see one Comet ever, apparently E Skill doesn't trigger it, and of course neither do enemies who are asleep. >:)
Jenova Life - I almost die but I don't. No Dispel so Radiance dunks on me, Aqualung really hurts. Fortunately Comet is ridiculous, and ignores J-Life's impressive MDef. Granted, it was almost this good in vanilla, but it actually got an MP cost decrease so it's more useful than I was expecting. Cleansing Wave stops me from buffing much, damage is tough for me to stay on top of but I do manage, and Tifa nonsense + Comet gets the job done nicely.
Glacier - Currently here. Magnades still mock "255%" hit I see. A number of enemies hit quite hard and then there are Shreds who are tanky, inflict berserk and then spam Cure 3, argh. I almost wipe to this once but fortunately run kicks in fast. Plenty of elemental weakneses here, particularly fire, so I pull out Vincent for Beast Flare purposes. Vincent's limit physicals suck. *checks hack notes* Okay they were always this bad, they are doubled in power but row-subject now. I do like the free heal from Vincent's limit though, a much bigger deal here than in vanilla. I run him with Deathblow/Steal as Well otherwise, decent enough but he mostly provides support and maginess otherwise, good thing his magic is decent.
Currently saved after passing out once. Time to go search for Added Cut/Alexander and pass out again, because apparently passing out around deadly monsters is the best way to get to a recovery point in this game.
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Vincent's limit physicals suck. *checks hack notes* Okay they were always this bad, they are doubled in power but row-subject now.
These used to be triple power but testing found the limits too powerful.
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Concept for you Tonfa.
Take the moves from Chaos and Hell Raiser or whatever it is. Put it on Vincent's L1. Make them all MT. Give him this charcter model.
(http://ffc.rpgclassics.com/EspMon/adamant7-b.jpg)
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Rank TF7 Bowser.
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Glacier continued - I already mentioned some of the randoms here but I'll add BUNNIES who have perfect MDef and really high evade (in that FF7 way of making your accuracy not matter). Kinda trolly unless I'm missing something. Sleep -> hit 'em works, as does just waiting to get lucky.
Snow Queen (2 resets) - Well okay she definitely lives up to Still More Fighting Now. ST OHKO of two elemental flavours and Fascination, which is Haste/Confuse/Silence (nasty mix; also I am impressed with how many enemies haste you to be jerks). Mostly single acts but occasionally doubleacts which breaks out of revival stall nicely. Aurora Armlet's ice absorb is great here, Choco/Mog Elemental can block wind on one person too. I use reflect but her AI seems to -mostly- know to target people without reflect (occasionally screws up though? Or my luck/memories are weird). Unfortunately Ribbon means no reflect and forgetting this is the cause of one reset.
Anyway I run Barret/Cait for Snow Queen, and indeed all of Gaea's Cliffs. I've been hating on Barret but I noticed his 255 hit weapon yields more damage than Vincent's, and he also has WAY more bulk (nice for surviving halved Snow Queen damage and various others), so yeah, with Added Cut now using that + Deathblow is good times. He also has back row Cover/Counter shenanigans. Cait I run the Mag+25 weapon so he's actually the best mage, just not with many slots. Cloud I switch to Enhance Sword on and that covers my slot needs.
I get ambushed by Stilva and he almost wipes me despite my precautions of lightning-immune Barret because his damage is still murderous and his physicals against suddenly-front-row-Barret are legit too. Fortunately Stop is great and saves me. Toxic Barf have a lot of MDef which is a pain but Bahamut works if I'm impatient/near a save point, otherwise turning them into frogs is a hilarious AND effective solution. Headbombers are weak to Leviathan, Leviathan + MP Absorb pays for itself against them. Molboros hit really hard now (again Barret/Cait team pays off, most other PCs would get OHKOed without ice res) and also inflict stop. You can stop them right back. Or L4 Suicide them. It's great. Main issue is getting Bad Breath, having a Ribbon on someone is useful for this and other fights. L4 Suicide also works on Stilva and the bats. Surprisingly useful Enemy Skill.
ICICLES are jerks, OHKO counter. They come with bats who hit pretty hard and heal to full when they do, or use confuse (blocking that is important, see Molboros). MT cleans up the bats but gives you an ugly counter. MT status works cleanly if I want to kill them, but then I realise Demi2 OHKOs the icicle ending the fights. Mwaha.
I am so pro at randoms in this game. Against bosses... not so much.
Schizo (3 resets) - First reset is a party switch for science, Yuffie gets OHKOed by multiple things in this fight. Nope. Second reset I just get overwhelmed since he can counter with a big MT physical at a bad time (it takes me a while to realise it's physical since it looks like Quake; everyone in the back row once I do). Third reset is because when you leave one head alone it gets TRIPLE DOUBLE BREATH which is high 2HKO to everyone, lol hope you didn't trigger a physical counter before this. Oh yes the MT physical counter inflicts slow. Guess how I die once.
More Barrier, back row, lots of fire/ice defence (Aurora Armlet Cait, Fire Armlet + Ice Elem Barret, Dragon Armlet Cloud... needs MBarrier because double breath hits too hard otherwise), heal slow with haste/hypers, and muscle out a long fight against 30k total HP. I decide I really don't want to see triple double breath so I kill both heads at once praying I can survive the double death counter with MBarrier but one of the heads is out of MP because I used Mindblow to drain it earlier, awesome.
I fight a Gigas and it hits very not hard for something so huge, though at low HP it acts a lot so that's something.
Tifa/Red for Whirlwind Maze, Red still doing that mixed offence thing (though I definitely feel the lower HP compared to Barret/Tifa/Cait) and Tifa Powersouling it up. I screw up the wind a lot to the amusement of my audience but fortunately the enemy you fight is really easy, Sacred Fire almost OHKOs. I also fight Gremlins and some enemy called KILLBIN but only once and I status them out so not much to say.
Jenova-DEATH (3 resets) - How nice she activates Powersoul for me, an excellent strategy. But Red Light (renamed Glare) isn't fire any more and she can mix in Aero3 which hits even harder into her tripleacts. She's fast as fuck too, and while her MT attacks (triple laser or Tropic Wind) aren't super-amazing they really add up. As does the Dual inflicted by Doomsday. Block death with two people, but I still get overwhelmed, the turns come so often that a bad run is difficult to recover from, and MBarrier is an option but really weakens my healing. On the third reset I have refined my strategy (Choco/Mog elemental is back, blocking both Aero 3 and, to my pleasant surprise, Tropic Wind; MT Esuna gets play to remove Dual since I don't seem to have a way to block that) but I get dunked on by Glare inflicting paralysis like crazy, maaan. Okay, EVEN MORE STATUS IMMUNITY lets do this, Ribbon + Added Effect Destruct protects Red, Jem Ring on Tifa, Safety Bit on Cloud. This time I win, even snagging Aero 3 on her very last action.
On the winning run I also realise that because Doomsday's second use and beyond is listed as "miss" on Jenova means the move is targetting her. Quick testing shows she's immuning Dual and (obviously) Death Sentence so man it was hasting her, no wonder I was getting owned. Sadly I'm not packing Dispel, would have used it. I manage though; by the time I realise this she's almost dead.
After the fight, I get Mug! :)
Sephiroth does the stuff which makes him a worthwhile villain, lots of plot ensues.
I know about Materia exchanging so Junon escape is easy mode, after realising Shinra soldiers are weak to shot I switch Barret to the Enemy Launcher and use Mug/Added Cut and he wrecks face.
I do a big shopping spree, new weapons look cool. I decide to run Barret and Vincent, as both get particularly cool new weapons. Barret gets his 140 power Solid Bazooka; a bit inaccurate but using an evade-boosting armour helps a little, and his Mug/Added Cut stings (as does his Big Shot... yes I don't have his L2 yet). Vincent gets a better +mag weapon so is now probably the best mage for raw offence. Bolt Armlets are storebought now so Trine gets to play. I run Bolt Armlets on Barret and Cid, Lightning Elemental on Vincent.
Corel - I definitely have some trouble with this! Gas Ducters get dunked on by Barret, no real issue there. Wolfmeister, though, is a jerk, he casts Mighty Guard and has plenty of HP. And then Eagle Gun has something like 25k HP (I don't scan him). Gravity to the rescue, yeesh, both Demi 2 and Laser. I mostly YOLO and poor front-row Cid dies in like three fights here which probably ends what little chance I had of using him hereafter. Anyway I'm not really optimum with time use and I seriously underestimate just how long the two big enemies will take but I win first try with about 35 seconds on the clock. Very tense!
Condor next.
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Cmdr Grand Horn - Tricky at first but my victory is never really in doubt. His AI seems to be "use poison breath on someone not poisoned + use 1-2 physicals on someone who is poisoned". This tends to lead to getting dunked on early since poison + 2x attack is pretty nasty. But once I escape the initial revive lock and everyone gets poisoned the fight gets way easier because he stops using poison breath and only uses 1-2 physicals on random people which is super-easy. Trine healing takes care of the rest. He uses some death counter which kills Cid because of course it does, see my previous post.
Ultimate Weapon - Uh well he's scary as hell, OHKO everyone and a strong MT 2HKO in Quake to keep you honest. Fortunately he runs away after a bit since I am certainly worried.
Underwater Junon - I run Barret/Red here, Bolt Armlets on non-Red for Trine abuse (Red has Elemental Lightning). Barret Mug/Added Cut is super-nasty to soldiers, magical mayhem gets the job done otherwise.
Carry Armour - Oh look it's one of the other Actually Good FF7 Bosses and... one of the few in the game who is changed laterally instead of clearly improved? Lapis Laser gets a major nerf (actually it might have the same base damage but this game having working and high armour MDef means it's much weaker in practice) though he does doubleact it with a little added ST damage + blind. That said he's more dangerous in other ways because the arms are now much harder to kill due to MDef/evade and they still grab people and it sucks. Fortunately Grenade Bomb and Bahamut spells to the rescue. Not easy but I win both times.
... I say both times because the first time after the fight I get ganked by an ambush fight on the submarine, you enter it immediately after a previous battle against soldiers (no chance to heal) and it's a pincer attack so I get gunned down by row-ignoring MT, some of which hits extra due to being back hits. Ack. Second time I come in fully healed and with some extra protection (Protect Ring, Draclau Ring) and it's a curbstomp the other way. Frogged soldiers are no threat.
I don't kill my buddies because I'm not a heartless monster.
At this point I am told to use Tifa again. Tifa can't use Bolt Armlet so there's a loss of Trine awesomeness but she can use the Powersoul + Curse Ring, wonder how good that is. *crit hits for near the damage cap* seems pretty good
Rocket Town - I use Cid + Tifa, Tifa destroys everything although I do try to give the odd kill to others because hey they need limits. Rude uses two Grand Sparks, decent start. He then casts Reflect on himself than Aura on himself, which reflects onto me. gj. Red XIII goes back in the party after this so I actually have a non-Cloud mage.
Gelnika - This place was already legit enough, it gained some teeth / some tricks but not too much to say otherwise. The sadness-inflicting attack of Unknown 3 now drains all your MP which is rude. Not to be confused with Rude.
Reno 3/Rude 3 - I'd like to talk about this fight but I open with a Tifa Mug/Added Cut on Reno and she crits both times and he runs away. Maybe I'll stop using Powersoul after this. Rude hits really damn hard but Barrier-All to the rescue.
blah blah blah plot submarine blah blah blah
Diamond Weapon - MAGICAL FEET now hit pretty damn hard and he's really fast so this once joke is now a bit of a problem! As is often the case in TF7 fights it takes a while of revival to get back on my feet and healed, then I get MBarrier up on everyone and things are okay. Can't Powersoul cheese this guy! Unfortunately after some magic damage (including Trine doing its thing) Tifa gets a L4 limit and that's the end of that chapter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwda_u3Y0QQ). So I miss out on the countdown-to-doom phase.
Midgar next!
I'm not sure if I think bosses need more HP at this point. Like boss HP isn't too bad if you miss out on some key things certanily... but with ultimate weapons now available with no drawback + most of your hack players will probably have at least one of 2x Cut or Added Cut + stuff I'm not even doing like MP Turbo or Quadra Magic or W Summon (though the latter two do require sidequests). I'm not sure what to recommend.
Of course one downside of amping up HP is you get more bosses into the "can't sense" range which is super-lame. You could instead add more defences though this does overcentralise a few attacks (Comet, Bahamut series)... I guess auto-MBarrier would slow those down if desired, and if that's actually possible. Or you could try to find an ASM hack which gets rid of that silly 30k limit.
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I'm not sure if I think bosses need more HP at this point. Like boss HP isn't too bad if you miss out on some key things certanily... but with ultimate weapons now available with no drawback + most of your hack players will probably have at least one of 2x Cut or Added Cut + stuff I'm not even doing like MP Turbo or Quadra Magic or W Summon (though the latter two do require sidequests). I'm not sure what to recommend.
Of course one downside of amping up HP is you get more bosses into the "can't sense" range which is super-lame. You could instead add more defences though this does overcentralise a few attacks (Comet, Bahamut series)... I guess auto-MBarrier would slow those down if desired, and if that's actually possible. Or you could try to find an ASM hack which gets rid of that silly 30k limit.
Not for lack of trying with regards to the ASM hack, unfortunately. I wonder if Powersoul itself is still too strong?
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I'm not sure that Powersoul is the sole problem at least not at this point. You can do similar things with many of the ultimate weapons. I actually switched to Premium Heart for the extra materia slots for instance, and Venus Gospel should be able to accomplish something pretty similar on paper. (Conformer's nerfed now so it less so... but then there's Ultimate Weapon/Limited Moon in the mix on disc 3.)
On the note of ultimate weapons, HP Shout doesn't appear to work. It did 0 damage to all of Grosspanzer, Crazy Saw, and Soldier 1st, at least two of which are gravity-vulnerable.
As another, much more minor detail, Blood Lance and Master Hand are still called by their old names when you pick them up on the field. The names display properly in the menu however.
Anyway, Midgar!
Three enemies in the initial area deserve particular note: Crazy Saws use confuse which is deadly to physical setups (hey, that's a weakness they have!). Added Effect-Hades to the rescue, as well as a Peace Ring on another PC. This isn't new to vanilla, IIRC my only reset on my last "break the game" run was here! I get Flash and at one point confuse almost leads me to ganking me own party with that. Whoops. Manholes can cast Ultima! Ouch man, that hurts. And Behemoth just hit like trucks in general, they get me into that round robin revival cycle which TF7 often does. End up having to Smoke Bomb away from one.
In the tunnels, there are SHADOW MAKERS who are still harmless but have upped their annoyance factor, I... approve actually!
Turks (1 reset) - Tale of two fights here; the first time I get overwhelmed by their offence and stuck in a revival loop, the second I Barrier-All immediately and blitz one of them down and the fight ends in 3 rounds instead of like 12, and in a better direction for me. Not much to say beyond that they throw out a lot of damage; Elena has a charm move as well and that's nasty in its own way but largely it's a matter of staying on top of things.
Proud Clod - Their damage is better but I still don't really have any problems.
Final area of Midgar has a couple nasty randoms I might tone down? Soldier 1st sometimes uses Sword of Doom and it does over 5000 damage to the front row which against the TF7 HP curve is just nutty, like it OHKOs back row PCs or Draclau/Protect Ring PCs and there are three of them. If they don't use that, no problem. And then there is the XCannon. Which inflicts Stop+Sleep on all three PCs then does MT 9999 while you look on helplessly. Stop+Sleep is kind of a pain to block! (Ribbon does it, but Stop is a tricky immunity otherwise, you'd need Added Effect on very specific materia stacked with a sleep blocker.) Not sure if it always does this, the second time I fight one I run before it can use Search on all three PCs.
Hojo (1 reset) - The first form's 13k HP still means that bad rap and poodles don't get turns. Second form has some damage but ultimately I don't have much to say here.
Third form... well combo is far nastier now, hitting way harder and having frog/berserk/sleep and... I dunno. Anyway either Hojo has an extremely rude trick or I am a derpatron but somehow Tifa ends up in permanent Frog status (which means either Combo inflicts resist on its final hit, or I accidentally applied it while trying to use Esuna). Oops. Anyway I get overwhelmed in this part partially because poor front-row Cloud gets annihilated by Combo (Tifa has the Draclau Ring). On the second fight I put Tifa in resist status before Combo can be used and usual anti-physical Counter nonsense dunks on the fight from there.
Next up: Ultimate Weapon, the Ancient Forest, and the final dungeon.
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I get to Disc 3 and am rewarded by Ultima's cost dropping from 150 to 120. Yay! (I imagine this should be fixed. Oh well. Ultima at 120 M is super-great, paired with MP Absorb in particular it's ridiculous at randomsweeping.
Ultimate Weapon
Mostly talked this one out with Laggy already. Chasing him's uneventful enough, he OHKOs a lot of people a lot but I can stall until he runs away at worst since he's almost all ST (even though he'll doubleact sometimes). Let's talk about the real thing.
Winning run:
Cloud, Bolt Armlet, Ribbon
Barret, Bolt Armlet, Fire Ring
Red XIII, Fire Armlet, Elemental/Lightning, Jem Ring. I also ran Elemental/Ice to reduce the risk of a MT wipe from Wave of Ice after that got me once.
Note how everyone absorbs lightning? Yeah, Trine provides MT healing through reflect and some damage. Since UW uses Thunderball (OHKO lightning) quite a bit that's even better. Fire immunity is to deal with Flare, again a OHKO. Shadow Flare I have no defence from, it OHKOs. All of these moves can be used in doubleacts. So can his status move Energy Ball, which inflicts stop/petrify/reflect and does a bunch of MP damage. Stop and petrify are cured by different things so takes two turns to recover from, Reflect is interesting and double-edged. It allows me to survive Flare and Shadow Flare and also bounce them back for significant damage. But of course it also interferes with Cure 3 and any other attempts to buff. The rest of his high-HP skillset is single-acted and includes Light Pillar (9999 ST), Comet 2 which does ~3HKO damage 4 times to random targets (gets nasty if only 1-2 people are alive) and Wave of Ice which does strong MT ice damage and also dispels. The last one is rare but along with the constant OHKOs/petrification does disincentivise buffs quite a bit, so I only use them occasionally (Resist to gain protection from Energy Ball or Haste; MBarrier is a consideration but because it slows my healing too I end up deciding against it).
Below half HP he gets scarier and starts throwing in Demi 3 -> Shadow Flare -> Flare combos (hope you have reflect I guess?) as well as adding Comet and Aero3 to a tripleact of damage moves. (Comet is nasty, can often OHKO.) The battle is largely constantly deciding how to mitigate his offence; revival (I have both Phoenix and Revive/All on-hand), healing (Trine, Cure 3, items), MP healing (I use lots of Turbo Ethers, several Elixirs, and 3 of my 6 Megalixirs), and status curing (petrify curing is a high priority, and stop as well). A lot of my damage comes off Barret's counters and reflected spells, though when I do get a spare chance I'll throw in MP Turbo Comet 2 or Mug-Added Cut from the Missing Score. (He counters occasionally but it's nothing I can't handle.) The limit phase definitely threatens to overwhelm me but then he runs out of MP, which means no more Flare, Shadow Flare, or Comet 2. This doesn't mean I win instantly but with him losing a bunch of turns to those I'm able to get clear control of the battle and win from there.
Ancient Forest- I run Cloud/Tifa/Red, Tifa uses Master Hand/Premium Heart, Red uses Limited Moon, and Cloud Ragnarok... I like its +3 materia slots on Apocalypse and +24 magic on Ultima Weapon. Three enemies to note.
Diablo - Huge physical defence, high HP, gravity immunity, drains with its main damage. Sounds like a job for Death! First time I've gotten legitimate use out of this FF7 spell, magic damage can also bring them down but not nearly as efficiently with their HP.
Bird with a name I'm not gonna try to spell - Good physical attackers. Unfortunately they're vulnerable to L4 Suicide which cripples them with Mini. And, y'know, damage.
Rilfsalk or whatever the weed enemy is called - They hit surprisingly hard with Autumn Leaves (MT physical) and they have super-high evade. Kinda nasty. L40 Suicide into Ultima-MP Absorb takes care of them though. And Sleep-All works on everything in this dungeon, so yeah that gets a good workout.
Final dungeon time! Actually I've made it through one wing of it, gonna do the other two to check out all the other randoms and then report on them. Almost done~
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Final dungeon - Cloud/Tifa/Red, as above. I'm actually much more familiar with the randoms here than most parts of the game (when I was younger I climbed up and down this place a lot I think, and the fact that there's no exit spell means you kinda have to if you save at the bottom and want to go do optional stuff). So keep in mind I'm taking that knowledge into the fights here. I ultimately fight every random here except Movers and that weird duo from the swamp area.
Gargoyles - Sleep stops the L4 Death counters if/when I have anyone with level divisible by 4. Since they essentially have auto-last strike and bad durability, that's all these guys ever do, so basically same as vanilla.
Parasites - They spam paralysis physicals which are actually kinda dangerous when there are three of them since they can semi-lock the enemies down and their damage isn't bad. Certainly a reward for using Protect Ring and/or Draclau Ring on front row people. I take 'em out with a mix of Mug/Added Cut and MT magic, they counter the latter with silence but doesn't stop the rest of the team from finishing the job. I get L5 Death.
Dark Dragon - They hit hard. In vanilla they counter magic with Ultima soo I'm not gonna fuck around with that, mostly just Barrier and hit with physicals. I get Dragon Force and promptly don't use it though with the higher defence values it does seem actually useful this time.
Scissors - oh shit confuse no no no no bad, smoke bomb. Next time I fight them both Tifa and Red immune that and I kill them with strong hits so they don't get to use their ID.
Pollensalta - Not as scary as Snows were, that's for sure. With confuse now blocked as above I'm less prey to Fascination and besides that they mostly just have slow + some modest damage. I get Angel Whisper and it... kinda seems like trash now? Am I missing the point of an endgame enemy skill that replicates a Phoenix Down at 50 MP cost? At least make it 75% revival or a good anti-status tool for Sephiroth or something.
Death Dealer - Um wow Star hits really damn hard, I end up running from these guys once and when I fight them again sleep is used with extreme prejudice. L4 Suicide cuts 'em down fast, too.
Master Tonberry - Tracking my PCs' kill counts is an amusing thought, but nah. Stop puts an end to their shenanigans. I try to mug 'em for elixirs, elixirs are good.
King Behemoth - Hits like a truck, just like the first. Unlike the first, he is prey to L5 Death. Mwahaha!
Allemagne - Someone else who uses L4 Death (why do enemies troll me with a slightly better version of my own spell?). Rasp gets rid of that and everything else that isn't physical, and L4 Suicide sends his L4 bullshit back his way and removes the physicals too. Damage cap means I have to do more than gently poke him afterwards but that's fine.
Armoured Golem - Y'know I fight one but I don't really remember it well. It gets taken out pretty quickly.
Magic Pot - I fight a surprisingly large numbers of these and trade elixirs for turbo ethers and lots of AP. Man if I'd know I would fight this many I would have raised a third Elemental to free Cloud from the Bolt Armlet, oh well. I still get nowhere near 4x Cut, finishing with about 60k AP on that particular materia. I also get a second Ultima, that's cool.
At this point I get W Magic which is broken (nothing new there). It goes to Cloud, who runs MP Turbo Comet 2, MP Absorb Ultima, Revive, Restore/All, and Destuct for various utility. Good stuff.
Iron Man - Plenty of physical offence, Draclau Ring / Protect Ring / throw on MT Barrier in each fight just to be sure, and blast away. He uses Adrenaline. I use Dispel and he counters with Adrenaline, why do I bother man. At least it's no longer pricy at this point.
Dragon Zombie - Tifa glances his way and he dies. Oh wait maybe I should have used MBarrier- Actually, his new trick ignores MBarrier. It also instantly kills anyone not resistant to gravity (reading the documentation it's HP-1 + dual, but yeah that kicks in before the battle ends). Fortunately Tifa halved it... from both the Draclau Ring and the Minerva Bangle. Which was enough.
Jenova-SYNTHESIS - Well she hits harder certainly so barriers come out to play. Ultimately though she's still not much, Double Ultima and Mega All Mug smash her around some although her defences are quite high. But then her tentacles die and her defence drops down a bunch and that's that.
Bizarro Sephiroth - I go to the trouble of setting up a second (bad) team in case this fight gets ubered. It is not ubered. My team is quite capable of destroying vanilla Bizarro and it does so pretty well here. I'm okay with this, this fight is annoying with how long some of the animations/death processing takes. Very much feels like a breather round before...
Safer Sephrioth
Safer is a good name (for a mistranslation), as he immediately uses "Big Wall". I'm not sure what that does, Protect/Shell are obvious. Haste? I'm not sure. If not Sephiroth is just really damn fast, which makes the rest of the fight harder for sure. I doublecast Dispel and an attack spell but the dispel doesn't work. All right, more durability for him, got it. No big, I cast MT Barrier and-
And he OHKOs Red through it, then Tifa with Shadow Flare. Um. Well. Yes I guess they would do that at vanilla values. Whatever, doublecast Life 2, and watch him get two turns in a row as I have no way to manipulate ATB, fly up and Pale Horse and OH MY GOD IT'S MT. And I'm not blocking Frog with anyone (man is this fight the entire reason Hades lost its frog blocking?). So uh three frogs, high Super Nova, at least I only have one PC vulnerable to confuse though that still sucks for sure, as does silence. I scamble a bunch, Break OHKOs someone, try to get my party back in some half-decent fighting shape before Deen... which does less damage than Pale Horse actually, but still have to make sure I'm healed after Super Nova. And then we repeat.
Anyway I end up seeing four cycles of his AI. (MT Rasp is used to start the second and fourth, kinda annoying but ultimately a breather turn.) Since frog persists through death and gets reapplied at every Pale Horse that's certainly a bit of a pain. Later I'm able to survive a physical thanks to Barrier Draclau Ring Tifa but it inflicts paralyze/blind which is a pain of its own, Shadow Flare not so much, would need reflect. So mostly the fight ends up trying to find better ways to cope with the damage and status moves. Knowing the AI helps because it means I don't need to heal after Pale Horse, but being healed before Pale Horse (as well as Deen) is important, though fortunately those are used after his turnskips for flight. I steadily gain better control of the fight and then, on the fourth cycle, I'm able to start doing some real damage, ultimately killing him with a counter triggered by Deen.
Pretty tough but if I'd lost I'm sure I would have won the second time. I forgot to equip a Heal materia on anyone and I think Resist would have been huge and made the fight relatively easy (mostly ST OHKOs to worry about at that point). Don't leave your Heal materia at home, kids.
I use Omnislash on Final Sephiroth. It makes teenage me happy. The end.
Was fun! Pretty clear upgrade to the game. May post more thoughts later. Congrats Tonfa and Laggy~
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Loving the feedback and first recorded completed playthrough! Always nice to know there was worth to massively nerding out over a 20 year old video game to the point of performing surgery on it.
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Beat this. Sadly, I didn't keep a detailed playlog, so I guess it'll just be assorted thoughts and bosses that stand out (mostly on the difficult end)
- Outside of the rather rough early game (since you're generally pushed onwards through dungeons with no ability to head back to town areas to resupply if needed), the difficulty is generally fine - enough of a challenge to make you think, but not taking up a grueling 2 hours per boss fight like in other romhacks.
- Limiting E.Skill to 1 copy and Restore is kind of interesting, though I think E.Skill got hit a bit too hard (though I didn't go out of my way to learn any E.Skill specifically) even with the supposed advantage of packing a lot of options into 1 materia slot. Not being able to connect Support Materia with E.Skills actually hit the damage options pretty hard and a lot of the utility was gutted so it falters a bit from an action economy perspective. I think Big Guard is one of the few remaining power moves it has but I didn't end up learning it.
- I really like how some of the Support Materia were available much earlier in the game - Steal as Well with a Magic Materia ended up being my main Steal method through the game, and Magic Counter has interesting utility. Counter is a bit iffy due to how bad most of the early game options for it are but hey free steal.
- Limits ended up not mattering a lot to me in late-game - either the boss is easy and I blow through it or it OHKOs constantly and I can never build up meter. Built-in FF7 system flaw so I can't fault here.
- Magic feels rather weak late game - Comet/2 seems like the only decent attack spell option now.
- Didn't feel like doing most sidequests
- Not sure if Battle Square is worth doing now that Omnislash is received elsewhere.
Notable Bosses
Air Buster: Lost the first time until I figured out that you shouldn't attack except from the back because of counterattacks.
Materia Keeper: I have no idea what the intended strategy is supposed to be after he takes one character out of the fight permanently (which is also annoying because it's a reset if it happens to be the E.Skill holder) - he Hastes himself periodically and you don't have Time yet so Slowing by Spider Web is a questionable option and his attacks are brutal. I ended up winning through completely luck-sacking Cait Sith's Dice twice.
Palmer: Wrecked me until I remembered "Oh, Reflect"
Snow: Sexy Palmer - didn't realize this was gonna be a turbo-charged boss but significantly easier with pre-battle prep. A bit annoying considering how far the save point is.
Also no Circlet Steal despite the doc listing (it's stolen from Ultimate Weapon).
Proud Clod: I have trouble figuring out how to mitigate the giant laser (I had it dealing 2k damage on Cloud and then it jumps to 5k after I messed around with my setup) and I can't figure out why it takes 0 damage from physicals and gets reflect casted on it though eventually I figured it suddenly gets reflect up when it starts kneeling. After that it was a matter of bringing in some actual weak spells to remove reflect.
Ultimate Weapon: Tried a bunch of setups for 2 hours. Figured I wasn't going to win this because I hadn't made the proper materia investments (I only had one maxed Elemental materia)
Surprisingly Easy List:
Gi Nattak, Jenova Synthesis, Both Sephiroths after I came back with proper Status Resist.
Character Thoughts:
Cloud
Not very impressive overall. Early Omnislash is nice even with the nerf and you can get it Disc 1 but as I've said, Limits stopped mattering as the game goes on so he always felt like the leftover guy who takes care of healing and utility for me. He sometimes pulled the standard counter build (Cover / Counter Attack / Counter + Mug) if I needed to run 2 mages but I don't think there's ever a time when he has a weapon that would make him the best for it.
Has a bit of an awkward weapon situation near the end where you need to do at least the Gelnika for an end-game weapon. Compared to how easy most characters get their ultimate weapons Cloud kind of stands out for needing a lot of effort to kill a boss that's now properly post-game level.
Barret
You really don't want to be slow in FF7, but Barret does seem to have certain fights that specifically caters to his niche of being a tanky Long-Range guy who exploits Shot weakness like Bottomswell. Generally if you can hit something with magic you're better off doing that though.
Tifa
I didn't use her this time because I did in my last run of Vanilla FF7 but on paper, it seems that the Powersoul build is nerfed (but probably still her best build) while her physical game with other weapons are greatly improved. I'm really bad with slots so the 40% base crit rate on her weapons actually end up outdamaging limits quite often, which is odd.
Aeris
Probably the strongest magic user while she exists now, which is nice.
Red
Really good utility limits, especially Mass Haste now that you can't All-Time, though the low HP is actually kinda scary if you put too much Magic Materia on him and I never ended up unlocking his Level 4 because he kept dying on me. Easy Ultimate Weapon that's pretty easy to upkeep if you just turn him into a Physical build with utility.
Yuffie
Didn't use her for the same reason of Tifa. In theory game best speed is worth something like being a utility caster (even with that lackluster MP) and item tossing. I kinda like how her weapons are all high power balanced out by her meh strength because it provides a good source of Throw damage (Superballs are fairly cheap and does as much damage as a Fire 3 from Cloud).
Think Conformer was nerfed going by the numbers but I don't know how much that hurt her.
Cait Sith
On paper, this character shouldn't work. Terrible Barret level speed and either worst to game worst in most categories except Luck and HP, the latter of which is somewhat nullified by the poor Vit/Spi scores and Luck doesn't amount to much, but I admit don't know how FF7 numbers work. Slots also took a power hit because of collateral changes (such as most of the Summons having reduced numbers) which it didn't really need - bad attack stats means iffy offense actions while bad speed means iffy utility actions (he's not a good user of his own Manipulate Materia because the turns seem to be based on his own slow speed!)
Cait's saving grace is a handful of really good weapons, so when the weapons have worn out their welcome you should generally just switch him out since he doesn't need to build Limits up, an advice which I probably should have personally followed but hindsight 20/20.
These are
Silver M-Phone: Fixed 320 Damage (Man I miss its 8 slots from the original though)
Starlight Phone: Dice damage, 50% Accuracy.
I've used the Red M-Phone (No Slots, Mag + 51) but I suspect a different character would have been better during that period.
Looking at the White M-Phone I feel this has some use with intentionally attacking your own characters with Elemental Absorption for a quick Heal + Haste rolled in one action but that's just theorycrafting.
Sadly, HP Shout is bugged and always deals 0 damage.
The standard Counter set-up with 2x Cut (couldn't get enough AP for 4x) with Starlight Phone is pretty ridiculous and reminds me of Fixed Dice Setzer - I wore the Mystile to counteract its low hit rate. Only weakness is probably not being Long-Range, so don't bring Cait to any battle that requires that.
Vincent:
Didn't use him much - his Limits could probably stand to use more boosts since it's conceptually pretty flawed... and if I'm not wrong, if his physical stats were lowered it should actually be worse in this version.
Cid
Didn't use except when forced - I have trouble figuring out what his role is supposed to be. Looking at the stats, he's slightly better than Cloud in physical stats but has significantly worse magic, which is not a great trade-off given that this is in comparison to a character that's already meh. I believe in Vanilla his niche was a handful of good weapons with Double Growth but that doesn't exist in TF7 any more and "character with some super good weapons" got taken by Cait so he's left out to dry.
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Thank you very much for playing the mod and posting your thoughts!