Game Diaries – Final Fantasy VII New Threat Arrange Episode III

Final Fantasy VII

If you don’t know what my Diaries are, please go here. Spoilers ahoy!

Otherwise, let’s go!


People talk about how VII‘s story is poor, but man, really re-experiencing everything with the knowledge of Crisis Core… it gets to me. People talk about all the retcons the series had and will debate whether newbies should play Crisis Core first since it’s a prequel or Final Fantasy VII since otherwise much of the mystery would be spoiled. Either way, Crisis Core colors Aerith’s formal introduction in a completely different way than if you are just playing blindly — and it’s not in a bad way.

Aerith innate: Defending absorbs most magical elements

Roll out the barrel! Skipped fighting, which was nice. Aerith, like I mentioned comes equipped with some nice Materia, and one of my Restore Materia will be put to the side for now. Her default weapon, Restore Rod, heals allies. In an older version of New Threat (or maybe in original?) Aerith slowly gained MP. Not really sure how useful the Geostance will be since even a bop with the Restore Rod sounds like a better use of a turn rather than hoping Aerith gets hit with an Fire spell or whatever. Unless some Bosses have a definite turn order or something and after losing a couple of times I know when to have her Defend.

Anyway, of course I have to make Cloud the prettiest girl around! And I’ll say this right now: in Remake, you’re crazy if you don’t go all the way. We’ve waited 20 years for an HD version, so how can you not make Cloud wear a silky dress and a diamond tiara?

And bikini briefs of course. Always go for the Group Room.

It really is amazing how this game where you start off being terrorists still manages to be so hilarious. Two girls and a guy threaten to chop/rip/smash “them”. Man, even if it’s changed in Remake, I’m sure Burton and Sakurai are going to have fun in the recording studio that day. (Although it sounds like at least the Japanese version is done?) “Now, okay, now say, ‘I have a boyfriend named Barret.'” In-universe, I wonder how many of his friends found out that Cloud somehow beat both Tifa and Aerith as the prettiest… I can imagine one day at 7th Heaven, Denzel is talking about how cool Cloud is, and Barret says something like, “I bet he wasn’t too cool when he wore that dress!” Cloud then does a spit-take and then retorts, “Yeah? Well, you weren’t so cool when you were dressed up as a marshmallow!” And as they go back and forth, Tifa is left to deal with two very confused children.

Anyway, Aps. I had a good feeling going into this battle. Everyone had a way to heal, and the swamp water tsunami attacks were physical in nature, so I would only need Barrier. Feeling good.

REKT.

All my hard planning went to waste as Aerith was out of commission for this fight. You can see me just floundering. “WHAT DO I DO?! WHAT DO I DO?”

So, I had to do some major reequipping. Aps is weak to fire, but that didn’t mean Elder Apps was. So I took Ice, the opposite of Fire in case he absorbed it. But as I found out thanks to Sense, he was weak to Lightning and Earth, the two elements I didn’t take. So I decided to take a chance and abandon my “Cloud-magic, Tifa-physical” strategy and go all physical. The Elder Licks were just brutal. Toward the end, I started to see that this probably wasn’t worth continuing. But I got REKT anyway.

Perhaps third time’s the charm?

After I reloaded, although Tifa looks as if she’s sitting up and Aerith down-and-out, I wondered if whomever Cloud talked to first was the one who joined him in battle. So I talked to Aerith first, and sure enough, she was okay. Genius me, however, didn’t bother to fix my Materia before talking to Tifa, and so I went into the fight without Barrier or Lightning/Earth on Aerith.

Turns out though that she didn’t need them. Cloud spammed Quake, and Aerith bopped the two of them with her staff. Elder Apps couldn’t outdamage her healing even with Poison, and a couple of Cross-Slashes gave them a break. Elder Licks not being spammed (or even used?) also made this fight a breeze. So magic + Aerith is the way to go in this fight.

Steal Materia! I love to Steal. Free items! Morph was also gained back at Aerith’s place, and it will definitely take a lot of experimenting to figure out when I should be using these.

Train Graveyard is usually only really good for stealing a weapon for Aerith, but my goal was to get her Seal Evil Limit Break. Not that I think it will be particularly useful in some immediate Boss fights, but it will probably be good in random encounters.

So as I was going for Seal Evil, I played around with Morph.

Final Fantasy VII Star Pendant Morph

OOOH, nice! Poison/Silence protection AND MAG +10? Yeah, I need three of those. Even if I get one in Shinra HQ, it’s still nice to have SOMETHING equipped in my Accessory slot. So I spent more time than I thought on encountering those Eligors. Even with Enemy Lure Materia, the encounter rate seemed extremely low. If I wasn’t so lazy with recording, I would have reloaded since my RNG just seemed terrible.

But yes, Seal Evil, 3x Star Pendants, and Waterkick?! Nice bonus.

Climbed up the pillar. Only had one battle, but those Aero-soldiers or whatever were pretty nasty. I had a hard time deciding what to pair with All, but I figured Cloud-healer, Tifa-warrior, and Barret-tank was pretty safe.

TIFA IS A ONE-WOMAN WRECKING MACHINE. I’ve also NEVER been this good at Slots. Have I started to pick up on the audio clues, or has all that time manipulating the reels in X and X-2 paid off? Or are the reels just easier in this version? Regardless, the Pyramids need to be busted with magic a la Bottomswell. I was a little thrown off when Barret was Imprisoned and yet the Pyramid wasn’t targettable. I missed the name of the attack (Magic Jammer), so Reno got healed accidentally. But no worries, Tifa FTW!

Also, she’s already learned Meteodrive? Holy crap. I think I usually had her learn it around the Gaea’s Cliffs area. Her Dexterity just means she is racking up the kills. I said Tifa probably wouldn’t my final team, but dang, she’s certainly making a case.

KO KOunter: 3

This post may contain reviews of free products or news featuring products which gave me bonuses. I may earn compensation if you use my links or referral codes. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Please read my disclosure policy here.

6 Comments

  1. Irina

    I never used Tifa that much. This hurt me later on

    Reply
    1. Krystallina (Post author)

      When I first played, I didn’t use Cid that much. And I used Tifa and Aerith a lot. Thank goodness for Yuffie in those sections!

      Reply
  2. dreager1

    You definitely play this game with a lot more strategy and planning than I did. Seems like a good approach to the game and I probably would have had less trouble with it if I’d done that. I didn’t even know that you could switch Limit Break attacks until I was around the final boss so I just had everyone’s default ones at the ready. It seriously blew my mind that you could actually switch it so I don’t even remember Meteodive. Sounds like a great attack though

    Reply
    1. Krystallina (Post author)

      Ha, that’s pretty funny. But at least Level 1 Limits are pretty good and charge up fast.

      Tifa gets the best Limits to watch. One girl lifting up enemies the size of Godzilla.

      Reply
  3. The Otaku Judge

    Reading your post makes me want to play Crisis Core for the first time. Right now there is no space left on my memory card to install it. Need to complete Mary Skelter and Danganronpa V3 first.

    The FF7 Remake will sell in droves because everyone wants to play HD dress up with Cloud haha.

    Reply
    1. Krystallina (Post author)

      Play it!
      Crisis Core suffers from some the same problems as other entries of the Compilation with new characters and retcons, but when it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful. Worth it just for the ending.
      Gameplay-wise, it’s pretty good, but I recommend following a guide for synthing, especially if you’re going to fight the superboss.

      Reply

Leave a Reply to The Otaku JudgeCancel reply

%d bloggers like this: