Game Diaries – Final Fantasy VII New Threat Arrange Episode VII

Final Fantasy VII

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

Otherwise, let’s go!


It’s Episode VII of VII! Is there something special for this Diaries entry?

I remember wasting so much money here at Fort Condor when I first played. Then I learned you could always just fight a monster instead. Don’t get as good of prizes, but who cares? I also learned years later just how many different Fort Condor fights there are and how if you’re doing a perfect game, how much you have to backtrack. Some are only available for a super-short period of time. So major props to whoever has done all… 16?? or so Fort Condor battles.

Fortunately, Sega Chief has taken pity on those people and introduced a pilot guy who will instantly transport you to Fort Condor. The game also alerts you when a new stage is ready, and then you can find the NPC who will teleport you to Fort Condor and then back to wherever you were. Bravo, good sir! Although I’m not doing them. I fought twice just to see if maybe you could get the regular rewards that way, but nope.

OK, Bottomswell. My current party is Cloud, Yuffie, and Red XIII. Obviously, Tifa is not worth bringing along, but Barret and Aerith both had their merits. I usually like to follow through with a team for a whole dungeon, and since I’m still working up their kill counts, I wanted to keep them. Besides, the party didn’t seem so bad: Cloud would do spell spam, Yuffie could attack, and Red could occasionally help out with Sled Fang.

That was Round One.

Game OversSo Bottomswell has been replaced by a boss I’ll call Jorgan. Because he was Von Strangling the crap out of me.

What can this nightmare overgrown fish do?

First, he will usually start off trying to Paralyze one of your characters, and he will try to do so throughout the battle. Then he can also inflict Poison, Silence, Slow, and Confuse. In addition, he will get a round where he will attack all three characters and try to inflict Dual on them, which is a reverse Regen. (Antidotes cure it.)

But status effects are only the beginning. His regular attack can do 500+ damage in the back row. His other main attack, Cyclone, inflicts about 600 HP worth of damage. Plus 100-200 for some of those status-inflict attacks, and Tropic Wave is about 350 to all characters.

But wait, there’s more! Fight now, and he’ll throw in random Walls on himself. (I think they go up automatically at certain HP levels, but he doesn’t actually cast the spell.) AND, act now, as a bonus, he’ll throw in the fact his Tail Attack (the regular attack) heals himself!

Oh, and he can still do the bubble trap spell (which require 500 damage to break) and has his water wave attack.

As Cid would say, @#$&*@%&@&*%&@!!!!

So yeah, considering my characters’ HP is under 700 (Yuffie) and 900-1000 (Cloud/Red), Barrier is a MUST. Without Sadness, no one can survive two Tail Attacks. But, of course, Jorgan has a high chance of Paralyzing someone on the very first turn. If it’s your Barrier caster, you’re screwed.

First loss, the biggest change was reequipping Destruct. I did run back to Fort Condor to regroup quickly, and when I returned, I had all my Limit Breaks ready to go. But the second time I ran into the same problem: MP. By the third defeat, I had a basic strategy:

First turns: Red-Barrier, Yuffie-Antipode (Fire/Ice Enemy Skill with Slow), Cloud-heal
Second: Red-Lunatic High, Yuffie-heal, Cloud-Climhazzard

After that and Choco/Mog (which did an impressive 1400 or so damage), Red would concentrate on keeping up Barriers and Debarrier-ing as needed, Cloud would spam Bolt2, and Yuffie would caste Haste, Antipode, and Cure/Revive/Clear Tranquil as needed.

Of course, the first problem is Paralyze. About 1/3 of the time, Red would be targeted by Jorgan’s opening move, and if he got Paralyzed, that meant no Barriers or Haste. This is where Soft Resets would be soooooo nice.

Obviously, I’m not showing every loss, but here was my “favorite”:

NOTHING went right this round. Paralyzed Red right from the start, and plus a couple of instant KOs thanks to critical hits.

Other changes I made were moving Destruct to Yuffie so that Red could concentrate on our own defenses, Added Effect-Choco/Mog on Cloud’s armor since he was the most dangerous to be confused, and equipping that third Restore Red XIII came with.

I’m assuming the best party would be Cloud/Aerith/Barret, especially if you buy a second Lightning Materia and equip Elemental-Lightning in his weapon. Cloud could also cast Magic, and Aerith could heal as needed. I think the biggest issue would be making sure to get rid of the bubbles since Barret’s magic would definitely be too low to break on his own. I seriously thought about bringing them in, but I have my pride, dang it! Red and Yuffie were going to have their revenge on Jorgan!

Sadness was also considered, but the problem was I really needed my Limit Breaks. With Jorgan able to drain the characters’ HP, getting half the number of Climhazzards and Sled Fangs meant losing a good chunk of damage plus, more importantly, the super-fast ATB recharge. Yuffie maybe should have had it since Greased Lightning isn’t nearly as good and the 30% damage would have countered the need for Clear Tranquil.

Speed: 2x

If you do place this mod, other tips:

  • Make sure you watch for Jorgan’s visual cue when he does his Venomfang. You need characters ready to toss Antidotes immediately.
  • He’s weak to wind, so I’m assuming Chocobuckle would have been a decent attack to use. I thought I used it once though and the damage was unimpressive. I kept using Antipode though just to make sure he didn’t Auto-Haste himself or anything though.
  • Yes, he does a final wave attack, so make sure everyone is above 400 HP at the end.
  • Be prepared to stop everything and free your party members. You know how cheap I can be, but even I was using Ethers liberally. Yuffie’s Magic seemed to be just under the 500 needed to break the bubble, and the amount of time until someone else can cast a follow-up spell can mean the difference between life and death for the trapped character.
  • Oh, and even if you let the character suffocate, the bubble stays around.
  • Bio doesn’t work.
  • Sense helps a lot to make sure you are prepared for his phases.

Also, has Confuse been changed slightly? My Cures (including Aerith hits) ALWAYS land on the enemy when Confused. I thought it was more random in vanilla. Not sure.

Moving on.

Anyway, I did horrible at the TV ratings minigame, but since it’s too much of a PITA to redo my recording setup without a built-in soft reset, I just let it go. Pleasing Rufus was much easier and got me a Rune Armlet. I bought a weapon upgrades for Cloud and Red XIII mostly for the extra Materia slots, and I also picked up another Revive and Heal Materia.

Moving on to Jenova, which I hoped wouldn’t require a lot of battles until I got to the fight. Thank goodness for Enemy Away Materia, but after Jorgan, who knows what to expect!

Speed: 2x

WTFDUDE, you’re JENOVA. You’ve conquered countless planets. How were you upstaged so badly by an oversized fish??

Seriously, JENOVA summons a couple of sample-like squids which you have to defeat before her. Well, Shiva took a big chunk of their health. (Evidently, you can Morph them for good stuff. A little late to find that out now.) After that… well, the battle was pretty long because of the evil alien’s heals, but I never was in any real danger. I kept expecting some kind of ultimate attack (or, more likely, for her to revive her little friends), and you can probably sense my hesitation. I was always ready to revive poor Red who kept getting Death Sentenced. Red skipped defense and went on offensive with Quake, and Cloud moved to the front row to physically attack, saving his MP instead of casting Bolt. Yuffie took advantage of the second Heal Materia by Osmosing when needed, but she really could have just attacked normally and thrown Potions. I had a hard time having her contribute to the fight. Only other thing had to worry about was Slow, but Haste is there to save the day. I could have been a lot more aggressive.

A little bit of extra and changed dialogue at the end I believe.

So, yeah. Almost had 7 new deaths for this 7th episode, but NOOOOOOO, Jorgan just had get one more

KO KOunter: 18

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2 Comments

  1. The Otaku Judge

    Sephiroth would be unbeatable if he was created with fish genes.

    Reply
    1. Krystallina (Post author)

      Then we can all rock out to his theme song, One-Finned Fish.

      Reply

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