Game Diaries – Final Fantasy VII New Threat Arrange Episode XII

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

Otherwise, let’s go!

Mt. Nibel. I was always kind of surprised there wasn’t more to the story here. Nothing about, “Hmm, this makes me think of 5 years ago”, no Tifa being still nervous after Nibelheim, no discussions about where to go next, no party chatter, nothing. Especially since Rocket Town has to be a pretty new village. I couldn’t find anything about how long it took to build the rocket, but it’s got to be a younger location than most of the rest of the world. Plus Cloud left several years before, so he might not know/remember Rocket Town. Unless he went there when he worked for Shinra?

Our friend X-ATM Scorpion is hanging out near the entrance. He has a “firmware upgrade” which supposedly enables here to use Barrier. But he went down easily without ever casting it.

Tested out Vincent’s Limit Break. Still the same. But he immediately learned Death Gigas. What? He definitely didn’t kill enough to learn it, so that must have changed. Perhaps a way to easily catch up with the rest of the group?

The Boss has moved positions. This means you can advance to Rocket Town without fighting him. While collecting the treasures, I tried to Morph a Nibel Dragon. It did not go well. He can drain HP with a magic attack and a physical attack (which hit pretty hard), so it made Morphing very difficult. Had to escape after stalling too much and entering the fight with a less-than-optimal setup.

Otherwise, time to challenge the Boss. The Materia Keeper could have been changed to absorb any element, and with the rise in difficulty, there was no way Vincent was going to be used in the fight. Yuffie I wanted for Rocket Town since I think her added dialogue at the end makes sense for the story. I chose Barret to be the physical attacker since Materia Keeper can be pretty powerful, and I guessed so would this Boss.

Besides, it couldn’t go any worse than on my original experiences on the original FFVII: I brought a newly-acquired Vincent to the fight. I had never used his Limit before, and I guess I just figured it would be like all the others. Not only did I lose control of one of my teammates early in the fight, but Vincent has a fire attack. Materia Keeper absorbs fire. No, I did not win. (Shocking, huh?) Plus I think I missed the Save Point and accidentally (or stupidly) triggered the fight, so I had to rehike up the mountain.

Well, Armor Keeper turns out to be a mini-Carry Armor: physical attacks and laser beams. Its Magic Defense seemed to be pretty high, so the bulk of the fighting fell to Barret. Yuffie and Cloud both concentrated on keeping the party alive. Armor Keeper can negate Barrier/MBarrier, so although Yuffie occasionally reapplied them, they only protected for an attack or two. She tried to Osmose as much as she could between Cures, but she was only recovering <50 MP at a time.

As I found out, the Keeper appears to power up after using that Bolevaerk ability. It seems to stack, so if I hadn’t finished the fight when I did, I would have been in serious trouble.

But guess what I did again? FORGOT TO RECORD! So here was the second fight, the only difference being I added Added Cut-Destruct to Barret to get a few extra attacks in. Which I did mean to do originally. Otherwise, I tried to play it as close to my first runthrough as possible. Either way, didn’t die.

NOTE TO SELF: RECORD RECORD RECORD RECORD.

Otherwise, I finished treasure hunting. Moving on to Rocket Town, where hopefully I won’t have any more brain blanks.

KO KOunter: 34