Final Fantasy VII, Sad to see it end...

Around fourteen years ago I woke up one Saturday morning after playing a long night of FF7 with my brother and friend who’d spent the night to play with us. We’d fought through the long game, mastered almost all the materia, gotten all our limit breaks, and completed most of the game with the exception of defeating Ruby and Emerald weapon. I was the first to wake that morning and I turned on my old 30” TV and started the PS. It wasn’t long before I reached Jenova, we’d been right there and just didn’t know it. I don’t really recall fighting Jenova, but I do remember Bizzaro Sephiroth and splitting my group, playing with both parties to slowly chip down his many parts to get to the core. I remember my brother and friend waking during that battle, seeing me fighting Sephiroth and not saying anything, just waking and watching. Sephiroth transformed again into Safer Sephiroth with his one wing and celestial body. I remember it being a very hard fight. He cast meteor like five times, he reduced my entire party’s HP to 1 many times, he killed members of my party over and over. And FINALLY he went down, I was so relieved. Then as the party is leaving, Cloud is sucked in, without a save point, to fight him one on one again. I was so stressed about losing after all that effort, but he hit my limit break immediately and Omnislash one shotted him (as it was designed to play out, you can’t lose). Sephiroth was finally dead, and we were victorious. It was gratifying and sad at the same time. We had completed an amazing journey but the fun was over...

Tonight I completed that journey once more.

Prior to facing off with the evil menace I did a little more clean up and finished some my limit breaks, and duplicated a few materia I knew I’d want for my second party, like revive, barrier, time, restore, full cure, etc. Even mastered a few summons and got a few stars on Knights of the Round. I also got Typoon in the Ancient Forest so I’m still on track with all summons in all games so far.

After a good bit of play, Rhek was about level 70. It was time.

I made my way to the northern crater, grabbed Cysra built as a white mage striker, and Lifnok built as a pure black mage. I went down a long spiral, got about half way and hit a random encounter with a Dark Dragon. He cast Ultima which one shotted Cysra and LIfnok and brought Rhek to 2k HP, then he hit Rhek for 2k... My party got wiped out by the second mob in the Northern Crater. At that point I was very worried. Could I not be ready for Sephiroth at level 70???

I reloaded my game and went down the spiral again, and met the same random mob. This time I treated him like a boss. I put up Wall, cast Haste and Regen and threw Neo Bahamut at him and my own Ultima. He tossed Ultima back and killed Cysra and Lifnok again, guess Wall doesn’t stop that magic. I cast Phoenix in response with Rhek and they both rez’d with full health. I cast Bahamut once more and he went down... Fucker was hard. I continued hoping I wouldn’t run into anymore of those on the way.

After a bit more of navigating I came to Jenova without further incident. I approached her a bit worried, but it was un-warranted. Rhek had only a couple materia on him, enough to make him counter, heal a little, cast Phoenix if others went down and 4x cut -that’s it. I wanted his other stats as high as possible w/o materia penalties. Jenova went down to two hits from Rhek, two rounds of 4 x 9,999 damage. What a beast.

Next I had to split up my party, decide who got what equipment, what materia, even out health and MP bars a little, etc. It took me a while, maybe fifteen minutes to get it all where I wanted it. I entered the fight with Bizzaro Sephiroth, ready to hit his 7 different parts with my two parties, and ready for some really nasty status effects. Un-warranted worry. I cast Wall with Cysra, Regen with Rhek, then I cast Knights of the Round once with Lifnok and he died... All of him... He didn’t get off one attack, and my other party never even saw battle. It lasted as long as the Knight’s animation took, that was the whole fight. Wow... Not what I remember.

Next was Safer Sephiroth, a real test, Meteors and instant death galore. Here was the real fight. Right? Nope.



Two casts of Knights of the Round. Dead. I think he got one hit off on Lifnok for about 3k and maybe one AoE swipe for like 300HP. I was shocked when he began to disintegrate. My party started their departure and Cloud was sucked into a worm hole to face off with the final version of Sephiroth one on one.



I didn’t even attack, he cut me and Cloud countered, he died. Didn’t even get to use my Omnislash because I hesitated a second. Almost reset the game right there lol. Anyway, I watched the final cut as Meteor came crashing down and Holy combated it with the Lifestream’s help. After a very long cut, we flash to five hundred years in the future and Red XIII is running with his cubs to finally overlook a cliff and see the overrun Midgar below implying to me at least that the humans are gone. The screen goes black and we get our FFVII title screen splash. Well played sir... well played...

Some end game stats, time played: ~48hrs.



Loved it then, still love it, always will. Fucking great game.