TF7 - The Final Fantasy 7 Rebalancing Mod

[Dark Holy Elf]

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.

[Tonfa]

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.

[Grefter]

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.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Rank TF7 Bowser.

[Dark Holy Elf]

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.

[Dark Holy Elf]

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. 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.

[Tonfa]

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?

[Dark Holy Elf]

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.

[Dark Holy Elf]

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~

[Dark Holy Elf]

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~

[Tonfa]

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.

[TigerKnee]

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.

[Tonfa]

Thank you very much for playing the mod and posting your thoughts!