Final Fantasy VII Remake

[Pimphand 5732]

So I just got to the Leviathan fight.   Holy fuckwad that is annoying.  Using your limit breaks or abilities against it is almost useless because they may hit but likely won't.  Like what is the point in having a limit break if it misses entirely?  Basically just cast lightning or heal with your ATB.

[ulukinatme 1763]

6 hours ago, Pimphand said:

So I just got to the Leviathan fight.   Holy fuckwad that is annoying.  Using your limit breaks or abilities against it is almost useless because they may hit but likely won't.  Like what is the point in having a limit break if it misses entirely?  Basically just cast lightning or heal with your ATB.

Another glorious addition to the combat system, Limit Breaks and Spells completely whiffing enemies.  Never happened in the original.

That shit about Cloud's manuscripts is bogus too.  Way to go, SE!  

[bamachine 1230]

Not in my life do I try Hell House on hard. I barely survived on normal and it took like 35 minutes. My hands were killing me after that. At least, for those completionists, you do not have to replay the entire game for those missing quests, although from what I hear, you have to complete the entire chapter, as you cannot then bug out once you get what you are after in that chapter.

Again, I liked the game but they really need to fix some faults for the following games, if I live that long. As mentioned above, Limit Breaks should never miss, except maybe if they brought back the reels for Tifa and later Cait Sith. Magic should also never miss unless an enemy has some kind of ability that allows it to dodge magic. Standard attacks missing, fine, if you can dodge, so can they.

[ulukinatme 1763]

Did a ton of grinding last night at Corneo's Colosseum.  Trying to max out my Green Materia so I can finish Chadley's last Battle Intel before I head to Shinra HQ.  I've been doing the "Three-Person Team vs. Shinra Warriors" fight.  Magnify + Blizzaga or Thundaga works really nicely, especially if you're using a character with a maxed out MAG weapon, along with a few MAG UP Materia, and Platinum Earrings.  First Attack Materia helps to start the fight with AP.  Blizzaga hits harder against the last bosses, but Thundaga seems to be harder for Enemies to dodge so I've been using that mostly.  At 344 Magic Attack everything tends to die with one cast, although the 4th group is a bit spread out at the start of the fight and you may need to cast twice or finish them off with Melee.  You get about 55 AP for all 5 rounds (110 if you have a Materia linked to AP UP) and it only takes about 2-3 minutes.

Edited April 17, 2020 by ulukinatme

[Pimphand 5732]

I gave up the notion of finishing Chadley before the hard run through because I'm still 3,800 short on Revival.

If it wasn't for the Revival materia needing 5,000 AP I could totally do it as the next worst is only 900 AP away and I could see coping with that on a grind.

I figure I don't want to deal with Bahamut now anyways I have been reading some horror stories there.

[ulukinatme 1763]

3 hours ago, Pimphand said:

I gave up the notion of finishing Chadley before the hard run through because I'm still 3,800 short on Revival.

If it wasn't for the Revival materia needing 5,000 AP I could totally do it as the next worst is only 900 AP away and I could see coping with that on a grind.

I figure I don't want to deal with Bahamut now anyways I have been reading some horror stories there.

Definitely pair Revive with the AP UP Materia.  Then again, it's not exactly worth the effort as the reward is the MP Absorption Materia, which is kind of meh.  It returns .1% of the damage your linked spell does as MP, so even 2000 damage only gives you 2 MP back.  

I tried Bahamut a few times, but there was some bad advice online on how to handle the fight, it was all wrong.  It was suggested that once he starts his countdown, DPS him as fast as possible and you can negate Megaflare.  Personally, I found that if he's not at about 90% Stagger by the time he gets to "2," then you're probably going to eat Megaflare.  It was also suggested to use Revival Rings, but the problem is that only resurrects you once.  In my experience you're going to get at least 2 Megaflares during the fight, if not more.  What wasn't suggested was to use Manawall, which will cut Megaflare's damage in half to 4k, which is manageable compared to 8k.  If you fight him on Classic mode I think it's only a 2k hit /w Manawall compared to 4k.  Bahamut's health is cut in half on Classic mode too.  I didn't have time to keep messin' with him, wanna finish this game before vacation is over.

[Pimphand 5732]

Yeah manawall is legit I used it against old Leviathan's tidal wave attack with great success. I am gonna make FF7 remake my 100th platinum so grinding out the Battle Intel is just part of the deal and yes AP growth has been paired to revival since the second it had its metamorphosis from the pedo materia.

Speaking of...the developer(s) who created the pull up minigame should be murdered in their sleep. What an atrocity. Even if you want to start over you have about 35 seconds of loading screen... For a minigame that sucks ass.

 

[Pimphand 5732]

On 4/16/2020 at 4:01 PM, bamachine said:

doible fuck the freeway mech

This is easily the worst/most annoying ending to a game I have ever played.  It's quite impressive in the wrong way.

[ulukinatme 1763]

15 hours ago, Pimphand said:

Yeah manawall is legit I used it against old Leviathan's tidal wave attack with great success. I am gonna make FF7 remake my 100th platinum so grinding out the Battle Intel is just part of the deal and yes AP growth has been paired to revival since the second it had its metamorphosis from the pedo materia.

Speaking of...the developer(s) who created the pull up minigame should be murdered in their sleep. What an atrocity. Even if you want to start over you have about 35 seconds of loading screen... For a minigame that sucks ass.

 

I thought the same.  Had no trouble with the squat minigame.  Pullup for whatever reason was a bigger pain in the ass.  You can be too fast and falter, whereas the final challenge it seems like the computer can go faster than you.  They faltered twice and still came within 4 pullups of me on a perfect run.  Took me 3 or 4 attempts to get it, but I already had two Champion Belts at that time so it was mostly just to check another box.

[Pimphand 5732]

Yeah the squat thing was super easy by comparison.  I'm actually flat out shocked that 10.8% of gamers have gotten the pull up trophy on PSN so far.  If you got it done in 3-4 attempts you won the lottery compared to me.  It got so bad I had to turn off the music & voice and leave just the SFX on so I could make it a metronome to get through it.

I wouldn't have been so ragey at it if they had a simple retry option that would let you boot strap it again quickly after you fell to the ground because if you fell other than right at the end of either round you didn't stand a chance.   He consistently put up 44 which meant you had to bang out 45 because the tie always went to the CPU and yes I tied him at 44 one round that was fun...

[Pimphand 5732]

Man I don't know if I'm going to play hard mode after all.  So sick of an enemy knocking you down mid spell and you losing the ATB bar and not getting the spell cast.

I cannot put it into words how frustrating/worthless this has become.

[ulukinatme 1763]

3 hours ago, Pimphand said:

Man I don't know if I'm going to play hard mode after all.  So sick of an enemy knocking you down mid spell and you losing the ATB bar and not getting the spell cast.

I cannot put it into words how frustrating/worthless this has become.

So many times...it gets so old.  Wasted ATB is the bane of this combat system, it can seriously screw up fights.  

Speaking of which, finally finished it.  Lost so many actions in those final two battles, nearly wiped a few times on the last boss.  Something else that bugs the hell out of me is lost Stagger during boss fights.  I'll be saving Limit Breaks for big damage once Stagger kicks in.  You finally get Stagger...and then some cut scene interrupts battle and Stagger is reset or there's no longer an opportunity at all to Stagger.  It's like...why the fuck even have a Stagger bar in fights like that?

That ending was the biggest load of garbage yet.  Nomura said he may spend the rest of his live working on Final Fantasy 7 Remakes.  No thanks...just retire now, please.

[Pimphand 5732]

5 hours ago, ulukinatme said:

So many times...it gets so old.  Wasted ATB is the bane of this combat system, it can seriously screw up fights.  

Speaking of which, finally finished it.  Lost so many actions in those final two battles, nearly wiped a few times on the last boss.  Something else that bugs the hell out of me is lost Stagger during boss fights.  I'll be saving Limit Breaks for big damage once Stagger kicks in.  You finally get Stagger...and then some cut scene interrupts battle and Stagger is reset or there's no longer an opportunity at all to Stagger.  It's like...why the fuck even have a Stagger bar in fights like that?

That ending was the biggest load of garbage yet.  Nomura said he may spend the rest of his live working on Final Fantasy 7 Remakes.  No thanks...just retire now, please.

Ha I lost a limit to a cutscene in the final battle too.  It's like WTF I don't mind you not giving me the limit but to also leave me with the empty limit bar afterwards? WTF?  I'd be pissed off if that had happened and I died.

Three things have helped....

1) when doing the hard mode just skip chapter 1 entirely and put off playing the Scorpion Sentinel until you've figured out your materia & gear loadout for Hard mode and accumulated some more manuscripts for both Barret and Cloud.  Also make sure you have two revival materias and you can pickup your 2nd (if you didn't buy more in the normal playthrough) in Chapter 4 after you fight Roche

2) Make sure you have at least 2x prayer materia and preferably decently leveled (though the latter is not a requirement because of the 3x AP gain in hard mode).  The trash enemies also pack a punch but the inability to regain MP other than via mako shards in broken crates you really need to save almost all of your MP for the boss fight(s) for recovery spells.  So while banging on trash just keep issuing prayer to keep your party healed up without expending MP.

3) When executing a limit/ability it's best to get the bars filled up while controlling the character because it happens orders of magnitude faster but before you pull the move off switch over to another character then issue the command via Tactical Mode.  For whatever reason when AI is controlling the character it will walk over to the correct enemy/location and execute the command from an optimal position.  If you issue the command yourself your character jumps on it instantly with no regard for positional awareness frequently spazzing out and hitting nothing but air like the aggie switch of gaming.

As far as Nomura goes that makes a shitload of sense that he would say that and why they got through 25% of disc 1.  The endgame sequence was the biggest abortion of mess in the entire FF universe and by a long margin.  To the point that I'm not sure I would play FF7R-2 or beyond. I certainly won't pre-order it and will wait and see what the feedback is like but it's clear they said F you to the fans and we're gonna do what we want instead.

 

 

[ulukinatme 1763]

So, I've got a question...how incredibly lazy of Square was it to include a certain fiery companion as a Guest unit and not as a full fledged member?  When I first heard about this, given the fact the story has been shortened into sections, my first reaction was "Makes sense I guess, he won't be with us very long."  However, the Shinra HQ can take 5+ hours to clean out top to bottom if you're checking nooks and crannies.  The companion is literally with your party through a few dozen battles as a Guest, and his combat animations are all there.  How hard would it have been to just make him a playable character?  He's there for at least four boss battles that I can remember, it would have been nice to have another character to control instead of being gimped.

[Pimphand 5732]

Yeah I also always renamed him Nanaki in OG FF7 as he was the only character I used to rename.  Even if you didn't get to customize weapons or equipment for him it would have been nice to fight with him since he was around for so long.

So I have gotten to the Pride & Joy prototype mission and let me just state for the record however annoying you thought Hell House or any of the normal game playthroughs were the Bahamut fight seems to be the breadwinner.  It's clear they wanted a Dark Souls + Witcher mashup in hard mode. If you can't stagger Bahamut before he gets to megaflare (and I can't) it's game over unless you have reprieve on your weapons or you get up manawall.  To make matters worse he summons Ifrit at 50% health as a bonus.

Here are my hard mode observations.

Magnify + Healing is the most important materia combination there is.  You're not going to make it without it

Revival materia you have to have 3 of them at all times because your party members can get KO'd very quickly and you can't predict which of the 3 will be last party member standing

You must get both Elemental materias because you're going to have to pair it with the enemies elemental weakness or their elemental offense (Reno + Lightning for example) in your bangle for every single fight since you will not be casting many offensive spells and need the damage boost to help drain their massive HP pools.

Warding materia needs to be leveled up because some bosses like Eligor will drop sleep & silence on you and both of those are very debilitating and while the 25% reduction in time is better than nothing it really needs to be the 50% reduction or better yet 100% reduction.

HP & MP up materias are your life blood make sure you have 6 of each so that you can get the maximum 100% buff in both categories once they are fully leveled up.

Prayer materia is key to keeping your HP up without burning MP.  Initially I used it 100% of the time but less so now because of the next point..

Until they patch it you can get unlimited MP in hard mode because the Shinra crates you bust up that contain mako shards will always contain mako shards and they regenerate whenever you load your game so if you are willing to deal with the 35 second loading screen you can get as much MP as you want.

Reprieve & Healing Spells MP Cost Reduction 20% are the two most important weapon skills to unlock.  Make sure you visit Chadley and reallocate your points to unlock those once you hit weapon level 6.

Twin Stinger, Guard Stick, & Light Machine gun are the 3 weapons that have both of the aforementioned skills on them so I have been using them 100% of the time.

You seem to get the 3x AP and 2x EXP boosts even in easy mode from chapter select so if you need to farm AP to help your survival pick a chapter with all 3 party members like the sewers and just clean their clocks on easy difficulty.

Chapter 1: Skip until you get your weapons reorganized with level 6 abilities and have at least 2 revival materia as the Scorpion Sentinel boss fight royally sucks.  I'm through chapter 11 and it sits in 3rd place behind Hell House & Eligor as far as worst bosses goes.

Chapter 2: The Huntsman is the easiest "boss" just be prepared to evade as he still packs a mean punch

Chapter 3: No bosses and the two manuscripts are locked behind the Rat Problem & On the Prowl side quests

Chapter 4: The Enigmatic Specter is a fairly easy boss just wail away on him but be mindful of when the damage starts stacking because you will KO soon after if you don't evade away

Chapter 5: Crab Warden is the easiest mech boss in the game just play it smart and you should be good to go

Chapter 6: No bosses the Chocobo & Moogle summoning materia has been replaced by the manuscript the only challenge is defeating the Queen Grashtrikes within the minute timer so you can turn off the fan to get to it.

Chapter 7: Airbuster is annoying as you'd imagine but overall as long as you have lightning materia loaded up on Barret and one of Tifa/Cloud and you attack his detached hands with a fury and avoid his main blasting skill you should take him down in the requisite 20 minute time limit.  Also make sure you get all 6 sector 5 key cards and only use the first one on the M-Unit as providing items is worthless in hard mode since you can't use them but you have to disable the first M-Unit to leave the room.  Just take out 5 of the AI cores and big bombers to make your life less annoying.

Chapter 8: Moogle merchant sells 4 manuscripts if you didn't buy them on your first playthrough make sure you get them now. Rude & Reno both hold manuscripts too.  Put elemental + lightning in Cloud's bangle and just laugh as you wail away on Reno at your leisure.  Rude is a lot tougher because he can pound you into oblivion so get ready to dodge a lot and counterstance when you can to decimate him. The other manuscripts are all locked behind sidequests so you can do every sidequest except for the Whack-A-Box one and you'll get Aerith to unlock the mid range dress when you get to chapter 9 (if you are going for that trophy)

Chapter 9: Hell House on hard is what you thought it was.  The only thing I did radically differently was drop bioga on it.  Unfortunately if you want all the manuscripts you're going to be beating it twice because they have manuscripts locked behind both sidequest trees that are mutually exclusive though you will get two if you go the price of thievery path (pay 3,000 gil to Madam M).  Also make sure you have Aerith finish both of her solo Cornholio coliseum fights as soon as you lay waste to Hell House because she cannot access it at any other time in the game.  This is mandatory to face Pride & Joy in Chapter 17 for the best accessory in the game.

Chapter 10: You fight Abzu right away first thing in the mission and he's not too bad.  The  only other part that can get sideways is when you fight the pile of Sahagin at the exit as they can turn you into frogs and then it's tough to recover if they manage to convert everyone

Chapter 11: I put Eligor up there with Hell House the first phase is no big deal you just pound on him like normal but because he throws reflect on everyone and the reflect on your party doesn't go away until they KO you are either using prayer to heal or are bouncing the heal spell off him but his reflect can go away so you might accidentally heal him if it hits at the wrong time.  I put bioga on him and hid behind the container and prayed until the 3rd round started then it was Shiva and full scale assault on his chariots wheels to get him to stagger in phase 3.  This might be the one fight where you don't want Magnify + Healing because if any of your characters still have his reflect on you're going to be healing him with it.  The ghoul boss wasn't much of a slouch either and I burned up way too much MP taking him down so this chapter was not very fun.

Chapter 14: Treasure trove of manuscripts you can get Tifa & Barret to unlock their Cornholio Colosseum scripts if you missed it first time through.  Seven manuscripts can be gotten from 6 of the 9 side quests so it may be worth cherry picking them early via chapter select.  When you unlock a manuscript you can stop playing the chapter and you will keep it going forward and thus don't have to reacquire it even if you start the chapter again a later time.

Chapter 17: From the point you start in Aerith's old room you only have to fight 3 Unknown Entities before you run into Chadley.  This is the shortest time to seeing Chadley so it's helpful if you need to have him reset upgrades on your weapons.   There are 4 manuscripts behind the vs 3-C SOLDIER Candidates missions and they are totally worth coming and poaching before you play the rest of chapter 17.

That's it for now... Chapter 17 having 4 bosses seems like it's going to suck and I know the Whisper boss fight in 18 is going to suck I'll let you know if anything else fits the bill.

Edited April 22, 2020 by Pimphand

[ulukinatme 1763]

Against my better judgement, I started Hard Mode too.  I really wanted to be done with this and play something else, but the min-maxer in me doesn't want to quit until I have all the weapons fully maxed /w manuscripts.  So far I'm up to Chapter 9 without too many problems.  It's not quite as difficult as I thought it would be thusfar.  I've definitely been abusing some of the tricks you outlined, like Magnify + Healing Materia and conserving MP so I can refill it again via Shinra boxes.  If you're stingy you can save all your MP for the final boss in each Chapter.  I tend to outfit Tifa with Metal Gloves for maximum physical damage while the other party members are geared for Magic.  Tifa clears most of the trash and does a lot of the damage on bosses, the others are there for heals or the occasional spell for Stagger.  I've been using lower level spells just for Stagger lately, they also cast quicker so that's nice.

I'm back to Chapter 9 now on Hard Mode, so I do have Hell House coming up shortly.  I'll be better prepared for it this time than I was on Normal, but I'm expecting more trouble of course.  Not sure how I'll get through Bahamut on Hard Mode yet, I actually dropped down to Classic mode just to beat him the first time and get it done.  Do you even need to beat him on Hard Mode though?  Short of bragging rights I don't think you get a manuscript for him and I don't see the benefit.

[ulukinatme 1763]

I forgot to mention the setup I'm using.  Other than building Tifa out for high physical damage via Metal Gloves, I've tweaked the other character builds a bit. 

I was using Cloud's Mithril Sword at the end of Normal, but I've swapped him to the Buster Sword.  It provides almost as much MP as the Twin Stinger, but it also has a bit more Attack, Magic Attack, Defense, and Magic Defense.  It doesn't have Reprieve or the Magic Reduction, but so far I've been getting through Chapters without running out of MP nor having to reload to farm Shinra crates although I'm sure soon I'll be needing to switch to a weapon with Reprieve soon.  He has the Chain Bangle for protection, and Platinum Earrings for extra MAG.  Aside from one or two offensive Materia that each person has along with Healing/Cleansing/Revive I gave him MP Up, MAG Up, and Steadfast Block.

Barret is a problem imo.  His Steel Pincers seem to provide the most MP as well as decent Attack and Magic, but the Pincers are also incapable of doing long range attacks unless you use an Ability which makes some fights a pain in the butt.  I opted to upgrade his Gatling Gun instead since it lets him keep his long range option, it has the next best MP, additional defenses, and it's well balanced for both ATK and MAG.  I gave him the Rune Armlet since he tends to be at range, along with the Circlet to help improve his awful MP.  He's got one of my Prayer Materia, Auto Cure, and an MP Up.

Tifa has her Metal Knuckles for offense, which actually give her the least MP but I don't cast much with her anyway.  I fitted her with a Steadfast Block too since she's always in melee range, along with an MP Up to help mitigate her loss from the gloves and HP Up.  She's got the Supreme Bracer and Supernatural Wristguards for extra damage.

I just went all out with Aerith on MAG since she can't do much of anything besides cast.  I gave her Mythril Rod /w Supreme Bracer and Platinum Earrings.  Even with just one 4/5 MAG Up Materia she hits 448 Magic Attack which is very nice.  I gave her my Magnify + Healing combo and she's nearly healing the entire party with just basic Cure which helps keep the MP costs down.  I haven't been outfitting everyone with HP Up Materia just yet though, so it's easier to keep people topped off (But it means I'm casting occasional Revives on fights like Airbuster when the bomb drops).

[Pimphand 5732]

2 hours ago, ulukinatme said:

Do you even need to beat him on Hard Mode though?  Short of bragging rights I don't think you get a manuscript for him and I don't see the benefit.

Hell House & Eligor are going to make you hate life so just be ready for it.  As far as Bahamut goes he's the 4th round in the final VR challenge in the game.  You have to have done all 20 battle intel, completed all 11 Colosseum challenges, and the previous 13 Shinra VR challenges to unlock it.  From there you fight Shiva in the first round, Fat Chocobo in the second round, Leviathan in the third round, then Bahamut and Ifrit in the fourth round and then close it out with the Pride & Joy prototype.

You have to complete that battle for two things.  First being the Ultimate Weapon trophy and you get the Götterdämmerung accessory which lets you enter every battle with a full limit bar.  I think you are going to want the Götterdämmerung to complete hard mode it certainly will make your life easier against the shit bosses being able to start off getting them most the way to stagger or ruthlessly ripping them up once they do get staggered.

[Pimphand 5732]

Barret is next to useless I only use him when I have to.

Chadley will only appear in chapter 17 when you are on Hard Mode.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Pimphand

[ulukinatme 1763]

Ahh, yeah, I hadn't gotten to that point yet.  I missed Aerith's endgame challenges during my first playthrough.  Something more to look forward to I guess.

[Pimphand 5732]

When you approach the end of chapter 15 to fight the Valkyrie make sure you're fully resourced out.  The crossfire you have to run from chops your ass up before you even get a chance to start fighting it in earnest.

[Michael Knight 12976]

[ulukinatme 1763]

19 hours ago, Michael Knight said:

Na, fam.  Tifa is bae.

[Pimphand 5732]

22 minutes ago, ulukinatme said:

Na, fam.  Tifa is bae.

She does need to fix the Crystal Gayle hair doe

[ulukinatme 1763]

21 hours ago, Pimphand said:

When you approach the end of chapter 15 to fight the Valkyrie make sure you're fully resourced out.  The crossfire you have to run from chops your ass up before you even get a chance to start fighting it in earnest.

That crossfire is some bullshit, I remember doing it on normal and getting knocked back repeatedly no matter how you timed it, super annoying.  I'm almost there again, I'm up to Chapter 14 on Hard now...somehow I didn't get a different resolution (Got Tifa again) even though I was trying to get Aerith for the purposes of unlocking everything.  Followed all the guides to make the right selections and such, the only thing I can think of that may have hurt my chances is I didn't do all of Aerith's side missions (Was also trying to unlock her 2nd Wallmarket outfit).  I've read that sometimes your choices from the 1st playthrough can screw up the resolution though, dunno if that is true or not.  Can't believe all that time was wasted though, it would be a headache to play through a 3rd and 4th time now just to unlock the other two resolutions.  I'm going to end up settling for an incomplete Play Log.

I'm getting to the point where I'll probably have to start using HP Up Materia, I've been getting by without it till now.  Steadfast Block has been super helpful in building ATB and keeping characters alive.  I've maxed out a number of MAG Up and MP Up Materia, but no HP Up yet.  Now that I'm in Chapter 14 I may do some grinding in the Colosseum with the trio, that was my preferred AP grinding spot first time around.

I had a few bosses give me trouble along the way, but not as much trouble as I initially expected.  I thought I had Hell House nailed, had it down to 25% pretty easy with lots of MP to spend, and then...it summoned Chocobo Sam's pets as backup.  "WTF is this new bullshit?!"  I got wiped after that.  For some reason they didn't appear on the 2nd attempt, so I either killed it quick enough to avoid them, or it's a random chance thing on Hard.  Speaking of which, the Colosseum seems to be another easy way to restore your MP during a chapter.  Aside from the fact you can grind easy monsters there for AP, you get 50% MP back each round still even on Hard. 

I've noticed a few other bosses have added mechanics on Hard to make fights more difficult too, aside from the increased damage.  I noticed the Scorpion Boss was using his Pulse Cannon twice instead of just once, which meant that after he fired it at one character and destroyed your cover you had to switch to the other character protected behind debris to force him to target you there.  I think Roche also was casting Thundaga instead of a lower level spell, but that didn't change the mechanics just the damage output.  The Failed Experiment boss at the end of 13 was doing some different stuff too.

[ulukinatme 1763]

13 minutes ago, Pimphand said:

She does need to fix the Crystal Gayle hair doe

I'll take Tifa's hair over Aerith's triple ponytail /w a seagull up front.

 

[Pimphand 5732]

Ha I got Aerith the first time because I did all of the sidequests in order to get the second elemental materia in chapter 14.  I think I talked to her first in the sewers after Cornholio was what flipped the switch but honestly I'm not sure.  When I was doing the Hard Mode playthrough I did all of Tifa's sidequests to get the manuscripts and choose the other dress from her discovery event and then with Aerith in Chapter 8 I did 5 of her 6 to unlock her mid level dress and get all the manuscripts.   I then played Chapter 9 on easy doing no sidequests to get Cloud's lowest level dress.  Then I immediately went and did chapter 3 on easy only talking to Chadley to advance the story and doing 0 sidequests for Aerith to unlock her worst dress so that when I did chapter 9 the final time I could unlock the dressed to the 9's trophy.  Needless to say when I got to Chapter 14 it was Barret standing there LOL.  While Tifa is my favorite of the 3 there is 0% chance I'm going to play through any of this to get her to show up.

I'm literally cleaning up Chapter 9 on Hard to get the last of Cloud's manuscripts then I'm going to take on Bahamut and the Pride & Joy Prototype then it's on to complete Chapters 17 & 18 on hard and then uninstall.  All I can say is thank god you can bypass the motorcycle minigame in Chapter 18.  Big win there.

[Pimphand 5732]

Also I finally found a use for Barret....

In Chapter 17 when you get to Chadley the Shinra VR simulation Two-Person Team vs. High Flyers from there you can farm 168 AP on Easy/Classic by completing the first 4 rounds in about 15 seconds of combat time and about 45 seconds of menus, tactical mode, & loading screens.

Setup:
Cloud: Magnify (max) + Fire (max) & First Strike (max) the rest of the slots are the materia you wish to level up
Barret: First Strike (max) + the rest materia you wish to level up

Cost: 400 gil
Round 1: 16x Bugaboos - Cloud typically kills them all in the first swipe on Triple Slash (48 AP)
Round 2: 2x Slug-Ray and 2x Byobapolis - Queue up Firega switch to Barret have him Overcharge which fills up his 2nd ATB then let off Maximum Fury - (36 AP)
Round 3: 4x Monodrive and 2x Terpsicolt - Same as round 2 only a Monodrive may escape so just blast it after Maximum Fury (54 AP)
Round 4: 2x Elite Helitrooper - Magnify + Firega kills them both (30 AP)
Round 5: Rust Drake - Give up - You can kill it easily but it will drag out the fight and you only get 21 AP so you're better served farming the first 168 AP and rinsing and repeating

Maximum Fury will move to the next alive enemy which makes it perfect for cleaning out the trash on the board that survives the Magnify + Firega combo

[Pimphand 5732]

Götterdämmerung acquired.  Took about 26 minutes to clear all 5 rounds.  The only thing I did differently was be extremely OP (all but 6 manuscripts & all max materia) and I put Fire + Elemental on Tifa & Cloud's armor so that when Ifrit came along I didn't care and just went at Bahamut until he was dead before the 2nd megaflare went off.  I was even able to fully bring the party back from 1x HP easily.  Didn't deviate from my normal setup other than making sure Aerith had Lightning for Leviathan and Pride & Joy and Fire for Shiva.  It is pretty entertaining taking out two Monodrives with Ascension just because you can.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Pimphand

[ulukinatme 1763]

6 hours ago, Pimphand said:

Götterdämmerung acquired.  Took about 26 minutes to clear all 5 rounds.  The only thing I did differently was be extremely OP (all but 6 manuscripts & all max materia) and I put Fire + Elemental on Tifa & Cloud's armor so that when Ifrit came along I didn't care and just went at Bahamut until he was dead before the 2nd megaflare went off.  I was even able to fully bring the party back from 1x HP easily.  Didn't deviate from my normal setup other than making sure Aerith had Lightning for Leviathan and Pride & Joy and Fire for Shiva.  It is pretty entertaining taking out two Monodrives with Ascension just because you can.

Grats!  I'm actually in the process of working my way up to that now.  Finishing the Hard mode Shinra challenges, got all the single player ones done, working on the other two before Pride and Joy.  Once I'm done with that (If I get it done) I'll finish up Chapter 17, 18, and then go back for the manuscripts I missed in Chapter 9's other path.

[ulukinatme 1763]

Well, first attempt at the Pride and Joy series was a bust.  Had no trouble up to Bahamut, HP was full and MP with 130+ to burn on each character.  I followed a few guides to try and stagger him prior to the first Megaflare, but it was a no go.  I switched back and tried to do Manawall on all my characters, but they weren't at max HP and none of them survived as a result.  Sucked, but wasn't completely unexpected.  None of my characters had more than 7k HP, I've gotten by so far without using HP Up Materia in Hard.  I'm grinding a bit in the Simulator now so I can max everyone at 9999 for the fight.  I think I'll down him tomorrow, otherwise I was doing pretty good mitigating the rest of his attacks.

Edited April 26, 2020 by ulukinatme

[Pimphand 5732]

Make sure you have either reprieve or revival earrings on to survive the first Megaflare.  I wasn't able to stagger him pre megaflare but I was able to take him down entirely before the 2nd one came to fruition. 

I just completed chapter 17 and overall it wasn't too bad but I had to fight The Arsenal twice because I failed to KO him before the 2nd Cry Havoc.  I tried breaking out Aerith's Planet Protection to survive it but still dropped all HP to 0 and I had burned up my revives earlier in the fight.  The 2nd fight I did everything the same except I made sure Aerith had a full ATB bar for Ray of Judgement and Barret had his limit ready when he flipped into the final phase and it died long before the red enemy action bar came up letting me know it was coming.

The Rufus & Darkstar fight was full blown amusing with Götterdämmerung.  I was actually able to pull the first one off staggering both out of the gate but unfortunately I didn't get to KO Darkstar when he was staggered so before I knew it he had healed up Rufus entirely so it was merely an amusing no-op in the end.  As long as you have steadfast block on just block everything Rufus does except bright eyes (which you should dodge) and get as close to him as possible then end his life with Braver or if you get it again Ascension when it shows him reloading.

The Jenova Dreamweaver is also ultimately a joke as well I just put Protective Boots on Tifa & Aerith to prevent stop and then equipped Cloud & Aerith with Warding + Binding to prevent silence.  Tifa getting silenced and Cloud getting the occasional stop was a fair trade for having the additional limit breaks.

I looked in the play log the only things I'm missing other than chapter 18 hard mode & the 2 manuscripts are 1/3 Chapter 14 Scenarios (Tifa) and 57/114 Enemies Assessed (I stopped wearing the assess materia once I was done with the battle intel stuff)

Edited April 26, 2020 by Pimphand

[Pimphand 5732]

Oh and you're going to laugh at how easy Hell House is once you're fully kitted up especially if you throw bioga on him twice and have Aerith use arcane ward and pop some -aga level spells on him depending on the shade of the windows.  Remember you don't need to conserve her MP at all because you'll be doing the sidequests solo as Cloud

[Pimphand 5732]

Managed to beat Sephiroth on the first run. There were times I wasn't sure I was going to make it in the last phases of the battle. I was losing party members and would barely bring them back to lose someone else.  Fortunately during that phase your limit bars fill like crazy so once I stemmed the evil tide it was game over.

Between the Whisper crap and Sephiroth it is pretty close to 1 hour of fighting for survival. If someone did that ish without Götterdämmerung more power to then but that would have royally sucked 

[Pasken 1309]

On 4/19/2020 at 12:17 AM, Pimphand said:

Man I don't know if I'm going to play hard mode after all.  So sick of an enemy knocking you down mid spell and you losing the ATB bar and not getting the spell cast.

I cannot put it into words how frustrating/worthless this has become.

Does increasing your speed stats help you cast faster in order to avoid this?

 

 

[ulukinatme 1763]

2 hours ago, Pasken said:

Does increasing your speed stats help you cast faster in order to avoid this?

 

 

Na, the Speed stat affects how fast your ATB builds.  Works great for Tifa because a lot of her Claws increase Speed, so she can rattle off Combos faster.  Losing ATB is either a bug in the combat design or it's working as designed...basically there's a window between when you've selected any ATB action or spell and the animation actually firing and the attack landing.  Sometimes this is a big window, sometimes it's short, but either way if you get knocked back or knocked down during this window you not only lose your ATB charge, but the action fails to complete.  You can always grind more ATB of course, but in some fights that can be difficult (Like when Leviathan is airborne and you're a melee fighter), and there are some abilities that also cost 2 ATB like Prayer which compounds the problem and can ruin fights.

[bamachine 1230]

The Valkyrie does 3 bursts, then a pause. Have to sprint during those pauses, just don;t overshoot. That was the only time I got hit. Have not tried it on hard mode yet. I am in CH 17 of my second play thru and the only chapter I completed on hard mode is  CH 2. Just got to the special Chadley battle room. I keep getting smoked on the final enemy of the first Hard Mode only battle. Damned thing slings out something that hits me for like 6K damage. I cannot get in close without getting shredded, cannot keep my distance without getting hit by that damned projectile from hell. I finally got off my summon of Bahamut, three seconds after he shows up, get hit by one of those projectiles. I had to shut it off for awhile. Hard mode is not even worth it for me and my slow reflexes. I can still smoke both Ruby and Emerald Weapon in the original. I kind of hate action combat. Although, I mostly got through it on normal but my hands were hurting at times. Hard mode is a SOB for my old ass.

Edited April 29, 2020 by bamachine

[ulukinatme 1763]

10 hours ago, bamachine said:

The Valkyrie does 3 bursts, then a pause. Have to sprint during those pauses, just don;t overshoot. That was the only time I got hit. Have not tried it on hard mode yet. I am in CH 17 of my second play thru and the only chapter I completed on hard mode is  CH 2. Just got to the special Chadley battle room. I keep getting smoked on the final enemy of the first Hard Mode only battle. Damned thing slings out something that hits me for like 6K damage. I cannot get in close without getting shredded, cannot keep my distance without getting hit by that damned projectile from hell. I finally got off my summon of Bahamut, three seconds after he shows up, get hit by one of those projectiles. I had to shut it off for awhile. Hard mode is not even worth it for me and my slow reflexes. I can still smoke both Ruby and Emerald Weapon in the original. I kind of hate action combat. Although, I mostly got through it on normal but my hands were hurting at times. Hard mode is a SOB for my old ass.

Yeah, I don't know if it's because my PlayStation is older, but the audio of the gun shots is what I was trying to time my movements by and not the visual.  It seemed like there was a momentary delay in the bullets visually firing and the gunshot audio playing.  In addition there's a short animation delay from the time you hit the movement stick to your character actually moving so I had to retime my moves based on the visual cue and not the audio (Kind of lame, considering Cloud would not be able to see the gunfire stopping while hiding behind cover).  On my 2nd go around on Hard I got through it much easier...but then once you hit the stairs there really isn't cover to hide behind so you just get lit up on the way down.  Fortunately the knockback is non-existent or minimal during that section, and the damage is cranked up on Hard so you end up just sitting at 1 Health the whole way down.  Who tested this?  I don't think it's possible to get down the stairs on Hard without hitting the 1 HP floor.

I completely agree with the bullshit Action combat though, it's not well done.  Those with short attention spans rave about it online though.  I continue to find gripes with it, like the fact Blizzard spells have an incredible delay on them, to a point where anything faster than a granny in a wheelchair is able to dodge them completely.  You have to damn near Stagger or at least Pressure a target to get Blizzard to land typically.  You couldn't dodge Magic like this before, it's lame.  I completely leave Blizzard out of my setups as a result, unless you're fighting a tough boss that has a strong weakness to it.  You would think Blizzard hits harder than the other spells to makeup for this detriment, but no...it just sucks.

[bamachine 1230]

The action combat is probably fine for teens and people in their twenties. Me, staring at 50, not so much. I am just happy I made it through the game on normal, screw hard mode though. Even the ones I can beat on it, way too hard on my minor arthritis.

[Pimphand 5732]

The thing I had to acclimate the most to in hard mode was changing characters religiously. The enemies focus on the character you are controlling so violently that you were basically in a healing loop and with finite MP it just wasn't working. Hell against Sephiroth I basically was switching character after every single attack unless they had an ATB and I could do something else. The other thing that really helped was navigating away from a character and then running spells and skills from tactical mode because they were less likely to be interrupted under AI control.  I am glad I finished it and made it my 100th platinum but I have 0 interest in ever playing it again as some of the boss battles teetered into Dark Souls territory. I am looking at you Eligor...

[ulukinatme 1763]

After taking a week off I came back and finished grinding my HP Up Materia, along with pretty much maxing out all the other Materia I still have left, then retried the Three-Person Team vs. Top Secrets series.  For some reason I had a bit more trouble with Shiva than I did the first time, she just kept healing up and would not Stagger despite pelting her with Fire attacks, but she went down eventually.  Fat Chocobo was cake again.  Leviathan was a bit easier since I knew the fight, I conserved a lot of MP. 

I went into Bahamut fully healed and full MP again.  I tried every trick in the book I had to try and Pressure and Stagger Bahamut before the first Megaflare.  A lot of videos and guides suggested "Just use Counterstance, works really good."  I had no such luck either attempt at getting Counterstance to work right.  Even if Bahamut attacked while it was up, he was more apt to knock Cloud back than anything.  I also tried ramping up Tifa's combos and unleashing them, as that was supposed to be a sure-fire way to pressure him, but had no such luck with that either.  At some point I did end up Pressuring him briefly, but I have no idea how it occurred because Bahamut had just knocked Cloud on his ass and Tifa/Barrett either too far away or had no ATB to really build the Pressure.  In any case, I ended up SOL come first Megaflare, but before the countdown was over I was able to Manawall two characters and the third had a Reprieve weapon on.  All three characters subsequently survived Megaflare this time since I had HP Up Materias to max them out at 9999 HP. 

I continued to try and pressure Bahamut in Round 2, but had no luck here either.  He immediately started going into his countdown again, and after burning a few Limits just to do some damage to him he hit 50% and summoned Ifrit.  This ended up making the fight a lot easier as I had maxed Fire + Elemental Materias in two characers armor slots, so they ended up getting free health back from Ifrit's attacks.  I continued to pummel Bahamut as best I could, and when the 2nd Megaflare came up I used Manaward on two characters and Manawall on a 3rd to try and save some MP (Barrett was almost empty at this point from healing).  Everyone survived the 2nd Megaflare again, and by this point I had nearly chipped Bahamut's health to 0 just from normal attacks and abilities.  Barret got his Limit late and I finished Bahamut off with that.  Afterwards there was still Ifrit to deal with, and because two characters were absorbing most of his attacks for free heals I just sat there for about 4 minutes trying to let Barret's MP slowly regain.  He only gained about 7 MP before the AI players finished Ifrit off.

Got to Pride and Joy.  I heard he was a pushover after Bahamut, and that's no joke.  Couldn't believe how pathetic he was.  Aside from his one hit kills on characters, which don't happen that often, you can just stand behind him and punch the hell out of him.  As long as each character has a Revive Materia you're fine.  I didn't even need Barrett to heal this one, I think I dropped two Prayers the entire fight and had to use Arise on Cloud two or three times.  When the bot got low I summoned Bahamut so he could get finished off by a Megaflare for laughs.  I'm glad to be done with this little achievement.  I'm going to finish the rest of Chapter 17, 18, get my remaining manuscripts and put a fork in it.  Looking forward to getting away from this buggy combat.

Edited May 6, 2020 by ulukinatme

[Pimphand 5732]

11 hours ago, ulukinatme said:

I'm going to finish the rest of Chapter 17, 18, get my remaining manuscripts and put a fork in it.  Looking forward to getting away from this buggy combat.

Remember to play hot potato with Götterdämmerung during chapter 17 😉  You can drop two limit breaks on Swordipede.  Also make sure Barret has Götterdämmerung equipped for Arsenal and save a limit break for it when it gets into the final phase and starts using Cry Havoc because Aerith's Planet Protection will not save you.

The amount of time I have missed the game after surviving the hard mode run is still 0 seconds.

[ulukinatme 1763]

I'm done with the turd.  The only item in the Play Log I didn't max out was Assessing all enemies, but screw that.  I've played enough of this thing, and I'm glad to be done.  I really hoped the combat would grow on me, but it just grates and grates.  The Kingdom Heart ending is bullshit too.  I really hope they fix the combat in later games, otherwise I'm not sure I'm giving Square Enix more money for Final Fantasy.  I'll keep playing Dragon Quest.

[Juicy 725]

Free this month for PS+ for anyone that hasn't played. I downloaded last weekend and it is definitely a solid game. 

[Juicy 725]

holy shit the walk from the church to Aerith's house is fucking brutal, just brought the game to a complete halt. 

[Viper 12097]

On 3/8/2021 at 9:25 AM, Juicy said:

Free this month for PS+ for anyone that hasn't played. I downloaded last weekend and it is definitely a solid game. 

you have to buy it though if you want the PS5 upgrade 

[Juicy 725]

Just now, Viper said:

you have to buy it though if you want the PS5 upgrade 

I am still slumming it with my ps4, I am unlucky with the drops, haven't even gotten one into my cart yet and had it fail at the payment. Was thinking by now they would have a decent amount available.

[Viper 12097]

yeah I'm not sure anyone but scalpers have ps5s even still. 

 

I do know that it's impossible to buy the digital version of a game if you have the PS+ version. You have to let your PS+ subscription expire before you can buy it, but the saved game data will carry over. Don't know if it will for the physical version of the game.

Edited March 9, 2021 by Viper

[ajax 2600]

I just started playing this on my steam deck. As soon as the fat character opened his mouth I knew it was this guy from breaking bad.