LogFAQs > #937049250

Right back to it. I first knock out the next plot event by returning to the Forgotten City and going to that awesome temple-room that seemed otherwise kinda pointless, which triggers Bupenhagen telling us about Holy and White Materia, the antitheses of Meteor and Black Materia. While we can't grab the White Materia since it was lost to the Lifestream, we do see that it's glowing, indicating that it's been a success.

Cait Sith and his Shinra updates continue to drive the plot. They are moving their cannon, now dubbed Sister Ray, but this triggers Weapon to emerge... and head toward Midgar.

We take a quick plot break to head to the sub and search around. I'm entirely unable to find the area mentioned with sunken ship, even though I run around everywhere I can several times. I am able to surface in a random cave in the middle of the "central" continent, which calls out "Vincent..." I learn to take a hint and swap out Red XIII for Vincent himself, and a ghost materializes... Lucrecia, Sephiroth's true mother, who is also unable to die fully due to Jenova cells. Vincent once loved her, though she wound up bearing the son of a scientist instead. Vincent was punished by Hojo for trying to act on her behalf, and Sephiroth appears to be the son of one of the scientists Gast and Hojo. He tells Lucrecia that Sephiroth died truly and is at peace.

With this done, we head right back to the airship and plant our asses in front of Midgar - and in front of the enormous Weapon. The battle starts without any preamble, and whoops, turns out we've got Vincent in our party, with zero materia attached since he was a temporary swap... No matter. I figure I'll just die, respawn, and then put Red XIII (who's equipped with Restore) back in. Barret goes ham with the Bahamut materia and Ultima until he runs out of MP, then is responsible for using items to heal; Cloud goes with Quake3 mainly and regular attacks; and Vincent very quickly turns into his second Limit beast. Once my MP is gone, Vincent is actually the most reliable source of damage, and... eventually, I'm able to outlast Weapon, unexpectedly. (I picked the right character to show up with no materia...)

At this point, we go back to Gya-ha-ha and Kya-ha-ha, who finally fire off Sister Ray to the North... and pierce Weapon, apparently wasting it for good. As its dying attack, Weapon also fires blasts high at Midgar, resulting in in Rufus's wordless death. Uhhh, damn. The man competed. The barrier around the North appears broken broken by Sister Ray, but Cait Sith's eavesdropping informs us we need to finish off Shinra: Hojo has hijacked Sister Ray (or something), which is a huge fucking issue for Heidegger and Scarlet. We need to take care of him, and it's into Shinra we go. (It also appears to confirm that Cait Sith's controller is Reed, the sympathetic dude in Shinra?)

But the roads from the slums are all cut off. In other words, we need to enter by air... by parachute. It's a pretty exciting scene, watching everyone skydive to Cid's Theme. I pick Red XIII (who had been swapped out for Vincent for the big Weapon showdown) and Yuffie (my lowest-leveled character other than Cait Sith). And thus begins a final winding, grinding navigation through the industrial tunnels of Midgar. It's really beautiful, and I wind up picking up very high-tier weapons in boxes. It's fun watching Tifa and Barret and Vincent and Cait Sith hanging out around the area, all focused on heading to the right spot. I intentionally circle back and forth on the most circuitous path I can and I *think* I get all the big-time items.

Notably, Cait Sith informs me that I shouldn't go into Shinra HQ. I do it anyway and search the tower top to bottom (except from 66+, which is inaccessible) and wind up taking home what seem to be some major weapons for Cid, Tifa, and Barret. The random encounters in these train tunnels are a cut above many in difficulty; annoyingly, Cloud keeps getting confused, so I finally give him a Peace Ring to prevent it. Once I get on the right track to exit the train tunnel, there's a save point, followed by a change in the Random Encounters - three-tier robots that keep killing Cloud (and reducing the rest of the party a lot afterward, too!)

And then boom, Scarlet and Heidegger, in a big mecha called Proud Clod (?!) for a boss fight. They're pretty strong, and they also have three components, but a broad-spectrum dose of Bahamut Zero, Neo Bahamut, Phoenix, Comet2, Quake3, and the like soon reduce them to rubble, and that's the end of those two chuckleheads. I'm granted Ragnarok for the battle, though I don't do anything with it yet... instead I run off and save and swap out Red XIII for Cid (now lowest-leveled, somehow), and find myself in front of Hojo. Hojo confirms that it was his mistake to underestimate Cloud, who became the most successful Sephiroth clone, and that while he let Gast experiment with him, Sephiroth is Hojo's son.

For some reason, the Hojo fight catches me off guard. I guess I should totally have expected it, given that... well, duh? Maybe it's because I already just fought, and Hojo doesn't seem like the fighting type... but he's injected himself with Jenova cells. It appears all he does is summon creepy-ass helpers, who are easily wasted by Neo Bahamut and a few smaller summons and a few direct attacks to his person. But then he transforms into a Jenova-like mess capable of doing a lot more damage, and with two arms. Worried, I use a bunch of target-all attacks but perform focused attacks on the arms... which doesn't work out that great, actually - Hojo regenerates it. No matter - I focus on Hojo himself and wreck him.

But then he transforms a third time, and this time it's the boss type that most annoys me: the status-effect boss. Hojo doesn't inflict massive damage in this form, but Cloud spends the majority of the battle asleep, and the Regen Cid casts wears off as poison eats away at everyone's HP. There's a point where all three of Cid, Yuffie, and Cloud are asleep for fifteen seconds or so. (Also annoying: Cloud wastes a turn trying to Sense, and this is an enemy on whom Sense does not work). But eventually, Cloud wakes up and we lay waste to him.

Let's pour one out for Hojo. What an awful person, perhaps the most monstrous of everyone we have met. It's not hard to lay the largest portion of the blame for the ills of the planet at Hojo's feet, and he's also tormented so many people on the small scale - Sephirtoh, Lucrecia, Vincent, Cloud, Aeris, Red XIII, Zack...
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness