LogFAQs > #937138247

Okay, so this time through the cave, I do the following:

1. use turbo mode a lot more
2. flee from Magic Pot, Gargoyles, and Tonberry on sight
3. still try to get every item that I can

I bring Cloud (with Counter, Cover, Sense, and Steal, along with others), Cid (Restore/All), and Yuffie (the Bahamut summons + Ultima). This time I also wait until after all the party-splits (and what the hell, I bring along Tifa/Barret for the splits) and know to place the save point there.

I take Tifa and Barret down there as well as we face Dragon Zombies and Iron Men. I continue to think that Cover 100% is not such a great idea when we're facing enemies so strong Cloud can't tank everything... that said, using Defend seems to work pretty well. At the end of a gauntlet of boss-like random encounters is Jenova-SYNTHESIA. Honestly, it has something going on with multiple pieces, but I pretty much just disregard everything and bombard it with Comet2, Bahamut, Neo Bahamut, Bahamut ZERO, and Ultima, with a few Cure2/Cure3s thrown in to protect my party, and don't worry about the details. That... seems to work.

And then suddenly, there Sephiroth is, ensconced in Holy. I'm asked to split my party, and suddenly I'm in a panic because not everyone has ideal materia situations. I settle on the following ideas:

1. Cloud (Cover/Counter, mastered Ice/Lightning), Red XIII (weaker Restore/weaker Fire/mastered Earth), and Vincent (who needs materia when you're transforming into a crazy monster anyway)
2. Tifa (Ultima), Barret (stronger Restore/All, Comet), Yuffie (Phoenix (which I finally read; apparently it revives dead party members?!) and W-Item)

I split the Bahamut materia between the two parties as well.

I'm relatively annoyed when I realize that there's no save point coming up for the rest of the game against obviously a tough final boss gauntlet. And it's two-party, which caught me off guard. (I was actually a little bitter that the previous party-split segment didn't allow you to play as different parties...)

Bizarro Sephiroth is this weird mutant with a ball for a stomach and a head sticking out of the top of his head. It's a fun FF-style character design. The game tells us to be careful about the order in which we attack its parts. I decide that the fastest way is: attack everything. Several of the parts die out as I raze them with Ultima and Comet2 and Bahamut summons, but A, B, and C stick around longest. B, the head, keeps regenerating after being killed, while A, the chest, heals itself massively pretty often, preventing me from doing anything to it. Oh, and C won't let me attack it at all!

It eventually becomes clear that killing the head, B, is kind of a lever that allows us to swap back and forth. I swap at every opportunity until Vincent is in his transformed state, because getting his damage up there without letting him die isn't easy! Once his transformed state bites the dust, I concede and switch over. The other crew continues indiscrimately attacking everything, and eventually we take down the shield protecting the core. At that point, I ride Cloud's party til the wheels come off, targeting the core (C), with a few broad-spectrum doses from Vincent's hit-all and Meteorain. Once it dies, the Bizarro energy can no longer heal itself, and I switch focus to alternating between head and torso. I'm building momentum, but just before it dies, it hits me with Fallen Angel, which has to be a staple FF final boss move since Kefka used it as well, reducing everyone to 1 HP.

Once Bizarro Sephiroth goes down, Cloud's party is immediately plunged into Safer Sephiroth's One-Winged Angel form, which also has a centaur-style bottom half. He really does look pretty awesome. Since his first move is to put up some sort of shield, I'm fairly hesitant to hit him with normal attacks. And since Red XIII's Restore is the crappy one with only Cure2, I wind up spending perhaps 50% of my moves using X-Potions and Phoenix Down. Cloud can survive Safer Sephiroth's Shadow Flare, but no one else can, and annoyingly, we can't counter him in the air. Vincent's transformation, also sometimes only does 1 damage when Safer Sephiroth has his barriers up. Whenever I get the chance I bust out my summons and the occasional Ice3 or whatever, but really it's a battle of attrition, constantly using those X-Potions, the occasional Megaelixir, and (finally) Remedies, because Safer Sephiroth also occasionally whacks everyone into states of mega-annoyance. I grow to despise the galactic move he uses - it's really cool to watch once, but good god it takes forever each time, and it's a guarantee that my next 3-6 moves will be X-Potion and/or Phoenix Down and/or Remedy. I think he uses it five or six times total. I finally discover Hero Drink will prevent status effects, and give one to Cloud and Vincent, and hit Sephiroth with one more Meteorain.

And down he goes. There's a bit of an anticlimactic moment where everyone stands around wondering if that's it, then just runs off... but Cloud informs Tifa that he still feels Sephiroth there. We're plunged into one final one-on-one confrontation. This is probably the most visually striking scene, with Sephiroth actually standing like a regular man, holding his sword. We hit him with the famed Omnislash, and I become super-bummed I never got to use this against Safer Sephiroth or any of the other annoying bosses throughout the game, because DAMN.

After that, it's a set of cutscenes to the finish, as Cloud rescues Tifa from a fall (and mentions Aeris during it, take a hint dude). Everyone else is still around, and the airship plunges in to rescue... though not entirely, because it falls apart. It's a little visually unclear what happens here, but essentially Holy comes up to combat Meteor. Everyone around Midgar looks around as Lifestream surges up to reinforce Holy, and we briefly see Aeris's smiling face...

Cut to credits, followed by five hundred years later, Nanaki's people running up and seeing the ruins of Midgar. Uh, okay.

When it's over, I don't get a new save point or a New Game+ option. I guess that means there's no real "post-game" content, and that in order to proceed to Wutai and Emerald/Ruby Weapon and whatever other major subplots are left, I need to resume from my last save point all the way before I fought Weapon (or right after, whenever I entered Midgar)?
---

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