Welcome to the Final Fantasy VII blog, in which I’m playing in Iron Man Mode – that is, if I die even just once, I’m bound by the rules of the site to immediately stop playing and wrap up this blog. This is currently the longest-running series on the site… in fact, it’s really long, so click here if you want to check out the full list of games on the site (you can click on the FFVII banner down the bottom to catch up on past entries of this series too.)For now though, I'm still soldiering on (or should that be SOLDIERing on?) It's time to pick up from where we were last time...... in hot pursuit of Sephiroth, who's heading to the Jenova Reunion all the kids are talking about.
On the way out of the Nibelheim mansion basement, goth extraordinaire Vincent Valentine decides he's going to join us. Great! Because we don't have enough emotional angst in the team already.
He's not massively au fait with grammar either:
But I'll cut the guy a break. He has only just woken up from a decade-long sleep in a coffin and could probably use a pot of java before he starts trying to form full sentences. And really, I'm glad he's joining us for the ride, not least because anyone who has a connection with the Turks can do absolutely no wrong in my eyes. Even if they were bad at remembering birthdays, or drank too much.
Or turned into totally uncontrollable monsters during battle.
Which Vincent does. Frequently.
Regardless, I plan to make him one of the core team from now on so unless the plot dictates otherwise, it'll be Spikey, Hotpants and the Emo Lord of New Romance over here.
I don't know if that's going to be a smart decision in the long run (owing to the whole 'uncontrollable monster' caveat) but we'll see how he gets on alongside the already battle-hardened Cloud and Tifa.
Wow. Way to embarrass me in front of the new guy, you two. That's the newly-recruited Vincent there, standing at full health and wondering how the hell Tifa and Cloud got killed fighting a single, low level enemy. Maybe I should just send Vincent on to complete the game alone.
We get out of the mansion, leave Nibelheim and head north. Along the way, I discover that I've been slightly rash in my criticism of the team; even the random battle monsters out in the field are giving me a really hard time, making me feel inadequate on so many levels. While I ponder this sudden feeling of being out-levelled, Vincent turns into an uncontrollable purple rage monster and goes his own little killing spree. Thanks for the demonstration of how that'll be playing out on a regular basis, mate.
We make slow progress through the Nibelheim mountains, getting frequently attacked by angry birds while Vincent (pictured center) regularly goes off on a jolly. I've also just come to the realisation that we're missing a bunch of important materia - someone's stockpiling a bunch, and it isn't any of these three schmucks. I'll have to do a party re-arrange when I next find a save point.
We finally make it inside Mt. Nibel... and another realisation hits me like a freight train.
Arse.
Tits and arse and possibly more tits...
... and a lot more arse.
I'm not flipping out because I dislike scaffolding. I've actually got no strong feelings either way about it. No; my very mild-mannered cursing is in response to suddenly remembering what lies at the foot of this scaffolding.
In a moment, I'll have to choose which pipe I slide down. Some have worse outcomes than others, but they'll all inevitably lead to a fight with a brutally difficult boss. This boss, a giant scorpion-thing with 8400hp, is called the Materia Keeper which is rather fitting when you think about it because I've lost half of my materia.
The Materia Keeper is also immune to fire attacks. In fact, he absorbs them - and guess which member of the party turns into an uncontrollable monster and launches fire attacks entirely of his own volition? Yeah, that guy.
Bollocks. What should I do? I really need to get my materia back from whoever has it, and should probably swap out Vincent for this battle. But the game will only let me do that if I reach a save point. I can either walk aaaaaaall the way back through the mountains to find one, or just slide down a one-way tube and dive right on into what might be the hardest fight we've had so far.
I put my handbag down, man up and jump headlong into a pipe.
Oh okay. Just ignore the last four paragraphs of hemming and hawing - turns out I remembered that there was a boss down here and even how many hit points he has, but forgot that there was a vital save point right by his feet.
Well, it looks like I'm pretty safe for now. Rather than sort the team out ahead of the battle, I poke around the bottom of the cave looking for items and power ups...
... AND IN THE PROCESS I AWAKEN SMAUG OH JESUS
This guy is one-hit kill material, and if I don't get out of here within the next 0.3 seconds I'm mincemeat. Luckily Tifa manages to slink away just as Cloud succumbs to his sudden incandescence, but man, that was close.
Right, enough being set ablaze for one day. I proceed directly to the save point, heal everyone up and take all of the missing materia from Barrett. For better or worse, I decide to keep Vincent in the party - when he gets to limit break level I'll just have to not let him turn into the Chaos monster. This means I'll be prohibited from making physical attacks for the rest of the battle, but to make up for it I give him all the high-powered summon materia.
Time to bring the pain.
We go in swinging, unleashing a barrage of spells and physical attacks. Tifa even has the foresight to poison the bastard, to great affect. We strip him of about 2,000HP before he even gets the chance to do anything, and we're sitting pretty at 1,000HP per character...
... but when he does hit back, he hits back hard.
Tune in next week to see how well the team's sudden breakdancing session pans out.
- Zeke (@ironmanmode)
