It only took 15 years, but I have finally done it. Ok, I wasn’t doing it consistently for 15 years. It was more like it took me 4 or 5 months over the course of 15 years.
Nevertheless, I finally did it!
I beat Final Fantasy VII!
It took 4 playthroughs of Disc 1, and 3 playthroughs of at least parts of Disc 2, but Sephiroth finally fell to my Buster Sword. The only things that kept me from jumping up and screaming were my hurting back and my wife and daughter being asleep in the room with me.
That final battle is a pain in the ass, too. I know it’s supposed to be hard (it is the final battle in the game, after all), but that’s not what I’m referring to.
I’ve talked about Summons before in a previous post. Basically, they’re magic that causes a mythological person/monster to come into your battle and do one powerful attack on your opponent. Some of them also have a beneficial effect for you or your party (such as Phoenix, which will damage your opponent while also reviving any of your party members who have hit 0 hit points).
Whenever you use a Summon, it’ll play a little video of the person/monster showing up and attacking your enemy. Usually, these videos last for around 30 seconds at most. In the final battle, Sephiroth has an attack called Cosmos that has a video like the Summons do.
The problem? The video for this attack is at least 3 minutes long. If it was a one time thing, that wouldn’t be that bad. However, he used this attack 4 or 5 times during the fight. If you do the math, that means that I sat there for 12-15 minutes during the final battle (which is supposed to be the most exciting part of the game) watching the same video over and over.
I also call this the final battle even though there is actually one more fight after this point. It is a pointless fight, though, as you cannot lose it.
I must say that, after watching the ending, there have been few things more gratifying than seeing those credits rolling. After all of the time and effort I put into beating that game, those credits seemed like validation for my troubles.
Now, it’s on to Final Fantasy VIII….once I’m able to buy it, anyways.
33 Grams of Blog 
Congrats!!
Thank you, my dear Jaded.
Woooooooooooot!
I came. I saw. I conquered…..eventually.
Cheers! Cookies and beverage of your choice^^
My beverage of choice is almost always Sunkist.
Ummm…with cookies?
With just about everything.
Congratulations! Have some tea and cupcakes. 😀
Ugh….tea. I don’t do tea. The smell of it makes me nauseous.
Have you ever tried it without milk? It could be the milk that’s the problem.
It’s not the taste. It’s the smell. I don’t like the smell of it.
Fair enough. I don’t like the smell of coffee all that much so I guess we’re even! 😉
Hell yes!
There’s a new one based on one of the characters from VII coming out, isn’t there?
From everything I’ve heard they’re not going to touch anything old until they get all their new stuph out.
Isn’t there a way to skip the videos? I don’t remember having to sit through them every time… But I haven’t played it in years and my memory is sketchy at best.
Congratulations!
A guy at work said that they didn’t start doing that until 8 or 9. They put an option in the menu to shorten/skip the movies.
I don’t remember it being in 8, but, then again, back then I was so blown away by how good the graphics looked on it that I wouldn’t have turned it off if I had the chance.
You haven’t really beat FF VII till you raise a gold chocobo and defeat the Weapons roaming the world. And did you get every character’s final limit break and ultimate weapon? 🙂
Sephiroth’s summons can’t be skipped. It goes on and on and I remember it scared me shitless the first time ‘cos I was sure I would be wiped out by it! But if you’re high level it doesn’t really do much…
The Sephiroth summons were the only thing that really bothered me. It was 2 in the morning and I was wanting to go to sleep, but I had to beat it first. When you’re that tired, having to watch 5 minute long summons is a giant pain in the ass.
[…] while back, I wrote a post with a very similar title (that can be found here) about beating the video game Final Fantasy VII after having to make many attempts to do so because […]