PART 1 - **NEW** PART 1.1 - PART 1.2 - PART 1.3 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4 - PART 5 - PART 6 - PART 7 - PART 8 - PART 9 - PART 10 - PART 11 - PART 12 - PART 13 - PART 14 - PART 15 - PART 16 - PART 17 - PART 18 - PART 19 FINALE

The crew have been rescued then subsequently captured by Shinra, begging the question why they bothered to let them on the airship in the first place. While recovering and held prisoner in Junon, Tifa dreams about finding Cloud way back in Midgar and he was clearly pretty out of it even then. Upon waking, Barret regrets to inform her that the Weapons are flipping out everywhere and there's a giant red rock in the sky coming to kill us all anyway. She's been nursed back to health and scheduled for execution, apparently so Shinra can blame us for everyone's problems and livestream our ruthless murder during primetime. Cloud's gone and most of the crew have taken an early lunch besides Barret. It's been a rough week, we'll say.

Junon Weapon Attack

We have a completely forced party for this sequence, but fortunately there's no real danger. It's mostly cutscene with a few light minigames. Chat saves at the first available opportunity and proceed to where we are seperated from Tifa. She is strapped into the gas chamber when the klaxons sound, heralding the approach of Weapon. Barret and a very convincingly disguised catJAM use this opportunity to make a break for it. There's an attempt made to rescue Tifa, but chat encounters a brief stumbling block at the gas chamber door. It's no ladderboss but finding the proper position to interact with the door and continue the sequence is fiddly. There's also some uncertainty about the exact trigger necessary to proceed, so chat does a few brief laps before finally hitting the stubborn airlock properly and moving on. Shinra have a ludicrously big gun and we've been waiting all game for them to shoot it so, that finally happens.

They probably got a little overexcited and maybe should have waited until their target closed range a bit. The opening salvo completely whiffs and Weapon is wholly unimpressed by this initial gesture, giving Junon a good strong boop hello. This whole sequence is rad, and serves to drive home how terrifying and powerful the Weapons truly are.

Chat is ejected from the cutscenes as Tifa's gas chamber activates. The forced party of Barret and Cait Sith is pretty far from ideal but right around the corner we pick up Yuffie and our reliable third slotter can handle things herself if need be. Random encounters are possible now, but chat only gets two of them anyway before reaching the airship landing and proceeding to Tifa's escape minigame. In this section, you have independent control of Tifa's head, legs and each arm. It's a pretty basic series of inputs and doesn't present too much difficulty for chat. Despite appearances, nothing in this section is timed.

Freed from her restraints, Tifa is still locked in but Sapphire helpfully cuts a path for us before Shinra's second barrage gives him a painful haircut at point blank range. Tifa proceeds down the barrel of that stupidly huge cannon before encountering Scarlet and slapping her to pieces. If there's one thing chat are experts at, it's spamming circle. Finally the moment everyone has been waiting for since climbing to Junon the very first time, that big beautiful airship is ours at last and we can finally take to the skies. Now we're playing a proper Final Fantasy, folks.

One quick note about airship travel. While chat has access to pretty much the whole map now, the downside is the unfortunate new toy this provided for trolls. Pressing triangle while flying the airship deposits you back on the bridge, and you must walk around to the pilot to speak with him and fly again. This single button press could easily eat a dozen or more seconds each time, could be chained effortlessly with no available counter input, and would cause considerable, lengthy stalls going forward. There, the cave dwellers got their little mention.

Tifa is the current temporary party leader and we fill out the team with the two standards, Yuffie and Vincent. A bit of work is done now to fix up everyone's materia and equipment setups, then chat makes a quick detour to Wutai before the next main objective. The HP absorb materia was missed on the first visit here and would be very nicely paired with Vincent's deathblow materia. Besides, it's in a room absolutely brimming with cats and that's always a good time. Collecting the wayward materia, chat fulfills its duty to pet all the kitties before proceeding with the next story event.

Mideel

This is the last town of the game, so there's quite a bit of shopping to be had here. Weapons and armor are fully upgraded for the core crew, as well as Tifa and Cid. An attempt is made to retrieve the curse ring, but the menu boss proves too strong and this is one of the few sequences in the game possible to completely fail, so it is lost forever. It likely wouldn't have been used anyway, the death sentence it inflicts would cause more trouble than the stat boost was worth. Crucially this is our first opportunity to buy a few HP plus materia, giving the crew a nice survival boost. Rampant consumerism complete, chat settles in for some plot.

We find Cloud at the Mideel clinic, severely mako poisoned and even more messed up than usual. A distraught Tifa vows to stay by his side, leaving Cid to pick up the slack and take the reins in his first appearance on the actual party roster. Disgruntled employee catJAM eagerly allows us to eavesdrop on the eternally useless Shinra executives discussing how to deal with the flaming ball of death sitting over their heads. Their bright idea is to gather up all the Huge Materia, slap it on Cid's busted old rocket, and fling the whole mess at Meteor. It's crude but nobody else has a plan, and since Shinra are the bad guys we naturally have to stop them anyway. They already have the one from Nibelheim, leaving Fort Condor and North Corel as our next two objectives. We're required to briefly stop at the PHS and reacquire our two mainstays first. Cid receives a little setup but not much is required, the reliable pair can carry the team until Cloud returns anyway.

Chat heads first to Fort Condor, we haven't had a chance to play this minigame yet and it's one of the few big ones that doesn't get added to the Saucer later, which is frankly criminal. We're required to do one regular round before we can do the final Huge Materia version. There's not much hope of actually winning but fortunately this isn't required. Failing the minigame just forces an encounter outside the hut, but since this enemy is not scaled to where we are in the game it is dispatched with ruthless efficiency. We have swiftly recovered our first huge materia, along with the extremely valuable phoenix summon. However, the next event of the questline is a bit less straightforward.

North Corel Reactor

Chat encounters some brief plot trigger confusion before finally heading off towards the next sequence, the train chase. We are a bit skeptical going into this, as it combines two of chat's deadliest enemies, a timer AND a minigame. Timer scam is available though, having only been used on Vincent's safe so far, and so is turbo. Besides, the event could be failed through if need be. We would lose out on bahamut zero but summons are rarely used in this run, and it was incredibly unlikely chat was ever going to do the massive amount of grinding and collecting necessary to unlock any master materia. So this wouldn't be any sort of true roadblock, but it remained to be seen what kind of performance we could muster.

The objective of this event is to reach the front cab of the train carrying the huge materia and prevent it from crashing through North Corel. Those poor folks have clearly been through enough already. The event is broken into stages, you start out driving your own train and must alternate pressing up and triangle to increase your speed and catch the other. Once aboard the enemy transport you proceed through a gauntlet of five enemy encounters before the final minigame where you must move both levers simultaneously either up or down three times to slam the brakes. You have ten minutes to complete the entire sequence or the town is destroyed and you lose a huge materia.

Chat's first attempt at the event, pumping the levers for speed was handily accomplished with one combined input we just had to spam, so turbo mode would definitely not be required. The train encounters are a tad more dangerous than expected though and chat wipes on the fourth fight in. A significant but overlooked issue is that earlier gauntlet enemies had cast sadness debuff on Vince, stalling his limit gauge and robbing us of our stalwart carry. This is so important as to be worth mitigating specifically, and Vince is equipped with the peace ring to nullify changes to his emotional state. Vincent stay mad, go hit.

The time remaining on the first try had gotten fairly low, but the train action had started sluggishly just figuring out the best input we could use and such, so timer scam likely wasn't required either. Also, the timer moved in real time while we were still set on lowest battle speed, so it's cranked back up for the next attempt and chat finally gets to experience full speed combat in this game for the first time ever. We're able to heal between fights here but the frenzied pressure had provoked some recklessness, so this definitely seemed like an event we could handle as is. The second try chat successfully completes trains and are two for two in the big materia hunt. We've also just now crossed the 100 hour mark since the start of the run.

This section has been almost all cool cutscenes and laid back minigames, providing a nice little break, as chat's experiences in the frozen north had been long and somewhat traumatizing. I gained a much greater appreciation for the pacing and cadence that FF7 has in that regard, something not as readily evident before. They go from difficult, intense and mature to silly, irreverent and fun, weaving back and forth. It's masterfully done and keeps one from getting burnt out or overwhelmed, mentally and emotionally. Imagine going straight from the death scene to North Crater without Icicle Inn shenanigans and some snowboarding to brighten your spirits a bit first. Given how long we were stuck in some areas, these tone shifts were welcome relief and felt that much more rewarding as a result. That elation would soon end, of course. A titanic roadblock lurks deep within the depths. But first we have a town to blow up and a lot of talking to do.

Next part will be half new for me too and will probably cover one of my favorite parts of the game, so we'll experience it together. Thanks for reading!

PART 1 - **NEW** PART 1.1 - PART 1.2 - PART 1.3 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4 - PART 5 - PART 6 - PART 7 - PART 8 - PART 9 - PART 10 - PART 11 - PART 12 - PART 13 - PART 14 - PART 15 - PART 16 - PART 17 - PART 18 - PART 19 FINALE