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

It's been an exceptionally long road, but after 148 hours, chat has finally arrived at the ultimate secret location, riding our golden mount of victory across the oceans to an island hidden from the map. This famous cave holds the ridiculously powerful Knights of the Round materia, by far the strongest spell, striking all targets thirteen times during an excessively long cutscene and capable of one shotting just about everything in the game, including the final dungeon bosses. Chat would become quite familiar with this animation, as one of FF7's few true shortcomings is the inability to skip any cutscene. We excitedly equip our new toy to Yuffie and immediately test it on some innocent and wholly unprepared goblins outside. This isn't even full power, as the attack can potentially do the max damage of 9999 with every strike.

Suitably pleased with the test firing of our deadliest weapon, chat proceeds to the next Materia Cave on the list, containing another powerful materia that almost seems a trinket by comparison. Quadra Magic allows casting a junctioned spell four times in one turn, rivaled only by the prior summon in potential strength. Emerald Weapon is vulnerable to gravity attacks, and we learned Demi 3 during the exit grind, granting us another potent tool in our kit. A menu is done to pair KOTR with MP Turbo to begin unlocking its true potential, dramatically increasing its strength and mana cost. Using Mime however, it only needs to be cast once and can afterwards be chained for free to devastating effect. This forms the crucial backbone of our upcoming battles and is a familiar strategy to many.

Ultimate Weapon

We're ready to cross a name off our list. A heal and save is taken in Junon and chat squares down with an old foe. Ultimate Weapon has been extremely patient while we played farmhand, and now it's time to finally throw down. It's our first true Weapon fight, but admittedly he's not a superboss. Ultimate has 100,000 HP, less whatever he lost during the first Mideel fight which was negligible. It doesn't matter though, as while Knights is still not quite at full strength, it easily brings him down to the required threshold and the pesky dragon immediately flees to Cosmo Canyon as planned. Now that he can't run, the remaining 20k represents no issue at all and he dies in under a minute before KOTR can even be cast. Definitely overkill, but a kill none the less.

One Weapon is dead, but our upcoming foes are on a whole different level. High off their swift and painless victory over the first target, chat saves and heedlessly slams into Ruby Weapon, coming face to face with a proper superboss for the first time. No real setup or plan is undertaken though, and this first attempt reveals exactly why these powerful foes have gained their reputation, bitter defeat arriving in less than a minute. Ruby exacts swift revenge, dispatching chat as quickly as we did his fallen brother. Clearly even with the proper tools, these fights would still require delicate and deliberate strategy to succeed. It's decided to grab a few more powerful upgrades before making another attempt.

Battle Arena Revisit

There's one extremely potent prize we didn't get from the battle arena, so a brief detour is made to retrieve it. Ultima Weapon, Cloud's most powerful blade won from the previous fight, is properly equipped. He's also filled out with HP plus materia, nearly capping his HP pool. Given the strength gained since the previous visit, this rematch is expected to go even smoother, and chat is even confident enough to max the battle speed after the first successful clear. HP half still represents a reasonable threat though, especially if it becomes chained, and accessory breaks will expose us to status ailments difficult or impossible to mitigate. Cloud's ribbon is busted on the second round, and he shortly becomes afflicted with mini from the slots, reduced to dealing 1 damage and scuffing this attempt. An omen of things to come.

The third round sees the other dreaded scenario take place, our hero's HP pool reduced to just 600, but thanks to the ridiculous evade granted by the mystile this dire situation is just barely pushed through. The next attempt features another accessory break on the very first roll and soon frog is cast on Cloud, granting another loss. Clearly the game was not pleased with chat's relative ease the first trip through here but luck like this was always expected and why we had banked plenty of GP. The rest of the grind is plagued with similar bad rolls and rampant miscreant inputs, but despite losing fourteen of twenty two rounds, over two hours later we have our last stupidly overpowered materia, w-summon. Like its sibling w-item, this allows casting two summons in one turn, the implications probably obvious.

There's one more quick stop made to learn the incredibly useful Big Guard enemy skill. This spell casts barrier, mbarrier and haste on the whole party, and has been available for quite some time now, but had always been put off due to the complicated input requirements. The manipulate command is required in order to have the enemy target the spell on the party, and just using the eskill involves sifting through a massive menu during combat. The mobs possessing this ability can be encountered on the beach just outside Costa del Sol and since the party viciously overpowers these early game foes, no real difficulty is presented. New tools in hand, we're as prepared as we can be and set off for another encounter with the desert dwelling menace.

Ruby Weapon

Ruby is the first of the legendary superbosses. He has 800,000 HP, quickly dishes out devastating blows and counters every cast of KOTR with Ultima. He also summons a pair of status flinging tentacles and can permanently remove party members from the fight, although this last action can be avoided by entering the battle with two of the crew already dead. Ruby starts the fight invulnerable until he buries his claws, and the game treats this as a back attack scenario, emptying the party ATB bars and granting the monster's first hits deadly strength. This boss has one extremely crucial weakness though. Ruby and his minions are vulnerable to stop, easily inflicted with either the dazer item or the Hades summon. Exploiting this can keep the superboss frozen and trivialize an otherwise incredibly difficult fight. Chat has been potentially capable of beating this crimson beast for quite a while, but his buddy Ultimate Weapon was hogging his slot, preventing Ruby from spawning until the lesser boss was destroyed.

Some final menu work is done to finish setting up the party for the deadly battle ahead. Manipulate is no longer required and swapped out for w-summon on Cloud. He also receives KOTR paired with HP absorb, which will heal him after every cast, and double cut is swapped for Mime. Cloud is the most powerful caster we have and exceptionally tanky, this potent setup will allow him to effectively solo the fight. Battle speed is returned to lowest, a tent popped and a save made. It's time to properly tackle our most challenging battle to date by far.

On the first attempt, Cloud is immediately removed from the fight by whirlsand, completely nullifying the prepared tactics and condeming chat to an immediate loss. Vince soon follows, leaving poor Yuffie alone to hopelessly face down the red monstrosity to predictable results. The second fight follows a similar pattern and Cloud is again the first removed, presenting a fatal flaw in need of remedy. Before proceeding, Cloud mercilessly dispatches his comrades and charges in alone to steal the glory. The third battle, Hades is cast on Ruby's tentacles and Knights on the big boy himself. This will cause him to counter with Ultima, but HP absorb heals our hero to nearly full after every KOTR cast and negates most of the counterattack. This sequence is mimed, but without stunning the superboss, he eventually gets a regular turn in and picks off Cloud before he can complete another cast.

Even with our overpowered setup, this is a delicate scenario to handle. Directed healing during the encounter is not possible, it would break the mime chain and we have spent our only Hades and Knights casts of the fight, as both are still only at level 1. Elemental is paired with fire on Cloud's armor to mitigate the damage from Ruby's Ray and Flame attacks, helping him survive some of the incidental damage between KOTR casts. Ruby can still decide to cast Ultima without being prompted though, and only the mystile's incredibly high evasion saves the final attempt, Cloud narrowly dodging the second chained cast. Once Ruby withdraws his tentacles Hades redirects onto the superboss, finally locking him in place and trivializing the last few rounds of the fight.

An hour after beginning attempts, Ruby Weapon is destroyed and we receive our hallowed trophy, the Desert Rose. This unlocks a free gold chocobo from the Kalm traveller, which obviously would have been a lot more useful about twenty two hours ago. Unfortunately there was no practical way to eliminate Ultimate Weapon without the busted KOTR spell, and while chocobo breeding was a long and arduous affair, trying to catch the fleeing dragon could have taken even longer. This is definitely the easiest of the two superbosses though, our next foe has no comparable weaknesses and comes with a few unique hitches of his own. Chat decides to give Emmy a crack now anyway to gauge the situation, but without any specific setup undertaken, this ends much the same as the many intentional wipes to this boss before. A bit more work would be required before chat's domination over all would be complete.

Emerald Prep

There's two important quirks to this aquatic superboss that need to be dealt with. The first is the timer, normally you only have twenty minutes to complete the fight before drowning, and as one cast of Knights takes over a minute by itself, this would render the fight probably impossible with our current setup. This can be mitigated however by retrieving the underwater materia from the Kalm traveller, which exists only to remove this specific time limit. This leads into the next obstacle, Emerald's Aire Tam Storm attack, which deals 1111 damage for each materia a character has equipped up to the maximum 9999, requiring as bare bones a loadout as possible. Materia spelled backwards by the way, there's your phoenix down moment, you're welcome.

Chat needs the guide book to trade for underwater materia, which is only retrieved from morphing a rare ghost ship enemy. The required mob appears in the battle arena and the tunnel outside the Junon underwater reactor, so chat equips morph on Vincent and heads back down the service elevators. This whole process is so arcane as to be nearly inscrutable, the kind of thing you'd only find out reading an old fashion gaming magazine or strategy guide of the era. The first two spectral encounters fail to menu boss, and it's soon realized that Yuffie somehow got Exit and Sneak Attack paired, which can quickly end many fights but could abruptly prevent the morphing process. This is swapped out and after a half hour hunting, boat boss becomes book and chat proceeds onwards to Kalm, retrieving our necessary oxygen supply. Before the next step begins, chat decides a change of scenery is in order and settles on a somewhat unsettling concoction.

Menus hideously altered, some setup is done and an attempt is made, without the timed pressure. Cloud's materia is stripped down, but he's still running with 8, and even having a capped 9999 HP pool would have to stay at maximum health to survive the storm. We would be mostly limited to just the materia necessary to enable the KOTR mime strategy. The first proper attempt reveals a fundamental issue though. Chat still needs to survive the Weapon's assault between casts, and we simply aren't strong enough. It was determined that to stand a chance against Emerald, we would need to boost our intrinsic strength. We need good, old fashioned levels. For the third and final time, chat is forced to embark on an intentional grinding session.

The Final Level Grind

Materia is completely stripped from the party and arranged, probably for the first time ever this run, and the setup is optimized for levelling. Cloud equips a double growth sword, slotted with quadra magic, sneak attack, mime and MP turbo. Yuffie receives her three slot growth weapon with gravity, HP plus and KOTR. We have no boosted experience equipment for Vincent unfortunately, but he carries the largest loadout with ultima, MP absorb, HP absorb, w-item, w-summon, and the multiple remaining HP plus.

We only really need a few key materia receiving AP for this segment, most importantly KOTR. Upgrading Knights will allow more casts, and we need at least two in order to w-summon it properly, but given its massive strength it takes the most AP of any materia to level up. Mastering a mime isn't required but will let us continue the devastating chain across another character. The rest are just nice to have and will improve our odds, enabling alternate strategies if needed. Suited up for the task ahead, chat returns to Mideel to once more exterminate their forest inhabitants. This section occurred over the late night hours and became a bit rudderless, new arrivals faced with the prospect of wiggling in the woods for hours having a hard time staying invested. An hour into the grind, the funky color scheme could be abided no longer and chat once again rearranges the drapes, probably just to take a break from the tedious process.

Three hours after starting the grind, KOTR is only halfway to second level. This signals a distressing pace, and an alternate strategy is proposed. A quick detour is made to City of Ancients to grab the Hypnocrown and Comet, representing if nothing else a much welcome change of venue. The accessory increases the success rate of manipulating enemies, and comet's second level spell launches four potent non elemental attacks. Back to Mideel's shrubbery to finish leveling up and six hours after beginning, the painful grind session comes to a close. Chat fiddles with the menu colors once more before embarking on the final step of preparation.

Using mini status, which reduces all attacks to 1 damage, Cloud's HP is delicately tuned to end in 77. Once done, potions and high potions are carefully applied to bring him to exactly 7777 HP, placing him in the hidden potent All Lucky 7s status. This will cause him to immediately attack 64 times at the opening of the next battle dealing 7777 damage per strike. Most people never encounter this event because of the rare requirements, but it is the single strongest attack in the game outside of overflow glitches.

Emerald Weapon

Some minor menu work is done before the final challenge. Vincent receives the KOTR MP turbo combo along with a mastered mime, Yuffie receiving the duplicate mimic and the crucial underwater materia, with both receiving enough HP plus to cap their health. Cloud's setup barely matters now as all his damage will come from his secret status effect anyway. The jade superboss has exactly 1,000,000 HP and Cloud's opening frenzy alone consumes just shy of half that. KOTR at 9999 each strike deals almost 130,000 overall, requiring at least two w-summon casts at full power to finish him off. This hyper blitzed strategy basically ensures Emerald will die before even casting a storm. Deliberate combat menus would still be required as to not break the mime chain, and the first two attempts fail from poor fight management and malicious inputs. The third round the strategy is successfully employed and at 165 hours into the run, Emerald Weapon dies, only living long enough to launch a single regular attack.

Alright, I think I've behaved myself pretty well up until now and here's where I'm forced to color my commentary a bit. In my entirely non expert opinion, none of this grinding was required, at all, nor the Lucky 7s. If the party was properly set up, I think this fight was totally doable as soon as underwater was received. It would have involved the same KOTR mimic strat and some work to boost the party's defensive ability, hero drinks for example. Cloud would have likely ended up soloing similar to Ruby and it would just be a matter of keeping him alive, with probably some backup strategies spread around the crew. Instead, the speedrunner saw the one failed attempt after the timer was removed and sent chat on a six hour grind session that ultimately didn't really change the factors of the fight, ending with a fire and forget glass cannon strategy. It probably sounds like I'm still just bitter, and that might be true too. People still seemed to enjoy it though, so who am I to judge anyway.

A kill is a kill and Twitch chat has officially conquered two of the hardest fights in videogame history. This was another lengthy update and while the superbosses could have probably been split into their own parts, I get the feeling some people were probably anticipating this event and I wanted to make good on that. And so, we have finally arrived. Only the last dungeon remains, and its denizens pose almost no threat to us now. Within the next five hours or so, Twitch Plays FF7 will beat the game. That seems awful long for just a final dungeon, though. Maybe we're not out of challenges quite yet eh.

One last thing, I've decided to finally go back now and address the long standing issues with Part 1. I'm going to completely rewrite the opening section of the game from scratch, from new game to leaving Midgar. This will also represent a good comparison point in how far I've come over the course of this project. I didn't even start taking timestamps until ladderboss back in part 8, so my process has evolved significantly. I'm expecting this will probably take around three updates, so the part 19 grand finale will probably be delayed two days or so. I think the final part might get a bit heavy for me personally, as silly as it is I've grown very attached to this whole thing and will be deeply sad when it's over. So I'm going to cling on just a little while longer, ok. If you've enjoyed this please let me know in the comments below, PM me here or on reddit or twitch, wherever you can find me. It would mean a lot to hear it, truly. As always, 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