I win for having an FF avatar before this thread came about. Kudos for the person who identifies it. Unless it's Dante.

Tempy wrote:

Have you seen a youtube video of the fight against Penance?

I just had a look at the first 30 seconds of a video of that. Hitting for 99999 damage anf the video still takes 48 minutes.

Fuck that.

Posted after me in the thread Raiz.

There was a lot of talk of favourite FFVII moments in the another thread.  I'll post mine here.

My favourite moment, and one of my favourite gaming moments ever, was when after beating Bizarro Spehiroth, the screen goes black, One Winged Angel starts pounding out and you see Safer Sephiroth descends from the heavens.  A while into the track, as you are fighting the bastard and all tense, out breaks the choir and they actually start singing!  What a tune, what a fight, but what a start to the battle!

This just arrived, gonna bung it into my iPhone now:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Final-Fantasy-VII-Limited-Edition-OST-Soundtrack-CD-7-Rare-Figure-Plush-PC-IX-/280909792657?pt=UK_Collectables_AnimationCharacters_Anime_SM&hash=item4167874591#ht_6811wt_1165

I beasted FFX. I don't know how i ever had the patience, but I got Wakka's best weapon and limit break through copious amounts of blitzball. Add loads of strength and boom 12x99999.

Then, you can move your limit break meters around with that skill I forget the name of, 3x(12x99999).

Nothing lasted too long.

Then you can use that to boost Dark Yojimbo. Because you needed to beat him 5 times in a row without saving, you could just beat him once, get the amazing drops (weapons with Ribbon!), save, and do it as many times as you needed, mostly to get good weapons for the the people's whose ultimate weapons were otherwise a paint to get.

I also went back through the sphere grid, deleting the poxy +1 and +2 nodes, and replacing them with +4 nodes dropped from the strong enemies at the monster arena.

Easily 175+ hours clocked on that game.

I don't think so, no. I think I Yojimbo'd him for fun, but I never saved it after so he was always there for the challenge. He really is absurdly hard.

The point I remember giving up was boosting for luck-spheres.

Yeah, I think that was where I crumbled to. I said earlier it was Dark Bahamut but looking at the Dark Aeon list I got up to Yojimbo/Magus Sister i'm pretty sure. I never finished off the Mosnter Arena. FFX really was chock full of genuine challenge.

@Revel: It isn't usually fun, it's a challenge. Penance is well known as the hardest boss in any FF game apart from possibly Yiazmat in XII(excluding the online iterations) and beating him is just a challenge you can choose to undertake.

The fun comes from beating him within the confines of the game system as even with max stats you still need a watertight strategy to best him. Some people enjoy working those out.

Yeah, it was some Hidden Research Facility which had Bahamut in it. You beat him and could then decend to fight Ultima Weapon which was a GF, and then the last challenge was Omega Weapon.

There were other optional GF battles like Odin, Tonberry and Cactuar King too.

Ah bugger, I got mixed up, I thought Omega was after Ultima. Never mind. I never beat FFVIII, that Castle shit me up as a Teenager, I couldn't bear to do the last boss with random party members eithers. Seemed like she was an utter shit to beat as well.

Yeah, drawing and junctioning was a brilliant mechanic but really poorly explained. I remember struggling with it for so long until it clicked, and then realised I had to spend ages drawing from certain enemies and grinding to earn AP for my GFs. Some beautiful design work in that game though, utter shitter for Tough bosses though. Seifer, Edea, Alma, that robot with the big cannon... some real sticking points.

I remember as a young un having to give my memory card to a friend so he could beat Demon's Gate on FFVII for me, heh.

Materia Keeper was a pain to beat, yeah. Trine hurt a lot. Carry Armour was a tough one too, he could knock out two party members.

FF games are basically long droughts of grinding punctuated by the occaisonal oasis of adrenaline pumping boss battles and the odd glimmer of FMV.

I'm quite over-leveled in 9 at the moment. Start of disk 2 and my Zidane party are all around level 34, t'other lot are about 22. Power-leveling is nice on the PSP though coz you can just watch some telly at the same time.

@DJR: Yeah, just waiting for someone to trounce in here and denounce them all as being utter shit but I played all of them before I was 18, bar XII which luckily had a great combat system to invest in, and that is prime time for getting emotionally invested in stuff that really isn't actually that great. They also had the novelty of being Japanese, and that was a new thing to a 12 year old boy.

I've got very fond memories of them, the same that people have of childhood books and TV shows but I'm not sure the stories would hold up so well to me now, in fact I am pretty certain they wouldn't, outside the constant names being recycled and the gloriously convoluted melodrama: I am a sucker for that ludicrous 'god being taken on by 6 random folk' stuff y'see, even though I know it is shit.

People, who at 25 or whatever, still think that FFVII is the pinacle of story telling and the greatest game ever are a bit worrying.

Bring back the overworld, I want FFXV to let me get in an airship to euphoric music again. Getting the rocket engines on Highwind started or finally getting to pilot Ragnarok was ace.

JonB wrote:

Tempy wrote:

People, who at 25 or whatever, still think that FFVII is the pinacle of story telling and the greatest game ever are a bit worrying.

Some of us weren't far off 25 when it came out. Ok, I never though it was the pinnacle of story telling, but it was the greatest game ever.

I'm mainly talking about my generation, heh.

But I can understand people being amazed by it when it was released, the novelty of it being the first really massive 3D JRPG, and the fact it is an utterly defining game for better or for worse. I do like the story, in that awfully convoluted Japanese way.

I remember Gamesmaster nearly always had a tips & tricks feature of it every few months.

I might get it on the PC and see how well it all holds up.