And we’re out

After planning to attack the heaviest guarded building in the world, on a whim, our heroes, Cloud, Barrett, and Tifa just, sorta casually walk in.

I mean, there was some mild shooting and murder, but all in all, pretty casual. Before you begin your assault on Shinra HQ, the game gives you two choices. One choice is to run up 60 flights of emergency stairs or to bust into the front door. My love of plot and character conversations tells me to go the 60 flight way because that way leads to characters conversing the whole way up and it’s all pretty funny (minus a word that hasn’t aged well). It’s also really boring. I choose to walk into the front door, chase away the suits, and fight in an elevator. Somehow, this doesn’t set off any alarms so, once we reach floor 60, it’s allllll casual. The next ten floors have the cast finding keys to the doors to proceed. I also steal a few armor pieces and a new weapon for Cloud. I also, also gain the legendary Elemental Materia, which means Cloud can fulfill his job of being a Spellblade. It’s all coming together.

At some point, we eavesdrop of the Shinra Big Wigs talking about rebuilding Sector Seven (they’re not), the space force, and The Promised Land. The Promised Land is the world of infinite mako and, therefore, infinite power. Shinra is an electric power company, you see. They’re also a military power, robotic r&d developer, genetics researchers, and Materia creators. Is Final Fantasy VII the reason I’m sketchy about Capitalism?

Anyway, after we eavesdrop, we follow Professor Hojo and find a headless purple woman with an eyeball over the right breast named Jenova and Cloud freaks-out. Wonder what that is. We keep following him and find Aerith. We step-in before he tries to breed her with a canine/feline creature (he’s not an anatomy professor) who ends up attacking his master when Barrett breaks the glass cage. He also talks. He says his name is Red XIII because that's what Hojo named him, but doesn’t bother telling us his real name. I renamed him to his real name, Nanaki, because I’m from the future. We are then attacked by another Hojo experiment, who proves I shouldn’t have given Cloud the Elemental Materia. I made Cloud a Fire Knight against a boss strong to fire. Good job, me. Regardless, he dies and now, with Aerith back and a new doggy friend, try to leave the building. Until security finally shows up and throws us in jail.

That night, Cloud wakes up to find his cell door mysteriously opened and the guard dead. There’s also a long streak of blood which leads to the roof so we, being heroes, follow it. We see the headless lady is missing on the way up. At the top, we find our mortal enemy, President Shinra, has been killed by a seven-foot long sword. Cloud surmises that is the sword of the man named Sephiroth because, "only Sephiroth can use that sword". And emo dudes everywhere go crazy.

The President’s son, Rufus, flies in on a helicopter and we go to meet him. We then split the party becomes Cloud wants to be cool and fight Rufus (and his pet dog) mano-e-mano. Tifa, worried about Cloud, waits on the floor below, thus splitting the party again as Aerith, Barrett, and Nanaki fight a boss in an elevator.

I now regret my challenge run. While not significantly harder, this boss is tough without anyone able to use lightning magic and only Barrett being able to physically attack. Maybe not harder, but it did take longer. The boss fight against Rufus is much the same. Still pretty simple, but I had to use several potions (something no true gamer would ever dream of doing) to survive. After those bosses are shutdown/flee, we then proceed to one of my favorite mini-games: the motorcycle fight. They expanded this a bit, by putting it earlier in the plot, in the Remake, but this is the only time in the original. At the end of this, we fight another boss. I haven’t saved in a while, nor have I changed Cloud's Firesword to an Electric one...

I didn’t die, but I sure am making this game harder than it should be. The nameless boss dies eventually, and we leave Midgar and are now free to roam the continent. It’s here where I called it a night, dreading the annoying backstory session coming tomorrow.

As the job class challenge is finally starting to come together, I’m getting more and more into it. There’s new Materia about to be bought. New gear, summons, characters, and playstyles. There's also Blue Magic to find, which I'm looking forward to doing. I’m also noticing that the game is definitely harder than I remember, even with several healers. What’s even more strange and disturbing, I’m looking forward to missing Aerith to experience everyone’s job classes. I don’t feel good saying this as she’s that “greatest character in video games” I mentioned in blog one so...I’m going to bed and I'll consider offering a prayer later.