Maxx Power's FF7 Challenge - Place Your Bets!

OK people, I feel the need to play this very fine RPG title once more. I've got a PS1 controller ready for some emulation typeness using the PC version, and now you can subject me to any number of tortures.

Above you will find a poll with a series of handicaps in the game. Basically you all vote, and whichever ones are in the top five that is the ones I'll be doing. Be as cruel as you want, or even very nice. Not that I'm contractually obliged to fulfill these requirements, but it'll be fun nonetheless.

What are you waiting for? Vote now!

(FYI this will become a record of the challenge once I get started)

I've picked no materia

Picked no materia.

Single-character (of Maxx's choosing)

I hope you choose Red XIII. He is a nice fella.

No Materia, No multihitting limits, Only Aeris (Oh wait that wouldn't work xD) Cloud, No items, Initial equipment, No going above level 40...

AKA

NMNMLOCNIINNGAL4

Initial equipment :eek:

No Materia.

I chose no special commands because it's easiest! I just couldn't bring myself to pick something really hard. I tried and my hand slapped me.

Single character.

I'll leave it a couple of more days. If I end up with Low Level, Single Character, No Materia it might be doable to a point. Basically if I can't defeat a boss at my current level then I'll go level up a bit more. Although since I won't have materia to steal items, money to buy items and I can't kill stuff to drop items then this is going to prove ubertricky.

As for the single character I may go easy-street and choose Cloud and then switch to using a random when he's not in the party. At a later date I may switch to another character when I get them in my party. Incidentally which character do you think would be best suited for solo fighting?

my advice for solo-chars would be tifa yuffie and of course cloud, they work the best for me but my biggest advice would be that you'll see for yourself in battle square and try the chars there... that way you'll see for yourself...

btw i chose no magic... was going to take no materia or no items but what the hell... i'll go easy on you ;)

Low Level.

Just looking at the results I can conclude that you are all incredibly cruel people who wish nothing but pain and suffering for me. :cry: I'm seriously hoping this doesn't turn into low level, otherwise I really will have problems.

No materia. As materia is central to the theme of magical power (i.e. compressed Mako energy) to do without it would be... interesting. I've even tried it myself, didn't gt too far.

No Limit Breaks sounds fun but a little too easy.

Whatever you choose *cough*nomateria*cough*, good luck. :)

Not really what I choose. I've done a no materia game in the past (heck, I wrote the guide on the freakin' thing, go check Gamefaqs), solo character would also be tricky but otherwise doable with smart item-use/sufficient levelling. But solo character, low level, no materia? That is genuinely bordering on the impossible.

No Limit Breaks would also mean no normal attacks once your limit bar is filled, right? Cut out no materia, if you've already done it, and go with solo character, low level, lo limits. :mwahaha:

Wouldn't you be forced to use the other characters at numerous times in the game? Unless you kill them each time, avoiding from using tents or any sort of reviving magic/items.

Go with solo, low level (10-20) and no materia, sounds difficult and challenging. I like it.

Anyone who's suggesting that a No Materia challenge would be extremely difficult has evidently never tried one. You spend most of the later battles tossing Hi-Potions and using a Limit Break as soon as it becomes available. Easy. I even took down Schizo in a single attempt and I normally find that to be the hardest boss in the game.

No, wait, here's an interesting challenge you could try, one that's not on your list: Go through the game as normal, but spend absolutely no money at all except when the game absolutely forces you to do so (the only time I can think of that does is the two occasions on which you're forced to visit the Gold Saucer, at which point you spend your minimum on day passes, no Gold Tickets). This means no Chocobo Lure (therefore no Chocobo Breeding, plus you gotta cross the swamp without a Chocobo, but the Zolom's ridiculously easy if you just lob a Deadly Waste at it), no buying items, no Inns (free bedrests only!), no getting a flower from Aeris to influence love points, no buying a Golden Ticket at the Gold Saucer, no buying weapons and so forth. This in turn prevents you from getting Master Magic, Master Summon and Master Command via conventional means as you can't buy the necessary Materia, nor can you ride a Chocobo to the Materia caves because that means spending money on stables and greens; all you can do is fight Emerald Weapon for one of each, which should be interesting without Mime (KOR isn't necessary but the majority of cool combos to take him down require Mime). At the end of it, take a screenshot of how much money your party has.

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Originally Posted by ReloadPsi

Anyone who's suggesting that a No Materia challenge would be extremely difficult has evidently never tried one. You spend most of the later battles tossing Hi-Potions and using a Limit Break as soon as it becomes available. Easy. I even took down Schizo in a single attempt and I normally find that to be the hardest boss in the game.

No, wait, here's an interesting challenge you could try, one that's not on your list: Go through the game as normal, but spend absolutely no money at all except when the game absolutely forces you to do so (the only time I can think of that does is the two occasions on which you're forced to visit the Gold Saucer, at which point you spend your minimum on day passes, no Gold Tickets). This means no Chocobo Lure (therefore no Chocobo Breeding, plus you gotta cross the swamp without a Chocobo, but the Zolom's ridiculously easy if you just lob a Deadly Waste at it), no buying items, no Inns (free bedrests only!), no getting a flower from Aeris to influence love points, no buying a Golden Ticket at the Gold Saucer, no buying weapons and so forth. This in turn prevents you from getting Master Magic, Master Summon and Master Command via conventional means as you can't buy the necessary Materia, nor can you ride a Chocobo to the Materia caves because that means spending money on stables and greens; all you can do is fight Emerald Weapon for one of each, which should be interesting without Mime (KOR isn't necessary but the majority of cool combos to take him down require Mime). At the end of it, take a screenshot of how much money your party has.

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That's...evil.

Initial Equip (also covers No Accessories), No Materia. Shouldn't be too tricky.

This one: GameFAQs: Final Fantasy VII (PS) IENANENPANLBCMO Challenge FAQ by Paltheos
IENANENPANLBCMO Challenge FTW!

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Originally Posted by Hazzard

Go with solo, low level (10-20) and no materia, sounds difficult and challenging. I like it.

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There would be...complications with this setup, the main one being since I'm low level I couldn't go and kill enemies for money to spend on much needed items (especially large amounts of Swift Bolt items for Diamond Weapon). As I've stated before this is less challenging more nye on impossible.

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Originally Posted by ReloadPsi

Go through the game as normal, but spend absolutely no money at all except when the game absolutely forces you to do so (the only time I can think of that does is the two occasions on which you're forced to visit the Gold Saucer, at which point you spend your minimum on day passes, no Gold Tickets).

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Doable I would say, but only if you didn't impose other sanctions such as no materia (which you can still work around with potion drops from enemies) or heaven forbid low level (can't even farm potions!).

Right now it looks like it's heading towards Initial Equipment, No Materia and Single Character, which I can live with given I can simply cheese it by levelling up excessively during the game. It'll still be difficult for sure, but no where near the torture that a LLNMSC game would be.

Wait, you get more EXP leveling up solo, so I guess that's one thing that goes in your favor.

If you have one character alive or three, you'd still get the same amount of EXP.

For the record the challenge will begin once my new 250Gb HD arrives in the post, which could be as early as tuesday (or as late as friday) :cool:

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Originally Posted by gyrus

This one: GameFAQs: Final Fantasy VII (PS) IENANENPANLBCMO Challenge FAQ by Paltheos
IENANENPANLBCMO Challenge FTW!

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That guide contradicts itself. In the Midgar Area section it says run from everything not Custom Sweeper. The challenge has been lost before it has begun.

I might try something similar, once my friend brings the game back.

I remember leveling up RedXIII, and he got triple the EXP he had when in party with Cloud and Vincent, so you sure about that?

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Originally Posted by Hazzard

I might try something similar, once my friend brings the game back.

I remember leveling up RedXIII, and he got triple the EXP he had when in party with Cloud and Vincent, so you sure about that?

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I know from experience (pun intended) that the number of people in your party doesn't affect the amount of experience you get, unlike pretty much every other Final Fantasy. 7 is pretty much the exception to the division rule of experience.

Sorry for the double post n all, but this is to announce that the challenge has officially started, and the sanctions are as follows;

- Initial Equipment
- No Materia
- Solo Character (of which I choose Cloud, simply because he has the highest stats in the game, and you get him for much of the game. When he is not present in the party the solo characters shall be Tifa and Cid respectively)

I think this is totally doable. I will have to do a fair amount of levelling however to get through many of the more powerful bosses. I'll have a lot of cash with which to pick up healing/status recovery items and also magic damage items (Swift Bolts ftw!). I'm just thanking my lucky stars the Initial Equipment wasn't Low Level, since that would have been the same thing as IE only MUCH worse.

Updates will appear periodically from now on as and when I play the game/feel like posting.

Fantastic, you definitely aren't going to try challenge the weapons, though?

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Originally Posted by Hazzard

Fantastic, you definitely aren't going to try challenge the weapons, though?

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There's an FAQ on GameFAQs where someone did. And succeeded.

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Originally Posted by Captain Maxx Power

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Originally Posted by ReloadPsi

Go through the game as normal, but spend absolutely no money at all except when the game absolutely forces you to do so (the only time I can think of that does is the two occasions on which you're forced to visit the Gold Saucer, at which point you spend your minimum on day passes, no Gold Tickets).

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Doable I would say, but only if you didn't impose other sanctions such as no materia (which you can still work around with potion drops from enemies) or heaven forbid low level (can't even farm potions!).

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Seeing as you ain't chosen to do it, I'm gonna try it once I'm done with my initial equipment thing. Schizo keeps kicking my ass though *_*

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Originally Posted by Hazzard

Fantastic, you definitely aren't going to try challenge the weapons, though?

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Ultima will be the easiest of the optional ones, but since I won't get anything out of it then it's more to novelty. At least if I defeat Ruby I get a Gold Chocobo out of it and can go to the materia caves...and then trash them. Ruby is in theory defeatable, if only because the battle is designed to be done with one character. Emerald, well, we all know how much of a pain he is. Since his Aire Tam Storm will do no damage because of the lack of materia I could simply heal with X-potions every turn until Cloud gets a limit and use that, if I shove him on the back row with Hyper it'll speed up the process. But really right now I'm more worried about just getting through the central game before I start thinking about the weapons.

UPDATE!!!!! :cool: :cool: :cool: :cool: :cool:

I've gotten as far as the battle past Raps. Right now the general boss strategy (indeed, battle strategy in general) is to keep healing myself with potions until I get a Limit Break. For now my physical damage won't be hugely affected by the Initial Equipment handicap due to the Buster Sword being the only sword available until the Shinra building for drops, and Kalm for buying. However as the game goes on I'll start to feel it more. Certainly the biggest problem right now is physical attacks. Magical attacks it doesn't really matter what armour you have as due to a bug you're armour MDef is ignored and only your Spirit stat is used. I can cut down the damage done by physical attacks by a quarter by shoving myself in the back row and using the defend command. Against the harder hitting bosses this may be my best strategy.

Now I'm worried about taking on Rude. The main reason for this is that his pyramid attack when applied to a character considers them dead (not to mention the fact that it can't be removed unless another character attacks it). As such I'll most likely keep Barret alive (he's automatically revived when you reach the top of the tower) for this battle only, and use him to remove the pyramid only should Cloud come under its effects, only using Cloud to deal damage. That's about as close I can come to a single-character battle. I'll have to do the same against Bottomswell in Junno as well since his bubble attack also considers the target "Dead".

Apart from that I'm just going to have to spend a lot of time killing stuff to get a bunch of Hi Potions for most of the game until I get the Tiny Bronco, at which point I'll probably spend hours farming in Wutai for X-Potions/Swift Bolts/Fire Veils. Once I have them then the rest of the game should be compartively a breeze until I get to the Northern Crater.

I looked at a solo cloud guide and the only way to get around the pyramid thing is intense powerlevelling.

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Originally Posted by gyrus

I looked at a solo cloud guide and the only way to get around the pyramid thing is intense powerlevelling.

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For reasons of sanity I simply kept Barret alive during the fight. Cloud was the only one who did any damage to Rude however. For the record I'm just up to the point where you go up to Shinra. I need to spend more time fighting for two reasons; one money to buy the batteries needed to get up there in the first place, and second to gain Meteor Rain before I reach Shinra (I currently have Blade Beam and Climhazzard). My plan for normal battles is to use Finishing Touch since it's a cheap, instant-death attack to all monsters that doesn't rely on weapon damage to do it's work. Now my thoughts are focused on the Shinra building, specifically the non-Cloud battle between the two "robots". Now obviously since I've not be levelling my other characters their levels are going to be low come this battle. Added to the fact that I normally have problems with these things playing the game normally I'm thinking it may cause problems. To keep in with the theme of a solo character I'll only be using one character for this battle, most likely RedXIII, using Grenades to do the damage (yet another reason I need to grind enemies for money). After that I'm "in the clear" for the majority of the game, with a distinct drop once I have access to the Wutai area.

When you don't have cloud, it can become a low level challenge for the characters you do have.

I vote no-materia.