Marcis: I have a request.. could you please send me a save of yours after you get past Shinra Boat, on Costa del Sol?
I managed to (yea, shame on me) overwrite my file. It was the stupidest thing ever, I know.
Emperor:
Since ficedula covered about the "non-extreme" ways of defeating the Weapons, I will talk about my style, which is different than his, so Emperor, you can compare two different points of view defending the same idea.
Well, the ease of something is relative, imo. If you have no patience to level up et cetera, then an "optional hard boss" really is not supposed to be easy.
When I'm saying these things, I'm not basing on what *others* do. That would be too hypocrite. When I said I was going to make the "hardcore" mode, I wrote a big text explaining why, in *my* opinion, FF7 is cheap, and why do I think it is, and even explained recently that my intention is not making what I believe should be the game released, but instead what I think it should be the "hard" mode.Back then, before I even getting the FF7 for PC, I used to level up the materias, and never runned out of patience doing so. I was one of the people who spent a long time mastering the materias I wanted to master. I'm aware not everyone do it, not everyone has the time, patience or want to do so. Well, I know even people who haven't managed to beat Safer Sephiroth.
This concept doesn't work when you are a player of my style because they are, supposing, the hardest bosses. They shouldn't be "easy" in any way, because when the game was released, Square didn't think about some overpowered ways to exploit the game. I level up a lot, pick up everything in the way, in the most perfeccionist way possible. To me, and the other players who play this way too, FF7 is easy.
See, for example, FF10. There are bosses that are hard, there are bosses that are very hard, and there are the bosses that require you to have almost everything maxed up, with the ultimate weapons, which aren't very simple to get. And even though I "leveled" up a lot on FF10 because I enjoyed to do so, there were still battles hard as hell, which I noticed that high level wouldn't win them - but strategy. And then I had to think on methods of killing the bosses, even though I wasn't rushing into them. I am still owned by Penance from time to time, regardless the fact that my saved game has 150 hours. See? they follow the same concept (ultra-hard optional bosses) but while the Weapons are exploitable, the only cheap way I know to beat the Dark Aeons and Penance is summoning Yojimbo (an one-hit kill to *anything* like Odin.. except it works for bosses), which takes away the whole point of killing them.
Besides that, they are bosses supposed to be fought by the player who has got everything in the game, maxed everything and after killing the last boss with one single hit (no 4xcut or anything, the last bosses can be killed by one single attack hit if you have Str maxed), they want something challenging, so the whole "if the player wants to spend a year leveling, let it be easy" doesn't work here. As you can see, there is a big difference between the Weapons and them, because nobody thought on these combos, probably, when they were created. They weren't supposed to fight the ultra-mega-overleveled player, they were just optional harder bosses.
But now we're on 2005, many years later. There are dozens of faqs teaching how to beat the Weapons. Dozens of different techniques. While in theory they may be "hard", for anyone with patience/knowledge of the game mechanics they aren't... and it makes more sense if an enemy has to be beaten by skill (FF10, just one more time, but there are others) not patience.
Back then, >> my << strategy was a simple 4xCut and counters, which was the first combo I thought (without using KOTR because I didn't like KOTR) and discussed possible with some friends. I gave it a try and, after many time leveling up materias, it worked... and I got all amazed. Too much free time, perhaps? Hehehe, after that, I enjoyed making different combos to see how they did behave. It wasn't quick, but it was easy. Just easy. Slow, sure, but easy.
My point was never saying that they were quick to be defeated, but easy. *Almost* every player of FF7 knows by now how to beat them, and even if they don't, they can just check gamefaqs and discover thousand methods of how. And the way to acquire these methods is easy. There is nothing hard on leveling up... unless you have no patience. Then, I guess that the real challenge would be fighting against your patience instead of the final fight against the Weapons
Cheers
