Mmh in my first playthrough i cheated (
) and gave myself a sack of stacks, basically double or even triple the usual amount.
Despite of that i got random game overs (sea worm, beachplugs
) and i realized that i still had to use strategy. Before the last fight in the crater i decided to screw it and put these strategies to use in a new game. Without cheats and with a good plan from the beginning. Some impressions, maybe they are helpful to rediscover the joy of NT:
What helped/still helps me:
Slow/Very slow battle speed and the use of the [wait]-"trick" (basically not wasting turns). Had to learn to stop the time by entering and holding commands super fast. Putting the cursor to [memory].
Extreme/ridiculous charbuilds, for example a 2nd row Barret with stacked Cover/Touph Ring who cannot do much except tanking but does that extraordinarily well. Right now most of my chars fight with 210-250+ Def/MRes. And at this point i win almost every battle of attrition.
The same Barret in the front row is a surprisingly capable damage dealer with the drill arm. Although the hit chance was sometimes infuriating.
Clouds lvl1-Limit lowers the defense of enemies/provides the rare paralyze status so i decided that he will mainly do that. Some lvl3 limits are traps imho, especially Cloud's.
Almost no status protection since those materias lower my stats. Even cheated max stats got lowered too much (for my taste, at least). I protect myself with Resist. This way i can solve the problem of piercing status attacks (dispel - esuna and they are fine).
I still don't know if and how enemies counter and get double attacks so i am very careful/almost paranoid with my command inputs.
Stumbling blocks were:
Wolfmeister, because of his def-ignoring sword. I spent some elixirs or even a megalixir. Barriers helped me to survive. Barret's drill arm brought him down.
Epiolnis encounter in the Ancient forest (lol). Actually all attacks which lower stats permanently (like its Acid Rain) and force me to deal damage as quickly as i can.
Yuffie's mystery Ninja fight was hard, had to restart several times.
I wanted to berserk her servants and block with Cloud but they ignore def and i couldn't bear that amount of damage. Putting them to sleep + slow did the trick.
The rest of the fight was healing (threw elixirs/megalixirs left and right)/dispelling/buffing and slowly dealing damage with Deathblow + Added Cut. She had ridiculous evasion at some point so i used Tifa's God Hand and a Masamune for Yuffie from Fort Condor. And i could paralyze the Ninja with Cross-Slash.
Sometimes the game felt like low-lvl Icewind Dale with it's increased focus on items and stats and means of protection and i really enjoy this kind of gameplay.
I got used to the fact that i probably will never be able to bust out the 9999s. At least not without special setup (Master Fist under Sadness/Silence/Poison on a Braver'd enemy?).
Right now i fought 3 of the 4 Special Materia guardians and did the 3 extra battles in the Battle Arena. Not broken yet. :--)
I use Proud Clod liberally though and maybe that's a form of cheating?
