Final Fantasy VII/Finale
Here your party reunites, and it's time to tackle the final boss. At the top of the stairway leading to the center of the planet, there's still one more chance to first grab all of the cool trinkets the other folks have collected, get your gear in order, and pick your team before heading down.
The descent[edit]
The stairway consists of fights with some really annoying enemies. Floating eyes (Allemagne), big knights with bigger swords (Iron Man), and skeletal dragons (Dragon Zombie), will plague you the whole way down. The eyes and dragons are fairly easy, though the latter's Pandora's Box Enemy Skill is quite dangerous. Be very careful of the knights, which are very tough. When fighting Iron Men and Dragon Zombies, it's best to treat each fight with equal seriousness as if it were a boss fight; start the fight with Big Guard and throw some big summons at it. Bring a lot of either with you so you can heal yourself afterwards and regain your MP.
At the bottom of the stairs, you find the last iteration of the Jenova monsters.
Jenova's ultimate form consists of three parts:
- Jenova-SYNTHESISA (the body)
- Jenova-SYNTHESISB (the right tentacle)
- Jenova-SYNTHESISC (the left tentacle)
The tentacles slap the characters, and can be revived by the main body.
The fight itself shouldn't be too hard if you use a sensible guarding strategy with Big Guard, and use whatever you have in your arsenal. Big spells, summons and really heavy-hitting enemy skills are all that's needed. The only big point is that near the end of the battle, Jenova starts counting down from 5. If the countdown reaches zero, Jenova casts Ultima and dies. If you survive the blast, you still win, but get no experience or AP from the fight, and this is the last fight where you can get those.
| Level | Hit Points | Magic | Weak against | Strong against | Absorbs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 61 | 60000/10000/8000 | 600/600/600 | None | Earth, Poison, Gravity | None |
Sephiroth[edit]
After the fight, you end at what may be the center of the planet. It is rather hard to say where you are at the moment, but you do know that Holy is close by, as is Sephiroth. For the following fight, you will get to split your party into one, two or three groups, depending on how well you got here. In general, expert players can finish the game at low levels, but other players enjoy fighting and grinding for a long time, therefore getting to high levels.
The minimum and average levels do not count Aeris, and they count Yuffie and/or Vincent only if they have been obtained.
| One Party (fast players) |
Two Parties | Three Parties (battle-loving players) |
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
An example of minimal fulfillment of the requirements for the three-parties battle is the following: Cloud and two characters at level 99, one character at level 67, the four remaining ones at level 45. Remember to use the Exp-Plus materia and get three mastered ones. You can obtain it in the Gold Saucer minigames for 2000 GP and it requires 150 000 AP to master.
This is, as the name indicates, a little bit of a strange fight. The game attempts to give you some hints on how to proceed, but they're of very little practical use. The body consists of not five, but seven of parts:
- A: The chest.
- B: The head.
- C: Left and right cores.
- D: Left and right magics.
- E: Left and right magics.
If you have multiple parties in the fray, you can switch the fighters whenever you destroy a body part. Apparently the idea is to blow away the outer layers and then attack the core parts. The core remains invulnerable until other parts are destroyed. Use whatever you have, just note that some elements get absorbed by some parts. This goes especially with fire attacks.
There are some annoying counterattacks, like reviving Bizzarro Energy, Stigma (poison) and Aurora Fence. You can't use Sense on the boss, so none of the stats are official. These are in case none of your characters are level 99 and you didn't use Knights of Round on Jenova-SYNTHESIS. Basically, add a couple of thousand to each part for each maxed-out character.
All in all, this is a rather challenging fight. In a pinch, you may even have to use Knights of Round twice.
| Level | Hit Points | Magic | Weak against | Strong against | Absorbs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 61 | 40000/2000/10000/6000/4000 | 400/400/400/400/400 | None | Gravity, Poison | None |
Finally, Bizarro Sephiroth falls, and you head right into the next battle.
The stats for Safer Sephiroth work on a variable based on actions during the battles against Jenova SYNTHESIS, and Bizzaro Sephiroth. The changes to Safer Sephiroth's stats are:
- Each character at Level 99 (not counting Aerith) adds 30,000 max HP, 2 Attack, 20 Def, 5 Magic, and 16 MDef.
- Casting Knights of the Round on Jenova∙SYNTHESIS adds 80,000 max HP.
- Any time Bizarro∙Sephiroth's head was killed during the previous fight reduces 100 max HP up to a maximum reduction of 24,900 HP.
Even with the massive variable to Safer Sephiroth's stats, he should still be a relatively easy fight.
Safer Sephiroth has following attacks up its sleeves:
- Wall: Magic and physical barrier.
- Shadow Flare: Capable of dealing massive damage to a single party member.
- Pale Horse: Many status effects.
- Break: An Earth elemental attack that may inflict the Petrify status.
- Heartless Angel: An attack that reduces the party's HP to 1.
- Supernova: A summon with long animation, that reduces 15/16th of your current health and causes status effects.
Ribbons or White Capes will be a big benefit during this fight. You'll want to use big summons and your most powerful spells. Phoenix materia is definitely recommended; it causes some damage and revives some undoubtedly fallen party members. Keep Wall casted at all times to cut damage in half. Two casts of Knights of Round should be all it takes to defeat this boss.
| Level | Hit Points | Magic | Weak against | Strong against | Absorbs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 87 | 80,000 (400,000) | 6,800 | None | Earth, Gravity | None |
That was the last fight in the game, the next one is just a nice cinematic showdown between Cloud and his nemesis, Sephiroth.
Cloud's final confrontation with the dark antagonist himself, a sword duel against a featureless background (it's all black and the only things you see are Cloud and Sephiroth facing each other).
This fight is for show only - you can't lose. You can only use the Omnislash limit break. If you don't have it yet, you at least you get to see what it looks like. Even if you don't pick the limit break, Cloud will automatically counter-attack with it if Sephiroth tries to attack.
| Level | Hit Points | Magic | Weak against | Strong against | Absorbs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | 10 | 0 | None | None | None |
The end[edit]
Sephiroth is destroyed in a rather unexplained way. It is quite difficult to tell for sure, though, what really happened at the end. If the end seems weird, there is plenty of fan analysis to be found. In the end, Holy tries to destroy the Meteor, the Lifestream tries to stop everything, and it all fades to white. After the credits, you see Red XIII return to Midgar 500 years later.
