Final Fantasy VII Walkthrough Disc 1

**Disclaimer**

My walkthroughs are e of a basic nature. I will detail the locations of certain hidden items and the processes of obtaining them, but I won’t hit every item chest off the main path, etc. That’s no fun. So be on the lookout for those things yourselves. Also, I’ve put short boss battle strategies in here. I have more detailed boss battle information included in the articles called “How to beat bosses x, x, and x in Final Fantasy VII.”

Midgar City/Mako Power Plant

When you first begin the game, after the FMV sequence, you’ll come into the city of Midgar (In cool style) atop a speeding train. Be prepared for your first battle right off the bat as you are to fight the guards at the station when you hop off. They’re really easy, though. Since this is the first fight of the game, it’s designed primarily for the purpose of letting you (the player) get a feel for the battle system and the buttons. Anyway, dispatch of the guards and move on. Now, head forward and talk to your team. Their names are Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. They’re part of Team AVALANCHE and they're a radical extremist environmental group. Yay! Ecology is fun! Can’t you just imagine it? The return of Captain Planet is imminent! (…it makes a lot of sense throughout the game. Even if you’re not on the side of the environment right now, you’ll be won over by this game.)

Now, you’re going to be talking to them for a minute and Barrett will be all jerky and you’ll give the two of you names. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll just be using the default names (Cloud, Barrett, Tifa, etc.) Now, head Northwest into the next room and then on into the middle of the plant. This is the Makoro Power Plant, by the way. So, talk to all the members of the team and Barrett will join you in your party. Make your way into the elevator, activate it, and move on. Go down the ladders and stairs, and go through the area until you reach the spot with the Restore materia. This is where you will plant the bomb. (This environment is pretty easily navigated, so I don’t feel much need to give directions of left, right, etc. But in the more complicated maps, I will give more detail on where to go.)

Pick up the materia before you plant the bomb, because when you do, an alarm will sound and you will fight the first boss battle of the game. It’s a large mechanical scorpion-type thing.

Guard Scorpion

When you begin this battle, it’s safe to simply attack him and heal yourself when it’s necessary. You’re most likely going to need to heal at least once, because he might catch you off guard and hit you with his Laser attack. When he raises his tail during the battle, Cloud will warn Barrett and that’s when you learn not to hit him when his tail is up. This is a good time for healing yourself and just guarding. Then, when he calms down, it’s safe to attack again. A few more hits in this mode and he’ll be scrap metal.

After the fight, you’re still in trouble because the alarm is sounding and you need to get out of the reactor. Plus, A BOMB IS NOW COUNTING DOWN TO EXPLODING TIME! …Well, it’s not really THAT urgent, though. You have ten minutes to get out of the power plant and it couldn’t have taken more than six or seven minutes for you to get down there. Just equip the gun Barrett received in the last fight, run to the save point, save, and then make your way out. Jessie will get caught at some point. Just free her when that happens and keep running. Just talk to the guys to have them open the doors on the way out and make your way to the exit. Simple as that. Now, there will be scenes and dialogue and whatever and you’re headed back to the Sector 7 Slums.

Midgar/Train/Sector 7 Slums

Your team needs to split up now, though. The cops are after you. Duh. Should have anticipated that.

So, head up the stairs and you’ll meet Aeris the flower girl. (off the subject: does anyone else think it’s kind of funny that her last name is Gainsborough? For some reason, that cracks me up!) If you’ve read any other walkthroughs, you’ll know that you have a couple of options, some of which are mean. Just play the game the normal way right now (which means “play the game as if it were you. Be nice to her, just like you would in normal life.”) . If you play the game in the proper way now, you’ll have a lot more fun with the strange ways later on. It won’t make any sense if you do it in any other fashion.

Now you’ll come into a few encounters with some Shinra Guards. Just fight ‘em. It’s not really that hard and you get some nice exp points for the fights, so that’s cool. But you DO have the option of running away if you really want to. After this happens a few times, Cloud will jump onto the moving train as it passes under the bridge. Luckily, this is the train the AVALANCHE gang is on, so just move forward and you’ll run into ‘em.

Before you go talking to the AVALANCHE members, make sure you talk to the people on the train. It’s not overly important, but it’s a good habit to be in throughout the game as many people have unique information and it could be the only time you talk to that person. So, talk to everyone on the train and then start talking to your teammates. Finish it off with a little chat with Jessie and she’ll show you a mechanical map of the city on the train. Now you finally might be able to rest up at the group’s base.

The base is the bar called 7th Heaven and it’s owned by a Tifa Lockheart. If you want to, just head there now. But you might as well talk to all the residents of the area, seeing as they’re nice enough to let you barge right in their houses in true Final Fantasy fashion. Anyway, head into the area and there will be some more scenes. You’ll find out that Barrett has a daughter and (a tiny bit later) that Cloud and Tifa know each other. ……………….hours later………you’ll wake up and head out for the next bombing mission.

So, now that you’re all awake, head over to the train station.

Train/No.5 Mako Reactor

When you’re on the train, talk to Tifa and then just move upward through the cars. There’s a guy that walks by you and laughs. GO GET HIM! He just stole some Gil from you and you need that! You’re just a poor mercenary! Tifa will soon jump off the train, then Barrett, and then you should follow suit. You’ll end up in the train tunnels. If you walk toward the camera, you’ll eventually encounter some Shinra guards. (It seems like you’re not moving, but you’re just passing through the same screen a few times. The tunnels just don’t change much.) You can fight these guys as many times as you want. This is good for gaining experience and such. In order to proceed with the game, just head away from the screen and you’ll come to a doorway with a green laser barrier in front of it. You’ll have to go down through a hatch to the side of the area. Sneaky, huh?

Go down the next two ladders and talk to Wedge. Then, you’ll take the ladder near him to go talk to Jessie. After that, go find Biggs because there is a save point and a tent next to him.

Now go up the ladder into the reactor room. Let Cloud mess with the mechanics a little bit and then go back to find the elevator. This takes you to another floor where there are some control panels. You need to hit them at the same time as the others. Just time it right and it’s pretty easy.

Now you’re ready to head out. You’ll be caught by some guards and the president of Shinra and after babbling for a bit, he’ll unleash another boss on you.

Air Buster

The Air Buster isn’t necessarily tough, so much as different from the norm. You end up on opposite sides of the enemy (Tifa and Barrett on the left and Cloud on the right.) He can do a couple of attacks that will really hurt your fighters, but not too many. He’ll spin around and attack the person that just hit him, so hit him with one side and then hit with the other. If someone needs to be healed, hit him with someone from the opposite side and use the time you have to heal. But don’t let your life get too far down, because he can still hit the person behind him with a little Gatling gun attack.

Sector 5 Slums/Church

After the battle, there will be an explosion and Cloud will be separated from the party. He falls through the roof of a church in the slums down below and meets Aeris again. Now, it’s your job to protect her from The Turks (It’s a group of Shinra bad guys and such that dress nicely.) They’re after her because they know something you don’t know.

It’s all pretty self-explanatory. When you come to the part with the barrels, just knock over the barrel that will hit the guy below. If you knock over some other barrel, you’ll end up hitting nothing and Aeris will now have to fight a battle for the guy you were trying to hit and a battle for the guy that that barrel was meant for. So, just look at the way everything is set up below you and you’ll know what to do.

Now you’re just taking Aeris home. [Cue the Whitney Houston music from The Bodyguard]. Once you meet her mother, you’ve been invited to stay here and rest for the night, but you’re also supposed to sneak out in the middle of the night. Just make sure you don’t run and don’t run into the walls or Aeris will come out and play mommy and make you go back to bed. Once you get out of the house, it’s worth exploring the garden area as there are a few things to find, including a Cover materia. Just head out of Sector 5 and you’ll be caught red handed by Aeris herself. Don’t ask me how. I have no clue how she made it there without you knowing, nor do I know why she needed a bodyguard if she was comfortable with wandering around the ghetto in the middle of the night, but whatever. You now need to go through Sector 6, which, oddly enough, is just a bunch of construction vehicles and parts strewn about the area. It’s kind of complicated, but if you just try a few different things, you’ll eventually make your way through and onto Sector 7. When you get there, you’ll hang out with Aeris for a minute and then you’ll see Tifa leave the area in the back of some kind of buggy. She’s all dolled up for some reason, too!

This is when you enter Wall Market. There’s quite a bit for you to do in this area, but not all of it is necessary for the progression of the game. You can simply suffice with getting a dress. I don’t think you need to get a wig, but you might. The ultimate goal is to have the best dress, the best wig, and makeup, so you KNOW it’s gonna be a blast!....Oh, and there’s a tiara involved, too.

Wall Market

So, your first task is to go to the brothel to the right of the entrance and talk to the people there. You’ll encounter a guy who you can then ask about Tifa. Now that you know where she is, head up to Don Corneo’s mansion at the top of town and talk to the guard out front. Aeris then comes up with the ingenious plan of dressing Cloud up as a lady in order to get him into the mansion to see Tifa.

Now, make your way down to the dress shop in the first area of town. Talk to the girl at the counter and she’ll tell you that she can’t have any more dresses made until her father stops drinking and comes back to the shop. What you want for a dress is either the Satin dress or the Silk Dress. The Cotton dress will do, but it will end up like Aeris is bringing her uggo cousin to the mansion or something like that. So, in order to get each dress, go to the bar and talk to the dressmaker. He’ll be inspired by the wackiness of your idea that he’ll agree to make a dress. But he’ll ask you two questions and this affects what kind of dress you get. The cotton dress comes from answering with the first option and second option for each respective question. The satin dress comes from answering with the second option and first option. Then, the silk dress comes from answering both questions with the second options.

Now you are to go to the shop and try on the dress. After that, head to the gym (for your wig, duh! What else??)

You need to do more squat thrusts than some other muscle guy because he wants the wig you’re going to get. Do better than him and you’ll get the blonde wig. Tie with him and you’ll get the dyed wig. Do worse and you’ll get the “wig” which is kind of dusty and lame.

From here, you are ready to go to the mansion and get in, but like I said, you’ll be the ugly one in the group. Best pretty yourself up a little, first.

Head to the Sushi bar. You’ll eat something and get a pharmacy coupon if you say the food was just alright. Take the coupon to the item store and exchange it for something. Then, go back to the bar and talk to the person in the bathroom. Depending on what you exchanged your coupon for at the item shop, you’ll get different things. You want the Sexy Perfume or cologne. The flower stuff’s nice, too, but the cologne is the bare minimum. So, to get the sexy stuff, get the digestive medicine at the store. For the Flower perfume, get the deodorant at the store. If you got the disinfectant at the store, that will just get you the cologne.

Now head to the strange shop with the guy who sits on the bed. He’ll tell you all about how he was banned from the hotel and that he desperately wants a drink from their vending machine. If you go pay for a night there, you can buy something in the middle of the night and then bring it to him. This one’s easy because it’s based on how much the drink costs. If you buy him the most expensive drink, you get the diamond tiara (the best one) and then it goes on down to the cheapest drink gaining you the glass tiara.

Now go to the guy standing near the area that leads to the brothel and you’ll get a membership card to said brothel. Talk to the bouncer and you can go in (without Aeris, of course). In here, you can look through the keyholes of the locked rooms, and you are expected to get yourself a room, too. If you go in the upper door (on the left side), you will go through things that ultimately get you the lingerie. (Just talk to the ghost you and you’ll pass out and…). The lower room will get you the bikini briefs from some dudes in a hot tub.

Finally, after that, you can go to the room with all the girls in it and you’ll get some makeup. Now, head to the dress shop and get all fancy. You’re ready to take on the perverted Don.

But as I said before, you could simply go to the mansion with a dress and a wig. You just won’t be chosen by The Don. He’ll simply throw you to his henchmen which means you have to fight your way back to him. I like it better that way, though. You get some more exp points and such. Plus, you get a chance to search the mansion for items. So, if you want to do it in a way that you don’t get chosen as his girl for the night, just don’t get all the feminine items. Here are the item orders that are required to get each character in the Don’s room.

-He’ll pick Cloud if you are wearing the best of everything. That includes the: Silk dress, Diamond Tiara, Blonde Wig, Sexy perfume, and the Lingerie.

-He’ll pick Aeris if you simply go without one or two of the extra femme items like the diamond tiara or if you swap the sexy cologne for the deodorant.

–And finally, he’ll pick Tifa if you wear anything worse than what you wear for him to pick Aeris, as described above. So, he’ll choose Tifa if you wear any of the lower two dresses, the lamest wig, etc.

Now, if you’re not the one who’s chosen, you’ll be in a big room with all the henchmen. Explore the area and talk to the guys. After a bit, you’ll show your true self and start a fight. Beat them easily and then beat the next three. If Aeris was chosen, you need to go get Tifa. If Tifa was chosen, you need to go get Aeris. Either way, head to the torture chamber where you waited to be picked in the first place. Now, go straight into the Don’s room and end this. He’ll be startled, there’ll be talking, and no matter how you respond, you fall through a trap door and into the sewers below.

Sewers

Make your way out of the sewers. It’s not much of a challenge. If I walked you through the area with baby steps, you’d never be able to make it through the next area. I’m teaching you to navigate!

APS

Well, it’s not long before you’re attacked by the big blue monster called APS. He’s not really hard at all. Mostly, he’ll just do his Reverse Tsunami attack, which causes a giant tidal wave to form behind the party and then come at both of you. Your whole party will take damage, and APS will, as well. He will take slightly less damage, though, as he is behind you guys and doesn’t get the worst of it. Just use Fire and Bolt on him and heal yourself when needed. Make sure you have fairly high HP when you think the battle is almost over, as he will use an attack called Sewer Tsunami which is nearly identical to his other wave attack, but it comes from behind him and kills him. It will hit you, though, and if you both die, well, you’re dead, so nothing else matters. He’s not too tough, though. I have faith in you.

Train Graveyard/Sector 7 Pillar

So, once you are out of the sewers, you’ll be in the Train Graveyard. Make use of the save point you arrive at and move on. It’s semi-confusing, but there are worse areas in the game later on, so it’s important that you are able to navigate here by yourself. Just remember that some train cars have holes that you might not be able to see from the angle the camera is at, so look for hidden exits, etc. You can also cross beams from one car to the next.

The last bit of the train graveyard requires you to move a train engine from one spot to another in order to make your crossing. Now, head left from the station. You’ll arrive at the support pillar that holds the plate above Sector 7 Slums. The AVALANCHE team will be fighting off the Shinra goons as they try to bomb the pillar and cover the entire area. Use the save point and buy items from the guy in the area and run up to help! Barrett will be firing rounds at the bad guys and you’ll come into a battle with Reno of The Turks.

Reno of The Turks

Reno’s not super difficult, but he can be the boss to kill you if you’re not careful. First, he has a Spark Bolt attack that does a fair amount of damage and can paralyze an ally. Another irritating tactic he uses is his Pyramid attack which traps one of your fighters until you free them. You MUST free someone when they’re imprisoned because if he does it to everyone, you lose the battle completely. Use Ice a few times and keep your party’s hp up and he’ll be running away in no time.

After he’s gone, Tseng of Shinra will kidnap Aeris. Then, the bomb will explode and the plate will fall upon the area. The team regains consciousness in the playground where you saw Tifa pass by in the Don’s buggy earlier. Barrett will be devastated and will be shouting for all of his AVALANCHE buddies, but there won’t be an answer. Marlene is safe at Aeris’ home, though. That’s nice.

Sector 5 Slums/High Above Wall Market

Go see the girl and you’ll now be firm in your resolve to take down this insane corporation. Head back to Wall Market and go to the Gun store. The guy there will sell you some Batteries. Make sure you have 900 Gil because they’re 300 each and you need 3 of them. After that, head to the dead end area just to the side of the Don’s mansion. It’s the area with the graffiti on the wall. (I can’t remember what it says, though.). There will be kids playing around on it when you get there, which shows that you can climb the pipe upwards. Do this and you’ll be above the wall now. (maybe that’s the reason for the area being named “Wall Market?”)

Now, this area can be irritating. You need to time your jumps properly and whatnot in order to make it through, but I know you can do it. Use the batteries in the little boxes in order to make things move and shift your path so you can proceed upward. Finally, you’ll end up right at Shinra HQ (how convenient!)

Shinra HQ

So, you now have two choices. You can either Run straight in and fight off the Shinra guards along the way. Or you can go off to the side and sneak in through the stairwell. If you go straight in, you will be taking the faster path, but it is also the more dangerous path. The stairs are completely sans enemy, so you just run up the steps. Did I mention it’s nearly 60 floors, though?? Yeah, this way takes forever, but it’s safer. You already know I am in favor of getting experience for my characters early in the game, but you can do what you like.

Once you reach the 59th floor, kill the guards in order to receive the 60th floor keycard. That was easy. Now go up to the 60th floor.

In this area, you need to sneak across in order to get your party to the escalators without being seen. So, sneak across to the middle and then call Barrett and Tifa over at the right time in order to get them there safely. If you mess it up, you’ll be fighting some guards. But, as I love exp, I just mess up on purpose. The guards will start reappearing for the first few fights, but if you do this enough times, they won’t reappear. That way, you’ll just be able to run across and you’ve gotten some valuable experience.

Talk to all the people here and there will be a guy who asks you about Aeris. Just answer with a “…” and he’ll give you the keycard to the 62nd floor. Go up there and talk to the mayor (Domino), and the guy in the white (Hart). You’ll then get the keycard to the 65th floor in a special way. You have to answer Domino’s question by checking out the library. Just go examine what you can in the two bookrooms and then come back to him so he can ask his question. If you want to just go for it, I suppose I can’t stop you, but he gives you better items the earlier you get it right, so keep that in mind. Now, go to the 63rd floor.

On this floor, there is a setup that you have to pass in order to receive three coupons that are to be exchanged for three items. The way you do this is by setting the computer and then following a certain path. You can reset the computer, but that will also reset the coupon locations, so it’s best not to do this. What you need to do is set the comp., then go to the top of the screen and open the gate that is the most to the right. Then, open the left gate and walk along the path to the room where coupon A is at. Go through the vent to the next area from here and you’ll get coupon B. Next, simply go from here to the room just above that contains coupon C. Now head to the computer via the walkway.

Now, on the next floor, there is a save point and a bit of a spa area. Everything but the save and the beds is basically useless, but there are a couple of tricks here. Check the lockers for the ultimate weapon of a character you will gain later on. If you want to mess around up here, go ahead, but I don’t really care to outline all the little tricks.

Now, the next floor, the 65th floor, you shouldn’t have a whole lot of trouble. It’s just a little mechanical map of the city that’s missing parts. There are chests scattered around the floor, and get this, the parts just might be inside those chests. The last chest to be unlocked will contain the 66th floor keycard.

On the 66th floor, find the bathroom and enter the stall that is below the air vent. You need to crawl up inside of it and make your way to the ceiling vent that is above the meeting room. Your party will then listen in on the Shinra stooges as they plot bad things. Now, in order to find Aeris soon, follow Hojo upstairs. Examine the cell in the area and save your game. Go to the top of the room and enter the elevator. Hojo will now begin messing around with things and you’ll choose who should protect Aeris. That will send someone out of your party, so choose with that knowledge. The test specimen will be a nice one and he’ll join your party. His name’s Red XIII and he became one of my best characters, so he’s quite useful. You’ll now begin battle with some other mad creation.

Sample: Ho512 and his friends

This battle can be kind of hard. I died once, but I was also being quite cocky. I barely healed and that was my downfall. Just heal yourself when you need to and make sure you attack the big guy. If you have an all materia equipped on some magic, that would be nice as it can attack the little ones and get rid of them for a short time. It’s not worth it to kill them first, though, as the big one will just re-summon them repeatedly. So, focus your single attacks on him and use your all+magics on all the baddies. Just be sure to not use poison or ice on him. Fire and bolt work wonders. Just bust him up, work some magic, and he’s history.

Now, once everyone’s together again, go get the keycard to floor 68 from the other guy in the room. Head down to the lifts and try to enter one. No matter what, you’ll get caught by Rude of the Turks. You’ll go talk to the president of Shinra and then you’ll be paired up in separate jail cells.

Shinra HQ (Post-Bloodbath)

Talk to everyone through the walls in the jail cells and then go to sleep. When you wake up, you’ll notice that your door is now unlocked. The guard will be dead, as well. Open everyone’s doors and investigate the floor. Make your way up to the 69th floor and use the save crystal. Run up the grand stairway to the Shinra President’s office and he will have been murdered, as well. Cloud deduces that it was Sephiroth that has done all of this and you now know a bit more about the path of the game. Go outside and talk to the new president of Shinra. His name’s Rufus and he’s the son of the recently deceased prez. Everyone but Cloud will now escape and run down the stairs. Tifa will stay one floor below and wait, so unequip her materia so you can use it in your next batch of boss battles. The rest of the party will get on the elevator and will be on their way down until they are attacked by a large mechanical shooty thingy.

Hundred Gunner

In this battle, you can only use long-range attacks, so Barrett is very useful. Your other character should be your healer, and Red XIII should be your magic caster. Use bolt magic on him, as the electricity works well to screw up the mechanics of the robots in the game. It does the largest amount of damage. You’ll most likely get lucky enough to use a few limit breaks, as well and the boss will collapse.

Heli-Gunner

Immediately afterward, you’ll be attacked by a flying robot. He’s almost exactly the same as the last one, but he flies. Just use the same tactics as the last battle, but make sure to place extra emphasis on healing, as you may be worn out a bit after the last fight. If you keep your life up and continue to bolt this sucker, he’ll break apart in no time.

Now the scene switches back to Cloud and he’ll begin battle with Rufus and his pet.

Rufus and DarkNation

Don’t ask me why this guy has a pet panther that can cast magic protecting barriers, because I don’t know. He simply does. Anyway, Ice magic works very well on these two. Just heal yourself when you need to, and use ice on the panther. You want to take him out first, and then follow it up with Rufus. You’ll most likely be driven into a couple limit breaks, so that’s pretty sweet. Hurt Rufus enough and he’ll run away like all members of Shinra do.

Now, run down below to the area where Tifa is waiting and begin your escape from the building. The group will escape by way of truck while you protect them while riding on a motorcycle. There will be a bunch of Shinra jerks attacking your party. You just want to keep hitting the bad guys until they fall down. Just make sure you keep them from hitting the party truck as much as you can, because you will begin another boss battle after all of this and how much life a character has depends on how much they were hit in the truck. If someone lost all of their life in this little mine-game, then the boss battle will be started with that character dead.

Motor Ball

Once you reach the end of the highway, you’ll be attacked by a large tank sort of thing with spikes and such. He has some attacks that do a lot of damage, so you’ll need someone to constantly heal the party. He also has a few attacks that do little damage, but the combination of the two can spell disaster for your party very quickly. Use limit breaks when they come up, as Aeris’ will heal your party and free you up for attacks instead of self-curing. Barrett’s and Cloud’s will cause a lot of damage to the enemy, too. Use Bolt magic since it is a mechanical boss and use Ice if a character doesn’t have Bolt. This is a tough battle, but if you follow the simple strategy, you should have it finished semi-quickly.

Outside of Midgar (World Map)/Kalm

FINALLY! We are going to be leaving Midgar and exploring other areas of the world! This wretched town can kiss us goodbye!!...what’s that? ….oh, we’re coming back a few times. Great. Well, it’s nice to get out, though. Anyway, form your party here and head out. It’s not overly important who you choose to travel with, as you are going to meet up with everyone at a nearby town. You will only come into a few battles along the way. There are a few little tricks that you can do throughout the game that will change the outcome of a few events, but I highly recommend you simply play the game in the way it was meant to be played out and then play through it a couple more times to see what else you can do. It’s a lot more fun that way because you get to see the different events after you know what it was supposed to be. But, if you are on your second or third playthrough, you’ll be happy to know that you can make Aeris and Tifa angry if you choose to travel with Barrett and Red XIII. You’ll know what I’m talking about if you’re trying to make this happen.

Make your way to Kalm. It’s the little purple-looking town off to the side of Midgar. You are to meet up with the party at the inn and Cloud will fill the party in on Sephiroth with his flashbacks.

After all of the talking, you’ll set out to take care of everything (like always), and you’ll receive a sort of cell phone-type thing called PHS. This allows you to switch your party around anytime on the world map or anytime you find a save point. This comes in quite handy when you want to get some other party members to a good level. It makes the game a bit more difficult if you only have three characters that are strong enough to battle the tougher enemies.

Make your way to the Chocobo Farm just over yonder. Talk to the first Chocobo and respond with a “Kweh!” and you’ll get the Choco/Mog materia which is a summon materia. Now, you can decide to either go through the process of catching a chocobo, or risk being attacked by a really strong monster. The monster is the Midgar Zolom and he lives in the swamp that stands between you and the mythril mines. Since chocobo are fast creatures, you can run a lot faster across the swamp, thus increasing your chances of crossing by unbothered. But, you can still be attacked if you are on a chocobo. You can run across by yourself if you’d like. It’s difficult, but it can be done without being hit. Just time it right with the movements of the Zolem. Find the quickest path through the swamp to the cave and wait until the Midgar Zolom is as far away from that area as possible. It’s best to run while he is still heading in the opposite direction because he will then need to turn around and come back at you in order to engage in battle and you now have a split second more to get away. I actually fought him the first time I came to this area. I was too lazy to catch a chocobo. Even though it’s an INCREDIBLY difficult fight, I was able to beat him the first try. I just had to make sure I cured and revived as needed and attacked enough times. The second time I played the game, though, I died so many times that I just decided to go catch one of those big featherballs and run across on it. So, it’s entirely up to you, but I’ll throw in a brief boss battle summary:

Midgar Zolom

Well, so you were either brave enough to take this guy on or you were slow enough to get caught. Either way, you’re now in battle with the toughest creature in the game in relativity to your progress throughout. He’s a lot easier later on, but considering where you are in the game, he’s way hard. But, just make sure you heal yourselves a lot. It’s best to take this on with characters that have gained a lot of exp. If you need to, go out and fight a bunch of other monsters before you even head into this area. He can use a Tail Swipe attack that will knock one of your characters out of the battle. This is actually a bit of a bittersweet sort of thing. When one of your characters is knocked away from the battle, they’re thrown completely out of the swamp, and so you now have someone that can run in and drag your KO’d characters if you lose the battle. You’ll then end up at the edge of the swamp again. He also has an attack called Beta Enemy that can do quite a bit of damage. You can acquire this attack if you have the Enemy Skill Materia. Just heal and attack. If you manage to withstand the battle for a long time, you’ll go through quite a bit of limit breaks, and this will help to take down the beast.

Now, keep running across the swamp because even if you killed him, another one will always respawn and come after you, so hurry! Once you are across, you’ll see one of those things impaled and bloodied on a large tree trunk. Remember how hard it was for you to just kill it? Well, Sephiroth can do THAT to one of them! Just move on into the mines now.

Mythril Mine

These are probably the most easily navigated mines in the world because the paths are pretty straightforward. The only real reason to go on any other path is to obtain some items. So, explore the area a tiny bit and get what you like. You’ll meet The Turks again near the exit of the mine and they’ll be talking big for a bit even though you’ve beaten one of them already. Oh well. Just climb up to the area where they were and walk out of the mine.

Outside Mythril Mine/World Map/Fort Condor

Head straight outward to Fort Condor. I swear to you, I completely missed this place the first time I left the mine. I only found it after I had the airship. How blind am I??

Anyway, talk to the guy outside and choose the second option for him to let you in. Climb up to the dwelling area inside the rock and talk to everyone. They’ll tell you all about how Shinra has been against them for years and how they are in need of help because the company’s always sending armies over to attack. You can help them out by paying for mercenary help to attack the Shinra army head on from the top of the mountain. I was lucky to have missed this place the first time, though, because I had accumulated enough money to buy the maximum amount of soldiers I needed for each battle. That way, it was pretty easy. But the second time I played the game, I ended up starting the war a bit too early and I lost a lot of the little army guys I bought since they were severely outnumbered. Oh well. Do what you want. It’s pretty self-explanatory, so have fun with it.

Once you’re all finished up here, head down and out and go right to Junon or head over to the forest area to get Yuffie (secret character).

In order to get Yuffie, you just need to run around in a forest area on the map until you come across an enemy called “Mysterious Ninja” or something like that. You’ll know who it is because she’s completely different from any of the other forest enemies you might encounter. Once you defeat her, she’ll be knocked unconscious and the party will be looking at her curiously. She’ll jump up and start freaking out. She’s a very proud girl, so yeah. That’s why she’s so crazy. If you want to know EXACTLY what you’re supposed to say to her, you can check out my in-depth guide about getting her, but all you need to know is that you can’t take your eyes off of her. So, any option that takes you to the save screen, starts a battle, etc. will afford her the chance to run away. Just tell her you don’t want to fight because you’re “not interested” and then the rest is pretty easy if you follow those rules.

Keep an eye out for my tutorial on how to get Yuffie in your party!

If you let her get away, you can continue running around this area or you can get her at any other forest area on the world map. Just run around until you find her again.

Junon

This town is pretty sad. It’s kind of a combination of Kalm and Midgar. It’s a small cottage-y town with nice people, but the town is stuck below another Shinra abomination of a city. Walk around and talk to people for a minute and then head down to the rocky shore. There will be a girl playing around with a dolphin below the power transformers (smart). She’ll get attacked by a big flying water monster thing and then your party will take it down.

Bottomswell

This boss is similar to Reno. He can trap your party members in little bubbles. You can’t attack the bubbles, so you have to use magics to pop them. It won’t hurt your character, so don’t worry about that. Just get out of the bubble. If you have all material attached to a magic, you can hit both the bad guy and the bubble he made. That’s pretty nifty. Anyway, just keep your hp up throughout the fight because he’ll unleash a Tidal Wave attack before he dies, just like APS. It’s a pretty simple battle, though.

After the fight, Priscilla will be unconscious because she nearly drowned. Cloud must resuscitate her with his amazing CPR skills. Just follow the meter. There’s no big secret trick to this.

Now go to the first house you see when entering the town and accept the offer to stay the night. Now, go to the apartment-type house where all of your party members are standing. Priscilla will give you the Shiva materia now. It’s a pretty good summon since you will meet many fire-based bad guys and her icy attack can take them down pretty easily.

Now, Priscilla will lead you to the shore once more (I made a rhyme!)

Talk to her again and she’ll give you the whistle she uses to play with her dolphin friend. What you now have to do is ride the dolphin to the area beneath the transformers and jump up on top of an iron bar that you then cross in order to sneak into the Shinra city of Junon.

Once you arrive, run along the airway and enter the building. You’ll now be in an area with a bunch of soldiers. Just enter the locker room and they’ll assume you are one of them. They’ll teach you the marching steps and (during the second training session) the dance that you must do in order to impress Rufus at his welcoming ceremony and Cloud will teach them his victory celebration (that thing where he spins his sword above his head after a fight. They just do it with rifles instead.) You will then leave and try to join the other soldiers in perfect time. You might mess up, but as long as you saved the last chance you had, just restart and try again until you get it. You get 5000 Gil if you do really well in this part, so try hard! When you join the soldiers, you need to raise and lower your rifle the way they do it alongside them, but this also takes a few tries. Just do what “your general” told you to do and you’ll be alright.

Now, you’ll return to the locker room and you can learn with them a little bit. After that, go explore the town and see what useful items you can buy. Now, head over to the area where you salute Rufus and perform it the way it is shouted out to you. It’s always random, so I can’t give you a specific order, but just know that: If you do a move late, you’ll get zero points. If you are facing the wrong direction, anything you do at all will be worthless. If you do something right, you get ten points and if you do the final move at the right time, you’ll get thirty points. The best item isn’t really the best, though, in my opinion. It’s just another weapon for Cloud. But, the second best item is an HP Plus materia which will raise your characters life points. I find that incredibly valuable. Anyway, now you’re just going to get on the boat.

Shinra Cargo Ship

Just wander around and talk to your friends and the Shinra guards. Everyone has something to say and there is also a guy up on deck who will sell you an Invisible Alpha. It makes your HP and MP completely restore itself, but you can only do it once. Now, go back downstairs and wander around, talking and whatnot. Go back upstairs and the guards should be out of the way, which will allow you to go forward more and talk to Barrett at the front of the boat.

Barrett is spying on the Shinra guys and after talking to him a few times, an alarm will go off. Were you caught?? Go back to the middle deck and talk to all of your party members. Arrange your fighters and head downstairs. Go into the room at the front of the downstairs area and enter it. Before you go any further, climb up the latter in order to get the Wind Slash. You cannot do anything in this area after you beat the upcoming boss. Move forward toward the captain and he will keel over dead. Sephiroth will appear afterward and you’ll have to fight a monster that he brought with him.

Jenova

For the first part of this battle, I’d recommend you attack it with your summons. You can use magics, but don’t use Poison. Ice and Earth work pretty well on her. It has some pretty strong attacks, though, so make sure you keep your characters healed. If you didn’t get all the items on the boat before you began this battle, don’t worry. You have a pretty good chance of dying here. It’s a tough battle, but all you can really do is attack and cure. It might even do its Terror Laser attack two times in a row, so you definitely need to make sure you have enough MP in one character to heal your party in case this happens. Good luck! Be sure to get the Ifrit materia that results from the battle ending.

Costa del Sol

Now your fighters will end up in a tropical hotspot called Costa del Sol. There’s a guy here who will sell you a bedroom for 300,000 Gil. That’s a complete rip-off right now, though, because you’d have a tough time getting back to this town until you get some kind of vehicle. But later on in the game, when you’ve accumulated more Gil, you’ll also have a way to get back to town and you can rest here for free any time you want. But, you might not even need this later on, either. Just something to keep in mind.

So, wander about the town for a little bit and you’ll come across Hojo the Shinra scientist. He’ll be hanging out with a bunch of girls (which is kind of weird considering the fact that he’s a creepy old freak).

Corel Mountain Pass

Just buy things that you might need and head out of town toward the mountains. Talk to that one guy you come across and then keep going. You’ll come to a Mako reactor and a bunch of train tracks. Just head in the direction the tracks go until you come to a big area that looks like you’re walking on a rollercoaster. You can fall through the track at a couple of points, but you can also get items from this, so it’s not all that bad. After this area, you’ll need to drop the bridge by going on the upper path and into that little shack. There are a couple of hidden areas just in here, but you don’t absolutely have to find them right now. If you want to, though, here is one. (You can find the other one even easier than this.):

Search this area and you’ll come to a giant gold bird that looks like a really fat chocobo. He’ll attack you because he thinks you’re trying to steal his babies.

Now, head across the bridge in the next area and you’ll come to a destitute village.

North Corel

This little town was once a prosperous coal mining town. (This was before the days of Mako energy, you see.)

Barrett used to live here and there was a big problem with Shinra.

Anyway, if you need to rest, use the inn. It’s cheaper here than many of the other areas you’ve been to, but the rest is all the same. When you’re ready, head through the village to the ropeway and you’ll all head to THE GOLD SAUCER! (It’s basically Chuck E. Cheese, but not really.)

The Gold Saucer

On your way in, while riding the tram/ropeway car, you’ll see some pretty cool fmv sequences of all the fun here at The Gold Saucer. Then, your party will dock and get out. You can’t use the save point yet, as you need GP to activate it. GP are the points you receive from the various games and such in this place. Just talk to the lady out front and you’ll have the option to buy a single entrance pass or a lifetime pass. Most likely, you won’t have enough money to buy a lifetime, so just get what you can right now and move along. Your party will split up from here and go to different areas. If you want to explore, as well, you can. If not, just head to Wonder Square where you’ll meet your fortune. ….a fortune teller, that is. His name’s Cait Sith and he’s a robotic future machine in the form of a cat with a smaller cat on his shoulder. He’ll insist on joining your party now and you have to take him with you. He’s probably one of the most useless characters in a battle, so just be wary of depending on him. So, there are a bunch of Shinra goons searching for Sephiroth around here. That’s kind of creepy, isn’t it?

Well, head to the Battle Square and everyone there will be dead except for one girl who….dies shortly after you talk to her. She’ll tell you that it was a man with a gun on his arm and your party will then be blamed for it all. You’ll now be thrown into a prison beneath the area.

Gold Saucer Prison/Old Corel

They built the recreation center right on top of the poor old town! Jeez! Now we have to find our way to Barrett before we can get out of this place. He’s around here somewhere… Just when you thought it was safe to have a friend with a gun on his arm, you find a bunch of dead bodies and then you get in trouble for it. Tsk tsk.

When you see him, follow him through the gate.

Now enter the house that’s fairly large and in the foreground. Barrett will come in shortly after, shooting up a storm. Then, he’ll have a flashback about a meeting that took place in this very house. It shows how Mako proprietors Shinra Company killed off all of the town residents. They burned the town to the ground when they wouldn’t allow a Mako reactor to be built nearby. Then, Barrett and his friend Dyne tried to save everyone and escape from the soldiers, but Dyne falls off the cliff. Barrett grabs his hand and tries to pull him up, but both of their arms are shot and Dyne falls anyway. Leave the area after the flashback is over.

Now you have to wander around in the desert for a while. That’s always fun! Well, just wander through the desert screens until you are stopped by a man in a carriage. He’ll ask you if you want a ride back to the prison area or not. Just say no and keep going. You’ll come to a gate soon if you keep going straight. If you wander to the side, it will start you back a few screens. Some say that you can go in a certain order (straight, to the side, straight or something like that) and you’ll get to where you need to go quicker, but I don’t believe it. You just end up back at the prison again. So, when you get the gate, cross through and you’ll come to the area where Dyne is. You find out that Marlene is his daughter and that Barrett is taking care of her (although he treats her as if she were his own.) Then, mad with rage, Dyne attacks Barrett. So, before you start this whole talking to Dyne thing, equip Barrett with a cure materia and a summon to use. You can equip more if you’d like, but these are the absolute essentials for the battle.

Dyne

So, the curative materia is incredibly important in this battle, as Dyne can pack quite a wallop and he’s kind of fast. But that’s actually a good thing, because he hits you so hard and so many times that your limit gauge rises ever so quickly! Just use most of your mp for healing yourself after his attacks and you’ll be fine. I had you equip a summon too, though. This is a good way to get more damage done to him in a shorter amount of time. You want to hurt him as much as you safely can as quickly as possible because if the battle goes on long enough, he uses a final attack and since Barrett is the only one in this fight, you need to keep him alive!

After the battle, Dyne is completely broken up. He’s been beaten back to his senses a little bit, but he’s now disgusted with the monster he’s become. He’ll tell Barrett to take care of Marlene (as if he wasn’t already), and then he leaps to his death.

Now you can talk to Mr. Coates and show him the jewelry Dyne chucked at you before he jumped. The guy will get all scared of you and let you up under one condition: you have to win the chocobo races.

So, you’ll go up in an elevator and you can have the racing instructions explained to you or not. Now, before you start the actual race, check the area just to Cloud’s let as he leaves the elevator. There is a summon called Ramuh here.

Now you can start the race. I can’t do anything other than reiterate Esther’s instructions, so just do what she told you and you’ll be alright. It might take a couple of tries, but you can’t be trapped in the prison for forever!

If you feel like you can do it on your own, then racing manually is the fastest way to win your freedom, but it also requires you to conserve your energy properly and move around the raceway in the best way. Basically, you need to do things yourself. But if you leave it up to the automatic, you might win, you might lose. You’ve got no control in it. So, I suggest racing manually.

Once you’ve won, you receive a Buggy from Dio and you are now able to drive around instead of walking and you can cross the light blue (shallow) parts of rivers. Enemies can still pick fights with you, though, so keep that in mind.

Outside The Gold Saucer/World Map/Gongaga

Now, go across the river and you’ll see a broken reactor. This is Gongaga Town and it was destroyed when one of Shinra’s Mako reactors blew up. The town is an example of how Shinra dissociates themselves from the problems they cause.

When you enter the area, you’ll actually be in the brush outside of town. You’ll see the members of The Turks and they’ll be talking about which of your party members are the cutest. (Awww!)

Then, Elena will leave the area and you’ll only have to fight Reno and Rude.

Reno and Rude of The Turks

The two of these guys aren’t too much trouble at this point in the game. They’re stronger than Reno was in the last encounter, but, hopefully, you’ve been taking advantage of exp gaining opportunities. Well, Reno will be the one doing the most damage with each hit, but Rude can heal the both of them, so it’s hard to say which one you want to take out first. It just depends on your individual strengths and weaknesses. Can you afford to take damage while getting rid of Rude (the healer)? Or would it be better if you took out the damage guy (can you do enough damage to kill him before he’s healed again?)

They’ll run away like they always do and that’ll be that. Now follow one of the pathways into town and you can visit each area here. This is where Zack lives, if you’ve heard anything about him. If not, try to find out. It’s kind of fun. *hint*[whispers] He’s Aeris’ old boyfriend and he’s got quite a significant role in the series as a whole. He’s of minor importance to the actual progression of the game, but in the complete story, he’s incredibly relevant. That’s one of the reasons you should be talking to everyone in the game. You might learn a little something about him and/or anyone else.

So, after exploring the town a tad, head out to the reactor. You can find the Titan summon materia here, after Scarlet and Tseng of Shinra show up. On one of the other paths, there is a Deathblow materia. This can be quite helpful if you equip it on Cloud. Other characters don’t have quite enough strength to really do a lot with it. It will raise them to normal standards, whereas, if Cloud has it, he’ll be superhuman strong!

So, either buy something around the town or head back to the buggy. You’re gonna head further away from the Gold Saucer and you’ll come to a rocky area that looks like the southwest of the USA or something similar. There will be an area that looks kind of like the Desert Mountain version of Fort Condor (if you went there before, you’ll understand what I mean.) If you have no clue what I’m talking about, it’s a big tower in the middle of the area and it’s got a giant telescope at the top of it (as opposed to Fort Condor’s giant Condor bird.)

Cosmo Canyon

This is Cosmo Canyon and it is the home of Red XIII. You now learn that his real name is Nanaki (it’s kind of fun to give him that name on your second playthrough of the game because you call him Nanaki from the start and then everyone is still completely shocked when you “learn” his name here.)

Anyway, he’ll run up the stairs to see his grandfather and you get to explore a little bit. While you’re here, you’ll learn a bit more about your tiger-like friend as you talk to his grandfather Bugenhagen. He’s just some old guy who took care of him. After you learn a bit from him, you’ll all go sit around the fire in the middle of the village. Talk to everyone and see what they have to say and then talk to Nanaki (Red XIII). After you do, his grandfather will show up and you’ll be able to enter the area that was previously sealed off. It was sealed off because it would have made the town vulnerable to the attack of their enemies. The area is full of the evil souls of enemy creatures, so you‘re going to need a lot of items, to say the least.

When you first enter, you’re going to think this is a really confusing area. It’s got lots of caves and whatnot, but actually, you don’t need to go in all of them. There are either items or enemies or both in each one. From the beginning, go right and then up and you’ll come to a cave that is facing left (or, the opposite way from the way you just travelled before you came up toward this particular cave. Go in it and you’ll be able to make an opening nearby. In the next area, there is an oil slick on the ground and Cloud will slide along it and hit a wall (like in a cartoon), …only this wall has spikes on it and can cut 500 off of everyone’s hp for the next battle. So, just navigate this area carefully. Walk slowly across the oil, and watch out for other traps. Then exit in the upper left of the space.

In this area, there are different paths that each have their own endings. The second path will take you to the exit, but it will also take you to a couple of items. The 4th path will also take you to items, but not exit, so if you want to just get out, go to the second path and fight the giant spider and then head out. You’ll come to a small area with a big face statue. If you approach it, it will attack.

Gi Nattak

Well, if you’ve leveled up your magic materia, then you’ve really got nothing to worry about. You can just use a few summons (not fire), and then ice and bolt him to death without paying much attention to your HP. But, if you still haven’t leveled up your magics, or you just don’t have a whole lot of MP, then you need to make sure you cure a lot. I would still recommend using summons, but instead of ice and bolt, focus your magic on healing when you need to and use physical attacks and limit breaks to take this guy down.

Once he’s dead, Red XIII will gain a newfound respect for his father, who he learns was never a coward, but was actually the bravest of all his kind. Grab the Gravity materia and skedaddle. Don’t worry. If you try to leave, Red XIII will come down the stairs and rejoin your group. You didn’t waste all that experience training on him, after all.

Outside Cosmo Canyon/World Map/Nibelheim

So, head out with the newly repaired buggy and cross the next river you see. You should come to a bunch of really tall, grey, pointed mountains and they’ll have a town in the center. This is NIBELHEIM! The town that Cloud and Tifa grew up in, Cloud visited with Sephiroth later on, and the same town that um….oh, I don’t know...BURNED TO THE GROUND! (they probably rebuilt it or something.)

So, enter the town and fool around in some of the buildings. Go buy stuff, play on Tifa’s piano, etc. Then, enter the large Shinra mansion at the back of town. If you look over to your left when you come in, there’s a piece of paper and it tells you where you can find the numbers that open the safe that is upstairs. If you want to open it now, just keep in mind that you have a tough fight ahead of you. I was lucky enough to simply miss the whole thing and only just find it before I beat the game, so I hit the boss twice and killed him. Anyway, the numbers are located on the side of the piano, on the chest in the greenhouse, in the East wing hallway, and on the paper itself.

Now, if you decide to open it, you have to do so very quickly and you MUST be prepared for the boss battle. I’ll detail this fight in a different section, as it is wholly optional.

Now, explore the upper area of the mansion and, when you’re satisfied, head to the rounded stone wall. You’ll find a secret passageway that leads to the basement of the mansion. Head down the long spiral walkway and make your way to the library at the end of the basement corridor. Inside, you’ll find, who else, than you’re friendly neighborhood Sephiroth!

Make sure you pick up the materia that he throws at you. I just leveled it up and sold it, but it can be useful. It’s a destruct materia which will get rid of an enemy’s barrier. Now head out of the town and up into the mountains. Right away, take the upper path and it will eventually take you to a Rune Blade which was my strongest weapon for Cloud for a long time. Then, go back to the area where the path splits and go the other way. When you approach the bridge, there will be separate paths that take you to different areas of the mountain. You can get items here, but they’re not necessary. Just follow the bridge and go into the little cavern. It will look like a warehouse once you get inside. If you like to pick up items along the way, head down the ladders. You cannot climb back up if you use the little chute nearby because the ladders need to be kicked down in the first place. But, if you want a faster path, take the chute. There’s also a path that leads to an item bag if you’d like to go get it. Otherwise, just save at the save point. Now, there’s a whole big ordeal that you can take advantage of if you go on a different path. You then go everywhere you’re supposed in reverse order, which isn’t good because you have to go to these places as you learn of them, etc. It is fun to go and see the areas, but it doesn’t give you any advantage over the boss aside from added experience points from the tough fights you’ll face as you run around the mountain. I’ve done it before for the purpose of just looking, but it doesn’t get you around the dragon. So, you’re going to have to face him sooner or later. Just keep that in mind.

Materia Keeper

So, for this battle just make sure you don’t use fire attacks. Beforehand, you should equip one or two characters with a leveled up cure materia linked to an all materia. The reason you might want to have two characters with this is because the Materia Keeper is much faster than you and if you heal yourself, chances are, he’s going to hit you hard again. The best strategy is to heal yourself once, use a summon, and then have another character waiting for his ATB Gauge to let him heal you again. If you’ve got a lot of defense and HP, maybe you’ll be alright with just healing once per round, but I would still suggest you have two characters with the ability. ChocoMog summon can also stun him, so hopefully you’ve leveled up this materia to be able to use it a bunch. He’s got an enemy skill called Trine if you’d like to equip your yellow materia and nab it. I’ve never much cared for enemy skills, though, so oh well.

Grab the Counterattack materia that results from the battle and head out from here.

Rocket Town

You’ll come out of the mountains at ol’ Rocket Town. Go into the area and talk to everyone. They’ll have some interesting stuff to stay about Shinra. It’s another town that’s “benefited” from Shinra’s greatness. After talking to some old guy, the screen will rise up and you’ll get a glimpse of the tilted rocket that so names this town. It was part of the Shinra space exploration program, but for some reason, it failed to launch and the company abandoned the program shortly after. As such, this rocket has just been left slowly tilting for 50 some-odd years.

After you see the rocket, the guy will give you a pretty nice weapon for Cloud called Yoshiyuki. Now, go inside the house at the top of town. It’s to the right of the path that leads to the rocket. You won’t find anyone inside, but simply open the treasure chest to find a drill that Barrett can attach to his gun arm. Now, go out back and look at the airplane. This is the Tiny Bronco and, as it just so happens, you need an airplane to get where you need to go. Well, Shera will show up and you can talk to her for a little bit. Then, she’ll let you know where Cid (the owner of the plane) is. Head to the rocket and find Cid. Just talk with him a bit and name him (by now, I’m sure you’ve realized that that means you are going to have him in your party.)

Head back to his and Shera’s house and let them talk for a bit. Cid will leave the area and Shera will explain why Cid’s so mean to her. It’s because Shera was checking the engines of the rocket that Cid was about to launch. It was his dream to go into space and he was about to do it, but Shera needed to get out of the area immediately. She was just being so thorough that it took too long and the launch could only be stopped completely. She would have been burned to a crisp, but he aborted the launch and saved her life. Now, he’s upset because the rocket has become a useless hunk of metal and he never got to go into space. She lets him be mean because he saved her life at the cost of his dreams.

After that, Palmer (the little weasel-y guy in the brown suit from Shinra) shows up. Head outside and you’ll see Rufus. Apparently, Shinra’s come to borrow the Tiny Bronco. Go to the back yard and you’ll see Palmer messing around with the plane. He’ll then recognize you and start a fight.

Palmer

This is one of the easiest battles in the game, considering the progress you’ve made. Considering your level and experience, this battles almost as easy as the first boss, the Guard Scorpion.

Simply use ChocoMog and your other summons a couple of times, heal if you really need to, and attack him. If you cast Haste on your party, this thing will be a breeze! The reason I mentioned ChocoMog specifically is because it has a chance of casting Slow on this chubby little punk, but you can also try it with your own Slow magics.

After the fight, your characters will escape on the plane and Cid will hop on with you. The plane is kind of a water buggy, in some ways. You can’t take it up on land, but you can go around a continent and up shallow rivers. The water that you could cross in the buggy is the water you can float on in the Tiny Bronco.

Now, if you have Yuffie, you can do her little side thingy, or you can go get her in the party and then do that. You can also explore some of the areas you’ve already passed by. One area you might want to go mess around with is the very first couple of towns. You can go kill the Midgar Zolom, You can go to Fort Condor to take care of the Shinra army, or you can go to Bone Village to receive the summon Kjata. It’s very strong, so I highly recommend this to you.

Gold Saucer’s Battle Square/Ghost Hotel

In order to continue the story, head to the Gold Saucer area. There’s a little shack with a guy who USED to have The Keystone that you need in order to proceed. So, go to the Gold Saucer itself and head to the Battle Square. Just before you get to the cash register, you’ll need to veer off to the right. The keystone has become a part of Dio’s collection and you need to fight in the battle square for him. ….well, you only have to agree to fight in the battle square. You’ll still get the keystone if you lose immediately. Cloud’s Omnislash level 4 limit break is awarded in this place, though, so I suggest you at least try to last a few fights in order to get some BP (battle points.)

I’ll write up a battle square instruction article, for those of you who would like a bit more detail in this area.

Well, now you can leave, right? …riiight?

The ropeway’s broken. Apparently, it’s not a good idea to depend on a rope as the only means of exit in a giant gold tower.

Oh well. Cait Sith will recommend you stay at the Ghost Hotel here. You’ll be hanging out in your room when a character will stop by and ask you out on a date. It’s normally Aeris, as that is the way the story goes, but, as I mentioned earlier, you can mess around with certain things and make Yuffie, Tifa, or Barrett come ask you instead. I’ve had Yuffie, Aeris and Tifa, but never Barrett. I’ll have to try that sometime. So, in order to get someone else to come by your room, simply be extra nice to them and extra jerky to Aeris. The order of likeliness is:

Aeris,

Tifa,

Yuffie,

and finally Barrett.

There are situations where you will have to be nice to someone that you don’t want to date, but just keep this order in mind and you’ll know what to do. Anytime in the game before this point where you have the option to say either a nice thing or mean thing, choose the mean thing and you’ll most likely put that person off, or at least, hinder their interest in you. If it’s a situation like when you, Tifa, and Aeris fall into the sewers from the Don’s mansion, and you don’t want to date either of them, ask Tifa if she’s alright first. With Aeris, if you show pretty much any bit of kindness, she’ll be madly in love with Cloud. With Tifa, you have to be a bit nicer, and with Yuffie, a bit nicer than that. To get with Barrett, you have to be rude to and ignore each of the ladies. Plus, something that helps your chances with each of them is having them in your party a lot. So, don’t have Aeris in your party unless you have to if you don’t want to date her. If there is a character you DO want to date, keep them right by Cloud’s side in the battle party. If you want to date Yuffie, make sure you keep Aeris and Tifa out of your party when you can. Then, when you get Yuffie, keep a party of Cloud, Yuffie, and Barrett. If you want to date Barrett, keep the above members out of your party, have Barrett right next to Cloud, and use Red XIII when you have the chance. There are lots of things you can do throughout the game to change the outcome here. Just fiddle around with everything and keep this knowledge in mind.

Anyway, there’s a date sequence that automatically happens, but you can easily figure out what to do there.

After the date, Cloud and his …partner will see Cait Sith sneaking around with the Keystone. Chase him a bit until you end up at the Chocobo races. He’ll toss the keystone up to a Shinra helicopter. Then, he’ll insist on staying in your party no matter how much you hate him.

The Temple of the Ancients

Now take the newly repaired ropeway back to North Corel and go find the Tiny Bronco. Take it way south to an area where you find a large Mayan-looking temple. This is the Temple of the Ancients.

There’s one of those weird robed creatures at the top of the temple. Just head in anyway and you’ll come across Tseng of The Turks. He’ll hand over the keystone so that you can take out Sephiroth, who attacked him before you arrived. Now, have a look at the little stone piece in the middle of the room and you’ll be taken down into the temple itself.

I feel it’s best to let you navigate this area, since you get tons of items, and you get tons of experience, too. You are going to need a lot of strength in order to defeat the boss at the exit of this place! If you really want to know how to get through here, though, then I’ll tell you the first area: Up, left, up, down, in, right, down, under, right, down, up, up. Now, go down the stairs and into the door on your left. Go get the silver rifle out of the treasure chest and talk to the old crazy guy a couple of times. He’ll let you save the game and he’ll even restore your HP/MP and buy things!

Now I think you should just run around a little bit in order to gain strength and experience while you still can. You can just go back to the old guy any time you need to save and heal, so it’s not that big of a deal to get a little hurt. I know I’ve said it before, but the strength you gain now will be INVALUABLE in just a few moments in the game.

So, since I gave you the first area’s layout, you’ve pretty much got an idea as to how this place works. It’s confusing, but it’s each area’s got layout similarities.

So, if you’re ready to move on, make your way out of here to the next area and you’ll come to some huge boulders with a hole in one spot. The way you get through here is to time your steps so that Cloud will end up at the spot on the ground where the hole will fall. He’ll then kneel down and the hole will land around him, thus, not crushing him. There’s a Morph materia in the water nearby, so don’t miss that. Once you’ve gotten past the boulders, Aeris will sense someone strong is in the temple and she’ll bring you back to the pool of water. You’ll then see a flash of light and a scene of Tseng and Elena of The Turks exploring the temple. Sephiroth will show up, clone himself, and attack Tseng.

Now, go to the end of the boulder area again and you’ll see the old man. He’ll now allow you to save and heal again. Now you’re in an area with a giant clock face in the middle and you need to get to certain areas. The Japanese version of this puzzle used to be really hard, but then, I guess they figured Americans wouldn’t be able to figure it out, so it’s incredibly easy. Just move the hands. Some paths are blocked off, and some paths lead to pointless battles, so I’ll tell you the important places and you can decide if you want to explore the rest or not.

IV (it says IIII, but oh well.) – Aeris’ Ultimate Weapon

V – Golden Treasure Chest with a Ribbon inside (Ribbons are great, rare accessories)

VII – Megalixir

X – Came from here

VI – Story Events (you can’t go back to the other rooms, though, so make sure you go where you want to before here.)

Before going into door VI, stand on the clock hands and let the second hand knock you down. You’ll fight Ancient Dragons and get a Nail Bat at the end. The Nail Bat is a really strong weapon for Cloud. In fact, you can’t get a stronger weapon for him during this first disc of the game!

Ancient Dragons

These guys are pretty easy, because they’re basically defenseless against some pretty basic attacks and elements. You can use physical attacks and they’ll do sufficient damage, or you can even use Control to make them hurt each other. You can also use summons and they’ll end the battle quickly. Some people swear by Demi magic, but I never really thought it was that great. Most enemies have defenses set up against it, so I never equipped it, but it works in this battle a bit.

Now, just go get Cloud’s weapon and head back to the clock room. Enter number VI.

So, the old man will run away again and Aeris will ask if you want to go get him or go back to the Clock Room. If you haven’t finished getting items in there, I would suggest doing that. Otherwise, go get that old man!

This will be an irritating game, but it’s not really too hard. He’ll go in one hole and come out another and you just have to figure out which one he’s going to come out of. When he goes into a hole, you need to enter the one that he’s exiting through and he’ll bump into you. You’ve now won his services, once again. Now a door will open. Enter that door and you’ll come across Sephiroth. He’ll talk and talk of his evil plans just like evil guys do when they have plans, and Cloud will go nutso. When he’s back to normal, look at the painting on the wall. It shows a gigantic Asteroid or Meteor hitting the planet and Aeris talks about the spell Meteo. Meteo is what Sephiroth plans to cast on the planet in order to destroy its life-force and be taken to his promised land.

After the temple shakes, you’ll be in a fight with a Red Dragon.

Red Dragon

Make sure you cast Slow on the dragon and then Hasten your party. Also, DON’T USE KJATA summon, as you will just cure him a lot. Other summons work great, though. Your limit breaks and normal attacks will do a lot of good here in this fight. As I said before, don’t rely on Demi, as it won’t even work on him. (That’s why I don’t even equip it anymore.)

After this battle, pick up the summon materia for Bahamut. This is your strongest “normal events” materia at this point in the game. If you have Kjata, he’ll rival the strength of Bahamut, but Kjata will also heal fire enemies, so that’s not good. Put short, Bahamut is the strongest summon you have now and you should equip him immediately so you can level him up.

Go back to the floating materia on the mantle and you’ll hear from Cait Sith. You hate him so much right now, don’t you? Well, if you take the materia from the area, the temple will collapse, so Cait Sith has offered to let you escape, and then he’ll remove the materia in order to save you all. That’s pretty nice, isn’t it? So, let him stay here and you get out now. Be sure to let the old guy heal you and run through the clock room. You can only go through number XII, so head straight through. You’ll come to a door and the wall behind it will come alive and attack you!

Demons Gate

This enemy is common to Final Fantasy games. I can think of two straight off the top of my head in number twelve, and I know I’ve seen them in a few others. It’s basically just a wall that has a skeleton in it, I suppose, but it’s really hard here! I died so many times during my first playthrough of the game! He’ll hit you for massive HP points, which sucks, but it’s good for your limit breaks. You’ll be able to attack him with those quite a bit. Just make sure you use Bahamut, too. It won’t do an amazing amount of damage, but you don’t really want to waste too much MP on the other summons. They’ll do barely anything. If you have enough HP to spare, though, I suppose you could use them a few times, though. But you want to be able to cure your party a lot, too, so just decide for yourself what you want to do with that.

After the temple collapses, Cloud and Aeris will drop down into the hole that was left behind and get the Black Materia. Sephiroth will come by to ruin everything, though. He’ll make Cloud give him the materia and then attack Aeris. Since Sephiroth has some crazy control over Cloud, you can’t do anything about this but let it happen.

You’ll have a dream sequence where Cloud sees Aeris in a forest. Then you’ll wake up and go after her. She’s out of your party for good now (That’s depressing!), and you get all of her equipment and materia back. If you went and got the Kjata materia, you’ll already recognize the forest. If not, go to Bone Village and enter the sleeping forest now.

Well, get the summon in the second screen, and then just head back out. If you keep going forward, the forest just repeats on and on and on. You need to pay to have some of the guys here dig up the Lunar Harp for you. Owning this will grant you access through the forest.

It costs 100 Gill to have one guy dig for you and you can place a total of five diggers. There will be an explosion and when you’re done telling them where to dig, they’ll all get to work. When the explosion occurs, they’ll all look in the direction of the item, so set diggers in that direction. The Lunar Harp is said to be in different places each time, but I’ve always found it right next to the tent up above. Once you’ve got it, head into the Sleeping Forest and you’ll actually be able to pass through. After you get back to the world map, just go up to the next area. This is the City of the Ancients.

Forgotten Capital/City of the Ancients

This area looks pretty strange. You know that little bit of pink coral you walked past earlier after you left the forest? Well, it seems like this city was underwater at some point and then the water receded. (This is most likely due to global warming…just kidding). Just explore the area but make sure you save at the point on the left path when you enter. After that, just look around. It’s pretty interesting being that this place was where the Ancients used to live. There’s not much left, though. There’s a Comet materia in one of the buildings, too. Comet is a really strong materia, so I recommend equipping it. It’s basically a mini version of the Meteo spell Sephiroth was trying to cast on the planet. Once you enter the house with the Enemy Skill materia, exit it again, and if you’re ready to proceed with the events, then head back in and approach the beds. Cloud will wake up in the middle of the night. (I can’t really blame him, though. Don’t you just have a creepy/sad feeling while you’re around here?)

Your party will regroup and you can head down the middle pathway now. Go down the steps and make sure you use the save point nearby. Of course, when you finally approach Aeris, Cloud will have another stupid fit and he’ll try to attack her again. Isn’t that incredibly annoying?? Well, he’ll finally get his wits about him again, but Sephiroth will jump down and stab her. I was so freaking emotionally wrecked when this happened! Aeris is now dead. Sephiroth runs away once more and sends you a JENOVA specimen to fight again.

JENOVA-Life

This battle shouldn’t be too hard to finish. You’ll already be angry and upset and seeking revenge. Plus, her attacks are fairly weak. Just watch out for the blue bubbles attack (Aqualung, I think?). It can do a lot of damage to your party, so you want to have some restore materia equipped. Earth elemental attacks work pretty well, too, so use Titan and summon and Earth magic. That new Comet spell is awesome, as well. I used that a couple of times near the end to take care of it all on my first playthrough. Of course, Bahamut works really well, and Kjata works pretty well, too, so feel free to go nuts with those summons.

Now, you’ll see a really sad FMV of Cloud placing Aeris in the water and letting her fall to the bottom. This scene and the music playing in it have really become a kind of Final Fantasy VII staple in the years after the game. Every time I think about the game, Aeris’ death comes to mind. Some people aren’t affected by it at all, claiming her low strength to be the reason they don’t care at all. I really was upset when it happened. I don’t care how lame that sounds. I didn’t cry, but I was just really depressed. (Why the hell don’t they use a phoenix down?!)

Okay, okay. Disc one is now finished. For further assistance with this game, see my Final Fantasy VII Walkthrough Disc 2.