This is without any doubt the hardest challenge in Final Fantasy 7 that does not rely on luck to actually be possible (unlike the approximately equally difficult, yet necessarily heavily luck requiring Lv. 7 Tifa No Sources, No KOTR Emerald Weapon challenge). In fact, I am convinced that this particular challenge is one of the hardest in the entire series of Final Fantasy.
In case you are inclined to disagree with my view on the level of difficulty of the Emerald Weapon SCESO challenge, let me explain why completing this challenge is hardly feasible:
Firstly, Emerald Weapon's attacks are seriously annoying for none of them are elemental and the majority of them are unevadable. As a matter of fact, only "Foot Stamp", "Revenge Stamp" and "Aire Tam Storm" are dodgeable. Emerald Weapon's most bothersome attack in this challenge is "Emerald Beam", which, albeit unable to kill a character, reduces its targets' current HP by 21/32, consequently making steady healing mandatory as Emerald Weapon will alternate between utilizing Emerald Beam and Aire Tam Storm from his second usage of Emerald Beam during his "eyes stage" on for the rest of that "eyes stage".
Secondly, since healing will be necessary, one will have to, as I will later show, resort exclusively to Angel Whisper due to its MP efficiency. Yet, because every casting of Angel Whisper still costs 50 MP and because all parts of Emerald Weapon possess merely 100 MP, thereby enabling one to absorb a total of 485 MP off of Emerald Weapon, one will quickly realize that the main problem in this fight results from the exceeding scarcity of MP, which forces one to wisely choose a character capable of coping with very limited MP reserves.
Now, it certainly comes as a surprise that I opted for Barret, who is the character with the single least MP at Level 99 (796 at most). To compensate for his meagre maximum amount of MP, however, Barret is the character with the single most HP at Level 99(9999 at the best). Surprisingly, even though a sufficient number of MP is vitally important in this challenge, a sufficient number of maximum HP, at least 9684 to be precise, is even more so because it greatly helps reduce one's MP consumption to the point of rendering this challenge possible without savestates.
As I have mentioned, while at least one of Emerald Weapon's eyes is present, Emerald Weapon will alternate between using Emerald Beam and Aire Tam Storm, whereas its eyes will attack in between those turns. Since Emerald Beam reduces all characters' HP to 11/32 of their current HP, it allows for a certain attack pattern yielding the optimal damage-MP ratio. This particular setup consists of one casting of Angel Whisper, namely after one of Emerald Weapon's Emerald Beams, per five of Barret's attacks (MP-free Goblin Punches). Thereby, if both of Emerald Weapon's first two Aire Tam Storms following Barret's Angel Whisper miss, the attack pattern will look like this:
EB(Emerald Beam); AW(Angel Whisper) [9999] -- EL (Emerald Laser) [9988] -- ATS(Aire Tam Storm) [9988]; B1 (Barret attacking) -- EL [9977] -- EB [3429]; B2 -- EL [3419] -- ATS [3419]; B3 -- EL [3409] -- EB [1171]; B4 -- EL [1161] -- ATS [40/1161]; B5 -- EL [29/1150] -- EB [9/395]
If either one or both of the ATS following Barret's Angel Whisper do not miss, Barret will have to cast Angel Whisper already after B3 in order to guarantee to survive the next ATS. The probability of the former event depends solely on Barret's Luck and with a Luck stat of at least 252, that probability is as high as 39.69%. Factoring this probability into the damage-MP ratio calculation, one will conclude that, on average, Barret will have to consume 1318 MP to deplete Emerald Weapon's 1M HP. Unfortunately, although Barret can access Emerald Weapon's MP, he will not be able to resort to more than 1281 MP at most, not to mention that the number of 1318 MP is a rather low estimation for it includes neither the 38 MP needed to cast Dragon Force twice nor the roughly 10 MP absorbed by Emerald's yellow eyes into nothingness.
This inequality between the needed and the available amount of MP leads to only one solution: Taking risks by sometimes healing not before B5 even if ATS could kill Barret. In fact, I employ this daredevil strategy quite extensively at the beginning of the battle. Regrettably, I had to resort to it also near the end of the battle, and yet, happened to be extremely lucky.
Compared to this challenge, Ruby Weapon SCNMNI is a mere warmup exercise...
If anyone else is able to succeed in this challenge, he shall ascend to Final Fantasy VII godhood!
Tracklist:
1) The Man with the Machine Gun (Black Mages)
2) The Tragic Prince Remix (Castlevania SotN OST)
3) Ganon Final Battle Theme (Zelda OoT OST)
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22 videos
NEEDS MORE DRAGON FORCE
lordmagicpants 3 weeks ago
good job!
TheBym4eva 3 weeks ago