Here we go with more monsters from the world's most popular and highest-rated Final Fantasy game and the game that defined a generation of JRPG's, Final Fantasy VII! It's the one with the blonde guy with the giant sword!
(I swear, I didn't even know that they would announce part 2 of the remake this month! I'll basically continue on with all these reviews, and maybe do a 'special edition' for the new monsters from the remake.)
Last time, we covered a bunch of enemies in Final Fantasy VII, form the No. 1 Reactor, to the Sector 4 Railroad Tunnels, to the No. 5 Reactor, to the slums of Sector 5 and Sector 6, and the sewers under Don Corneo's estate. Story-wise it's been a bit choppy, but I feel like the pacing and exposition is pretty decent. Now we're starting off in the Train Graveyard, a graveyard for trains! I have been immensely enjoying the game, even though I've been spoiled on... pretty much almost everything there is to be spoiled about. It's still fun to experience the story in its entirety, because there's always something different about actually playing as a character in a video game than just reading their synopses or watching a let's play of them, y'know?
As a little repeat of myself, I'm going in this more or less blind about the monsters, I'll talk about them in chronological order from when I meet them in the game, and I'll include pictures from the 1997 version and the 2020 remake just to see what the original intent of the monsters are, and how the same creators did them with access to two decades' worth of video game graphics improvement.
Oh, and now I know how to find out these guys' names in the original 1997 version, you need the "Sense" materia, which gives you the spell! Neat.
Ghost
The Train Graveyard has g-g-g-ghosts! And it'd be a boring old ghost if it's just a hooded specter or a bedsheet ghost, but look at that! Look at that bizarre ghost. It has the general silhouette of a Casper-esque ghost, but the face is just three delightful dots on the torso of the ghost, and that changes so much, yeah? Sure, the weirdly segmented tail and the red claws are neat deviations, but the simple addition of changing the head makes FFVII's Ghost look so uniquely different, isn't it? In combat, you can use 'Cure' spells on the Ghost to damage it severely, a running little feature in most Final Fantasy games with the undead -- something that's sort of borrowed from its D&D inspiration. Any other sort of damage will cause the Ghost to become invisible for an entire turn.
The remake's Ghost, remarkably, manages to keep the balance of spooky and adorable. Most importantly, that simplified three-dot face on the torso of the ghost. It manages to look even creepier with little stitches and a weird ribcage like texture around the 'head'. Very, very spooky, and that tail is far, far more explicitly some sort of tail instead of just the ghost's body trailing off. The remake also adds a whole part of the plot dealing with the ghosts in the train graveyard, instead of just having them be one-off common enemies, and even has a conglomerate boss version. Cool!
Deenglow / Cerulean Drake
We get a teeny-tiny dragon in the train graveyard? That's... that's honestly kind of bizarre and not the most thematic enemy. The remake moves the Deenglow (renamed 'Cerulean Drake' for the English remake version) to the Sector 7 Slums where it feels more at home with a bunch of other monsters. Either way, it's a pretty neat 'wyvern' or 'drake style enemy. I love just how weirdly skeletal this thing looks in the original, and how weird the wings are arranged. The remake version keeps all the colours and the distinctive nose. The wings aren't quite as weird, but they're still tattered and follow the contours of the finger-bones, so they kept the spirit of the original Deenglow intact for sure! Not a whole ton to say here, it's a pretty drake.
Eligor
A bit of a 'what the fuck that shit is cool' enemy is the Eligor! Look at this motherfucker. Look at this absolutely rad motherfucker. Named after a Duke of Hell from the Ars Goetia, who is known for riding a horse. Final Fantasy VII's Eligor is just this bizarre one-eyed skull-headed figure who is fused from the waist down with his steed... and said steed has a scythe for a head, and its rear body is a pair of wheels. It's a chariot, a horse and its rider all fused together, what the fuck. This thing is so metal, it's so awesome, and in addition to casting spells, it has lasers for some reason. Is this a robot? The place where the wheels, horse and human body are fused together does look like some sort of weird steam engine or whatever.
The remake's version, however, is definitely not. Like the Hell House, Eligor is rightfully elevated as a boss, and is described as 'a ghastly fiend that haunts the train graveyard and feeds on human fear to grow stronger. It is a manifestation of the memories and sorrows that linger in the train graveyard.' It's a fear demon born out of memories and sorrows, and it looks so much more like a regular fantasy monster while keeping everything about the original intact. Look at its humanoid half, which is just so raggedy and ghostly, and the horse's scythe looks so badass! And the chariot looks even more bizarre than before, with it being an interlocking set of gears and wheels instead of the ambiguous mass of the original 1997 version. An utterly badass monster for sure.
I didn't actually meet this one! I cleared the Train Graveyard too fast, and simply never fought these weird guys. Oh well, them's the breaks when you're dealing with 'rare' enemies. Cripshay (from 'clip' or 'crypt' and 'shave) is this bizarre monster that, at a glance, looks like some sort of a stag beetle. But instead of a stag beetle body, it's got an angry baby face and a disturbingly flesh-coloured body that looks like a dog or something. In 1997 graphics, it doesn't look terrible, it just looks like a weird mutant animal in the same vein as the Hedgehog Pies or something.
The 2020 version, though, takes the 'flesh coloured' bit and ramps the creepy factor up to eleven. The stag beetle horns and the new earwig tail is cool, of course, and the body does kinda look like a dog or something... but look at that way-too-human face. That's some uncanny valley level of shit. I've been staring at that creepy-ass face attached to a dog body with bug horns growing out of it for nearly half an hour and it still creeps me the fuck out. I'm not sure why, sometimes it's these sort of things that are far, far creepier than something that's more obviously spooky like Eligor up above. The fact that these are apparently natural nocturnal carnivores makes them somehow worse than if they were demons or Mako-mutants.
Aero Combatant / Helitrooper
These guys show up in the brief area that's the Sector 7 pillar. And... and what a way to design a flying trooper, huh? Jetpacks? Hang-gliders? Jet boots? Helicopter backpacks? Nope, the Aero Combatants fly around with helicopters built into their hands, and they look like ninjas. And they can land and use the helicopter blades as swords, all Transformers style. I absolutely love that the entire design is fully carried over to the remake, even if they did give the "Helitrooper" a brand-new punk themed outfit. Their hats or helmets are a bit weird and I thought they were robots, but the remake specifically notes them as humans in powered armour.
Reno
A named character boss! Character design wise, Reno and the rest of the Turks are... they're just gangsters with anime hair and suits. Reno's a typical punk design, with an unbuttoned suit and going around carrying a stun-rod. He's a pretty popular 'bad boy' among the Turks, but the original version really didn't give too much of an impression about him -- he sure is a Shinra thug that appears a couple of times before he blows up the Sector 7 plate and causes a whole ton of death. He fights by casting some pyramid spells or whatever that disables a member of your team, which is a bit weird. The remake clarifies what the pyramid is supposed to be, it's a tiny deployable forcefield that traps your party members in place.
Mighty Grunt / Armored Shock Trooper
Next dungeon... the Shinra Headquarters! And they've got these giant mecha-looking guys that made me go "oh, a Zaku!" the first time I see them. You guys see it too, right? Huge shoulder pads, chunky legs, a single eye... sure, these guys have two gun-arms, but still. Interestingly, beat them up enough and the armour splits apart to reveal the inner form, and turns out these dudes do look like the Grunts we've been fighting earlier. Giant lower arm gauntlets, claws, a faceless bubble-head, and, most interestingly, giant chunky skateboards for feet. Very over-the-top, I approve. Naturally, in the skater form, the Mighty Grunt is much faster and can dodge attacks.
The remake version looks a lot more like it is created in the same sensibilities with the Zaku, huh? Love the head love the shoulders, love the guns... I just love everything about this little Iron Man armour. I'm not sure what that clear-face helmet is really a reference to (all I can think of is Pokemon XY's Essentia) but I love that they still kept everything from the original model intact in the 2020 version, even the goofy-looking skateboard feet. Maybe Reno should've borrowed one of these armoured suits, he could've been much more threatening.
Grenade Combatant
Essentially the same model as the very first MP enemies you fight in the game, except scaled up to the point of the game you meet them in. I'm just including them for completion's sake.
SOLDIER: 3rd / 3-C SOLDIER Operator
So I guess it makes sense that Shinra's HQ has a bunch of human guards. Including SOLDIERs. Not Soldiers. SOLDIER. With all capital letters. They're super-humans that our main buddy Cloud Strife keeps reminding himself he is an ex-member of. Unlike Mr. First-Class Cloud, these punks are third class. They're dudes with huge lances and throw sickles, and they get cooler knight-themed armour in the remake. They look boring, but the idea that we're facing up against supersoldiers that are Mako-enhanced like our boy Cloud does give these SOLDIERs a neat aura of gravitas about them.
This sure is a robot! I'm not sure why it's called a "Moth Slasher", because it doesn't look like a moth at all. It's still a pretty cool killer robot, though, with a drill-beak, a lower body that's just a spinning orb with spikes, and a bizarrely split-apart upper arm that joins together into a single lower arm. A pretty cool killer robot for sure, but the remake's model really picks out a lot of the detail and makes it look even more bizarre. The jointed, bizarrely bug-like claws, the removal of the eyes so its entire head is just a drill, and the more curved, meaner-looking spinning claws all contribute into making the M.O.T.H. Unit look even more threatening and over-the-top.
Sword Dance / Swordipede
What are these? Among the robots and soldiers that your party meets as they go through Shinra HQ are these hovering, undulating flat robots that sort of hover in the air while undulating like some sort of eel or aquatic worm. It took me a while to realize that this is supposed to be a floating chainsaw, albeit with a huge weird fish head. They look so weird! Like, you get more or less regular-looking robots, albeit with differing aesthetics, and then you get something as utterly baffling like the Sword Dance. Like, okay, I get what it is, but why, Shinra? They're lunatics, and I love them. Giant hovering chainsaw eels with a buzzsaw for a face. Sure!
The remake identifies the renamed-in-the-English-version 'Swordipede' as a 'bionic species' whose behaviour regulation mechanisms aren't perfected. And because Shinra has no concept of safety, it still sics the Swordipede and allows it to hover around without proper software. The Swordipede, by the way, is elevated into a boss in this one, just like the Hell House. I approve of the design team just taking all the weird enemies and instead of deleting them from the game, they went, 'huh, let's make them bigger and into a boss'. And the Sword Dance is certainly a pretty impressive giant robot worm!
Hammer Blaster / Sledgeworm
Um, what? Called "Dezone Hammer" in the original Japanese, this is just a weird half-a-body held up with a little wiry spine, and it's holding a cute little hammer to bonk you in the head with. Look at that utterly bizarre face that certainly has no business hanging out on a killer robot made by an immoral supercompany. Which, of course, makes the Hammer Blaster even weirder and I like it a bit more. This one is a rare encounter and I think I only fought one throughout my run of the Shinra Building.
The remake gives it a much more robotic look and calls it a 'Sledgeworm', although I love that they kept a lot of the parts that make the Hammer Blaster so goofy intact, and even emphasizes on it. Look at those weirdo baby hands! And, sure, we lose the weird cartoon-duck lips, but turning the entire thing into a weird metallic worm-robot-thing does make up for it. This enemy, by the way, has the utterly bizarre ability of 'vanishing' like the Ghosts, which the remake handwaves as 'warping space-time'. And yet all it will do is bonk you with a hammer. Shinra, you lunatics.
Warning Board
Didn't actually ever meet this enemy, but it's pretty boring looking. It's just a little warning board and it will continually spawn machineguns and laser cannons until you kill it. Okay, sure, it's not a turret, at least.
Sample: H0512
Near the halfway point of the actually pretty lengthy Shinra HQ dungeon, and after a bunch of cutscenes, you get to meet the architect of many of Shinra's weirdest bioweapons, Dr. Hojo. Who, in his first appearance, tries to breed Aerith (a human girl) with Red XIII (a weird dog-cat thing) with the bizarre justification that they're both "endangered species" so they must be able to... reproduce? Okay, Hojo. Apparently, he's able to make creatures like this, though, a creature called Sample H0512. I love it when scientific experiment monsters don't even have cool codenames like "Tyrant" or "Weapon X" or "Sephiroth", but is just a string of numbers. Makes it a bitch to remember them, sure, but it highlights just how many experiments Hojo's done.
Sample H0512 is very clearly a frankenstein of a bunch of monsters in both incarnations, with its Cthulhu head, one of its shoulders being a giant flesh-maw, its other shoulder being some sort of trilobite creature, a massive insect-legs-for-fingers arm with a fish fin growing out of it, a giant organic cannon on the other, weird little root-like feet that end in stumps and a hose randomly connecting its belly and the left shoulder. It's amazing how the remake keeps every single detail from the original and just enhances it and swaps the colours around -- I could see myself bitching about it had they just made it like five shades of dull gray and brown, but keeping the bright colours really highlights what a fuck-up this Franken-Cthulu really is. It's a pretty cool boss!
Sample: H0512-opt
Sample H0512 comes with these little friends, just called "Sample H0512-opt" What is 'opt'? Optional? they are little mite-like things with four feet in the original, while they look a lot more buggy with a grosser eyeball and spidery legs. Sample H0512 will continually summon these eyeball bugs and spawn them, presumably off of its own flesh. The remake even more explicitly identifies this as creatures that 'protect its parent'. Okay? Do they... do they grow into Sample H0512's eventually, if Cloud and friends don't kill them? Did Hojo actually create a reproducing Frankencthulhu?
In one of the most effective uses of music ever, after the H0512 fight your party members get captured and placed in a cell after a bit of cutscnes, before breaking out and finding out that someone that's far more brutal than your party members quite literally painted the hallways of Shinra HQ with blood and corpses. Mystery greater villain also essentially wiped out every single Shinra human soldier and robot, killed the music (even the cheery victory theme, a small yet most unsettling change) and unleashed a bunch of Hojo's most monstrous experiments out. The most mundane among these is the Zenene, which still looks like a hideous, emaciated skeleton with limbs and a central body that looks way too thin. The more you look at Zenene, the more hideous he becomes, with unnaturally human-looking hair, a gaunt skull-head, spikes all over the back half, and its front arms end in fangs instead of claws. Some Shou Tucker vibes here for sure, and the fact that one of your party members is a rescued canine/feline experiment does imply that these odd Zenenes might very well be experiments related to Red XIII.
The remake identifies them as a chimera made out of the parts of different animals, noting that they are so intelligent that they're uncontrollable... and the model just makes them look like spiky lions with angry faces. And don't get me wrong, it sure is a cool model, but comparing it to just how ragged and wretched the original Zenene is, Remake!Zenene actually feels less like a hideous failed experiment that shouldn't see the light of day and just... a generic weirdo animal. Probably the only enemy that the remake dropped the ball on, I feel, which, yeah, well, they can't all be perfect.
I'm happy that I can just go 'what the fuck Hojo'. I'm happy that there's a name to place to the madness that Shinra makes, because I am delighted at how quickly everything went utterly weird and bizarre. Like these "Vargid Police". What's a 'Vargid'? Why are these things called a 'police'? They are just floating strips of flesh with two horns, six demon eyes, a row of a half-dozen mouths arranged vertically, and four noodle-like limbs. What in the utter fuck is this thing? Oh, and it floats. It's just this bizarre flesh monster that resembles nothing in real life, I can't even go "it's a weird dog monster" or "it's a weird crab monster", because what is this thing even supposed to be? What a creepy fucker.
The remake keeps everything the same, not adding any more detalis other than the textures, and it still looks as creepy as ever. The lore explains nothing about these guys, too, just noting that they're monsters created by Shinra, that are "now feral after some escaped the lab and bred in the wild." Yep, somehow these abominations are a sustainable species with a population that can survive and expand. I would say 'what the fuck Hojo', but he is probably happy that his creations can breed considering the extent that he modifies his facilities to see some inter-species breeding.
Brain Pod
The biggest "???" enemy in the post-breakout Shinra buildings are these Brain Pods. Other than the name, you'd be forgiven into thinking that they're just another weird robot. A lot less generically spiky and threatening than something like Moth Slasher, perhaps, and it's a weird bizarre teapot thing with a robotic arm that's holding the 'lid' of the teacup. Weird, but more in a whimsical way. You'd expect to see this in, like, an episode of Mickey Mouse or something. It's neat, but I did find them weird appearing next to the Zenene and Vargid Police as part of the creepy, unleashed horrifying science experiments. Sure, the name "Brain Pod" implies that there's a brain in there, but knowing that there's a brain and seeing a flying teapot is two different things. The remake, likewise, makes them look weird but still kinda cute and not the most threatening...
...until you realize what's going on in the animations. What the fuck. There's a literal human head just stuffed underneath the teapot. Sure, the remake changes it to a creepier Resident Evil science experiment head, which is significantly less creepier than just a weird red-nosed little old man, but neither one of these make any real sense. What? Why is a 'brain pod' a floating teapot with a human head that pops out and attacks you by vomiting out green 'refuse'? Not even the remake's lore really explains much, just saying that they're a 'copy of human brain' in a tank that expels waste matter that builds up.
Yeah, Shinra built a whole lot of these floating pods with human heads inside, that can attack by expelling refuse (vomit and... other things) and there's a cute robotic hand so the heads can pop out. So yeah, what the utter fuck, Hojo.
Hundred Gunner / The Arsenal
We get a bit of a boss rush at this point of the game, though. The second-stringers fight two bosses in a row on a descending elevator, the first being the Hundred Gunner, a transforming mobile artillery base tank thing. It's got two gatling gun arms, three tank turrets, and weird looking wheels. It looks kinda static, but there's actually a surprising amount of animation as those gatling guns (each barrel is itself comprised of six smaller barrels if you look closely) actually move around like fingers, constantly shifting as it rotates between its attack animations. It's got laser beams in between those gatling guns. It sure is a Shinra death-machine, and the fact that you fight it while descending an elevator means that your melee attack simply can't reach it. Pretty neat.
Heli Gunner / The Valkyrie
After you kill the Hundred Gunner, it's immediately replaced by the Heli Gunner, which is a floating helicopter robot with multiple rotors, and sometimes it will rotate around and point those thrusters under it as a spinning laser cannon at you. And sometimes it drills you. For some reason it can cause your party members to fall asleep. Not a whole ton to say here, both Gunners are pretty cool death-machines. They get fancy new names in the remake, although I do really like the charm of 'Heli Gunner' and 'Hundred Gunner'.
Rufus Shinra & Dark Nation / Darkstar
Apparently, unlike his no-action dad, Rufus Shinra, the newly-elected president, walks into battle with his fancy white suit (particularly fancy in the remake) and his pet dog, who is named the edgy name of Dark Nation. Or "Darkstar", in the remake. Also, he lugs around a shotgun. That's literally all he does in battle, he just pulls out his goddamn double-barreled shotgun to shoot the super-soldier with a sword the size of a small man. As with Reno, he's probably going to be a cool character, but I did feel like he was a bit of a boring boss fight, badass shotgun animation aside. Hopefully he'll grow on me as one of the main villains of the game. If nothing else, he has a far, far better fashion sense than the rest of the Shinra higher-ups.
The dog, in addition to, well, being a giant bio-engineered wolf, can also cast barrier on its owner. What a good boy.
Motor Ball / M.O.T.O.R.
The final boss of the first huge act of the game is this guy, Motor Ball! Or "M.O.T.O.R." as the remake calls him. To give some context, after fighting those three other bosses, our party has this whole fun little minigame where Cloud rides around on a motorbike slashing Shinra goons on bikes as they go through a high-speed chase on the highway. And then, at the literal end of the road, a giant Mad Max meets Transformers vehicle shows up, with six spike wheels and two giant tank cannons... and it transforms, revealing that it's got a robotic upper body with literal blades for arms, and it continually shifts between being a half-robot and a tank. A surprisingly badass final boss for the Midgar chapter of Final Fantasy VII, and a pretty cool one to go out on. Like the Hundred Gunner, they put in a fair amount of work into the animations here.
The remake keeps a lot of the details the same, albeit giving it more... 'realistic' proportions, I suppose. Reminds me of Proto-Eva 05 from the Rebuild of Evangelion movies, actually. It's also got a pair of much, much meaner-looking stabby claws, but like most of the other FFVII remake bosses, M.O.T.O.R. is actually extremely faithful to the original.
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And the fall of these four bosses our heroes finally reach the open-world map! Which is a great place for me to cut off, so see you guys next time! This is also the last batch of monsters with a 'remake' counterpart, so from here on out it's the 1997 models all the way. Next up we explore the open world around Midgar!
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