Reviewing Monsters - Final Fantasy VII, Part 5

This segment of the game has me go through the Cosmo Canyon storyline, where we get a whole lot of exposition about the Lifestream of the planet and how souls and the planets work in the world, as well as what's essentially a Mass Effect 'loyalty mission' for Red XIII. I do like this, I do like that we're slowly getting backstory for our secondary characters. So far Barret and Red has gotten one, and Cloud sort of has a flashback, so I'm very curious to see what the rest of the party's "loyalty" stories are going to be. This leg of the journey I found to be a lot more fun. I guess I just really don't like the Gold Saucer? I'm not sure what about that place rubbed me the wrong way, the music and the level design is great, but I guess I'm just not a huge fan of the emphasis on minigames. 

A lot of the common enemies in Cosmo Area is shared with the ones we've seen in Gold Saucer and Gongaga, but then Cosmo Canyon's got a whole lot of enemies that's tucked away in a dungeon, and so does the Nibel area!

Desert Sahagin

A repainted version of the Sahagin enemies I meet in the sewers of Midgar is the Desert Sahagin. It's a kappa turtle-man that lives in the desert because... it actually kind of makes sense. Some tortoises do live in the desert, and since FFVII's Sahagins are specifically turtle-folk instead of fish-folk, I guess these guys are just part-desert-tortoise or something. 

Skeeskee

...is that Pen Pen? From Neon Genesis Evangelion? A penguin with claws on its flippers and spiky red hair? Well, the Skeeskee has a bunch of green hair, spiky platypus legs, a spiky flat tail and the kanji for "rage" on its chest, so it's a couple of magnitudes more angry than Pen Pen. It runs around with its "Rage Bomber" attack and can deal surprisingly large amounts of damage for that part of the game. They're found in a mountainous canyon, which... I'm not sure if penguins do. I don't think they do. I'm not sure what this guy's deal is, but it sure is a weirdo. 

Griffin

Making more sense as a bird enemy encountered in a mountainous canyon, the griffins are pretty standard depictions of the mythological creature. Part-lion, part-eagle, FFVII's griffin has a particularly neat large green tail and a fun bushy... beard? Does that count as a beard? Also, its tail is modeled after a peacock (which it uses in some of its attack animations) which is just such a small change to a traditional griffin, but I feel like it changes a fair bit of the vibe of this enemy. The griffin is not a particularly hard enemy, although sometimes it spawns with a bunch of Skeeskees. The gimmick is that sometimes it takes to the air and gets an evasion and defense bonus, but I've never had any trouble with the griffin so I didn't even notice the flying bit.

Bagrisk

Okay, so the Gagighandi isn't the only basilisk enemy. "Bagrisk" here (actually just the katakana reading of 'basilisk') is far, far more memorable, though! It's got crazy-looking chameleon eyes, a grinning devil-mouth with a forked tongue, six lizard legs and a pinwheel made up of colourful feathers on top. A far, far more fun-looking enemy than the pretty boring Gagihandi! Actually low-key one of my favourite enemies from the Cosmo Canyon area. 

Heg & Sneaky Step

These guys show up in the "Cave of the Gi" dungeon, a bizarre undead burial grounds (???) of the ancient enemies of the Cosmo Canyon residents and Red XIII's parents, the Gi Tribe. And the ghosts of the Gi tribe just hang out there, despite a whole flashback telling us about how the dead souls of the world return to the planet. Two repainted enemies show up here. Heg (Nidhogg in the Japanese version, a reference to a dragon from Norse mythology) is a slightly different version of the Crawler enemy in the Mythril Mine. 

Sneaky Step's more interesting, it's a repaint of the Zenene enemies, which, if you'll remember, are some of the evil science experiments released by Dr. Hojo in Shinra HQ. Are these members of the same canine-feline species that Red XIII and his parents came from, and that Hojo just captured them? Or are these like, zombie versions of Red XIII's species? We'll never know. 

Gi Spector

So the primary enemies in the Cave of the Gi are these guys, the Gi Spectors. Who are the ghosts of the dead Gi Tribe! What was that about 'returning to the planet', Bugenhagen? These guys just turn into floating skeletons. I don't really care all that much about them, but I do appreciate the tattered cape and the visible purple ribcage. It sure looks pretty wraithlike! I didn't realize until looking at the concept artwork that their heads are just yawning, gaping voids surrounded by headgear. Pretty cool! I really do wish we learned a bit more about what the Gi Tribe actually are, but sure, ghost dungeon!

Stinger

Parts of the Cave of the Gi is filled with spiderwebs, triggering these quasi-minibosses called Stingers, which have powerful attacks that always deal 3/4'th of your hero's health bar. It's a pretty cool giant spider! Albeit with four legs. And a head unit that looks like a bizarre fanged saucer. It's got three eyes, and I kind of like just how utterly bizarrely impractical those long legs would be if it really exists in real life. Even real-life daddy-long-legs and harvestmen don't have quite a disparate difference between its legs and its body! A pretty cool and surprisingly tough miniboss, I actually got into a fair bit of trouble in the Cave of the Gi after fighting a bunch of these, which was the reason I decided to go and actually grind for experience and gold. 

Gi Nattak (and Soul Fire)

The final boss of the Cave of the Gi is a giant floating upper half of a giant tribal warrior. And I do mean upper half, you can actually see the fucking spine of the thing hovering below its massively-adorned clothes. I don't think that would actually get into a more PG-13 game in this time! The Gi Nattak shows up with two floating fireballs called "Soul Fire". The Soul Fires will cast fire spells on themselves (which heal them) and sometimes 'take over' and possess a character, hiding within them and dealing fire damage to them. Gi Nattak himself just deals huge amounts of damage and sometimes straight-up drains health from your party members. 

It sure is a decently impressive-looking tribal enemy -- I personally don't care for those sort of enemies, but the fire buddies and the exposed spine does make him way more memorable than most of his ilk. The fun thing about this fight? Gi Nattak is an undead being, and undead in Final Fantasy apparently work the same way as D&D undead do. Which means 'holy' spells will wound them. Which means you can use your Cure and Heal spells on the enemy -- something you otherwise would have no reason to do -- and damage Gi Nattak faster than any actual regular attacks would. Using a Phoenix Down (the 'revive from 0 HP' item) on Gi Nattak will straight-up kill him. 

Golem

This neat-looking robot with a huge underbite is one of the possible encounters in the Cosmo Area, but I never met him! I only fight penguins, turtle-men and griffons! The Golem apparently slowly advances towards the party every 'turn', and gets stronger and stronger as he does so, meaning you need to beat him within a time limit. Not much to say here, he's a fun, chunky-looking robot. I like him. 

Nibel Wolf & Battery Cap

The next area is Nibelheim, which we briefly explored during a flashback segment when young!Cloud and Sephiroth hung out there. One of the common enemies is just a big brown wolf called a Nibel Wolf, which somehow because of the power of stats is more powerful than half the Shinra robots we've faced before. I do appreciate that the 'repaint' enemies do feel a lot more spread apart compared to FFXIII, though! 

Battery Cap is a repaint of the Search Crown. Still weird, still cool, still shoots lasers for some goddamn reason. 

Valron

Its Japanese name is "Balron", a reference to the Balron enemies of the Ultima games, which of course is derived from Tolkien's Balrog. He's a pretty cool demon enemy, I like the sleek shape of its long, xenomorph-esque head and the teeny-tiny pinprick eyeball it has. It's got pretty neat devil wings, fangs, and I think pants? Not a whole ton to say about the Valron, he's a cool demon enemy. I really actually like just how much the enemies in the FFVII overworld sometimes just doesn't give a shit about if they thematically fit. You'll have wolves and griffons and monster insects, and then randomly you get enemies like Joker, Valron and Hellrider. 

Crown Lance

You can find the Crown Lance a bit earlier too, but I've only managed to find them near the Nibel Area. They're pretty neat, flying jellyfish enemies. It's nothing particularly special, but I do like that it's got two kinds of tentacles (the little ones on top are 'lappets' and the longer thicker ones are  'oral arms', if my old biology knowledge is accurate), and the long, tapering ones even end in fleshy hands! That's surprisingly creepy. They're weak, but they swarm your party and they can apparently switch out their formation on the front and back row to access different attacks. Which would be neat if they don't die in two turns. Still, cool floating jellyfish enemy is still cool!

Dorky Face

We'll close off this segment with the monsters encountered in the Shirna Manor dungeon. I did find it a bit odd that this game spent so much time and effort crafting the map for the Nibelheim Shinra Manor, which felt like it should serve far, far more of a purpose in-game than just a fancy backdrop for a flashback. And I'm right! Turns out it's a whole dungeon, and probably one of the times in the game where the enemies start to really force me to pay attention instead of "spam Beta". As another Shinra facility, this is another one where all the creatures are implied to be escaped experiments -- you recruit one as a party member, and there's even a hidden laboratory with a study and a dungeon and torture chambers and everything!

The most common enemies are these guys, the Dorky Faces ("Funny Faces" in Japanese) which are flying balloon jack-o-lanterns with a cute little ribbon on top of their head, and a body that's just a bunch of sharp blades. Or, as that Moebius card art shows, tendrils of cloth. They're the 'weak but numerous' enemy of the mansion, but even then they can be a massive dick because they will spam attacks that cast 'confuse' and 'silence' effects on your party members. They don't hit for much, but when Cloud slashes Barret with his big-ass sword, now that will hit for a lot. I do appreciate this a lot, I do appreciate that this fun jack-o-lantern balloon enemy is actually memorably annoying. 

Mirage

The Shinra Mansion, I think, really punishes players that either rely too heavily on magic spells or stolen enemy skills (guilty), but also those that rely too much on brute-forcing with physical attacks and never bothering to upgrade materia or getting enemy skills. The Mirage enemy is just a floating hand-mirror with a bunch of extra technology accessories here and there, but it will 100% reflect all magic spells that you cast onto it. Which is what happened when my stupid ass just double-spammed two AoE magic spells on a swarm of Mirages and Dorky Faces, which led to a near game over. Again, once you figure out the trick the Mirage is easy to beat down with your regular attacks, but it's so neat that the enemies are starting to require specific strategies to beat. 

Ghirofelgo

Ghirofelgo, roughly borrowing its original Japanese name from a combination of 'guillotine', 'fell' and 'ghost', is... he's a huge muscle man with a creepy mask, blonde hair, a lower body that's a combination of a moped and a giant guillotine, and he's hanging onto a giant chain suspended from the ceiling. Whether he's a ghost, or a cyborg, or some Mako mutant. The Moebius artwork goes a bit too over-the-top in making it look like something out of a Japanese horror movie or something, but I prefer the Ghirofelgo a lot more for the sheer ridiculousness and absurdity of it being a muscleman with a mask just hanging onto a giant chain with its lower body being a big-ass guillotine. 

The gimmick is that Ghirofelgo can... well, he has a chance every turn to fall onto the ground from his giant suspended chain, at which point he just sort of has to waste a turn climbing back up to his chain. He's also got really high HP, and my first couple of encounters really burned through my magic points until I looked up the enemy and realized that it can be one-shotted with the enemy skill 'Laser' or the magic spell 'Demi2'. Why is this giant guillotine cyborg possibly-ghost monster is so weak to lasers, we'll never know!

Black Bat

It sure is a bat! I don't think these guys show up a ton in the Shinra Mansion, and even then they usually die thanks to my area spells. I looked up their stats and they have a high evasion, which I suppose is meant to be their 'gimmick', but they're just so outclassed by all the other enemies in the mansion. It sure is a giant bat! 

Jersey

This guy's name is horribly mistranslated from "jajji", which, of course, is the English word "Judge". On the surface it's nothing too exciting, it's just a pair of scales with a clown-panther robot face on the bottom. But if you don't figure out its gimmick it'll be hard to kill it! Depending on which side the scale is leaning, Judge here will be completely immune to either physical or magical damage, and it will basically alternate its 'lean left' and 'lean right' forms depending if you manage to hit it with the type of damage it's weak to.

This guy is also ridiculously rare, only spawning in a couple of specific rooms in the Shinra Mansion, and it took me way too long to hunt it down and wait for it to use the "?????" enemy skill, which, thanks to a bug, it will only use if it's at full health. A weirdo! 

Lost Number

Technically the 'boss' of Shinra Mansion, Mr. Lost Number here is actually fought around halfway through the mansion, after a particularly convoluted puzzle involving finding the numbers of a combination of a safe, as well as trying to figure out how the safe minigame even works. Also, this boss is pretty large, certainly far larger than the safe it is supposed to burst out from. Considering its name, "Lost Number" is easily inferred to be yet another one of Hojo's many, many experiments, yeah? We fought a numbered seafood-chimera-special back in Shinra HQ. Lost Number is initially fought in that first form, where it's just this mass of... colours all glued together. Half the face is an angry purple face with green arms, the other half is a mass of Muppet-like hair and tentacle limbs. The Moebius art makes it look more like one half is made up of octopus tentacles and the other of tentacle-like musculature or something. 

At halfway through the fight, the Lost Number assumes a completely different form -- I got the completely red-and-yellow form, which is highly resistant to magic attacks. But that's because the damage that triggered its transformation is a magical damage! If I had focused on beating Lost Number with physical attacks instead, its purple side will take over and it becomes resistant to physical damage instead. It's such a cool idea of the creature essentially adapting to whatever damage manages to reduce its health pool to half, but thanks to how the Lost Number originally looks like, you could also take it as the Lost Number's two halves battling for dominance, and the one that's not resistant simply gets 'killed off' by your party's attacks, allowing the resistant half to take over. 

Looking at the two alternate forms of Lost Number, they're pretty interesting, too, huh? Obviously a lot more cohesive than the original Frankensteined version. I did think the red, hairy-tentacly form reminds me of that angry drummer Muppet, but I also do like the more ape-like purple/green creature. I still prefer Specimen H0 512, but there's a fun, imperfect vibe to this guy that makes its designation as a strange, incomplete "Lost Number" work so well. 

Ying & Yang

So after gaining access to the creepy secret laboratory in the Shinra mansion, the final segment of secret, dungeon-like tunnels is populated by Ying-Yang, a single two-headed monster with two targetable heads. They did the 'let's leave the music to a minimum' thing they did so effectively with the final Shinra HQ segment, and Ying-Yang here is... well, the animation is pretty damn spooky. It's just a two-headed ReDead from Ocarina of Time, with slightly weirder head designs and claws and spikes! It should not be this spooky. But the combination of the mood set by the lack of music, as well as the bizarre animations. It's like this thing (these things?) find it to be such an effort to even stand or keep their balance! And just take a closer look at those heads. The way the torso even has a deep cut in-between the heads, the bizarre neck-folds and the glossy, almost doll-like heads... honestly, one of the creature designers have gone on record on saying that Ying-Yang is his favourite monster design, and I can't blame him!

Like Mirage, Lost Number and Judge Jersey in this dungeon, Ying Yang also has a physical/magical gimmick going on. Ying is weak to physical attacks, and Yang is weak to magical attacks. And if you reduce their health enough, you'll get the rather creepy announcement that "Ying/Yang is happy", which is a sign that... the weaker head is going to do a suicide attack. Which is just so, so unsettling. Honestly, it's pretty great -- hell, this would fit right at home even in something like Resident Evil. And just look at that concept art! At this point in time I've played through a bit of Mt. Nibel, too, but I feel like Ying-Yang and Lost Number are such bangers to end off this game on.