Reviewing Monsters - Final Fantasy VII, Part 6

Last we left off was at the end of the Nibelheim Shinra Mansion, which had a bunch of creepy Shinra experiments. This time around we're ascending Mt. Nibel to get some plot-relevant stuff after a whole lot of exploration and side-missions focusing on telling the story of our secondary characters. Which means, yeah, main Cloud/Sephiroth plot time! 

This segment primarily covers my journey through Mt. Nibel and the Rocket Town areas. I had a bit of progression delay at this point because I did a whole lot of backtracking to load up enemy skills like Beta and Aqualung into my second E. Skill Materia, as well as to grind gil to purchase attacking materia for the three new party members I basically recruited one after the other, and once I got the Tiny Bronco unlocked there were a lot of random side-quests and sub-areas that I ended up visiting. 

(Other posts on this blog is going to be delayed for a bit while I deal with some IRL stuff. I do have a couple of longer articles like these ready to be posted, though, so hopefully it won't be too much of a content drought.)

Kyuvilduns

I actually first saw a lot of the enemies in Mt. Nibel a long while back, during the Kalm area flashback. We had a level 1 Cloud hang around Sephiroth and travelled through Mt. Nibel alongside a super-powerful max level Sephiroth who one-shots everything in his path. Now Cloud and party is upwards of level 30, and these guys are proving to be... well, not particularly difficult for this specific enemy. "Kyuvilduns" isn't quite as bizarre as something like the Kimara Bug since it's... it's just a weird giant insect. But the more I look at it, the weirder it is! It's got a head that just ends in a huge spiky spear, it's got four legs, a wasp-like stinger at its butt, and two extra spikes that jut out from its shoulder blades. The wiki says that they're inspired by mosquitoes, but they could make an argument for this being one of many, many different types of insects out there. 

I appreciate that they had a bunch of different-looking spiky, jumping bugs in this game. We had the Grashtrike from forever ago, the Kimara Bug not too long ago, plus the bug-dragons that are Ark Dragon and Bagnadrana... again, they could've stopped at a single bug enemy, but they made a lot of them and I appreciate that a lot. 

Sonic Speed, Screamer & Twin Brain

Mt. Nibel features a bunch of 'repaint' enemies, but, again, it's been a while since we've seen some of them so it doesn't feel repetitive! Sonic Speed is a repaint of the 'Formula' enemies from the Junon overworld, although Sonic Speed doesn't quite have the same amount of cool attacks as Formula. Screamer is the more powerful version of the Madouges in Mythril Mine... I don't really have much to say about him. I still don't know what it is, some sort of golem or some shit, I suppose. I don't actually think I met a single one of the Screamers in my run through Mt. Nibel. 

Twin Brain is.... huh? They are a repaint of the very memorable Vargid Police enemies in Shinra HQ, but I'm still not sure if they're just escaped science experiments (from either the Mt. Nibel reactor or the Shinra Mansion) or if they were somehow natural and Dr. Hojo tried to clone them or something? Also, its new name is 'Twin Brain', which is more descriptive than 'Vargid Police' while also telling me absolutely nothing about what this thing is or why it's purple. 

Zuu & Tonadu

Apparently this giant bird is a recurring enemy in Final Fantasy! Speaking of having a lot of options, FFVII has got a whole lot of different-looking bird monsters too. From the sleek Formulas to the owl-bear Zemzeletts to the very dinosaurian/vulture-like Zuu, I do appreciate just how many bird variants exist in the world of... what is the world called? Just the 'Planet', I suppose? Zuu draws its name from Anzû of Mesopotamian mythology. I don't think there's anything particularly notable about this one, but apparently the wiki told me that it's a dangerous enemy because it can fly to be exclusively far-range. I went through Mt. Nibel with Barret and Vincent, the two gun-wielding members of the party, so I certainly didn't experience that!

Showing up on the Woodlands Area which I explored after this, is a palette-swapped Zuu, called "Tonadu" (from 'tornado', of course) shows up there. Not much to say about that guy, either. 

Dragon

The first enemy during the Sephiroth flashback segment was a huge dragon that Sephiroth basically one-shotted to death. And after two buggy dragons, here we are, with our fantasy party of adventurers, going up and murdering dragons! Well, Meteorain-ing and gunning them to death, at any rate. The dragon is pretty standard-looking, the standard European "lizard with bat wings, spikes and fire breath" dragon. I'm not complaining, there's enough to make this look distinct than most other European dragons, and FFVII's got a bunch of weirder draconic enemies we've met before anyway. 

Materia Keeper

This guy is the boss of Mt. Nibel. Or acts like one, he sort of blocks your way halfway through and he's very, very powerful compared to the rest of the enemies in the area. I do really like the somewhat over-the-top design. I mostly like those legs, with upside-down 'fingers', giant spiky 'thumbs' that double as the tips of spider legs, and the general feel does look like someone took a dragon, a spider, and the arm design sense of the Zeon from Mobile Suit Gundam and mushed it all together into the Materia Keeper. 

Beyond being a big powerful monster, I don't think there's actually anything much that this guy has in terms of being a boss other than absorbing fire (which fucked me over when I had Vincent trigger his Galian Beast ultimate and he went ham with fire spells that I can't stopped) and being able to cast 'Cure 2' on itself. A cool looking boss, but I wished that it had some sort of story significance or something. Even its name is a bit of a misnomer, it certainly doesn't keep any real hoard of materia or anything! 

Velcher Task

Speaking of weirder-looking dragons, after making it out of the surprisingly labyrinthine Mt. Nibel, you get into yet another segment of the overworld! Part of it draws monsters from the 'Nibel Area' pool, but then you get into the 'Rocket Launchpad Area' pool. Okay! The first new one here is the Velcher Task, which is... a frog dragon? It's otherwise not really notable, but I really do like how it looks, with the puffy cheeks, the puffy chin, fangs, and horns, and a general posture that just screams "frog dinosaur" or something. I like this guy, he's weird. 

Bahba Velamyu

????? What? The Wiki goes on a bit of a stretch calling this monster's name a combination of "baba" (grandmother in various languages), "round" and "mutant".  I can sure see the "mutant" part, but not much else. What the fuck is this one? Even trying to describe it makes me scratch my head. The central body vaguely resembles an eyeless face with a head that just tapers off into a long stinger and a mouth that looks more at home on a lamprey than anything flesh-coloured. And then it's got two legs that just jut out sideways and end in claws. It's got an eyeball on the back of its body, and its animations is just bizarre. This doesn't even look like an organic species that exists in the same ecosystem as the Velcher Task or the Kyuvilduns. This looks like something created from spare parts when Hojo was making the Vargid Police. Or someone hit 'randomize' on a Spore monster creator. What? There's no explanation to this, and it hangs out in the forest, a bit too far away to blame Dr. Hojo or the Mako reactors as being the source of these abominations. I love this. This is so bizarre and so fucked-up looking. It's so weird. 

Palmer

In addition to the Turks, there's a board of recurring Shinra executive members that are basically this big band of antagonists. We've seen and fought Rufus Shinra before, but there's also evil bitch Scarlet, big brute Heidegger, token good teammate Reeve and this guy, Palmer, who's just fat, dresses up like Watson and completely incompetent. During the Rocket Launch Pad Town segment, which opens up a huge part of the overworld for exploration, Palmer basically tries to be the boss. I say 'try', because all he does is shoot you with his Mako gun. Granted I thought he would be a joke boss that would die to a single hit, and I am actually surprised they programmed him to take on multiple hits from Cloud's big-ass sword; Vincent's transformation and Tifa's kung-fu punches, but still. It's a fun boss, and he 'dies' by running away and getting run over by a random truck that shows up out of nowhere. 

Attack Squad

Now after recruiting Cid and finishing the Rocket Pad sequence, there's a bunch of things that I could do and the world is huge. I was playing this with a huge Final Fantasy friend of mine checking in, and he basically helped to consult a guide for me so I can play it spoiler-free. So the side-quest that I was told to 'get over with' quickly after the Tiny Bronco is going off to Wutai in the Western continent, which is Yuffie's side-quest! Without spoiling too much, turns out that she betrays us, steals our materia (there's a whole sad backstory involved, of course) and leaves most of the party at the mercy of these red-coloured Shinra goons. Except Shinra goons suck, and even with only two members in your party without materia, it's very, very likely that you just beat the shit out of these SOLDIER wannabes. 

Thunderbird, Edgehead & Razor Weed

Far more threatening are the local wildlife in the Wutai region. A repaint of the earlier 'Needle Kiss' enemy, the Thunderbird doesn't really look different, but as you can probably guess from the name, it shoots lightning blasts onto your entire party. These guys show up in groups of three or four, which made them pretty annoying! 

Edgehead is a repaint of Cripshay from the Train Graveyard. This makes a bit more of a sense in the Wutai area with its many bugs and plants, though. Razor Weed, meanwhile, is a autumn-flavour version of the Mandragora enemy. It attacks by screaming. Not much to say here, these two are pretty decent variations of the enemies we've seen before. 

Tail Vault

One of the basic enemies in this area are these fun guys called Tail Vault. On the surface they're just colourful lizards that look like bubblegum. But the more you look, the weirder it looks! The different looking fins, the cheek-fins, the fact that its rear legs look like someone wore socks that are two sizes too large...  pretty fun for what's otherwise yet another lizard enemy. This game's got a lot of those, huh?

Bizarre Bug

I'm not sure why this guy is identified specifically as a 'bizarre bug'. You'd think that the Grashtrike or Kimara Bug would be far, far more bizarre than this guy! It's just a colourful beetle with a scorpion tail. Sure, it's got a somewhat more humanoid face. Its gimmick is that... it can fly. Not very 'bizarre', surely, in a world where Bahba Velamyu or the Vargid Police exists? Although considering how terrifyingly unsettling the remake version of Cripshay is, maybe when the remake eventually reaches this part of FFVII, we'll see that the Bizarre Bug has like, unnatural fleshy parts on an insectoid body and I'll go, 'yep, pretty nasty'. None of the enemies in this segment have any real huge gimmick about them, since you're supposed to fight them without Materia.

Adamantaimai

The rare encounter in the Wutai region (or at least it was a bit difficult for me to find him) is this slightly more monstrous tortoise. It's a tortoise with horns and fangs and claws, and its skills mostly revolve around defending itself. Relatively simple as far as these monsters go, but I like it. 

Jayjujayme

Okay, uh, I'm not sure what... how do you even pronounce this guy's name? Let's see the katakana... Jejujemi? Okay, that's a lot easier to swallow than Jayjujayme. These guys show up in the Da-Chao Mountain in Wutai, sort of the mini-dungeon. The Jayjujayme shows up with Bizarre Bugs, and it's a cute little rainbow-coloured grub with a massive fanged maw that shoots out silk from its mouth. Like the Adamantaimai, a pretty simple enemy, but I like it. 

Garuda

A recurring enemy who draws its name from the giant bird from Hindu and Buddhist myths, this Garuda is a humanoid bird-man with a humanoid torso, but a delightfully very bird head. A pretty cool looking enemy for sure, even if it's a pretty simple one -- again, a lot of these Wutai enemies are balanced around your party not having any useful materia, so they don't do much interesting things. It's neat to see for sure, though, and fits the location of a mountain with god-like statues carved onto its side. 

Foulander

I guess we're just using random mythological beings in Da-Chao mountain, huh? I never actually encountered these guys, but a more appropriate transliteration of Foulander's Japanese is actually "Fall Rangda", a reference to a demon queen from Balinese mythology. It's a pretty cool and certainly bizarre-looking enemy, but I don't have much to say about her. 

Rapps

I thought this guy is a repaint of the Deenglow model, but turns out it's a brand-new one! Don Corneo is the boss of the Yuffie side-quest, and he's replaced his Aps pet with a bigger one, Rapps. Apparently it's a reference to how in Final Fantasy, the second tier of magic has the suffix of '-ra'? Okay. It sure is a giant needle-nosed wyvern monster, and, again, the big challenge here is that your party just happens to not have any materia to fight Rapps! Pretty fun, even if he is just kind of a bland boss. I kinda wished we had Don Corneo ride him or something. 

Gorky & Shake

The next couple of enemies are enemies on a pagoda in Wutai, where Yuffie can undergo a 1-v-1 challenge to prove herself or something. All these monsters are actually Wutai martial artists that 'transform' into a monster form with their ninjutsu. And despite Wutai having a very China-meets-Japan vibe, the names of these bosses... all have Russian names? Gorky (a.k.a. Gorkii; the game isn't very consistent in translating the name) Gorky of 'strength' transforms into a Valron, but is otherwise not too difficult; the idea of a 1-v-1 boss run is interesting but all it amounts to is to buff Yuffie up with all your best Materia. 

Shake of 'Speed' is a little bratty girl that transforms into a Skeeskee. And... again, they're here mostly for completion's sake and just how bizarre that all of these martial artists transform into such an eclectic selection of monsters.

Chekov & Staniv

Chekov of 'Magic' transforms into a Twin Head, which just adds to my ever-growing question on what this is supposed to even be. I remembered Chekov's fight to be stupid not because it's hard, but because it's a 1-v-1 fight and Chekov just keeps stunning me, locking Yuffie into basically being stunned and doing nothing for like 15 seconds as she gets stunned and her time bar charges up. 

Staniv of 'Weapons' (oh, hey, finally one that makes sense) transforms into a Screamer. Again, not a whole ton to say here. All the pagoda minibosses have names that is a reference to theater -- Maxim Gorky, William Shakespeare, Anton Chekov and Constantin Stanislavsky respectively. In the original Japanese version they apparently talk in ways that reference their origin, but none of this is retained and all that's left is me scratching my head why a ninja-kung-fu man is called 'Chekov'. 

Godo Kisaragi

The final boss of the pagoda is Yuffie's own dad, Godo Kisaragi, who's got a somewhat complex situation with his daughter, which involves her disgust at him losing the war and turning their hometown into a tourist attraction... something I felt could've actually been focused on more instead of info-dumped to us in-between the far more prominent "Yuffie steals our shit" and "Don Corneo returns" and "clenched-teeth alliance with the Turks" stories. He transforms into an interesting multi-faced god that looks like it draws from multiple different religions at once, but, of course, most closely resembles an Asura. Some sources call the three faces as 'human', 'beast' and 'cheater' respectively, although they do resemble masks from Hindu or Buddhist mythology. The golden face can cast healing and support magic; the red face is the very aggressive one with damaging spells; and the white face cast debilitating-damage magic. Not a whole ton to say here, I tend to never really have much to say about enemies like these and I tend to feel uncomfortable trying to compare how they look to their religious inspirations. Certainly a pretty cool final boss for a martial arts pagoda, though. 

Sea Worm & Hippogriff

One of the very optional areas that my friend recommended me to go is one of the South-Eastern islands that's apparently called the Mideel Area. It's got a bunch of great enemies that gives a pretty high experience, gil and AP yield for this time of the game! We've seen a bunch of these enemies before; the Sea Worm is a marine-themed version of the Land Worms from Gold Saucer. It is coloured like a particularly festive sea cucumber! The Hippogriff is, obviously, a repaint of the Griffin in Cosmo Canyon.

Head Hunter & Under Lizard

The Head Hunter is a barely-different look of the Grashtrike from... from forever ago. Again, it's neat, and I do like that all of these guys make somewhat of a sense hanging out in a more secluded island. The Under Lizard is on the nearby Woodlands Area, which is the location of a very plot-relevant dungeon that I can't get access to at the moment. The Under Lizard is a red Gagighandi, but with the ability to 'frog' people. Not much to say about either one of these.

Spiral

The new enemy in the Mideel area are these "Spiral" enemies, which show up in swarms, and are able to roll up into a multi-segmented spinning ball. It gives me very, very strong pillbug or isopod vibes, except it's got gangly limbs associated with a larger animal. It's like a reptile-crustacean fusion, I guess? I like the mass of spikes jutting out of the front segment of its chitinous hide. They're not particularly annoying (which is why Mideel is so great to farm), they can just sometimes roll up to reduce the damage they can take. A pretty fun isopod-lizard-pillbug monster for sure. 

Dual Horn

We're into the Woodlands Area monsters now, which is the southernmost island on which the clearly plot-relevant Temple of the Ancients is located. And one of the new enemies is the Dual Horn, which is a giant gorilla-dinosaur with a grinning fanged face and two gigantic horns jutting out of its head. Sometimes you don't need too much for a monster concept. Sometimes you just need a huge kaiju with extra horns. 

Slaps

...and sometimes you just have a swarm of goddamn hornets. "Slaps" is such a bizarre name for a swarm of hornets, and after fighting monsters like the Dual Horn or Bahba Velamyu, it's so weird to have a brand-new enemy be a bunch of bees, huh? These guys actually inflict a lot of random status effects, from berserk to poison to paralyze... to sadness. Like, okay, I kind of get the first three, but the fourth one? I mean, I guess I'll be sad if a hornet stung me, but still. 

Kelzmelzer

Speaking of cool bug enemies, we've got the Kelzmelzer! Which is certainly a mouthful, and is some sort of horrifying centipede monster. Like, I've actually seen real-life centipedes do this 'threat posture' before, but the Kelzmelzer has got two gigantic forward-pointing needle arms that sprout out of his shoulder, two giant stag beetle chompers on its head, and its legs are so long and creepy! And despite its creepy form, it's not actually too much of a threat, just a standard enemy that can inflict poison.

Again, I appreciate that so much about these Final Fantasy enemies. Sometimes you have just overworld encounters that are just so fucking weird but they're just a random monster that someone designed and put in the game to pad out the encounter table in this area. 

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Odin

Oh, right, I forgot all about Odin last part! We get the Odin materia after beating up Lost Number, and... he sure is an Odin, yeah? He's a dude with an... interesting yellow skin and a somewhat ogre-like head and spiky horns. That sure is an interesting take on an 'Odin' for sure! And he's riding a six-legged horse. Not quite the eight legs of the mythological Sleipnir, but at least they remembered why Sleipnir is so weird, unlike robo-Odin in Final Fantasy XIII. Odin's attack in this game as a summon is the 'death' spell, making him one hell of a hail mary to toss out at your opponent. He just straight-up bisects the enemy models after bursting out of the moon! If the enemy is immune to instant death, though, he unleashes Gunge Lance Gungnir on the enemy. Not a whole ton to say, I do find the summons in Final Fantasy to always be cool, particularly when you're in dire straits and then... unleash ODIN, ALL-FATHER OF THE GODS and IFRIT, GREAT DEMON OF HELLFLAME and CHOCO-MOG, A MOGGLE RIDING A CHOCOBO upon thy enemies.

Kujata / Kjata

Mistranslated as 'Kjata', this summon is yet another one associated with a mythological being, this time Kujata, the many-eyed cosmic bull from medieval Islamic cosmography. The Kujata Materia is a bit of a long-winded easter egg to get that's absurdly simple if you know where to go, but otherwise won't be something that I would've discovered naturally. The animation's pretty cool; whereas most of the other summons are basically just one of your more common spells magnified, Kujata is all the elements, and you get to see a barrage of the elemental attacks attacking your enemy, disintegrating and reforming, before Kujata himself shows up in the final attack. Like the mythological version of itself, FFVII's Kujata has got multiple eyes and horns, and a pretty cool set of fangs and hair for a god-bull. 

Leviathan

The reward from the Wutai sidequest is the mighty Leviathan materia. Leviathan, of course, being the giant sea monster from Judeo-Christian mythology. It sure is a giant water serpent, and it's apparently the god-guardian of the Wutai people. Not quite a Chinese/Japanese dragon, but it does have the long beards of a Chinese dragon. As expected, Leviathan is the Water element summon. It sure is a cool giant big sea serpent!

Galian Beast

I said I wasn't going to cover party members, but party member Vincent's Limit Breaks basically act in a way similar to summons, turning him into an independently-moving monster form with a bunch of fancy attacks. Regular Vincent, if you don't know, is basically a badass vampire gunslinger D&D character, and his first limit break transforms him into the "Galian Beast", which is a hulking, demonic werewolf-like beast with giant tusks and a ragged mass of hair. The later-released Dirge of Cerberus spinoff starring Vincent really tries to make the beast look a lot more humanized by giving it a more human face, more human hair, clothes and toning down his bulked-up physique, beastly face and horns. It's still a cool design, but considering that Vincent is supposed to basically embrace his inner Hulk/Wolfman/Mr. Hyde side, I feel like they're kind of missing the point just to make him more traditionally cool. Even changing the skin colour from the bizarre, unnatural purple to the more standard gray-black feels like a step down to make him just feel like a generic cool-wolfman-guy that you can find in every other Japanese anime or video game. 

Death Gigas

Vincent's second Limit Break is the physically tanky "Death Gigas", a form clearly based on a Frankenstein's Monster. It's been a while since I've seen a Frankenstein's Monster that's mostly plays straight with hulking, mismatched limbs, bolts and a chunky square jaw and oversized feet -- most 'Frankensteins' I tend to see in media nowadays tend to be a subversion where there are a lot of non-human parts being thrown in or the result isn't humanoid. There's something just unsettling about something that's clearly humanoid but doesn't quite have the right proportions. The feet and arms are just a bit too big, y'know? Frankenstein ain't as marketable to the anime crowd as a wolf-man, but I do like that Vincent's limit breaks, it seems, is going to take us through a full tour of traditional Western horror monsters. 

Anyway, that's all the monsters we're covering this time! It's a bit of a bizarre run-around as I try to follow a guide, but that's how all traditional J-RPG's work, apparently! See you guys in the next one.