Reviewing Monsters: Final Fantasy VII, Part 9

Part nine of my ever-going review of Final Fantasy VII's monsters. This one took a while, because I took... quite a bit to complete a lot of the available exploration given to me by the Highwind, and a huge chunk of that is to basically retract my steps and re-learn a lot of the Enemy Skills to the two empty E-Skill materia that I can obtain at this point in time. Also did a lot of farming to unlock a lot of the limit breaks for my roster. There's also a Chocobo-breeding minigame that's really obscure, obnoxious and the game really doesn't tell us anything about this. Thank god for online guides for older games, huh? 

Anyway, at this point in time a lot of the world is open to you, and in addition to a lot of collection quests for skills and whatever, there's also the 'Huge Materia' sidequests going on, as well as a bunch of new areas. Not a lot of the enemies are new, which is why this one took a while for me to write since there simply aren't much in terms of new enemies, at least until the back end of the Huge Materia storyline. 

Goblin

Located on a single unmarked island on the Eastern side of the map is the 'Goblin Island', an island with a forest filled with nothing but Goblins. And FFVII's goblins are... well, they have the same skin tone as humans, run around with sneakers, jackets, beanie caps and boxing gloves, and have a special skill called 'Goblin Punch'. It's just a forest filled with these guys and I do kind of feel bad to come in and beat them up. This random little easter egg is basically only relevant in the game to beat up goblins, learn the (very unremarkable) Goblin Punch skill and to loot some specific nuts for the Chocobo breeding. I do always like secret areas like this, although I do wish we had just a bit more about the goblins. Maybe we've gotten other goblin-centric locations in previous Final Fantasy games or something?

Cactuer

The actual "Sabotenda" enemy in this game is translated as "Cactuer" instead of "Cactuar"? It's a bit bizarre, FFVII's Cactuar is actually meant to be a weaker version of the regular Cactuar, and this Cactuer is the game's real Cactuer. Okay, then. Like most incarnations of the enemy, Cactuer can cast the '1000 Needles' skill, which deals, well, exactly 1000 points of damage. And it's got a stupidly high amount of evasion. Like the Goblin, the Cactuer is only ever found in a specific location, the Cactus Island, another one that's unmarked. The Cactuer is also a bit of an easter egg, because you need to land the Morph skill to turn this guy into the highly-useful Tetra Elemental item, but while finding the Cactuer is easy, beating it with the Morph ability is a lot harder than it looks because of his high evasion. It was a bit too frustrating for me to do and I actually skipped it, but this is the sort of easter egg that I'm a huge fan of. 

Crysales

We've visited part of Mideel before when we got the waterplane, but now the entire island is open to our characters, including the forest area which is swarmed with these guys! Their name clearly a warping of 'chrysalis', and they're a repaint of the Jayjujayme enemy from Wutai. This one has a more boring but realistic dull-brown colour, and spits sleeping scales. 

Gas Ducter & Slalom

After a series of cutscenes in the Mideel Area when you find out what happened to good ol' Cloud, you get thrown into a fight over Huge Materia, and you get to fight Shinra minions again! Returning after not seeing them in a while are these stronger versions of the Smogger enemies, the Gas-Ducter. The Attack Squad also return. Slalom, an identically-coloured but differently-statted enemy, shows up in Junon's Shinra base. 

Wolfmeister

So the Mt. Corel segment of the Huge Materia quest involves a timed battle where you have to climb on a train, chase down another train, beat up a series of Shinra goons, and then do another minigame to stop the train. All within ten minutes! Two of the enemies are basically mini-bosses, like Wolfmeister here, which is impossible to beat in time unless you abuse Demi spells. Wolfmeister is actually a mistranslation of "Wolframiter", with Wolframite being a type of ore mineral. That means that this giant guy with oversized shoulders, lower arms and sword is a robot. It kinda reminds me of the Darknuts in Wind Waker with its exaggerated physique, and is actually quite a cool encounter. 

Eagle Gun

The other big miniboss encounter in the Corel sequence is the Eagle Gun, a robot eagle whose long fathers have been modified into goddamn cannons. I also like the weird curled proboscis thing that the Eagle Gun has in place of a regular beak. Very Yu-Gi-Oh, I feel, and while it's a pretty simple 'huge health' enemy, I did find this one to look a lot cooler and feels more at home with a company that creates things like the Guard Scorpion. I do like this guy a lot, although sadly you only ever fight the Eagle Gun once in the entire game. 

CMD.Grand Horn

The next part of the Huge Materia sidequest brings us to Fort Condor, a place that earlier is basically just a pit-stop for a RTS-style tower defense minigame. It's... pretty dated, I'm not going to lie, and the rather odd controls doesn't help my enjoyment of it -- but I did beat it and had decent fun doing so. You can win through the minigame, or you can just say 'screw it', fail the RTS bit and fight the boss to complete this leg of the quest. Commander Grand Horn here is just a brown version of the Grand Horn enemies you've met earlier in the game, not a whole ton to say here other than I do really like the Grand Horn design but the original Grand Horn enemies are kind of forgettable, so I'm happy it got reused for a boss. 

Death Machine & Guard System

You face off against Ultimate Weapon (who we'll cover later on) for a bit at Mideel after completing those two bits, then we get a pretty long and emotional sequence with Cloud and Tifa... yeah, I really did like that sequence. After that, our heroes raid the Shinra underwater submarine base, which features a lot of repaints! You can actually already encounter Death Machine and Slalom much earlier since they spawn in a corridor in Junon that leads to the actual base; and as my friend pointed out, it's an easy way to farm EXP earlier in the game. Otherwise, not much to say, they sure are Shinra robots we've seen before.

Hard Attacker & Corvette

More repainted robots, although I actually thought the Hard Attacker was new. It certainly wasn't memorable as "Bullmotor". It's so weird, I do like that this is basically Mad Max BB-8. The Corvette, a repaint of the Sword-Dance enemy from the Shinra HQ, show up here and it's extra-thematic since it's an underwater base with lots of fishies swimming around underwater tunnels. 

Submarine Crew, Underwater MP & Senior Grunt

Yeah, your heroes beat up a bunch of Shinra staff. Two variants show up, and I do feel like they added a bit more pre-battle dialogue for a lot of these mooks. There's really not much to say, they sure are Shinra goons. Senior Grunt's arm kanji reads "form is emptiness", and he attacks with hadokens. 

Gun Carrier

New models now. One of them is, uh, just a god damn tank. It's a cute, chunky orange tank and I love just how much the turret kind of reminds me of a trash can, but otherwise... it sure is a tank. 

Guardian

That's more like it! Guardian's a bit more boring since he's just humanoid, but he's certainly more interesting than just a toy tank. It's got two huge clubs for arms, and a fun little straight, horizontal visor. Not a whole ton to really say here, it sure is a Shinra robot!

Diver Nest

Being an underwater base, apparently some of the underwater creatures can get into the tunnels? I am surprised we don't feature more underwater-themed enemies, though. You'd think they would keep one of those seahorses or a repaint of Acrophies in this place. Instead, we've got Diver Nest, a pretty cool mutant manta ray. It's honestly mostly the same at first glance, but I really love how the head looks like it's covered in bone, like it's the skull of some sort of demon. The manta-ray's feelers end up looking like demonic horns, and its normally yawning mouth is now a maw full of teeth. It's a simple but cool change!

Ghost Ship

And hey, you've got a Ghost Ship! It's a giant ship that acts as a common enemy, with its figurehead being a massive skeleton that holds an oar and moves in a continual motion as if rowing. I've seen a lot of ships made out of bones in Warcraft, Zelda, Witcher and whatnot, and likewise I've seen a lot of Charon-expy undead ferrymen; but I don't think I've actually ever seen the undead ferryman integrated as a ship's figurehead. Or if I have, it certainly isn't quite as charmingly kooky as Ghost Ship here. He's also got some real cool attack names, like "Saint Elmo's Fire". It's pretty funny, and this one is actually relevant because you need to use the Morph materia to kill this specific enemy in order to complete a sidequest later on. 

Carry Armor

The boss here is this guy, the Carry Armor, which proves to be a surprisingly difficult fight! After the relative pushovers or HP sinks that are Jenova-Death and Two-head, it's actually surprising to see a boss suddenly reduce my entire party's HP into the red. Carry Armor here is sicced on you by Reno, and the implication that it's merely a robot that carries items into the submarine or something, not a dedicated weapon like the tank up above. And hyet it's deadly, even though its central body looks like a damn mailbox with a bunch of accordion legs. I love just how wobbly the legs look, and how it's got two gigantic pincer hands that sprout out of its head. The Carry Armor's gimmick is that it's one of those bosses whose health is split among three bodies, and it can and will grab and immobilize one of your party members while fighting you. Not the most impressive robot, perhaps, but certainly one that I'll remember. 

Emerald Weapon

You steal Shinra's submarine and can now travel underwater! And turns out that out of the various giant kaiju-sized robotic antibodies released from the Northern Crater, one of them, Emerald Weapon, just happily swims in the depths of the ocean. This guy looks a lot like a Gundam suit, and apparently is specifically based on the Neue Ziel. I always thought it looked more like the Qubeley, but apparently that one is a dead-ringer for Diamond Weapon, who we'll meet later. I do really like the look of this guy, though. Two giant shoulder-pads that end in blades, no arms, no regular feet, two giant chunky thruster-looking legs... and it just peacefully swims around in the ocean until you bump into it. And there's no way to beat Emerald Weapon at this point in the game, which is why I'm covering him now and saving Ultimate Weapon for later -- Emerald Weapon is the game's "super-boss", which means that you're only supposed to fight him after completing the story and getting all of the best equipment for your team. I never really care to play any video game enough to fight these sort of super-bosses, but it's very, very cool nonetheless to acknowledge them! Those four dots on Emerald Weapon's shoulders are its eyes, by the way, which will pop up in the form of blue and orange gems during the fight and are targetable. 

A pretty cool giant enemy boss, and honestly, I do think that my favourite part of this guy is the visual of the overworld sprite moving around in the trenches of the ocean floor; just this deep, ancient robotic being just simply swimming through the depths of the ocean. 

Poodler

At this point in time you unlock one of the final modes of transportation, the submarine. And after dealing with the Huge Materia sidequests in Corel, Fort Condor and the Junon submarine, you get to go off to deal with a huge Cid-centric storyline in rocket-city. Mostly, you beat Turks and generic Shinra goons. A bunch of final weapons and final skills also become collectible, including a pretty short but heavy bit for Vincent. I'm saying this because Poodler here is just a repaint of Beachplug, but is located in a completely optional and out-of-the-way area that you can only reach by submarine, a crashed Shinra plane called the Gelnika that carries a bunch of Shinra's bioweapons, originally meant to be used to fight Sephiroth but the plane was shot down by Emerald Weapon, a huge monstrous Gundam-looking thing that you're not supposed to fight at this point in this game. 

Bad Rap

The other enemies in the pretty short Gelnika dungeon originally just seem to be pretty generic sea monsters. And okay, Bad Rap here (it's a pun on 'wrap', get it?) is pretty weird, it's a bizarrely-coloured squid with a series of eyes that wrap around its 'neck' and a second series of pinpoint red eyes halfway up its trunk. It's weird, but considering how weird cephalopods can get, I honestly wouldn't bat an eye if a less-exaggerated version of this creature actually does turn out to exist somewhere deep in the ocean. Heck, some mollusks already have weird eyes that circle around the rim of their 'mouth', don't they? 

Serpent

Far more impressive-looking is "Serpent", here, whose name is simple but looks pretty damn impressive! Two giant arms that end in huge fins, a face that's the combination of a deep-sea viperfish and a snake, the Serpent might not be as imposing as Leviathan or Bottomswell, but I really do like the colours they choose here, and I absolutely love the combination of the huge fin-hands and the dragon-like mustache. Serpent's only found as a rare encounter in exactly one room of the Gelnika, which is kind of a shame. Honestly, I kinda wished that enemies like the Bad Rap and Serpent act as the random encounters while running around the submarine... it's kind of weird that you meet these guys in a crashed ship. I suppose they got in from the leaky parts, but it's weird that you can travel around underwater in a submarine unmolested by anything in the ocean (other than Emerald Weapon, that bitch) while a quasi-hidden crashed plane is host to so many underwater creatures. 

Unknown

There's just enough dialogue snuck in because Cloud and company do get to fight Reno and Rude of the Turks, and we get just the barest hint of what's going on in Gelnika. And suddenly we're full in some sort of Resident Evil nonsense as the monstrous abominations in the Gelnika is far, far worse than what Cloud and company has ever met in Shinra HQ and Shinra Manor. It's been a while, but god damn it, Hojo! With a lot of the other Shinra abominations, you get the sense that they're developed to at least look somewhat humanoid, although some of the weirder ones do look like some sort of abominations... apparently, Hojo can do so much worse. I'm not sure if the Unknown were intended to look like this by Hojo, or if some sort of deep-sea mutation or contact with the Emerald Weapon after the plane crashed transformed them even further. 

And then there are these guys. Three members of the "Unknown" monsters show up in the crashed Gelnika, and it's amazing just how much they are hidden and off the beaten path, because unless you're really nosey (or, like me, am using a guide) it's highly likely that you just go straight to where the game points you towards. There's literally no reason to visit the Gelnika other than to loot the powerful resources within, and unlike most other dungeons, the three Unknown enemies are far, far more powerful than most of the monsters you've met before and I actually nearly wiped to these guys. 

The first Unknown is probably the most creepy, with a bizarre face that's best described as a gigantic elongated skull with stubby, meaty feet propping it up. It's got eyes running down around the side and the back of its body, and then two metal-looking hollow eyes (or is that a nose?) grafted near the tip of that nasty, nasty nightmare-rodent mouth. Then it's got a secondary bulb that terminates in a weird tail, and then two tentacles extend into a mass of creepy, rainbow-coloured sausage fingers. Very creepy, and I can't wait for when the remake actually does these guys in HD. 

Unknown 2

Unknown 2 is juuuust a bit more silly than the first and third ones, but is no less creepy. I do like how its body looks like a cartoon long-necked dinosaur, but its head ends in a screaming spiky human skull and then explodes in a massive flower-like mass of fleshy sausages with needles sticking out of each 'sausage'. I didn't even realize that there's an 'eyeball' where each needle connects to each finger, that's nasty. That would be creepy enough but wouldn't probably look as unsettling as the simple detail that there's a green, long eyeball-encrusted tentacle bursting out of just one eye-socket. Without that tentacle, this would probably just look like a background flower in a fantasy hell-scape, but that tentacle just threw me for a loop. 

This one has some of the weirder attacks, too, with 'Abnormal Breath' causing cutesy-pink hearts to burst out of your party member as they are afflicted with confusion, or the '? Needle' that paralyzes opponents. Honestly, just due to how bizarre the lumpy frog-dinosaur body is connected to something from Silent Hill, this is easily my favourite of the three Unknowns. 

Unknown 3

The third and final Unknown is perhaps the nastiest looking one that made me go "what the utter fuck, Hojo". The first two look like a bunch of random fleshy animal parts got grafted together, but they still look like bizarre creatures. Unknown 3 looks like someone went to a butcher shop and tried to replicate the Facehugger from Alien using assorted offal, and ended up with this nightmarish thing. The more you see, the creepier it is. There's like the remnants of a spine and rib bones at the center of it, with two very sad-looking eyes. You realize the holes on the 'wings', the random extra set of eyeballs, the very human pair of hands at the end of the wings... and then just this random mass of parts dangling down the sides of the wings. In the center of the creature you get a bunch of mismatched kidneys or something that ends up tapering off into a meaty tail with a fanged mouth. 

Utterly bizarre and disgusting in all the best ways, this guy has the most varied attack of the three Unknowns. It can do 'slap', a powerful melee attack; cast 'bolt2', a lightning spell like our heroes; the obviously-named 'poison fang'... and 'creepy touch'. Consent, Unknown 3! 

Anyway, I feel like this is a great place to stop off. The Gelnika is such a moody and actually challenging place, and the sheer unexpected "oh, hey, random crashed ship with horrifying science mutants" is definitely not what I was expecting after the relatively drama-heavy sequences involving Cloud and Tifa a while back! Overall, this whole segment of running around the world trying to solve its problems while the looming threat of Sephiroth, Jenova and Meteor looms in the horizon (literally!) is a sequence that I really, unexpectedly found myself liking a lot. 

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Hellmasker

I also unlocked Vincent's third Limit Break. The past two, if you forgot, turned Vincent into a werewolf and a Frankenstein's monster, and Vincent's third transformation turns him into the Hellmasker, which is... a slasher movie serial killer! With a fun mouthless metal mask with glowing us, long ragged hair, and a big-ass chainsaw, it's definitely one that caught me off-guard because of how... humanoid it is. In addition to regular chainsaw attacks (okay, chainsaw "Splatter Combos") he's at least got a bit of Freddy Kruger in him, too, with one of his explody-beam skills being called "Nightmare". Jason Voorhes isn't exactly like, a 'horror monster' in the traditional sense, but they kind of are? Okay, sure. It's hilarious mostly because of the chainsaw, but I don't like Hellmasker here as much as I do Death Gigas or Galian Beast. 

Chaos

I unlocked Vincent's final ultimate limit break, the second that I've unlocked after Cait Sith (I have items for a lot of them, but I need to unlock all the prerequisites before actually learning the skills). Vincent's final form transforms him into Devilman Chaos, rounding out the horror movie monsters. We've got vampire, werewolf, frankenstein's monster, a serial killer and now Satan himself. The Chaos from FFVII is admittedly simple, just a horned muscular dude with huge wings, but that serves its purpose. I certainly prefer the original-looking Chaos to this bizarre trying-way-too-hard-to-be-merchandise redesign from Vincent's spinoff game, which... it's a matter of personal taste, but yuck. I did like that Dirge's version of Chaos is holding Vincent's gun, and I do like the bony gauntlets and whatnot, but I dislike everything else about that design. Overall, though, I do think that Galian Beast is still my favourite Vincent monster form. 

Phoenix

The reward of the Fort Condor storyline in the Huge Materia sub-quest is the Phoenix materia. it sure is a phoenix, I'll tell you that. I do like that its wings looks so funky, and there's a patch near its body that's rainbow coloured. Really like the birds-of-paradise tail it's got going on, too. At this point a lot of the Summons do kind of boil down to just "oh, hey, cool giant mythological monster", but again... that's what we're all tuning in for. Phoenix's pretty cool, he also revives all fallen party members. I mean, Phoenix Down and all that, y'know? 

Hades

Found among the many, many pieces of powerful items and weapons in the crashed Gelnika is the summon materia for Hades. And Hades's design is pretty simple, just a floating skeleton in a tattered wizard's robes. It's not exactly the Greek god Hades per se, and more of a generic-looking super-undead lich lord, but it's still pretty damn cool! The attack sequence for Hades is pretty badass, too, with you basically summoning a whole summoning circle, which transforms into a stony, rune-etched floor, and then stone pillars that rise up out of the ground, then an altar appears, before Hades finally materializes and unleashes every debilitating effect on the enemy. Pretty damn cool!

Knights of Round

No, you read that right, it's "Knights of Round", which, of course, is a homage to the Knights of the Round Table. The most powerful summoning materia in all of FFVII, and you need to breed a Gold Chocobo -- something that involves a very convoluted series of events that I'm not even going to try to elaborate here, but you can get this as the reward at this point in time. I don't care for either the minigame or this set of summons, although the animation is pretty dang cool even if it takes forever to finish. They sure are knights, they look pretty neat. My favourite is probably Knight #12, the right-most one here, which has a huge weird scorpion-tail-like hair or helmet. It sure is a bunch of guys, and I kind of probably would've preferred it if they were a series of knights you recruited or something? I dunno. They're neat.