No Doors Challenge — Part 24: Schizo — Final Fantasy VII

Schizo is by far the hardest boss so far, but it didn't really need to be quite this difficult. Firstly, the fight would have been a lot easier if I had done the inevitable X-Potion grind before going to the northern continent. Secondly, I made the fight a lot harder for myself by equipping the Enhance Sword on Cloud instead of the Yoshiyuki. Not only is the Enhance Sword straight up weaker than the Yoshiyuki, the Yoshiyuki also gets a damage bonus for each dead party member. However, the Enhance Sword has a higher Magic stat bonus than the Yoshiyuki, and since my plan was for Cloud to use magic the whole fight (or at least until the left head died), and I didn't really plan for Cait and Red to die, the Enhance Sword seemed like the correct choice at first.

However, while Cloud did indeed mostly use magic, he of course ended up getting a few Limit Breaks, and Cait and Red would always die eventually, so I soon realized that equipping the Yoshiyuki would have been better. I had many failed attempts before this successful one, so it's not like I didn't have a chance to correct this mistake, but I actually enjoyed having a properly challenging fight for once in this otherwise very easy challenge, so I actually didn't want to make the fight easier.

On this attempt, Cait and Red survived longer than usual (Cloud had the Fire Armlet equipped and was the only one I could realistically hope to keep alive for the whole fight). Their job was basically just to stay alive as long as possible, heal Cloud when needed, and use their Limit Breaks when they got them. I also had very good Dice luck on this attempt, so I got a lot of damage in before Cloud had to do the rest of the fight by himself (trying to revive anyone who died was pretty much hopeless). Immediately after Cait and Red died, Cloud nearly died as well thanks to a counter (the left head uses a counter after every 6th attack used against it). At that point I figured the left head must be close to dead, so I decided to only attack with Cross-Slash from then on to maximize my chances to kill it with fewer than six attacks. Thanks to Cloud's Fire Armlet, the right head would always heal back the damage done by the left head, so I knew that if I could just kill the left head before its next counter, the only attack that could kill Cloud was the left head's final attack. To avoid dying to the final attack, I simply made sure to only use Cross-Slash when Cloud was fully healed.

Once the left head died, I had pretty much won. All I had to do at that point was make sure I didn't kill the right head immediately after a counter. But then he ran out of MP, so I didn't even need to worry about that anymore.

Playlist:    • No Doors Challenge — Final Fantasy VII  

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(Plus, the Enhance Sword just looks cool.)