The Platinum Road #7 – The Planet’s Hope (Final Fantasy VII Rebirth)
Hot off the heels of replaying Remake to get the PS5 platinum properly, I figured it was best to strike while the iron was hot and to move onto Rebirth in preparation for Revelation next year. I was going to play in August anyways but seeing what I have to do, I’ll need all the mechanical skill I can get. The remaining trophies are simple, but that’s not to be confused with easy – it's absolutely not going to be.
I’ve been writing this article for a while, apologies for any mistakes/inconsistencies
Stage 1: Wow, that was Easy! Oh…
The first proper start on our journey takes us to Gilgamesh Island to come face to face with the Legendary Swordsman himself. Before that though, we have to fight combinations of the summon fights we have fought previously – the options being Bahamut Arisen + Titan, Phoenix + Kujata and finally Alexander + Odin.
I fought them in the order above and they were all first time attempts. Feeling myself, I went on to fight Gilgamesh and also thrashed him, giving me the trophies ‘Bladesmen of Legend’ and ‘Materia Completionist’ (The latter is for developing the Materia with Chadley post Gilgamesh). My feelings of success were starting to fade as doubt crept in - I checked my settings and unfortunately, you guessed it, the game was set to Easy. I just figured I was way overlevelled. Admittedly I was a little disheartened but I’ll have to do it in Stage 3 anyways.
Stage 2: Once more, with Pain
Rebirth is just straight up too long a game to be doing an Normal and Hard playthrough, especially since I’ve already done a normal playthrough. Gilgamesh marked the end of the Normal mode stuff so now I’m moving onto the Hard playthrough. In theory it shouldn’t take too long since I can skip cutscenes and dialogue but since I’ve skipped straight to Hard, I do want to see the cutscenes and whatnot again.
The only reason I would need to do side quests is for the levelling manuscripts as I already have the trophies for side quests and luckily you can mark them as completed from the get go. If I need to, I can choose to reset the side quests in Chapter 12 as none expire thanks to the games open world nature.
As I did with the Hard mode playthrough of Remake, I’ll be narrowing this down to just Events and specific tasks I needed trophies for and the boss encounters as to not detail an entire playthrough. Without doing the side quests, there’s little more than a boss rush anyways. I’ve cut out the bosses I don’t have anything to say about.
Materia Guardian (Chapter 1) - 1st Try
Escaping Kalm with the two weapons I needed - Crystal Cross for Yuffie and Jarngreiper for Tifa. I don’t have Yuffie in the party yet but there’s still weapons that need their abilities mastered, one for each character as it happens - Crystal Sword for Cloud, Jarngreiper for Tifa, Plumrose Rod for Aerith,, Fafnir Rifle for Barrett and finally Brisingamen for Red XIII. All that leaves is Yuffie and Cait Sith, who are unlocked in Chapter 6 and 9 respectively.
Midgardsormar (Chapter 2) - 2nd Try
I remember back in the original playthrough that Midgardsormar was quite the wall to get past, even for an early boss. Even now with all the relevant materia and weapon upgrades, he was still proving to be a bit of a challenge.
Elena & Rude (Chapter 3) - 2nd Try
Turks are back from the first game and while you managed to fight Reno and Rude separate before their join up at the Sector 7 plate, here all Turk fights are against a duo. On top of that, there’s a new face here - Elena. Elena is really annoying to fight favouring grenades and other stunning techniques. One loss to underestimating their mid fight super move, a mistake I didn’t make the second time around. Cloud focused Elena while Tifa focused Rude. Aerith was there for support.
Mythril Golem (Chapter 3) - 1st Try
The first example of a boss fight with my less experienced characters, this one starring Barrett and Red XIII. Nothing too bad, a battle of attrition since the boss heals but still a first try.
In my first playthrough visit to Junon, I missed out on the Commendation of the Junon Parade . It’s formation dependent and I did gather all 10 troops the first time around so I don’t know if I didn’t do the right formation or just didn’t do well enough or what but this time around I once again gathered all the troops and made sure I had the right formation. There was 3 quick resets, a reset midway through part 1 and on attempt 5, I locked in and got all three done on the 1st try, earning ‘Stealing the Show’, one of the remaining challenges for Johnny’s Hotel.
Roche (Chapter 4) - 9th Try
Honestly I forgot about this fight which is annoying because I used a lot of MP fighting Terror from the Deep earlier in the chapter. The key to the fight is to find a good angle and here it was elemental-lightning on the armour so I didn’t have to worry about backing out of the fight.
Grastropod (Chapter 6) - 1st Try
This one is cool in the way that you can choose your fight partners between Aerith and Barrett or Tifa and Red XIII. I’ll be honest, I can’t remember which team I chose but I know it was the opposite of my first playthrough. Beyond that, not much to report on a fight like this.
Yuffie is on the team now, so we can get her weapon abilities caught up. The Corel region monsters are a bit annoying to fight but I just buckled in and got it sorted - Savage Dagger, Crescent Sickle and Crystal Cross mark Yuffie as all sorted, finally just leaving Cait Sith.
Custom Valkyrie (Chapter 7) - 1st Try
Not a bad boss when fought back in Remake but it doesn’t really elicit the kind of emotions that warrant it’s return. I also wonder if this is a sign of the expansion of Final Fantasy 7 starting to show it’s cracks by having to have a boss or several in each chapter.
Dyne (Chapter 8) - 13th/14th Try
The first real roadblock of the run. This is one of the games solo boss fights, this one with Barrett. The fight itself isn’t too complex, it’s actually fairly intuitive and learnable. A couple annoyances are the Paralysing shot not being Electric and Point Blank seemingly having infinite startup range. Barrett just doesn’t do that much damage and Dyne has a lot of health.
Anuran Surpressor (Chapter 8) - 5th Try
Coming straight after the Dyne fight, you can use anyone but Barret for this, so my team was initially Cloud, Aerith and Tifa but Tifa was swapped out for Yuffie on the third attempt.
Entering Gongaga with Cait Sith in tow, it was time to work on his weapon abilities - The Resounding Megaphone and Golden Megaphone were simple on the way to Gongaga village. The Crystal Megaphone wouldn’t be done until I reached Cosmo Canyon post Crimson Mare because of it’s awkward requirements (Requirements, not even the proficiency).
Gi Nattak (Chapter 10) - 24th Try
I was already struggling with the basic Gi army on the way to the boss. 11 tries + 12 resets at the start + winning try was what it took. It was really just the first phase that was giving me grief, for whatever reason I just couldn’t manage my dodges.
Once phase 2 started and you have limited time to finish the fight, I just locked in and played the best I had ever played.
Diabolical Variant (Chapter 11) - 1st Try
Another returning boss from the Yuffie DLC, this one from Deepground’s combat simulator. Pretty much the same as the one there except this boss duplicates when hitting certain health thresholds. Not much of a challenge since the duplicate spawns with the same health as the original. I never had more than two on the go, honestly an easier encounter than some of the basic mob encounters.
Just after Cait Sith reunites with Barret and Aerith, there’s an elevator in which you can do a Box throwing minigame. I struggled a little with the box throwing before this but since I forgot to save beforehand and failure meant a full chapter restart, I locked in and got the 10 boxes required on my first try. There’s no trophy but it’s another item on the Johnny list.
Galian Beast (Chapter 11) - 27th Try
Hoo boy, this was a tough fight in the normal mode and I was dreading it for this playthrough. My fear was valid because damn this is a rough fight, made worse because one of the mandatory team members is Cait Sith (Who is actually not bad, he’s my favourite of the later 3 additions but his MP was low thanks to previous encounters and for a fight like this I want my experienced A-Team). This took me two sessions to beat, with 12 in the first session before I went to bed and a further 16 attempts (Including quick resets when the opening 10 seconds didn’t go well.
The first attempts just didn’t go well but Day 2 things looked up - I loaded Cloud up with Block and Defense materia to build up pressure and I just had to hope for a really good order of moves. Revival earrings on Aerith and Cait Sith helped alleviate some of the pressure. In the end, I’m surprised I even got it - Cloud was down, Aerith and Cait Sith didn’t have enough MP to do anything and would have died to a stray wind but some frantic attacking and dodging the erratic second stage got me the win. I’m just glad Vincent is on our team for the next one.
Roche Rematch (Chapter 11) - 19th Try
The final boss in the four boss slog that Shinra Manor offers is a Cloud 1v1 fight against Roche (again). This fight is the third style, having had a mix fight in Remake and a full bike fight earlier in Chapter 4. Here, Roche has been worked on by Hojo so he has some new darkness powers.
After the Galian Beast fight (and I suppose the Diabolical Variant much earlier on), I was down to very low MP. Roche in all encounters is more of a glass cannon, hitting very hard even when I had Manawall on (leaving myself no MP). Thankfully fails were quick resets and it was just a matter of persevering. The winning attempt was my best one which is nice.
Finally being set free in the Nibel region, I made my way over to the Chocobo guys house to pick up Cait Sith’s last weapon - Gjallarhorn. Unlike every other weapon, the Gjallarhorn is a trade for Chocograss, a collectible unique to Nibel. I did immediately feel a sense of dread when I realised this wasn’t a normal item but a specific limited collectible - one I had 34 of and needed a further 11. That dread went away nearly instantly when I realised Chocograss was the floating onion things. I found the 11 rather quickly all things considered. Getting Gjallahorn and getting the weapon ability in one fight finally earns us ‘Well-Rounded’. I’m not looking forward to doing this in Revelation - 7 weapons for 7 characters here, it’ll be 8 characters with god knows how many weapons.
I hope you like Loveless, as I’ve got to do it twice. I already have the trophy for doing it S-Rank but I need to do it with the two other ladies - Tifa and Yuffie for Johnny’s treasure trove.
The Golden Saucer has one more thing for us before we progress the story - I need over 1000 more points to get the Dio Autograph for Johnny. I did some research online, the best way to get the points I need is to grind easy mode Colosseum challenges. What I didn't realise was everything was set to level 70. We’ll come back later to sort that.
Abzu (Chapter 12) - 6th Try
You can’t keep this guy down apparently with only the Turks rivaling the rounds he’s gone - poor thing has no horns or his tail left which also means this fight plays a lot differently. The fire weakness is a lot less apparent here and due to the arena there’s no water attacks. Having Don Corneo ride him and buff him is interesting but not having him as a separate entity makes it a bit of a moot point. Going from three rounds of fighting into this boss did leave my team in a rough spot so every round was an uphill battle from the start - once that was done, the fight wasn’t too bad, just not one with much strategy.
Rude & Elena Rematch (Chapter 12) - 6th Try
More of the same from the fight in Chapter 3 though the reviving of the downed teammate took me off guard the first time. Elena can get in the bin though, the constant explosive and stun spam makes this fight nigh intolerable to deal with.
Rufus (Chapter 12) - Whoops (30+ Tries)
I hit a wall here, in a six hour play session, I dare say half of it was against Rufus. I think I saw phase two less than a handful of times. The fight is the same conceptually as the one in the first game - can’t attack directly, attack when reloading, braver staggers. The difference here is Darkstar joins the fight in the second half rather than the first and Rufus stays aggressive. I managed to do the Rufus fight on Hard in Remake first try so I really don’t know what happened here. Having to reassign materia every attempt was also a downer before every attempt. In the end for the sake of progression, I put the Streamlined Progression just to get past. I’ll make it right later.
Red Dragon (Chapter 13) - 6th Try
I saved my game before this boss and took my first day break since starting playing a week ago. Red Dragon is a cool fight complete with arena hazards you can use to your advantage - getting the dragons fire to weaken columns you can knock them over for some heavy stagger buildup. The thing that makes Red Dragon a right pain in Hard is that his special move - Crimson Breath, is always at it’s largest range and highest damage even when you cripple the chest (the solution in Normal). Elemental-Fire on your armour doesn’t even work since the attack isn’t considered Fire.
5 attempts with Tifa made no progress but with Yuffie it was first try.
Ironclad (Chapter 13) - 2nd Try
Unique amongst bosses as this is the only one you have to stagger for narrative purposes, in this case to cause the boss to dislodge an orb from a Cetran tower. Once that’s done, you just kill it as normal. As a fight, it has some telegraphed instakill attacks that I did fall victim to the first time but otherwise not much to the fight at all.
Rude & Reno (Chapter 13) - 2nd Try
After failing to stop the big first attack in the first attempt, Attempt 2 was a complete wash for the Turks. Cloud managed to get Reno on the backfoot and it was game over from there. Rude is tough but when it was one vs three he didn’t stand much of a chance.
Moss-Grown Adamantoise (Chapter 13) - 8th Try
Not considered a boss fight but you can’t proceed without beating it. A very annoying encounter thanks to the boss constantly applying defensive buffs and having a very strong ranged attack. Constantly applying fire damage and removing the defensive buffs was the play.
Stage 2.25 - Things fall apart at the End of the World
After the Whispers miniboss, the rest of Chapter 14 is dedicated to two bosses - Jenova Lifeclinger and Sephiroth Reborn. While you can swap builds between the two fights and there are checkpoints, they are back to back with no downtime. Checkpoints are appreciated as each of these bosses are long grueling affairs with multiple stages
Jenova took 16 tries spread over the various phases - Deaths during the Tifa/Cait Sith phase, one with Cloud/Yuffie then five on the final bit for a total of 8 before resetting due to poor phase 3 composition and status. Following that was 7 more deaths - 1 in the first phase, 2 in the second, three deaths to Yuffie and Cloud and a death in the final phase.
Sephiroth was touch and go but I was managing for a while - 2 deaths to Whisper Bahamut, 2 as solo Zach, 4 to Sephiroths wings and em… 39 to the final phase. 39. 9 more than Rufus before I changed settings to get past him. The issue was, Cloud had very little MP and while he does get healed by Aerith at the start of the phase and she has full MP but she just wasn’t prepared for the fight, not least because she didn’t even have Revive. Cloud couldn’t revive because he didn’t have enough MP. If one went down, I had no way to revive the other. Given that Sephiroth can stun and Skewer as well as the different Whisper attacks, I just struggled. There was maybe 5 attempts that got to the last phase with one being like maybe a couple hits off but it wasn’t meant to be. Going back in, I’m sure some better MP management and actually having revive on Aerith would do the world of difference but a guide is probably more fullproof.
There’s been a three day break, in which I played some Rugrats and started the original Infamous to give myself a little buffer time. Once again, first up is of course Jenova Lifeclinger. Following an Optinoob guide (Somewhat, I only really messed with Cloud’s build), and some better playing from myself, I’ve gotten it on my 10th try rather than 16th. There was a death in the first stage, two in the second, Tifa and Caith Sith had four deaths, Cloud and Yuffie had two but the final stage went well with a first try attempt.
Moving onto Sephiroth, I once again consulted the guide to edit Aerith’s loadout (Once half of why the original attempts tookme into the wee hours of the morning). The first phase was easy as always but 4 deaths to Cloud’s solo phase led me to do an early reset, giving Cloud a Rage Ring. The only problem is that it also reset Aerith’s materia loadout as well as Barret’s but by the time I realised I didn’t want to reset AGAIN.
On this second (third) try - Cloud and Zach easy, one death to Cloud Solo, two deaths to Whisper Bahamut, cleared Solo Zach no problem, 3 deaths in the Wing phase thanks to Octoslash which finally led to our rematch alongside Aerith. Having the Infinite Fire heal really helped despite not having the necessary Aerith materia. It took 7 deaths before I finally did it and my god I was very happy indeed. Almost enough to forget the original attempts. 47 vs 17 deaths isn’t too bad at all.
Stage 2.5 - One Last Stop at the Gold Saucer
Before we move onto Chadley's VR based Hell, there are some things to wrap up in Chapter 12 – One last show of Loveless, giving Rufus the business the old fashioned way and finally grinding the coliseum for Dio's autograph.
Despite it being last on the list, it’s the Coliseum grinding we’re going to be doing first. I probably wasted my points on the random items the first time around so this got left to the wayside. Giving myself max damage makes the arena go very quickly.
Loveless is just loveless, not much to say there. Dying against Rude and Elena one time, I just decided I don’t care about doing things legitimately. I reset the Chapter AGAIN to be able to go see Chadley. There’s no more delaying it, VR Hell awaits…
Stage 3: In my VR Prison
I've been dreading this the whole time – there's no positivity online about these challenges, described as asinine, gruelling and unfair. I'm willing to give some of them a try but I think I'll mostly be consulting guides as they have these challenges down to a T and quite frankly Hard mode has drained me dry of patience. I'm not putting any of the advanced streamline progressions on, just max level AP so I don't have to grind – I've spent enough time here.
For the first 3 Brutal Challenges – Army of the Damned, Requiem for the Scorned and Unending Nightmare. The 7th Seal – I used Cloud, Aerith and Cait Sith (Cait Sith wasn't needed for the first). Using a guide by Optinoob, I used the 'Stop Earth' strategy which is to freeze them with Cait Sith, buff with Aerith and use Magnify-Quake on all enemies. The attempts being 1st, 3rd and 1st Try respectively
Challenge 4 - Hellion’s Intonemen - was 5 attempts on Day 1 and First try day 2. Deaths came from the Adjudicator with Reflect, another the Hecteyes with Reflect, there was a death to the Tonberry King (Unless this was in Challenge 2 instead?) and finally a couple deaths to Yin and Yang's Despondent Strikes After completing Challenge 4, despite it only taking 10 minutes on the new day, I'm going to limit myself to one challenge a day for the two remaining Brutal Challenges and all 9 of the Legendary ones. Partly because I'm also playing Infamous at the same time and partly to keep my sanity in check.
That was the plan at least, but I have a confession - I used the Streamlined Progression. I got to Round 7 of The 7th Seal before failing twice to Round 2. At this point, I just decided I was finished with the whole thing. The cheats went on and I blasted through Brutal 5 & 6 as well as the 9 Legendary tasks.
Completing that earns us ‘Virtually Renowned’ and opening the special chest at Johnny’s Seaside Hotel gets us ‘7-Star Hotel’. That would be it however I forgot to do ‘Staggering Success’ which elicited a very strong laugh. A quick visit to the Titan VR rematch netted us ‘Staggering Success’
At 183 hours, the Platinum trophy, ‘The Planet’s Hope’, is mine. Good golly gosh. I love this game and all the characters but between Hard Mode and the VR challenges, I almost want the Gi to get the Black Materia. I can live with using the Streamlined Progression since I did Hard Mode legit. I think if the challenges were more interesting conceptually than just ball busters I’d be more willing but the game gave me the tools so I used them. That’s Final Fantasy done with until the release of Revelation next year. Hopefully we get a release date at Gamescom.
For a breakdown:
Original Playthrough - 124:31
Hard Mode Playthrough - 54:25 (Including Gilgamesh Island 0:55, 5:35 worth of attempts against Jenova and Sepiroth as well as 2:55 for the second round of attempts)
Extra Stuff - 0:50 (Extra Loveless, Arena grind)
Brutal Challenges 1-4 - 2:15
Brutal Challenge 5 and God Mode ending - 1:30 (183:31)
Staggering Feat - 0:05 (183:36)
