FF7 Remake Intergrade- Monsters of Legend (No Damage/No Gotterdammerung)

This was one hell of a rush. This wound up being both not as difficult to ND as I thought and trickier than I thought it would be at the same time. Every round except the last one has to go pretty fast. All of these guys get really nasty if left alone, or alive too long. I give a lot of credit to the thought put into stacking all of these guys together. As for builds, the inclusion of Type-0 Behemoth called for Cloud and Tifa to lean into physical strength. I've seen Buster Sword used just fine, but Cloud's magic stats are already pretty solid and Punisher Mode with Hardedge is just ridiculous. This gauntlet also reminded me of just how good Disorder is, especially if you can get it to interact with Skill Master by chaining other attacks together. I was almost afraid that my previous Behemoth strat was a fraud because it seemed like Tifa would always have to start the fight with Concentration activated. Thankfully, I pulled it off fine without it this time. Aerith's inclusion in this fight made it a little more interesting. Behemoth has a high resistance to Stop so I had to give her with a staff that had the Debuff increase. Her magic stats are through the roof no matter what, so you're not defanging her by not giving her the Mythril Rod. I got some mileage in some runs by having her use Ray of Judgment on the Horns, but left her with not much to do when finishing him. She worked better lobbing magic at him since the Horns can't counterattack magic anymore. As you can see, a lot of this challenge required a build that hinged mostly on the Behemoth fight. Thankfully, there's no cave in Desperation Move, so he's actually easier than before. However, he does require that much optimization to pull off a ND run with. He's also just a little annoying- satisfying to pull off, but its work. Besides him, surprisingly, the Bombs gave me more trouble than the Tonberrys, which really aren't that hard so long as you're careful. The Bombs are fickle and will always throw you off if you try to predict them too much. Having Cloud and Tifa with the Elemental + Fire on their armor was required, too. I had the best luck with pressuring it by having Aerith cast Blizzaga just slightly after Cloud launches into Punisher Mode. The timing was really tight, but it worked consistently enough for me to roll with it. That was usually enough to interrupt whatever it was doing. They're easy to Stagger and finish off otherwise. Tonberry, again, is not that hard, and he's actually pretty chill while you take care of the Bomb in Round 4. If you're fighting him without Barret and his Focused Shot, it's going to be a bit of a race filling up that Stagger gauge. Don't waste timing switching between Cloud and Tifa, just issue as many Focused attacks as you can as simply as you can. Having the Warding + Subversion on Cloud wasn't necessary, but I kept it just because I had the room. Finally, I do admit, I played it a bit safe with Malboro. I might be interested in trying a faster, riskier run where I can actually get a Stagger off on him. Unfortunately, Malboro only pressures if you attack it while its doing Chow Down or Bad Breath and its mouth is open. I'm fairly sure you have to do a fair bit of damage on him before he starts doing either of those. Once I made it to the final round, I really just wanted to see how effective Sleep would be on it and to my surprise, he stays down for a while. By that point, I was ready to just take it a little slower and have my fun with it. I know I probably could have taken him a little faster by not throwing a Stop on him right after the Sleep wore off, but nah, I had fun cheesing him. Again, maybe I will try a faster run some time in the future, but for now, I'm happy with this one. This was a fun challenge. Didn't take as long as I imagined, but still felt l had my work cut out for me. A very fair, balanced little bit of fun. I liked it.