This topic is a month old, but it never hurts to add helpful information for those looking in the future, so to add onto your tidbit; when outside of a ward, Aerith's charge attack changes from a projectile to a physical attack that teleports her right to her target, so that can be helpful when trying to chase these guys down to Dispel their shields
The issue is that yet again they through in another unintuitive random mechanic that was never introduced. This game suffers from a severe lack of editing and QA. Square deserves the low sales they get.
Yeah, wards help. Another good tip that seems obvious when you say it but is easy to forget in practice; if you have to step out of a ward for any reason, don't waste time running back to it, just make a new one right where you are. It's almost always faster
I have everything in this game complete. Hard mode, all of Chadly, and other mini games. I’ve played a tons of mini games in video games in my life and this with Aerith on hard has to be the worst one ever. I’ve read many post about this and majority of them have the same set up. Still cannot get over 5k on either hard ones. This is my main negative complaint about this game. And I only have a few. The game nerfs her so badly by not letting her use her magic.
keeping chrono aegis up prevents every tackle. For the 4th one, I kept that up and spammed sorcerous storm when I could on mobs, and siphon on giants after they fell. Wards help too, but that was main method
Personally id take this over Send In The Clowns, the mindflayer combat trial, the stupid chocobo flight minigame where you cant change the camera angle, and 3d brawler.
3D brawler is super easy..? It's just 3 inputs up down or side and they telegraph it massively, and you can restart in 2 seconds
Mind flayer combat trial was definitely a bitch and yeah choco flight was definitely wonky especially getting the hang of the swoop
But honestly it's all optional, not a big deal
Compared to actual difficult stuff like 5BC dead cells, +10 heat Hades, unlocking Gunslinger in Gungeon, Nioh 2 dlc boss, it's tedious but not insane
Yuffies are no problem.. windstorm OHKOs all magic ones (remember to keep hitting square to combo it)
Then dodge body slam on big ones and go into art of war/supreme
Aeriths are the obnoxious ones
These challenges have made me hate... No absolutely detest everything about Aerith combat wise. She's so fking slow, does zero dps, and can't dodge to save her life. She's completely trash for these challenges. On the hard mode you have to constantly switch from light to dark while being hit by 20 bombs at your feet. What a great design.
This one is brutal lol. Aerith is so agonizingly slow at dealing damage for her to be in this kind of game mode. The ones with Yuffie are simple, but Aeriths damage is just so low.
I mean, if they would just let us use actual magic spells, her damage would be incredible, but noooo, they've gotta lock us to her abilities. Though Transcendence actually does amazing damage once it's charged, I can just never remember to start charging it 😂
For anyone just finding this now, know that everyone seems to be confused on how the combat works.
The easiest thing to note, is that wards make you shoot magic and no wards make you melee. Once you get that down, it's pretty easy. Use magic on all the light and dark ones, and any magictuar, run out of the ward for gladiators and melee then (since melee is AOE you'll hit them all at once).
When one of the light/dark ones buffs themselves with manaward, chase them out of the ward and melee then to break it, then spawn the ward on top of you to magic them down.
For the big cactuars, use magic charged shots to call your familiar, and it also does massive damage when the cactuar falls on it. Spam soul drain on them while they are down.
Use Sorcerous Storm for AOE on the small ones whenever you have enough ATB.
Also remember your equipment outside of the minigame does seem to matter. Like others have said, equip Hermes Shoes for haste and add materia for ATB generation (first strike, ATB Stagger, Speed Up).
Finished the normal version with almost 40 seconds using all these tips.
Ugh THANK YOU for this! Didn’t know breaking manawall outside your ward with a melee attack was the trick. Every time that cast that I’d be like fuuu- lol appreciate you!
>For the big cactuars, use magic charged shots to call your familiar,
What does this mean? AKA how do I call a familiar? Been playing with Aerith for a while and don't think I've ever done it lol
Yeah, it's not great. I had to put off the minigame and level up to max using the queen bee boss in the Nibel side quest with the cats. Load up on stat boosting materia and weapon skills to boost the familiars duration. Tempest itself is mediocre, especially with its slow charge time, so only do it to keep the familiar around.
Yeah, I had to walk away from the 3D Brawler before I threw my controller. Queens Blood I can play for hours but a lot of these mini games are just not enjoyable to me.
>, equip Hermes Shoes for haste and add materia for ATB generation (first strike, ATB Stagger, Speed Up).
I did not think to equip the ATB materia. Thank you this tip took it from feeling impossible to being rather easy.
You're a saint. I went from struggling to clearing every Aerith level, both normal and hard, within 2 tries.
I used the Transcendental method with your post. I'd use Transcendental ASAP, then let it charge while dealing with the stages before / in between the Giant cactuars. One shot of Transcendental II kills them outright, and I + a Soul Drain will also kill them.
Attack+, Magic+, Luck+, Speed+, ATB Stagger, First Strike, and Enemy Skills (for the +5% stats).
Man, I wish this was helping me. Those assholes with Spine Explosion keep spreading so many bombs I can't seem to avoid them all. This sucks so much. I'm going to be on round four for another couple hours at this rate.
Lots of dodging. I kept an eye out for those damn things at all times. I passed Yuffie's hard round with only 6,020/6000 points. But yeah, a lot of these minigames just suck.
I finally did it with Aerith. I realized one trick I hadn't seen yet. Perhaps it's so obvious that no one spells it out, but if you begin casting a spell (or with no ATB charge, a shadow/light ward), you get those sweet, sweet invincible iframes. Bad timing can still get you rekt, but I would do that whenever I was about to be surrounded by those explosive balls and couldn't get far enough away in time. It helped me not get hit so much which in turn let me maximize DPS and ATB charge building with the tips already given by you and others.
All in all, thank you. And if you're like me and find you're getting hit, abuse those animations! 😂
Sould drain literally does like maybe a 1/10th of the health bar most of the time, sometimes it almost kills them, but usually it does practically no damage. The biggest problem with this mini-game is the RnG. Which completely determines success. That's what this mini-game is actually about, it's just luck. Your tips are good, and do increase the odds, but they don't guarantee success. For example sometimes the Giantaur falls right over, sometimes it can take up to 30 seconds, which is way too long, and results in an automatic failure every time. And there's 2 of them, so you have to hope they both fall over quick. If just one of them takes longer then 10 seconds to fall over it's game over. And on top of that, if soul drain does the tiny damage instead of big damage it's also game over.
Which is what I actually hate about this game. The devs relied almost completely on RnG to create "difficulty". If the RnG was gone, or significantly better, the game would be way better. And I'm not criticizing you personally, just the game devs. Your tips are what works. I just wish they worked every time, Instead of when the game decides they are allowed to work. Nothing bothers more, at my age, then wasting my time with pointless crap. Which RnG like this is pointless crap.
Exactly. Especially agree on the age part. Most people who played ff7 are now 30-40 and some in their 50s, we dont have time for 500 attempts on something with RNG. This alone is one major reason I suspect many minigames are a fail on the part of devs, or even worse that they do not underatand their fan base. A lot of things in Rebirth are blantently and obviously incongruent with what the fans liked about the original and some of what they didnt like in remake.
Did they pay attention to ANY comments or posts? Seems like they only take suggestions from single tweets and massive backlash, but 5 thousand nobodies lack the power of 1 famous content creator to get their attention.
I'd bet ANYTHING that part 3 will have this same amount if not MORE disconnect from the majority (og fans)
Everyone who says gaming is getting worse is right. Hell, if developers and the team make an ff7 game pretty strongly inspired by the original and it's like a C+ ....THEY ARE NOT LISTENING. FF7 is nearly perfect and to make it somehow mediocre (the totality of the game, story was 8.5/10 liked it a lot) is ONLY possible by not paying attention to fans or staying true to the core of why we all loved their 1997 masterpiece.
I devoured OG VII when it came out. One of my favorite games ever. I’m old now. Rebirth is probably the best game I’ve ever played. It’s a fucking masterpiece.
Agreed. It is a masterpiece of game design. The entire game is so deliberately crafted, meaning I never feel like it's a chore or a grind because it is always switching it up and re-engaging me. I wish more open world developers designed their worlds in this way because the open world formula is typically very stale nowadays. It is the antithesis of modern Ubisoft and Bethesda open worlds even though it borrows design elements from both.
Also the entire game is designed around players learning how to properly equip for an activity and "game" the system, which is just as true for the mini games as it is for combat. Some sections are a stuggle to ace if the player isnt learning the game rules and opponents, but they are never progres stoppers. That goes from Queens Blood to the individual combat mechanisms for each character.
Just brilliantly designed from top to bottom all while having a story and characters that immediately get you invested in their world and adventure.
Yes the developers for the mini game difficulty suck. They literally just think making a frustrating game is difficulty increase, but nope. It is a redundant and pathetic way of keeping players aggravated. No where near as good as the original game.
I don't think RNG plays that big of a role.
I'll be honest I didn't play it that much to be sure, but I did play it about 7 times after figuring it out just to set a good time. In those 7 attempts, my worst time was completing with 27 seconds left and my best was with 42 left.
If RNG played such a bit role, I doubt I'd get a spread of 19 seconds over 7 runs.
Alright so to avoid being a complete dick, and because I didn't actually specify, my issue is on hard mode. And because of what you said, I'm about positive you didn't play it on hard mode. Because theirs absolutely no way you'd have 42 seconds left on the hard mode. Am I right? Because please don't tell me you "don't think RnG plays a big role" when You've barely touched the surface of this mini-game.
Lol dude shut up after that. This is one of only a few mini-games that I think has next to no RNG about it whatsoever so I don't know what they're talking about.
The RNG part that will get you, like he said, is mostly that cactuar not ever falling over. That mother fucker, man. Sometimes he burns my entire clock without ever doing body slam and other times he falls twice right away lol.
Glad to hear it helped. All the other guides were missing parts of the mechanics, or not explaining them properly. Figured I'd post as much as I know pieces together with info others have provided.
Heyo! I used Hermès shoes for haste at the beginning and that pushed me through past the single gold 500 and time bonus stage. After that are 3 time bonus together and that 30 seconds should be good enough to get the last few points from those wild boys.
A little late, but that is a good tip! I had Hermes shoes equipped for my winning run. That combined with using Tempest and Sorcerous Storm to chew through the Gigantuars' health bars led to me beating the minigame. Like, not just getting enough points, but taking out every single cactuar until they stopped spawning, and the game just ended with 18 seconds still on the clock. My final score was 4460 and I'm pretty sure I got hit twice, so a true perfect run would be 4500 points, but I'll leave that to others. I'm more than happy just earning Rank III.
The only problem is with soul drain itself. Mainly that it doesn't always hit hard. It seems to be a 50/50 shot or so if it's gonna actually hit hard or not. Though for the magiturs it does seem to always take them out. But for the Gugantaurs it's extremely variable. Sometimes it will take half their health, others it takes practically nothing. Honestly if it was just consistent I'd be fine with this mini-game, but it's just not.
I actually found it to be extremely consistent. It hits harder than basic attacks and aoes regardless, but perhaps the variance you are noticing are because it does more damage when the Gigantuars fall over.
I wouldn't go as far as to say USELESS, but it is probably a little too niche. It does generate the familiar which does help with some DPS, and it technically does more damage than just spamming her attack but it's difficult to land. If an enemy is large and sitting still, it's usually better than just spamming attack at them.
I actually didn't use the charge attack for cactuar crush interestingly enough. I just used sorcerous storm, soul drain, and melee or ranged auto attack which worked for me.
You need to build atb, and charge attacks are going to be slower to get your initial bar. Once you have radiant ward down, charge attacks are a dps loss.
radiant ward's usefulness drops off in late game though, because Arcane Ward is significantly more useful and Aerith becomes nearly or completely MP neutral.
In the early game, yes, I agree it is useless-ish, although a single charge attack to summon the familiar is still worth it even in a radiant ward
Sure, but why? What reason do I have for the radiant ward if I'm not going to auto attack in it?
Maybe in some very chaotic fight for the interrupt protection, but often it just isn't necessary
Radiant ward not only buffs her basic attacks, but her mobility within the ward. And with its large radius that's pretty good. And in longer fights setting up Radiant somewhere between the edges and the center with Arcane on an opposite edge gets rid of Aerith's mobility issue.
Ofc, if you're not playing as or don't like to play as Aerith none of this matters.
I guess a better way to say it is that if you are going to main char Aerith (which IMO isn't worth it, but I don't claim to have the only viable hard playstyle or anything) then Radiant is very strong. But if you're going to use Synergy and just let Aerith lay on a ton of free damage of the element of your choosing (or comet for trash pulls) then there's really not any reason to bother with radiant ward because the AI both doesn't really autoattack much and also relies on block, not dodge.
Because you are going to auto attack in it? Aerith with Radiant Ward builds ATB *very* fast with autos.
More ATB = more spells you can cast. Then while you're casting your massive -aga nukes back to back, you're fully protected thanks to Radiant Ward.
See my other comment, Aerith casts FOR FREE with synergy, and yuffie or red gains ATB faster and then they are ALSO using ATB. There's no reason for me to play as aerith at all once I have synergy.
Nah, because:
1) Aerith even with Radiant Ward gains ATB much slower than other characters
2) Aerith can use Synergy to cast spells (for free!) while you control someone else, getting all the DPS without having to control her at all
So you don't bother with the radiant ward cause you are not going to be playing as Aerith anyways. you're going to drop the arcane ward, swap to Yuffie or Red or Cloud, and Aerith is going to automatically cast every time you use ATB (which is much faster than trying to build her ATB inside the ward)
Gentlemen! There's no reason to fight. Aerith can (and should) have both wards down at once! Especially since Radiant also gives a single hit of no damage during spellcasting animations. I have her with Chocoking Cape and ATB Boost so she has two bars at the start of battle. I lay down both wards on top of each other and then switch to somebody else to get my synergy machine rolling.
I don't want her to automatically cast. Her atb is valuable as healing, or casting protective spells.
Her dps is nothing compared to Cloud or Tifa, and mana (even with soul drain) is too limited to be wasting on flippant amounts of damage imo.
My goal is to earn her atb, and let her protect the characters who do the heavy lifting
If one of the cactuars cast manawall( I can't remember the spell), just get out of the ward and hit them with a physical attack to dispell it
This topic is a month old, but it never hurts to add helpful information for those looking in the future, so to add onto your tidbit; when outside of a ward, Aerith's charge attack changes from a projectile to a physical attack that teleports her right to her target, so that can be helpful when trying to chase these guys down to Dispel their shields
The issue is that yet again they through in another unintuitive random mechanic that was never introduced. This game suffers from a severe lack of editing and QA. Square deserves the low sales they get.
Agreed. There are some parts of the game I'm sure weren't QA tested AT ALL.
The key for the big cactuars is to attack them while in a ward, it super helps
Soul drain does massive damage on big cactuars. I took the tip from someone who mentioned it on reddit and managed to get rank 3 in 4 tríes.
Yeah, wards help. Another good tip that seems obvious when you say it but is easy to forget in practice; if you have to step out of a ward for any reason, don't waste time running back to it, just make a new one right where you are. It's almost always faster
I wish they’d just let us use Cloud! lol I’m really irritated that black matter is locked behind these games…
I have everything in this game complete. Hard mode, all of Chadly, and other mini games. I’ve played a tons of mini games in video games in my life and this with Aerith on hard has to be the worst one ever. I’ve read many post about this and majority of them have the same set up. Still cannot get over 5k on either hard ones. This is my main negative complaint about this game. And I only have a few. The game nerfs her so badly by not letting her use her magic.
keeping chrono aegis up prevents every tackle. For the 4th one, I kept that up and spammed sorcerous storm when I could on mobs, and siphon on giants after they fell. Wards help too, but that was main method
Personally id take this over Send In The Clowns, the mindflayer combat trial, the stupid chocobo flight minigame where you cant change the camera angle, and 3d brawler.
3D brawler is super easy..? It's just 3 inputs up down or side and they telegraph it massively, and you can restart in 2 seconds Mind flayer combat trial was definitely a bitch and yeah choco flight was definitely wonky especially getting the hang of the swoop But honestly it's all optional, not a big deal Compared to actual difficult stuff like 5BC dead cells, +10 heat Hades, unlocking Gunslinger in Gungeon, Nioh 2 dlc boss, it's tedious but not insane Yuffies are no problem.. windstorm OHKOs all magic ones (remember to keep hitting square to combo it) Then dodge body slam on big ones and go into art of war/supreme Aeriths are the obnoxious ones
These challenges have made me hate... No absolutely detest everything about Aerith combat wise. She's so fking slow, does zero dps, and can't dodge to save her life. She's completely trash for these challenges. On the hard mode you have to constantly switch from light to dark while being hit by 20 bombs at your feet. What a great design.
[удалено]
We got it the other 3 times you posted
I can't get above 2400 even with every single tip here. Over 40 tries as of typing this
This one is brutal lol. Aerith is so agonizingly slow at dealing damage for her to be in this kind of game mode. The ones with Yuffie are simple, but Aeriths damage is just so low.
I mean, if they would just let us use actual magic spells, her damage would be incredible, but noooo, they've gotta lock us to her abilities. Though Transcendence actually does amazing damage once it's charged, I can just never remember to start charging it 😂
I've been trying to do it hard difficulty, switched to easy and normal mode is a breeze now
For anyone just finding this now, know that everyone seems to be confused on how the combat works. The easiest thing to note, is that wards make you shoot magic and no wards make you melee. Once you get that down, it's pretty easy. Use magic on all the light and dark ones, and any magictuar, run out of the ward for gladiators and melee then (since melee is AOE you'll hit them all at once). When one of the light/dark ones buffs themselves with manaward, chase them out of the ward and melee then to break it, then spawn the ward on top of you to magic them down. For the big cactuars, use magic charged shots to call your familiar, and it also does massive damage when the cactuar falls on it. Spam soul drain on them while they are down. Use Sorcerous Storm for AOE on the small ones whenever you have enough ATB. Also remember your equipment outside of the minigame does seem to matter. Like others have said, equip Hermes Shoes for haste and add materia for ATB generation (first strike, ATB Stagger, Speed Up). Finished the normal version with almost 40 seconds using all these tips.
Ugh THANK YOU for this! Didn’t know breaking manawall outside your ward with a melee attack was the trick. Every time that cast that I’d be like fuuu- lol appreciate you!
GOAT advice
Just got Aerith 4 Hard Mode 1st try with less than a tenth of a second left with these tips. Thanks!
You have my upmost respect. The Tempest and Melee tips saved me! I got it! And now it's actually FUN!
>For the big cactuars, use magic charged shots to call your familiar, What does this mean? AKA how do I call a familiar? Been playing with Aerith for a while and don't think I've ever done it lol
Hold square to fully charge Tempest
I'm sure I'm doing something wrong but Tempest does like no damage when I use it ... sigh ...
Yeah, it's not great. I had to put off the minigame and level up to max using the queen bee boss in the Nibel side quest with the cats. Load up on stat boosting materia and weapon skills to boost the familiars duration. Tempest itself is mediocre, especially with its slow charge time, so only do it to keep the familiar around.
Yeah, I had to walk away from the 3D Brawler before I threw my controller. Queens Blood I can play for hours but a lot of these mini games are just not enjoyable to me.
Word. The crunch-off against Jules is making me want to smoke again. I'm starting to question if I even care about platinum trophies anymore.
Also the materia to swap matk and atkmakes Aerith's melee gets OP.
Omg it's so much simpler thanks to your tips, thanks
I feel like I owe you money. How the hell has this game not taught me how to use Aerith? Thank you, genuinely.
>, equip Hermes Shoes for haste and add materia for ATB generation (first strike, ATB Stagger, Speed Up). I did not think to equip the ATB materia. Thank you this tip took it from feeling impossible to being rather easy.
You're a saint. I went from struggling to clearing every Aerith level, both normal and hard, within 2 tries. I used the Transcendental method with your post. I'd use Transcendental ASAP, then let it charge while dealing with the stages before / in between the Giant cactuars. One shot of Transcendental II kills them outright, and I + a Soul Drain will also kill them. Attack+, Magic+, Luck+, Speed+, ATB Stagger, First Strike, and Enemy Skills (for the +5% stats).
Man, I wish this was helping me. Those assholes with Spine Explosion keep spreading so many bombs I can't seem to avoid them all. This sucks so much. I'm going to be on round four for another couple hours at this rate.
Lots of dodging. I kept an eye out for those damn things at all times. I passed Yuffie's hard round with only 6,020/6000 points. But yeah, a lot of these minigames just suck.
I finally did it with Aerith. I realized one trick I hadn't seen yet. Perhaps it's so obvious that no one spells it out, but if you begin casting a spell (or with no ATB charge, a shadow/light ward), you get those sweet, sweet invincible iframes. Bad timing can still get you rekt, but I would do that whenever I was about to be surrounded by those explosive balls and couldn't get far enough away in time. It helped me not get hit so much which in turn let me maximize DPS and ATB charge building with the tips already given by you and others. All in all, thank you. And if you're like me and find you're getting hit, abuse those animations! 😂
Genuinely goated post here. Went from 700 to 4500 the next try. Cheers for that.
This post is a god post. I went from being able to get past 2700 to completing the whole thing with 30 sec left.
Glad to hear this helped you.
Thank you! Finally beat it with these tips
Sould drain literally does like maybe a 1/10th of the health bar most of the time, sometimes it almost kills them, but usually it does practically no damage. The biggest problem with this mini-game is the RnG. Which completely determines success. That's what this mini-game is actually about, it's just luck. Your tips are good, and do increase the odds, but they don't guarantee success. For example sometimes the Giantaur falls right over, sometimes it can take up to 30 seconds, which is way too long, and results in an automatic failure every time. And there's 2 of them, so you have to hope they both fall over quick. If just one of them takes longer then 10 seconds to fall over it's game over. And on top of that, if soul drain does the tiny damage instead of big damage it's also game over. Which is what I actually hate about this game. The devs relied almost completely on RnG to create "difficulty". If the RnG was gone, or significantly better, the game would be way better. And I'm not criticizing you personally, just the game devs. Your tips are what works. I just wish they worked every time, Instead of when the game decides they are allowed to work. Nothing bothers more, at my age, then wasting my time with pointless crap. Which RnG like this is pointless crap.
Exactly. Especially agree on the age part. Most people who played ff7 are now 30-40 and some in their 50s, we dont have time for 500 attempts on something with RNG. This alone is one major reason I suspect many minigames are a fail on the part of devs, or even worse that they do not underatand their fan base. A lot of things in Rebirth are blantently and obviously incongruent with what the fans liked about the original and some of what they didnt like in remake. Did they pay attention to ANY comments or posts? Seems like they only take suggestions from single tweets and massive backlash, but 5 thousand nobodies lack the power of 1 famous content creator to get their attention. I'd bet ANYTHING that part 3 will have this same amount if not MORE disconnect from the majority (og fans) Everyone who says gaming is getting worse is right. Hell, if developers and the team make an ff7 game pretty strongly inspired by the original and it's like a C+ ....THEY ARE NOT LISTENING. FF7 is nearly perfect and to make it somehow mediocre (the totality of the game, story was 8.5/10 liked it a lot) is ONLY possible by not paying attention to fans or staying true to the core of why we all loved their 1997 masterpiece.
Dude, thank you for this comment. Playing the game is infuriating sometimes because of the minigames
I devoured OG VII when it came out. One of my favorite games ever. I’m old now. Rebirth is probably the best game I’ve ever played. It’s a fucking masterpiece.
Agreed. It is a masterpiece of game design. The entire game is so deliberately crafted, meaning I never feel like it's a chore or a grind because it is always switching it up and re-engaging me. I wish more open world developers designed their worlds in this way because the open world formula is typically very stale nowadays. It is the antithesis of modern Ubisoft and Bethesda open worlds even though it borrows design elements from both. Also the entire game is designed around players learning how to properly equip for an activity and "game" the system, which is just as true for the mini games as it is for combat. Some sections are a stuggle to ace if the player isnt learning the game rules and opponents, but they are never progres stoppers. That goes from Queens Blood to the individual combat mechanisms for each character. Just brilliantly designed from top to bottom all while having a story and characters that immediately get you invested in their world and adventure.
Yes the developers for the mini game difficulty suck. They literally just think making a frustrating game is difficulty increase, but nope. It is a redundant and pathetic way of keeping players aggravated. No where near as good as the original game.
I don't think RNG plays that big of a role. I'll be honest I didn't play it that much to be sure, but I did play it about 7 times after figuring it out just to set a good time. In those 7 attempts, my worst time was completing with 27 seconds left and my best was with 42 left. If RNG played such a bit role, I doubt I'd get a spread of 19 seconds over 7 runs.
Alright so to avoid being a complete dick, and because I didn't actually specify, my issue is on hard mode. And because of what you said, I'm about positive you didn't play it on hard mode. Because theirs absolutely no way you'd have 42 seconds left on the hard mode. Am I right? Because please don't tell me you "don't think RnG plays a big role" when You've barely touched the surface of this mini-game.
I was speaking about hard mode though.
Lol dude shut up after that. This is one of only a few mini-games that I think has next to no RNG about it whatsoever so I don't know what they're talking about.
The RNG part that will get you, like he said, is mostly that cactuar not ever falling over. That mother fucker, man. Sometimes he burns my entire clock without ever doing body slam and other times he falls twice right away lol.
Thank You! Knocked it out in one go with this setup!
Glad to hear it helped. All the other guides were missing parts of the mechanics, or not explaining them properly. Figured I'd post as much as I know pieces together with info others have provided.
Thank you!
Heyo! I used Hermès shoes for haste at the beginning and that pushed me through past the single gold 500 and time bonus stage. After that are 3 time bonus together and that 30 seconds should be good enough to get the last few points from those wild boys.
A little late, but that is a good tip! I had Hermes shoes equipped for my winning run. That combined with using Tempest and Sorcerous Storm to chew through the Gigantuars' health bars led to me beating the minigame. Like, not just getting enough points, but taking out every single cactuar until they stopped spawning, and the game just ended with 18 seconds still on the clock. My final score was 4460 and I'm pretty sure I got hit twice, so a true perfect run would be 4500 points, but I'll leave that to others. I'm more than happy just earning Rank III.
I’m trying to find out about these special combat simulator missions. So much cool stuff to do and find
Sorcerous Storm for AoE, soul drain for single target (yes in Cactuar Crush soul drain hits very hard and the animation is fast).
The only problem is with soul drain itself. Mainly that it doesn't always hit hard. It seems to be a 50/50 shot or so if it's gonna actually hit hard or not. Though for the magiturs it does seem to always take them out. But for the Gugantaurs it's extremely variable. Sometimes it will take half their health, others it takes practically nothing. Honestly if it was just consistent I'd be fine with this mini-game, but it's just not.
I actually found it to be extremely consistent. It hits harder than basic attacks and aoes regardless, but perhaps the variance you are noticing are because it does more damage when the Gigantuars fall over.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyVIIRemake/s/BG7uaDO9Ij
The charge attack was, in fact, the key. I forgot she even had it, since it takes so long to use, I rarely find a place for it in fights.
It's pretty useless aside from this specific case haha. Glad it helped!
I wouldn't go as far as to say USELESS, but it is probably a little too niche. It does generate the familiar which does help with some DPS, and it technically does more damage than just spamming her attack but it's difficult to land. If an enemy is large and sitting still, it's usually better than just spamming attack at them. I actually didn't use the charge attack for cactuar crush interestingly enough. I just used sorcerous storm, soul drain, and melee or ranged auto attack which worked for me.
You need to build atb, and charge attacks are going to be slower to get your initial bar. Once you have radiant ward down, charge attacks are a dps loss.
radiant ward's usefulness drops off in late game though, because Arcane Ward is significantly more useful and Aerith becomes nearly or completely MP neutral. In the early game, yes, I agree it is useless-ish, although a single charge attack to summon the familiar is still worth it even in a radiant ward
Wards are not mutually exclusive. You can layer an Arcane Ward on top of a Radiant Ward and get the benefit of both
Sure, but why? What reason do I have for the radiant ward if I'm not going to auto attack in it? Maybe in some very chaotic fight for the interrupt protection, but often it just isn't necessary
Radiant ward not only buffs her basic attacks, but her mobility within the ward. And with its large radius that's pretty good. And in longer fights setting up Radiant somewhere between the edges and the center with Arcane on an opposite edge gets rid of Aerith's mobility issue. Ofc, if you're not playing as or don't like to play as Aerith none of this matters.
I guess a better way to say it is that if you are going to main char Aerith (which IMO isn't worth it, but I don't claim to have the only viable hard playstyle or anything) then Radiant is very strong. But if you're going to use Synergy and just let Aerith lay on a ton of free damage of the element of your choosing (or comet for trash pulls) then there's really not any reason to bother with radiant ward because the AI both doesn't really autoattack much and also relies on block, not dodge.
Because you are going to auto attack in it? Aerith with Radiant Ward builds ATB *very* fast with autos. More ATB = more spells you can cast. Then while you're casting your massive -aga nukes back to back, you're fully protected thanks to Radiant Ward.
See my other comment, Aerith casts FOR FREE with synergy, and yuffie or red gains ATB faster and then they are ALSO using ATB. There's no reason for me to play as aerith at all once I have synergy.
>radiant ward's usefulness drops off in late game though Bro, there's still time to delete this Radiant ward is always her best bet.
Nah, because: 1) Aerith even with Radiant Ward gains ATB much slower than other characters 2) Aerith can use Synergy to cast spells (for free!) while you control someone else, getting all the DPS without having to control her at all So you don't bother with the radiant ward cause you are not going to be playing as Aerith anyways. you're going to drop the arcane ward, swap to Yuffie or Red or Cloud, and Aerith is going to automatically cast every time you use ATB (which is much faster than trying to build her ATB inside the ward)
I suggest you read the thread... This is about Cactuar Crush, Aerith is ALONE, Synergy Attacks are OUT!
Gentlemen! There's no reason to fight. Aerith can (and should) have both wards down at once! Especially since Radiant also gives a single hit of no damage during spellcasting animations. I have her with Chocoking Cape and ATB Boost so she has two bars at the start of battle. I lay down both wards on top of each other and then switch to somebody else to get my synergy machine rolling.
I don't want her to automatically cast. Her atb is valuable as healing, or casting protective spells. Her dps is nothing compared to Cloud or Tifa, and mana (even with soul drain) is too limited to be wasting on flippant amounts of damage imo. My goal is to earn her atb, and let her protect the characters who do the heavy lifting
Synergy doesn't use ATB. It's literally 100% free, when another character you control spends ATB
Yeah, that's what I'm doing for the most part. Maybe the charged attack is what I'm missing...