Final Fantasy VII Rebirth Gears and Gambit #3 (Hard)(Main Game Normal Mode) - Swarm strat
67Gears and Gambit is the minigame you play when you are dealing with the Cosmo Canyon protorelic quest. I am guessing this is a homage to FFXII.
Once you beat the normal mode, a hard version for each protorelic quest is unlocked. Each of these hard version has a different set of limitation when it comes to your robot deployment.
Note that some of the gambits (conditions) and actions are only available to your robot after the hard version is unlocked, just in case if you are confusing it with the normal one.
Main Game difficulty influence
From what I have heard, you can lower the difficulty of the main game to ease the difficulty of certain minigames. I don't know if it is true, but I don't know if that messes up with the game not counting your completion of the main game on normal mode. So I just played if safe and did not lower the main game's difficulty. Thus the title: "Hard, Normal Mode Main Game"
Stage 3 Notable Features:
The stage basically gives you a spawn CD on each robot. There are however no limits to how many robots you can spawn. That's why I used a low bot cost swarm strat.
Also the boss only has a ST attack "vicious bite". It also only casts "Cure" if there are 4 or more bots on THE SAME LANE, which makes swarm strat even more favourable. It does get other abilities such as Firaga later on, but if you keep pushing its HP thresholds, it will spend time on those threshold abilities instead of attacking you.
There are no flyers as far as I am concerned, unless they spawn in late and I have not seen that far into the stage.
The big flans on the other hand are the main obstacles of this stage. Once they get to the portal, they either use regen or cure, depending on their type. Kill them with no mercy and extreme prejudice!
Strat:
Most of the bot conditions from stage 2 are carried over. I removed the anti-air moves since there are no flyers and they add costs to spawning bots. I mostly replaced them with + moves. They don't add to the costs and are mostly helpful.
Keep the costs low and spawn more bots as soon such that it finishes its CD early. Since the mob pattern is fixed, it will be good to know what to spawn as well during the early stage. As soon as you get the minions down till the 2 minute mark, start spawning extra bots to swarm the boss. Just keep in mind not to spawn 4 on the same lane, so the boss doesn't cast "Cure".
You can pretty much ignore the low HP threshold regen and the AOE spells when you have so many bot spawned.
Haste Field and Physical Attacks
Bot survival is not really the issue on this stage. The boss only ST attacks and the big flans are mostly going straight at the portals. Therefore, you can leave some physical moves in for when your bots are all but spent. That's also why I added a Haste Field, Shock and Lariat on the Lightning bot.
Deprotect
The deprotect on blizzard bot from stage 2 makes a return. I kept it on blizzard bots because most of the flans spawned early on are weak to fire and lightning.
I got a bit unlucky this time the deprotect was in effect quite late. Still the swarm of bots bulldoze the boss with no problem.
Big Red Flans (weak to Lightning)
These are the worst enemy on this stage, even worse than the ones that are weak to fire (regen flan). The red ones casts a big cure when they reach the portal and that's what they most likely would do. Kill them quickly before they do that to save you time and spawns. Use two lightning bots if you must.
Portal Skills:
Use Aeroga to weaken the 3 simultaneous spawns (near the 2 minute mark with 2 big flans and a small one) such that your bots can quickly get to the boss afterwards. Use Comet early to kill the boss or for when there are fresh mob spawns if you aim for a safer and slower victory.
Honestly this stage is probably the easiest one behind stage 1 hard version. It took me 3 tries to nail down the modifications from stage 2.
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