Game:

Final Fantasy VII (1997)

Duration: 3:50

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6

I was going to end the speedrun here.

Not so much for the Icicle battles. Although they are very luck reliant, there's a simple way to make matters much less homicidal.

The reason why this segment was so much more frustrating than anything before it is the fact that I had to redo it.
Well, so far, I had to redo every segment. I don't recall having finished a segment in just one try yet. This time, however, I had to redo an almost impeccable segment.
But not just once. 14 times.
And not for a stupid mistake. But for Tifa's stupid stats.

While I was practicing the Schizo battle (I am badly lacking vomit emoticons to express my true feelings about this fight), I realized that for a certain strategy to work, Tifa's Strength and Spirit would have to be in a certain range. You can probably already guess the gist of the story.

Yes, I had to redo this highly annoying segment, save, check Tifa's stats (her Spirit has to be high enough to enable her to survive some of Schizo's attacks and, even worse, her Strength must be neither too high nor too low, or else my strategy won't work), reset, repeat this for 9 times, doubt my ability to ever achieve this, take a long break, die a little bit on the inside, repeat it for two more times, consider changing my Schizo strategy, consider how to explain I would discontinue the run, take another break, try it two more times again, become aware that I had eventually made it, copy my savefile to all the hard disks within reach and finally upload this.

I can only hope that nevermore anyone's stats matter as much as they did in the Schizo battle...

On to the Icicle battles.
I read in a certain Speedrun guide and saw in Farringa's run that ATB on active would be the setting of choice.

I still have honestly no idea how anyone of sane mind could attempt the three mandatory Icicle battles with active ATB. Basically, ATB on active pretty much guarantees that all Evilheads will get at least(!) one turn. If they use Ultrasound on Cloud, the segment is over. If they kill anyone, it is as well.

Therefore, one should do as much as possible to reduce the number of turns they get. ATB on wait does exactly that.

As I had a spare T/S Bomb, I found a very nice way to make use of it and save quite some time.
Since the Icicles are weak to Gravity; Demi2, Demi3, Laser or a T/S Bomb will instantly kill them, unless of course, one uses any of these attacks, except for Demi3, after having used another attack on the Icicle and having reduced its HP to an odd number beforehand. In that case, it will be left with one 1 HP after Demi2, Laser or a T/S Bomb...
Yeah, that's so cool...

Apart from that, Demi only has a MAt% of 75%, which was the source of hundreds of resets. Moreover, the Icicle has a 50% chance to counter any non-fatal attack by using Icicle Drop on a random party member, which was the source of even more resets.

I accepted up to two Icicle drops in total, if they did not kill anyone. Unfortunately, they were lethal around half of the time.
I was getting two Icicle Drops most of the time, followed by one and three Icicle Drops (three were a certain reset because of deaths, though). Never did I get 4 or 5 Icicle Drops and only a few select times was I able to go without any at all.

I was incredibly relieved after I had realized that, when I was witnessing an Icicle Drop-free session again, I would finally not have to redo it ever again.

04:21:35

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