Game:

Final Fantasy VII (1997)

Duration: 0:00

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3

Rules Reminder

Low Level
Solo Character
No Non-Mandatory Inns
No Independent Materia
No Attack Command
No Scavenging

Hojo doesn't have a lot of raw power, but he's a tricksy boss who uses a lot of status effects. We're also forced to use an underleveled Yuffie for this fight thanks to his high EXP total. His first form is so trivial that it's not even worth setting up Barrier. However, we should count HP to heal and setup Barrier in preparation for his next phase.

Hojo's second phase is his most dangerous. Unlike Carry Armour, the three body parts don't attack independently. Rather, the main body does all the attacking, and the arms that are alive influence what moves are used. The biggest danger here is from Confu, which will cause us to attack ourselves and break the challenge rules. You might think we'd want to protect ourselves from Confusion, but there's a better way around it. Whenever the stabby arm is revived, Hojo's attack script reverts back to its start. This means that Hojo will need to attack three times before he has any chance of using Confu. As long as we keep up the offense when the arm is alive, we'll be able to kill it and restart the cycle before Confu is used.

This allows us to protect ourselves against Sleep instead, which is handy because we can't prevent Hojo's second phase from using it and the third phase can use it as well. The only caveat is that Hojo's second phase can use Confu near the start of the fight, and it chose to do so here. Fortunately, it missed. My plan was to Defend to prevent my own move, but in hindsight, Yuffie probably would have gotten her next turn before Hojo anyways. A time-wasting animation like a Phoenix Down probably would have been better, though I don't know if it would have been enough either.

The stabby arm is also pretty strong, so we need to manage our turns carefully to ensure that we always have the chance to knock it out before Confu. In this attempt, this ended up being pretty easy thanks to some clutch misses.

Hojo's third form is a little easier. It has Slow, but it can also be slowed itself, so we go with the Haste+Slow+Low Battle Speed combo to double-turn it instead of getting double-turned ourselves. He will counter our Dragon Scales with Silence, but with some foresight we can heal that whenever we need to setup a buff. His Combo can also inflict Poison and Sleep; on the lowest Battle Speed, we can ignore the former as long as we don't get too greedy attacking, and we're protected against the latter already.

With all the status effects managed, we just need to deal with the raw damage. As long as we have 300+ HP, we're safe from everything it can do. If Hojo runs exactly out of MP like in this attempt, his strongest attack (the tentacle attack called Absorb) gets disabled, and we're basically home-free from there.

At the end of the fight, we receive our reward of seeing every character reach the final level of 28. That's one more thing off my mind in this challenge!

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