FFVII: Ever Crisis Announced
- Thread starter Lex
- Start date
Makoeyes987
Listen closely, there is meaning in my words.
- AKA
- Smooth Criminal
I personally find it very fun and it's extremely casual friendly.
It's fun whether you play auto or full on ATB.
The game's definitely generous so you don't have to pay out the ass to keep up or win battles. So if you're looking for some fun FFVII stuff, it's definitely worth it.
It's fun whether you play auto or full on ATB.
The game's definitely generous so you don't have to pay out the ass to keep up or win battles. So if you're looking for some fun FFVII stuff, it's definitely worth it.
Suzaku
Pro Adventurer
The game gets a bit grindy as you push to higher power levels to take on the most difficult endgame content, and "very hard" challenges require a fair bit of strategy, but if you just want to play through the story and casual content (normal / hard difficulties) it's very approachable. The nature of gacha games also means that as time goes on new stuff will come out which will make it easier to progress through the older hard stuff.
Monetization is pretty fair with a decent amount of free currency and gacha rates that are well above average with one of the better pity systems I've seen in a gacha game.
Anyway, timestamped preview of Young Sephiroth:
The new content update including playable Sephiroth is actually Friday, September 29th, so just a few days away, and that's when they'll give out the 5-star Sephiroth weapon reward too.
What's coming on October 6th is a raid boss version of adult Sephiroth.
Young Sephiroth on the character art image is named 少年時代のセフィロス (Shōnenjidai no Sefirosu) which is more accurately something like "Younger Days Sephiroth" or "Boyhood Sephiroth."
I still suspect that they'll release an adult costume for him along with Masamune at some point, since making them into separate characters with separate pools of weapons would be odd to me. Maybe fairly soon as he should be playable in the Nibelheim flashbacks.
Monetization is pretty fair with a decent amount of free currency and gacha rates that are well above average with one of the better pity systems I've seen in a gacha game.
Anyway, timestamped preview of Young Sephiroth:
The first two clips appear to be his Limit Breaks which seem to be Hell's Gate and Shadow Flare:
And a very brief look at one of his costumes:
And a very brief look at one of his costumes:
The new content update including playable Sephiroth is actually Friday, September 29th, so just a few days away, and that's when they'll give out the 5-star Sephiroth weapon reward too.
What's coming on October 6th is a raid boss version of adult Sephiroth.
Young Sephiroth on the character art image is named 少年時代のセフィロス (Shōnenjidai no Sefirosu) which is more accurately something like "Younger Days Sephiroth" or "Boyhood Sephiroth."
I still suspect that they'll release an adult costume for him along with Masamune at some point, since making them into separate characters with separate pools of weapons would be odd to me. Maybe fairly soon as he should be playable in the Nibelheim flashbacks.
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Suzaku
Pro Adventurer
So, some more details about the livestream.
Nomura apparently mentioned that he's been in discussion with Toriyama about wanting to eventually include the sections of the story that have been skipped via the Story Quests feature. He also reiterated that they plan to include AC, BC, and DC eventually.
They said they've considered adding a Skip function since early development, but at the current time they seem to want players to engage with the battles and have balanced grinding around using x3 Stamina and auto battle.
Glenn, Matt, and Lucia were named by Nomura after green matcha tea, which he was drinking at the time. [Green] -> [Glenn], [Mat]cha -> [Matt], [Tea] -> Lu[cia].
At this point in the story Sephiroth has a pretty different personality from the one seen when he's older, as discussed in the previous interview I summarized a few pages back (in which he was described as naive and trying to fit the hero mold that was laid out for him). They mention that he speaks formally and uses lots of honorifics.
When the update comes out there will be a campaign to help with leveling and upgrading "the four First SOLDIERs."
Dungeon Ranking Event will see players divided into groups of 10,000, so you won't be competing with every single player for rewards. The best rewards are reserved for the top 10 and top 100 players in your division, but there are participation rewards including blue crystals, so it's worth doing even if you can't make it to the top. There will be separate rankings for Normal, Hard, and Very Hard, it seems.
The October 6 Raid Boss event will be a VR battle with Sephiroth. There will be multiple difficulty levels.
No information on the Halloween Event except for the key visual which shows it taking place in Nibelheim.
As already mentioned, they're tripling the rate at which Stamina replenishes and are also tripling the amount of Stamina Tonics awarded from the daily missions.
They mentioned that porting it to PC is surprisingly not very costly (probably because it's built in Unity to start).
Nomura apparently mentioned that he's been in discussion with Toriyama about wanting to eventually include the sections of the story that have been skipped via the Story Quests feature. He also reiterated that they plan to include AC, BC, and DC eventually.
They said they've considered adding a Skip function since early development, but at the current time they seem to want players to engage with the battles and have balanced grinding around using x3 Stamina and auto battle.
Glenn, Matt, and Lucia were named by Nomura after green matcha tea, which he was drinking at the time. [Green] -> [Glenn], [Mat]cha -> [Matt], [Tea] -> Lu[cia].
At this point in the story Sephiroth has a pretty different personality from the one seen when he's older, as discussed in the previous interview I summarized a few pages back (in which he was described as naive and trying to fit the hero mold that was laid out for him). They mention that he speaks formally and uses lots of honorifics.
When the update comes out there will be a campaign to help with leveling and upgrading "the four First SOLDIERs."
Dungeon Ranking Event will see players divided into groups of 10,000, so you won't be competing with every single player for rewards. The best rewards are reserved for the top 10 and top 100 players in your division, but there are participation rewards including blue crystals, so it's worth doing even if you can't make it to the top. There will be separate rankings for Normal, Hard, and Very Hard, it seems.
The October 6 Raid Boss event will be a VR battle with Sephiroth. There will be multiple difficulty levels.
No information on the Halloween Event except for the key visual which shows it taking place in Nibelheim.
As already mentioned, they're tripling the rate at which Stamina replenishes and are also tripling the amount of Stamina Tonics awarded from the daily missions.
They mentioned that porting it to PC is surprisingly not very costly (probably because it's built in Unity to start).
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cold_spirit
he/him
- AKA
- Alex T
On Glenn's name: Earlier this month, upon realizing that a major character in Picturing the Past is also named Glen, Nomura stated that he didn't want to change it since he'd "taken great pains to arrive at it."
And now those "great pains" have been revealed to be... drinking macha tea by coincidence. I hope that he's joking.
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
It's insane to me that they're tripling the Stamina regen and Stamina Tonics, because I LITERALLY have never managed to run out of stamina in the game since launch. I have no idea how some people are apparently running into that as a barrier – especially compared to the gacha.
There's a co-op mission that I did yesterday that makes me really glad that the Dungeon groups are being split into groups of 10k, because the whales in this game have an UTTERLY RIDICULOUS power advantage. I'm maxed out at level 50, with an 8★ (Red 3★) Apocalypse & Murasame both maxed out at level 90. I have some decent materia so that the Cloud I use has a Power of 51,423 and in a boss fight against H0512, I was getting a max single hit damage with a regular attack of ~4.5k. Normally that puts me into being one of the higher ranked people in most co-op battles... HOWEVER, I am nowhere even CLOSE to people who can cash sink to gacha grind.
Yesterday I teamed up with someone who had Cloud using the Summer Event weapon & outfit who had a power of 67,000. Each ★ on your primary weapon will boost that weapon's ability damage output, as well as increasing your power rank by maybe about 1k, so just as a guess that would mean he'd have to have something like an 8★ sub weapon, and a 25★ main weapon (that's a 5★ event weapon powered up with TWENTY 5★ duplicates of that weapon, which you have a 1% chance to draw per pull on the event card). In the H0512 boss fight when his armor weakens, this dude had a single hit damage with that Weapon ability that did 21k damage in a single hit – against an enemy who isn't even weak to water. He dealt about 5 times as much damage as I do currently maxed out, where without drawing more duplicate weapons, I'm locked at this as my power ceiling.
I have a feeling that the power rankings during the Dungeon event are gonna REALLY start to highlight that to the point of those being essentially pay-to-win rewards even if they DO end up dividing everyone into groups of about 10k players. I'm really curious what that overall player distribution feels like, because the fact that that power gap is just STAGGERING to someone like me who has pushed the limits of what the game offers via close to all of the obtainable in-game content, and am just content locked by the crystal rewards to try and attempt pulls for better weapons... I dunno how those things are gonna feel in the long-term or what kind of things you'll just end up being incapable of ever having when faced against that side of the playerbase.
On other bits of the news:
The fact that Green Matcha Tea (グリーン抹茶ティー) ended up trending on Japanese Twitter and was being used as a hashtag for people talking about The First SOLDIER team feels like it's one of those memes that's gonna stick around for a while. Both Glenn's & Lucia's VAs laughed about the reveal a bunch, and speaking as someone who's been a DM for a really long time – you'd be surprised how often weird, mundane things like this end up being the inspiration for character names, but also how you get attached to those things conceptually, like how this is the name of that whole team, rather than just one character.
The Nibelheim-hosted Halloween event with everyone wearing Jack-o-Lanterns made me think that it might also involve the Shinra Manor's Funny Face enemies, since that's what they look like.
Lastly – I don't know if I'd expect that they'll have an older Sephiroth costume for Young Sephiroth for a long while, since the in-game character profiles list them individually, they have separate VAs, and thematically they're focused on different takes of the character, but ESPECIALLY after they announced the VR challenge against regular Sephiroth (and also mentioned that this means you could make a team of Cloud, Zack, & Young Sephiroth to take him on which sounds awesome).
X
There's a co-op mission that I did yesterday that makes me really glad that the Dungeon groups are being split into groups of 10k, because the whales in this game have an UTTERLY RIDICULOUS power advantage. I'm maxed out at level 50, with an 8★ (Red 3★) Apocalypse & Murasame both maxed out at level 90. I have some decent materia so that the Cloud I use has a Power of 51,423 and in a boss fight against H0512, I was getting a max single hit damage with a regular attack of ~4.5k. Normally that puts me into being one of the higher ranked people in most co-op battles... HOWEVER, I am nowhere even CLOSE to people who can cash sink to gacha grind.
Yesterday I teamed up with someone who had Cloud using the Summer Event weapon & outfit who had a power of 67,000. Each ★ on your primary weapon will boost that weapon's ability damage output, as well as increasing your power rank by maybe about 1k, so just as a guess that would mean he'd have to have something like an 8★ sub weapon, and a 25★ main weapon (that's a 5★ event weapon powered up with TWENTY 5★ duplicates of that weapon, which you have a 1% chance to draw per pull on the event card). In the H0512 boss fight when his armor weakens, this dude had a single hit damage with that Weapon ability that did 21k damage in a single hit – against an enemy who isn't even weak to water. He dealt about 5 times as much damage as I do currently maxed out, where without drawing more duplicate weapons, I'm locked at this as my power ceiling.
I have a feeling that the power rankings during the Dungeon event are gonna REALLY start to highlight that to the point of those being essentially pay-to-win rewards even if they DO end up dividing everyone into groups of about 10k players. I'm really curious what that overall player distribution feels like, because the fact that that power gap is just STAGGERING to someone like me who has pushed the limits of what the game offers via close to all of the obtainable in-game content, and am just content locked by the crystal rewards to try and attempt pulls for better weapons... I dunno how those things are gonna feel in the long-term or what kind of things you'll just end up being incapable of ever having when faced against that side of the playerbase.
On other bits of the news:
The fact that Green Matcha Tea (グリーン抹茶ティー) ended up trending on Japanese Twitter and was being used as a hashtag for people talking about The First SOLDIER team feels like it's one of those memes that's gonna stick around for a while. Both Glenn's & Lucia's VAs laughed about the reveal a bunch, and speaking as someone who's been a DM for a really long time – you'd be surprised how often weird, mundane things like this end up being the inspiration for character names, but also how you get attached to those things conceptually, like how this is the name of that whole team, rather than just one character.
The Nibelheim-hosted Halloween event with everyone wearing Jack-o-Lanterns made me think that it might also involve the Shinra Manor's Funny Face enemies, since that's what they look like.
Lastly – I don't know if I'd expect that they'll have an older Sephiroth costume for Young Sephiroth for a long while, since the in-game character profiles list them individually, they have separate VAs, and thematically they're focused on different takes of the character, but ESPECIALLY after they announced the VR challenge against regular Sephiroth (and also mentioned that this means you could make a team of Cloud, Zack, & Young Sephiroth to take him on which sounds awesome).
X
Suzaku
Pro Adventurer
Some official English PR finally rolling out this morning.
Interestingly, they changed the name of his Limit Break from Hell's Gate (獄門, Gokumon) to Astral Gate (星門, Seimon), which uses the kanji hoshi meaning "star," "planet," or "geo-," depending on the term and translation (in FFVII it's usually referring to the Planet). Makes me wonder if they'll also change his Shadow Flare to Flare Star...
Also put out a few in-game notices:
Interestingly, they changed the name of his Limit Break from Hell's Gate (獄門, Gokumon) to Astral Gate (星門, Seimon), which uses the kanji hoshi meaning "star," "planet," or "geo-," depending on the term and translation (in FFVII it's usually referring to the Planet). Makes me wonder if they'll also change his Shadow Flare to Flare Star...
Also put out a few in-game notices:
- Murasame and Heavy Hauser are being added to Ticket Draws and the Weapon exchange, suggesting that featured banner weapons will be added to the global pool of weapons two weeks after the banner ends.
- Co-Op Battle: Ifrit will be available for a week, as a way to more easily farm the Ifrit Summon Memories and Weapon Parts. Drop rates will be better, and naturally you'll have two other players to help out.
- THE FIRST SOLDIER Chapter 5 and new playable character Sephiroth will be implemented.
- Sephiroth's Stat Stream, Missions, Memories, Weapons, Gear, and Enhancement Quests will also be implemented.
- Sephiroth's Gear Exchange outfit is named Aeroglider.
- Sephiroth's weapons won't be included in FS Ticket Draws; he'll have his own Tickets.
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ForceStealer
Double Growth
Oh hi Aqua
Tetsujin
he/they
- AKA
- Tets
Was my first thought too lol
X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
I've gotta say, whoever is creating their media for Twitter is doing a hell of a job because the background for the three young Sephiroth images are set up so that when they're cropped and stacked in Twitter's preview format, the "Sephiroth" banner in the background is all lined up, so that it creates a totally different collage image:
Glad that it seems like the event weapons are gonna get added to the regular pools at some point, so that they don't end up being prohibitively difficult to continue upgrading, but this is one of those things where the more weapons that get added to those pools, the more diluted the draws end up being to get duplicates, and I'm not sure what the expected balance cadence of those things is meant to be.
Also, there's gonna be an official EN stream about the new Ever Crisis update on the SE Twitch, so I'm curious if we'll end up getting any of the Green Matcha Tea information or what sort of stuff they'll cover compared to the JP stream.
X
Glad that it seems like the event weapons are gonna get added to the regular pools at some point, so that they don't end up being prohibitively difficult to continue upgrading, but this is one of those things where the more weapons that get added to those pools, the more diluted the draws end up being to get duplicates, and I'm not sure what the expected balance cadence of those things is meant to be.
Also, there's gonna be an official EN stream about the new Ever Crisis update on the SE Twitch, so I'm curious if we'll end up getting any of the Green Matcha Tea information or what sort of stuff they'll cover compared to the JP stream.
X
Suzaku
Pro Adventurer
Just dropped a .5 gig patch, so guess they've already preloaded some of the new data ahead of maintenance tonight.
Patch notes up in the notices. Everything previously mentioned, including a new Criterion Dungeon, Cawpine Caverns, which I suppose is that underground Rhadoran resistance base seen in the story previews. Also a vague mention of minor QoL improvements.
The dungeon ranking event is being delayed due to technical issues, 300 blue crystals as compensation. Everything else seems to be set.
Patch notes up in the notices. Everything previously mentioned, including a new Criterion Dungeon, Cawpine Caverns, which I suppose is that underground Rhadoran resistance base seen in the story previews. Also a vague mention of minor QoL improvements.
The dungeon ranking event is being delayed due to technical issues, 300 blue crystals as compensation. Everything else seems to be set.
Suzaku
Pro Adventurer
Got really lucky and got an x5 stamp bonus on my Sephiroth weapon pulls last night so I'm off to a pretty good start.
The Sephiroth release campaign is also incredibly generous, you get 60x Sephiroth exclusive weapon draw tickets for getting his first 50 stat stream panels unlocked, and 3000 blue crystals for raising him to level 50. They've also got a 30% EXP boost for all FS characters for the next two weeks; Sephiroth starts at level 24.
Sephiroth is currently designed to be a MATK unit, with most of his weapons providing strong MATK and elemental support. He's also the first character in the game to have offensive buffs, with his Aogiri katana providing a mid->high MATK buff for himself, coupled with a small heal and short duration regen. His second LB, Ardent Flare, is an AoE that also provides him with a mid->high MATK and PATK buff. His first featured banner weapon, Edged Wings, is a strong ST magical ice attack with MATK, ice potency, and X sigil boosts. He's also got fire and thunder weapons, and a PATK down debuff weapon, as well as a standard ST MATK nuke weapon. His default weapon, Nameless, is the only weapon in the game with a 2-ATB cost ability, which provides a mid MDEF break; they gave everyone a free 5-star copy of it.
Some localization notes:
Limit Breaks
I'm only a little bit into the new chapter of the story, but a brief recap of what I've seen so far:
Sephiroth is naive and unsocialized, so he's a bit awkward around people, but he seems to be fundamentally kind and wants to get along with the team. He initially has a bit of friction with Glenn, but that evaporates when he explains that his status as a hero is a lie cooked up by Shinra as part of their recruitment campaign, and this is actually his first field deployment.
He says that he doesn't want to be a hero, and all that he wants is to live a normal life, though he recognizes that's impossible.
Sephiroth carries a photograph of Lucrecia, believing her to be Jenova, and is trying to figure out what happened to her.
He starts to bond with the team pretty quickly, even laughing and cracking a joke. He mentions that this is his first time having fun. Lucia ruffles his hair, Glenn pats him on the shoulder, and Matt gives him a thumbs up.
The Sephiroth release campaign is also incredibly generous, you get 60x Sephiroth exclusive weapon draw tickets for getting his first 50 stat stream panels unlocked, and 3000 blue crystals for raising him to level 50. They've also got a 30% EXP boost for all FS characters for the next two weeks; Sephiroth starts at level 24.
Sephiroth is currently designed to be a MATK unit, with most of his weapons providing strong MATK and elemental support. He's also the first character in the game to have offensive buffs, with his Aogiri katana providing a mid->high MATK buff for himself, coupled with a small heal and short duration regen. His second LB, Ardent Flare, is an AoE that also provides him with a mid->high MATK and PATK buff. His first featured banner weapon, Edged Wings, is a strong ST magical ice attack with MATK, ice potency, and X sigil boosts. He's also got fire and thunder weapons, and a PATK down debuff weapon, as well as a standard ST MATK nuke weapon. His default weapon, Nameless, is the only weapon in the game with a 2-ATB cost ability, which provides a mid MDEF break; they gave everyone a free 5-star copy of it.
Some localization notes:
Limit Breaks
- Astral Gate (星門, Seimon, lit. "Planet's Gate" or "Star's Gate")
- Ardent Flare (アーデントフレア, Ādento Furea)
- Nameless (無銘, Mumei)
- Telluric Fury (動地, Dōchi, lit. "Shaking Land")
- Edged Wings (斬り羽, Kiriha, lit. "Cutting Feather," a euphemism for an excavation site)
- Aerial Frostblade (氷翼急翔, Hyōyoku Kyūshō, lit. "Cold Wings Swiftly Soar")
- Glaireid (グライレイド, Guraireido, lit. "Gli-Raid," Glide+Raid)
- Sweeping Slash (孤斬, Kozan, lit. "Lone Cut")
- Aonibi (青鈍, Aonibi, lit. "Dull Blue")
- Frenzied Stance (荒天のかまえ, Kōten no Kamae, lit. "Stormy Weather Stance")
- Northern Lights (ノーザンライツ, Nōzan Raitsu)
- Radiant Aurora (極光, Kyokkō, lit. "Aurora")
- Prototype Crimson Blade (試作・紅蓮太刀, Shisaku: Guren-tachi, lit. "Prototype: Crimson Tachi")
- Firaga A
- CC Alloy Sword (CC合金刀, Shi-Shi Gokin Katana, lit. "CC Alloy Katana")
- Thundaga A
- Mythril Type-0 Katana (ミスリル0式打ち刀, Misuriru Reishiki Uchigatana, lit. "Mythril Type-0 Uchigatana")
- Steadfast Stance (不動のかまえ, Fudō no Kamae, lit. "Immovable Stance")
- Shinra Blade: Model I (神羅刀壱号, Shinra Katana Ichigo, lit. "Shinra Katana No. 1")
- Shock Blast (ショックブラスト, Shokku Burasuto)
- Shinra's Hero (神羅の英雄, Shinra no Eiyū) - Default; pairs with Nameless
- Edged Wings Training Garb (羽刃の修験装, Kiriha no Shugensō, lit. "Cutting Feather Ascetic Garb") - Featured; pairs with Edged Wings
- Aeroglider (グライディングスーツ, Guraidingu Sūtsu, lit. "Gliding Suit") - Voucher; pairs with Glaireid
I'm only a little bit into the new chapter of the story, but a brief recap of what I've seen so far:
Sephiroth is naive and unsocialized, so he's a bit awkward around people, but he seems to be fundamentally kind and wants to get along with the team. He initially has a bit of friction with Glenn, but that evaporates when he explains that his status as a hero is a lie cooked up by Shinra as part of their recruitment campaign, and this is actually his first field deployment.
He says that he doesn't want to be a hero, and all that he wants is to live a normal life, though he recognizes that's impossible.
Sephiroth carries a photograph of Lucrecia, believing her to be Jenova, and is trying to figure out what happened to her.
He starts to bond with the team pretty quickly, even laughing and cracking a joke. He mentions that this is his first time having fun. Lucia ruffles his hair, Glenn pats him on the shoulder, and Matt gives him a thumbs up.
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ph14basicbitch
shinra merch buyer
- AKA
- koda
To the dev who changed the stamina timer from 6mins to 2mins: Who hurt you?
Maidenofwar
They/Them
I'm not crying you're crying! 
I like how I wasn't really thinking about the Sephiroth banner (looking ahead to Halloween) but with those magic words MATK and elemental support, along with SE sneaking the beach stuff for Aerith, Cloud, Tifa and Red XIII in there as well, I am now having to rethink those plans.
I already managed to make one pull on the new banner thanks to the 3000 free gems from New Campaign bonus and got another copy of Cloud's beach weapon!
I spent too long rerolling so I didn't manage to complete the beach event (so I appreciate the story summaries from Suzaku here) or get all the stuff but I hope to make the most of the new campaign and I have been enjoying the game a lot so far!
I like how I wasn't really thinking about the Sephiroth banner (looking ahead to Halloween) but with those magic words MATK and elemental support, along with SE sneaking the beach stuff for Aerith, Cloud, Tifa and Red XIII in there as well, I am now having to rethink those plans.
I already managed to make one pull on the new banner thanks to the 3000 free gems from New Campaign bonus and got another copy of Cloud's beach weapon!
I spent too long rerolling so I didn't manage to complete the beach event (so I appreciate the story summaries from Suzaku here) or get all the stuff but I hope to make the most of the new campaign and I have been enjoying the game a lot so far!
Suzaku
Pro Adventurer
The team heads into Cawpine Caverns, a network of underground caverns connected to some ancient Rhadoran ruins. They suspect remnants of the Rhadoran resistance are inside. The interior looks like cross between a fortress and a mine, decorated with the Rhadoran aesthetic.
Sephiroth is willing to kill children and the elderly, reasoning that he's still a kid himself and the elderly could be war veterans, which makes Glenn a bit uneasy.
As they work their way through the cavern they encounter rebels and have to deal with sealed gates, and ultimately a large weaponized digging machine called the Mole Crawler, such an old model that it isn't in Sephiroth's records. After they take it down, Sephiroth runs off ahead, then orders Team Glenn to attack the remnants while he circles around. He jokes about his "cyborg instincts," referring to Glenn disdainfully calling him a cyborg when they first met. Glenn apologizes for the comment.
[TL Note: the Japanese term kaizōningen, though usually translated as cyborg, literally just means "modified human." Bioroid would probably be a more accurate translation since there's nothing cybernetic about him, but to be fair Glenn only knows that he's a product of Hojo's experiments.]
When Team Glenn catches up to the Rhadorans, they get cut off by another gate, but "Stamp," the gallonbaloir that has been pursuing them since they arrived in Rhadore, suddenly appears and takes out a bunch of the rebels on the other side of the gate. They are forced to backtrack and take Sephiroth's path.
They catch up to Sephiroth outside, finding him dealing the killing blow to the last of a number of Rhadoran remnants who were evacuating those unable to fight. Glenn asks if this was all necessary, and Sephiroth reiterates that their mission is to eliminate any remaining Rhadorans. He reveals that he was injured by one of the "kids" in the party he killed, noting that even the young and elderly Rhadorans have had military training. Their assumptions about the Rhadorans were false, just like the assumptions many make about him, which he strives to prove wrong.
Staring at his bloodied hands, he explains that in his training he's learned that to be a good SOLDIER one must hone their mind, body, and heart. He says that SOLDIERs led by their emotions are outdated and have no place on the battlefield, where to survive you must kill the enemy before they kill you. Glenn approaches and Sephiroth looks down and away, unable to make eye contact.
Glenn embraces him and tells him he's right, but they all know how strong he is and he has nothing to prove. Glenn would rather see him show some compassion. Sephiroth looks down, dejected, and cradles his head in his hand, "...I'm not a cyborg." Glenn hugs him again, "I know. I'm really sorry I said that." The screen turns black and Sephiroth says, "I never wanted to be..."
As they reach the coast, they see Rosen's island. Glenn explains who resides there. On the island, Rosen recalls his last conversation with Team Glenn and looks skyward. Lucia explains that once every last Rhadoran on the island is gone, Rosen will be the last survivor.
And... unfortunately, that's it! A pretty short chapter with only a single dungeon.
Sephiroth is willing to kill children and the elderly, reasoning that he's still a kid himself and the elderly could be war veterans, which makes Glenn a bit uneasy.
As they work their way through the cavern they encounter rebels and have to deal with sealed gates, and ultimately a large weaponized digging machine called the Mole Crawler, such an old model that it isn't in Sephiroth's records. After they take it down, Sephiroth runs off ahead, then orders Team Glenn to attack the remnants while he circles around. He jokes about his "cyborg instincts," referring to Glenn disdainfully calling him a cyborg when they first met. Glenn apologizes for the comment.
[TL Note: the Japanese term kaizōningen, though usually translated as cyborg, literally just means "modified human." Bioroid would probably be a more accurate translation since there's nothing cybernetic about him, but to be fair Glenn only knows that he's a product of Hojo's experiments.]
When Team Glenn catches up to the Rhadorans, they get cut off by another gate, but "Stamp," the gallonbaloir that has been pursuing them since they arrived in Rhadore, suddenly appears and takes out a bunch of the rebels on the other side of the gate. They are forced to backtrack and take Sephiroth's path.
They catch up to Sephiroth outside, finding him dealing the killing blow to the last of a number of Rhadoran remnants who were evacuating those unable to fight. Glenn asks if this was all necessary, and Sephiroth reiterates that their mission is to eliminate any remaining Rhadorans. He reveals that he was injured by one of the "kids" in the party he killed, noting that even the young and elderly Rhadorans have had military training. Their assumptions about the Rhadorans were false, just like the assumptions many make about him, which he strives to prove wrong.
Staring at his bloodied hands, he explains that in his training he's learned that to be a good SOLDIER one must hone their mind, body, and heart. He says that SOLDIERs led by their emotions are outdated and have no place on the battlefield, where to survive you must kill the enemy before they kill you. Glenn approaches and Sephiroth looks down and away, unable to make eye contact.
Glenn embraces him and tells him he's right, but they all know how strong he is and he has nothing to prove. Glenn would rather see him show some compassion. Sephiroth looks down, dejected, and cradles his head in his hand, "...I'm not a cyborg." Glenn hugs him again, "I know. I'm really sorry I said that." The screen turns black and Sephiroth says, "I never wanted to be..."
As they reach the coast, they see Rosen's island. Glenn explains who resides there. On the island, Rosen recalls his last conversation with Team Glenn and looks skyward. Lucia explains that once every last Rhadoran on the island is gone, Rosen will be the last survivor.
And... unfortunately, that's it! A pretty short chapter with only a single dungeon.
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jazzflower92
Pro Adventurer
- AKA
- The Girl With A Strong Opinion
So much from years of fanon has practically been canonically confirmed.
cold_spirit
he/him
- AKA
- Alex T
Back in '05-06, the idea of Crisis Core really excited me. A game that showed Sephiroth before his descent into madness AND featured the Wutai war as the backdrop? Sign me the hell up! However, the final game turned out to be very different. Sephiroth's humanity was only shown in glimpses and the Wutai war became irrelevant after the first mission. Instead, the game focused on a new threat: Genesis. Though it took me a while to really appreciate the game, I quite enjoy Crisis Core now, especially after the Reunion update. However, a part of me still hungered for that game about Sephiroth.
Well, it ain't Wutai, and Sephiroth isn't wielding the Masamune (yet), but the inner narrative is the same.
In The First Soldier's opening cinematic, Sephiroth is trying to call Genesis, a friend he's worried about. And now that Sephiroth has joined the cast properly, what's become the story's main focus? Well, it's about Sephiroth learning to make friends. Though Sephiroth is unapologetically fascist, the story attempts to build a case for him, explaining how he's used for the company's propaganda and has limited experience working with people. Most startling to me is Sephiroth's own wish for himself: to live a normal life.
Note that I'm just reiterating the story, I'm not personally saying "SePhIrOtH dId NoThInG wRoNg".
Going back to that opening cinematic, Sephiroth encounters Glenn on a Wutai battlefield the day Genesis deserts SOLDIER. What's Glenn doing there? Well, the narrative already shows glimpses of Glenn's compassion, most notably through Rosen and questioning Sephiroth's orders, so him falling out with Shinra and becoming sympathetic to Wutai's independence shouldn't come as a surprise. What I'm most curious to learn is the nature of his relationship with Sephiroth.
Though their friendship is budding now, something drove a wedge between them. And what does that mean for Rebirth and beyond?
I don't think The First Soldier's story exists in a vacuum. It was written alongside the Remake Project. We have confirmation from SE that the mysterious hooded man in Rebirth's trailer has connections to The First Soldier. And finally, Remake's Ultimania has long pointed out that the Sephiroth we see in Chapter 18 is different and uses the same Japanese pronoun as his young, pre-Nibelheim self.
The question of whether Sephiroth "can be redeemed" has been tossed around a few times. All I can say is that I think the story is going in that direction. Though he'll never be "one of the good guys", I think we'll see more and more of this "sympathetic" Sephiroth, one who leverages Jenova's legacy with the lessons of humanity he learned from Glenn in The First Soldier, towards some goal we have yet to learn.
Well, it ain't Wutai, and Sephiroth isn't wielding the Masamune (yet), but the inner narrative is the same.
In The First Soldier's opening cinematic, Sephiroth is trying to call Genesis, a friend he's worried about. And now that Sephiroth has joined the cast properly, what's become the story's main focus? Well, it's about Sephiroth learning to make friends. Though Sephiroth is unapologetically fascist, the story attempts to build a case for him, explaining how he's used for the company's propaganda and has limited experience working with people. Most startling to me is Sephiroth's own wish for himself: to live a normal life.
Note that I'm just reiterating the story, I'm not personally saying "SePhIrOtH dId NoThInG wRoNg".
Going back to that opening cinematic, Sephiroth encounters Glenn on a Wutai battlefield the day Genesis deserts SOLDIER. What's Glenn doing there? Well, the narrative already shows glimpses of Glenn's compassion, most notably through Rosen and questioning Sephiroth's orders, so him falling out with Shinra and becoming sympathetic to Wutai's independence shouldn't come as a surprise. What I'm most curious to learn is the nature of his relationship with Sephiroth.
Though their friendship is budding now, something drove a wedge between them. And what does that mean for Rebirth and beyond?
I don't think The First Soldier's story exists in a vacuum. It was written alongside the Remake Project. We have confirmation from SE that the mysterious hooded man in Rebirth's trailer has connections to The First Soldier. And finally, Remake's Ultimania has long pointed out that the Sephiroth we see in Chapter 18 is different and uses the same Japanese pronoun as his young, pre-Nibelheim self.
The question of whether Sephiroth "can be redeemed" has been tossed around a few times. All I can say is that I think the story is going in that direction. Though he'll never be "one of the good guys", I think we'll see more and more of this "sympathetic" Sephiroth, one who leverages Jenova's legacy with the lessons of humanity he learned from Glenn in The First Soldier, towards some goal we have yet to learn.
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cold_spirit
he/him
- AKA
- Alex T
Woofta. All current story content, jumpstart and guide missions, and the first season pass have been completed.
Though I still plan on logging in daily to complete the premium quests, and spending Sunday nights on crisis dungeons, I won't be playing quite as much.
Though I still plan on logging in daily to complete the premium quests, and spending Sunday nights on crisis dungeons, I won't be playing quite as much.
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X-SOLDIER
Harbinger O Great Justice
- AKA
- X
So, meant to wander in on this a few days ago, but I'm really enjoying Young Sephiroth as a character. He's got a really interesting playstyle, and there are some details about the design of his abilities that I think are particularly interesting as well as some parts of his story so far that I think are easily the most compelling things in Ever Crisis so far.
Ardent Flare has got the best cinematic pacing of any of the Limit Breaks because it actually lingers for a couple seconds AFTER the hit to really let the impact hang and feel significant which the others all cut away from too quickly. This attack animation obviously foreshadows the Nibelheim event visually, but the fact that it provides the Physical & Magic Attack buff when it's performed underscores that this is when Sephiroth snaps (the entire idea of what a Limit Break is), and it makes him extremely aggressive. Most other limit breaks will weaken the enemy with their impact or just dish out a massive amount of damage to the TARGET, or they'll provide defensive or healing buffs, but this is the first one where it's really amplifying outright offensive aggression in a way where this is contextually important given the story elements.
This ONE chapter just has absolute ACRES UPON ACRES of tiny and deeply significant detail. It covers all of the nuances that I was hoping for from this game and executed in ways that I was never expecting, and there's still a LOT more to come just from what's been teased directly. I feel like it's finally earned the, "We still don't know Sephiroth" tag teaser already but I can't wait to see how much more we'll get still.
Aside from that: I'm just having an absolute blast playing the game, but I have no idea how any of the JP players could ever possibly run out of stamina before, but now that it's literally 3x, it feels ridiculous – but I'm all here for it.
One last thing that I found out is that the cost of Red Crystals are made to have a cost that's a 1:1 to Japanese Yen, which makes a TON of sense for the Gacha costs and seems relatively "reasonable" (the mobile gacha landscape itself is an unreasonable whaling garbage fire by default, but this just means it's not overly egregious in that landscape)... HOWEVER if you end up doing exchange rate comparisons for the costs in the stores for those in non-JP regions to compare to that value in Yen, even the discount that you get with the top-end bulk purchases cost 15%-20% more for the US/EU. This means that there's a MASSIVE bias on the "pay to win" aspect of the game that favors the JP playerbase since for the cost of every 5 draws other regions only get 4, and especially over time that's gonna skew the power levels between regions. Not really sure that there's any way to get that addressed because money hungry mobile environment will leech out as much as it can possibly get, but it's something that's worth knowing and potentially keeping an eye on as the Dungeon Ranking events start to happen in groups of 10k.
X
Ardent Flare has got the best cinematic pacing of any of the Limit Breaks because it actually lingers for a couple seconds AFTER the hit to really let the impact hang and feel significant which the others all cut away from too quickly. This attack animation obviously foreshadows the Nibelheim event visually, but the fact that it provides the Physical & Magic Attack buff when it's performed underscores that this is when Sephiroth snaps (the entire idea of what a Limit Break is), and it makes him extremely aggressive. Most other limit breaks will weaken the enemy with their impact or just dish out a massive amount of damage to the TARGET, or they'll provide defensive or healing buffs, but this is the first one where it's really amplifying outright offensive aggression in a way where this is contextually important given the story elements.
We get the first indications that Young Sephiroth isn't socialized because he whistles to call over the others to his position. This is something he didn't know would be rude, which means it's also a learned behaviour. It's most likely that this is how he gets treated. Given the relationship that Rufus has with Dark Nation commanding him with similar calls, this is something about the overall environment that Shinra has that's consistent and rather telling of how they treat those they're in charge of. It's why Glenn calls him a cyborg** at first for which he later apologizes.
**IMPORTANT: The term Glenn uses when referring to Sephiroth as a "cyborg" is 改造人間, which literally means modified human, and it's an accurate descriptor for the SOLDIER program as we're classically familiar with it and isn't true of the P0 SOLDIER. This is different from how Chadley uses the term サイボーグ for himself, which is literally just the work "Cyborg" in the more classical artificial human sense. While there is value in looking at the parallels between the rebellious Chadley being raised by Hojo in an isolated environment growing to turn against Shinra paralleling a lot of the same conditions of Young Sephiroth's upbringing, in addition to Young Sephiroth being 15 when this part of the story takes place – which is the exact same age that Chadley is portrayed as in Remake. This is why it's worth making it clear that there is a significantly overt distinction between the two of them in Japanese that the English terminology can't smoothly differentiate.
Secondly is that he's combat trained but this is his very first actual field mission. That means that he's been using the Combat Simulators that Crisis Core & Remake established, and that he's also rather significantly isolated. The stories about him have been fabricated so that he can be their poster child for the new SOLDIER recruitment program since they're looking exclusively for candidates who have specific physical requirements as they're not going to stick to the P0 types anymore, but they're going to start the human modification with mako & Jenova Cells as the standard process (a big part of what the Green Match Tea team being P0 SOLDIER seems to be about highlighting). This underscores something else about Young Sephiroth is that he explicitly DOESN'T want to be a hero, and that it is just Shinra's propaganda pushing him into that role that he has no real interest in, because he's a just tool to serve as a means to and end for them.
This recontextualizes moments like his fight with Genesis (& Angeal) on the simulated Junon canon, as Genesis explicitly wants what Sephiroth has, but Genesis comes from a place of privilege being wealthy in Banora, so they don't see that in the same light as Genesis sees it as something like the award he won for making Banora White, whereas Sephiroth sees it from the cold perspective that Shinra does. That's also the event that leaves Sephiroth feeling disconnected from them as friends because of the (unknown to him at the time) compatibility barriers between Project G SOLDIER and himself as the Project S subject exacerbate the rift between the two of them. This is why Zack who wants to be a hero is the one who Sephiroth is always deferring missions to, because he can't figure out how to feel. Assumedly the cinematic prior to starting The First SOLDIER campaign with Genesis not picking up is around the time of the SOLDIER mass desertion, and adding in even more weight to the strain of that which eventually leads to him telling Genesis to rot in Nibelheim (which I'll add more to in a second).
Most of this all helps to establish why Sephiroth is up for turning against Shinra together with Zack and refusing to kill their mutual friends, so long as he's got Zack to be able to defer to in some capacity. What's most telling though is that much like Zack undergoes a significant change prior to setting off towards Nibelheim, the Sephiroth who arrives at Nibelheim together with Zack is already VERY different from the Young Sephiroth who met up with Glenn, Matt, & Lucia when it comes to his beliefs about his own life. While we get some glimpses of that dynamic in Rebirth's portrayal of Cloud's fantasy Nibelheim flashback in how Sephiroth talks to "Cloud" referring him him wanting to be a hero and calling him a puppy, as they're the sort of things that show that those little bits of humanity are still down there in Sephiroth seeing Zack as a friend... the biggest difference is how Sephiroth sees himself, which comes down to understanding more about WHO he is at this point.
This sequence underscores a number of things. First is that Young Sephiroth is the spitting image of Lucrecia, and the match of the look of their hair and facial features is even more apparent in the cinematics where you see it in motion.
There's zero doubt that THIS is his mom, but it's also important to remember that at this point what Sephiroth's history would have been like. We know from the original game that Sephiroth's had a brief, positive relationship with Professor Gast which would have been limited to being prior to Gast's disappearance from Shinra, and Hojo besting Hollander for his position – which had originally taken place in 1980. However, the original opening cinematic for the non-Ever-Crisis version of The First SOLDIER showed some of that timeline a bit differently:
• 1977 is when SOLDIER Project 0 started
• 7/7/77 is when Jenova is (mis)identified as an Ancient
• 9/3/77 is when the Jenova project is approved
• 1977-1984 is when Gast, Lucrecia, Hollander, & Hojo were involved in carrying out a series of human experiments involving Jenova
• 1985 is when Gast was murdered & Ilfana was kidnapped with the infant Aerith
• 1988 is when Glenn comes to Matt's rescue while fighting against the Type-0 Behemoths, followed by Lucia saving both of them
• 1989 being when the mass simulated SOLDIER training environments were being used (The First SOLDIER game)
• 1992 the events of the Ever Crisis chapter of The First SOLDIER take place
That places Sephiroth as being 8 years the year Gast is killed and makes it likely that whatever he learned from Gast being at the same formative memory age as when 7-year-old Aerith & Ilfana escaped Shinra HQ and her mother died. (Additionally, while Young Sephiroth was 15 in 1992 when this takes place, this is the same year when Aerith & her own mother Ilfana escape and I'd wager that Sephiroth having his first ever field-op may end up being related to the window of opportunity that allowed them to make it out without being recovered).
What's noteworthy is that at 15 we still see all Young Sephiroth's cautious optimism that he'll be able to have a normal life with his mom at some point, which is what he wants more than being a hero. After they have a brief confrontation around their awkward interactions, but before they start their mission Young Sephiroth addresses the other three,
"There's something I want to ask. Do you know this woman? Her name is Jenova." Lucia comments that she's beautiful to which he replies, "She's my mother. You don't remember seeing or even meeting her?" and when Glenn states they haven't "Right... Professor Hojo gave me this picture, but he wouldn't tell me anything about her. I know going around asking about my mother isn't cool..." "Anyway, we're almost at their base. Everyone, keep your guard up."
The most stark thing about this is that this VERY CLEARLY establishes what Sephiroth's go-to is in conversation for what matters to him. He's trying to get answers to questions that no one at "home" will give him, and Glenn assumes he's asking before the mission in order to make sure to effectively extract the intel from them in case they die on the mission – which Young Sephiroth mentions hadn't even crossed his mind. What this makes even more poignant is how this EXACT SAME THING happens in Nibelheim.
"So, how does it feel? TO be home after all this time? I have no hometown, I wouldn't know." and then Zack asks him about family and he INSTANTLY replies with this same thing, "My mother's name is Jenova. She died shortly after I was born. My father..." but now he just starts laughing to himself and then cutting off from that with, "Why am I talking about this? Come on, let's go."
At this point, it's been a decade since that mission and Sephiroth is 25. He's still the same person deep down, but he's essentially given up on ever being able to find his mom and have a normal life. He's been through the Wutai war while being trapped as the public hero of SOLDIER where the accomplishments of others get announced as his – like Zack's mission at Fort Tamblin not even mentioning his accomplishments, and the news only talking about Sephiroth. His friends have always been getting pulled away from him, he's disenfranchised with Shinra, and he's not even attempting to chase his dream anymore ...except that this is where that dream he's had his whole life actually comes true – but it's not a dream at all.
This is where the nightmare begins.
After learning that he's the product of a human experiment to create the perfect monster for Shinra to be the poster child of their SOLDIER program, and then feverishly reading all about what was done there for a week straight seemingly without sleeping – he's crushed that Professor Gast never told him the truth about his mother, and that he died for reasons Sephiroth STILL doesn't know. He still thinks Hojo is nothing but a hack scientist in comparison and knows he can't trust him, but now we know that he's also made to doubt the picture that Hojo gave him and who he'd been asking about constantly as a kid. And all of that is what eventually pushes him past the breaking point where he uses Ardent Flare on Nibelheim.
The Nibelheim Incident is LITERALLY his Limit Break.
The spike in both physical & magical attack power, the overt aggression and massacre of everyone else. He's gone totally insane, and he's singularly possessed by the drive to create a new world with himself and his mother free from all of the manipulation and horror of what they've been subjected to. And all of that is what it takes for Sephiroth to FINALLY have the resolve to go past that door and find what he's been looking for his entire life... and is put face-to-face with Jenova in her tank.
We know that the lingering Jenova Cells within Lucrecia from having Sephiroth gestating in her womb wouldn't let her die, and that despite never even being allowed to so much as hold him, she dreamt of him constantly feeling unworthy to be called his mother. However, prior to this I hadn't really ever considered the possibility that the most haunting part of that relationship would be what Jenova is known before for – she takes the form of others and the Advent Children opening cinematic shows that Jenova is ALSO the spitting image of Sephiroth AND Lucrecia. A picture of Lucrecia's face is what Sephiroth carried around with him but doesn't seem to have any more, and so he'd see the absolute worst version of what he could imagine – that face he'd yearned for his entire life attached to a twisted alien monstrosity of an inhumane lab subject kept preserved in a mako reactor, cut off from any human contact just like him.
Even more than that is on their mission after attacking the Rhadorans, Sephiroth's only injury sustained is from one of the child soldiers. He chastizes the other 3 for underestimating the young & elderly, and it's the young Cloud who kills him over that same pain of losing his own mother in Sephiroth's attack. It's this cold dissociative disconnection of the psychotic break that distinguishes the pre-Nibelheim & post-Nibelheim Sephiroth both in the personal pronouns that he uses, as well as his overall demeanor and why Zack doesn't recognize him as soon as he breaks.
**IMPORTANT: The term Glenn uses when referring to Sephiroth as a "cyborg" is 改造人間, which literally means modified human, and it's an accurate descriptor for the SOLDIER program as we're classically familiar with it and isn't true of the P0 SOLDIER. This is different from how Chadley uses the term サイボーグ for himself, which is literally just the work "Cyborg" in the more classical artificial human sense. While there is value in looking at the parallels between the rebellious Chadley being raised by Hojo in an isolated environment growing to turn against Shinra paralleling a lot of the same conditions of Young Sephiroth's upbringing, in addition to Young Sephiroth being 15 when this part of the story takes place – which is the exact same age that Chadley is portrayed as in Remake. This is why it's worth making it clear that there is a significantly overt distinction between the two of them in Japanese that the English terminology can't smoothly differentiate.
Secondly is that he's combat trained but this is his very first actual field mission. That means that he's been using the Combat Simulators that Crisis Core & Remake established, and that he's also rather significantly isolated. The stories about him have been fabricated so that he can be their poster child for the new SOLDIER recruitment program since they're looking exclusively for candidates who have specific physical requirements as they're not going to stick to the P0 types anymore, but they're going to start the human modification with mako & Jenova Cells as the standard process (a big part of what the Green Match Tea team being P0 SOLDIER seems to be about highlighting). This underscores something else about Young Sephiroth is that he explicitly DOESN'T want to be a hero, and that it is just Shinra's propaganda pushing him into that role that he has no real interest in, because he's a just tool to serve as a means to and end for them.
This recontextualizes moments like his fight with Genesis (& Angeal) on the simulated Junon canon, as Genesis explicitly wants what Sephiroth has, but Genesis comes from a place of privilege being wealthy in Banora, so they don't see that in the same light as Genesis sees it as something like the award he won for making Banora White, whereas Sephiroth sees it from the cold perspective that Shinra does. That's also the event that leaves Sephiroth feeling disconnected from them as friends because of the (unknown to him at the time) compatibility barriers between Project G SOLDIER and himself as the Project S subject exacerbate the rift between the two of them. This is why Zack who wants to be a hero is the one who Sephiroth is always deferring missions to, because he can't figure out how to feel. Assumedly the cinematic prior to starting The First SOLDIER campaign with Genesis not picking up is around the time of the SOLDIER mass desertion, and adding in even more weight to the strain of that which eventually leads to him telling Genesis to rot in Nibelheim (which I'll add more to in a second).
Most of this all helps to establish why Sephiroth is up for turning against Shinra together with Zack and refusing to kill their mutual friends, so long as he's got Zack to be able to defer to in some capacity. What's most telling though is that much like Zack undergoes a significant change prior to setting off towards Nibelheim, the Sephiroth who arrives at Nibelheim together with Zack is already VERY different from the Young Sephiroth who met up with Glenn, Matt, & Lucia when it comes to his beliefs about his own life. While we get some glimpses of that dynamic in Rebirth's portrayal of Cloud's fantasy Nibelheim flashback in how Sephiroth talks to "Cloud" referring him him wanting to be a hero and calling him a puppy, as they're the sort of things that show that those little bits of humanity are still down there in Sephiroth seeing Zack as a friend... the biggest difference is how Sephiroth sees himself, which comes down to understanding more about WHO he is at this point.
This sequence underscores a number of things. First is that Young Sephiroth is the spitting image of Lucrecia, and the match of the look of their hair and facial features is even more apparent in the cinematics where you see it in motion.
There's zero doubt that THIS is his mom, but it's also important to remember that at this point what Sephiroth's history would have been like. We know from the original game that Sephiroth's had a brief, positive relationship with Professor Gast which would have been limited to being prior to Gast's disappearance from Shinra, and Hojo besting Hollander for his position – which had originally taken place in 1980. However, the original opening cinematic for the non-Ever-Crisis version of The First SOLDIER showed some of that timeline a bit differently:
• 1977 is when SOLDIER Project 0 started
• 7/7/77 is when Jenova is (mis)identified as an Ancient
• 9/3/77 is when the Jenova project is approved
• 1977-1984 is when Gast, Lucrecia, Hollander, & Hojo were involved in carrying out a series of human experiments involving Jenova
• 1985 is when Gast was murdered & Ilfana was kidnapped with the infant Aerith
• 1988 is when Glenn comes to Matt's rescue while fighting against the Type-0 Behemoths, followed by Lucia saving both of them
• 1989 being when the mass simulated SOLDIER training environments were being used (The First SOLDIER game)
• 1992 the events of the Ever Crisis chapter of The First SOLDIER take place
That places Sephiroth as being 8 years the year Gast is killed and makes it likely that whatever he learned from Gast being at the same formative memory age as when 7-year-old Aerith & Ilfana escaped Shinra HQ and her mother died. (Additionally, while Young Sephiroth was 15 in 1992 when this takes place, this is the same year when Aerith & her own mother Ilfana escape and I'd wager that Sephiroth having his first ever field-op may end up being related to the window of opportunity that allowed them to make it out without being recovered).
What's noteworthy is that at 15 we still see all Young Sephiroth's cautious optimism that he'll be able to have a normal life with his mom at some point, which is what he wants more than being a hero. After they have a brief confrontation around their awkward interactions, but before they start their mission Young Sephiroth addresses the other three,
"There's something I want to ask. Do you know this woman? Her name is Jenova." Lucia comments that she's beautiful to which he replies, "She's my mother. You don't remember seeing or even meeting her?" and when Glenn states they haven't "Right... Professor Hojo gave me this picture, but he wouldn't tell me anything about her. I know going around asking about my mother isn't cool..." "Anyway, we're almost at their base. Everyone, keep your guard up."
The most stark thing about this is that this VERY CLEARLY establishes what Sephiroth's go-to is in conversation for what matters to him. He's trying to get answers to questions that no one at "home" will give him, and Glenn assumes he's asking before the mission in order to make sure to effectively extract the intel from them in case they die on the mission – which Young Sephiroth mentions hadn't even crossed his mind. What this makes even more poignant is how this EXACT SAME THING happens in Nibelheim.
"So, how does it feel? TO be home after all this time? I have no hometown, I wouldn't know." and then Zack asks him about family and he INSTANTLY replies with this same thing, "My mother's name is Jenova. She died shortly after I was born. My father..." but now he just starts laughing to himself and then cutting off from that with, "Why am I talking about this? Come on, let's go."
At this point, it's been a decade since that mission and Sephiroth is 25. He's still the same person deep down, but he's essentially given up on ever being able to find his mom and have a normal life. He's been through the Wutai war while being trapped as the public hero of SOLDIER where the accomplishments of others get announced as his – like Zack's mission at Fort Tamblin not even mentioning his accomplishments, and the news only talking about Sephiroth. His friends have always been getting pulled away from him, he's disenfranchised with Shinra, and he's not even attempting to chase his dream anymore ...except that this is where that dream he's had his whole life actually comes true – but it's not a dream at all.
This is where the nightmare begins.
After learning that he's the product of a human experiment to create the perfect monster for Shinra to be the poster child of their SOLDIER program, and then feverishly reading all about what was done there for a week straight seemingly without sleeping – he's crushed that Professor Gast never told him the truth about his mother, and that he died for reasons Sephiroth STILL doesn't know. He still thinks Hojo is nothing but a hack scientist in comparison and knows he can't trust him, but now we know that he's also made to doubt the picture that Hojo gave him and who he'd been asking about constantly as a kid. And all of that is what eventually pushes him past the breaking point where he uses Ardent Flare on Nibelheim.
The Nibelheim Incident is LITERALLY his Limit Break.
The spike in both physical & magical attack power, the overt aggression and massacre of everyone else. He's gone totally insane, and he's singularly possessed by the drive to create a new world with himself and his mother free from all of the manipulation and horror of what they've been subjected to. And all of that is what it takes for Sephiroth to FINALLY have the resolve to go past that door and find what he's been looking for his entire life... and is put face-to-face with Jenova in her tank.
We know that the lingering Jenova Cells within Lucrecia from having Sephiroth gestating in her womb wouldn't let her die, and that despite never even being allowed to so much as hold him, she dreamt of him constantly feeling unworthy to be called his mother. However, prior to this I hadn't really ever considered the possibility that the most haunting part of that relationship would be what Jenova is known before for – she takes the form of others and the Advent Children opening cinematic shows that Jenova is ALSO the spitting image of Sephiroth AND Lucrecia. A picture of Lucrecia's face is what Sephiroth carried around with him but doesn't seem to have any more, and so he'd see the absolute worst version of what he could imagine – that face he'd yearned for his entire life attached to a twisted alien monstrosity of an inhumane lab subject kept preserved in a mako reactor, cut off from any human contact just like him.
Even more than that is on their mission after attacking the Rhadorans, Sephiroth's only injury sustained is from one of the child soldiers. He chastizes the other 3 for underestimating the young & elderly, and it's the young Cloud who kills him over that same pain of losing his own mother in Sephiroth's attack. It's this cold dissociative disconnection of the psychotic break that distinguishes the pre-Nibelheim & post-Nibelheim Sephiroth both in the personal pronouns that he uses, as well as his overall demeanor and why Zack doesn't recognize him as soon as he breaks.
This ONE chapter just has absolute ACRES UPON ACRES of tiny and deeply significant detail. It covers all of the nuances that I was hoping for from this game and executed in ways that I was never expecting, and there's still a LOT more to come just from what's been teased directly. I feel like it's finally earned the, "We still don't know Sephiroth" tag teaser already but I can't wait to see how much more we'll get still.
Aside from that: I'm just having an absolute blast playing the game, but I have no idea how any of the JP players could ever possibly run out of stamina before, but now that it's literally 3x, it feels ridiculous – but I'm all here for it.
One last thing that I found out is that the cost of Red Crystals are made to have a cost that's a 1:1 to Japanese Yen, which makes a TON of sense for the Gacha costs and seems relatively "reasonable" (the mobile gacha landscape itself is an unreasonable whaling garbage fire by default, but this just means it's not overly egregious in that landscape)... HOWEVER if you end up doing exchange rate comparisons for the costs in the stores for those in non-JP regions to compare to that value in Yen, even the discount that you get with the top-end bulk purchases cost 15%-20% more for the US/EU. This means that there's a MASSIVE bias on the "pay to win" aspect of the game that favors the JP playerbase since for the cost of every 5 draws other regions only get 4, and especially over time that's gonna skew the power levels between regions. Not really sure that there's any way to get that addressed because money hungry mobile environment will leech out as much as it can possibly get, but it's something that's worth knowing and potentially keeping an eye on as the Dungeon Ranking events start to happen in groups of 10k.
X
Maidenofwar
They/Them
Friends?? 
AXL4X6DBKUC7A
AXL4X6DBKUC7A
Misterbadguy
Phantom Lord
- AKA
- METEODRIVE
From belts and zippers, to checkered material, to lapels. The many eras of Nomura art.