Uploaded September 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
We're on a sea-faring vessel of some kind, cresting waves of Rage.
So Round 5 is when the difficulty takes a bit of a spike, as you'll be dealing with not only mini-bosses for the first time but also with large groups of enemies. The mini-boss is a Wrestler from Round 3 who packs pretty much the same power as the bosses from that stage, so knowing when he's going to show up really helps.
There's also a special type of Clown that also makes an appearance, who bounces around and can throw things without warning. They don't juggle anything so they can't knock you down on contact but they're still quite dangerous, especially in the high numbers they spawn in just before this Round's boss fight.
And on that note, let's talk about the boss fight for Round 5. Two sprite-swaps of Blaze appear, one favoring to rush and use a Jump Kick while the other moves slower, evading attacks while attempting to execute a throw.
They can be difficult to hit if you try to take them in a straight fight due to their ability to evade attacks. Usually, you'd try and grab the jump kicker by moving to where she's going to land. For the thrower, you'll want to avoid slow jump kicks and punch at her to trigger her over-head evasion flip and then punch at where she'll land to knock her down. Once one of the Judo Sisters is down, the remaining boss will start to swap between both AI sets but the fight is much less dangerous with one KO'd.
We're on a sea-faring vessel of some kind, cresting waves of Rage.
So Round 5 is when the difficulty takes a bit of a spike, as you'll be dealing with not only mini-bosses for the first time but also with large groups of enemies. The mini-boss is a Wrestler from Round 3 who packs pretty much the same power as the bosses from that stage, so knowing when he's going to show up really helps.
There's also a special type of Clown that also makes an appearance, who bounces around and can throw things without warning. They don't juggle anything so they can't knock you down on contact but they're still quite dangerous, especially in the high numbers they spawn in just before this Round's boss fight.
And on that note, let's talk about the boss fight for Round 5. Two sprite-swaps of Blaze appear, one favoring to rush and use a Jump Kick while the other moves slower, evading attacks while attempting to execute a throw.
They can be difficult to hit if you try to take them in a straight fight due to their ability to evade attacks. Usually, you'd try and grab the jump kicker by moving to where she's going to land. For the thrower, you'll want to avoid slow jump kicks and punch at her to trigger her over-head evasion flip and then punch at where she'll land to knock her down. Once one of the Judo Sisters is down, the remaining boss will start to swap between both AI sets but the fight is much less dangerous with one KO'd.




![FF7 Mexicos Hardcore Mod - Final Rampage
The end is in sight so we gotta put that hammer down, and give it hell.
-Diamond Weapon- [0:00]
Similar to Reno, Diamonds Fire attack will strip your party of buffs so we need to reapply after each shot. With this fight, we can avoid Diamond Flash altogether by attacking with magic only and fortunately hes still vulnerable to Bolt which makes this viable.
-Ultimate Weapon- [4:15]
Decided to take this opportunity to show KOTR and how weak it is in this mod (this is the only time its used because physical attacks are king here considering the Magic Defence of enemies/bosses).
-Midgar Turks- [5:26]
Was expecting a nightmare after the Gelnika fight but Reno favours his physical attack over Neo-Turk Light and Elenas multi-target shrapnel is fire elemental so we can remove that out of the equation entirely with some fire-resistance. Maybe used a bit too much Bahamut-
-Proud Clod- [11:09]
He packs a punch as you might expect, and each of his attacks inflicts a status ailment. We can cover most with Ribbon, except for that pesky Stop (forgot about Contain + Added Effect for this fight).
-Hojo- [14:10]
We have to watch out for Pile Banger being used twice in the second phase, and for Gas which inflicts Instant Death to the party. The final phase is a real pain due to Lifeforms high evasion and the Death Sentence his Combo can inflict. I had the ol Cover + Counter Attack set-up in place but it still took a while to bring him down and things got hairy when Death Sentence kicked in.
-Special Battle- [21:52]
Relatively straight-forward but the handicaps can cripple you if youre not careful. I lost Command Materia halfway through which left me with no Barriers bar a single dose of Light + Lunar Curtain for Proud Clod. So I used Defend instead and relied on counter attacks to keep myself safe from stray critical hits and looses Omnislash when it was available. Longish fight, but no worries.
-Pagoda- [30:11]
I reloaded an older save for this, because I clean forgot to do it. Our low level Yuffie can Poison each of the four Pagoda bosses (but not Godo) so we open with that and then carefully pick our way through the fights.
Godo himself can be simplified immensely by defending against Poison, Demi, and the status ailments he can cause. Beast Sword is crippled by Sadness and Barrier so we can attack safely and run this sidequest in. Yay for Yuffers.
-Emerald Weapon- [42:15]
Hes still not immune to Gravity which is great news for us! I stuck Gravity with Quadra on Cid, gave him W-Magic, and the other two Mime Materia, and let the fireworks fly. Emmers attacks are sorta dangerous but his Stamp is negligible so its just Shoot to watch for. The goal was to kill him before he reached his Lasers + Aire Tam Storm phase.
-Ruby Weapon- [46:47]
His defence is sky-high, but Tifa can sort of make a dent using her Premium Heart so long as her Limit gauge is full. Set her up with five counter attack Materia and a Magic Counter + Full Cure to counter the %-based tentacle attacks and Ruby Ray (which ignores defence). To survive Ray, we need MBarrier up at all times so I keep an eye on Barriers and replenish MP if it falls below 300.
-Jenova Synthesis- [53:07]
This bugger has some viciously strong attacks so Dragon Force is the way to go if were to survive them. With that in place, we can smash into SYN with 4x Cut (magic is fairly useless against this kind of magic defence) until she goes down.
-Bizarro Sephiroth- [55:03]
Due to some AI-editing on Jenova Synthesis, this is always a three-party fight and Bizzaro Enegy gives him and his parts Regen, Haste, Shield, Barrier, and maybe some others. But this matters not, because we brought Dispel and Resist. Applying these prevents the application of these buffs and leaves him with just a 4000HP heal, which we can easily burn through with the Safer team and put Bizarro down.
-Safer Sephiroth- [56:30]
He opens with Adrenaline which gives him similar buffs to the ones enjoyed (briefly) by Bizarro. We can deal with this the same way by applying Dispel and then Resist. The biggest threat of this fight seems to come from Pale Horse, which inflicts some nasty statuses that I couldnt heal; its maybe either Resist or the Status Defence Ignore flag. In any case, I had to take care of Safer ASAP before I saw Pale Horse again. Fortunately, we were throwing out counters and 4x-Cuts like they were on sale so he was dead by the end of the first cycle.
And that concludes the (speedy) playthrough of Mexicos Hardcore Mod which is still undergoing revisions and changes based on feedback. If you want to get in touch with the mod author to give it a go, then leave a comment and Ill put you in touch with the guy.
But anyways, I gotta get back to those other FF7 challenges. And challenges for other games! And theres a speedrun to plan! And proms tomorrow! D: FF7 Mexicos Hardcore Mod - Final Rampage](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/e3G-3-GsEvE/mqdefault.jpg)


![FF7 Mexicos Hardcore Mod - To The Bronco!
That poor ol Bronco is lonely and waiting for us. Thing is, so are a bunch of horr-able monsters; lets not keep em waiting, eh?
-Bottomswell- [0:00]
The most disruptive thing here is Lunar Strike which inflicts Confuse. This derails us a fair bit, preventing healing and having us damage ourselves if we have spells cooking. Thankfully, the Tsunami wasnt too strong so once we reached that phase we were home dry...in a manner of speaking.
-Jenova BIRTH- [5:02]
A long fight and her Lasers hit hard but Ive got a lot of experience with this fights flow now. We go defensive until she goes through her three phases of attack and then go after her during the long cooldown period. I also used my Light Curtain (which was dropped from the Rufus + Dark Nation) to give us a little extra staying power.
Biggest killer here is Stop which leaves a character vulnerable and makes it much harder to use Wait ATB effectively. Poison is also annoying as it cancels out Defend whenever a tick of damage is dealt.
-Dyne- [14:37]
This fight can be dangerous but Dyne can still be Poisoned (though not put to Sleep) so all we have to do is land a successful Bio and then turtle him with Defend + Cure. We cant deal with double attacks so its important we dont hit him at all, otherwise this AI will be triggered.
-Gongaga Turks- [16:15]
Very luck-reliant fight without Big Guard (which I went and got immediately after this) as Renos Turk Light will hit for 700 damage unless youve got Sadness up. This can result in a character being killed if Rude decides to also go after that character on the same turn.
-Gi Nattak- [21:51]
Armed with Enemy Skills, we can lay down some decent damage with Beta. This heals the Flames but we actually want them alive as Nattak will waste turns using Take Over when theyre still around. Why do we want him to waste turns? Because his spear inflicts instant death so we need to bring him down fast. And hes immune to healing magic as well, so no Phoenix Downs here!
-Lost Number- [25:58]
First, I went up Mt. Nibel to get the Powersoul and the second Elemental materia; two very valuable tools. For set-up, we equipped the Bolt Ring and Star Pendants, with Elemental + Bolt and Poison + Added Effect to cover the gaps. This leaves Quake2 but hey-ho.
We want to go through the magic side as the physical side gets two turns and was hitting for 2000 damage in regular game, so who knows how much damage hell deal here. We go in with Beta, and when the Magic side takes over we swap to Powersoul + Deathblow and ???? (the KING of Enemy Skills).
-Materia Keeper- [29:24]
Theres no Paralysis here, but with the Powersoul and ???? we can blaze through the Goal Keeper before he can use Cure2 more than once. His Hell Combo inflicts Paralysis and Sleep (as well as Poison), which makes his single-target attacks slightly more effective at controlling the battle. Trine can be dealt with using the Bolt Ring and the two Elemental materia.
-Palmer- [32:05]
Hes immune to most basic elements, from Fire to Water, so physical attacks are the only way to go (unless we use Matra Magic :I). Problem is, his evasion is sky-high so it takes a while for us to bring him down. His Mako Gun also spits out Tier 3 spells instead of Tier 2 and we cant cover them all reliably. Hes also got 180 speed so keeping up can be tough.
And thus the Bronco was liberated. Praise be! Im off to buy Diamond Bangles, these Mythril Armlets are looking a bit, eh, beat-up. FF7 Mexicos Hardcore Mod - To The Bronco!](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/elG8Bge2an4/mqdefault.jpg)
![FF7 Gjoerulvs Hardcore Mod - Ep.40B: Diamond WEAPON (NMA)
Cant get Diamonds without PRESSURE.
[Restriction: No Magic Attacks]
-Strategy-
First of all, we need to defend against Confusion (Diamond Fire) so Cloud and Cid have Ribbons while Cait Sith has Mystify+Added Effect in his armour. Ribbons prevent a character from having MBarrier in this mod but as Diamonds stamp attack dispels these effects anyway, its not really worth it to maintain MBarrier in the first place.
This leaves Cait vulnerable to the other ailments caused by Diamond Fire, namely Soft-Numb and Poison, so Cid has a Heal Materia and theres small stock of items on hand to deal with Slow-Numb when the counter gets low. Caits accessory is a Headband, which protects against Sleep, Slow, and Stop in this mod, which is crucial for later.
Without magic attacks, we have to use Limit Breaks to damage Diamond. We go into the battle with Fury on each party member, which has our Lv.1 Limits fill instantly whenever Diamond hits us (Cloud requires two hits as hes using Lv.2 limits instead). Caits Dice are ideal for this fight as it ignores Diamonds high defence and can potentially inflict 3-7000 damage each time.
After two limit breaks, however, Diamonds core will open and hell begin charging Diamond Flash. When Flash is used, Cait and Cid take little damage because they havent killed many enemies (they havent even unlocked their Lv.2 Limits by this point) whereas Cloud, who has his Lv.3 Limits unlocked, is hit for 9999 damage. Cid is also hit with Stop, while Cait Sith is hit with Silence and Dual. Its imperative that Cait and Cid have high HP before Flash is used so liberal amounts of White Wind are used beforehand to keep HP topped up.
Cid is now Stopped, Cloud is dead, and Cait is silenced but still active. This is where Dispel comes in. Cait first uses a Remedy/Echo Screen on himself before casting Dispel on Cid who can then cast Life2 on Cloud. Diamond will have gotten some attacks off in the meantime so improvisation is sometimes needed. Once the team is steady again, we repeat the pattern. Midway, we use Turbo Ethers to replenish MP.
Eventually, Diamond goes down. Its not an ideal way to tackle him, but it shows a potential method for dealing with both Diamond Fire and Diamond Flash. The trick for dealing with Flash though is in using characters who havent been used often and/or who havent killed many enemies. FF7 Gjoerulvs Hardcore Mod - Ep.40B: Diamond WEAPON (NMA)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/f1gJSrcYeLc/mqdefault.jpg)

