Finalized. Fantastic.

Just in time for the remake!

Another day, another game moved to my "Complete" collection in Steam. Final Fantasy VII isn't too hard if all you care about is completing the story, but unlocking every achievement is another matter entirely. Before we begin, special thanks go to ThunderPeel2001, who made a mod to improve the game's compatibility with Xbox controllers, and mira, who wrote a guide listing the many things that can be permanently missed in a playthrough.

First on our agenda is the "Great Gospel" achievement, which is unlocked by teaching Aeris Aerith the party member whose name starts with "A" the Limit Break of the same name. (You don't have to actually use the Limit Break, it's enough that she knows it.) This will never happen in an ordinary playthrough, as by the time a player manages to stumble across the Great Gospel item, Aerith will be long dead. Once you've got it, it's a matter of letting her get smacked around by enemies until she's learned all of her other Limit Breaks, and you're good to go. (Sadly, hitting your own party members doesn't fill the Limit Gauge. I guess Square thought that was too cheap even for FFVII.)

The Steam version's translation is an improvement over the original PlayStation version, but it doesn't fix Aerith's name. Fortunately, the player can do that themselves.

Next up is the Gold Chocobo. This one isn't actually too hard, though not all guides include a critical piece of information: when performing the final breeding between a Black Chocobo and a Wonderful Chocobo, you have to select the Black Chocobo first, or the offspring won't be a Gold Chocobo. Knowing that would saved me a good deal of frustration.

This little guy came in very handy during the races for Materia. I got a kick out of watching him take off like someone stuck a rocket in his cloaca.

The true test of my patience came with the "Materia Overlord" achievement, which requires the player to master every type of Materia in the game. Unsurprisingly, this is the rarest achievement on Steam. Mostly, it's a tedious grind in the swamp room in the Northern Cave, praying that the next encounter is with three Movers. A word of warning is required, however. The actual requirement to unlock the achievement is that you must currently possess at least one copy of each mastered Materia. This includes the Master Command, Magic, and Summon Materia! (and Underwater...) If you value your sanity, DO NOT collect the Master Materia from Cosmo Canyon. If you did this, you would have to re-master all of the Command, Magic, and Summon Materia. I narrowly averted overwriting my save file before I realized that I was doing something wrong. Get the Master Materia from the man in Kalm after defeating Emerald Weapon for a much more enjoyable time. (Also, fight one more random battle so the game will recheck the achievement.)

Speaking of Emerald Weapon...

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According to Steam's achievement stats, Emerald Weapon is the easier of the two superbosses. I personally found it quite difficult, though I'm not sure whether this is because defeating Emerald Weapon unlocks the Master Materia that came in so handy against Ruby Weapon, or because I was using a high-risk, high-reward strategy. I went in with only two Materia (HP Plus and either Enemy Skill or Underwater) equipped on each party member. If you're lucky, Emerald Weapon will use "Aire Tam Storm" while your entire party is at full health, leaving all three with exactly 7,777 HP. This will put your entire party in "Lucky 7s" mode, and they will proceed to rip Emerald Weapon a new one. (Unfortunately, this works only once per battle.) I had quite a bit of trouble getting this to work, and Emerald Weapon still had plenty of health left afterward. (Turns out 1,000,000 hit points is a lot.)

Ruby Weapon was a relative pushover. I went in with two party members KO-ed as recommended, then brought them back with Final Attack + Phoenix. My party then kept Cloud supplied while he broke in his shiny new Master Summon Materia and cast Knights of the Round until the game's "hardest monster" keeled over and died.

Knights of the Round may be a wee bit overpowered.

Obviously Sephiroth is a total joke if you're capable of beating the Weapons, so there's no point in relating the details of that fight. If anyone would like to challenge my status as the premiere Final Fantasy VII expert, here's a question that I've been unable to solve:

What did Rufus want with the Tiny Bronco, anyway?