Final Fantasy VII: Hard Type mod FAQ!

Final Fantasy VII "HardType" mod -- http://www.twitch.tv/potatohandle

 --- Q: What the hell is FFVII: HardType? What platform are you playing on? ---
A: Hardtype is an increased difficulty mod for the Playstation version of Final Fantasy VII, made by GalenMyra and LandonRay. I have purposefully not read up on many of the details of the mod myself, but you can read what it does here: http://www.insanedifficulty.com/board/index.php?/files/file/63-final-fantasy-vii-hard-type/

The core gameplay remains the same, but the enemies and bosses are much tougher and there have been several balance tweaks; most notably, I have FAR less HP than in a normal game. I'm using ePSXe to run this mod, as cannot be applied to PAL versions of FFVII and I only have a PAL PS2.


 --- Q: What does the "____ edition" mean in the title? ---
A: It's just an on-going gag, each time I stream I make up and change what "edition" the stream is, usually something relevant to what's coming up in the game. It's just flavour text though, and has no bearing on the game or the mod.


 --- Q: Why does everyone have the "Sadness" debuff? ---
A: Sadness reduces damage received by 30% at the rather trivial cost of making your limit gauge fill up at half speed. The damage reduction is nearly always the better choice, so I will have sadness on whenever it's available.


 --- Q: Why do you cast Death Sentence on Tifa? ---
A: With Powersoul equipped, it quadruples her damage; here's an example: http://www.twitch.tv/potatohandle/c/3695784


 --- Q: Why are you such a low level? ---
A: I'm not, I do my best to fight all random encounters that I come across to keep my level from slipping too low. It can just appear that I am too low, because the damage output of enemies has been increased, my party's HP has been decreased, and I'm always in the back row to reduce physical damage.


 --- Q: Why don't you grind levels to make it easier? ---
A: Because that would be boring, haha. These mods are usually balanced so that you get the levels you need just by fighting encounters "normally", however sometimes it may take a fair few deaths to work out how each fight works and how to equip and strategize to beat them. One exception however, is that I may grind for items if I decide that I desperately need them for a particular fight.


 --- Q: What have you died from so far? ---
A: Here's the list; "RE" stands for Random Encounter, anything without "RE" is a boss fight.
  1. Midgar Zolom         - Tested if I could survive his physical attacks. Spoilers: I couldn't.
  2. RE, Levrikon x3      - Pincered outside the chocobo farm. No tranquilizers.
  3. Bottomswell          - Fight started earlier than I remember, wasn't at full health to start.
  4. Jenova Birth         - Two people killed by triple-laser attack. Forgot to reapply sadness after reviving.
  5. RE, Bullmotor x4     - Attritioned to death by 4x matra magic spammers just before Dyne.
  6. Dyne                 - Forgot to equip W Machine Gun. FailFish
  7. Dyne                 - Forgot to equip W Machine Gun. FailFish
  8. Reno/Rude (Gongaga)  - Used White Wind, which removed my Sadness. Died shortly after.
  9. Gi Nattak            - Didn't learn my lesson on Reno/Rude, used White Wind again.
  10. Gi Nattak           - Survived longer, but eventually killed by double turns of fire2.
  11. RE, Harpy           - Trying to learn Aqualung, got bad damage range.
  12. RE, Harpy           - Trying to learn Aqualung, got bad damage range.
  13. RE, Harpy           - Trying to learn Aqualung, got bad damage range.
  14. Lost Number         - Testing with physical second phase.
  15. Lost Number         - Testing with magic second phase.
  16. Materia Keeper      - Assumed he wasn't still vulnerable to stop/paralyze, copped lots of Trines.
  17. Materia Keeper      - Choco/Mog's stop didn't work, Cloud died early, copped some early Trines.
  18. Materia Keeper      - Changed materia layout, forgot to place Elemental/Lightning on anyone, died to Trines.
  19. Rapps               - Mainly just because I was testing stuff first attempt.
  20. RE, Ancient Dragons - Tried to kill them without crowd-controlling them first.
  21. Red Dragon          - Got wrecked by instant death and Aeris wasn't able to survive Red Dragon Breath.
  22. Red Dragon          - Playing too defensively.
  23. Demon's Gate        - Was hard. >_>
  24. Demon's Gate        - Was hard. >_>
  25. Demon's Gate        - Was hard. >_>
  26. Demon's Gate        - Was hard. >_>
  27. Demon's Gate        - Was hard. >_>
  28. Demon's Gate        - Was hard. >_>
  29. Demon's Gate        - Was hard. >_>
  30. Demon's Gate        - Was hard. >_>
  31. Jenova Life         - http://www.twitch.tv/potatohandle/c/3695894
  32. Jenova Life         - Opened with Aqualung, difficult to recover.
  33. Jenova Life         - Working on strats.
  34. Jenova Life         - Working on strats.
 (34.5. Wutai Pagoda      - Yuffie died here three times. Game over screen shows, but doesn't end game.)
  35. RE, SOLDIER B Class - During the Weapon attack on Junon on disc 2. Wasn't set up properly.
  36-50. Materia Guardian - Various attempts and demonstrations of the new Materia Guardian bosses.