i talk too much

it was kinda fun tho... at first I was very obsessive about keeping the tank at full hp but then I realised I could put a little more trust in my faerie companion to do a good amount of healing

Omg you finish the hard mode?!? Holy cow how did you survive?

with quick reflexes, stubbornness, and a lot of frustration! ^_^;

no but really, the key was to play defensively and be very conservative with MP, mostly using pray and chakra to restore HP. There was definitely a learning curve lmao, I died twice to the scorpion mech in chapter 1 just because I wasn’t careful enough. I learned to have revive on all party members at all times. Chapter 4 was a bit of a struggle. And don’t even get me started on chapter 9 and the fucking hell house. In order to get all the manuscripts (which isn’t a necessity for platinum so I’m not sure why I did this to myself) you have to do both madam m’s AND sam’s side quests on hard mode, which means doing most of chapter 9 twice... and beating the hell house twice x_x honestly everything after that was pretty easy-going, especially since I had tifa back in my party. tifa is extremely overpowered and incredibly mobile. it’s amazing.

the hardest part was the final combat sim challenge where you have to fight all the summons and then the “secret” boss, and if you die you have to start it all over again. Bahamut... is such a bitch. But then I found this video and copied this dude’s method and beat it in 5 minutes, which almost felt like cheating but I was so Done at that point that I didn’t even care anymore.

also, funny story, during the sephiroth fight I summoned the fat chocobo because tifa had some atb to spare (and just happened to have fat chocobo equipped) and its finisher dealt the last fucking blow.

I literally beat the final boss, on hard mode, by getting an oversized chicken to sit on him.