Cloud Strife
Name: Cloud Strife
Gender: Male
Age: 24
Height: 173 cm | 5’8”
Weight: 62kg | 136 lbs
Not-so Ex-1st Class SOLDIER of Shinra
Imbued with mako and JENOVA cells
Successor to Zack Fair
Absolutely nails dress fashion
Background
Childhood
As a child, Cloud wanted to become a strong person who protects others. Cloud grew up in Nibelheim, an outskirts village in the FF7 world. It was occupied by Shinra. He wanted to get a childhood acquaintance to notice him (Tifa Lockhart) and vowed to become a member of SOLDIER like his childhood icon, Sephiroth. This will certainly end well.
Crisis Core
So Cloud left home to become a SOLDIER and prove himself to Tifa. Except he did not make the SOLDIER program whatsoever and was relegated to an infantryman. The embarrassment prevented him from showing his face. This was around when he met 1st Class SOLDIER and soon to be bestie, Zack Fair. The two bonded and Cloud was content with his job. This was until he met Sephiroth during a reconnaissance mission at Nibelheim, his home town. Not willing to show himself, Cloud cowered for seven days until the day Sephiroth burned down Nibelheim. Sephiroth killed most of everyone dear to him save for Tifa.
On that day, Cloud confronted a defeated Zack, an injured Tifa, and decided to fight Sephiroth. Cloud was successful and ended up “killing” him (but he actually threw Sephiroth into the Lifestream, totally won’t be a problem later). The injuries of the fight left him vulnerable to Hojo, who took his unconscious body and injected him full of mako energy and JENOVA’s (an alien calamity) cells. Zack managed to break him free and give Cloud his freedom from Shinra, but at the cost of his own life. In his dying moments, Zack gave Cloud his own Buster Sword, telling him to protect his honor and chase his dreams.
Final Fantasy 7 / Remake
Years later, Cloud is now a mercenary doing odd jobs for pay. He soon connected back with Tifa and met the members of AVALANCHE, a rogue group of ecoterrorists that defy Shinra’s rule. After destroying the Sector 5 reactor, Cloud became intertwined with the fight against Shinra (though against his will). He would meet many colorful characters and explore the world. However, Sephiroth resurfaced after killing the President of Shinra. The chase was on to defeat Sephiroth before he could destroy the world.
Along the way, Cloud’s psychological trauma from the events of Crisis Core conflated his own experiences with Zack’s. He led a life of lies until he was made privy to Hojo’s experiments and began questioning his identity. After the death of Aerith, Cloud became depressed and gave Sephiroth the tools needed to wipe the world. Of course, after confronting his memories and identity, Cloud and Tifa would lead the fight against Sephiroth. He ended up taking him out “once and for all.” But not before destroying Shinra, and bringing the world back to nature. The remake is the same story up until they leave Midgar, wherein Cloud destroys the OG timeline and the events of previous games are sorta undone.
Advent Children
After the events of FF7, Cloud ran a delivery service. However, the events of the game traumatized him to the point he didn’t want to be involved with anyone. He was confronted with the Geostigma crisis and aimed to heal a massive disease. Cloud would fight the Remnants of Sephiroth and then Sephiroth + JENOVA for the last time. Afterwards, the earth is saved, disease is cured, and Cloud finally is happy with himself… for once.
Arsenal & Equipment
Weapons
Buster Sword: The initial and mainly canon weapon across FF7. It was given to him by Zack as he was dying, who subsequently had it given to him by Angeal when he was dying. He’s the third user of it. It has two Materia slots and post relatively lower-end stats.
Ultima Weapon: After defeating Ultimate Weapon, Cloud is given the best weapon in the game. Has extremely high stats (100 Attack, 110 Attack%, 51 Magic) and eight Materia slots. It deals more damage the more HP Cloud has. At low health, Cloud’s attack stat is hindered instead.
Fusion Sword: In Advent Children, Cloud leaves behind the Buster Sword and begins using the fusion sword, which are six smaller swords that can combine in unique fashion into greater swords. He can separate and recombine them mid-fight. It also gives him access to his most powerful Omnislash technique.
Armor / Equipment
Ribbon: Grants immunity to every status effect besides Slow, Stop, and Instant Death.
Ziedrich: Provides 100 Defense, 15 Def%, 98 Magic Defense, 18 MDef%, +20 Strength and Magic, as well as halving all elemental damage.
Hardy-Daytona: A motorcycle used in FF7. A regular old motorcycle.
Fenrir: The high-speed delivery motorcycle used in Advent Children. Also has his Fusion Swords equipped inside of it.
Gold Chocobo: The true man’s ride. It’s a golden chicken thing that can fly and run on water. The best Chocobo you can ever find.
Materia
What is Materia? Simply put, Materia is crystallized mako, which is in turn energy directly from the Lifestream. Materia calls upon the knowledge of the lifestream to manipulate the elements of the Planet. It is created once mako is pressurized to a finite point. While it is seen as magic rocks, they are used for more things than just combat. Mako, since Shinra’s use of it, is used to power whole cities and provide energy to products.
Doesn’t Cloud need Materia slots to use Materia? Nope. In fact, characters like Zack and Kadaj use materia off hand without equipping it to a weapon. Zack especially literally hand waves and conjures magic. No weapon involved. Kadaj fashions it inside of his skin. The versatility of Materia is abundant. In “On the Way to a Smile, Episode: Yuffie” it is explained that materia requires brain waves to activate. If Cloud has owned it (which in Advent Children, we see that he has owned it), he can use it. So as long as he has a working brain.
No need to find out what “canon” materia there is. This applies to other FF7 characters too.
Offensive
Firaga: A powerful fire-based attack.
Blizzaga: A powerful ice-based attack.
Thundaga: A powerful lightning-based attack.
Quaga: A powerful earthquake-based attack.
Bioga: Large venomous bubbles that inflict damage and can poison.
Graviga: Creates a giant gravity well that crushes opponents in it. Cannot be reflected.
Cometeor: Summons meteors from outer space to hit enemies. Cannot be reflected.
Death: Calls forth the Grim Reaper to instantly kill an opponent. Cannot be avoided unless they explicitly resist it.
Tornado: Creating a powerful twister on an opponent. Can inflict confusion.
Freeze: Encases the opponent and surrounding area in ice.
Break: Petrifies enemies by materializing rock around the enemy to crush them.
Flare: Creates localized nuclear explosions of extreme heat.
Ultima: Massive wave of Dark Energy. Most powerful black spell besides Meteor.
Healing
Curaga: Restores a large amount of health. Equation is (130 * 22) + [(Level + Magic Atk) *6)]
FullCure: Restores the user or one of their allies to full health.
Regen: The user gradually restores health overtime. If Haste is in play, that time is expedited. Slow halves the regeneration. Stop halts regeneration completely.
Arise: Revives a mortally wounded opponent to full health.
Esuna: Cures any status ailment besides Doom, Slow, and Stop.
Support
Haste: Doubles the speed of time for the user.
Wall: A barrier that halves physical and magical damage.
Reflect: Reflects up to four magical attacks back at the caster.
Shield: Shields the user from any elemental damage they can access through Materia & all physical damage. Wears off after a while and cannot heal while it is up (besides regeneration spells).
Resist: Locks the user’s current biological state, preventing additional status effects but cannot heal. Wears off after a while.
Disruption
Slow: Halves the opponent’s time.
Stop: Stops the flow of time for their opponent, freezing them in place.
Sleep: Puts the enemy to sleep.
Toad: Turns the enemy into a frog, preventing them from using any abilities besides normal attacks.
Mini: Reduces the size of the opponent.
Silence: Seals magic by disabling the use of abilities that require sound (extends to vocal and regular sounds).
Berserk: Enemy is put into a state of rage wherein they are driven to kill the user. They cannot use special abilities but their attack is increased by 1.5x
Confuse: Interferes with the mind of the opponent and well… confuses their actions.
DeBarrier: Disables most manner of magical shields or barriers.
DeSpell: Disables enemy modifications they grant themselves, even barriers. Does not affect statistical buffs.
Dezone: Sends the enemy to another dimension, effectively taking them out the fight.
Enemy Skill
Aqualung: An attack of massive bubbles.
Beta: Large nuclear blast of heat, resembling a mushroom cloud.
Death Sentence: Death is called on the enemy and will kill them in 60 seconds. Time-affecting spells will also affect the time it takes to kill the enemy.
Magic Breath: Multicolored bubbles of fire, ice, and lightning.
Pandora’s Box: A technique that deals heavy non-elemental damage, ignoring special defense.
Shadow Flare: Dark flames engulf the opponent in a blinding light, dealing heavy damage.
Trine: A pyramid of electrical energy is unleashed on enemies.
Angel Whisper: Restores the user to maximum health and cures special status effects.
White Wind: A wind that cures the caster’s health equal to their own and cures special status effects.
Big Guard: Grants the abilities of Barrier, Magic Barrier, and Haste all at the same time.
Death Force: Protects the user from instant death.
Dragon Force: Boosts their defensive stats by 1.5x and then 2x.
Bad Breath: Inflicts Sleep, Poison, Confusion, Silence, Small, and/or Frog at the opponent.
Frog Song: Turns enemy into a frog and puts them to sleep.
Magic Hammer: Steals a fraction of the opponent’s magic and adds it to their own pool.
Support Abilities
Elemental: Reacts to the battlefield and paired materia to turn into a specific elemental attack.
Added Effect: Reacts to the battlefield and paired materia to turn into a materia that grants status effects.
HP Absorb: User can absorb 10% of health based on the damage they deal.
MP Absorb: User can absorb 1% of MP based on the damage they deal.
Quadra Magic: Can cast spells or Summons of paired materia four times at once.
MP Turbo: Increases both the power and MP cost of paired materia.
Added Cut: automatically will follow up with a regular attack.
Sneak Attack: can open the fight with the paired materia.
All: Decreases the paired materia’s power by ⅓ but can affect a wide area of effect.
Counter: Will counter when struck with the paired Command materia.
Magic Counter: Will counter when struck with the paired Magic or Summon materia.
Final Attack: When the user is defeated and is near death in battle, this will activate, allowing them to unleash an attack with the Paired Materia.
Counter Attack: Counters with a regular physical attack.
Mega All: Up to five times can turn single-target abilities into wide area abilities.
Long Range: Can reach opponents out of range with physical attacks.
Pre-Emptive: Increases the likelihood of catching opponent off-guard and successful ambushes.
Underwater: Allows the user to breathe underwater.
Commands
2x-Cut & 4x-Cut: Able to attack two or four times simultaneously.
Slash All: Strikes with physical attack across a wider area.
Flash: Precise strike against all enemies that can kill them instantly.
W-Magic: Can cast two spells simultaneously.
W-Summon: Can cast two summons simultaneously.
Deathblow: Deal critical damage but has low accuracy.
Manipulate: Can take control of the opponent and force them to use any spell or ability in their arsenal.
Mime: Mimics the action of the teammates (besides Limit Breaks) at no cost.
Morph: If the opponent is killed with this weak technique, the opponent turns into an item.
Sense / Assess: Can scan the abilities, biographies, life, magic ability, elemental weakness, and capabilities of the opponent.
Summons
Master Summon Materia: This is an ultimate piece of Materia that allows the user to summon any of the sixteen summons available in FF7. This takes away any guesswork out of what summons to include for each party member as they have access to all of them.
Alexander:- Judgement
Ifrit- Hellfire
Kujata- Tetra Disaster
Leviathan- Tidal Wave
Phoenix- Phoenix Flame
Ramuh- Judgement Bolt
Shiva- Diamond Dust
Titan- Anger of the Land
Choco/Mog- Fat Chocobo / DeathBlow!!!
Hades- Black Cauldron
Odin- Zantetsuken / Gungnir
Bahamuts- Flare Series
Typhon- Disintegration
Knights of the Round- Ultimate End
Power & Abilities
Biology
JENOVA Cells: When Cloud became a SOLDIER, Hojo injected him with cells of JENOVA which already made him much more proficient than the average SOLDIER. Because of this, he is attuned with the thoughts and feelings of the extraterrestrial. Not to mention his affinity with mako and the Lifestream had been boosted tremendously, not unlike that of Sephiroth.
Mako Energy: Normal SOLDIERs are already injected with a ton of Mako into their DNA. Cloud was injected with so much mako in Hojo’s experiments that he underwent a bad case of mako addiction shortly thereafter. This allows him other abilities but makes him less receptive to the dangers of using stuff like mako and materia.
Superhuman Physique: The standard fare. Super strength. Super speed. Super durability. There’s also this weird thing that Cloud can leap bounds in a single jump. I want to call it flying but he technically isn’t.
Limit Breaks
Everyone in FF7 has Spirit Energy inside of them ready to be used. Limit Breaks are unique skills that tap into this. They are affected by intense emotions canonically and are way stronger than normal attacks.
Level 1
Braver: Cleaving an opponent in half with a large leap and vertical slice.
Cross Slash: The kanji for “bad luck” is written as Cloud slices his opponent three times. Can paralyze.
Level 2
Blade Beam: A beam of spirit energy is sent at the opponent for damage. After it hits, other beams are honed onto remaining opponents.
Climhazzard: Cloud impales the opponent before cutting them upwards.
Level 3
Meteorain: Cloud summons and sends six meteors at the opponent.
Finishing Touch: Cloud creates a tornado and sends it at the opponent, catching them in a localized typhoon.
Level 4
Omnislash: Cloud’s ultimate Limit Break. It speaks for itself as one of the more famous RPG attacks. Cloud repeatedly strikes the opponent with an abundance of Spirit Energy before finishing them off with an overpowered Braver.
Final
Omnislash Version 6: The variation of the Omnislash used in Advent Children. Cloud takes advantage of the Fusion Sword and his own spiritual energy to blitz the opponent with a series of fast and strong attacks. He dashes from fusion sword part to fusion sword part before finishing them off.
Strength & Attack Potency
His opponents / allies have done some crazy shit and Cloud’s defeated them or at the very least can compare to them
By virtue of his materia..
Causing Magnitude 7 earthquakes. (based on the fact they can destroy villages)
Summons will turn against the user if they cannot handle their power.
His Limit Break energy one-shotted Bahamut SIN, the most powerful Bahamut iteration in FF7.
Defeated the Whisper Harbinger, thus eliminating the OG FF7 timeline in the Remake. Its minions were all fashioned after previous summons Cloud has faced.
Defeated Sephiroth which needs no introduction.
Speed & Reactions
Faster than bullets. Should be faster than most lower class SOLDIERs.
Should be comparable to lasers based on skills in both the OG game and remake.
Can keep up with Reno in an even fight early game, who uses electricity to fight.
In the remake, is able to keep pace with summons in boss fights.
Durability & Stamina
Lived through Hojo’s experiments & powered through a horrible case of mako addiction.
Fell about fifty meters into the slums from Midgar after his fight with the Airbuster.
Fell about several meters into a sewer after encountering Corneo.
Fell into the Lifestream after Ultimate Weapon destroyed Mideel. (he does a lot of falling)
Survived multiple run-ins and battles with Sephiroth.
His Spirit Energy could power through Bahamut SIN’s Petaflare, one of the strongest skills in FF7.
Got stabbed several times by Murasame and was relatively fine.
Near-death, Cloud tanked a collision explosion that killed Kadaj and Loz.
As a SOLDIER (or made like one at least), can fight for long periods of time without rest.
Skill & Intelligence
Already was gifted in sword fighting even as an infantryman. Managed to “kill” Sephiroth when Zack was unable to (and that guy had way more experience than Cloud).
Has an expert grasp on everything in the FF7 world like Limit Breaks, Materia, Mako, Shinra, the surrounding nations and cities, and magic early on in the OG story.
Defeated the likes of the Turks, Hojo, Rufus Shinra, JENOVA, the Weapons, and Sephiroth.
Was instrumental to the fall of Shinra.
Could fight three remnants of Sephiroth while riding a motorcycle.
Solved the Geostigma crisis.
In the remake, fought a future version of Sephiroth before he even left Midgar.
Scaling
Zack
Fared considerably better against Sephiroth than Zack. Also by the end of the game accomplishes most of what he wasn’t able to in terms of power output. His SOLDIER cells are also pure and are above the 1st Class SOLDIERs in Crisis Core.
Turks
They are fought consistently across any iteration of FF7 that has Cloud in it, even in Advent Children they fight briefly. The Turks have been around since the first game in the FF7 timeline and contributed to some feats. Mainly applies to Reno, Tseng, and Rude.
Tseng has taken one beating from every first class SOLDIER barring Cloud and Zack.
Reno and Rude get clowned on by the Remnants of Sephiroth across all of Advent Children.
Summons
The summons you receive in the game are below the party’s maximum Spirit Energy. While they have strong skills, if the caster cannot handle a summon, they will turn against them. Not to mention, characters like Zack have defeated Summons in one-on-one battles. In the remake, you fight Summons directly in either simulated combat scenarios (which are analogous to the real deal) or remnants / copies of them (like with the Whisper fights). In Advent Children, a single Limit Break attack brings down one of the most powerful summons.
Knights of the Round has its own dimension of many, many stars.
Bahamut Fury can molt the moon. It also flew from a distant planet to Earth in seconds.
Zirconiade, the “Planet Burner”. was a big enough threat that the Planet released the Jade Weapon to stop it.
JENOVA
You fight JENOVA cells and various iterations of her body across the entire game. She is abundantly powerful and leads to several of the major conflicts in the game. Even just her head is enough to recall Sephiroth back to the living world in Advent Children.
JENOVA’s impact on the meteorite creates the Northern Cavern.
She survives it and leads to the destruction of the Cetra.
Sephiroth
Cloud beats him. Multiple times. He was also constructed to be a clone of Sephiroth by undergoing similar experiments after their initial run-in.
Sephiroth is built differently and is above even 1st class SOLDIERs normally. Should be above the feats mentioned before.
Was considered so much of a Planet Crisis that the Earth released ALL of its Weapons against him.
Others…
Shinra’s tech could defeat the Weapons and Cloud / co. should be comparable.
Miscellaneous
Is surprisingly tone-deaf. It took him two game discs to realize Tifa likes him.
Sephiroth is his stalker-ex that follows Cloud into every game he’s in. And I do mean every game.
Aerith death scene because it’s basically public domain at this point.
It took Tifa literally diving into his subconscious, tanking a supernova & overcoming Earth-cancer for Cloud to stop being depressed for 3 seconds.
Weaknesses
Overuse of materia could lead to biological damage, but Cloud’s JENOVA cells kinda makes this point mute.
Technically has a finite pool of MP to spend on Materia skills but MP is never brought up for story reasons in FF7 whatsoever. Leading me to believe that MP is mainly a gameplay mechanic rather than a story one.
Has an abundance of psychological issues that took the entire FF7 timeline to fix. He’s prone to depression of sorts.
Advent Children is not a good movie.
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