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Gaming Update
May. 29th, 2026 09:49 amLast night I finally beat Bonds of Friendship, the hardest combat challenge in FFVII Rebirth and the only thing standing between me and the platinum trophy. You play as Zack (with a fixed load out) and Cloud, and fight your way through ten boss fights, all of which are difficult and the last of which, Odin, is a nightmare; you cannot pause between fights, skip any fights, use items or change your load out once you start. Most of the bosses can one-shot you and/or have nasty attacks that make it very hard to continue (e.g. paralysis, silencing so you can’t cast spells, a gravity-based attack that reduces your HP to 1).
Odin himself is mounted on Sleipnir, is extremely fast, and fights in three phases; the first he uses a spear, the second a sword, the third both, and in all phases he has attacks that while blockable will put bracelets on your character and mean that any attack spell they cast will be met with an unblockable reprisal before your spell has even hit them, as well as a few unblockable (but dodgeable) attacks for good measure. If you are hit by too many attacks and/or fail to damage Odin enough, he gets bored and will give you a single warning before delivering an unavoidable whole party kill, Zantetsuken. At phase two he is able to cast Spatial Distortion and split the arena in two; one half has a burning floor that rapidly drains your health. At phase three he uses Temporal Distortion to trap one of your characters in a time bubble, unable to move/act but still able to be damaged, but this can be avoided if your character triggers their Limit Break as they are attacked. I did a lot of practising against Odin at full power in solo battles with Cloud in the VR simulator and can take him there, but he’s significantly stronger and faster in the Bonds battle.
And first you have to get to him. I have now died to all the bosses along the way many, many times, with the exception of round 3, which is against Phoenix and is accordingly very difficult to die on. Rounds 2 & 4 can suddenly go badly early on if I don’t dodge quickly enough at the start and get my buffs up; round 6 is against Ironclad, a massive giant with a very large sword, and often I would end up with only one conscious character doing laps around the arena with 1 HP desperately regenerating ATB. Round 7 has Alexander, a mechanical city, who after a number of battles I would usually be able to take out easily but occasionally for no good reason would kill Cloud unexpectedly and leave Zack stranded. Round 8 is the Mindflayer, who uses psychic attacks but is weak to synergy; this was usually doable once I got the hang of it and stopped remembering just how annoying soloing this with Cait Sith was. Round 9 is Bahamut, who has complicated mechanics involving form transformation and particles, and again either this went well or it went downhill rapidly and I ended up sliced into pieces. I got significantly better at blocking, dodging, and using synergy moves while I worked on this.
I spent several weeks tackling this, got frustrated, and abandoned it in favour of a new run on Stardew Valley, where for the first time I have managed to catch all the fish (including the five legendaries), ship all the stuff, acquire all the golden walnuts, and craft all the things, so now all I need is another 10 million gold to buy the clock and I will reach Perfection, woo hoo. I did a bit more Bonds and kept dying to Odin if I even got there. I tried Cyberpunk 2077 and decided that I should probably play it after the kids are asleep or else get headphones as it is definitely an adult game, I tried Ghost of Yotei and yes it looks lovely but it is also very grim. I did a few more days on Blue Prince, unlocked another trail on Lonely Mountains Downhill, and basically dithered. I couldn’t get into another game while my heart was still in Rebirth.
About a week ago I realised that on June 3rd FFVII Rebirth was coming out on the Switch 2, and at that time the streamlined progression option is likely to be unlocked for all platforms, which basically enables god mode. I really wanted to get the platinum before that, so I picked up Bonds again. On Sunday I got to Odin five times and got him into the third phase twice; on Monday I got to him twice and got into the second phase once. Last night I got to him but both Zack and Cloud got trapped on the wrong side of Spatial Distortion, and died rapidly. I tried again. I got wiped out on round 9, twice, 2 once, 7 once, got to Odin again, got him into phase 2, lost Zack, evaded Temporal Distortion with a limit break and then managed to pressure Odin just long enough to get off a level 3 wind spell and push him into a stagger. And kill him.
This is definitely the hardest platinum I’ve ever done, and I relied heavily on guides, mainly Optinoob and Solestro for the battles as well as random people in the comments and on Reddit. I am really really glad I eventually made it through. I do wish for story reasons that I’d been able to do more with Zack’s mechanics. You can only play him and Sephiroth in the simulator, and they each have a very short training challenge and then a long difficult battle challenge with Cloud. Sephiroth has a spin attack that builds his limit very fast, and I used that quite a bit in Rulers of the Outer Worlds , but Zack’s mechanics require you to play as him for long chunks of time (he charges up his attack to level 3) and the game guides were all based around using Zack to buff/heal etc while Cloud did the majority of the fighting and damage. I have seen a video in which someone solos Bonds with Zack, and while that looks totally unachievable, I might go back and try some of the earlier rounds using Zack as primary DPS.
Am I finished with Rebirth? Not… yet. I am working on a fic that requires me to replay one of the chapters, plus I have not actually 100%’d the game, although I do not think I can actually be bothered scanning every single enemy. But I do feel much more satisfied with it, and hopefully I will be able to get into something new now as well.
Odin himself is mounted on Sleipnir, is extremely fast, and fights in three phases; the first he uses a spear, the second a sword, the third both, and in all phases he has attacks that while blockable will put bracelets on your character and mean that any attack spell they cast will be met with an unblockable reprisal before your spell has even hit them, as well as a few unblockable (but dodgeable) attacks for good measure. If you are hit by too many attacks and/or fail to damage Odin enough, he gets bored and will give you a single warning before delivering an unavoidable whole party kill, Zantetsuken. At phase two he is able to cast Spatial Distortion and split the arena in two; one half has a burning floor that rapidly drains your health. At phase three he uses Temporal Distortion to trap one of your characters in a time bubble, unable to move/act but still able to be damaged, but this can be avoided if your character triggers their Limit Break as they are attacked. I did a lot of practising against Odin at full power in solo battles with Cloud in the VR simulator and can take him there, but he’s significantly stronger and faster in the Bonds battle.
And first you have to get to him. I have now died to all the bosses along the way many, many times, with the exception of round 3, which is against Phoenix and is accordingly very difficult to die on. Rounds 2 & 4 can suddenly go badly early on if I don’t dodge quickly enough at the start and get my buffs up; round 6 is against Ironclad, a massive giant with a very large sword, and often I would end up with only one conscious character doing laps around the arena with 1 HP desperately regenerating ATB. Round 7 has Alexander, a mechanical city, who after a number of battles I would usually be able to take out easily but occasionally for no good reason would kill Cloud unexpectedly and leave Zack stranded. Round 8 is the Mindflayer, who uses psychic attacks but is weak to synergy; this was usually doable once I got the hang of it and stopped remembering just how annoying soloing this with Cait Sith was. Round 9 is Bahamut, who has complicated mechanics involving form transformation and particles, and again either this went well or it went downhill rapidly and I ended up sliced into pieces. I got significantly better at blocking, dodging, and using synergy moves while I worked on this.
I spent several weeks tackling this, got frustrated, and abandoned it in favour of a new run on Stardew Valley, where for the first time I have managed to catch all the fish (including the five legendaries), ship all the stuff, acquire all the golden walnuts, and craft all the things, so now all I need is another 10 million gold to buy the clock and I will reach Perfection, woo hoo. I did a bit more Bonds and kept dying to Odin if I even got there. I tried Cyberpunk 2077 and decided that I should probably play it after the kids are asleep or else get headphones as it is definitely an adult game, I tried Ghost of Yotei and yes it looks lovely but it is also very grim. I did a few more days on Blue Prince, unlocked another trail on Lonely Mountains Downhill, and basically dithered. I couldn’t get into another game while my heart was still in Rebirth.
About a week ago I realised that on June 3rd FFVII Rebirth was coming out on the Switch 2, and at that time the streamlined progression option is likely to be unlocked for all platforms, which basically enables god mode. I really wanted to get the platinum before that, so I picked up Bonds again. On Sunday I got to Odin five times and got him into the third phase twice; on Monday I got to him twice and got into the second phase once. Last night I got to him but both Zack and Cloud got trapped on the wrong side of Spatial Distortion, and died rapidly. I tried again. I got wiped out on round 9, twice, 2 once, 7 once, got to Odin again, got him into phase 2, lost Zack, evaded Temporal Distortion with a limit break and then managed to pressure Odin just long enough to get off a level 3 wind spell and push him into a stagger. And kill him.
This is definitely the hardest platinum I’ve ever done, and I relied heavily on guides, mainly Optinoob and Solestro for the battles as well as random people in the comments and on Reddit. I am really really glad I eventually made it through. I do wish for story reasons that I’d been able to do more with Zack’s mechanics. You can only play him and Sephiroth in the simulator, and they each have a very short training challenge and then a long difficult battle challenge with Cloud. Sephiroth has a spin attack that builds his limit very fast, and I used that quite a bit in Rulers of the Outer Worlds , but Zack’s mechanics require you to play as him for long chunks of time (he charges up his attack to level 3) and the game guides were all based around using Zack to buff/heal etc while Cloud did the majority of the fighting and damage. I have seen a video in which someone solos Bonds with Zack, and while that looks totally unachievable, I might go back and try some of the earlier rounds using Zack as primary DPS.
Am I finished with Rebirth? Not… yet. I am working on a fic that requires me to replay one of the chapters, plus I have not actually 100%’d the game, although I do not think I can actually be bothered scanning every single enemy. But I do feel much more satisfied with it, and hopefully I will be able to get into something new now as well.
