Chapter 15: The Day Midgar Stood Still

Story mode. Written for a first playthrough and kept free of spoilers — it will not tell you what happens here, only what the game is asking of you.

After the longest chapter in the game, one of the shortest. There are no side quests here, no Chadley and no shops apart from three vending machines. The whole chapter is a climb, and it only goes one way.

Before you start

Equip Wind and Lightning magic, and put Elemental with one of them if you have it. The soldiers on the way up hate fire, and most of the machines and flying things hate lightning or wind. The fight at the top cares about nothing else.

The climb

You go up ladders and towers first, then the game hands you a grappling gun and shows you how to use it at a marked anchor. From then on, the route is anchors, stairs and ladders.

The one rule worth remembering: almost every landing has a chest just off the path, and you usually cannot come back down for it. Before you grapple or climb, look round the corner. There are nine in all. The interesting ones are an Enchanted Ring, found by doubling back into a building through its own outside stairs, and a Magician’s Bracelet on some scaffolding you reach by going back for a rope bundle.

If you have Enemy Skill Materia, keep it on. The blue flying lizards here teach a skill.

The disc

The second bench has a vending machine that sells Lurking in the Darkness for 50 gil. Nothing else in the game sells it.

Under fire

Partway up, something starts shooting at you across an open deck. Do not try to fight it. Wait behind cover while it fires, then run to the next metal container when it stops, and keep going until you reach the stairs.

The end

After the third bench there are a few more grapple points, a short run, and a boss. Rest at that bench and heal up. The boss spends much of the fight in the air, so let Barret’s gun do the work while it flies and switch to your fighters when it comes down. Kill anything it sends out at you first. Late in the fight it gets much faster and much harder to stagger; when the floor lights up, move.

Game Notes

This is a corridor, and the game knows it. The climb works because it is short and loud and keeps changing the shape of the path under you: towers, a building you go in and out of three times, a highway, a deck with nowhere to hide.

Most of the chapter’s value is in the fight at the end, which is one of the better boss fights in the game and the first one in a while that properly tests whether your materia matches the enemy. If it beats you, change your elements before you change your level.

How this page was made

Researched across 4 community walkthroughs and written from scratch — no source’s wording appears here.

How we decide what to print

Completionist mode. Full spoilers, in play order, with every permanent loss called out before you reach it.

Spoilers from here.

Cloud, Tifa and Barret climb the wreckage of the fallen Sector 7 plate toward the Shinra Building, with Shinra troopers combing the debris for Avalanche survivors. The party does not change, there are no side quests, and Chadley is nowhere near.

The deadline

There is no single door. The route is ladders and grapple points, almost all of them one-way, so each landing’s chest is lost for this run once you climb past it. Every chest and the disc come back on Chapter Select, and a replay gives the same items.

Everything, in order

A Broken City. A Neighborhood Watch member tells you to turn back; walk past him into the debris. Nothing to pick up.

The Climb. A bench and vending machine sit under a collapsed building just beyond him. Up the first water tower, across a bridge to the second, past two Byobapolis: Mega-Potion. Back on the first tower, two Cerulean Drakes — with Enemy Skill Materia equipped, they teach Algid Aura. The grappling gun tutorial follows on the platform past the third ladder.

Hiding in Plain Sight. 3-C SOLDIER Operators, weak to fire and fond of spells. A grapple point at the end of the tunnel fails and drops you into four waves: Elite Security Officers with a Guard Dog, a Helitrooper, Elite Security Officers with Elite Grenadiers, then more Helitroopers. Follow the road left and up.

The Path to Greater Heights. The second bench and vending machine — this is the one that sells 5. Lurking in the Darkness for 50 gil.

• 3,000 gil in the corner to the right of the building front, after two 3-C Operators and an Elite Helitrooper.
• Stairs up, grapple from the spotlight, then Slug-Rays and a room of Slug-Rays and Shock-Rays (the Shock-Rays put Manaward on the others). Hi-Potion in that room’s corner.
• Grapple from the far side of that floor, walk round the outside, down the stairs and back in: Enchanted Ring. Grapple the opposite wall to leave.
• Outside, a Blast-Ray — lightning, and it shoves melee away once staggered, so use Barret or spells.
• The red tower: Turbo Ether round the back of the first ring, Smelling Salts up a short ladder on the left of the second.
• The elevated highway, with more Byobapolis and Cerulean Drakes (Algid Aura again if you missed it). Go back for the rope bundle and grapple across to the scaffolding for the Magician’s Bracelet.

Flight of the Valkyrie. The Valkyrie strafes the open deck. Hide behind a container while it fires, run to the next one between bursts, and make the stairs.

To the Stairs. Down into an open area with one or two Blast-Rays.

In Hot Pursuit. Ladder up the far pillar, two Elite Helitroopers at the top, then the third bench and vending machine. Antidote up the nearby stairs on the left; Remedy back down and behind the staircase on the right. One guide’s reader reported a second Remedy before the long stairs — it is this chest. Up the next stairs, the party stops to look out over what is left of Sector 7.

To the Top of the Plate. Two or three grapple points, a short sprint toward the camera dodging Valkyrie fire, and the boss. Use the third bench first.

The Valkyrie

Weak to lightning and wind. Aero is the best stagger tool, and Barret’s shooting covers the airborne stretches. Lesser resist to Stop; strong resistance to fixed and proportional damage; immune to Poison, Silence, Sleep, Slow and Berserk.

• Airborne opener: Mark 98 Rotary Cannons and missiles. Hide behind the rubble, shoot with Barret, cast Aero with the other two. A cutscene moves the fight.
• Phase two: it deploys a drone with a heavy laser; kill the drone first. After Drill Dive it sits on the ground for a moment — that is the melee window. Guard the cannon and artillery volleys rather than dodging them. Antipersonnel Gas poisons and sleeps; Napalm Drop and Firewheel burn.
• Below about a third: Limiter Override. Stagger builds far more slowly, it spins its arm across the arena, and a blue lightning field covers the floor — move when the ground glows. It also raises a shield, which breaks if you lure it into its own blue vertical laser.

Reward: the Cog Bangle. Nothing to steal.

On Hard, put Manawall on all three for the final laser, Fire with Elemental in armour to blunt many of its attacks, and Steadfast Block on Cloud and Barret.

Two steals on the way up are worth the slot: the 3-C SOLDIER Operators carry a Turbo Ether and the Blast-Ray a Heavy-Duty Bracer.

Hard mode

One Manuscript in this chapter is Hard-only:

• Sharpshooter’s Companion Vol. XII — the Valkyrie.

It is given once per save; beat the Valkyrie on Hard again and it pays a substitute. The Valkyrie gives no Manuscript on Easy or Normal.

Game Notes

Chapter 15 stands in for the original game’s quick climb up a wire to the plate, stretched into an hour of vertical level design. It is the most linear chapter since the reactor runs, and that is the point: after the sprawl of Chapter 14, the game pulls the party into a single line and points it upward.

The chapter is at its best in the small moments — the watchman telling you not to go in, the pause at sunset over the ruins of Sector 7 — and at its most mechanical in the trooper gauntlets. The Valkyrie redeems it. It is a proper element check: a party carrying fire and ice from the slums will grind against it, and a party that swapped to wind and lightning at the first bench will wonder what the fuss was about.

How this page was made

Researched across 7 community walkthroughs and written from scratch — no source’s wording appears here.

How we decide what to print