FFVII Dirge of Cerberus – Part 27: Return to Reactor Zero!

Summary: Vincent pushes deep into Mako Reactor 0, finding Yuffie and Nero along the way.



Mako Reactor 0

-Catwalk with gunmen to start. Pretty standard stuff.

-That was a short standard section. I came to what looks like a massive boiler atop a green pool.

Looks either like an insect’s face, or something… less PG-13.

Is this where Omega’s arm blasted out from in the Cait Sith scenario?

-A minefield of treasure here! What’s the catch? Is this the warmup to a major boss fight? …no, nothing that dramatic. At the end of picking up all the treasure, some bugs dropped down for me to kill.

-This place is really high up. As I go through this series of tunnels and catwalks, it’s taking me closer and closer to the bottom floor.

-Great. I came to a part of the game that’s totally bugged for me. A bunch of rocket launching dudes are stacked up on a pillar, and at this part of the game (despite restarts) I can only play at half speed. Slow motion. Fucking emulators.

(Well, I mean they’re great since I get to play the game, but pcsx2 has given me more problems than all my other emulators combined.)

-Whew. Made it.

-“Game Over.” There was a part where I saw dude was slowly pushing a chain gun up a catwalk.

I decided to let him get all the way since I thought if he did I‘d get some bonus thing. I was curious what would happen.

Results: not positive.

Well… I found out what would happen. When he got all the way up the catwalk, he got in the chain gun seat and opened fire on me. He stunlocked me. The chain gun’s fire pinned me against the wall with nowhere to run and no chance to live.

It’s not the death that bothers me. Death happens, especially in later stages of the game, and that was actually a pretty awesome little encounter. Just a guy harmlessly pushing a turret down path, all “la di da di da,” and then BLAM! Dead. I legit laughed when it happened as I died. XD

I just didn’t want to have to replay the slow motion part of the game. Whatever – the tough enemies in that room were bonus, not core. Going to run past all this… made it.

Not THIS time, my good man!

-Another room filled with enemies shooting at me from all sides. I survive, but this is kind of not fun. I don’t know how to avoid damage, and I just get constantly stunned and hit. Ugh.

-Reached the bottom of the reactor I think. There’s a plane flying overhead covered in gargoyles.

”Gargoyles on a Plane,” starring Samuel L. Jackson as a Deepground pilot.

-This boss (or perhaps I should say mini-boss, since it feels more like that than a Tsviet) gives me a bit of slow motion when I look at it, but not as bad as the room from before.

-The way this fight seems to work is gargoyles swoop at me from all over and I can’t see them or find them and I just get hit.

It also sometimes hides behind the big boiler thing in the middle of the reactor and pokes it head out to shoot heat-seeking missiles for me to dodge.

-GOT IT! The PT Dragonfly takes its final hit and crashes into the green soup below.

-Further we go into the core of the reactor.

-Hi Yuffie! She arrived at the same place as Vincent, taking her own path.

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Heart of the Reactor

-Yuffie and Vincent walk into a big green glowing room. There’s a dead or dying dude in the center of it with white hair and no shirt. Weiss.

-Nero reappears behind our pair, as he seems to enjoy doing. Seems to confirm that Weiss is dead, but maybe not as dead as he looks.

I’m guessing there’s going to be some sort of Weiss-Omega team-up where Omega possesses Weiss or uses him as an avatar perhaps.

-He goes on that his brother’s going to wake up. “It seems like an eternity since I was granted the knowledge of rebirth.” Still not sure on the connection between Nero and Omega.

-The green pool surrounding Weiss starts to glow hard. Vincent and Yuffie both look at Weiss, and shout “Omega?!” They pull out their weapons, glaive and gun, but Nero freaks right the fuck out, throwing void bolts at them. “Stay away from my brother!”

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In the Void

-Yuffie got sucked into the void. She kind of flails around a bit, panicking (and who could blame her?).

-Three blue swimmy things move towards her. Not sure what’s going on.

-Vincent dove into the void to save her, since he’s immune and all. Pulled her out.

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Heart of the Reactor

-Part of why I like Yuffie in “Dirge of Cerberus” is that she has a tendency to ask good and obvious questions that people like Vincent just seem to roll with. She is one of the first people in the game to explicitly ask what the hell Nero’s void power is and what it does.

-LOLOL – Nero doesn’t really know. He just gives it vaguely darkness-y names. Whatever it is can reflect, absorb, and do all kinds of wonderful stuff! Reflects, absorbs, slices, dices…


Tom Waits describing the various qualities of Nero’s oblivion.

-wait. Wait wait. I’m probably misreading this, but Nero suggests that the Void can even absorb the “heart of a daemon.” Did he just steal Chaos somehow with his void when Vincent dove in, or is he just being dramatic? Either is a possibility with a dude like Nero.


Overly dramatic Nero is my favorite Nero.

-Nero then opens up his darkness again, this time enveloping both himself and Vincent.

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Next time: Nero, redux.