Gamer Corner Guides

Not only does Chaos lack exploitable weaknesses, he lacks any weaknesses whatsoever. Between his 200 Magic Defense and resistance to all eight Elements, offensive magic is simply not an option. Even Flare is only good for 100–200 damage, though this is probably better than your characters' unaided attacks. Haste is an absolute must, and Steel and the Giant's Gloves will help immensely. Repeated use of the Giant's Gloves can make this fight easy, but in a fair fight Chaos is hard to hurt. And while you chip away at him you'll have to deal with a whole host of nasty attacks. No matter what Chaos does, it's going to be bad for you.

For the most part Chaos sticks to magic, and his Spell list is not to be underestimated. He will lead with Ice3 followed by Bolt3, so put up NulAll if you don't have all the elemental resistances covered already. You can't resist Slow2, so if he hits a melee character with it, re-apply Haste to counter it ASAP. His fourth Spell is the biggest danger, because it will heal him all the way back to his full 4,000 HP. If he uses his first few Spells early, it may be worthwhile to stick to buffing your characters and wait until he casts Cure4 to start the assault. After that he follows with Fire3 and then (for some reason) Ice2. If he's still going at that point—which is quite possible if he got off Cure4—he will Haste himself (making his already nasty attack downright unfair) and then finish the cycle with a good old blast of Flare. In another Final Fantasy game, you could deal with all that. In this game, though, even the best party heal is not nearly powerful enough to outlast this onslaught.

In terms of damage, Chaos's Special Attacks are even worse. Blaze is the most powerful of these, though it's Fire-elemental so you will probably resist it down to reasonable levels. As he cycles through the four Elements, he'll follow with an Earth-elemental KO attack which could kill anyone without a Ribbon if you haven't cast NulAll or NulMgc. But it's Chaos's Water and Air attacks you need to watch out for. Because there are no Water or Air Elements in the game, both attacks are non-elemental and thus nonresistable. They're more than half as powerful as Flare, though much less likely to connect for full damage, but they're still nasty and will wear you down faster than you can heal.

Finally, Chaos can just attack, and even that option is dangerous. His two attacks hit hard, almost as hard as Warmech's, and are just as accurate. Just for good measure, they can also Paralyze. Remember that you can heal Paralysis with Cure4 if you need to. If he gets off 7 Spells and Hastes himself, Chaos's physical attack becomes quite capable of one-shotting characters that have been softened up by his Spells.

All is not lost, of course. A sustained attack can take Chaos down before he kills you, though if you get really unlucky with his actions you can get screwed by an untimely Cure4. If you're trying to follow my hardcore commandments, Chaos will be the ultimate test of your will. He's just so much easier if you stack half a dozen Attack buffs. Just remember: on the NES, neither Steel nor Saber actually worked. Of course, Chaos also had half the hit points. Maybe that's why.