CHAOS

CHAOS

Before the final battle, CHAOS will speak to you and explain the nature of the time loop and how he and the Fiends corrupted the world. You'll have a few chances to back off, but at this point there's no way to go but forward. Use any healing items or spells you have now and go into the fight in tip-top shape, because you're in for a tough battle.

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 NUKE is only good for 100–200 damage, though this is probably better than your characters' unaided attacks. FAST is an absolute must if you want to deal any physical damage to CHAOS, 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 LIT3, so put up WALL on any Warrior that doesn't have all the elemental resistances covered already. You can't resist SLO2, so if he hits a melee character with it, re-apply FAST to counter it ASAP. His fourth spell is the biggest danger, because it will heal him all the way back to his full 2,000 HP. If he uses his first few spells early, it may be worthwhile to stick to buffing your characters and wait until he casts CUR4 to start the assault. After that he follows with FIR3 and then (for some reason) ICE2. If he's still going at that point—which is quite possible if he got off CUR4—he will FAST himself (making his already nasty attack downright unfair) and then finish the cycle with a good old blast of NUKE. 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. CRACK can kill any character without a Ribbon, though ARUB or WALL can help. INFERNO is the most powerful of his damaging moves, though it's Fire-elemental so you will probably resist it down to reasonable levels. It's CHAOS's SWIRL and TORNADO attacks you need to watch out for. Because there are no Water or Wind elements in the game, both attacks are non-elemental and thus nonresistable. They're more than half as powerful as NUKE, 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 cause Paralysis. Remember that you can heal Paralysis with CUR4 if you need to. If he gets off 7 spells and uses FAST on himself, CHAOS's physical attack becomes quite capable of one-shotting characters that have been softened up by his damaging spells and attacks.

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 CUR4. He has half the HP in this version that he does in the Origins remake, so you should be able to take him out even without TMPR or SABR.