Finally, we learn the king of all Enemy Skills; Death Sentence.

Challenge Rules
-) Low Level (Lv.29 or below)
-) No Items
-) Initial Equipment/No Accessory
-) Command Materia Only

-Strategy-

Safer is arguably easier in this version of the game, as he uses different attacks and some of them behave differently. At the start of the fight, he'll open with Slow which can be immediately negated by using Big Guard (unlike Wall which blocks your attacks and drags this fight out much longer, which can be dangerous). He'll then follow this with Flare, rather than Shadow Flare, which unfortunately prevents us from using this powerful E.Skill against him but without Wall we're not losing too much firepower.

He'll then fly up and use Pale Horse. This is a %-based attack in the Japanese version and does not appear to have any status ailments attached to it. It's a perfectly safe attack, in other words, and lets us get some hits in while preparing for his big move; Super Nova.

The Japanese Super Nova has a shorter animation and hits for roughly 2000 damage, reduced to 1000 or so with MBarrier. It can inflict Silence and Confusion, so it's best to keep the team ready with a turn so they can Defend if they get hit with Confusion; that way they don't attack themselves/each other while unaffected teammates use White Wind to remove these statuses. We now get some more attacks in as he uses Break then Dispel (which later becomes Death Sentence once his HP is down enough) and then get prepared for Deen's 800 or so damage. On the next round he'll use Slow again instead of Dispel + Deen and so the cycle repeats.

So your two enemies here are time and chance. Super Nova can inflict the entire team with Silence and Confusion. If that happens, you're as good as dead so the more Super Novas you sit through then the greater those chances of getting a full-team 'wipe' become. That being said, it's a fight with a pattern and so long as you don't make any critical mistakes it's easy enough to ride in.

So that concludes the Japanese LLNIIENACMO. I started this challenge on this version after seeing Garland's vid demonstrating the Japanese Super Nova and how it behaved differently from later releases. I didn't want to just do a regular LLNIIENACMO so I figured it'd be interesting to see if the original version of the game had any other differences and how they'd impact on a challenge like this (the absence of Diamond Weapon and his 35,000EXP hit, for instance). Didn't exactly plan to do it without Slots as well but I can't work those goddamn reels so didn't have a choice. And I'm not patient enough to grind for Lv.3 limit breaks either but then who is?

But yeah, thanks for watching!