Yuffie is the master of disaster every time I play this game. Her wretched distaste for everyone that slowly changes into friendliness, even playful rivalry, to acceptance that this is the family she has chosen and coming to terms with that.....I just had a lot of respect for her. She’s a kid sometimes but at her heart, she’s a good kid with no guidance. We can either make her a hero or a villain. And she had actual spitfire in her. Aeris and Tifa used to pretend, but they would never speak against Cloud directly. Let me tell you, if you run around with Yuffie, she definitely will. It was so refreshing to hear her somehow end up being the voice of reason and the only one besides Cid, that will step up and fucking tell him. For this wonderfully blunt way of hers, I always end up with her and Cid and Cloud, running around being team: estranged siblings on vacation.
My favorite way to utilize Yuffie is around the materia Morph. Yuffie is the only character that has a weapon (Conformer) that can use Morph at its full strength. So whatever Yuffie hits for by the time you can use Conformer--that’s the strength that Yuffie will hit at. When I figured that out, I was like: HOLY SHIT WHAT. So then I took her with me everywhere, to Morph everything. Which is how I ended up finding the monster spawns for Guard and Power. And how I ended up with Yuffie fucking dominating everything and she became the strongest speed demon on this mako-lit earth. And through Yuffie, when I decided that time to just equip Yuffie’s final weapon and take Cid and Cloud’s mastered materia. It freed up slots for them and it kept me from feeling like I was wasting time--because I do not like having unmastered materia in a weapon with no growth to it. I feel this is a monumental waste. If we must do this--create powerful materia with the planet’s lifeforce--then let us do it quickly and be done. Then only equip Mastered materia so that we do not have to trap other souls. Anyway--uh, through that was how I first discovered the awesome benefits of Luck Plus/Speed Plus. Both are materia you can get from the Gold Saucer Battle Arena. Totally worth the GP. So when I switched all my mastered stuff and Enemy Skill to Yuffie, I had spare slots (I do not like to buy materia because if I just level it, I know I can get one for free. The only exception to this is Steal--because collecting items to sell or to stock goes a lot faster when all three of them can Steal at the beginning of you adventure out of Midgar, so when I get to Kalm, I always buy two more Steal materia.) and so i put in the Luck and Speed plus. I started to notice that they were hitting criticals a lot more often and the battles went a lot faster. By the time you can even first acquire these materia, you have just gotten Morph from the Ancient Temple.
The first time I ever used Morph was when I was trying to find the Guidebook. Once I figured out what it did (”That’s because you have to damage it first,” Vegeta snorted, rolling his eyes.) Then I tried it on lots of things--but I would get distracted by something else--as it takes a while to find out what things Morph into useful stuff.And I found the TriBot monsters in Gongaga and find out about Power Sources. The more my team had, the stronger their Morph hits were. They started doing from a quarter damage to about half. And when they criticaled, they hit for nearly full damage.
Intrigued, I went to a screen I had not really studied before, Stats and actually looked at it---using items and checking immediately to see a difference. Since the Tribots are weak, I stayed there for awhile, just practicing with different combinations. After reading out the Stats, I realized yuffie had the highest Dexterity naturally and so I switched for her. And then just poured all these power sources into her Strength stat. So the battles went faster and faster the more she levelled the materia Luck/Speed. But she was also strong as shit. I learned to just take most magic materia away from her. Give her Enemy Skill and maybe a summon with a Support Materia attached to absorb damage but otherwise--she was zipping through battles at nearly twice as fast as Cloud and Cid and for sure--her Dexterity Stat had tripled.
That’s when the Stats system suddenly made sense. Its a lot harder to see the gradual change in the Strength stat or Magic stat unless you do it all at once. But with luck and speed--you start to notice a lot quicker. So if you give Yuffie: Mega-All, Enemy-Skill, Sneak-Attack/Morph and HP[or MP] Absorb/Morph, SpeedPlus, LuckPlus
and then, say if she had Minerva’s Band: Added-Effect/Destruct, Added-Effect Hades, Counter-With/Morph, Then if Yuffie flips lucky on the opening of battle, then she was immediately hit with Morph for Full strength, while also absorbing [HP/MP]. Because if you have more than one Morph equipped, it lets you add effects with a Support materia and then all of them are activated every time Yuffie hits with Morph.
You could add another combo of Morph/Steal As Well, and so then Yuffie will open half of your fights by attacking, Morphing, absorbing HP/MP and looting their pockets. And it turns out, you can Mime that. So then the next character (usually Cloud) can immediately do all the same things (except for hitting at full strength with Morph, only Yuffie can do that)
This is how I finally was able to blast my stats out of the water and waste everything that moved when I was Stat Hunting. All because of Yuffie and her ninja training. You equip her with the Conformer, Minerva’s Band, Ribbon--she’s fucking unstoppable. She’s strong as shit and faster than everyone else. AND she can turn everything into Stat Sources with one hit and drastically speed up grinding for them.
Then I took her to the Battle Arena. At first, Cloud gets the most levelling, of course. But when you get to run around as Cid, I decided to take Team: Chaotic Neutrals out together. Cid-Vincent-Yuffie are hilarious together, like possibly high, extremely dangerous ghost Grandpa, an oxygen-deprived speed junkie alcoholic, and then the extremely impressionable and yet utterly stubborn and abrasive Yuffie. Who would just as soon spill your guts as stick out her tongue and make silly faces at you. She fits right fucking in. Cid buys her a beer. Vincent finds her bluntness refreshing. It’s all because of you, Morph.
Man. I talked forever.