Game & film icons · City to planet
Cloud Strife vs Guts
Two men with swords as big as doors and pasts they cannot escape.
Tale of the tape
| Final Fantasy VII | Universe | Berserk |
|---|---|---|
| City to planet | Tier | Superhuman |
| The Buster Sword, Mako-enhanced strength and the Omnislash limit break | Strength | The Dragonslayer sword and the Berserker Armor |
| Memories that are not entirely his own | Weakness | The armor is slowly destroying his body |
| 1–1 | Record on Versus | 1–3 |
The Arena
Cloud Strife rode his motorcycle through a strange portal and came out on a battlefield under a blood-red sky, covered in rusted armour and broken weapons. Standing in the middle of it, leaning on a sword the size of a door, was a man in black armour with one eye and a mechanical arm.
Guts looked at the spiky-haired young man with the giant sword on his back and almost smiled. “Nice sword,” he said. Cloud got off his bike. “Yours is bigger.” Guts shrugged. “Yeah. It needs to be.” Neither of them said anything else. Both of them knew what came next.
Cloud drew the Buster Sword. Guts lifted the Dragon Slayer. The wind howled across the battlefield.
Round One
They met in the middle of the field, and the clash of their swords sounded like a bell the size of a church. Guts was stronger, his blows crushing, each swing of the Dragon Slayer driving Cloud back. Cloud was faster, Mako-enhanced reflexes letting him slip around the enormous blade and strike from angles Guts did not expect.
Cloud cut Guts across the shoulder. Guts did not even slow down. He swung the Dragon Slayer in a wide arc, and Cloud blocked it and was thrown thirty metres across the battlefield into a pile of armour. He climbed out, shaking his head, his arms numb.
Guts fired the cannon in his mechanical arm. Cloud cut the cannonball in half in mid-air. Guts raised his eyebrow. Not many people could do that.
The Turn
Guts reached for the Berserker Armour, and it closed around his body like a living thing, the wolf-shaped helmet covering his face, his eyes glowing red. His pain disappeared. His strength doubled. He roared and charged, swinging the Dragon Slayer with no regard for his own body at all.
Cloud was driven back, step by step, his Buster Sword ringing under every blow. Guts was not fighting like a man anymore. He was fighting like a beast. Cloud took a hit to his side that cracked his ribs and knocked him to his knees.
He looked up at the snarling armour, and he recognised something in it: a man drowning in rage, the way Cloud had once drowned in someone else’s memories.
The Finish
Cloud stood up, and his sword began to glow. His limit break was ready. Omnislash. He moved faster than he ever had, striking Guts from every direction, fifteen blows in a single breath, each one carrying all the power of his Mako-enhanced body.
The Berserker Armour held through fourteen of them. The fifteenth broke through, knocked the Dragon Slayer out of Guts’s hands, and drove him to the ground. The armour retracted, leaving a battered, exhausted man lying among the rusted helmets of a thousand dead soldiers.
Cloud stood over him, then dropped his sword and sat down heavily beside him. “You fight like you’re trying to die,” he said. Guts laughed bitterly. “And you fight like you’re trying to remember who you are.” They sat together on the battlefield until the red sky turned grey, two men who had lost everything, too tired to say anything more.
The verdict
Cloud Strife wins
Guts is stronger and the Berserker Armour makes him nearly unstoppable, but Cloud is faster, his Mako-enhanced body operates on a higher level, and Omnislash lands more blows than the armour can absorb.
- SpeedCloud’s Mako-enhanced reflexes let him strike from impossible angles.
- OmnislashFifteen full-power blows in a single breath.
- Power scaleCloud has fought world-ending threats; Guts fights apostles.
How the rematch could go differently: A Guts who got Cloud into a pure test of strength, sword against sword, could crush him with the Dragon Slayer.
Who do you think wins?
Who would win in a fight between Cloud Strife and Guts?
Cloud Strife wins. Guts is stronger and the Berserker Armour makes him nearly unstoppable, but Cloud is faster, his Mako-enhanced body operates on a higher level, and Omnislash lands more blows than the armour can absorb.