Cloud Strife

For other meanings of "cloud", see Cloud (disambiguation).

Cloud Strife (, Cloud Strife) is a character from Square Enix's series. He is the main protagonist of ', its high-definition remake, and its film sequel, '. Cloud also appears in a supporting role throughout ''Final Fantasy VIIs related media, the '. Cloud also makes appearances in the franchise.

Initially appearing as a proud, yet arrogant and aloof swordsman who claims to be a former member of the elite paramilitary group SOLDIER, Cloud is hired by the insurgency group Avalanche as a mercenary to help them in their cause against the Shinra Electric Power Company. As Cloud's journey unfolds, he rediscovers his past and, alongside his childhood friend Tifa Lockhart and newfound friends within Avalanche, abandons his quest for power and fame in favor of fighting alongside his friends in order to defend their home planet of Gaia.

Cloud made his Super Smash Bros. debut in Super Smash Bros. 4 as a downloadable character, and returns in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as an unlockable character.

Origin
Cloud first appears in the game Final Fantasy VII and is the first character the player can control directly. He was born in the mountain village of Nibelheim. During his childhood, his father died and he was raised by his mother. Due to his lack of close friends, Cloud, perhaps as a coping mechanism, considered himself to be superior to all the other village children, and thus did not enjoy their company.

At the age of 14, Cloud, upon learning of the legendary hero Sephiroth's exploits and desiring to impress his friend and childhood crush Tifa Lockhart, left Nibelheim for Midgar to join SOLDIER, the paramilitary arm of the Shinra Electric Power Company, a megacorporation that effectively ruled the world. Although he was too mentally weak to join SOLIDER and instead became a mere infantryman, Cloud would eventually become best friends with a 1st Class SOLDIER named.

Cloud and Zack were later captured by Shinra's corrupt head scientist, Professor Hojo, and experimented upon to test Hojo's Reunion Theory, a facet of the Jenova Project. This experimentation resulted in Cloud becoming as powerful as a 1st Class SOLDIER, but also rendered him catatonic. Four years after being deemed failures during the experimentation, Zack eventually escaped with a weak and delirious Cloud in his arms, but was ambushed by a massive army of Shinra troops and killed. Cloud takes up Zack's sword and attempts to be his successor, although the trauma from Zack's death shattered Cloud's mental stability. His memories warped, causing him to believe that he was an ex-SOLDIER and to forget that Zack ever existed, essentially replacing him in his mind. At Tifa's behest, he joined her in allying with the second generation of Avalanche led by Barret Wallace, and aided them in their battles against Shinra and a revived Sephiroth alongside allies including Aerith Gainsborough, Red XIII,, Cait Sith, and Cid Highwind. Eventually, Cloud discovered that he inadvertently mimicked Zack's personality in lieu of his memories; with Tifa's aid, he came to terms with his past, resumed his true personality, and was able to move on. Despite Sephiroth killing Aerith and receiving the Black Materia from a mind controlled Cloud, Cloud and his friends eventually managed to defeat Sephiroth and thus save the world.

In the years that follow, Cloud, Tifa, and the party go their separate ways. In the film sequel , Cloud and Tifa settle down in the city of Edge and set up a delivery business called the Strife Delivery Service. He also takes in two children; Denzel, an orphan suffering from Geostigma, a disease that has started to appear after the defeat of Sephiroth. Cloud eventually sets out to find a cure for Geostigma, having been infected himself thanks to Hojo's experimentation. He discovers that Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz, three manifestations of Sephiroth's consciousness, are responsible for the disease and have been kidnapping Geostigma-infected children with the intention of using the Jenova cells within them to revive her. Cloud confronts the trio but is outmatched; he is rescued by Vincent, who reveals that Geostigma is a plague caused by Jenova cells. Kadaj eventually leads an attack on Edge to find the remains of Jenova. The former members of Avalanche reunite to face him, and Cloud manages to cure his Geostigma using Lifestream-infused water flowing in Aerith's old church. Cloud encounters Kadaj and defeats him in the ruins of Midgar, but Kadaj merges with Jenova's remains to resurrect Sephiroth. The two duel once again and Cloud emerges victorious, resulting in Sephiroth fading away while his manifestations die immediately afterward. Cloud then returns to the church with the infected children and uses the water to cleanse the Geostigma out of them. He then says farewell to the spirits of Zack and Aerith, who had been with him throughout the events of Advent Children.

As Final Fantasy VII became the best-selling and most recognized game in its series, Cloud is widely considered the most famous Final Fantasy character. Despite the unconnected nature of each main game, Cloud is often used to represent the franchise as a whole (much like Marth for ), and frequently shows up in crossovers with other series. In some of his more notable side appearances, Cloud has been playable in every  title to date, and has served as a boss, side character, or an ally in multiple titles.

Cloud was originally voiceless in his game of origin; although he is voiced by and  in the arcade and PlayStation versions, respectively, of ', it was not until his appearance in ' that he was given a consistent voiceover. In Japanese, Cloud is voiced by in all appearances since Kingdom Hearts. In English, Cloud was voiced by from Kingdom Hearts up until Final Fantasy VII Remake, with  replacing Burton as the English voice for Final Fantasy VII Remake. However, Burton was not asked to reprise his role for Super Smash Bros. due to conflicts regarding his contract with Square Enix, so Sakurai's voice is used in all international versions.

As a playable character
Cloud appears as a newcomer in Super Smash Bros. 4, and was formally announced during a Nintendo Direct on November 12, 2015. This makes him the second character to be both downloadable and from a third party developer, the sixth character overall to be from a third party developer, and the first fighter hailing from Square Enix. According to Super Smash Bros. series creator Masahiro Sakurai, Final Fantasy characters were heavily requested to appear in the Super Smash Bros. series, with Cloud receiving the most support out of all of them.

While discussing potential candidates from the Final Fantasy series to include in SSB4, Sakurai stated in an interview with Square Enix veteran Tetsuya Nomura that he could have included characters such as, Bartz Klauser from Final Fantasy V, or Terra Branford from Final Fantasy VI. However, Sakurai ultimately said it was difficult to imagine a Final Fantasy character to include that was not Cloud, primarily owing to his design and iconic status.

Unlike most playable characters, Cloud has two distinct models that comprise his costumes: his classic Final Fantasy VII design (albeit with his slightly modified attire from Dissidia Final Fantasy ) is his default costume alongside the Buster Sword, while his "Cloudy Wolf" design from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is an alternate costume alongside the Fusion Sword.

Cloud's strengths include highly disjointed range thanks to his Buster Sword, surprisingly fast attacks relative to his range and power, and quick overall mobility. Despite being a heavyweight, these traits collectively give him a heavily offensive playstyle that is useful for combos and excellent at aerial combat, especially edgeguarding. Additionally, Cloud's unique Limit Break fighter ability slightly boosts his attributes and converts his special moves into powerful, single-use KOing options once it is full, further improving his offensive presence to the point that he can score KOs even at fairly low percentages.

However, Cloud has a few glaring weaknesses in spite of his tremendous strengths. The most notable of these is his inconsistent KO potential, which is due to his very small number of easy-to-land KOing options outside of his Limit Break special moves. Aside from this, Cloud's polarized aerial movement results in his recovery and off-stage endurance both being lackluster. Lastly, his grab game is one of the worst among the cast, and some of his moves have noticeable amounts of ending lag.

Overall, Cloud, like, boasts numerous advantages that are supplemented by a relatively low learning curve, which have contributed to him achieving very noticeable tournament results and representation. As a result, Cloud is ranked 2nd out of 55 on the current tier list; this places him in the S tier and posits him as a top tier character.

As a playable character
Cloud returns as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He was formally announced alongside the rest of the cast via Ultimate's E3 2018 trailer on June 12th, 2018. Although his moveset is largely unchanged aesthetically, Cloud received noteworthy mechanical changes, particularly to his Limit Breaks. Unlike in Super Smash Bros. 4, the Limit Gauge is now constantly displayed next to his damage meter, and a full Limit Charge must be used within 15 seconds or else it will deplete entirely.

As of update 10.1.0, Cloud's "Cloudy Wolf" costumes use Omnislash Ver. 5 like in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, complete with Takahiro Sakurai reprising his role as Cloud's voice actor. Compared to Omnislash, Omnislash Ver. 5 has the same total damage output and knockback, but consists of 11 initial hits instead of 14 (with each hit inflicting 0.6% more damage to compensate) and has different hitbox placements. This same update also made Tetsuya Nomura's artwork of Cloud from the PlayStation release of Final Fantasy VII into his default fighter spirit, although the player can still swap between it and his Ultimate render fighter spirit.

Trivia

 * As of Ultimate, Cloud, Mewtwo, Luminary and Sephiroth are the only characters to use Japanese voice acting in the international versions of the Super Smash Bros. series despite having established English voice actors.
 * He and Sephiroth are the only ones whose speaking lines are not replaced with generic grunts in the international versions.
 * Cloud, Sephiroth, Richter Belmont, Joker and Hero are the only third-party characters who did not debut in the first game of their respective home series.
 * Cloud, Young Link and Toon Link are the only swordsmen in the Super Smash Bros. series capable of wall jumping.
 * Due to having access to his "Cloudy Wolf" attire from , Cloud is the only character with an alternate costume directly taken from a movie.
 * Cloud is the first character to have his victory theme continuously play over the results theme.
 * Prior to update 10.1.0 in Ultimate, Cloud was the only third-party character in the game who did not use pre-existing artwork for his fighter spirits. However, his Advent Children costume's fighter spirit continues to feature his Ultimate render only.
 * Cloud, Sephiroth, and Hero each hail from one of the two companies that merged into Square Enix, as Cloud and Sephiroth were from Squaresoft and the Hero was from Enix.
 * Cloud is the first fighter whose Final Smash was substantially altered in an update, and consequently the first fighter whose Final Smash varies in name and appearance depending on the alternate costume.
 * Prior to update 10.0.0 of Ultimate, if the game's language was set to either variant of Chinese, Cloud's name was shown in English on the character selection screen and the Spirits mode, as with several other characters in the Chinese and Korean translations of the game. As of update 10.0.0, he has his name written properly in hanzi. This is presumably due to the release of Final Fantasy VII Remake, which is the first game in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII series to receive an official Chinese translation.
 * However, the official site for Ultimate was never updated to reflect this in either variant of Chinese.