Is Cloud or Zack stronger?

[Erudite Scholar]

Advent Children Cloud cured of Geostigma vs. Zack from Crisis Core?

[Bio]

2 Fast 2 Quick の投稿を引用：

Cloud is way stronger when not nerfed but technically from a gameplay standpoint Zack is Stronger since he can break limits and maxes out at 99999 Hp unlike Cloud who is capped at 9999 and 999 MP.
(also Zack doesn't seem to be affected by the Jenova Cells or S Cells as negatively as Cloud was prob because of the Mako exposure Soldiers got or whatever)

Numbers are meaningless, they're just a representation to compare one person's damage/health to another in-game. Just because one game shows 9999 and another final fantasy game shows 9999 doesn't mean that those two things are dealing the exact same damage in both games.

[SlickDrickle]

Everyone knows the strongest character in the game is Marlene so debating between Cloud and Zack is irrelevant.

[Hyala]

Fascinating question. *SPOILERS AHEAD*
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Cloud was a no body, just a Shin-Ra grunt. Until he beat sephiroth in the reactor through sheer rage and adrenaline. Hojo took notice of this, stuck his him in a tank and tried to reproduce a perfect sephiroth clone through jenova cells and mako Making the cloud you see in the original game. He is much stronger than Zack even though Zack was a soldier, he was not infused with Jenova, and was not designed to be sephiroth 2.0. Cloud wins this... if they sparred, Cloud wins, and then they can celebrate with a beer at 7th heaven and talk about the good times.

[Misfit]

Cloud

[Cidrow]

Cloud basically imprinted Zach's "honor" as Soldier. By the time of "Advent Children", Cloud made his own battle style, based on Zach moves, whoes mentor was Angeal. Zach fought with Minerva (10 / 20 millions HP on NORMAL / HARD), who is Gaia and Lifestream manifistation in FF7, even if she was likely nerfed. Zach could become much stronger if he would survived "His Last Stand" (but to be fair, he pretty much zeroed everyone..). By the time of "Advent Children" he would be on very different level, because of battle experience, Soldier training and Angeal mentoring. Oh, and he did everything without party members. But Original "FF7" Story-kun said otherwise..

[Isuzuyori]

This is not an easy question to answer. As others said, originally Cloud was stronger than Zack at the end of each other's journey. However, it's also true that Zack's journey was cut short (which would had happened to Cloud too if not because of the rest of the cast). Moreover, Cloud had the cells that made him a technical copy of Sephiroth, while Zack had more talent and natural ability (to the point of easily copying other people's ultimate skills) and was able to best very powerful entities just by himself. It's hard to say who would end up being stronger if both had been able to stay alive. My personal guess is that both had the same potential to end up being equals, or very close to being so.

But maybe we'll know in the future.

[Azure Sky]

Were both injected with Jenova cells after being captured at the reactor? We know Cloud was. I always assumed it was the Jenova cells that gave Zack the ability to effectively hold off an army towards the end. No way in hell Cloud had those capabilities by that point but the Mako shower and Jenova cells seem to have given him the combat abilities to pass as a first class SOLDIER at the beginning of FFVII. Probably not a simple question of who is stronger, but I think it's fair to say Cloud did greater feats of strength by the end of FFVII.

[ja0]

Rythli の投稿を引用：

Fixed Cloud (Disc 3 & Advent Children) > Zack > Broken Brain Cloud (Disc 1 & 2)

pretty sure this sums it up, good luck trying to come up with a logical reasoning to beat this.

[Isuzuyori]

Azure Sky の投稿を引用：

Were both injected with Jenova cells after being captured at the reactor? We know Cloud was. I always assumed it was the Jenova cells that gave Zack the ability to effectively hold off an army towards the end. No way in hell Cloud had those capabilities by that point but the Mako shower and Jenova cells seem to have given him the combat abilities to pass as a first class SOLDIER at the beginning of FFVII. Probably not a simple question of who is stronger, but I think it's fair to say Cloud did greater feats of strength by the end of FFVII.

Yes, both were experimented on by Hojo. But Zack's body absorbed and transformed the cells, thus nullifying the "clone" aspect as well as the other side effects. What other consequences that had on his body is anyone's guess, as he died "shortly" after.

However, Zack was already a beast. Zack's strenght came from his natural talents, his strong will, his courage, the SOLDIER treatment, and Angeal's training. His many feats, like rising in the ranks faster than anyone at that time, single handedly beating God tier entities or making Sephiroth fight seriously for the first time (as noted by Hojo), were proof of that. That's why almost deleting an entire division of the ShinRa army by himself was something that he was able to do even without accounting for any additional power-up.

[Grizzled Grizzly]

Darkstaru の投稿を引用：

one beat sephiroth, and one did not. Thats your answer

This ^

[ar2games]

At the end of their journey Cloud is stronger. When they met, Zack wins.

As far as gameplay I´d say Zack wins because hell materia is broken and if he get´s lucky with the DMW, it´s over.

[gaaraks]

Real answer is that Cloud got all of Zack's memories through Jenova imprinting. At the beginning of FF7, he is as skilled as Zack because Jenova cells basically copied all of Zack's memories into Cloud, even overwriting his personality almost fully.

Now this doesnt mean that Cloud is immediately stronger than Zack at the start of FF7.
The DMW is canonically one of Zack's abilities, one that allows him to replicate the powers of those he is close with, so Cloud still would have a lot of catching up to do because that is something Jenova cells cant copy. By advent children Cloud is undeniably stronger than Zack, he had a lot of time to take those skills and develop them further.

[Bowllow]

What about retconned dead Zack VS Advent Children Cloud cured of Geostigma? I bet Square Enix give Zack more buffs to join the new storyline fights

[Afrikano]

I mean Zack is basically like a mentor and the student always surpasses the mentor in the end. Now if Zack hadn't died as soon as he did he probably would have gotten stronger in the end, sure. As strong as cloud? hard to say, we can't really say because this is something that never came to pass so we can all speculate.

Zack is a good fighter, he has experience and whatnot, but cloud got the captain america space juice injected in him that is better than what he got and that lets cloud go even further than Zack could.

Also some people assume zack is alive at the end of the last game, I actually have a feeling that's just the afterlife whatever mako thing you see in advent children with Aerith and Zack ghosts or whatever.
Not that far fetched that the people in the church are people who also died from the platform falling on them.
They could be going for that Zack fights from the other side Sephiroth (the planets energy or whatnot, I forget all that jumbo jambo) while our main group fights him in the normal world.

Like wasn't sephiroth eventually part of the planet and Aerith and Zack said they will fight to contain him there or something? I forget really.

[gaaraks]

Afrikano の投稿を引用：

I mean Zack is basically like a mentor and the student always surpasses the mentor in the end. Now if Zack hadn't died as soon as he did he probably would have gotten stronger in the end, sure. As strong as cloud? hard to say, we can't really say because this is something that never came to pass so we can all speculate.

Zack is a good fighter, he has experience and whatnot, but cloud got the captain america space juice injected in him that is better than what he got and that lets cloud go even further than Zack could.

Also some people assume zack is alive at the end of the last game, I actually have a feeling that's just the afterlife whatever mako thing you see in advent children with Aerith and Zack ghosts or whatever.
Not that far fetched that the people in the church are people who also died from the platform falling on them.
They could be going for that Zack fights from the other side Sephiroth (the planets energy or whatnot, I forget all that jumbo jambo) while our main group fights him in the normal world.

Like wasn't sephiroth eventually part of the planet and Aerith and Zack said they will fight to contain him there or something? I forget really.

I sincerely believe Zack would have been way stronger than Cloud if he were to be alive. People constantly forget that Zack was also injected by S cells. The fact he was a SOLDIER already when it happened, meant he didnt fully assimilate them though, he had natural resistance to them already, but genesis even has a scene where he has a clone eat some of Zack's hair, because he has S cells in him, and mentions he has become stronger thanks to them too.

Not only that, Zack was actually talented. Cloud didnt have the skills to make it into the SOLDIER program, meanwhile, Zack immediately showed progress, even being recognized by Sephiroth for his worth and made SOLDIER 1st class while he was still 17 years old. Youngest 1st class ever bar Sephiroth (which was fully genetically engineered) who got the title while he was 12 years old, and Sephiroth was the "1st" 1st class as far as we know, so the nomenclature just started with him due to his power.

In a timeline where Zack is still alive, I feel he would have become much stronger than Cloud, he always had the talent and the attitude to work hard to achieve his goals. Even with Cloud having an affinity with the S cells, that doesnt really completely make up for the fact he was never a talented combatant to begin with.