First we will go over the history of each respective fighter, then the stats, then the weapons and abilities, and finally a general overview of who has the best shot. This will be more in-depth than some battles you've seen and maybe not as accurate as some as well but nonetheless I will do my best to accommodate the battle.
History
Cloud Strife is the protagonist of Final Fantasy VII and the usual star of the Compilation as a whole. Though different installments focus on different characters, as a general rule you'd be hard pressed to find a single one that doesn't have Cloud somewhere.
Cloud grew up in a town on Gaia called Nibelheim as a bit of an outcast. As a young boy, he dreamed of joining the illustrious elite group known as SOLDIER. At around the age of 17 he ends up working with one particular SOLDIER who would become his greatest influence, Zack Fair. Zack, though occasionally thick and hasty, is someone that Cloud always strived to be like. Which he eventually does but we'll get to that.
During one of his missions with Zack and the then-current leader of SOLDIER Sephiroth, he went back to Nibelheim to inspect a Mako reactor that was acting a bit weird. There, Cloud, Zack, and Sephiroth found out about Mako experimentation and also about an entity known as Jenova. The events at Nibelheim are pretty iconic, with one particular scene being the burning of Nibelheim at the hands of Sephiroth and Sephiroth's death at the hands of Cloud. See also Crisis Core.
After Sephiroth was seemingly killed, Cloud was experimented on by a Doctor Hojo who injected him with Mako and left him unable to move temporarily. Zack, determined to get out of SOLDIER's influence, took Cloud and decided to escape with him. However, the ShinRa Corporation caught up to them and Zack hid Cloud, and sacrificed himself so Cloud could escape alive.
Though the interpretation of this ending will vary from game to game and source to source, the general consensus seems to be that Zack dies and, at the end Cloud, now so traumatized that he's not even himself anymore, takes the Buster Sword and assumes Zack's identity from that point forward.
From here we have the events of Final Fantasy VII, which starts off pretty mild with a plot to take down a Corporation that is killing the planet, with his childhood friend Tifa Lockhart, and the other members of Avalanche.
Throughout the game, Cloud and the group find that Sephiroth is indeed still alive, or at least his will is, and set out to prevent Sephiroth from gaining the Black Materia and to acquire the White Materia, magical balls that hold the spells of Meteor and Holy respectively.
Through mind-control shenanigans that I'd rather not get into, Cloud gives Sephiroth the Black Materia and Sephiroth kills Aerith, the one with the White Materia. However, as it turns out, she cast the spell Holy even without his influence and so now the game becomes a race against time to defeat Sephiroth so that they can stop his will from suppressing Holy so that it can stop Meteor.
They end up defeating him but it's too late, Meteor is too close to the planet for Holy to completely stop it, so the life stream does so instead.
However, head into Advent Children and Sephiroth's death leads to a disease that infects the body from the Life Stream called Geo-Stigma. Throughout the movie, Cloud fights 3 entities that are aspects of Sephiroth and defeats Sephiroth at the end of the movie, removing his influence entirely.
From there, we also have Dirge of Cerberus following but, since that has very little to do with Cloud, that's not worth mentioning beyond noting that it exists.
Next we have Ryu Hayabusa and, before I get into him, I want to stress that because I believe the series was rebooted in the 3D games instead of being prequels, I will not be mentioning any story happenings from the original games.
Ryu Hayabusa starts off as a young Shinobi from the Hayabusa Clan and the next heir to take over when his father dies. Not a lot is known about his history prior to Ninja Gaiden but what we do know is that the Hayabusa Clan are friendly with another Shinobi Clan by the name of Mugen Tenshin and Ryu found himself a friend and rival in that clan's heir Hayate. He also made friends with Hayate's younger sisters Kasumi and Ayane, the latter of whom is present throughout the Ninja Gaiden series.
At the beginning of Ninja Gaiden, he has just about finished his training as a Hayabusa Clan Ninja, and goes off to see his Uncle on his mother's side Murai. Murai tests him briefly, passes him and then Ryu goes off to his village and finds that it has been destroyed and, in front of him, childhood friend and Shrine Maiden Kureha is killed by the attacker, Greater Fiend Doku (Note: I know I spelled his name wrong but I'm doing so for the sake of understanding).
Doku makes short work of Ryu and after recovering, Ryu goes after the Great Fiends of Vigoor to avenge the assault of his village and bring back the Dark Dragon Blade, which was stolen during his attack.
After resolving this, killing Murai, who was a traitor, and destroying the Dark Dragon Blade, Ryu takes up Kureha's younger sister Momiji as an apprentice. I'm not entirely familiar with the events of this game so I'll link you to an article that may sum it up better than I do: Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword.
Following this, Ryu goes through many adventures that are not all that noteworthy story-wise and these games happen concurrently with Dead or Alive, with Dead or Alive 1-4 taking place shortly after Ninja Gaiden 2. Ninja Gaiden 3 happens before Dead or Alive 5, and there are currently no sequels as of yet.
Stats
For the purposes of this discussion, I will be using the stats I used during one of my previous posts, which are as follows: Vitality, Mana/Energy Source, Strength, Dexterity, Durability, and Sorcery. Before I begin, however, I want to stress a few things. Firstly, I'm going to be using the most up-to-date canon versions of these characters. So, for the purposes of this discussion, they will be Cloud Strife in Advent Children, and Ryu Hayabusa in Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge and Dead or Alive 5: Last Round.
Now, Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive don't really have a stat system I can work with and Advent Children isn't a game to begin with so any stats I bring up will have to be in my own system that I can translate into what I think works best. Generally speaking, when I assign a stat a value of 1 point, that number will be translatable across all stats. I will define them in a later post if this gets enough traction but for now, let's go over them.
Vitality: Vitality is about how much damage you can take before you go down completely. It can also be thought of as stamina or endurance, how much damage you can survive and how long you can survive with that damage. Since these are both human characters, they will have roughly the same amount of Vitality, since most humans can generally be killed by the same degree of injury.
Most humans will generally have a Vitality of about 100, that's 1000 HP for those of you wanting to know how this would translate into a game. I will list these in the table as I acquire the numbers.
Mana/Energy Source is whatever supernatural energy source you use to cast spells with. This will vary from game to game, in particular Ninja Gaiden uses a Ki system. Cloud's MP will basically be the same as it is at Level 99 in Final Fantasy VII and just translated for the sake of consistency but Ninja Gaiden is a bit trickier.
In Razor's Edge in particular, Ryu has a meter rather than a series of slots but this doesn't necessarily mean he's stronger than in previous games. While it is true that his Ki can now regenerate as he fights and deals damage, the full meter is only worth one Ninpo. Granted the power of the Art of the True Inferno is probably the strongest spell he has but it doesn't change the fact that it will drain completely once he uses it. This coupled with the fact that either using that or healing will drain the entire bar, it's safe to say Ryu may not be relying on Ninpo all that much.
Likewise, because Cloud's Weapon is going to be the Fusion Swords, which have no Materia Slots I could find, Cloud's super abilities would be restricted to his Limit Breaks, which he can use whenever he wants. However, we will get to that.
So, to summarize MP/Energy Source, Cloud will get a translated version of the MP he has at Level 99 in Final Fantasy VII, which will be about 90, and Ryu will have a Ki capacity of about 100.
Next is Strength, this one is a bit more definitive than the previous ones because we actually see these two characters demonstrate their strength in action in these games. In Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, Ryu wields a large broad sword called Enma's Fang. This sword seems to be comparable in size to, if not heavier than the Dhabilaro from Ninja Gaiden Black and Sigma, and Ryu is capable of wielding it in a stance, something that many sword fighters are unable to achieve.
However, for as impressive as Ryu's strength with Enma's Fang is, Cloud's strength effectively dwarfs it. Even in Final Fantasy VII, Cloud is capable of wielding a similarly sized sword with relative ease in the strength department. However, come Advent Children, Cloud is capable of even more massive feats with this sword, capable of not only swinging it with great speed but also massive cutting power, as we see in Advent Children Complete where Cloud cuts several large pieces of debris easily while riding on the back of his motorcycle and performs a similar feat during his battle against Sephiroth.
Ryu's strength would roughly amount to about 5000 if we're being generous but Cloud's is far higher, probably in the 20,000-100,000 range. And, bearing in mind, all of this is without any magical enhancement from Materia. Ryu can even this out with Ninpo and weapon abilities but we'll get to that.
In terms of speed, Ryu has the edge, and I'm not going to deny that. However, that edge may not be as great as one would initially think. In Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, when Ryu performs high speed feats like the Flying Swallow and the Guillotine Throw, he is surrounded by Blue Afterimages. If we assume the color is analogous across all series, this would make Ryu's speed on par with that of Loz in Advent Children, who is capable of similar feats of speed.
However, it is worth noting that even though Loz is faster than Cloud, he had no trouble dealing with the juggernaut and his brother Yazoo at the same time.
So of course, the question remains, how fast is Ryu and how does Cloud compare. Well, bearing in mind that Loz was able to keep Cloud suspended in mid-air while moving faster than speeding motorcycles, it's fair to say that their speed was at least close to that of sound. Moving faster than motorcycles is one thing but, if he can keep someone suspended in mid-air while fighting them while achieving that same feat, their speed has to be up there. Making Ryu's speed about 22468, or roughly 600 miles per hour.
Cloud is not as fast, probably quite a bit slower. However, his speed is still quite commendable. Bearing in mind, Cloud is capable of blocking bullets after they've been fired, he's moving well over 300 miles per hour. Making Cloud's speed 11234 points.
Next is durability. Durability is the hardest one to map out because forces are hard to categorize in terms of damage and also it's hard to translate damage from one series to another. Durability is how strong an attack needs to be before it can deal damage. If the power is too low, it won't deal damage. And if it's high enough, it can kill in a single blow.
With that in mind, Ryu can survive having a building collapsed on top of him, as we see in Ninja Gaiden 3, which would put his durability around 25,000 range. And this didn't seem to impact him too much beyond his pre-existing injuries. So this seems like a fair place to put his durability.
Cloud's durability is a bit tougher. However, since Cloud is capable of taking beatings from Loz without taking any injury, who possesses Sephiroth's strength, Cloud's durability may be around the 25,000 range as well.
Finally Sorcery. Sorcery is relatively simple in that it's roughly how much a single Mana point costs. Bearing in mind 1 Mana point is roughly 10 MP, we can gauge this pretty easily.
In Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, Ryu's Ninpo are usually one-hit-kills for anything that comes into contact with them. Ryu's Ninpo at that point are each worth 100 MP which is one slot. This means that 1 Ki point will be roughly 1/10 of their Health Bars. They weren't wearing any armor and it seems to be the same across all of them, so that means one Ninpo will probably deal 1000 points of Damage to anything with human durability. Keep that in mind, it will be a factor.
Cloud's sorcery stat will not be a factor because he cannot use magic. So in total, here are what the stats look like:
Stat
|
Cloud
|
Edge
|
Ryu
|
Vitality
|
100
|
=
|
100
|
Mana/Energy Source
|
90
|
<
|
100
|
Strength
|
100,000
|
>
|
5000
|
Dexterity
|
11234
|
<
|
22468
|
Durability
|
25,000
|
=
|
25,000
|
Sorcery
|
N/A
|
<
|
10%
|
So here, we can see that the edges look relatively even, they each get two edges, and two equals. However, it's worth noting that the edges by themselves are not worth a whole lot. If a single edge is big enough to carry a fighter, it will. If an edge is too small, it won't impact the fight all that much. That's just a note to keep in mind.
Abilities
Something to keep in mind is that, while stats play a factor, often times abilities can be the difference between victory and defeat. You can have the edge in every single category but if your opponent has one ability that renders all of that meaningless, then there you go, it renders it meaningless. So now, let's look at their abilities.
For Cloud, this will come down to his Limit Breaks. Bearing in mind, for this to work in real-time combat we'll have to use Cloud's Limit Breaks as they are interpreted in the Dissidia games.
All of Cloud's Limit Breaks are HP attacks in that game with two exceptions, Climhazzard and Blade Beam. Due to the nature of Brave Points in the Dissidia games, it can be assumed that Blade Beam and Climhazzard will be Armor Breakers rather than straight damage dealers, meaning that these two abilities will be used to reduce Ryu's durability and attack power more than actually damage him. This is noteworthy, as this gives Cloud more of an edge the longer the fight goes on, especially considering he can use these abilities whenever he wants. His HP Attack Limits, for the most part, have a charge time on them. What this means is that, if Cloud wants to attack with Braver, Cross Slash, and Meteorain, he has to charge up to allow the attacks to be usable, giving Ryu an opportunity to see the attacks coming and dodge them. Cloud's Last two Limit Breaks, Finishing Touch and Omnislash Version 5 are chainable, which means he can activate them in the middle of a combo, which can reduce Ryu's ability to fight back if Ryu doesn't dodge out of the way. This leaves Omnislash as Cloud's EX Burst and though it does deal the most damage of any EX Burst in Dissidia and the second most in Duodecim, Cloud won't be making much use of it in this fight due to its nature. Although it is worth considering for his limit meter.
Ryu, on the other hand, has a few notable signatures such as the Flying Swallow, Izuna Drop, and Guillotine Throw. However, most of these are not going to be particularly useful against Cloud. The Flying Swallow can be blocked easily by foes that are not as strong as Cloud, making it ineffective. The Guillotine Throw is never lethal and is mainly used as a stagger to open up for a combo, making it relatively ineffective, though somewhat useful if he's on the ropes. And the Izuna Drop is an aerial ability which, while useful in the Ninja Gaiden games, will be less useful against Cloud due to his aerial mobility which he shares with the other Dissidia Characters.
One thing Cloud has that Ryu lacks is that Cloud is capable of moving around an arena in 3 dimensions. While both can run on and jump off walls, Cloud can perform an aerial dash toward and away from his opponent while on the ground and in the air. This allows Cloud to evade abilities that would be devastating against any Ninja Gaiden enemy. Cloud is also capable of jumping a total of 4 times while in the air, allowing him great mobility even if there is a lack of ground. This makes his ability to undermine Ryu's flank much more prominent because Ryu lacks aerial fighting.
Much like Cloud, Ryu is capable of a variety of abilities that are similar to his Limit Breaks in the form of Ultimate Attacks. Though many of them will be just really powerful combos, two attacks in particular are worth noting, the Ultimates for Enma's Fang and the Eclipse Scythe. Enma's Fang is capable of generating a shockwave of black-violet fire, which may allow Ryu to damage Cloud in the long run. The Eclipse Scythe has the ability to generate a torrent of wind blades, much less useful as Cloud can simply jump over and away from that.
Though Ryu's Ninpo are quite powerful, they all come with a caveat, specifically his second strongest one, Art of the Piercing Void. This one is really hard to aim with and is not likely to hit Cloud due to how imprecise it is. This means that Ryu will be forced to use his strongest Ninpo, Art of the True Inferno, if he wants to deal with Cloud.
In terms of how well Cloud would fare, Cloud's battle with Bahamut SIN may be an indication that Cloud would be strong enough to at least fend off the Dragon long enough for Ryu to revert, which would only take around 20 seconds at max.
Based on abilities, these two seem to be mostly analogous. Though Ryu can use Ninpo and Cloud can't use Magic, Cloud has a greater degree of aerial combat ability that's far more reliable.
Weapons
The weapons these two possess may in fact be the difference, however. While Cloud will be wielding the Fusion Swords, which will be a total of six weapons, Ryu has a number of weapons to pick from as well. By default, these two will be wielding Fusion Sword 1st and the Dragon Sword Respectively. From there, Cloud can wield each respective component in the blade, while Ryu can wield the Lunar Staff, Falcon Talons, Eclipse Scythe, Enma's Fang, and Twin Katana.
Since Cloud can pull all of his out in the space of a second, it's fair to give Ryu that same ability of live-weapon swapping. In general, Ryu's Shin Ryuken or True Dragon Sword may be his best bet. The Falcon Talons are fast but deal little damage, the Lunar Staff is too fragile in its composition and could break easily, the Eclipse Scythe, while damaging, limits his mobility quite a bit, the dual swords are only a slight improvement on the Dragon Sword, and Enma's Fang is an absolute last resort.
Ryu could wield the Dual Katana as a way to fight against Cloud's dual wielding. The problem is that one handing a sword decreases striking power and striking speed, which against Cloud he'll need.
The True Dragon Sword may be able to deal enough damage to match Cloud's. However, does this mean he'll win?
Conclusion
Let's set up this fight. Let's say it takes place in an open area in the Hayabusa Village. This is how I expect the fight to end.
Early Fight: In the early fight is Ryu's best bet. Because he starts with a full Ki gauge, and Cloud starts off with an empty EX gauge, this gives Ryu a distinct stat advantage. Though Cloud should be able to keep up for the duration of this stage of the fight, his biggest problem will be overcoming the Art of the True Inferno as he has no ability to amplify his stats at this point. Thus I end up giving Cloud and Ryu a 1-2 Advantage.
Mid Fight: In the Mid Fight, Cloud will likely have worn down some of Ryu's defenses and reduced some of his ability to fight. At this point, Ryu will have a question. "Do I use the Art of the True Inferno or do I heal some of my injuries?" If Ryu uses the Art of the True Inferno, he will be able to recover but only if it results in a kill. If Ryu uses it and he doesn't get a kill, however, he'll be vulnerable to Cloud's ability to fight against him. At this point, Cloud will also have a bit of a dilemma. Will he use his most powerful Limit Break, or will he save it for until Ryu is vulnerable. During this stage of the fight, I can see Ryu using the Art of the True Inferno and Cloud fending it off with Braver and his other more powerful Limit Breaks. In fact, while Ryu is charging, Cloud may use Meteorain at a distance to keep Ryu back until it wears off. For this stage of the fight, I give Cloud and Ryu a 2-1 advantage, making the total amount to 3-3.
Late Fight: At this point, Ryu will be exhausted from using his most powerful Ninpo and is unable to heal. Though he might be able to fight back, Cloud can stage a comeback at this point and use his Omnislash EX Burst to finish the job. Here, I give Cloud and Ryu a 3-1 lead, making the total come out to 6-4 in favor of Cloud.
I see this fight ending in the Mid-to-Late Fight. If Ryu uses his Art of the True Inferno right out of the gate, he might be able to knock Cloud off his game and build up the meter for a second one, assuming he can get a decent number of hits in. However, this doesn't seem likely to me, as Cloud has proven far too resilient in the past to be taken down by a Dragon, especially one that is only out for a handful of seconds. This will also leave Ryu vulnerable to any damage Cloud can deal should he mess up.
If I were a betting man, I would bet that Cloud would be the victor.
Of course all of this is just my opinion. If you disagree with my results, feel free to voice them in the comments, provided you be civil about it. Thank you for reading and I hope to see you again next time.
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