I honestly don't even see how this is a competition. Link's raw strength and agility puts him at an enormous advantage over anyone. Once boosted by items such as pegasus boots, gauntlets, masks, etc, there's no way anyone could beat him. Unlike Cloud, who starts out physically weak and levels up, Link's only changes were additions to his arsenal and magical knowledge.
With the magnetic gloves, Link could rip Cloud's sword from his hands without even coming near him. As for Cloud's magic, simply defending for a few minutes will quickly exhaust Cloud's magic energy, while Link can go on forever with Chateau Romani. Using Din's fire, elemental arrows, spin attack shockwave, Link can beat him from a distance. As for swordsmanship, Link has been shown to be able to parry and dodge any attacks thrown at him, and his speed allows him to cut in-between his foe's attacks.
On top of that, Link can slow time for his foes with Song of Time Inverted, teleport with Song of Soaring and other songs, summon storms and put people to sleep just by playing music.
Most of this is just the Hero of Time's arsenal, through the other games, Link has many, many, many other weapons and enchanted items that would put Cloud to shame.
This fight is like suped up thor vs captain america, sure cap can get in a few blows here an there...but thor long range wise dominates him....and even if it it gets close range, link is vastly stronger and will dominate that scene...thats the benefit of having the shield, if even if someone is faster, link can block and deflect with both sword and shield in two sides of his body at once, this is what happened to cloud in advent children sephiroth who was faster up front was cutting him up and stabing him silly...even if he was faster than link, sephiroth would be either being deflected by the sword or hitting all shield.
Who is superior:
Long range cloud: magic fire/ice/lightning/earth and summons
(Link can heavily defend with immunity equipments, mirror shield can bounce most back, reflect spell can bounce most back, be defended by the hylian, be tanked, defended by 10 different mask, be defended by the staff of byrna, be defended by nayru, be defended by the magic armor, be defended by the magic cape)
+ Link can defend all of them 20 different ways
Long range link: has spells, dins fire, arrows/ice/fire/silver/light/bombs hook shot, boomerang, fire rod, ice rod, deku nuts, sling shot/seeds bombs sword beams, 3 medallions, a ball and chain,
(Cloud can only defend to this at minimum by his temporary spells reflect/protect)
+ Cloud Only 2 ways
We are talking about different colored orbs called materia and this:
vs all of this
Cloud is a one trick pony.
Even if you add in summons, links summons like the 4 giants...
4 Giants >>> All clouds summons at once.
So...in terms of overall fight:
- Long range winner: Link
- Close range winner: Link
- Mid range winner: Link
- Variety and diversity winner: Link
- Strength winner: link
- Spells winner: Link
- Durability winner: link
- Recovery winner: link
- Tactical winner: Link
- Base winner: Link
- Full powered winner Link
Pretty much to cloud supporters this is why he wins:
Cool cinematic visuals winner: Cloud
(Which has nothing to do with feats, capability's overall and negating his foes advantages)
Coolness does not protect you from a ***** slap.
My favorite twist in all of gaming.
lol And in that sense, you cant even call him a super soldier since he was never a soldier to begin with...so what is he? Drifter at best.
Drifter vs the hero of time? the hero of legend? the hero of hyrule? The hero of an entire universe?
At best you can call cloud a hero, but is he a solo hero? Nope.
Depends what the buster sword is made from. It may not be steel in which case the magnetic gloves could not attract it.
But where does it state its unbreakable? Its handle did deflect sephiroths sword, but thats about it. Link is in the 10 ton base at least, 1,000 ton at mid with enhanced gloves, and 20,000 ton as a giant. In any base/mid/high link has enough to bend the sword into a balloon animal if its ordinary steel. If we are talking about composites here:
Link:
Pushing/grabbing/throwing/pulling
(Golden gauntlets)
- At base 10 tons (moves/lifts blocks bigger then him self in every series and throws gorons)
- Titan mits 50 tons
- Power bracelet 100 tons
- Silver gauntlets 500 tons
- Golden gauntlets 1,000 tons (or strength to move mountains)
- Giants mask 20,000 tons (throws twinmold)
- Composite twist Giants mask x golden gauntlets can technically push the planet
Other strength factors with power instead of grabbing ect:
Punching/smashing/crushing/slicing
(Handy glove)
+ Experts ring makes links punches equivalent to a bomb
+ Toss ring doubles the gloves strength (thats two mountains or two planets now as a composite)
+ Red ring doubles links sword power
+ Hammer and magical hammer busts boulders from small, medium and larger than link
+ The handy glove which ups links power to breaking blocks and busting through sheilds
(Experts ring)
http://zeldawiki.org/Magic_Ring
Other equipment's:
Cane of pacci: Flips any object.
Heres another indestructible item:
The staff of somaria, the blocks he creates cant even be broken by any boss in the game, so if cloud were to summon any one shotters or strong strikers, like bahamut or Kotr...link can just be unhitable behind it.
Sand rod and water wand, which in its self are power houses, what can cloud do to protect himself from inhaling 100s of pounds of sand/water? He cant deflect it with his sword sand/water as its to small/intangible.
Height, distance and travel is nearly nothing link has as an obstacle, link can fly with the fairy spell...this is why link is almost identical to thor, what ever thor can do link can do in a similar fashion...
Mystical items and enchantment's by gods >>> A super serum
Thor >>>> captain america
Link >>>> Cloud
I don't recall link ever being able to beat a new born god such as sephiroth. hell link would lose almost instantly.
What god? A man amoungs ants can kill them, but he still is just a man. Sephiroth is a giant deformed version of this:
Sephiroth is a deformed pigeon,
Ganon is usually called a god because you cant kill him even after his body is gone, he'll keep coming back...if sephiroths ghost is lingering link can end him with the phantom sword, if his spirit remains, link end him with the spirit sword. Link has a enchanted mystical weapon for any type of being.
And Cloud defeated a god. Cloud is Link's Senpai.
Cloud defeated a low level monster, not a god. Even zack defated something more powerful.