FFVIII: Odin, Everyone's Grudge and a Gaint Cactus!

Today, was a good and a bad day... First the bad... I realised that by missing Alexander, from Edea, I now can't get Doomtrain... GRRRRRR....

But I did have some fun today I recieved Odin. I got surprised when it only took one of Squall's limit breaks to stop him. He'll now appear randomly and cleave enemies in half. I also fought Tonberrys at the Cetra Ruins, if you defeat about 20 it's easy if you keep Squall in Critical(yellow) HP Zone and Limit break them. You then face the King Tonberry, I just let Squall take him out too, after his defeat you get the Tonberry GF. This is the point in the game where the battles change from GF's all the time to Limits all the time. I also beat Jumbo Cactaur and got the Cactaur GF, Squall got 10,000 needled in the fight, but using Life kept him in critical and his limit did the dirty work.

I was going to get Bahamut in the Deepsea Research Base, but it's too hot out and it's hard to hold the controller when you're hands have sweat beading up on them. Tomorrow though I will defeat Bahamut, learn his Rare Item skill, upgrade my 3 characters weapons to ultimates, then go and fight Ultima Weapon at the bottom of the Deepsea base. I'll also try to finish the game tomorrow if I can, I've got the Pandora bit of Disc3 and then the last hour or so of Disc 4, so it is a possibility. Till tomorrow then.

(34h 13 m)

FFVIII: Drawing? Heaven or Hell?

Just a little update for you all. Today I ran around the Islands Closest to: Heaven and Hell, these Island contain powerful monsters that give good items, but I'll get to that in a future post. All I did today was run around the islands and draw the best spells from their many draw points. Spells like: Aura, Meteor, Full-Life, Holy, Triple, Quake and Flare are available.

Unfortunatly, you can only draw from each once until they restore again after a time. Another thing is they only give maximum FIVE uses of each spell. Most time you get 2 or 3. But I'm going to finish some other sidequests tomorrow.

(32h 10m)

FFVIII: In Space, Lunar Cry, Ragnarok and Meeting Laguna

I played a lot! So here it goes!

After getting the Soloman's Ring from Tear's Point, the next goal is the Lunar Gate. Once there Squall, Rinoa, and a character of your choosing get launched in to space. The other party headed up by Zell heads back to Esthar, to talk to Dr Odine about the huge ship that has appeared. That ship as they find out is the Lunatic Pandora. There is a little timed based Mission that takes place it's really easy, but it gets a bit over dramatized. You have 20 minutes to intercept the Pandora at one of three locations, but even if you are totally lost you can get it to the first contact point before it even gets there at 15 minutes. Once inside the characters run into a sentry robot that boots them out.

Now it's time to see how the space bound characters are doing, after a really great FMV, Squall takes Rinoa to the medical room and puts her in a special bed. Next is the bridge of the Lunar Station, here on a monitor you see the Lunar Cry begin. After that you meet with Ellone, as you are taking her to the bridge, Rinoa awakens, and begins stumbling from the medical room. Squall runs off to go check on her, if you touch her Squall gets slammed to the wall. Once Rinoa gets to the bridge, she begins to release Adel from here holding device. Chasing Rinoa to the locker room, and into the airlock(after putting on a space suit, of course), she beats you out and the air lock is locked down. Making your way back to the bridge, a cut-scene of Rinoa unlocking Adel from the hold. Following this is the amazing Lunar Cry FMV! It's one of the most amazing things you can see. So many monsters that they flow of the moon like a tear, and down to the planet below. Adel is collected inside the Pandora and now the Lunar Station is in trouble!

After a flash back scene for Squall courtesy of Ellone, he goes out to save Rinoa who is running out of air. In the little mini-game you have a cirtain amount of time to get yourself positioned infront of Rinoa who floating towards you and catch her. The game doesn't really tell you how to control the game. But a bunch of presses of Circle and left will get you in the right spot. After a little scene floating in space, Squall and Rinoa's last chance is to float to a derelect spaceship called Ragnarok. Inside this ship, there are a bunch of aliens that you have to defeat in pairs. It's not to hard, but there is one that can be hard to find, it's the last yellow one, that is hiding in the first screen of the ship. After the ship is cleaned out you head to the bridge where a little musical scene begins. It's one of the best in the whole game, so I just put the controller down(and let the text boxes change themselves), listen to the music, and smile. It's really well done.

Once the scene ends Rinoa decides that now she has Edea's powers and is a sorceress, she had better go and be sealed away, incase Ultimecia decides to take her over again. And Squall lets her. Silly Squall. He soon realizes what he has done though, and she is rescued from Esthar Sorceress Memorial. After heading to Edea's house Squall and Rinoa have another good scene, it's the one that explains the text that you see during the intro FMV... "I'll be here waiting... I promise."

Soon after that the main cast finally gets to meet Laguna in person! He explains his whole story, and if you pay enough attention you can figure out that he is Squall's father. I know there was a quote somewhere that hints at it, but I don't remember when it happens. It could be on the Ragnarok. Anyway, Laguna and Odine explain how that they plan for the SeeDs to stop Ultimecia, and so on... Now comes one of the fun parts of the game! GF hunts, Magic Drawing on the Islands, Weapon Upgrading, and lots of side quests! So that's what I'm probably going to do for the next couple of posts.

(30h 58m)

FFVIII: Disc 3 Start, SeeD Ship, Salt Lake and Esthar

After disc 3 starts you head to Edea's house, there she tells you about how she was controlled by a sorceress from the future called Ultimecia. And that she wants to compress time using Ellone's time abilities. Edea is worried that Ultimecia may try to take over the body of the Sorceress Adel. After all that Squall talks to Rinoa who is still unconcious for unkown reasons. Squall then falls asleep and you're take to the next Laguna scenario.

This one is pretty comical as the Laguna scenes tend to be, in this one they are actors in some movie. Laguna dresses up as a knight and Ward and Kiros are going to dress up as the dragon. In a spin a real Ruby Dragon shows up and attacks Laguna, you play a game where you have to defend the blows of the Dragon and whack it with your little sword. After you damage it enough you run down the hill where you battle the dragon for real. This battle is very slow, attacks do very little or no damage, so you have to use GFs to win. It takes quite a bit of boosting to win, and it tires out you fingers. After the fight you see the Lunatic Pandora doing something in the back ground and then the game returns to Squall.

The next mission is to find the white SeeD ship, it can be tricky if you don't know where to look. After you find it you find out that Ellone is no longer on the ship and that she maybe in Esthar. So after a short flashback, the game returns to the bridge of B-Garden. You head to the infirmary and get Rinoa, and Squall starts of on his own to Esthar. He has a little scene where he opens up to the unconcious Rinoa. It turns out his friends where going to Esthar with Edea, so they meet up and head through the Great Salt Lake. At the end of this path is a boss, it's easy to defeat, just draw-cast it's Cura spells and it'll go down. At a cirtain point after the boss a the scene will flicker, it ends up opening a passage in the middle of the sky. After a bunch of lifts the giant city of Esthar is revealed. At the end of the lift, Squall and the others again fall in to the dream world. For the FINAL Laguna Scenario.

In this scenario Laguna is in Esthar working as a prisoner, after a few battles they escape. Dr. Odine (he looks really wierd), tells them where Ellone is being kept. A locked door in the next building is opened by a computer up stairs and Luguna is reunited with Ellone.

Back to Squall again, a "Man" comes to pick you up and take you to the Presidential Palace. There Squall and friends meet Dr. Odine. Odine agrees to let you meet with Ellone, but he want to examine Rinoa first. So it's off to see the sights in Esthar City, it's a pretty big and confusing place, but it's pretty easy to get out of if you learn the path. You even get to visit the stores on the way out. The last thing I did was get the Solomon's Ring from Tear's Point. Tomorrow it's time to head into SPACE!!

(28h 19m)

FFVIII: Disc 2 End

Before I took on the G-Garden I went to the desert and faught a ton of Cactuars. Yup, you can fight Cactaurs before getting the "air ship" later in the game. You just head near it using the little mountain pass, after the big forest. Enc-Half or Enc-None is a big help here, because the battle rate is very high. Anyway follow the desert to the point where you can see an island with a little green thing popping out of the sand. If you walk around on the very edge of the land near this island. You get into a fight with one or two Cactaurs every battle. They are hard to hit and run away quickly, but Squall doesn't miss when he is equipped with a good weapon so use him to take a few out. The best thing about Cactaurs is that they give only a few EXP, like 4. But gives tons of AP, 20 per Cactaur! If you battle here long enough you can teach you GF's all their abilities.

After all the random battles, it was time to take on G-Garden. This is the part where Squall finally take on the role he was given, leader. He takes command of the garden and helps everyone through the battle. There is one major dramatic point, near the beginning of the battle with G-Garden Rinoa gets in big trouble, when a part of the Quad floor breaks away, and she is left hanging. It's pretty odd how the characters just keep talking like normal, and take their time, with explaining to Squall that he has to save Rinoa. In fact Squall takes out time to make his huge speech, all while poor Rinoa is hanging there.

After his speech to the B-Garden, he goes to look for a way to save Rinoa. Squall gets attacked by a G-Garden soldier. This starts a little mini-game. After Squall escapes through the emegency door, he battles the soldier's zip line. It's a pretty simple game, Punch, Kick and Block... But it's easy to lose(you get to try again, but I think you lose a SeeD rank), if you are not careful and block the soldiers punches. A bonus to blocking is that after blocking enough damage you can do a deathblow punch the knocks the soldier off the rope. Sqall uses this mech suit to save Rinoa, who is still just hanging there, she's pretty strong ;)

Now that she is saved it's time to storm G-Garden. To get Squall and Rinoa in you run through a really cool FMV of a battle going on behind you. There are some pretty interesting things happening if you watch it as you run. Once inside the garden, it's a matter of running down the right corridors and entering the right rooms. After getting 2 of the 3 key cards that you need, there is another GF boss battle, this one is against Cerberus. If you are at high levels at this point in the game he can be another of the tougher fights. If you aren't it's a matter of beating him down with attacks. That's all I had to do. A few other tips would be to dispel his triple, and use float to avoid his Quake attacks.

Now that you have Cerberus, it's time to finish finding the sorceress. First you have to get a final key card, and enter the elevator on the second floor. Here you'll fight Seifer. He's not hard at all just draw-cast haste on your characters then go to town with Physical attacks. He'll go down. After Seifer loses the fight, the Sorceress escapes through the floor. She ends up in the large conference room. Once there you'll fight her almost instantly. First beat down Seifer again, once he's down the Sorceress can be attacked. She has GF Alexander, so draw that from her. Actually I'm sad to say that I got far too caught up in the fight to remember to draw the GF, and didn't remember until after I saved at the Disc change save. It's not too big a deal, but now I won't be able to get that GF until almost the very end of the game, where he'll be totally useless to me for the most part, unless I go back and earn AP for him. I was a little mad at myself for this.

On with the battle, she can be taken down with just attacks, because magic doesn't work, she relfects it. GF's work good too, especially Diablos. After the battle a very short scene plays out and Disc 2 ends. I just started Disc 3, when I realized that I had missed Alexander I was a little mad, and stopped playing to work on this, but I'm going to start playing Disc 3 as soon as this is up.

To be continued in the next post...

FFVIII: Running Around Balamb and Trabia Garden

This'll probably be another short one. I continued where I left off last night just outside Balamb Town. Once inside the town, you have to talk to the soldiers way at the back of town(they have aa dog), then go to Zell's house and then have the dog find the "captain". The captain turns out to Raijin, and you'll fight him infront of Balamb Hotel. There isn't much to this fight just take out the soldiers and then just take him out with attacks or GF. After you "Get him, ya know" you fight a second battle, this time it's both Fujin and Raijin. Fujin has Pandemona, draw that to add another GF to your collection. Fujin is also the one you have to worry about the most, she has an attack that can take down one characters HP to 1. That actually worked in my favor in this fight as it was Squall that was hit, so his Limit made short work of Raijin, it also triggered Blasting Zone, it's one of the most over the top things you'll see. Anyway that damaged both Fujin and Raijin. Then one final blast from Brothers took out Fujin. Another one for the W column.

After a short story sequence, where Fujin and Raijin explain they are on Seifer's side, you head to Trabia Garden. It's been destroyed by Galbadian missiles. It ain't pretty. Besides the standard walking around and talking to the remaining T-Garden students(and drawing some Aura from the draw point near the missile) you head to the basketball court, this is where one of the most controversial scenes in the game takes place. In simple form it goes something like this:

Irvine remembers living at an orphanage... The others except Rinoa(who wasn't there) remember living at the same orphanage... How could we have forgotten? Using GF made us forget...

Okay it's a bit better than that, and it fits in with the story of the Fated Children, but I think this is the weakest and strongest part of the story. Weakest because it's a pretty weak to just say GF made us forget. But Strongest because it really brings the characters together that much more. Just my thoughts on it. Regardless the show must go on, and the next stop is Edea's House(the orphanage) , but G-Garden is there waiting for you. That'll be tomorrow, Disc 2 will be done and I'll move on to Disc 3 as well.

(23h 18m)

FFVIII: A Concert and Back to Balamb

This is going to be a short one. The main part of this section is the Concert that Sephie puts on to celebrate Squall becoming the leader of the Balamb SeeDs. There is two sets of Dialog depending on what song you pick. If you pick: Electric Guitar, Sax, Bass Guitar and Piano, get a version of the games theme Eyes On Me. This choice kinda shows just how silly Squall can be. He does his drama and Rinoa leaves. Selphie calls Squall a big Stud in both sets of dialog, but he's far from one if you pick this.

And just for you I did both. If you pick Tap(tap dancing), Flute, Violin, and Guitar, you get a country or folk style tune. The dialog on this one is much better. Squall does the same thing for the most part but Rinoa doesn't get mad at him so easily and she tries to get it through Squall's thick head that his friend love him and want to help him. He just has to let them. I reccomend this one, but if you save before this, you can try both for yourself, reading the full dialog.

After the scene with Rinoa is over, the game turns to Squall in bed, it triggers the flash back of when he was a kid. These are really the clues to why he behaves the way he does. And basically thats all I did for today. It wasn't all that interesting, no boss fights or battles, but I did head back to Balamb and am read to take on that next part later today(Aug6).

(22h 02m)

FFVIII: Master NORG and Crash Landed at FH

I got busy, but I'm back now...

To start off this session, was the battle with Master NORG. Turns out he's been running the Garden, and that he was the one that gave the order to take out the Sorceress. Turns out you weren't part of the plan, Gabadia Headmaster Martine used you. You also find out that Cid and Edea are married. Any way NORG ends up getting mad and attacking you.

He's a pretty easy boss, not much to worry about. To win have one character always attack the blue orbs, because they slow change from Blue to Yellow to RED. And like NORG says "LOTS-OF-MAGIC-WHEN-RED". The other two characters bash away at NORG's compartment. After taking enough damage it will be destroyed and NORG will be in the open. He has Levaithan, so draw that before you take him out. NORG is a little tougher when exposed, but he does little damage (around 300). Just uses some GF's or attack him, you'll win.

After the fight visit the Infermary and talk to Cid, you can ask him a few questions, but while the answers are interesting, they do little for the progression of the game. After talking with Cid, if you go near the directory board, you'll trigger a cut scene of Xu telling you that there is a ship approching the drifting Garden. The ship turns out to be Edea's ship and it is controlled by the White SeeDs, you remember the ones that took the girl away after she was attacked in the Training Center?

Your next mission is to find Ellone, yes, the little girl from the Laguna Scenario, except shes grown up. She's also the girl that Squall saw in the first few minutes of the game and the girl I mentioned just a bit ago. Anyway, she's in the Library, to simplify things. Squall does his drama, and Ellone leaves on the SeeD ship. Squall then gets in his thinking mode, he really confuses himself in this one, he also has a little flash back that gets slowly filled in as the game goes on.

The garden ends up drifting right in to Fishermans Horizon or FH(as they call it). The people of FH don't like the Garden or SeeD being there because they don't like fighting. Squall tries to appologize to the mayor. I love the attitude that Squall gives the Mayor at the end of this scene. As you leave the mayor's house Galbadian soldiers attack FH. The Mayor goes to talk to them: "He's Dead" thinks Squall...

There is a little battle with the Galbadian Gaurds, they can be taken out in one hit. Then you face the broken carrier from the missle base, somehow it survived being in that huge explosion. You can Mug a Adamantine from it, if you are lucky(I guess I was lucky)... Just hammer away with GF's and Attacks and again you'll win with NO trouble at all... It turns out that the Missle Base team of Selphie, Irvine and Rinoa escaped sure doom in that big carrier. The group is reunited, but at this point it's a bit short lived as they want to talk about it later. Squall and Rinoa have one of their first moments in this part. Squall's answers are great, I really like that: "I guess I kind... felt the same way too... maybe..." one it's pretty classic. Squall then explores FH, there's not all that much to do. So this is where I stopped. I'll have more later tonigh(Aug5)

(21h 35m)