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)