Final Fantasy 7-9: A Second Time Through

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

2004-08-14T23:46:00.000-07:00

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?

2004-08-11T21:18:00.001-07:00

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

2004-08-09T00:47:00.000-07:00

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

2004-08-08T01:28:00.000-07:00

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

2004-08-07T15:40:00.000-07:00

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

2004-08-07T01:09:00.000-07:00

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

2004-08-06T00:33:00.000-07:00

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

2004-08-05T02:36:00.000-07:00

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)

FFVIII: Imprisoned Pt2, Missiles, and a Flying Garden?

2004-08-02T23:30:00.000-07:00

Escaping the prison is pretty straight forward. There is just lots of running up and down the floors. After all the running, your character realize that there is no escape from the prison which is high above the desert floor, and there is a small boss fight. It's not that hard, but you have to watch out for the Mirco Missile, which do 1500+ damage. After the fight your characters run across a bridge that connects the towers of the Prison, which are now screwing into the earth. After the cool FMV, the characters leave the Prison in some Galbadian vehicles.

After missiles are fired at Trabia Garden. The main cast splits into 2 parties, one that is going to G-missile Base and the other going back to B-Garden. The first focus is on getting Squall's party (mine including Zell and Quistis), on to a train. This scene has a little comic relief when the guard chasing the train falls.

The game then focuses on Selphie's party(mine with Rinoa and Irvine). This is a simple little part of the game. There is really only one important thing, set the error ratio of the missiles to max. The missile for Balamb are still fired, much to the disappointment of your team and it ends with a boss fight against a big carrier. A few blasts of Quezicotl and Thundaga, and it's over. The scene end with a dramatic scene of Selphie's party realizing they might just die there. The base blows up, in a FMV and the game leaves you to wonder how they could have survived.

Now back to Squall at the Garden. The Garden is in chaos! While Squall was gone there has been a division of the garden. Apparently there is a garden master and he is after the Headmaster. So what you must do is run around to each of the areas looking for the Headmaster. You'll see Xu and head up to the 3rd floor and find that Cid was in his office the entire time. The missiles are on their way, and a plan is needed to save B-Garden. Cid gives Squall a key to the MD level of the garden, down there you must make it down to the bottom. There is a button mashing minigame, to open a valve. I find that you usually need at least 2 of the characters to open it. After a couple of other ladders and switch pressing, there is another boss fight. This fight against Oilboyle, actually two of them. It can be a tricky fight, but a few Ifrit summons and some Limit Breaks will dispose them quickly. After this fight Squall and friends find the panel they where looking for. Squall pushes buttons and the platform rises up through the floor collecting Cid and rising high above his office. The Garden is now mobile, but, the missiles are about to hit. They just miss and the garden floats off. In a little drama, B-Garden is about to crash into Balamb town! Squall comically presses buttons on the control panel and B-town is saved.

That's where I stopped for now. Next up will be Master NORG, the garden Master, and Fisherman's Horizon(FH). That'll be tomorrow.

(20h 34m)

FFVIII: Start Disc 2 and Imprisoned Pt1

2004-08-02T02:22:00.000-07:00

Disc 2 starts in Winhill in another Laguna scenario. Not all that much happens here, if you pay attention you can learn that Julia(the pianist for the 1st Laguna scenario) is gets married to General Caraway making her Rinoa's Mother. Anyway you go from one end of Winhill to the other and the scenario ends.

The next scene starts with Zell, Rinoa, Selphie and Quistis in prison. The story switches back and forth from Squall getting interogated by Seifer. Zell enacts his revenge on "Mean Guy" and he gets the partys weapons back. Then they beat up Biggs and Wedge again (those poor guys). Drawing Haste from Wedge is a good plan, it becomes very useful.

And that's where I stopped, I went down to F1 and got Combat King 001, and stuff, then I saved on the F6. I'll escape the prison tomorrow.

(18h 14m)

FFVIII: End Disc 1

2004-08-02T01:51:00.000-07:00

Hello, I got a bunch in today. First thing I did was play a bunch more cards, Gayla-ST Mag Ref-Meltdown. I got enough meltdowns to full fortify a second characters Vit-J. I was going to get some for a thrid, but at this point I didn't have a thrid Vit-J. I also played enough cards to get a couple characters even better weapons. Squall has the Cutting Trigger and Rinoa ended up with the Cardinal(which is her second best weapon.)

I had enough playing cards so I finally decided to finish Disc 1. So after you give the Idno (47 remember, although each file is different). Your party meets General Caraway, who turns out to be Rinoa's Father. He shuts Rinoa in a room and tells the SeeDs the great plan for taking out Edea. He basically takes you out of the mansion and walks you through it. Just before the groups head out, Rinoa "breaks" out of the room, and comes up with a plan of her own. Quistis throws the book at her, and your party leaves and gets set at their posts for the parade. Quistis feels bad for "yelling" at Rinoa so she takes the "gateway team" back to the mansion to appologize. Mistake. They get locked in the mansion. They end up getting out by ways of a secret passage through the sewers.

The other team of Squall and Irvine are waiting for the parade to start. Rinoa goes off on her own to try to make her plan work. She gets knocked around by the Sorceress. Edea makes this nasty speech and kills Vinzer Deling. She then sends two huge creatures after Rinoa. To make a long story short. Squall and Irvine save her by taking out the Iguions. It's not a tough fight, with the Junctions I have, their swipe attack did 50 and their powerful Magma Breath did 130+. This boss hold one of the drawable GFs, Carbuncle. Brothers GF took them out in one use.

The gateway team makes it through the sewers just in time to shut the gates on the monument, trapping Edea and her "kight" Seifer inside. Irvine almost chokes, but fires a shot, that the Sorceress blocks with ease. Squall jumps down from the clock tower and drives a car up to the gates. The first part of the final battle of disc 1 is versus Seifer, I took him out with two hits. The second is against Edea, she uses "aga" magic that does 300+ damage. You can stop this by using your newly aquired GF Carbuncle, summoning him casts Reflect on your party. Edea doesn't like this because her only attacks are magic, so she goes about dispelling everyones relfect status. She's so busy doing that, she forgets to attack at all, alowing you to GF her for the win. If she dispels all your characters before the fight is over just summon Carbuncle again and the same thing happens!

After Edea has had enough, a FVM showing her lanuching a huge icicle at Squall is shown (impaling him through the shoulder) and disc 1 ends.

This is continued in the next post.

FVIII: Tomb of the Unknown King and Tons of Triple Triad

2004-07-31T23:59:00.000-07:00

Okay again, not much today... I played through the Temple of the unknown king, to get the Brothers GF. Oh, and to also get the IDno, this game it was 47. The Temple is easy if you know that if you make ONLY right turns you can do the temple in one big loop, exit, save, and then come back in to fight the brothers. The Brothers are pretty easy, just GF and you'll win.

I'm basically now in the last few hours of the first disc. So to prepare(more like OVERprepare), I played some Triple Triad. The best place to play is in Galbadia Garden. In the second screen, there is this guy that walks around, if you play him, occasionally he'll use a Mesmerize card(it looks like a horse with a big horn). If you win a bunch (like 15), then you can card mod them in to Mesmerize Blades, these then turn into Regens by using L Mag Ref(life magic). With this method you can have 3000+ HP pretty easily. The other card that this guy uses rarely is a Gayla card(it looks like a white sting ray), these cards can be modded in to Mystery Fluid, that can be changed to Meltdowns, by S Mag RF(status magic). These when junctioned to your VIT-J give you over 75 in that catagory. Mystery Fluid also teaches Quistis a limit power. So if you take the time here, you can become very powerful.

There is a girl just near the gates in the next screen, play here and you can win all kinds of cards that can be modifyed in to items that you can use to get at least the first weapon upgrades for most of your characters. I got enough items to get Squall's, Zell's, Quistis', Selphie's and Rinoa's weapons upgraded to the first levels. I'm ready to finish the first disc tomorrow, so I'll have that to right about tomorrow.

(13h 34m)

FFVIII: Laguna Again, Galbadia Garden, and Deling City

2004-07-31T02:28:00.000-07:00

To start off my session today, was the second of the Laguna dream sequences. It's pretty straight forward, and nothing special happens. In fact nothing much happened in the short playing session that I had. The party visited Galbadia Garden, it's a much bigger garden than B-Garden is. Squall and friends get the big mission for the first Disc. Take out the Sorceress! To do this they need a sniper, that guy is Irvine Kinneas. A new character that now joins your team for good. There is a funny sequence here if you just let Irvine take his choice of party.

Then your party visits Deling City, and gets sent on a quest to the Temple of the Unknown King, to find a student ID no. That's where I stopped. Man FF8 is a story driven game, I neve realized that, until I try writing these after every play session. I guess I'm gonna have to play more each time. I guess this marks the shortest post here at A Second Time Through.

(8h 7m)

FFVIII: I Dreamt I was a Moron, Train Hijack, and TV Station

2004-07-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

Shortly after you board the train in Balamb, your party falls asleep mysteriously, and enters a dream world. Here they get their first looks at Laguna, Kiros and Ward, three Galbadian soldiers, they play a bigger role than your characters think at this point. In this dream, you control Laguna and his friends, who are heading back to Deling City. Once there they head to the hotel where Laguna goes to see Julia, a woman who plays the piano. This part is really awkward, he goes to wave at her and his leg cramps up.

To make a long story short, she invites Laguna to her room and they have a talk. That's it for that part these long story portions of the game sure make these logs awkward. FF7 didn't have as many of these. Anyways showing their lack of knowledge of these Laguna's importants, Squall says to himself: "I dreamt I was a moron".

Now the train has reached Timber, the group meets the Forest Owls, and Squall meets Rinoa, the girl he danced with back when he graduated. The next game releated mission is to hijack the president of Galbadia's car. You have to punch in codes using the buttons on the controller. It's pretty easy, but it is possible to get caught by the gaurds. After some cool FMV, Rinoa confronts the president... but... The president is a fake, The Forest Owls just got duped.

This boss fight is pretty easy, you just summon some GFs and he goes down pretty easlily. You can also take him out with a single Phoenix Down if you are lucky. After this boss there is a bunch more story, where the president announces that he has a sorceress as a ambassador of the "peace". Seifer attacks the president and Zell's big mouth get the garden in big trouble(this plays out more later). You see the sorceress for the first time as well.

The next thing that happens is the group needs to get to Galbadia Garden. That's where I stopped. I'll try to spice these up a bit more in the upcoming posts.

(7h 29m)

FFVIII: The Dance, Talking to a Wall and Diablos

2004-07-28T00:20:00.000-07:00

First thing was the really great dance FMV, it's so funny(and just slightly embarassing). But it's memorable. Then followed by a short trip through the Training Center and then a scene with Squall, doing what he does best, stick to himself.

After that there is a short fight to save a girl(at this point you don't know who that girl is). That boss is easly dispatched by putting him to sleep and then beating down his rollys. Then You take him out with Squall's Limit Break.

Soon after, Squall, Selphie and Zell get sent on their first SeeD mission, they must go to Timber, via the train in Balamb. Before I went there I fought Diablos (you get his lamp by talking to Cid before you leave the garden). At this stage of the game this is one of the hardest, if not the most challenging battle you might face in the entire game. He can be beaten if you Draw and cast his demi spell on him right from the start, that does 1300+ damage to him for at least 3 rounds. Then you can follow up with Zell's Limit (doing only puch rush and booya) and Squall's Limit. You have to get lucky, I actually lost the first time, but won in the second because I managed to get Demi to work and then right at the end Zell got a 12 second Duel!

Before I stopped I gained some GF abilites so that everyone had HP-J. It's easy to teach GFs abilites and not level up by using the Card power. Each Character has about 700HP. That's about it for today. But the game is just starting and there is a lot more to come!

(4h 22m)

FFVIII: SeeD Training Exam...

2004-07-27T01:26:00.000-07:00

Back with a little more...

Today, I cover the SeeD (seed, not CD) candidate exam. After the fire cave(which was in the last post), Squall gets set to become a SeeD. You meet Zell Dincht. Squall finds out that Seifer is his squad captain. One of the best scenes, is in the truck on the way to Balam town. I think it's funny anyways...

You board the ship and it sets off automatically for Dollet. The FMV is pretty cool in this part of the game. After you get on land, the mission plays out in short spurts. Selphie joins your party and you fight FF staples Biggs and Wedge. Who are then replaced by Evorlet, a really annoying boss. First you have to remember to draw GF Siren. The annoying thing is that at this point your characters are pretty weak. So you have to rely on GF's to beat him, it takes alot of boosting GFs to win, and your finger gets pretty tired.

After you defeat Evorlet you goto the bottom of the tower, you are then attacked by a huge robot. you can defeat this robot, so you have to knock it down with Lightining and then run away. Once you've done this a few times, you get the the beach and get to see one of the many cool FMV's in this game. In this one Quistis blows away the robot with the ship's mounted machine gun!

Once you get back to Balamb Garden, Squall, Selphie, and Zell become SeeDs. I stopped in Squall's dorm, just before the next story part of the game. There sure isn't all that much gameplay at this part of the game. Tomorrow I will get in to the actual "game" and things will start to pick up and I'll have more to write other than a discription of the plot.

(2h 23m)

FFVIII: 0 Hours In...

2004-07-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

And so the FF8 coverage begins!

I didn't get all that much in today, got a late start, and didn't get very far. First things first, I love the intro to this game. It's so awesome, the song the FMV, it's just a perfect start to the game, which mind you has a much slower pace. After the intro FMV, Squall is lying in the Infirmary after getting slashed by his rival Seifer. He now has a scar. Anyway, his instructor Quistis Trepe comes to get him. There isn't too much gameplay really in this first part. After the short scene in the classroom, remember to get the first to Gaurdian Force (GF) Monsters from Squalls classroom desk. There easy to miss if you've never played. And Quezqacotl has the two best GF abilities. The CARD command that turns enemies into cards that you use to play the Triple Triad card game (which I'll get to more in a bit), but it also allows you to defeat monsters and get AP but no EXP. And the Card Mod ablitiy, which allows you to mod(ify) cards in to VERY useful items.

First Squall literally bumps into a new character called Selphie Tilmitt. She's the hyperactive character of the game. After this you can get your first cards from a man standing just before the elevator to the first floor(theres still a bit more before I tell you about the card game). Squall then has to meet Quistis in front of the garden, and head to the Fire cave. Before entering it though, taking some time to draw magic. Yup DRAW magic, using GF the characters draw magic from their opponents, sometimes it takes awhile, but it allows you to use the new Junction System. In which you junction(attach) magic to various statistics to make you more powerful, the more magic you have stocked, the more it boosts the stat it's attached to. At first you can only attach magic to a couple of stats but as you progress you get more options.

This also brings us to the most interesting thing about FF8, rasing Levels is not exactly all that benficial. In fact you want to keep your overall level low as you feel comfortable with. Why you ask? Well it's because monsters, are at the same level as your highest level character(which is usally Squall). So staying at a low level and then Junctioning Magic to your stats is the only way to get more powerful.

Anyway you go in to the fire cave to get GF Ifrit, which is the first boss of the game. Then you head back to the Balamb Garden. That's where I stopped, but not without first getting in a little bit of Triple Triad. I'm not gonna explain the entire game here, but it's a pretty simple card game(some of the optional rules are deadly and more confusing). You play on a 3x3 grid, and take turns placing cards, each card has a 4 numbers on it, the represent the power of the card on that preticular edge. You win by flipping your opponents cards, by placing a higher numbered edge against the lower numbered edge of his card. It's pretty tricky at first but once you get some better cards it goes pretty easily if you just pick cards starting from the bottom of your list.

Anyways sorry for the play-by-play, but there just wasn't enough to cover without doing that. Tomorrow I'll play more, get to some interesting parts and tell you my thoughts on them. Oh yeah I'm gonna place the game timer at the bottom of the post in brackets from now on.

(1h 5m)

FFVIII: Intro to Final Fantasy VIII

2004-07-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

Final Fantasy VIII is the "cult hit" of the FF series I think. The people who like it really like it and People who hate it really hate it. Personally it's my favorite one, and when I was nearing the end of FF7 I began to anticpate playing this one again!

For those that don't know Final Fantasy VIII was released on September 9th, 1999. Why the exact date and not just September 1999, like in the FF7 intro? That's because that date was important to me, no, not just because that was the date FF8 was orginally released, in fact, I didn't get FF8 until far later, like October 2000. What was important, was that was my 18th birthday. And I always thought that was cool.

Before I get started with my FF8 coverage please read my impressions of finishing the game for the first time: http://www.flatface.net/~ebcentral/tff/ff8.html. They are no where near as detailed as this is likely to be, but they are very honest impressions of the first time totally throught the game for me.

This time your gonna get my coverage of the game from the beginning, so hang on for the ride!! Here comes FFVIII!

FFVII: The End!

2004-07-24T23:19:00.000-07:00

I've finished Final Fantasy VII! In record time(for me): 47:39 at only Lvl 74(last time I was at 86). The end of the game wasn't much trouble I just used W-summon and with Knights, and Jenova was dead, then the same thing to Sephiroth's first form Bizzaro. Then I wasted Safer, with a Omni-Slash, 2 KotR's and 5 or six uses of 4x-Cut! And finally Sephiroth himself, although anyone who can press a button can win that fight :)

I think I got the ending a little better, but I still don't like that 500 years later thing... I really like FF7, sometimes though I wish I could play a version with FFX's graphics, heck even FF8's graphics, I think I could feel just a touch more for characters that look more "real" then the boxy polygon models that they use in FF7(even sprites can "emote" better). But other than that the game still holds it's own, and graphics aren't "all that". Heck, some of my favorite games ever, are 2-d games.

Well that's pretty much it for FFVII coverage, maybe I'll have a retrospective at the end of this. I'm going to put down FF7 for another year, and come back to it. With the same enthusiasim! Long Live Final Fantasy VII!

Final Fantasy VIII is Comin' Up!

FFVII: Ancient Forest and lots of Battles!

2004-07-24T01:33:00.000-07:00

Hiya!

I didn't get to play much today and I didn't want to stay up so late playing the game this time, so I just managed to pull off a couple of things.

First I went through the Ancient Forest. Here you have to put frogs in plants to get across the screen to a cave with a really good sword for Cloud, by good I mean it has TRIPLE materia growth. That's really good for getting your Materia ready for the final battles, because cirtain monsters give massive AP (or EXP if that's what you are interested in).

The only other thing I did was head to the battle square in the gold saucer. I had plenty of GP to use from all the C'bo racing I did last night. I think it was about 1800, that's good enough for 180 battles in the battle square. Anyway I got to 32000 BP really quickly and got OmniSlash, man it's still awesome to watch! I also decided that I would get W-Summon too. That took MUCH longer, almost 2 hours. As for how the Battles went, I think my best round was 11530 BP.

I'm now ready to head to the Northern Crater and finish the game, I should be able to do that tomorrow.

FFVII: The Fall of Shinra, Ultimate Weapon and a Gold Chocobo!

2004-07-23T04:11:00.000-07:00

Well there isn't going to be as much here as there may have been in the last few posts. One, because it's 4:13am and two, I only did a few things in the game.

First thing on my list was completing Disc 2. To do that the characters parachute in to Midgar. There isn't much of intrest here. W-Item materia is very cool, if you know (or want to) exploit the trick. You battle Scarlet and Hieddger in Proud Clod (what the hell is Clod?!). It's a really straight forward battle, as most of the battles are at this point of the game, just summon powerful monsters and use attacks and just beat the crap out of everything. Hojo was the next to get this treatment, that was after we find out he's actually Sephiroth's father! He injects himself with Jenova Cells and turns into this weird freaky thing. After the fight the team reflects on themselves. And the Highwind(airship) turns rocket powered!

At this point you can just go and finish the last couple of hours of the game and beat Sephiroth/Jenova and win the game... Or... You can finish up doing all the extra things. The first thing I did was chase around Ultimate Weapon. I beat him with ease. Then I set out to do one of the most annoying and time consuming things in FF7:

Chocobo Breeding

This is insane. But it's not all that hard, first you have to go around the world and collect a few select chocobos. Then you have to feed them greens to make them better. The best greens are Sylkis Greens, but they are very expensive, like 5000 gil each. So what you do is buy 2 of them and use the W-Item trick, and get 99(BTW this works for any consumable item, even Megalixers!!). After you feed you chocobo 90(which is way more then enough) you race it and WIN 9 chocobo races at the Golden Saucer. You do this for the other 2 chocobos you cought. Then you breed 2 of them, to get a green or a blue C'bo. Follow that up with the same parents creating a opposite one for the first one you got. Then the Blue and Green mate. Black one is made. Black with Wonderful MALE Chocobo = Golden Chocobo!

That sounds easy, but it's far from it. First there is the problem of the chocobo menus themselves. Some of them don't work unless you have the default controls on (O is select and X is cancel). So if you are like me and like the X button to select, then you have to change to the default controls everytime you want to use cirtain menus.

Second, the chocobo racing is a pain really, it's not exactly needed except for your Wonderful Male. But it helps to get the right color or gender that you need to keep going to gold. It's also good for getting GP to use in getting OmniSlash at the battle square. But the main problem is if you use the technique of 90 greens then your chocobo outclasses the others and you can win the race by a minute sometimes, that sounds good but you can't advance until ATLEAST ONE other rider crosses the line.

Thrid is the fact that you can't just quickly breed. You have to wait, because c'bos that just breeded or where just born can't mate. So that means you have to go off and from what I have found, raise at least one level of exp. So depending on what Level your on it could take awhile. Raising levels is the fastest way to get you c'bos ready to breed again. Don't believe the guides that tell you to "do stuff" to waste time cause it really doesn't seem to help.

And the final thing is that sometimes you do not get the gender or color that you need to get to the next step so you have to make sure you save before breeding so that you can reset and reload your game.

Well I got my Gold Chocobo, called him Goldy(bad name... I'm tired, it's 4am...). I got Knights of the Round and a bunch of the other hard to get materia and stopped for the night. Tonight I plan on finishing the game so check back sometime tonight and I'll hopefull have the game done!

FFVII: Huge Materia Pt3, Sea, Space, Diamond and a Huge Freaking Cannon!

2004-07-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

Back for more? (That's good!)

First thing today was the Submarine Mini-game... HAHAHAHA!! This game is kind of a joke I think. You get 10minutes to stop the red sub from getting away with the huge materia. Except if you get the controls, it takes less than 30 seconds to win. It plays it out like it's such a tense moment. "OMG! The Sub is getting away!!" So.

After you stop the red sub you get to keep the sub that you "borrowed" and can explore the bottom of the seas. There's a couple of things that you can get there. The first thing is to get the Huge Materia from the destroyed red sub. Then visit one of the scarest places in FF7 I think the sunken Gelinka plane. This place is filled with really wierd mutations that are at a very high level, for this point of the game. Some of them can do upwards of 2000HP of damage, to LV50+ characters. But there are quite a few really good items here that you should not miss. Except for the battle with Reno and Rude I ran away from every fight down there.

The other thing that you can do under the water is get the key to the ancients. It's not that hard to find, and it is need to move the plot. You could also find Emerald Weapon under the sea, but fighting it now would be suicide, for characters LVL'd pretty much normally over the course of the game.

The final quest is to get the final Huge Materia. This one is located in the Shinra no. 28 rocket. Getting the materia can be tricky if you don't know the passcode for the case it's in. Later on the Rocket (now in SPACE!!) Cid has a huge revelation, when the oxygen tank #8 explodes. Turns out Shera was right. He then proceeds to swear alot. It's almost funny, but it's nice to see grumpy old Cid realize his faults.

The next thing is to go to Cosmo Canyon and talk to Red's grandfather. You store away the Huge Materia, and if you have Bahamut and Neo Bahamut you can get Bahamut ZERO. Three Bahamuts... I thought he was the king of dragons, why are there three of them. Anyways... ZERO is even more powerful than Neo. You take bugenhagen to the City of Ancients and you see a little thing about Aeris and Holy(her materia, that does nothing). Cloud realizes that Sephiroth is stopping the release of Holy. And gets determind to not let Aeris down. After this point the plot really is starting to get to an end.

But before it does you must "try" and stop Diamond Weapon from taking out Midgar. The battle isn't that hard, you just can't do any physical attacks on him. The Bahamut's, Comet and some Lightning magic will sofen him up though. After that the plot stats to unfold in one long scene. I really like this part. Rufus orders the cannon fired and it sucks all the Mako energy from Midgar and lets rip with a huge Mako shot. But just before the Cannon can take out the looming weapon, it fires some shots at Midgar. The Mako shot goes right through the chest of Weapon and takes him out, it also takes out the force field surrounding the Northern Crater. The final scene is that of Diamond's shots blowing up the presidents office, incinerating him, heh, he had it coming.

The group takes the highwind to the crater to discover that the field is gone, but before they can go challenge Sephiroth, Cait Sith reports that Hojo is trying to fire the Mako Cannon again and that it will lead to disasterous results. That's the partys next goal, but while the city of Midgar is on the verge of blowing up, I went off and did a few things. One I got the Sector 5 key (which may or may not be important at this point). Two, I played the piano at Tifa's old house in Nibelhiem and got her final limit. I stopped at this point and will finish the 2nd disc tomorrow, I'm on record pace, the clock just hit 30 hours. And I'm almost done Disc 2, so unless it takes me 28 hours to breed chocobos(betcha you can wait to hear about that) and get OmniSlash then I'll finish in record time! Till tomorrow!

FFVII: Getting Huge Materia Pt2

2004-07-21T00:48:00.000-07:00

I'm back with another post...

Today I did the Fort Condor mini-game and won the Huge Materia. Like I said in the last post, completing the game is much easier if you have a lot of gil. You just keep placing troops as you need them and it's a easy win. I also got the Phoenix Summon. You know, I don't think I've ever used it. I'll have to give it a shot.

After that you have to go check to see how Cloud is doing in Mideel. After a short scene of Cloud still messed up. You have to fight Ultima Weapon, he's not too hard, but I did end the fight with Cid KO'd. After this battle comes one of the most important story segments of the game. In this long scene Tifa helps Cloud find out about himself and the truth about his past. It's really important to follow this as closely as possible.

After Cloud clears his head and gets back to being his more 'real' self. One of the cool places to visit is Nibelhiem, there you can go back into the basement of the Shinra Mansion to see a optional but cool flash back about Zack and Cloud's escape from Hojo. And if you are still wondering why Nibelhiem is still standing and not burned down, you can talk to a guy in the back of the item shop, that mentions that he works for Shinra, to protect the 'secret' of Nibelhiem. I assume this means that Shinra rebuilt Nibelhiem and everyone that works there is paid by the Shinra to hide the fact that Sephiroth was there. Not perfectly sure on that one though.

After all that you next goal of the game is to get the 3rd huge materia from the Junon Underwater reactor. One of the things that you have to do here is morph a Ghost Ship into a Guide Book. I forget what it exactly does at this point, but I had a few frustrating moments trying to morph that ship. Because it has a move that can throw one of you party members out of the battle. Somehow he'd always pick the person that I had Morph equipped to.

Now once you get in there it 's pretty easy sailing (pun? You decide). But the worst thing that happened in the reactor was that I lost to the Boss that is there the Carry Armor. It was crappy luck was all, really, with a tiny mistake on my part. The first thing he did was grab my healer, Tifa who had the Restore with All. Then he happened to hit me with his Lapis Laser attack that does 1500+ damage. Unfortunately I was too slow at getting my healing items in to play and he bashed Cloud getting him below the 1500HP mark, making him killable by one hit of the Lapis Laser. To make matters worse the Armor grabbed Yuffie and then decided to use Lapis Laser. I was wiped out :(

The second time the thing was blown away. I blasted it with Bahamut and Neo Bahamut for 4500 damage to each of the three parts. Then after it grabbed both Tifa and Yuffie I had Cloud plaster it with multiple Meteor spells. And finished it off with Limit Breaks from Cloud and Yuffie. It was the first time that I have been wiped out in FF7 since I first played it.

I decided to save inside the submarine, just before the submarine mini-game. I'll have that for next time. And finish up the Huge Materia quests. 31:59 minutes in.

FFVII: Getting Huge Materia Pt1

2004-07-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

I played for a bit tonight. First thing that happened was one of the weapons attacks Junon, the weapon just happens to help Tifa escape the gas chamber she is in. Just after that the Junon cannon "Sister Ray" blows the head clean off the weapon. The FMVs in this part of the game are some of the best. Any ways you take Tifa out of the gas room and down to the barrel of the Sister Ray. There she gets in a slapping fight with Scarlet. It's a pretty weird fight, but if you press O fast enough you slap Scarlet down.

After the slapping :P Tifa is rescued by the airship: Highwind and you get to keep it for the rest of the game. After a short sequence aboard the ship, you head to the town of Mideel which is in the south east part of the map and is surrounded by forest. It's a small town where the weapons are good, but they cost 30,000 gil each! Theres also this crazy person running around buying all the stuff from the stores. You can talk to her in all the stores so she can help you later on. It's really funny because the "yahooo!" Chocobo music is playing.

Anyway after you buy all the weapons for your characters, when you try to go deeper in to the town, you'll hear a conversation between a couple of Mideel residents. They are talking about a 'spiky-haired kid'. That just happens to be Cloud. He's pretty messed up and Tifa decides she better stay with him. Which kinda sucked for me first I lost Cloud, and now Tifa left the party for the time being, leaving with just Yuffie from my leveled characters. It doesn't matter that much because there isn't all that much fighting in this part of the game any way. That and my main characters where pushing level 50, making the other characters about 41.

After Tifa leaves the characters(okay, maybe just Barret does) decides that Cid should be the leader of the group. After that you can begin the quests for the 4 "Huge Materia". The first one I did was the Corel Reactor one. To get it you have to catch up to the Shinra train and then battle across the cars to get to the engine. Once you defeat the simple soldier, you have to try and stop the train from taking out North Corel. It's not all that hard you just keep pressing down+Triangle. It's almost humorus because Down+Triangle is technically the brake but the train keeps speeding up. And it's hard not to laugh at Cid's "Shhiiiii---!" And Red XIII telling him that the train is speeding up and not slowing down, thanks obvious man :P After you complete the mission you get the first of the Materia, and the town's people will reward you with powerful Ultima Materia.

Now I was going to do the second quest and get the Materia from Fort Condor, but completing that little mini-game is a lot easier with a ton of money. So I ran around outside of Mideel and earned enough AP to MASTER an All Materia. Luckly I still had a weapon that gave double growth and 3 All's at 4 stars so it didn't take quite as long as it could have. When you sell a Mastered All, you get.... 1,400,000, gil!!! That's right you just walk into any store and sell this thing for 1.4 million gil. Man these stores must really hoard money to be able to buy that from you XD

Anyway I'll play some more later or tomorrow. BTW I'm about 29 Hours in now. that means about 30 or so to go...

FFVII: 25 Hours In...

2004-07-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

This is going to be really quick summary of some of the key points, thoughts, and other stuff in the 25 hours I played before I had the idea to do this log. So here we go!

The game started as it always does, with the Aeris scene in to the long view of Midgar City. The first part of the game is fairly straight forward. You take Cloud and Barret through the Mako Reactor and fight a simple boss. There is one thing about the Robot Scorpion boss, is that when it raises its tail you aren't supposed to attack it because it will fire its tail laser, its most powerful attack... Except Cloud tells Barret: "Attack while its tail is up!" Then the message box changes, and says it "It'll attack with its tail laser!" the problem is that at first it sounds like you are supposed attack it. That's just one of the times the sometimes shoddy translation of this game causes problems. It's not that big of a deal if you've played the game before or manage to catch it.

For people who haven't played the game the next interesting part of not is Wall Market part 1. Here Cloud has to save Tifa from Don Corneo, but to get in to the Don's mansion, he has to dress up as a woman. It can be just as simple as getting the dress and wig and getting in. Or as complex as completing many mini-quests and getting the Don to pick Cloud. It's a little on the odd side, but it's one of the craziest things that has ever happened in a videogame.

In next 15 hours you get a chocobo, visit the gold saucer(which in like minigame central), meet 3 new party characters(2 are kind of hidden), get put in a desert prison, race a chocobo, visit a temple that becomes black materia, then you visit the City of Ancients where one of your party members is killed, it's kind of a downer. After that disc 2 begins.

Disc 2 starts off with quite a bang compared to Disc 1 which I find quite boring for the most part. Okay... It actually starts of with one of the longest and most annoying parts in the entire game. You end up in the north snowfields and after you vist the only town and do a few things (like find out a bit of info on Aeris's past). You play a snowboarding game, which is just mediocre. After this you must chart this really confusing snow area, where you must do too things, touch a hot spring and grab a materia called Added Cut. You have to be pretty quick in doing this because if you take too long your characters faint from the cold.

After that thought the disc really heats up. Climing the cliff is pretty fun, and there is a chance that you might bump into a deadly Malboro. I can't believe how frightning these things are. If you get into a battle with one of these at this point of the game, without a ribbon on at least one character, it's probably going to be over. It's Bad Breath attack is insanely unbalenced, can turn you into a frog, poison you, and give you just about every status effect there is. I had one encounter and luckly I manage to get away.

After that you fight your way through the crater and watch a scene where Cloud gives Sephiroth the Black Materia (again!). This allows the real Sephiroth encased in materia to cast Meteor. Which also releases the Weapon(s). Ultima, Ruby, Diamond and Emerald. You wake up in Junon 7 days later as Tifa. Meteor is hanging in the sky and now that jerk Rufus Shinra wants to public execute you for realsing Meteor and causing all this to happen.

Well that's where I saved, just as you control Barret and are heading to the gas chamber. Sorry for just discribing the game progression, it's almost walkthrough like. I really want this to be a bit more personal, but because of the 25 hours I played it was hard to do anything but. But now this log is up to date, I'll be able to really do this how I want.

The next post will be later tonight before I go to bed. Sometime around mid-night PT.

FFVII: Intro to Final Fantasy VII

2004-07-19T18:24:00.000-07:00

Final Fantasy VII, the RPG that started it all, well, for most people it seems. I'm old enough to have played Dragon Warrior 1 and Final Fantasy 1 on NES and many the RPG on SNES, so I've always had a bit of a soft spot for good RPGs before that point. But what FF7 does is make giant steps for RPGs in Graphics, and story telling and cinimatic presentation.

For those that don't know Final Fantasy VII was released in North America in 1997. So even though it's a PSone game I'm still playing something that is quite old. The game takes place over 3 discs, and clocks in at around 50+ hours if you don't take your time.

Before I get started with my FF7 coverage please read my impressions of finishing the game for the first time: http://www.flatface.net/~ebcentral/tff/ff7.html. They are no where near as detailed as this is likely to be (or become), but they are very honest impressions of the first time totally throught the game for me.

Another thing before I get started is that before I got this idea, I have already played about 25 hours in to FF7 and just started Disc 2. I'll try to summarize some of the key things from that 25 hours. And then continue from there. I'm planning on making one post a day, featuring my thoughts on that part of the game, what I did/accomplished, and anything else that might be important or of note.

Any way I hope you enjoy!

More About The Quest...

2004-07-19T16:13:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Final Fantasy 7-9: A Second Time Through!

Like it says in the About side bar, I've played through FF 7-9 once before, having owned the games for a few years. That year was last year 2003, I started just a little bit before this, in fact on Wednesday, July 21, 2004 it'll be exactly a year since I finished FFIX. I started FFVII on June 17, 2003 and finished FFIX on July 21, 2003 so I managed to complete Three 60+ hour RPG's in a little more than a months time. That was then, when I pretty much could stay home and play them all day, logging upwards of 12 hours each day. I don't have that luxury(or "problem") any longer, so I'm sure it'll take me a bit longer this time around.

I you'd like to read my thoughts on Finishing the games for the first time, please check out the site I did: http://www.flatface.net/~ebcentral/tff/ that covered a mammoth task that I still haven't managed to pull off. It's called The Final Fantasy: Tom's RPG Completion Quest 2003, and it was my attempt to complete all the RPGs that I had bought and then never finished. When you go there you can read my thoughts on FFVII and FFVIII. I did finish FFIX, but never got around to writing a thoughts for it (I plan on doing that as my first post of my FFIX coverage).

As you can see it takes a bit of a time and effort to finish games like these. For those who didn't visit the link above, it took me "about" 58 hours and 34 Minutes to finish FFVII. 67 hours and 6 minutes to finish FFVIII. And took 70 hours and 14 minutes to finish FFIX. So you'll have a lot read here, over the upcoming months.

That concludes the introduction to this journal. Following is the first post about my FFVII playthrough. BTW this was inspired by a great blog called: Jack's Quest Through Final Fantasy, it's a great read, except he's playing through FF 1 - FF 10. Here's the link it's a great read: http://jackdyce.blogspot.com.

One last "Ado" and we are off!