... That... seems like an unwise use of storage space. Why would you need to put scenes that'll only ever actually happen during the course of Disc 1 on Disc 2, wouldn't it be more efficient to only include scenes that will actually have a chance of playing in the course of that disc's runtime?
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
IIRC, I played through most of the game (PS1 version) once but never actually beat the final boss, and this was also after I'd played VIII (which I'm pretty sure I got to the final boss of at least once, but I don't recall if I'm remembering the ending from beating the game myself or a Let's Play I watched) and IX (which I played through the whole of at least twice, as I recall, and it's my favorite of all of the FF games I've played).
...Man, I knew obviously the world map and NPCs and a lot of things were the same between disks, but wouldn't have thought straight up everything but the FMVs was the same.
Though granted, that also tells you exactly what Square did with all that extra multi-disk space: show off their brand new 3D Modeling skills by stuffing in a bunch of FMVs. Now I'm kind of curious exactly what FMV is numbered to what on each disk. Like, imagine watching Cloud, Tifa and Avalanche swing away from the collapsing Sector 7 Tower and then the game just hard cuts to "anyways here's Cloud dueling to the death with Sephiroth real quick, alright back to our regular scheduled programming".
FelOnyx
Love and Peace!
- Location
- Gunsmoke
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Almost all of the game's size is the FMVs. Everything else put together takes up way less than one CD. The full combined file size of FF7 including FMVs would just about fit on 2 CDs with a little optimization, but that would require the player to swap disks back and forth regularly. Going with 3 disks avoided that, and also left them with so much room to spare there was no need to do the extra work of cutting content that would go unused on a given disk.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
At a quick google search, yeah apparently VIII and IX are similar cases. Though on the other hand, there's also some JRPGs from that era where there might be entirely different data on each disk. For example, Legend of Dragoon would actually prompt you to go back and insert a previous disk when revisiting older areas in the game. So could just be different design philosophies across different dev teams/companies.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This would mean that Child Me could have actually finished FFVIII instead of being forever stuck at the end of Disc 1 because the disc was scratched in a way that made the last FMVs glitch to a halt while the gameplay still worked.
This is devastating knowledge and I shall require a period of mourning.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I would suggest looking for a swamp - when you can avoid the random snakes that sometimes pop up in them, they make for the most atmospheric locales for some high-end moping.
Morganite
Happiness is a large book.
- Location
- Dynamis - Firefly Alley
So he says
and then you suggest he go and play a minigame?
-Morgan.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm a bit late since I was out of town the last couple days, but even if it seems a little rushed I'll chime in and say I enjoy Sephiroth's The Shadow Over Nibelheim backstory.
View: https://www.tumblr.com/pennsylvaniahateaccount/701541261934510080/lorileopard?source=share
View: https://www.tumblr.com/pennsylvaniahateaccount/701541261934510080/lorileopard?source=share
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That comic might be a bit spoilery.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ehhh...I don't think so but I'll drop it to be on the safe side.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Put it in the spoiler thread!
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Remember, in that scene Sephiroth was talking about the process by which Mako is pumped into a containment unit and condensed and crystallised into the hyperdense, usable form common with synthetic materia. We also know from repeated reference that SOLDIERs get some form of Mako treatment which leads to physical mutations, Cloud's eyes instantly marking him as a recipient of said treatment to those in the know. I'm pretty sure that what Sephiroth and Cloud found in there was just some kind of variant of that process, whether it was an abandoned version that led to too many mutations before being scrapped or a new variant designed to make even better SOLDIERs is unclear. Maybe the goal was to create soldiers able to innately use magic without needing materia at all, like how Aerith is able to cast a wide variety of blatantly magical effects with only ATB moves in FF7 Remake? In any case Sephiroth instinctively felt a kind of kinship with the mutant setting him apart from normal SOLDIERs like Cloud so my read is that this is Sephiroth instantly jumping to the conclusion that he's Built So Motherfucking Different that he endured a similar process without mutation which means obviously that's proof he's a Cetra and a Genetically Special Boy.
(I had to reread this like six times to make extra sure you weren't talking about Jenova not the pod mutant because I'd hate to 'um actually' the wrong thing but here goes)
Cloud can try to approach Sephiroth, but Sephiroth just requests to be left alone. Over the following days, Sephiroth remains locked inside Shinra Mansion, refusing to come out and making his way through Professor Gast's entire library, something which the game shows with great effect by showing a succession of takes on the same Dutch Angle background showing more and more books piling up:
Random minor note but iirc it was originally stated Sephiroth stayed up for three days straight reading everything he found in the basement but in all subsequent retellings of the event it was extended to a full seven. Just so you know how delirious homie must've canonically been.
Now, our boy Sephiroth here is clearly on a bad track psychologically. He's managed to resolve the existential trauma of finding out he's some kind of lab experiment by deeming all of humanity 'traitors' and an inferior species to himself, and he's headed for Jenova. But surely Cloud can still make him see reason, right?
Cloud, carrying the Shinra Branded Midgar Pizzas:
I want to highlight this shot from earlier in the scene for how the stark lighting shows Sephiroth as a lot more… Human, wide-eyed, marveling at the sight of Jenova, than the shadowy and sinister expressions he's otherwise had in the FMVs. There's something almost childish to him.
Damn look at the shadows under those eyes he really needs a nap and a Snickers.
Bereaved, betrayed by his role model, desperate and with little to live for, Cloud takes his combat stance, the screen flashes white, and… It's over.
He has the humility to recognize that there was no way he could have possibly killed Sephiroth. Tifa notes that "official records state Sephiroth is dead," and that she read it in the newspaper, to which Aerith notes that the newspapers are owned by Shinra (lmao, of course they are) so you can't trust them; but even if Sephiroth merely escaped and his death was a cover-up, that still doesn't explain why Cloud is still alive - or Tifa, for that matter!
That's all that Cloud remembers.Interestingly iirc I think this is another thing that changed in Remake - there, Cloud is initially certain that he killed Sephiroth, but becomes less sure of that no doubt due to the various Gaslighting Skype Calls he receives, until by the back third he's settled into the original's 'I don't know if he's dead or not, Shinra officially claims he is but who knows'. This might just be down to minor changes in Remake Cloud's personality and it's quite possible Rebirth will bring him back to 'there's no way I killed Sephiroth on my own that's crazy' when it covers Kalm.
There may not have been a clear goal; if he was involved Hojo is exactly the sort who'd take a "let's throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" methodology to human experimentation. I've no problem at all imagining him sticking random people in pods and infusing them with Mako in various ways just to see what happens.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Eukie
Powered by furious Canadian redheads
It would be more efficient in terms of storage space, but it's usually not efficient in terms of development time. If you just toss the entire game sans intensive graphics and music onto a disk, the entire game is going to run from any disk without much hassle. If you include only the exact pieces you need on each disk, you have to spend a lot of time making sure that what is essentially three separate games run without issue. And this is a process that has to be done last in development, since exact file sizes typically aren't known until then. If the entire game is on each disk and the storage-intensive things like graphics and music are the only things that change, the process is much smoother and it's easier to accommodate development changes.
Geckonator
Occult Materialist
I also imagine it becomes significantly easier from a QA angle and keeping everything working properly with no problems for the player... If you split up the code among the different discs you're basically creating three different pieces of software that that might have bugs or issues that aren't consistent across all of them and compound across a save file that has to carry through all three of them.
Final Fantasy VII, Part 10: The Zolom That Lives In Midgar
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game where it took a solid 8 hours of play but I finally found something I could reasonably call a challenge.
Last time, we left Kalm and decided to head east, following Sephiroth's path across the plains.
On the way, we find a nice, relaxing beach, enjoy some sandy battles.
…side note: as you can see from this picture, and as is the case for every character and weapon, Cloud's sword has changed from the iconic Buster Sword to the Mythril Sword, which is just, like… A sword.
Which feels weird. The Buster Sword is iconic, all official and fan art of Cloud has him use it that I'm aware of. Like, it's part of the visual identity of Final Fantasy in general and Cloud specifically. The starting screen of the game is literally the Buster Sword planted in the ground against a dark background. Except, mechanically, the Buster Sword is just a starting weapon. It's impressive that it took seven hours for us to outgrow it, to be fair, but now it's completely obsolete, so we'll just equip random weapons instead.
The Remake had this interesting approach where each weapon had its own 'upgrade tree,' so all weapons equippable by a given character were viable, they just have a different focus in terms of abilities and stats. I liked that, though of course this is too complex for VII. And even so - while as a modern AAA games Remake tries to make its gameplay graphics look like its pre-rendered graphics, you can spot the times it goes from in-engine cutscene to pre-rendered by the fact that Cloud's weapon swaps to the Buster Sword regardless of what he has equipped. Advent Children has Cloud wield the Fusion Sword, a special weird sword that splits apart, but importantly in its resting form, it looks just like the Buster Sword.
I remember, years ago, an incredibly obnoxious argument with another player of the TTRPG Exalted, who argued that Artifact weapons (the powerful, legendary weapons wielded by the heroes of the setting, each with their own magical features, kinda like Noble Phantasms) should be treated as perfectly utilitarian items without emotional attachment, to be easily discarded whenever you meet a shinier one. And that idea was anathema to the group of us arguing with him, but in evidence for his point of view, he pointed to FFVII and said "The Buster Sword may be 'iconic' but it's just a weak sword that you discard the moment you find a stronger one," and that conversation has never left my head because yes, he's right in terms of the mechanics of the game, but this here is a total mismatch between a game's mechanics and its visual identity?
Anyway.
It's a bit of a hike to our destination, but not altogether much; soon enough, we see a series of buildings, resembling a farm more than a settlement proper.
Now, the natural thing to do would be to check out said farm, ask around about what's up, have they seen Sephiroth, and all that. However! Much more interestingly, near that farm, the grassy plains meld into a swamp - and that swamp has something moving inside of it, a shadow under the water, reminiscent of Leviathan's presence in an overworld lake in FFV.
It's definitely some kind underwater giant serpent.
So, right off the gate, what is going on is pretty obvious: as you can see, there is a cave on the other side of that swamp. But the serpent is roaming the swamp. A quick look at the world map seems to show that this cave and the farm on the prairie are the only places actually available to us (aside from Kalm behind us), the rest of the world is blocked off by sea and mountains. So it seems pretty obvious that this serpent is going to be an obstacle, an opponent too strong for us to defeat yet, which we will have to try and avoid in order to get to the cave?
I say this mostly because, just, that's kind of the thought process I have when I go through games, even if I'm not necessarily breaking it down in updates? I made a dissection of the photo scene in Nibelheim a couple updates ago and someone asked if I was sure I hadn't played the game before, and I tend to go through games with a mix of 'no thought head empty uwu what's this' and 'overthinking a single screenshot before doing anything.'
The other reason I say all this is so it makes sense to you when my next action is to immediately test my theory by saving the game and running into the swamp and straight at the snake.
Well.
That is, I'm pretty sure, the largest opponent we've had in the game so far, bigger than even Shinra's various giant robots. That thing is called 'Midgar Zolom.'
First, let's get the name out of the way - 'Midgar Zolom' is likely a mistranslation. It's a name that makes sense, in that 'Zolom' could easily just be the name of that order of giant snakes, so the Midgar Zolom is 'the species of Zoloms that live in the Midgar region,' which is still where we are, geographically. And it makes sense!
But no. This is meant to be Midgardsormr. Because of the way Japanese doesn't differentiate between L and R and how syllables are broken up in the language, the 'sormr' sound could easily become 'zolom.' This thing is named after Midgardsormr, one of the names of Jormungandr, the World Serpent of Norse mythology.
So it's pretty clear we're fucked, right off the gate, but I knew that going in. So let's see how fucked we are.
Matra magic hits it for around 150 damage, most normal spells for about 170, a Limit Break by Cloud for 270, so let's see how much HP it has!
…several times more than any boss fought so far. Amazing.
Midgar Zolom hits for 400-500 damage, easily knocking any character into the critical range if not outright killing them in one hit. This is manageable. Zolom still has only one attack per turn, so as long as it's not a OHKO we can Cure the damage away and still get two attacks a turn.
There's a wrinkle in this plan, though. Once it takes enough damage, the Zolom takes on a high, 'warding' stance, like so:
In that stance, it may respond to attacks with a tail sweep that will knock a character on their back… And out of the fight. Similar to Omega's removal, it deletes the character from the encounter. This completely fucks the action economy and means the Zolom can easily wipe us out…
…although interestingly, the result of this is not a Game Over.
Indeed, the character who was blown away from the encounter, Aerith in this case, is at full health, and we simply resume control of our characters on the shore of the swamp. Interesting!
Well, this foe is beyond us for the time being, so let's head for the farm.
The Chocobo Farm.
Man those birds look good in 3D. They are cute, but sleek, with a slender build that suggests speed and even combat potential, while still being adorably fluffy and golden. I love them.
And they love me back, it turns out. By interacting with the chocobos, we can answer their 'wark!' with a 'wark!' of our own, whereupon all the chocobos in the field start to do a coordinated dance!
It's adorable and I love them. And at the end they gift us with…
…drum rolls…
…our first Summon Materia!
I have been wondering how this game would play with Summons. VI had them as a core component of the narrative, only handled in ways that, well, I refer you to the entire playthrough for my complicated opinions on Espers. So I've been wondering how this game would handle it, and so far it's interesting that we haven't seen any summon in Midgar; they aren't on sale, Shinra makes no mention of them, I have no idea if they're secret magic Shinra lacks access to or high-security Materia reserved for critical emergency, hmm.
Here it looks as simple as 'the chocobos like us, so they give us a possibly secret magic rock that lets us summon them in battle.' And with the name Choco/Mog, it looks like we're dealing with a Chocobo-Moogle team-up, which is interesting seeing as moogles haven't appeared in the game yet. This sounds adorable. Before moving on with the plot, let's test it out on a random encounter!
…
This is the best summon ever.
Okay, they are really flexing their 3D capabilities with that one - and they're doing it with the first summon in the game, which historically has always been kinda lame/ineffective, as a sort of 'foot-in-the-door' advertisement. Previous summons were just "monster appears on the screen, casts a big flashy spell, disappears." This thing is damn near a cutscene unto itself, including a custom summoning stance for the character using it.
This may prove a problem if every summon is like this and it ends up making fights last forever, but for now, it's absolutely a great feeling. That cutscene is adorable and hilarious, I love it. Capability-wise, Choco/Mog's hits harder than any magic I've unlocked so far, but it seems that it can only be used once a fight - once summoned, the command is greyed out. Final Fantasy VI had a similar thing, but FFVI in general vastly devalued summoning as a tool, whereas here the requirement for materia slot and a dedicated command probably mean it'll have a higher profile? It might be a neat way of balancing out 'summons are flashy enough that they feel like they should be stronger than spells' with 'you can't just make spells worse than summons' by striking a balance where summons are stronger, but more limited than Magic.
We'll see. For now, let's head into the farm.
This looks to be the granddad and farm owner. He tells us that crossing the marsh isn't safe due to the Midgar Zolom. THANKS, I HADN'T NOTICED. If we want to cross the marsh, we need to move very fast, and for that purpose, we better get a chocobo. If we want to buy one, we should talk to his grandson in the stables.
Sounds straightforward enough! Every game in the past has had chocobo renting be a very simple matter of giving some money and getting a single chocobo ride. Surely this should be the same, right? Right?
(Also we can use his bedroom as an inn for the exorbitant price of 100 gil.)
Oh, no.
We have to catch our own chocobo.
Okay, here are the rules: There are places across the map that have chocobo claw marks. If we carry a Chocobo Lure Materia with us, then we have a chance to initiate a battle with a pack of normal monsters and a chocobo. We cannot hurt the chocobo or it will turn hostile (so we can't use All Materias or Matra Magic); we have to defeat all the other monsters piecemeal. Then, the chocobo will take notice of us… And run away, unless we've distracted it with a Green, ie some vegetables. There's a number of Greens that have increasingly higher prices, corresponding to how long they will keep the chocobo occupied (that being the time we have to defeat everyone else). The Greens are consumed on use, and have to be purchased here. If we do all this right, we capture a chocobo, which we can then produce to use for a single trip, because it immediately runs away once we climb down from it.
I already hate this system.
I understand that the Midgar Zolom here exists as a tutorial, meant to force us to engage with, and learn how to use, that system. And I appreciate that. This kind of forced lesson can be good. I just don't really see any chance I might want to engage with the chocobo system once I no longer need to, because this sounds like a giant hassle.
Also the Chocobo Lure Materia costs 2000 Gil, which I literally do not have right now, and then there are further costs for the Greens.
So fuck that. Let's try brute-forcing our way by killing the Midgar Zolom.
With proper coordination, things go better. I now have the power of Chocobo with me. Because any attack from the Zolom nearly kills a character, it also fills up their Limit Bar, allowing me to unleash multiple Limit Breaks, so I can dish out a lot of damage, fairly quickly. However, the Zolom is really tanky, and once again, attacking it incautiously allows it to remove a character from the fight - but with enough Cures and using Bio to poison it so it takes damage over time, I can still try and race its HP down before it takes down the last two!
What the fuck is 'Beta.'
Oh.
Okay so this snake is armed with nuclear weapons.
Fuck.
'Beta' is a Fire-type spell, and deals well over a thousand damage to the whole party, instantly wiping them out. There is no recourse to something like this. We're not brute-forcing it.
Except…
Wait.
Just before Tifa and Cloud pass out… A message at the top of the screen…
…this is an acquirable Enemy Skill???
Okay, so my first reaction is maniacal laughter. It says I learned it! It says so right there! And, as I have mentioned before, the group being wiped after someone was kicked out doesn't result in a game over, so I don't have to reload anything. By all rights, I should now have the all-powerful Beta spell.
…except I don't. The game's UI just lied to me. I checked the wiki, and an Enemy Skill is learned "whether or not a character survives the attack," and there was no game over, and the game treated me as having learned the skill… But for whatever reason it's not actually retained if we 'die' to the Midgar Zolom.
So, I feel that's pretty bullshit. But also: I now know this big snake has a super-powerful spell I can learn if I just manage to survive the fight properly.
This knowledge will ruin me.
I immediately attempt to obtain knowledge of the spell. In order to do this, I need to survive Beta without it wiping the party, which is hard, because it deals twice as much damage as I have HP. However, that is a Fire-type spell, and I have one Elemental Materia. I have so far exclusively used it to give Cloud's sword elemental typing, but if we slot it into a piece of armor, we can halve damage from a given element.
So, give Tifa the Enemy Skill Materia and an armor with Fire and Elemental slotted in, and let's dive in.
Incidentally Cloud just unlocked his first lv 2 Limit Break, Blade Beam, which is a, well, you guess it.
It doesn't work. Midgardsormr is just too powerful and, also, keeps knocking Tifa out of the fight so she doesn't learn anything, and then I die.
Alright. Fine. I guess I'll just go and grind the money to buy the Chocobo Lure and Greens, urgh.
Back in FF3, Gysahl Greens were called that because they came from the town of Gysahl. I wonder if there will be a similar diegetic explanation for the names of this rather expanded list of veggies?
Then we head for the claw mark patterns next to the farm, and on the next random encounter, wouldn't you know it…
A chocobo is mixed in among the other monsters. We attract it with the Gysahl Greens, which look like… some kind of radish? Then kill the other two beasts, and presto! Chocobo get!
Now riding the chocobo, we can outrace the giant snake and run across the marsh to the cave (it is still chasing after us, so presumably we don't want to get caught, bird or not).
But as we approach, a special encounter plays out. When we set foot on that grassy area between the swamp and the gate, we see…
…
Damn but this game knows how to do presentation.
Sephiroth came through here, and he wasn't riding no chocobo. The Midgar Zolom, Midgardsormr - the serpent who thwarted us with overwhelming power, that I attempted multiple times and with a customized strategy to defeat only to meet with failure again and again, ending up having to resort to paying an eye-gouging price for a chocobo lure to escape it - lies there, dead, impaled on a tree.
Sephiroth's work. The man went through the swamp earlier, and treated the overwhelming foe as a trivial obstacle.
What gets me is that the serpent isn't even, like, beheaded. Or cut in half. It's impaled on a dead tree. This isn't something that happens naturally in the course of delivering blows and ripostes. It would require active effort, the ability to grapple and manhandle a beast of that size, and probably to jump several meters in the air, so you can drive its head down onto the tree-tip. This is actively superhuman, not 'action movie' superhuman.
And it's all coming through in implications, from the aftermath of the actual fight, which we did not witness. Outstanding stuff.
…unless you don't try to fight the snake. The most natural process for this sequence would be that you arrive there, see the farm, check out the farm, someone tells you "beware the snake," and then you choose whether to try and brave it or just pay up and skip the doomed fight. If you choose to trust the game, and don't fight the giant snake, then that bit loses a lot of its effectiveness, doesn't it? Ah, well. The perils of giving players freedom, I suppose.
The characters stand in shock at the sight, and Aerith muses "Our enemy is someone that could do this?" and Tifa says, "Amazing…" Yeah. Big Bishie Boy's power level is sinking in.
After this short scene, we proceed onwards to… The Mythril Mine!
I've just realized that this non-remastered game does not have a minimap. I am going to have to navigate every dungeon as Square intended, staring at an obnoxiously small square section of the overall picture. This is so not super.
There's some loot to reward exploring, at least.
Thankfully, the Mythril Mine is extremely short - only four screens, and small ones at that. Its only real claim to fame is being the first "true" dungeon of the game, a gloomy cave with loot and random encounters, as well as containing a story-relevant cutscene.
Oh god, it's the Turks.
It's the alternate version of the Turks from a parallel universe.
What? You don't know what I mean? Allow me to illustrate.
Aerith: "By any chance, are you..?"
Rude: "Do you know who I am?"
Cloud: "The Turks, right?" (// "Not interested")
Rude: "Well if you know, then this won't take long. It's difficult to explain what the Turks do…"
Cloud: "Kidnapping, right?"
Rude: "To put it negatively… You could say that. But, that's not all there is to it anymore."
Rude: "..."
Elena: "Sir! It's all right, Rude! I know you don't like speeches, so don't force it!"
Rude: "Then explain, Elena."
Elena: "I'm the newest member of the Turks, Elena. Thanks to what you did to Reno, we're short-handed."
Elena: "...But, because of that, I got promoted to the Turks…"
Elena: "Anyhow, our job is to find out where Sephiroth is headed. Wait a minute, it's the other way around… You're the ones that are getting in our way."
At this point, Tseng, the Turk leader, enters stage left.
Tseng: "Elena. You talk too much."
Elena: "Mr Tseng!?"
Tseng: "No need to tell them about our orders."
Elena: "Sorry… Tseng."
Tseng: "I thought I gave you orders. Now go. Don't forget to file your report."
Elena: "Oh! Right! Very well, Rude and I will go after Sephiroth, who's heading for Junon Harbor!"
Tseng: "...Elena. You don't seem to understand."
Elena: "Oh! I'm, I'm sorry…"
Tseng: "...Go. Don't let Sephiroth get away."
Rude/Elena: "Yes sir!"
Rude: [Turning around to look at us as he leaves] "Reno said he wanted to see you after the injuries you gave him healed. He wants to show his affection for you all… with a new weapon."
Tseng: [Now alone]: "Well, then…"
Tseng: "Aerith… Long time no see. Looks like you're safe from the Shinra for a while, now that Sephiroth has reappeared."
Aerith: "What are you saying? That I should be grateful to Sephiroth?"
Tseng: "No… I won't be seeing much of you, so take care."
Aerith: "Strange, hearing that from you."
Tseng: "Well then, stay out of Shinra's way."
[He leaves.]
…
These Turks feel like they wandered in from the reality where the initial plans for them to be a quirky minisquad of likeable punch-clock villains was executed in the first part of the game. Which, to be clear, it wasn't; Original Flavor FF7 has Reno be an asshole poser yakuza goon, Rude just kind of exists, and Tseng is a gloating villain who literally escapes from a scene on a helicopter with a tied up damsel in distress as hostage, and, this must be emphasized, they murdered everyone in Tifa and Barret's town along with their three Avalanche friends.
This scene feels a lot closer to the reality of the Remake, where the Turks are antagonists but you at least root for them to make it out of the story alive because they're fun. Tseng's final lines here, which allude to actually caring about Aerith's safety, are much more in line with how the Remake has it that the Turks were basically always hovering around her life making sure she stayed safe. But the Turks we know in this game are explicitly a hitman squad who abduct people and whom Aerith has had to repeatedly evade capture from in the past.
It's just, it definitely feels like the Turks were meant to be one thing, but then they ended up being another thing, and the writer is now trying to reroute them back to the thing they were originally meant to be, with Elena the new girl who can't help but spill critical information in front of their enemies (and also has a tic where she starts off with 'sir' and 'Mr' but can't help but default to first-name basis immediately after even when talking to her hierarchical superiors), Rude the guy who tries to make a big dramatic speech but ends up choking because he has stage fright/social anxiety, and Tseng the long-suffering 'straight man' boss who kinda does care about Aerith after a fashion. Reno the guy who swore revenge from his hospital bed and wants us to know we're totes BRF (Big Rivals Forever) and he's got a cool new weapon (it is becoming apparent to me that Renji Abarai and Reno exist in a kind of mutual feedback loop).
Which, again, is hard to square with the mass murder of everyone in Sector 7.
Anyway. That scene genuinely is funny. The "It's hard to explain our jobs…" "Kidnapping." "Well if you want to be negative about it-" exchange is flawless. I love Elena. I like these Turks! They just. Feel like new characters that got swapped behind the scenes after the pilot version tested poorly. We check the next room over to grab an Elixir and Hi-Potion, and then we're through the cave!
What the fuck is that giant bird thing.
A bird statue? A bird monument? Some kind of weird alternate Statue of Liberty?
Well, we'll check it out soon, but first I have an immediate priority.
This isn't really something that I could just guess from environmental or storytelling cues, it's literally just something that I remember from originally playing the game 10 years ago; if I didn't have that prior knowledge, I would need to either run into it randomly or have someone warn me about it.
You see, having left the Midgar region, we are now, for the first time, seeing forests. It's really remarkable that they weren't any before - the Midgar region has grassy plains, it's not just fully devastated wastes, but no woods. No trees. Just a… steppe?
Here now, there are small woods. And if we run into them arbitrarily until we get enough random encounters, we find…
…this girl. She has a kind of armor protecting a single arm, and is using as a weapon a giant shuriken that she throws at us, although she mostly attacks with magic. The girl isn't too tough an opponent, and once we deal enough damage, the fight ends without a standard combat ending screen; instead, we are sent there:
This girl is lying unconscious in the grass. There's a save point right nearby, so before actually talking to her, I head there to save the game. As usual, it displays the "open the Menu to Save" reminder, so I go into the menu, where...
...the Save function is grayed out?
YOU LITTLE SHIT
IT WAS A FAKE SAVE POINT???
OH MY GOD
SHE MOVED WHILE I WAS IN THE MENU BECAUSE I COULDN'T SEE HER
This is such meta bullshit, this is Weeping Angels nonsense. I love it. Also, I hate it, because she just fled and ran away with 200 precious gil.
And that means we now have to run around the forest to trigger that encounter again.
The way Cloud just sticks out of the forest texture is funny.
A closer look at the girl.
Cloud does not, in fact, know her.
Okay, lesson learned. We don't try to access the save point, we just go talk to the girl. Her first words upon waking up are "I can't believe I lost," then she immediately starts bouncing around the battlefield throwing punches at the air.
So.
Think of this scene as a job interview for membership in the party. Except you're not interviewing the girl, she's interviewing you. There's a series of dialogue options and you have to pick the right one or she dips. For instance, here, like an idiot, I answer straightforwardly "All right," because sure, I'm willing to give that girl another shot at a fight.
Girl: "I won't lose this time! Take your time and get ready. Holler when you're ready!"
…which is a trick. We can't move, so our only option is to go into the Menu, which makes sense after all, we need to prep our equipment -
And of course she once again moves within the stopped time while we're in the menu, robs us of more gil and flees, shouting "No chance I'm going to fight with a punk like you more than once! I'll save enough for the doctor bill! Next time, you won't be as lucky!"
This is the most obnoxious Thief in a Final Fantasy game so far.
But it's fine. I have nothing but time.
We run around the forest some more, fighting a bunch of random encounters, until we run into the girl again. Then we beat her again. Then this time, we play hard to get, saying "Not interested" to her offer for a rematch.
Girl: "Thinkin' of running away? Stay and fight! FIGHT, I said!"
Girl: "C'mon… What's the matter? You're pretty scared of me, huh!?"
Cloud: "Petrified…" // (You're gonna lose again.)
Girl: "Hmm, just as I thought. What do you expect with my skills?"
Girl: "Good luck to you guys, too. If you feel up to it, we can go another around(sic). Later!"
[She starts running away, then pauses.]
Girl: "I'm gonna leave! I mean it!"
Cloud: "Wait a second." // ("Go ahead.")
Girl: "What is it, you still have somethin' for me?"
Girl: "Hmmm. So is that it? I know you want my help 'cause I'm so good! You want me to go with you?"
Cloud: "That's right." // ("You kiddin'?")
Girl: "Heh heh… I thought so. You put me in a spot. Hmm, what should I do? But, if you want me that bad, I can't refuse… Alright! I'll go with you!"
Cloud: "What's your name?" // ("Can you hurry?")
Girl: "Me? The name's…"
Upon choosing "What's your name," the Girl sends us to the "name a character" menu, and we get to see/change her default name. Mission accomplished!
…wait.
WAIT A MINUTE
WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE THE NAME SELECT MENU IS A MENU
OH MY FUCKING GOD
SHE ROBBED US AND TELEPORTED OFF-SCREEN WHILE WE WERE IN THE MENU AGAIN
THIS IS THE BEST AND WORST GAG OF ALL TIME, I HATE IT AND ALSO I LOVE IT, IT'S SO DUMB
Okay. Fourth time's the charm. We do everything we just did, but this time, instead of asking her for her name, we say "Let's hurry," and the whole group turns around and leaves. Yuffie is confused and panics, shouting at us to wait and that we didn't even ask her name, then introducing herself as "I'm Yuffie! Nice to meetcha!"
Then she laughs ominously to herself.
Yuffie: "Heh, heh… Just as I planned. Now all I have to do is… a little this and a little that… nyuk, nyuk, nyuk…"
Yuffie: "Hey, wait up! Wait for me!!"
Yuffie: "Here, I'll give you back the money I've stolen from you! …Or, huh, what's left of it."
Nyuk nyuk nyuk? Seriously? Who the fuck is she, Goofy?
Anyway, I guess our girl has plans now, but mostly I just. What a scene.
Yuffie is some kind of giant shuriken wielding ninja with truly bizarre fashion sensibilities and I kind of love her? Her weapon is the "4-point Shuriken" at this stage, and she's a ranged fighter like Barret, our second. Also, she seems extremely genki, and it seems like the key to getting her on board was feigning indifference to her at every turn, because the moment you validate her by showing interest her head blows up to twice its size, whereas if you pretend to ignore her she just goes 'wait but why aren't you paying attention to me ;_;'. Incredible character hours. I like her design and concept, so I'll be changing the group around some to add her in shortly.
Not just yet, though. Because, here's the thing.
I am treating the Enemy Skill Materia as a nice thing to have, I am not looking up any guide on which Skills to get where and how, but I saw that Beta was an Enemy Skill when the Midgardsormr killed me. I cannot remove this knowledge from my brain.
And the thing is? It took like half an hour to recruit Yuffie. Half an hour where I was grinding forest encounters waiting for her to pop up.
Every character has gained three levels, at least.
Okay. Here's the thing. With this much HP, any character can survive a direct hit from the beast's normal attack. Tifa, if equipped with Fire Elemental armor, can survive Beta provided she is at full HP.
Now, there are a few problems with this. For one thing, is Midgardsormr casts Beta while Tifa has less than full HP, she dies, and since Cloud and Aerith also die by default, we wipe. Also, with 4k HP, the Zolom takes forever to kill with puny 200-damage attack, and that's time he has to hit us with high-power attack and time he has to blow someone away. It's not so much that we wipe, it's that one Tifa is blown away the only thing that's left to do is alt+F4 out of the game and reload. The Zolom only uses Beta once at low HP, so my goal here is to get it to low HP as quickly as possible, and to try and avoid attacking into what looks to be a counter-stance that triggers his 'sweep away' move. It's not easy!
Thankfully, I have a little something with me called 'Graviball.' These consumable items can be thrown to cast Gravity on an opponent - Gravity, if you'll recall, is Time Magic which automatically deals damage equal to ¼ of an opponent's HP. In this case, a single Graviball hits for 1,000 damage, easily outclassing everything else I can do three times over, and a second Graviball then hits for 750, twice as much as I can hope to get from Choco/Mog. Combine with Bio to stack damage over time that lets me avoid attacking into the counterstance while still dealing damage, and…
Aerith still got herself blown away, unfortunately; it turns out the Zolom will always blow away at least one character, so trying to avoid attacking into a 'counter stance' was futile.
We've successfully learned "Cast Nuclear Weapon."
Oh, the sweet, sweet taste of victory. This took many attempts, but it's done now.
…or it will be done as soon as we actually make it out of this alive. If Tifa gets killed it's GG. I quickly use a Phoenix Down on Cloud, then Cure spells, and then we slam Limit Breaks into the Zolom until it cries uncle.
The reward screen for beating this insurmountable foe is laughably small. You really get nothing out of brute-forcing this if you don't have the Enemy Skill Materia; it doesn't even let you skip the Chocobo quest, because the Midgar Zolom's field model ('underwater snake shadow') immediately respawns and guns straight for you, so we end up having to actually run away from a second Zolom battle.
But it's done. We have Beta. And I didn't even do it because someone advised me "oh btw you can get that cool overpowered spell very early by doing these steps," it was all organic stubbornness.
Also I think we broke the game.
Well!
We'll try to refrain using it overmuch to preserve some semblance of challenge.
And with this, we've successfully completed our to-do list. In truth, all we did was walk a short distance from Kalm; however, in the process of doing so, we encountered the game's chocobo mechanics, its very first summon, its first optional boss with a great reward, and its first (only, we can hope?) missable party member. Quite a bit of stuff, all considered! I am liking the sense of 'journey' that it adds to the proceedings, where even just getting from one settlement to the next is kind of an adventure unto itself. Bit of a lighter update than digging into the Nibelheim flashbacks and high-octane plot action of the Shinra Building, but it's nice to have something more low-key this time.
Next Time: The Big Bird Place!
Thanks for reading!
Last time, we left Kalm and decided to head east, following Sephiroth's path across the plains.
On the way, we find a nice, relaxing beach, enjoy some sandy battles.
…side note: as you can see from this picture, and as is the case for every character and weapon, Cloud's sword has changed from the iconic Buster Sword to the Mythril Sword, which is just, like… A sword.
Which feels weird. The Buster Sword is iconic, all official and fan art of Cloud has him use it that I'm aware of. Like, it's part of the visual identity of Final Fantasy in general and Cloud specifically. The starting screen of the game is literally the Buster Sword planted in the ground against a dark background. Except, mechanically, the Buster Sword is just a starting weapon. It's impressive that it took seven hours for us to outgrow it, to be fair, but now it's completely obsolete, so we'll just equip random weapons instead.
The Remake had this interesting approach where each weapon had its own 'upgrade tree,' so all weapons equippable by a given character were viable, they just have a different focus in terms of abilities and stats. I liked that, though of course this is too complex for VII. And even so - while as a modern AAA games Remake tries to make its gameplay graphics look like its pre-rendered graphics, you can spot the times it goes from in-engine cutscene to pre-rendered by the fact that Cloud's weapon swaps to the Buster Sword regardless of what he has equipped. Advent Children has Cloud wield the Fusion Sword, a special weird sword that splits apart, but importantly in its resting form, it looks just like the Buster Sword.
I remember, years ago, an incredibly obnoxious argument with another player of the TTRPG Exalted, who argued that Artifact weapons (the powerful, legendary weapons wielded by the heroes of the setting, each with their own magical features, kinda like Noble Phantasms) should be treated as perfectly utilitarian items without emotional attachment, to be easily discarded whenever you meet a shinier one. And that idea was anathema to the group of us arguing with him, but in evidence for his point of view, he pointed to FFVII and said "The Buster Sword may be 'iconic' but it's just a weak sword that you discard the moment you find a stronger one," and that conversation has never left my head because yes, he's right in terms of the mechanics of the game, but this here is a total mismatch between a game's mechanics and its visual identity?
Anyway.
It's a bit of a hike to our destination, but not altogether much; soon enough, we see a series of buildings, resembling a farm more than a settlement proper.
Now, the natural thing to do would be to check out said farm, ask around about what's up, have they seen Sephiroth, and all that. However! Much more interestingly, near that farm, the grassy plains meld into a swamp - and that swamp has something moving inside of it, a shadow under the water, reminiscent of Leviathan's presence in an overworld lake in FFV.
It's definitely some kind underwater giant serpent.
So, right off the gate, what is going on is pretty obvious: as you can see, there is a cave on the other side of that swamp. But the serpent is roaming the swamp. A quick look at the world map seems to show that this cave and the farm on the prairie are the only places actually available to us (aside from Kalm behind us), the rest of the world is blocked off by sea and mountains. So it seems pretty obvious that this serpent is going to be an obstacle, an opponent too strong for us to defeat yet, which we will have to try and avoid in order to get to the cave?
I say this mostly because, just, that's kind of the thought process I have when I go through games, even if I'm not necessarily breaking it down in updates? I made a dissection of the photo scene in Nibelheim a couple updates ago and someone asked if I was sure I hadn't played the game before, and I tend to go through games with a mix of 'no thought head empty uwu what's this' and 'overthinking a single screenshot before doing anything.'
The other reason I say all this is so it makes sense to you when my next action is to immediately test my theory by saving the game and running into the swamp and straight at the snake.
Well.
That is, I'm pretty sure, the largest opponent we've had in the game so far, bigger than even Shinra's various giant robots. That thing is called 'Midgar Zolom.'
First, let's get the name out of the way - 'Midgar Zolom' is likely a mistranslation. It's a name that makes sense, in that 'Zolom' could easily just be the name of that order of giant snakes, so the Midgar Zolom is 'the species of Zoloms that live in the Midgar region,' which is still where we are, geographically. And it makes sense!
But no. This is meant to be Midgardsormr. Because of the way Japanese doesn't differentiate between L and R and how syllables are broken up in the language, the 'sormr' sound could easily become 'zolom.' This thing is named after Midgardsormr, one of the names of Jormungandr, the World Serpent of Norse mythology.
So it's pretty clear we're fucked, right off the gate, but I knew that going in. So let's see how fucked we are.
Matra magic hits it for around 150 damage, most normal spells for about 170, a Limit Break by Cloud for 270, so let's see how much HP it has!
…several times more than any boss fought so far. Amazing.
Midgar Zolom hits for 400-500 damage, easily knocking any character into the critical range if not outright killing them in one hit. This is manageable. Zolom still has only one attack per turn, so as long as it's not a OHKO we can Cure the damage away and still get two attacks a turn.
There's a wrinkle in this plan, though. Once it takes enough damage, the Zolom takes on a high, 'warding' stance, like so:
In that stance, it may respond to attacks with a tail sweep that will knock a character on their back… And out of the fight. Similar to Omega's removal, it deletes the character from the encounter. This completely fucks the action economy and means the Zolom can easily wipe us out…
…although interestingly, the result of this is not a Game Over.
Indeed, the character who was blown away from the encounter, Aerith in this case, is at full health, and we simply resume control of our characters on the shore of the swamp. Interesting!
Well, this foe is beyond us for the time being, so let's head for the farm.
The Chocobo Farm.
Man those birds look good in 3D. They are cute, but sleek, with a slender build that suggests speed and even combat potential, while still being adorably fluffy and golden. I love them.
And they love me back, it turns out. By interacting with the chocobos, we can answer their 'wark!' with a 'wark!' of our own, whereupon all the chocobos in the field start to do a coordinated dance!
It's adorable and I love them. And at the end they gift us with…
…drum rolls…
…our first Summon Materia!
I have been wondering how this game would play with Summons. VI had them as a core component of the narrative, only handled in ways that, well, I refer you to the entire playthrough for my complicated opinions on Espers. So I've been wondering how this game would handle it, and so far it's interesting that we haven't seen any summon in Midgar; they aren't on sale, Shinra makes no mention of them, I have no idea if they're secret magic Shinra lacks access to or high-security Materia reserved for critical emergency, hmm.
Here it looks as simple as 'the chocobos like us, so they give us a possibly secret magic rock that lets us summon them in battle.' And with the name Choco/Mog, it looks like we're dealing with a Chocobo-Moogle team-up, which is interesting seeing as moogles haven't appeared in the game yet. This sounds adorable. Before moving on with the plot, let's test it out on a random encounter!
…
This is the best summon ever.
Okay, they are really flexing their 3D capabilities with that one - and they're doing it with the first summon in the game, which historically has always been kinda lame/ineffective, as a sort of 'foot-in-the-door' advertisement. Previous summons were just "monster appears on the screen, casts a big flashy spell, disappears." This thing is damn near a cutscene unto itself, including a custom summoning stance for the character using it.
This may prove a problem if every summon is like this and it ends up making fights last forever, but for now, it's absolutely a great feeling. That cutscene is adorable and hilarious, I love it. Capability-wise, Choco/Mog's hits harder than any magic I've unlocked so far, but it seems that it can only be used once a fight - once summoned, the command is greyed out. Final Fantasy VI had a similar thing, but FFVI in general vastly devalued summoning as a tool, whereas here the requirement for materia slot and a dedicated command probably mean it'll have a higher profile? It might be a neat way of balancing out 'summons are flashy enough that they feel like they should be stronger than spells' with 'you can't just make spells worse than summons' by striking a balance where summons are stronger, but more limited than Magic.
We'll see. For now, let's head into the farm.
This looks to be the granddad and farm owner. He tells us that crossing the marsh isn't safe due to the Midgar Zolom. THANKS, I HADN'T NOTICED. If we want to cross the marsh, we need to move very fast, and for that purpose, we better get a chocobo. If we want to buy one, we should talk to his grandson in the stables.
Sounds straightforward enough! Every game in the past has had chocobo renting be a very simple matter of giving some money and getting a single chocobo ride. Surely this should be the same, right? Right?
(Also we can use his bedroom as an inn for the exorbitant price of 100 gil.)
Oh, no.
We have to catch our own chocobo.
Okay, here are the rules: There are places across the map that have chocobo claw marks. If we carry a Chocobo Lure Materia with us, then we have a chance to initiate a battle with a pack of normal monsters and a chocobo. We cannot hurt the chocobo or it will turn hostile (so we can't use All Materias or Matra Magic); we have to defeat all the other monsters piecemeal. Then, the chocobo will take notice of us… And run away, unless we've distracted it with a Green, ie some vegetables. There's a number of Greens that have increasingly higher prices, corresponding to how long they will keep the chocobo occupied (that being the time we have to defeat everyone else). The Greens are consumed on use, and have to be purchased here. If we do all this right, we capture a chocobo, which we can then produce to use for a single trip, because it immediately runs away once we climb down from it.
I already hate this system.
I understand that the Midgar Zolom here exists as a tutorial, meant to force us to engage with, and learn how to use, that system. And I appreciate that. This kind of forced lesson can be good. I just don't really see any chance I might want to engage with the chocobo system once I no longer need to, because this sounds like a giant hassle.
Also the Chocobo Lure Materia costs 2000 Gil, which I literally do not have right now, and then there are further costs for the Greens.
So fuck that. Let's try brute-forcing our way by killing the Midgar Zolom.
With proper coordination, things go better. I now have the power of Chocobo with me. Because any attack from the Zolom nearly kills a character, it also fills up their Limit Bar, allowing me to unleash multiple Limit Breaks, so I can dish out a lot of damage, fairly quickly. However, the Zolom is really tanky, and once again, attacking it incautiously allows it to remove a character from the fight - but with enough Cures and using Bio to poison it so it takes damage over time, I can still try and race its HP down before it takes down the last two!
What the fuck is 'Beta.'
Oh.
Okay so this snake is armed with nuclear weapons.
Fuck.
'Beta' is a Fire-type spell, and deals well over a thousand damage to the whole party, instantly wiping them out. There is no recourse to something like this. We're not brute-forcing it.
Except…
Wait.
Just before Tifa and Cloud pass out… A message at the top of the screen…
…this is an acquirable Enemy Skill???
Okay, so my first reaction is maniacal laughter. It says I learned it! It says so right there! And, as I have mentioned before, the group being wiped after someone was kicked out doesn't result in a game over, so I don't have to reload anything. By all rights, I should now have the all-powerful Beta spell.
…except I don't. The game's UI just lied to me. I checked the wiki, and an Enemy Skill is learned "whether or not a character survives the attack," and there was no game over, and the game treated me as having learned the skill… But for whatever reason it's not actually retained if we 'die' to the Midgar Zolom.
So, I feel that's pretty bullshit. But also: I now know this big snake has a super-powerful spell I can learn if I just manage to survive the fight properly.
This knowledge will ruin me.
I immediately attempt to obtain knowledge of the spell. In order to do this, I need to survive Beta without it wiping the party, which is hard, because it deals twice as much damage as I have HP. However, that is a Fire-type spell, and I have one Elemental Materia. I have so far exclusively used it to give Cloud's sword elemental typing, but if we slot it into a piece of armor, we can halve damage from a given element.
So, give Tifa the Enemy Skill Materia and an armor with Fire and Elemental slotted in, and let's dive in.
Incidentally Cloud just unlocked his first lv 2 Limit Break, Blade Beam, which is a, well, you guess it.
It doesn't work. Midgardsormr is just too powerful and, also, keeps knocking Tifa out of the fight so she doesn't learn anything, and then I die.
Alright. Fine. I guess I'll just go and grind the money to buy the Chocobo Lure and Greens, urgh.
Back in FF3, Gysahl Greens were called that because they came from the town of Gysahl. I wonder if there will be a similar diegetic explanation for the names of this rather expanded list of veggies?
Then we head for the claw mark patterns next to the farm, and on the next random encounter, wouldn't you know it…
A chocobo is mixed in among the other monsters. We attract it with the Gysahl Greens, which look like… some kind of radish? Then kill the other two beasts, and presto! Chocobo get!
Now riding the chocobo, we can outrace the giant snake and run across the marsh to the cave (it is still chasing after us, so presumably we don't want to get caught, bird or not).
But as we approach, a special encounter plays out. When we set foot on that grassy area between the swamp and the gate, we see…
…
Damn but this game knows how to do presentation.
Sephiroth came through here, and he wasn't riding no chocobo. The Midgar Zolom, Midgardsormr - the serpent who thwarted us with overwhelming power, that I attempted multiple times and with a customized strategy to defeat only to meet with failure again and again, ending up having to resort to paying an eye-gouging price for a chocobo lure to escape it - lies there, dead, impaled on a tree.
Sephiroth's work. The man went through the swamp earlier, and treated the overwhelming foe as a trivial obstacle.
What gets me is that the serpent isn't even, like, beheaded. Or cut in half. It's impaled on a dead tree. This isn't something that happens naturally in the course of delivering blows and ripostes. It would require active effort, the ability to grapple and manhandle a beast of that size, and probably to jump several meters in the air, so you can drive its head down onto the tree-tip. This is actively superhuman, not 'action movie' superhuman.
And it's all coming through in implications, from the aftermath of the actual fight, which we did not witness. Outstanding stuff.
…unless you don't try to fight the snake. The most natural process for this sequence would be that you arrive there, see the farm, check out the farm, someone tells you "beware the snake," and then you choose whether to try and brave it or just pay up and skip the doomed fight. If you choose to trust the game, and don't fight the giant snake, then that bit loses a lot of its effectiveness, doesn't it? Ah, well. The perils of giving players freedom, I suppose.
The characters stand in shock at the sight, and Aerith muses "Our enemy is someone that could do this?" and Tifa says, "Amazing…" Yeah. Big Bishie Boy's power level is sinking in.
After this short scene, we proceed onwards to… The Mythril Mine!
I've just realized that this non-remastered game does not have a minimap. I am going to have to navigate every dungeon as Square intended, staring at an obnoxiously small square section of the overall picture. This is so not super.
There's some loot to reward exploring, at least.
Thankfully, the Mythril Mine is extremely short - only four screens, and small ones at that. Its only real claim to fame is being the first "true" dungeon of the game, a gloomy cave with loot and random encounters, as well as containing a story-relevant cutscene.
Oh god, it's the Turks.
It's the alternate version of the Turks from a parallel universe.
What? You don't know what I mean? Allow me to illustrate.
Aerith: "By any chance, are you..?"
Rude: "Do you know who I am?"
Cloud: "The Turks, right?" (// "Not interested")
Rude: "Well if you know, then this won't take long. It's difficult to explain what the Turks do…"
Cloud: "Kidnapping, right?"
Rude: "To put it negatively… You could say that. But, that's not all there is to it anymore."
Rude: "..."
Elena: "Sir! It's all right, Rude! I know you don't like speeches, so don't force it!"
Rude: "Then explain, Elena."
Elena: "I'm the newest member of the Turks, Elena. Thanks to what you did to Reno, we're short-handed."
Elena: "...But, because of that, I got promoted to the Turks…"
Elena: "Anyhow, our job is to find out where Sephiroth is headed. Wait a minute, it's the other way around… You're the ones that are getting in our way."
At this point, Tseng, the Turk leader, enters stage left.
Tseng: "Elena. You talk too much."
Elena: "Mr Tseng!?"
Tseng: "No need to tell them about our orders."
Elena: "Sorry… Tseng."
Tseng: "I thought I gave you orders. Now go. Don't forget to file your report."
Elena: "Oh! Right! Very well, Rude and I will go after Sephiroth, who's heading for Junon Harbor!"
Tseng: "...Elena. You don't seem to understand."
Elena: "Oh! I'm, I'm sorry…"
Tseng: "...Go. Don't let Sephiroth get away."
Rude/Elena: "Yes sir!"
Rude: [Turning around to look at us as he leaves] "Reno said he wanted to see you after the injuries you gave him healed. He wants to show his affection for you all… with a new weapon."
Tseng: [Now alone]: "Well, then…"
Tseng: "Aerith… Long time no see. Looks like you're safe from the Shinra for a while, now that Sephiroth has reappeared."
Aerith: "What are you saying? That I should be grateful to Sephiroth?"
Tseng: "No… I won't be seeing much of you, so take care."
Aerith: "Strange, hearing that from you."
Tseng: "Well then, stay out of Shinra's way."
[He leaves.]
…
These Turks feel like they wandered in from the reality where the initial plans for them to be a quirky minisquad of likeable punch-clock villains was executed in the first part of the game. Which, to be clear, it wasn't; Original Flavor FF7 has Reno be an asshole poser yakuza goon, Rude just kind of exists, and Tseng is a gloating villain who literally escapes from a scene on a helicopter with a tied up damsel in distress as hostage, and, this must be emphasized, they murdered everyone in Tifa and Barret's town along with their three Avalanche friends.
This scene feels a lot closer to the reality of the Remake, where the Turks are antagonists but you at least root for them to make it out of the story alive because they're fun. Tseng's final lines here, which allude to actually caring about Aerith's safety, are much more in line with how the Remake has it that the Turks were basically always hovering around her life making sure she stayed safe. But the Turks we know in this game are explicitly a hitman squad who abduct people and whom Aerith has had to repeatedly evade capture from in the past.
It's just, it definitely feels like the Turks were meant to be one thing, but then they ended up being another thing, and the writer is now trying to reroute them back to the thing they were originally meant to be, with Elena the new girl who can't help but spill critical information in front of their enemies (and also has a tic where she starts off with 'sir' and 'Mr' but can't help but default to first-name basis immediately after even when talking to her hierarchical superiors), Rude the guy who tries to make a big dramatic speech but ends up choking because he has stage fright/social anxiety, and Tseng the long-suffering 'straight man' boss who kinda does care about Aerith after a fashion. Reno the guy who swore revenge from his hospital bed and wants us to know we're totes BRF (Big Rivals Forever) and he's got a cool new weapon (it is becoming apparent to me that Renji Abarai and Reno exist in a kind of mutual feedback loop).
Which, again, is hard to square with the mass murder of everyone in Sector 7.
Anyway. That scene genuinely is funny. The "It's hard to explain our jobs…" "Kidnapping." "Well if you want to be negative about it-" exchange is flawless. I love Elena. I like these Turks! They just. Feel like new characters that got swapped behind the scenes after the pilot version tested poorly. We check the next room over to grab an Elixir and Hi-Potion, and then we're through the cave!
What the fuck is that giant bird thing.
A bird statue? A bird monument? Some kind of weird alternate Statue of Liberty?
Well, we'll check it out soon, but first I have an immediate priority.
This isn't really something that I could just guess from environmental or storytelling cues, it's literally just something that I remember from originally playing the game 10 years ago; if I didn't have that prior knowledge, I would need to either run into it randomly or have someone warn me about it.
You see, having left the Midgar region, we are now, for the first time, seeing forests. It's really remarkable that they weren't any before - the Midgar region has grassy plains, it's not just fully devastated wastes, but no woods. No trees. Just a… steppe?
Here now, there are small woods. And if we run into them arbitrarily until we get enough random encounters, we find…
…this girl. She has a kind of armor protecting a single arm, and is using as a weapon a giant shuriken that she throws at us, although she mostly attacks with magic. The girl isn't too tough an opponent, and once we deal enough damage, the fight ends without a standard combat ending screen; instead, we are sent there:
This girl is lying unconscious in the grass. There's a save point right nearby, so before actually talking to her, I head there to save the game. As usual, it displays the "open the Menu to Save" reminder, so I go into the menu, where...
...the Save function is grayed out?
YOU LITTLE SHIT
IT WAS A FAKE SAVE POINT???
OH MY GOD
SHE MOVED WHILE I WAS IN THE MENU BECAUSE I COULDN'T SEE HER
This is such meta bullshit, this is Weeping Angels nonsense. I love it. Also, I hate it, because she just fled and ran away with 200 precious gil.
And that means we now have to run around the forest to trigger that encounter again.
The way Cloud just sticks out of the forest texture is funny.
A closer look at the girl.
Cloud does not, in fact, know her.
Okay, lesson learned. We don't try to access the save point, we just go talk to the girl. Her first words upon waking up are "I can't believe I lost," then she immediately starts bouncing around the battlefield throwing punches at the air.
So.
Think of this scene as a job interview for membership in the party. Except you're not interviewing the girl, she's interviewing you. There's a series of dialogue options and you have to pick the right one or she dips. For instance, here, like an idiot, I answer straightforwardly "All right," because sure, I'm willing to give that girl another shot at a fight.
Girl: "I won't lose this time! Take your time and get ready. Holler when you're ready!"
…which is a trick. We can't move, so our only option is to go into the Menu, which makes sense after all, we need to prep our equipment -
And of course she once again moves within the stopped time while we're in the menu, robs us of more gil and flees, shouting "No chance I'm going to fight with a punk like you more than once! I'll save enough for the doctor bill! Next time, you won't be as lucky!"
This is the most obnoxious Thief in a Final Fantasy game so far.
But it's fine. I have nothing but time.
We run around the forest some more, fighting a bunch of random encounters, until we run into the girl again. Then we beat her again. Then this time, we play hard to get, saying "Not interested" to her offer for a rematch.
Girl: "Thinkin' of running away? Stay and fight! FIGHT, I said!"
Girl: "C'mon… What's the matter? You're pretty scared of me, huh!?"
Cloud: "Petrified…" // (You're gonna lose again.)
Girl: "Hmm, just as I thought. What do you expect with my skills?"
Girl: "Good luck to you guys, too. If you feel up to it, we can go another around(sic). Later!"
[She starts running away, then pauses.]
Girl: "I'm gonna leave! I mean it!"
Cloud: "Wait a second." // ("Go ahead.")
Girl: "What is it, you still have somethin' for me?"
Girl: "Hmmm. So is that it? I know you want my help 'cause I'm so good! You want me to go with you?"
Cloud: "That's right." // ("You kiddin'?")
Girl: "Heh heh… I thought so. You put me in a spot. Hmm, what should I do? But, if you want me that bad, I can't refuse… Alright! I'll go with you!"
Cloud: "What's your name?" // ("Can you hurry?")
Girl: "Me? The name's…"
Upon choosing "What's your name," the Girl sends us to the "name a character" menu, and we get to see/change her default name. Mission accomplished!
…wait.
WAIT A MINUTE
WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE THE NAME SELECT MENU IS A MENU
OH MY FUCKING GOD
SHE ROBBED US AND TELEPORTED OFF-SCREEN WHILE WE WERE IN THE MENU AGAIN
THIS IS THE BEST AND WORST GAG OF ALL TIME, I HATE IT AND ALSO I LOVE IT, IT'S SO DUMB
Okay. Fourth time's the charm. We do everything we just did, but this time, instead of asking her for her name, we say "Let's hurry," and the whole group turns around and leaves. Yuffie is confused and panics, shouting at us to wait and that we didn't even ask her name, then introducing herself as "I'm Yuffie! Nice to meetcha!"
Then she laughs ominously to herself.
Yuffie: "Heh, heh… Just as I planned. Now all I have to do is… a little this and a little that… nyuk, nyuk, nyuk…"
Yuffie: "Hey, wait up! Wait for me!!"
Yuffie: "Here, I'll give you back the money I've stolen from you! …Or, huh, what's left of it."
Nyuk nyuk nyuk? Seriously? Who the fuck is she, Goofy?
Anyway, I guess our girl has plans now, but mostly I just. What a scene.
Yuffie is some kind of giant shuriken wielding ninja with truly bizarre fashion sensibilities and I kind of love her? Her weapon is the "4-point Shuriken" at this stage, and she's a ranged fighter like Barret, our second. Also, she seems extremely genki, and it seems like the key to getting her on board was feigning indifference to her at every turn, because the moment you validate her by showing interest her head blows up to twice its size, whereas if you pretend to ignore her she just goes 'wait but why aren't you paying attention to me ;_;'. Incredible character hours. I like her design and concept, so I'll be changing the group around some to add her in shortly.
Not just yet, though. Because, here's the thing.
I am treating the Enemy Skill Materia as a nice thing to have, I am not looking up any guide on which Skills to get where and how, but I saw that Beta was an Enemy Skill when the Midgardsormr killed me. I cannot remove this knowledge from my brain.
And the thing is? It took like half an hour to recruit Yuffie. Half an hour where I was grinding forest encounters waiting for her to pop up.
Every character has gained three levels, at least.
Okay. Here's the thing. With this much HP, any character can survive a direct hit from the beast's normal attack. Tifa, if equipped with Fire Elemental armor, can survive Beta provided she is at full HP.
Now, there are a few problems with this. For one thing, is Midgardsormr casts Beta while Tifa has less than full HP, she dies, and since Cloud and Aerith also die by default, we wipe. Also, with 4k HP, the Zolom takes forever to kill with puny 200-damage attack, and that's time he has to hit us with high-power attack and time he has to blow someone away. It's not so much that we wipe, it's that one Tifa is blown away the only thing that's left to do is alt+F4 out of the game and reload. The Zolom only uses Beta once at low HP, so my goal here is to get it to low HP as quickly as possible, and to try and avoid attacking into what looks to be a counter-stance that triggers his 'sweep away' move. It's not easy!
Thankfully, I have a little something with me called 'Graviball.' These consumable items can be thrown to cast Gravity on an opponent - Gravity, if you'll recall, is Time Magic which automatically deals damage equal to ¼ of an opponent's HP. In this case, a single Graviball hits for 1,000 damage, easily outclassing everything else I can do three times over, and a second Graviball then hits for 750, twice as much as I can hope to get from Choco/Mog. Combine with Bio to stack damage over time that lets me avoid attacking into the counterstance while still dealing damage, and…
Aerith still got herself blown away, unfortunately; it turns out the Zolom will always blow away at least one character, so trying to avoid attacking into a 'counter stance' was futile.
We've successfully learned "Cast Nuclear Weapon."
Oh, the sweet, sweet taste of victory. This took many attempts, but it's done now.
…or it will be done as soon as we actually make it out of this alive. If Tifa gets killed it's GG. I quickly use a Phoenix Down on Cloud, then Cure spells, and then we slam Limit Breaks into the Zolom until it cries uncle.
The reward screen for beating this insurmountable foe is laughably small. You really get nothing out of brute-forcing this if you don't have the Enemy Skill Materia; it doesn't even let you skip the Chocobo quest, because the Midgar Zolom's field model ('underwater snake shadow') immediately respawns and guns straight for you, so we end up having to actually run away from a second Zolom battle.
But it's done. We have Beta. And I didn't even do it because someone advised me "oh btw you can get that cool overpowered spell very early by doing these steps," it was all organic stubbornness.
Also I think we broke the game.
Well!
We'll try to refrain using it overmuch to preserve some semblance of challenge.
And with this, we've successfully completed our to-do list. In truth, all we did was walk a short distance from Kalm; however, in the process of doing so, we encountered the game's chocobo mechanics, its very first summon, its first optional boss with a great reward, and its first (only, we can hope?) missable party member. Quite a bit of stuff, all considered! I am liking the sense of 'journey' that it adds to the proceedings, where even just getting from one settlement to the next is kind of an adventure unto itself. Bit of a lighter update than digging into the Nibelheim flashbacks and high-octane plot action of the Shinra Building, but it's nice to have something more low-key this time.
Next Time: The Big Bird Place!
Thanks for reading!
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
So fuck that. Let's try brute-forcing our way by killing the Midgar Zolom.
With proper coordination, things go better. I now have the power of Chocobo with me. Because any attack from the Zolom nearly kills a character, it also fills up their Limit Bar, allowing me to unleash multiple Limit Breaks, so I can dish out a lot of damage, fairly quickly. However, the Zolom is really tanky, and once again, attacking it incautiously allows it to remove a character from the fight - but with enough Cures and using Bio to poison it so it takes damage over time, I can still try and race its HP down before it takes down the last two!
What the fuck is 'Beta.'
But as we approach, a special encounter plays out. When we set foot on that grassy area between the swamp and the gate, we see…
…
Damn but this game knows how to do presentation.
Upon choosing "What's your name," the Girl sends us to the "name a character" menu, and we get to see/change her default name. Mission accomplished!
…wait.
WAIT A MINUTE
WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE THE NAME SELECT MENU IS A MENU
OH MY FUCKING GOD
SHE ROBBED US AND TELEPORTED OFF-SCREEN WHILE WE WERE IN THE MENU AGAIN
THIS IS THE BEST AND WORST GAG OF ALL TIME, I HATE IT AND ALSO I LOVE IT, IT'S SO DUMB
You should've used the rare opportunity you had.
Yuffie: "Got yer wallet!"
Cloud: "Haha! Got your birth certificate!"
Not just yet, though. Because, here's the thing.
I am treating the Enemy Skill Materia as a nice thing to have, I am not looking up any guide on which Skills to get where and how, but I saw that Beta was an Enemy Skill when the Midgardsormr killed me. I cannot remove this knowledge from my brain.
And the thing is? It took like half an hour to recruit Yuffie. Half an hour where I was grinding forest encounters waiting for her to pop up.
Okay. Here's the thing. With this much HP, any character can survive a direct hit from the beast's normal attack. Tifa, if equipped with Fire Elemental armor, can survive Beta provided she is at full HP.
Every character has gained three levels, at least.
Omi, no.
OMI
HIMBOMI NO-
But it's done. We have Beta. And I didn't even do it because someone advised me "oh btw you can get that cool overpowered spell very early by doing these steps," it was all organic stubbornness.
Also I think we broke the game.
Omi realising he has trivialised all of Disc 1 through the overwhelming might of nuclear fire:
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
So, you just got the probably best spell for quite a while.
Just to put things in prospective, Beta has 54 spell power. Fire2 has 20 spell power, while Fire3 has 64. Yeah, Beta is almost as powerful as FIre3 (Firaga in other games) and it's cheaper to cast.
Also it targets all enemies with no damage reduction for multiple targets, so it will outdamage even multi-target Fire3.
Just to put things in prospective, Beta has 54 spell power. Fire2 has 20 spell power, while Fire3 has 64. Yeah, Beta is almost as powerful as FIre3 (Firaga in other games) and it's cheaper to cast.
Also it targets all enemies with no damage reduction for multiple targets, so it will outdamage even multi-target Fire3.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Between getting thrashed by a giant snake, the dancing chocobos, getting nuked by a giant snake, the arcane art of chocobo summoning, the Turks' new comedy routine, however much time was spent tangling with a weird ninja teenager in some forest, coming back to fight the giant snake again and still getting beat to fuck but at least getting something out of it......Cloud may not be having the worst day of his life but it's definitely one of the weirdest.
Welcome to the outside world, Aeris.
Welcome to the outside world, Aeris.
MiskWisk
Hoot
- Location
- Somewhere devoid of wit
- Pronouns
- He
I actually like Midgar Zolom better than Midgardsormr. Sure, that's partly because it was 20 years before I found out about the mistranslation, but I feel it works better, especially FFXIV's Mid lives rent free in my head.
So, Choco/Mog. As a summon it's not the strongest, the big thing is that it has a 40% chance to apply Stop to an enemy and is one of the only wind type spells you get.
It also has an interaction with a certain piece of materia. It's not actually a spoiler, but I'm putting it in one if you don't want someone telling you how to play the game.
Added Effect means your basic attack now gets a chance to inflict Stop too. Wiki says it's a one in five chance.
Oh yeah, before I forget, you can unlock more uses of the summon by levelling it up. Also, also: there is a 1/16 chance of something special happening when you use Choco/Mog.
Greetings from M. Zolom, ruler and King of the swamp... Our words are backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
Yep, it's easily the disc one nuke of the game.
Look, Choco-Bill has to pay his utility bills somehow, and that means your the schmuck who gets rinsed.
Also this will be part of a minigame later. It's not open now, and it's not even required to do it.
You know, if you don't mind missing out on endgame gear.
Not sure if you picked it up or not, since you did go into the room, but there should have been some vines on the left hand side of the screen, just below where you're standing. You can climb those to grab the Long-Range materia. It has some utility, but not a huge amount.
Side note, you can hit the ASSIST button (whatever you've got that bound to), which is select on a controller and it'll highlight exits and climbable objects.
The Midgar Zolom impaled on a tree is such a great scene. It's a massive shock and neatly underscores just how powerful Sephiroth is. Killing the dragon shows he's strong, but he uses his sword for it, while burning down a town full of civilians doesn't show his power, only his cruelty. This shows how monstrously powerful he is, because impaling a giant snake on a still planted tree is not easy.
The Turks are honestly victims of the writers not really knowing how to present them.
Oh wow, you fell for this a lot. Admittedly, I can't talk because I had the guide which laid out all of it, and when I replayed the game it turned out I had read it enough to have the responses memorised.
She also comes equipped with the Throw materia. I never really used it, but it does gain the ability to use Coin (gil toss). It does damage irrespective of the character using it, so I suppose its utility would be if you want a majorly underlevelled character to still contribute.
Congrats on getting the disc one nuke.