Final Fantasy VII, Part 11: Fort Condor to Junon Harbour
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game that has, at long last, taught me to hate.
It starts off well enough.
The Big Bird Place has this monk-looking dude standing watch over its entrance. He explains to us that Shinra has been attacking their fort, and they've been doing their best to repel their assaults, but they're struggling; could we help them fight off Shinra?
The way he phrases that is so funny, though. Like, dude is asking us to engage in protracted warfare against the major world power and he's saying things like "Could you spare some time" or "We don't want to sound pushy" like he's asking us to grab some cigarettes for him while we're out for groceries. My guy, lives are at stake!
Anyway, sure, why not. The interior of the fort is built in this very cool, cross-section kind of way:
Just some really sweet design.
The old… woman, I think? At this table gives us a more thorough explanation of what's happening.
It turns out, this huge bird at the top of the mountain isn't a statue or a mountain at all! It's an actual bird! Holy shit! That thing's enormous! And it's called… The 'Condor.'
…
You could at least have gone with 'Roc.' Like the bird from the adventures of Sinbad? A condor isn't a mythical animal of legendary proportions, it's just… A bird. It's literally a bird. Granted, the condors are the largest extant birds, so they have a very obvious connection to 'bigness,' but it still feels wrong. Like looking at the mythical leviathan and going "ah yes, a Crocodile," instead of the other way around.
Anyway, there's a Mako Reactor at the top of the mountain, and that reactor has been producing a special Materia. Unfortunately, it's also where the Condor has decided to roost and take care of its eggs. Unfortunately, Shinra doesn't appreciate having a building-sized bird on top of their critical energy infrastructure, and so they brought in the troops to chase off the Condor and, while they're at it, all the villagers as well, putting the whole mountain fort under direct control and securing both the reactor and its rare Materia. The villagers aren't only trying to protect themselves - the Condor is a rare species and only produces an egg every few years, so they want to protect it from Shinra disrupting its reproductive cycle.
Cloud: "New lives…"
Tifa: "Condor's egg, a real work of nature. We've got to protect the life of the planet."
Aerith: "We must protect the condor egg, right?"
I don't know if I should give the game points for finding a pretty neat narrative metonymy, with the Condor and its rare, fragile egg that takes years to hatch serving as a stand-in for the fate of the planet as a whole, and the hope for its offspring representing the hope for new life to grow even after Shinra wounded the planet, or if I should dock it points for then having the character step forward and lay out the metaphor explicitly to make sure I would get it.
Also despite their monk-ish appearance, the locals apparently aren't fighters, and instead have hired soldiers to fight off Shinra for them. Interesting; I wonder where they're recruiting them from? Wutai?
There are interesting implications here that Shinra doesn't have full control over the inner territory of the Midgar Continent; this place, at the very least, has been able to engage in open insurrection and maintain its position against waves of Shinra attacks. The fact that it's home to a Mako Reactor does mean Shinra used to control its territory, but the fact that it was able to establish temporary autonomy means Shinra's control is fragile.
It makes sense. Shinra is enormously powerful, and Midgar might as well be the center of the world, but it's one city. Shinra's manpower resources and force projection capabilities are limited, even on its own territory; it has other places with their own garrisons that can project force, as we'll see later, but these are themselves few and limited in their reach, and much of the Midgar Continent is unsettled wilderness, limiting Shinra's ability to put down insurrections - it's more like they have 'places they control within a territory' rather than 'a territory they control'.
Anyway, these guys want money.
Okay, they want money or for us to fight alongside them, but it's going to end up costing money either way. Also, it's going to suck ass. Let me explain.
"We must set a trap and hire soldiers to protect the place."
Here's the thing.
This isn't a dungeon. This isn't a gauntlet. This isn't wave combat.
This is a fucking RTS minigame.
The explanation alone takes for-fucking-ever, and has to be operated entirely through a dialogue menu, so it looks like this:
You pick "The enemy," and then the guy informs us there are four types of enemies and they are Wyverns, Beasts, Barbarians, and Commanders, then we select Wyvern and are informed that they are "flying types that can move at high speed. Stoner and Tristoner aren't effective against them," and then we do this for all the enemy types, and then for all our soldier types, and, look. Point is it's incredibly cumbersome to navigate. The system that is being described an extremely simple in concept rock-paper-scissor deal. Attacker beats Beast, Beasts beat Shooters, Shooters beat Wyverns, Wyverns beat Defenders, Defenders beat Barbarians, Barbarians beat Attackers. Also we have siege weapons like the Catapult and "Stoner" (probably could have picked a different name).
We're not fighting ourselves. Instead, we're paying out of a fund of 15,000 gil + any extra gil we donate, and then, we enter a special battle menu where we recruit our soldiers and then place them on our side of a special map.
At least the background for the map looks really cool.
But as for the actual battle, it looks more like this:
…
I get it. At least I think I do. They had sharp graphical limitations so they went for a kind of 'stylized' aesthetic with their character models?
It looks like shit.
This is my front line for the first battle. The sharp dudes are Attackers. The gals with the broad hats are Repairer (they heal troops). The crossbow guys are Shooters. There's one big beefy Defender just to see what it does. This set-up costs me thousands of gil.
Oh, I forgot to mention. This is an RTS minigame… Designed for a 1997 console controller, pre-analog stick. We have to move the cursor with the directional arrows. Select things with our character buttons. It's so, so, so slow and cumbersome. Barely anything is properly explained; I have no idea what the gauge to the left actually represents, or how to set the Speed to the side to High or Low. On the other hand, the speed of character movements is agonizingly slow. On the other hand, the interface is so painful it's already making me miss calls based on poor timing.
Every time a unit completes an order, the cursor teleports to it. Unit arrived at designated location? Unit encountered an opponent? Unit destroyed an opponent? The game centers the camera on that unit immediately, even if you were in the middle of giving orders to another unit.
Combat looks like this:
It's barely-readable mush, but the gist of it is simple. If two neutral characters face off, they'll take turns hitting each other for identical amounts of damage. If a character with an advantage faces off, say an Attacker against a Beast, the Attacker will strike for, say, 45 damage, the Beast will strike for 25 damage, and they will repeat this until the Beast dies. So the key to victory is to simply stack several advantaged characters against each enemy to defeat them piecemeal, because three Attackers hit a Beast for like 100 damage while it hits only one of them for 25, so we can win more fights this way than by having separate 1v1s. It makes sense, it's how, like, fighting in general works. At some point the game throws in Wyverns, and then a Commander.
Here you can see a bizarre line where I tried to use the healer but then I had to attack and the order was all broken up so the enemy stacked against me instead of the reverse and I suffered avoidable losses.
The Commander is really big, really strong, and has a lot of HP. We throw cannon fodder at him until he dies.
Once the Commander is dead, the enemy attack ends regardless of surviving enemies (which doesn't matter, seeing as he was the last one to come out anyway).
And then it's done. We've completed the first battle of the Condor War.
This sucks ass, man.
This is where minigameitis has fully settled, I think. The minigames were often annoying but at least they were short and uncomplicated. This though, this takes forever to explain, forever to play, isn't fun, and costs me precious fucking money. And by all appearances, we are meant to go back and play this again. And again. There is, after all, a "very special Materia" at the top of that Reactor for us to eventually claim!
Well, at least we're done here for now. We can come back later.
New party lineup.
On a more fun note, remember this guy from last update? As has been pointed out in the thread, his name is "Hell Rider VR2." And I think that's kind of a clever in-joke? You see, we haven't encountered any Hell Rider before. So why "Version 2" when there is no "Version 1" to compare it to?
Well, if you'll recall, during the attack on Narshe in FFVI, there is a miniboss protecting Kefka, and that miniboss is "Hell's Rider." He, too, is a heavily armored knight riding a monstrous-looking beast. In its game of origin, it is a unique opponent fought only once.
So I think "Hell Rider VR2" is a slightly tongue-in-cheek reference the previous game. It is "Version 2" because it is the new version, appearing in this game, of a monster that previously appeared in the game directly preceding it. I think that's neat!
Now, let's head to Junon Harbor.
…that is some impressive coastal artillery.
Which is interesting in and of itself! So far, we've seen fairly little air power from Shinra - no airships, mainly. In real life, advancements in aviation made coastal artillery, in the sense of 'giant fuckoff guns mounted on the shore to blow up incoming ships,' increasingly less relevant. So the existence of this giant fucking gun could mean that the world of FF7, while fairly modern in its aesthetics, doesn't have highly prominent aircraft warfare, and so this gun is Shinra's main way of interdicting a naval approach towards the Midgar territory from the sea.
As a town, Junon Harbour isn't much to look at. The first person we run into actually expresses her surprise at seeing anyone not from Shinra visiting this town. The town itself used to be a fishing village, but ever since Shinra started polluting the water, there's been no fish.
There's a large gate built into the cliffside, leading an elevator which, presumably, will take us to that giant gun area, but we can't access it yet. We ask about the "man in a black cape," but no one's seen him.
If we go down to the shore, we run into a little girl who is trying to befriend a dolphin.
Her name is Priscilla.
The group approaches the girl (I'm not sure what they want from her?), who takes them for Shinra members and starts shouting at them to leave - when a sea monster suddenly comes roaring and attacks Mr Dolphin! Priscilla immediately rushes the beast to save her cetacean friend, with all the success one might expect from a literal child trying to fist-fight a sea serpent, but I give her points for bravery. Unfortunately it means it's up to us to save both the child and the marine mammal.
It actually gets a field model, for once! Although I think it's just the same as its combat model.
"Bottomswell" is a little bit deceiving. Unlike some other fish-type bosses, it actually is floating in the air, it's not just a visual abstraction; as such, despite looking like a sea creature it is not weak to lightning, and is instead weak to wind, which I don't have equipped as a magic type right now. It has an advanced version of Reno's Pyramid move which it uses to imprison a character but, I'm going to be real with you, I failed to notice during the fight because I was kinda zoned out and it wasn't that hard.
He also does the big wave attack.
Also, this is a "long range" opponent, meaning only characters with ranged attacks can reach it using the Attack command, which in this case means Yuffie (since she's throwing that big shuriken of hers). This doesn't matter, because like basically every fight in the game, all characters have access to at least one offensive spell, offensive spells always deal more damage than attacks (aside from Limit Breaks), and MP costs are fairly trivial while Ether is common. So we just blast it with spells the entire time and it dies without me even noticing Yuffie was sealed in a bubble.
Priscilla's grandfather arrives running, and checks on her, but says that no, she isn't breathing. There's only one solution - Cloud has to do CPR.
Why Cloud? Well, you see, there are two reasons. One is that Cloud is our player avatar, the one we play in every minigame. The other is that the game thinks a boy doing CPR on a girl is funny because mouth-to-mouth is kinda like kissing (which isn't really accurate to what CPR proper is like), with Cloud acting flustered about having to do mouth-to-mouth breathing to a girl. An absolutely timeless gag that I haven't seen a thousand times before (we're just not going to question Priscilla's age here). This means that - while the girl is dying because she's no longer breathing - the old man takes Cloud aside and explains to him how to do CPR. It's another minigame, this time one where we have to let a lung-shaped gauge fill up and click it when it reaches the top but before it goes over and cancels our progress.
It's slow and not very interesting. It's literally just makework. You just let the gauge slowly fill up, then hit when it's at the top, and then you keep doing that until the girl finally wakes up, gasping, and her grandfather asks if she's alright, then picks her up in his arms and leaves the beach.
It seems a bit abrupt a departure, but once we're back in the village, we are quickly informed that the other villagers have heard that we saved a local girl and we are offered to take a rest in one of the houses.
So we accept their generous offer and stay the night, during which Cloud dreams of voices again.
…our friend, the trauma flashback voice, is back.
Backseater: "...That reminds me"
Cloud: "You again? …Who are you?"
Backseater: "...You'll find out soon."
Backseater: "...But more importantly, 5 years ago…"
Cloud: "5 years ago… Nibelheim?"
Backseater: "When you went to Mt Nibel, Tifa was your guide, right?"
Cloud: "Yeah, …surprised me."
Backseater: "But where was Tifa other than that?"
Cloud: "...I dunno."
Backseater: "It was a great chance for you two to see each other again."
Cloud: "...You're right."
Backseater: "Why couldn't you see each other alone?"
Cloud: "...I don't know. I can't remember clearly…"
Backseater: "Why don't you try asking Tifa?"
Cloud: "...Yeah."
Backseater: "Then, get up!"
Voice: "Hey, wake up. Wake up, Cloud!"
Okay, so our Backseater is firmly acting as a kind of… Gentle nudging presence that is trying to get Cloud to confront his memory loss.
That's interesting because, left to his own devices, Cloud is incredibly passive about his memory holes, showing no interest in actually pursuing the missing pieces. And, I will say, that makes complete sense; it's a perfectly believable trauma response. There's a gaping hole in his memories and it hurts to look at, so Cloud pointedly avoids looking at it. He focuses on the parts he can easily remember, and they're sufficient for his needs - Sephiroth killed my family and destroyed my hometown, I hate Sephiroth, Sephiroth must pay. It's enough. Whenever he's confronted with Flashback Migraine, he immediately segues into something else and tries not to think about it.
So our Backseater here is an important presence, because it's trying to force him to acknowledge and confront the inconsistencies in his memory - such as, here…
…okay I don't get it. I don't know what the inconsistency here is meant to be. "How did Cloud survive the reactor," "how did Tifa survive," "how did Jenova get to Midgar," "what happened to Sephiroth," sure, all these are intriguing questions which draw attention to missing gaps in Cloud's story. "Where was Tifa other than where she was at the time we saw her?" What? Is the idea here that she was collocating? I don't know what Cloud is meant to be asking here. Maybe he's asking what Tifa's activities other than being a guide were at the time? But she was 15, the answer is probably just "being a teenager."
Ah, well. We'll see where this is going, I guess.
Cloud: "When Sephiroth and I went to Nibelheim, where were you?"
Tifa: "...We saw each other, right?"
Cloud: "The other time."
Tifa: "No… It was 5 years ago. I don't remember. But, something seems strange outside. Cloud, come quick."
I have genuinely no idea what's going on there or what Cloud is trying to ask, but, well, everyone is distracted by, oh, the fact that the soundtrack has been replaced by fanfare music.
Note on this picture how this is most likely the middle of the day, but everything is in shadows and the houses are lit up inside.
The whole party has gathered in the center of town and is wondering what's up with the music. Upstairs, the girl Priscilla has finally woken up; she comes out of her house and sheepishly thanks us for helping while apologizing for mistaking us for Shinra goons. As an apology, she gives us "something special," an amulet, which turns out to contain the Shiva Materia.
Okay. I guess Summon Materias are just a thing that's around in the world. Which… Hmm.
If Materia are encoded instructions on how to perform magic, then I guess it makes sense for some of them to encode the means to "call" on a supernatural being. If summons have an independent existence in this game, then the Materia is essentially having their phone number and ringing them up for an assist. It makes sense, I can vibe with it.
Anyway, it turns out that the fanfare is because the Shinra music band is rehearsing for an official visit from Rufus Shinra. Barret immediately says he has to "pay his respect;" I like the euphemism here. Prsicilla elaborates on the history of Junon Harbour; years ago, when her grandparents were young, the seaside was beautiful. But Shinra built a city above, and ever since, it has been blocking out the sun and polluting the water, casting the town forever in shadow and killing all the fish.
…I see. Shinra replicated the Midgar model here - they built another elevated city, above this old town, ruining everyone's lives in the process. If you were wondering why Sephiroth or Rufus would be interested in this small, dying village without any interesting feature, it's because it's not this place they're heading to - it's the elevated city that it is effectively sitting outside the gate of. Shinra's modern technological paradise, locked behind an elevator whose guard won't let us go through.
The group theorizes that if Rufus is coming here, it must be because he is intending to cross the ocean - it seems like Junon Harbour is the main international port of the Midgar Region? They theorize in turn that this means Sephiroth probably already crossed the sea, and Rufus is in pursuit. So, our next objective is to get to the town above to get more info. Unfortunately, the guard at the elevator won't let us pass, so the group decides to climb the tower out in the harbour to get there (it seems to be part of the energy infrastructure?). The girl warns them they can't do that, there is a powerful electrical current running under the water!
Oh my god. They literally constructed a fish-frying device smack in the mouth of the harbour of that fishing town. Shinra are such relentless assholes, they literally cannot stop ruining people's lives for even one second.
However, the girl says that if they can get Mr Dolphin's help, it might be possible to climb the tower. How? We'll see. First, the game has a very funny play on Cloud being the designated protagonist of the story:
Tifa: "High voltage tower… I guess this means Cloud'll have to do it."
Aerith: "Yeah, better leave it to Cloud!"
Red XIII: "We're counting on you, Cloud."
Cloud: "Hey!! Wait a second!"
[At that point, everyone turns around and leaves without paying attention to his protests.]
A very important part of depicting a believable group of friends is to know when to show these friends being assholes to each other just because it's funny. Everyone going "Alright Cloud, you're the hero, you tackle the deadly electric tower, good luck!" at the same time is pitch perfect comedy.
Alright, it's time to head for the beach and deal with…
…another fucking minigame.
This is one of the dullest of the lot. There is nothing interesting or engaging to it. The deal is that we're trying to reach that big bar suspended above us. We control Cloud, who must swim to a given spot, then click [SWITCH] to call the dolphin, who at this point launches us into the air. If we picked the correct spot, we successfully land. If not, Cloud falls to the bottom of the screen and must swim back to the next spot.
Also, if we jump in the wrong spot, Cloud falls short of reaching the the bar, rather than like, sailing over it, or missing it by a degree to the side, so there is no way to use failed jumps to triangulate the correct jumping spot. Also also, there is an invisible boundary around the glowing part of the tower; if we cross that boundary, Cloud is zapped by electricity and wakes up on the shore.
It's a pain in the ass that takes forever unless you just go and look it up (the correct jumping point is a little to the side of that tiny bar sticking out of the side of the tower) and is tiresome and uninteresting, but hey, eventually, we get there!
Then, we climb the tower, which it turns out leads to an elevated air field; the first thing Cloud sees upon reaching the top of the ladder is an enormous airship.
I love the design. Lunar Whale aside, Final Fantasy's airships have stayed conservatively on the side of "sailship with propellers/blimp," with VI leaning into the blimp side for a relatively cool new aesthetic, but here we are going full Weird Modernity - I don't think anything like this airship exists in our world, but it looks like it could plausibly be a thing. There are upwards propeller lifting it off the ground in a vertical takeoff, a suspended cabin/cockpit… There seems to be a kind of fuselage above it? I'm really curious about the anatomy of that thing.
The minigames might be annoying, but in terms of aesthetic FFVII remains king.
Look at the use of perspective and distance to emphasize how small Cloud is in comparison to these enormous machines.
Okay, from the size and number of those things, it looks like my "maybe this world doesn't have very advanced combat aircraft" was probably wrong. These things look like war machines. "Junon Harbour," while an important port, may matter less as a port and more as a strategic airport. That's interesting.
We enter the base and immediately run into a bunch of guards running who don't even stop to notice Cloud, and then an officer comes in to scold him, saying "You're still dressed like that? Come on!"
…I guess Cloud is still dressing like a SOLDIER, as we've seen from the Third Classes in the Shinra Building. If security is tight enough, I can kinda see how someone might just not even consider that this guy is an intruder? He took a particularly dangerous and unlikely route in. The officer drags us into a locker room and asks us to change.
Cloud: "A Shinra uniform… I was so proud when I first put it on."
Cloud: "I wonder when it was…"
Cloud: "...I couldn't stand to wear it anymore."
…see, these bits, where Cloud reflects on how he used to feel proud to be part of Shinra, to be a SOLDIER, to do the job he was asked to do, that's so important to selling a 'renegade from the evil faction' character, and - look I'm not going to keep shouting "Finn Sequel Trilogy was robbed of the character arc he should have gotten" but he was.
Officer: "You remember the greeting procedure, right!?"
Officer: "...The look on your face says that you forgot. Allright, I'll show you again! Do just like I do."
[At this point, two Shinra soldiers enter]
Soldier #1: "Commander! We'll help too!"
Soldier #1: "This is how to do it!"
Soldier #2: "We'll sing too!"
Commander: "All right! Show 'em!!"
Commander: "Now, march!! This's the Welcoming March!"
Soldier #1: "Then I'll sing along with you!"
Soldier #2: "Quietly--!!"
Soldiers: "Aaaaaah!"
Soldier #2: "Hey, come on now. Now!"
Officer: "And… March!!"
This sequence is borderline incomprehensible. Checking the Retranslation mod, it scans a lot better; I have no idea where the original translator pulled "Quietly!" or the soldier screaming "Aaaah!" from. I have also no idea what they're showing me beyond 'playing a walk-in-place cycle animation"; the officer turns to me and tells me to "Keep in step with the soldier next to you and march smoothly," then asks me if I "got it," and I can answer yes and no, but, like… He didn't explain anything. If there is a mechanic I was supposed to learn there, I don't know what it is and cannot execute it.
Anyway, we hear that Rufus has arrived, and so the guards come out and I rush after them - once outside, we get a glimpse of the true Junon Harbour, the real town built around the military base, not the little village in its shadow.
Rows of apartment buildings testify to something more like a city, with a large population, which would make this the first major urban settlement we've seen since Midgar.
Also, Rufus is doing the "ride slowly in a car standing up and wave to the people in the middle of a military parade," very classical dictator of him. Would be a shame if someone were to JFK him.
As our own group of soldiers arrive late to the party, we play a cinematic showing the true form of Junon Harbour and clarifying its construction and architecture, and it's… A little over the top.
I thought the size of the coastal artillery gun on the world map was exaggerated for visibility purposes, but no. That thing is so massive it is bigger than the buildings, bigger than the entire city. It is so large, it is braced against the entire cliffside. That thing can probably shoot a shell halfway across the world. I guess that explains why Shinra is bothering with that kind of artillery in a modern setting with aircraft - sure that thing might shoot an incoming ship, but honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it could blow up a city on another continent. What the fuck. Is this the setting's equivalent to ICBMs?
Also, we can see that this isn't a 'conventional' city - these apartment rows are built in steps, rising along the side of the cliff. So the population is smaller than I would have expected - they're building apartment rows for space efficiency reasons, but there isn't a lot of total space, probably more of a town than a city. I would also expect most of the population to work in fields related to the local military base - not as military themselves, mind you, but like, local bars probably cater primarily to soldiers, local mechanics probably work on the base all the time…
Also, you can see "Old Junon" in this picture. Look for the tiny cluster of light pixels on the ground to the right of the base. That's the town there, with their lights turned on in the middle of the day, not just because the sheer mass of New Junon is occluding the sun, but because they literally built the airstrip above the town. What absolute assholes.
(The proportions of Junon Harbour are far larger than make any realistic sense, nobody would build that way even if we had the capabilities for it, but the same is true of Midgar and it looks sick, so who cares.)
Our quatuor of latecomers arrive to an empty street and the officer loudly exclaims that they're late, then blame the "rookie," Cloud, for it; one of the soldiers proposes taking a shortcut through the back alley between two buildings, and…
Soldier: "Just sneak into the back of the line when you see an opening."
Officer: "Now listen up! This parade's gonna be broadcast live on Shinra TV around the world!"
Officer: "If you look bad, the whole Junon army will look bad. Remember that and don't screw up!"
Officer: "OK! Jump in when I give you the sign! Just sneak in from the back! Don't mess up the row!"
Officer: "And no matter what you do, don't try to go in from the front!"
…this is where I gave up.
The minigame here is that we must sneak into the parade as it advances. Every formation has three rows, and there is a hole in the third row. We have to get there and start marching. The "Live TV Ratings" is our score bar for how well we're doing. Every time we mess up, Cloud is pulled back to the officer, who tells him "Don't play around!," the score gets a malus, and we have to try again.
And again.
And again.
There is no escape clause. There is no release. There is no final failure. At no point does the officer go "ah well that sucked but parade's over, let's move on with the plot." Even after a dozen attempts, as the score has ticked all the way down to 00%, I still have to keep trying.
I don't even know what I'm doing wrong, because I don't know what 'doing it right' even looks like. The game has given me no legible instructions. I just keep running into the line, walking at the line, sneaking up from the back, rushing in from the side, and nothing works. It's just failure, after failure, after failure, and the game will not release me even as its fucking score counter is judging me for failing to comply with instructions it did not fucking give.
You don't get to tell me I failed your arbitrary bullshit minigame when you designed the game wrong.
My last save was after the big fish boss fight, but I don't care. It's twenty minutes at most, much less if I don't need to reread the dialogue. At this point I just alt-F4 out of the game and go play Baldur's Gate instead.
My wife.
Alright.
A little D&D adventuring later, I am quiet. Relaxed. Moisturized. In my lane. It's time to head back to the parade sequence and just… Roll with it.
I ended up looking up a guide on how to approach the parade, and while it did an okay job at explaining how to get into the file, immediately after the game apparently expected me to do… Something? To execute 'marching in rhythm with the other soldiers'? I have no idea what the game wants from me there, so the score counter instantly starts going down and has hit the single digits by the end.
There is an honestly kinda funny skit at the end where the TV Producer is going "I am going to be fired! Who's that soldier who fucked this up for me, send him a bomb or something," and that's why our reward for this bit is… A grenade, a consumable item that inflicts damage. It's a funny gag, but also, fuck you, game.
There are apparently multiple tiers of rewards depending on how well you do and going above 51% gets you 5k gil, but whatever, I'm rich, I don't need any money. At least this is done. This is over now.
Rufus: "How's the job? What happened to the airship?"
Heidegger: "The long range airship is still being prepared. It should be ready in about three more days. Gya haa haa!"
Rufus: "And the Air Force's Gelnika?"
Heidegger: "Gya haa haa!"
[Rufus steps in closer.]
Rufus: "Stop that stupid horse laugh. Things are different from when Father was in charge."
[Heidegger's laughter slowly slows down and stops. He looks deflated."
Heidegger: "Gya…"
Rufus: "Is the ship ready?"
Heidegger: "Yes Sir, we'll get it ready quickly."
[Rufus climbs into the cabin on the left of the screen, and is gone. Heidegger angrily starts punching against a soldier's chest to vent his frustration, then follows after Julius.]
Oookay. I guess "Rufus's ship" is a different thing from "the long-range airship" and the "Gelnikas…" Are those meant to say Guernica? Does Shinra have a bomber fleet named after one of the world's most famous bombings? Incredible.
Anyway, the weird cabin you can see is mounted on a diagonal rail and goes up, carrying Rufus to… I don't know, the airfield?
Left alone, the soldiers chat about how the parade was a disaster and Heidegger was really angry, and one of them comments that everyone's stressed because the "man in the Black Cape" has been roaming the city, but no one is able to find him. Cloud immediately enquires for more details, and nobody thinks it's weird that another Shinra soldier doesn't know about this; other soldiers chime in that the man showed up two or three days ago and killed a few of their soldiers, and disappeared after that, and the rumour is that it's Sephiroth himself.
Yeah, our man isn't keeping it very subtle, is he? There's benefit in being thought to be dead, but it's hard to keep a lid on it after assassinating the President of the company. The officers dismiss the soldiers, and they scatter into two groups, but because Cloud has no idea where he's supposed to go he just kind of stands around until the officer from earlier comes at him, says he acts like he thinks the army's a joke, calls him a slacker and assigns him new duties.
I love this whole sequence. The friction between the antagonists, the way being on 'team Shina' doesn't translate to personal obedience or getting along or being friends, the chain of power manifesting in how Rufus is casually rude to Heidegger and Heidegger is taking it out on the soldiers, the way the Shinra mooks are kinda wacky and invested in their own identity and their marching song and the pride of their hometown, it all comes together to deliver something that FFVI had gestured at in the conflict between Leo, Kefka and Celes, and in the intro with Biggs and Wedge, but which is way more in depth here, really humanizes the evil faction without taking away from their awfulness.
Anyway.
Then there is.
Another.
Minigame.
We are assigned to more parade duty, to send off Rufus Shinra with the traditional Junon salute. The guards show the movement sequence for us, and we need to replicate it - it involves turning left and right and raising the rifle in a particular order. The soldiers show us the sequence once, then the officer asks us to repeat it at the same time as the soldiers, and once we've done so, he asks us if we got it or if we need to try again.
The fact that it's a choice most likely means that we're going to be asked to repeat the sequence again later, while seeing Rufus off. Maybe from memory, even. God.
The soldier asks about a special pose to crown their salute, and the officer says he hasn't decided on one and asks Cloud to show them his best move; Cloud twirls his rifle the way he does his sword in the game's victory fanfares, everyone thinks this is the coolest shit ever, and the Officer decides that'll be their final move, and then we are finally, thankfully, at long last, dismissed.
This big-ass elevator connects back to Old Junon, but the guard at the entrance won't let us out.
We can't go anywhere, really, so our main option is to return to the main street we took to get to the parade; this time there are both soldiers in the street as well as random citizens, and also…
…Rude?
I guess it's not that surprising that he followed in Sephiroth's footsteps along with the rest of the Turks… If we follow after him, we find him in a smoke-filled bar room, palling around and drinking with random citizens of the town.
I guess Rude is the "chill one" in the Turks. So far he hasn't had a lot of characterization beyond being fairly quiet and imposing but bad at speeches, but I'm starting to have him figured out, I think. He's the guy who, despite his job as part of Shinra's black ops enforcers, is just kind of a Regular Guy, doesn't really like attention or to talk big, likes to destress with regular hobbies and let his guard down. When we approach him, he says we are free to hang out with him, we just have to take off our masks, that's the one rule of that informal get-together. Obviously we're not going to do that, since we don't want him to find out Avalanche has infiltrated the city, but notably he's totally cool with inviting a soldier to go off-duty and break his orders to go drink with him and a bunch of civilians. I have a feeling Rude never snitches.
Also, one of these models is the monk-like guys from Fort Condor. I'm guessing that's just an asset reuse for NPC variety, but it could be meant to indicate that Rude is totally fine with hanging out with nominal enemies of Shinra in his free time.
There are multiple buildings in Junon, though they are visually indistinguishable from one another when outside - it's all the same apartment rows, with light (or arrows if you press Select) indicating which can be entered, but inside, each one is different. And they include stores! Not just stores, either, but store with the next tier of weapons and new Materia!
They have Hardedge, that sword we could have stolen from the Third Class SOLDIERs, "Atomic Scissors" for Barret, just new stuff for everyone that involves a whopping +9 Attack power (from 23 to 32, a full +50% increase, it's pretty considerable), and the Materia store sells the Revive Materia, so we finally have access to the Raise line of spells!
Things are, at last, looking up. We've accumulated a pretty considerable amount of money since Kalm, even if we had to spend some being gouged by a Chocobo salesman, so after all these shitty minigames, this, at last, is our reward. Time to splurge.
…
I…
What?
I walked into Fort Condor with nearly 10k gil and there have been fights since, I should have…
Okay. I get it. I see what happened now.
Fort Condor starts with a "fund" of 15,000 gil for their war effort. They told me that they "need 3,000 gil for each battle." I figured, sure, I have a shitton of gil, I can afford to give 3k to their war fund so we have some flex room and I don't have to worry about running up the costs of the RTS battle. Then, we went into the battle, and I bought a bunch of soldiers to fight the Shinra wave.
But the game was explaining this incredibly badly. The fund to which I initially contributed was the fund the game uses when handling battles on its own, while I'm not there to directly do the RTS minigame. It's a "health bar" of money that gets depleted during assaults I'm not there for. When I hired soldiers for the awful RTS minigame, I wasn't paying out of that vast 18k supply. I was paying out of pocket with my own money. On top of also having given them 3k for the war fund.
Which means Fort Condor just drained my coffers entirely. I checked my saving history; I walked in with 9,200 gil, I walked out with 1,100.
And I fucked up the awful parade minigame, meaning I missed out on their 5,000 gil prize. So I just… Finally got access to all the shops and all I have is what I got from random encounters and the Bottomswell boss fight on the way, which is barely enough to pay for two characters' new weapons and none of the new Materia.
And I'm stuck here. I can't even leave to grind out in the overworld.
This is the part that broke me. This is where I gave up again.
I got Shiva, but I haven't even had an opportunity to try her because there has been a single fight in the last hour of game, against that flying fish, before we acquired it, and instead of the gameplay that actually works it's just. This parade of broken minigames that are explained horribly and feel awful to play. Even as the game is hitting some of its best aesthetic notes, some absolutely killer environmental design, and some genuinely funny interactions with Shinra soldiers that really let us get deep into the guts of the humanity of the common mook, the continued mystery with what Sephiroth is up to, it keeps getting in its own way over and over and finally. What I get on the other end of all this. Is the game dangling a bunch of shinies in front of me that I can't get because I fucked myself over an hour ago and I didn't notice.
Enough. That's it. I'm taking a break. There's a save point nearby; I use it and I quit. Junon Harbour will find its conclusion some other day.
…but find its conclusion I will. This part isn't a dealbreaker, a 'I am giving up on the game' moment, but it is a 'my ADHD ass could very decides this is annoying enough to deal with later, start up another game, and realize six months later that I never picked up where I left off' moment. Fortunately, dear reader, you are with me on this adventure. This thread stands as a monument to my hubris, and now that my frustration has been fully vented in this update, I shall soon resume playing.
Next Time: Whatever's next.
Here's a fun fact: As I wrote it initially, this update contained 57 pictures. After finishing it, in order to avoid splitting it up, I went and curated those pictures down to an even 50. 50 pictures per post is the limit available for subscribed members of SV - non-subscribers are limited to 20 pictures, which would make these updates split between three to half a dozen separate posts. Thankfully, I have access to such subscriber benefits thanks to my membership on the SV Community Council. It is one of the perks we receive as rewards for the work we put in as Councillors to help make this forum a better place!
As members of SV, I would encourage you to vote in the SV Community Council Elections which are currently ongoing! As readers of this Let's Play specifically, I would encourage you to vote for me for Councillor - I think I do a good job of it, and it's directly helping this Let's Play, so it's all benefits! Please consider voting for me in this election, and thanks for reading!
It starts off well enough.
The Big Bird Place has this monk-looking dude standing watch over its entrance. He explains to us that Shinra has been attacking their fort, and they've been doing their best to repel their assaults, but they're struggling; could we help them fight off Shinra?
The way he phrases that is so funny, though. Like, dude is asking us to engage in protracted warfare against the major world power and he's saying things like "Could you spare some time" or "We don't want to sound pushy" like he's asking us to grab some cigarettes for him while we're out for groceries. My guy, lives are at stake!
Anyway, sure, why not. The interior of the fort is built in this very cool, cross-section kind of way:
Just some really sweet design.
The old… woman, I think? At this table gives us a more thorough explanation of what's happening.
It turns out, this huge bird at the top of the mountain isn't a statue or a mountain at all! It's an actual bird! Holy shit! That thing's enormous! And it's called… The 'Condor.'
…
You could at least have gone with 'Roc.' Like the bird from the adventures of Sinbad? A condor isn't a mythical animal of legendary proportions, it's just… A bird. It's literally a bird. Granted, the condors are the largest extant birds, so they have a very obvious connection to 'bigness,' but it still feels wrong. Like looking at the mythical leviathan and going "ah yes, a Crocodile," instead of the other way around.
Anyway, there's a Mako Reactor at the top of the mountain, and that reactor has been producing a special Materia. Unfortunately, it's also where the Condor has decided to roost and take care of its eggs. Unfortunately, Shinra doesn't appreciate having a building-sized bird on top of their critical energy infrastructure, and so they brought in the troops to chase off the Condor and, while they're at it, all the villagers as well, putting the whole mountain fort under direct control and securing both the reactor and its rare Materia. The villagers aren't only trying to protect themselves - the Condor is a rare species and only produces an egg every few years, so they want to protect it from Shinra disrupting its reproductive cycle.
Cloud: "New lives…"
Tifa: "Condor's egg, a real work of nature. We've got to protect the life of the planet."
Aerith: "We must protect the condor egg, right?"
I don't know if I should give the game points for finding a pretty neat narrative metonymy, with the Condor and its rare, fragile egg that takes years to hatch serving as a stand-in for the fate of the planet as a whole, and the hope for its offspring representing the hope for new life to grow even after Shinra wounded the planet, or if I should dock it points for then having the character step forward and lay out the metaphor explicitly to make sure I would get it.
Also despite their monk-ish appearance, the locals apparently aren't fighters, and instead have hired soldiers to fight off Shinra for them. Interesting; I wonder where they're recruiting them from? Wutai?
There are interesting implications here that Shinra doesn't have full control over the inner territory of the Midgar Continent; this place, at the very least, has been able to engage in open insurrection and maintain its position against waves of Shinra attacks. The fact that it's home to a Mako Reactor does mean Shinra used to control its territory, but the fact that it was able to establish temporary autonomy means Shinra's control is fragile.
It makes sense. Shinra is enormously powerful, and Midgar might as well be the center of the world, but it's one city. Shinra's manpower resources and force projection capabilities are limited, even on its own territory; it has other places with their own garrisons that can project force, as we'll see later, but these are themselves few and limited in their reach, and much of the Midgar Continent is unsettled wilderness, limiting Shinra's ability to put down insurrections - it's more like they have 'places they control within a territory' rather than 'a territory they control'.
Anyway, these guys want money.
Okay, they want money or for us to fight alongside them, but it's going to end up costing money either way. Also, it's going to suck ass. Let me explain.
"We must set a trap and hire soldiers to protect the place."
Here's the thing.
This isn't a dungeon. This isn't a gauntlet. This isn't wave combat.
This is a fucking RTS minigame.
The explanation alone takes for-fucking-ever, and has to be operated entirely through a dialogue menu, so it looks like this:
You pick "The enemy," and then the guy informs us there are four types of enemies and they are Wyverns, Beasts, Barbarians, and Commanders, then we select Wyvern and are informed that they are "flying types that can move at high speed. Stoner and Tristoner aren't effective against them," and then we do this for all the enemy types, and then for all our soldier types, and, look. Point is it's incredibly cumbersome to navigate. The system that is being described an extremely simple in concept rock-paper-scissor deal. Attacker beats Beast, Beasts beat Shooters, Shooters beat Wyverns, Wyverns beat Defenders, Defenders beat Barbarians, Barbarians beat Attackers. Also we have siege weapons like the Catapult and "Stoner" (probably could have picked a different name).
We're not fighting ourselves. Instead, we're paying out of a fund of 15,000 gil + any extra gil we donate, and then, we enter a special battle menu where we recruit our soldiers and then place them on our side of a special map.
At least the background for the map looks really cool.
But as for the actual battle, it looks more like this:
…
I get it. At least I think I do. They had sharp graphical limitations so they went for a kind of 'stylized' aesthetic with their character models?
It looks like shit.
This is my front line for the first battle. The sharp dudes are Attackers. The gals with the broad hats are Repairer (they heal troops). The crossbow guys are Shooters. There's one big beefy Defender just to see what it does. This set-up costs me thousands of gil.
Oh, I forgot to mention. This is an RTS minigame… Designed for a 1997 console controller, pre-analog stick. We have to move the cursor with the directional arrows. Select things with our character buttons. It's so, so, so slow and cumbersome. Barely anything is properly explained; I have no idea what the gauge to the left actually represents, or how to set the Speed to the side to High or Low. On the other hand, the speed of character movements is agonizingly slow. On the other hand, the interface is so painful it's already making me miss calls based on poor timing.
Every time a unit completes an order, the cursor teleports to it. Unit arrived at designated location? Unit encountered an opponent? Unit destroyed an opponent? The game centers the camera on that unit immediately, even if you were in the middle of giving orders to another unit.
Combat looks like this:
It's barely-readable mush, but the gist of it is simple. If two neutral characters face off, they'll take turns hitting each other for identical amounts of damage. If a character with an advantage faces off, say an Attacker against a Beast, the Attacker will strike for, say, 45 damage, the Beast will strike for 25 damage, and they will repeat this until the Beast dies. So the key to victory is to simply stack several advantaged characters against each enemy to defeat them piecemeal, because three Attackers hit a Beast for like 100 damage while it hits only one of them for 25, so we can win more fights this way than by having separate 1v1s. It makes sense, it's how, like, fighting in general works. At some point the game throws in Wyverns, and then a Commander.
Here you can see a bizarre line where I tried to use the healer but then I had to attack and the order was all broken up so the enemy stacked against me instead of the reverse and I suffered avoidable losses.
The Commander is really big, really strong, and has a lot of HP. We throw cannon fodder at him until he dies.
Once the Commander is dead, the enemy attack ends regardless of surviving enemies (which doesn't matter, seeing as he was the last one to come out anyway).
And then it's done. We've completed the first battle of the Condor War.
This sucks ass, man.
This is where minigameitis has fully settled, I think. The minigames were often annoying but at least they were short and uncomplicated. This though, this takes forever to explain, forever to play, isn't fun, and costs me precious fucking money. And by all appearances, we are meant to go back and play this again. And again. There is, after all, a "very special Materia" at the top of that Reactor for us to eventually claim!
Well, at least we're done here for now. We can come back later.
New party lineup.
On a more fun note, remember this guy from last update? As has been pointed out in the thread, his name is "Hell Rider VR2." And I think that's kind of a clever in-joke? You see, we haven't encountered any Hell Rider before. So why "Version 2" when there is no "Version 1" to compare it to?
Well, if you'll recall, during the attack on Narshe in FFVI, there is a miniboss protecting Kefka, and that miniboss is "Hell's Rider." He, too, is a heavily armored knight riding a monstrous-looking beast. In its game of origin, it is a unique opponent fought only once.
So I think "Hell Rider VR2" is a slightly tongue-in-cheek reference the previous game. It is "Version 2" because it is the new version, appearing in this game, of a monster that previously appeared in the game directly preceding it. I think that's neat!
Now, let's head to Junon Harbor.
…that is some impressive coastal artillery.
Which is interesting in and of itself! So far, we've seen fairly little air power from Shinra - no airships, mainly. In real life, advancements in aviation made coastal artillery, in the sense of 'giant fuckoff guns mounted on the shore to blow up incoming ships,' increasingly less relevant. So the existence of this giant fucking gun could mean that the world of FF7, while fairly modern in its aesthetics, doesn't have highly prominent aircraft warfare, and so this gun is Shinra's main way of interdicting a naval approach towards the Midgar territory from the sea.
As a town, Junon Harbour isn't much to look at. The first person we run into actually expresses her surprise at seeing anyone not from Shinra visiting this town. The town itself used to be a fishing village, but ever since Shinra started polluting the water, there's been no fish.
There's a large gate built into the cliffside, leading an elevator which, presumably, will take us to that giant gun area, but we can't access it yet. We ask about the "man in a black cape," but no one's seen him.
If we go down to the shore, we run into a little girl who is trying to befriend a dolphin.
Her name is Priscilla.
The group approaches the girl (I'm not sure what they want from her?), who takes them for Shinra members and starts shouting at them to leave - when a sea monster suddenly comes roaring and attacks Mr Dolphin! Priscilla immediately rushes the beast to save her cetacean friend, with all the success one might expect from a literal child trying to fist-fight a sea serpent, but I give her points for bravery. Unfortunately it means it's up to us to save both the child and the marine mammal.
It actually gets a field model, for once! Although I think it's just the same as its combat model.
"Bottomswell" is a little bit deceiving. Unlike some other fish-type bosses, it actually is floating in the air, it's not just a visual abstraction; as such, despite looking like a sea creature it is not weak to lightning, and is instead weak to wind, which I don't have equipped as a magic type right now. It has an advanced version of Reno's Pyramid move which it uses to imprison a character but, I'm going to be real with you, I failed to notice during the fight because I was kinda zoned out and it wasn't that hard.
He also does the big wave attack.
Also, this is a "long range" opponent, meaning only characters with ranged attacks can reach it using the Attack command, which in this case means Yuffie (since she's throwing that big shuriken of hers). This doesn't matter, because like basically every fight in the game, all characters have access to at least one offensive spell, offensive spells always deal more damage than attacks (aside from Limit Breaks), and MP costs are fairly trivial while Ether is common. So we just blast it with spells the entire time and it dies without me even noticing Yuffie was sealed in a bubble.
Priscilla's grandfather arrives running, and checks on her, but says that no, she isn't breathing. There's only one solution - Cloud has to do CPR.
Why Cloud? Well, you see, there are two reasons. One is that Cloud is our player avatar, the one we play in every minigame. The other is that the game thinks a boy doing CPR on a girl is funny because mouth-to-mouth is kinda like kissing (which isn't really accurate to what CPR proper is like), with Cloud acting flustered about having to do mouth-to-mouth breathing to a girl. An absolutely timeless gag that I haven't seen a thousand times before (we're just not going to question Priscilla's age here). This means that - while the girl is dying because she's no longer breathing - the old man takes Cloud aside and explains to him how to do CPR. It's another minigame, this time one where we have to let a lung-shaped gauge fill up and click it when it reaches the top but before it goes over and cancels our progress.
It's slow and not very interesting. It's literally just makework. You just let the gauge slowly fill up, then hit when it's at the top, and then you keep doing that until the girl finally wakes up, gasping, and her grandfather asks if she's alright, then picks her up in his arms and leaves the beach.
It seems a bit abrupt a departure, but once we're back in the village, we are quickly informed that the other villagers have heard that we saved a local girl and we are offered to take a rest in one of the houses.
So we accept their generous offer and stay the night, during which Cloud dreams of voices again.
…our friend, the trauma flashback voice, is back.
Backseater: "...That reminds me"
Cloud: "You again? …Who are you?"
Backseater: "...You'll find out soon."
Backseater: "...But more importantly, 5 years ago…"
Cloud: "5 years ago… Nibelheim?"
Backseater: "When you went to Mt Nibel, Tifa was your guide, right?"
Cloud: "Yeah, …surprised me."
Backseater: "But where was Tifa other than that?"
Cloud: "...I dunno."
Backseater: "It was a great chance for you two to see each other again."
Cloud: "...You're right."
Backseater: "Why couldn't you see each other alone?"
Cloud: "...I don't know. I can't remember clearly…"
Backseater: "Why don't you try asking Tifa?"
Cloud: "...Yeah."
Backseater: "Then, get up!"
Voice: "Hey, wake up. Wake up, Cloud!"
Okay, so our Backseater is firmly acting as a kind of… Gentle nudging presence that is trying to get Cloud to confront his memory loss.
That's interesting because, left to his own devices, Cloud is incredibly passive about his memory holes, showing no interest in actually pursuing the missing pieces. And, I will say, that makes complete sense; it's a perfectly believable trauma response. There's a gaping hole in his memories and it hurts to look at, so Cloud pointedly avoids looking at it. He focuses on the parts he can easily remember, and they're sufficient for his needs - Sephiroth killed my family and destroyed my hometown, I hate Sephiroth, Sephiroth must pay. It's enough. Whenever he's confronted with Flashback Migraine, he immediately segues into something else and tries not to think about it.
So our Backseater here is an important presence, because it's trying to force him to acknowledge and confront the inconsistencies in his memory - such as, here…
…okay I don't get it. I don't know what the inconsistency here is meant to be. "How did Cloud survive the reactor," "how did Tifa survive," "how did Jenova get to Midgar," "what happened to Sephiroth," sure, all these are intriguing questions which draw attention to missing gaps in Cloud's story. "Where was Tifa other than where she was at the time we saw her?" What? Is the idea here that she was collocating? I don't know what Cloud is meant to be asking here. Maybe he's asking what Tifa's activities other than being a guide were at the time? But she was 15, the answer is probably just "being a teenager."
Ah, well. We'll see where this is going, I guess.
Cloud: "When Sephiroth and I went to Nibelheim, where were you?"
Tifa: "...We saw each other, right?"
Cloud: "The other time."
Tifa: "No… It was 5 years ago. I don't remember. But, something seems strange outside. Cloud, come quick."
I have genuinely no idea what's going on there or what Cloud is trying to ask, but, well, everyone is distracted by, oh, the fact that the soundtrack has been replaced by fanfare music.
Note on this picture how this is most likely the middle of the day, but everything is in shadows and the houses are lit up inside.
The whole party has gathered in the center of town and is wondering what's up with the music. Upstairs, the girl Priscilla has finally woken up; she comes out of her house and sheepishly thanks us for helping while apologizing for mistaking us for Shinra goons. As an apology, she gives us "something special," an amulet, which turns out to contain the Shiva Materia.
Okay. I guess Summon Materias are just a thing that's around in the world. Which… Hmm.
If Materia are encoded instructions on how to perform magic, then I guess it makes sense for some of them to encode the means to "call" on a supernatural being. If summons have an independent existence in this game, then the Materia is essentially having their phone number and ringing them up for an assist. It makes sense, I can vibe with it.
Anyway, it turns out that the fanfare is because the Shinra music band is rehearsing for an official visit from Rufus Shinra. Barret immediately says he has to "pay his respect;" I like the euphemism here. Prsicilla elaborates on the history of Junon Harbour; years ago, when her grandparents were young, the seaside was beautiful. But Shinra built a city above, and ever since, it has been blocking out the sun and polluting the water, casting the town forever in shadow and killing all the fish.
…I see. Shinra replicated the Midgar model here - they built another elevated city, above this old town, ruining everyone's lives in the process. If you were wondering why Sephiroth or Rufus would be interested in this small, dying village without any interesting feature, it's because it's not this place they're heading to - it's the elevated city that it is effectively sitting outside the gate of. Shinra's modern technological paradise, locked behind an elevator whose guard won't let us go through.
The group theorizes that if Rufus is coming here, it must be because he is intending to cross the ocean - it seems like Junon Harbour is the main international port of the Midgar Region? They theorize in turn that this means Sephiroth probably already crossed the sea, and Rufus is in pursuit. So, our next objective is to get to the town above to get more info. Unfortunately, the guard at the elevator won't let us pass, so the group decides to climb the tower out in the harbour to get there (it seems to be part of the energy infrastructure?). The girl warns them they can't do that, there is a powerful electrical current running under the water!
Oh my god. They literally constructed a fish-frying device smack in the mouth of the harbour of that fishing town. Shinra are such relentless assholes, they literally cannot stop ruining people's lives for even one second.
However, the girl says that if they can get Mr Dolphin's help, it might be possible to climb the tower. How? We'll see. First, the game has a very funny play on Cloud being the designated protagonist of the story:
Tifa: "High voltage tower… I guess this means Cloud'll have to do it."
Aerith: "Yeah, better leave it to Cloud!"
Red XIII: "We're counting on you, Cloud."
Cloud: "Hey!! Wait a second!"
[At that point, everyone turns around and leaves without paying attention to his protests.]
A very important part of depicting a believable group of friends is to know when to show these friends being assholes to each other just because it's funny. Everyone going "Alright Cloud, you're the hero, you tackle the deadly electric tower, good luck!" at the same time is pitch perfect comedy.
Alright, it's time to head for the beach and deal with…
…another fucking minigame.
This is one of the dullest of the lot. There is nothing interesting or engaging to it. The deal is that we're trying to reach that big bar suspended above us. We control Cloud, who must swim to a given spot, then click [SWITCH] to call the dolphin, who at this point launches us into the air. If we picked the correct spot, we successfully land. If not, Cloud falls to the bottom of the screen and must swim back to the next spot.
Also, if we jump in the wrong spot, Cloud falls short of reaching the the bar, rather than like, sailing over it, or missing it by a degree to the side, so there is no way to use failed jumps to triangulate the correct jumping spot. Also also, there is an invisible boundary around the glowing part of the tower; if we cross that boundary, Cloud is zapped by electricity and wakes up on the shore.
It's a pain in the ass that takes forever unless you just go and look it up (the correct jumping point is a little to the side of that tiny bar sticking out of the side of the tower) and is tiresome and uninteresting, but hey, eventually, we get there!
Then, we climb the tower, which it turns out leads to an elevated air field; the first thing Cloud sees upon reaching the top of the ladder is an enormous airship.
I love the design. Lunar Whale aside, Final Fantasy's airships have stayed conservatively on the side of "sailship with propellers/blimp," with VI leaning into the blimp side for a relatively cool new aesthetic, but here we are going full Weird Modernity - I don't think anything like this airship exists in our world, but it looks like it could plausibly be a thing. There are upwards propeller lifting it off the ground in a vertical takeoff, a suspended cabin/cockpit… There seems to be a kind of fuselage above it? I'm really curious about the anatomy of that thing.
The minigames might be annoying, but in terms of aesthetic FFVII remains king.
Look at the use of perspective and distance to emphasize how small Cloud is in comparison to these enormous machines.
Okay, from the size and number of those things, it looks like my "maybe this world doesn't have very advanced combat aircraft" was probably wrong. These things look like war machines. "Junon Harbour," while an important port, may matter less as a port and more as a strategic airport. That's interesting.
We enter the base and immediately run into a bunch of guards running who don't even stop to notice Cloud, and then an officer comes in to scold him, saying "You're still dressed like that? Come on!"
…I guess Cloud is still dressing like a SOLDIER, as we've seen from the Third Classes in the Shinra Building. If security is tight enough, I can kinda see how someone might just not even consider that this guy is an intruder? He took a particularly dangerous and unlikely route in. The officer drags us into a locker room and asks us to change.
Cloud: "A Shinra uniform… I was so proud when I first put it on."
Cloud: "I wonder when it was…"
Cloud: "...I couldn't stand to wear it anymore."
…see, these bits, where Cloud reflects on how he used to feel proud to be part of Shinra, to be a SOLDIER, to do the job he was asked to do, that's so important to selling a 'renegade from the evil faction' character, and - look I'm not going to keep shouting "Finn Sequel Trilogy was robbed of the character arc he should have gotten" but he was.
Officer: "You remember the greeting procedure, right!?"
Officer: "...The look on your face says that you forgot. Allright, I'll show you again! Do just like I do."
[At this point, two Shinra soldiers enter]
Soldier #1: "Commander! We'll help too!"
Soldier #1: "This is how to do it!"
Soldier #2: "We'll sing too!"
Commander: "All right! Show 'em!!"
Commander: "Now, march!! This's the Welcoming March!"
Soldier #1: "Then I'll sing along with you!"
Soldier #2: "Quietly--!!"
Soldiers: "Aaaaaah!"
Soldier #2: "Hey, come on now. Now!"
Officer: "And… March!!"
This sequence is borderline incomprehensible. Checking the Retranslation mod, it scans a lot better; I have no idea where the original translator pulled "Quietly!" or the soldier screaming "Aaaah!" from. I have also no idea what they're showing me beyond 'playing a walk-in-place cycle animation"; the officer turns to me and tells me to "Keep in step with the soldier next to you and march smoothly," then asks me if I "got it," and I can answer yes and no, but, like… He didn't explain anything. If there is a mechanic I was supposed to learn there, I don't know what it is and cannot execute it.
Anyway, we hear that Rufus has arrived, and so the guards come out and I rush after them - once outside, we get a glimpse of the true Junon Harbour, the real town built around the military base, not the little village in its shadow.
Rows of apartment buildings testify to something more like a city, with a large population, which would make this the first major urban settlement we've seen since Midgar.
Also, Rufus is doing the "ride slowly in a car standing up and wave to the people in the middle of a military parade," very classical dictator of him. Would be a shame if someone were to JFK him.
As our own group of soldiers arrive late to the party, we play a cinematic showing the true form of Junon Harbour and clarifying its construction and architecture, and it's… A little over the top.
I thought the size of the coastal artillery gun on the world map was exaggerated for visibility purposes, but no. That thing is so massive it is bigger than the buildings, bigger than the entire city. It is so large, it is braced against the entire cliffside. That thing can probably shoot a shell halfway across the world. I guess that explains why Shinra is bothering with that kind of artillery in a modern setting with aircraft - sure that thing might shoot an incoming ship, but honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it could blow up a city on another continent. What the fuck. Is this the setting's equivalent to ICBMs?
Also, we can see that this isn't a 'conventional' city - these apartment rows are built in steps, rising along the side of the cliff. So the population is smaller than I would have expected - they're building apartment rows for space efficiency reasons, but there isn't a lot of total space, probably more of a town than a city. I would also expect most of the population to work in fields related to the local military base - not as military themselves, mind you, but like, local bars probably cater primarily to soldiers, local mechanics probably work on the base all the time…
Also, you can see "Old Junon" in this picture. Look for the tiny cluster of light pixels on the ground to the right of the base. That's the town there, with their lights turned on in the middle of the day, not just because the sheer mass of New Junon is occluding the sun, but because they literally built the airstrip above the town. What absolute assholes.
(The proportions of Junon Harbour are far larger than make any realistic sense, nobody would build that way even if we had the capabilities for it, but the same is true of Midgar and it looks sick, so who cares.)
Our quatuor of latecomers arrive to an empty street and the officer loudly exclaims that they're late, then blame the "rookie," Cloud, for it; one of the soldiers proposes taking a shortcut through the back alley between two buildings, and…
Soldier: "Just sneak into the back of the line when you see an opening."
Officer: "Now listen up! This parade's gonna be broadcast live on Shinra TV around the world!"
Officer: "If you look bad, the whole Junon army will look bad. Remember that and don't screw up!"
Officer: "OK! Jump in when I give you the sign! Just sneak in from the back! Don't mess up the row!"
Officer: "And no matter what you do, don't try to go in from the front!"
…this is where I gave up.
The minigame here is that we must sneak into the parade as it advances. Every formation has three rows, and there is a hole in the third row. We have to get there and start marching. The "Live TV Ratings" is our score bar for how well we're doing. Every time we mess up, Cloud is pulled back to the officer, who tells him "Don't play around!," the score gets a malus, and we have to try again.
And again.
And again.
There is no escape clause. There is no release. There is no final failure. At no point does the officer go "ah well that sucked but parade's over, let's move on with the plot." Even after a dozen attempts, as the score has ticked all the way down to 00%, I still have to keep trying.
I don't even know what I'm doing wrong, because I don't know what 'doing it right' even looks like. The game has given me no legible instructions. I just keep running into the line, walking at the line, sneaking up from the back, rushing in from the side, and nothing works. It's just failure, after failure, after failure, and the game will not release me even as its fucking score counter is judging me for failing to comply with instructions it did not fucking give.
You don't get to tell me I failed your arbitrary bullshit minigame when you designed the game wrong.
My last save was after the big fish boss fight, but I don't care. It's twenty minutes at most, much less if I don't need to reread the dialogue. At this point I just alt-F4 out of the game and go play Baldur's Gate instead.
My wife.
Alright.
A little D&D adventuring later, I am quiet. Relaxed. Moisturized. In my lane. It's time to head back to the parade sequence and just… Roll with it.
I ended up looking up a guide on how to approach the parade, and while it did an okay job at explaining how to get into the file, immediately after the game apparently expected me to do… Something? To execute 'marching in rhythm with the other soldiers'? I have no idea what the game wants from me there, so the score counter instantly starts going down and has hit the single digits by the end.
There is an honestly kinda funny skit at the end where the TV Producer is going "I am going to be fired! Who's that soldier who fucked this up for me, send him a bomb or something," and that's why our reward for this bit is… A grenade, a consumable item that inflicts damage. It's a funny gag, but also, fuck you, game.
There are apparently multiple tiers of rewards depending on how well you do and going above 51% gets you 5k gil, but whatever, I'm rich, I don't need any money. At least this is done. This is over now.
Rufus: "How's the job? What happened to the airship?"
Heidegger: "The long range airship is still being prepared. It should be ready in about three more days. Gya haa haa!"
Rufus: "And the Air Force's Gelnika?"
Heidegger: "Gya haa haa!"
[Rufus steps in closer.]
Rufus: "Stop that stupid horse laugh. Things are different from when Father was in charge."
[Heidegger's laughter slowly slows down and stops. He looks deflated."
Heidegger: "Gya…"
Rufus: "Is the ship ready?"
Heidegger: "Yes Sir, we'll get it ready quickly."
[Rufus climbs into the cabin on the left of the screen, and is gone. Heidegger angrily starts punching against a soldier's chest to vent his frustration, then follows after Julius.]
Oookay. I guess "Rufus's ship" is a different thing from "the long-range airship" and the "Gelnikas…" Are those meant to say Guernica? Does Shinra have a bomber fleet named after one of the world's most famous bombings? Incredible.
Anyway, the weird cabin you can see is mounted on a diagonal rail and goes up, carrying Rufus to… I don't know, the airfield?
Left alone, the soldiers chat about how the parade was a disaster and Heidegger was really angry, and one of them comments that everyone's stressed because the "man in the Black Cape" has been roaming the city, but no one is able to find him. Cloud immediately enquires for more details, and nobody thinks it's weird that another Shinra soldier doesn't know about this; other soldiers chime in that the man showed up two or three days ago and killed a few of their soldiers, and disappeared after that, and the rumour is that it's Sephiroth himself.
Yeah, our man isn't keeping it very subtle, is he? There's benefit in being thought to be dead, but it's hard to keep a lid on it after assassinating the President of the company. The officers dismiss the soldiers, and they scatter into two groups, but because Cloud has no idea where he's supposed to go he just kind of stands around until the officer from earlier comes at him, says he acts like he thinks the army's a joke, calls him a slacker and assigns him new duties.
I love this whole sequence. The friction between the antagonists, the way being on 'team Shina' doesn't translate to personal obedience or getting along or being friends, the chain of power manifesting in how Rufus is casually rude to Heidegger and Heidegger is taking it out on the soldiers, the way the Shinra mooks are kinda wacky and invested in their own identity and their marching song and the pride of their hometown, it all comes together to deliver something that FFVI had gestured at in the conflict between Leo, Kefka and Celes, and in the intro with Biggs and Wedge, but which is way more in depth here, really humanizes the evil faction without taking away from their awfulness.
Anyway.
Then there is.
Another.
Minigame.
We are assigned to more parade duty, to send off Rufus Shinra with the traditional Junon salute. The guards show the movement sequence for us, and we need to replicate it - it involves turning left and right and raising the rifle in a particular order. The soldiers show us the sequence once, then the officer asks us to repeat it at the same time as the soldiers, and once we've done so, he asks us if we got it or if we need to try again.
The fact that it's a choice most likely means that we're going to be asked to repeat the sequence again later, while seeing Rufus off. Maybe from memory, even. God.
The soldier asks about a special pose to crown their salute, and the officer says he hasn't decided on one and asks Cloud to show them his best move; Cloud twirls his rifle the way he does his sword in the game's victory fanfares, everyone thinks this is the coolest shit ever, and the Officer decides that'll be their final move, and then we are finally, thankfully, at long last, dismissed.
This big-ass elevator connects back to Old Junon, but the guard at the entrance won't let us out.
We can't go anywhere, really, so our main option is to return to the main street we took to get to the parade; this time there are both soldiers in the street as well as random citizens, and also…
…Rude?
I guess it's not that surprising that he followed in Sephiroth's footsteps along with the rest of the Turks… If we follow after him, we find him in a smoke-filled bar room, palling around and drinking with random citizens of the town.
I guess Rude is the "chill one" in the Turks. So far he hasn't had a lot of characterization beyond being fairly quiet and imposing but bad at speeches, but I'm starting to have him figured out, I think. He's the guy who, despite his job as part of Shinra's black ops enforcers, is just kind of a Regular Guy, doesn't really like attention or to talk big, likes to destress with regular hobbies and let his guard down. When we approach him, he says we are free to hang out with him, we just have to take off our masks, that's the one rule of that informal get-together. Obviously we're not going to do that, since we don't want him to find out Avalanche has infiltrated the city, but notably he's totally cool with inviting a soldier to go off-duty and break his orders to go drink with him and a bunch of civilians. I have a feeling Rude never snitches.
Also, one of these models is the monk-like guys from Fort Condor. I'm guessing that's just an asset reuse for NPC variety, but it could be meant to indicate that Rude is totally fine with hanging out with nominal enemies of Shinra in his free time.
There are multiple buildings in Junon, though they are visually indistinguishable from one another when outside - it's all the same apartment rows, with light (or arrows if you press Select) indicating which can be entered, but inside, each one is different. And they include stores! Not just stores, either, but store with the next tier of weapons and new Materia!
They have Hardedge, that sword we could have stolen from the Third Class SOLDIERs, "Atomic Scissors" for Barret, just new stuff for everyone that involves a whopping +9 Attack power (from 23 to 32, a full +50% increase, it's pretty considerable), and the Materia store sells the Revive Materia, so we finally have access to the Raise line of spells!
Things are, at last, looking up. We've accumulated a pretty considerable amount of money since Kalm, even if we had to spend some being gouged by a Chocobo salesman, so after all these shitty minigames, this, at last, is our reward. Time to splurge.
…
I…
What?
I walked into Fort Condor with nearly 10k gil and there have been fights since, I should have…
Okay. I get it. I see what happened now.
Fort Condor starts with a "fund" of 15,000 gil for their war effort. They told me that they "need 3,000 gil for each battle." I figured, sure, I have a shitton of gil, I can afford to give 3k to their war fund so we have some flex room and I don't have to worry about running up the costs of the RTS battle. Then, we went into the battle, and I bought a bunch of soldiers to fight the Shinra wave.
But the game was explaining this incredibly badly. The fund to which I initially contributed was the fund the game uses when handling battles on its own, while I'm not there to directly do the RTS minigame. It's a "health bar" of money that gets depleted during assaults I'm not there for. When I hired soldiers for the awful RTS minigame, I wasn't paying out of that vast 18k supply. I was paying out of pocket with my own money. On top of also having given them 3k for the war fund.
Which means Fort Condor just drained my coffers entirely. I checked my saving history; I walked in with 9,200 gil, I walked out with 1,100.
And I fucked up the awful parade minigame, meaning I missed out on their 5,000 gil prize. So I just… Finally got access to all the shops and all I have is what I got from random encounters and the Bottomswell boss fight on the way, which is barely enough to pay for two characters' new weapons and none of the new Materia.
And I'm stuck here. I can't even leave to grind out in the overworld.
This is the part that broke me. This is where I gave up again.
I got Shiva, but I haven't even had an opportunity to try her because there has been a single fight in the last hour of game, against that flying fish, before we acquired it, and instead of the gameplay that actually works it's just. This parade of broken minigames that are explained horribly and feel awful to play. Even as the game is hitting some of its best aesthetic notes, some absolutely killer environmental design, and some genuinely funny interactions with Shinra soldiers that really let us get deep into the guts of the humanity of the common mook, the continued mystery with what Sephiroth is up to, it keeps getting in its own way over and over and finally. What I get on the other end of all this. Is the game dangling a bunch of shinies in front of me that I can't get because I fucked myself over an hour ago and I didn't notice.
Enough. That's it. I'm taking a break. There's a save point nearby; I use it and I quit. Junon Harbour will find its conclusion some other day.
…but find its conclusion I will. This part isn't a dealbreaker, a 'I am giving up on the game' moment, but it is a 'my ADHD ass could very decides this is annoying enough to deal with later, start up another game, and realize six months later that I never picked up where I left off' moment. Fortunately, dear reader, you are with me on this adventure. This thread stands as a monument to my hubris, and now that my frustration has been fully vented in this update, I shall soon resume playing.
Next Time: Whatever's next.
***
Here's a fun fact: As I wrote it initially, this update contained 57 pictures. After finishing it, in order to avoid splitting it up, I went and curated those pictures down to an even 50. 50 pictures per post is the limit available for subscribed members of SV - non-subscribers are limited to 20 pictures, which would make these updates split between three to half a dozen separate posts. Thankfully, I have access to such subscriber benefits thanks to my membership on the SV Community Council. It is one of the perks we receive as rewards for the work we put in as Councillors to help make this forum a better place!
As members of SV, I would encourage you to vote in the SV Community Council Elections which are currently ongoing! As readers of this Let's Play specifically, I would encourage you to vote for me for Councillor - I think I do a good job of it, and it's directly helping this Let's Play, so it's all benefits! Please consider voting for me in this election, and thanks for reading!
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