My favorite example of that breaking down is Dragon Quest 8, which has in the menu keeping track of how many enemies you kill and how many items you've stolen, a bit that keeps track of how many miles you've walked.
By the end of the game, once you've walked from one end of the globe to the other, travelled to every town and country in the world on foot, explored every nook and cranny of the world map and delved every dungeon and entered every house, it tells you so, that you that you've walked enough to circle the globe. How far is that? Well, about 200 miles.
Whatever, nerd. It was a big boat; want to fight about it?
I jest. You actually make a great point about the overworld that I had been thinking about recently. 7's Overworld is probably the most barren of civilization I can recall in a game to date, and even most of that is tiny villages. While it's certainly a matter of tech limits of the time and not needing to model every possible tiny village, it's a weird feeling to step out of a population hub (especially the ones that make reference to having major tourist industries, about 4 if I recall correctly) and right into an apparently untouched overworld with no visible roads or railways (despite cars and trains being a thing) and where every point on the map is separated by some sort of impassable natural barrier.
Although, it does bring an interesting bit of possible worldbuilding by omission, where the world really *is* that sort of forlorn oldskool D&D points-of-light setting and revolves around loosely linked hubs of civilization and modern industry surrounded by wild beasts, wilderness, and now horrible Mako-infused monstrosities. Realistically thouh, I just don't think they thought to hard about it, hence why the world's foremost premier tourist destination requires you to take a boat trip, travel over monster infested forests, rivers, and mountain passes by foot, and through a bombed out junkyard in the middle of an inhospitable wasteland instead of just, idk, building an airstrip or a railroad like Vegas.
And that actually makes me think of another funny thing, which is that the sheer amount of engineering wizardry and possibly literal magic that must go into making something like the Gold Saucer function. It might actually make it the most technologically advanced place on the Planet? Do you think Reeve lies awake at night thinking about what the operating budget for the shooting gallery alone must be; meanwhile Midgar's rail system probably hasn't been budgeted for an inspection in years.
REEVE: "President Shinra, sir, why does this highway need to be eight lanes wide? Our models show severe diminishing returns in regards to traffic congestion once you reach a certain-"
PRES SHINRA: "So that our robotic flamethrower tank made entirely out of giant spiked wheels will fit on it, obviously."
I remember once reading that if you overlaid Skyrim onto the real world, the whole map would only be about the size of Delaware (not sure that's the exact state they said, but definitely one of the smaller ones).
And granted, if the FF7 devs did put in a bunch of extra houses and towns you couldn't enter to make the world seem less barren, you'd probably get players complaining they couldn't enter them
I remember once reading that if you overlaid Skyrim onto the real world, the whole map would only be about the size of Delaware (not sure that's the exact state they said, but definitely one of the smaller ones).
I recall it being said that Daggerfall, well known for being very large was about the size of Turkey. Of course the map was also procedurally generated, and not all that well by modern standards. An article I found on the size of various Elder Scrolls games; Skyrim isn't even that small as it happens, it's just easier to get around in and so feels smaller.
Which is another problem: huge maps are going to be either mostly procedurally generated or sparse, just due to the sheer manhours that would be needed to actually fill it up by hand.
Which is another problem: huge maps are going to be either mostly procedurally generated or sparse, just due to the sheer manhours that would be needed to actually fill it up by hand.
The matter of abstraction that I think hangs over the series the most, the one that can't really be interrogated because the games don't really have answers, is the size of their world.
This is something I've thought a lot about over the years. It's something that at times bothers me, and at other times doesn't. I think it's easiest to dodge the issue of "Okay but where is everything else" when your world map is like, say, Suikoden, where you only cover one portion of the world map per game, but even then some abstraction has to go on, some assumptions that there are supply lines that we just aren't seeing (which granted, I find fairly easy to believe with Suikoden, typically). It's not like Chrono Trigger where, while I appreciate the presence of houses on the world map, in the end it kind of worsens the problem of "wait, so how big are these places supposed to be?"
(Chrono Trigger does have one, maybe two portions of its plot which dodges much need to abstract in this regard, but 2300 AD is by and large an exception to this exactly because of its narrative purpose and the fact that it does give a straightforward explanation for how these people can survive with so few of them and no visible farms. That portion of the plot existing is also one of the best decisions the designers could have made imo, but that's another topic )
FF7 is actually one of the ones I feel most ambivalent on, since as far as I can recall, the only two larger 'nations' are Wutai and Shinra, which feels a bit out of place.
I remember once reading that if you overlaid Skyrim onto the real world, the whole map would only be about the size of Delaware (not sure that's the exact state they said, but definitely one of the smaller ones).
To be fair, Skyrim is just a small part of the entire world of that game. It's the only part you can travel but there's meant to be much more beyond it, unlike the Final Fantasies so far.
I recall it being said that Daggerfall, well known for being very large was about the size of Turkey. Of course the map was also procedurally generated, and not all that well by modern standards. An article I found on the size of various Elder Scrolls games; Skyrim isn't even that small as it happens, it's just easier to get around in and so feels smaller.
Which is another problem: huge maps are going to be either mostly procedurally generated or sparse, just due to the sheer manhours that would be needed to actually fill it up by hand.
After some looking up, I found that the apparent largest game world that wasn't procedurally generated is Fuel, a driving game from 2009 that I'd never heard of before and got a 67 on Metacritic. Its big selling point was a game world roughly 120 x 120 km, which is big enough to comfortably fit on top of Connecticut.
I recall it being said that Daggerfall, well known for being very large was about the size of Turkey. Of course the map was also procedurally generated, and not all that well by modern standards. An article I found on the size of various Elder Scrolls games; Skyrim isn't even that small as it happens, it's just easier to get around in and so feels smaller.
Which is another problem: huge maps are going to be either mostly procedurally generated or sparse, just due to the sheer manhours that would be needed to actually fill it up by hand.
I'd say this is the biggest problem with making things "realistic", including "Realistically sized". Traveling by foot from Bangor, Maine to Atlanta, Georgia is entirely possible, but it's such a drag which is why we invented various methods of transportation. For your standard sandbox or RPG game, this would be unbelievably tedious; showing hundreds if not thousands of miles of empty space with assorted towns and settlements would require a HUGE amount of work and an even bigger budget to work with or would be left completely empty to save space and memory. It's a balance between fun and realism; would you rather have a smaller, more compact world with fun more accessible and easier to find, or would you rather have your player character walk hundreds of miles for days on end just to get anywhere?
In a tabletop, you generally get around this by abstracting time, i.e. you spent so much time on the road, but the GM isn't going to waste everyone's time by narrating each individual hour and day of the trip (there have been RPG horror stories that tell of GMs who do just that, and it's all mind-numbing tedium). In a video game, it's hard to abstract things the same way.
I think there were a few games where Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw bitterly complained of the sheer size of open world sandbox games that were way too big with nothing noteworthy between the important bits besides long stretches of your character moving in one direction with nothing to distract you, though I don't recall which games off-hand.
So while even modern FF games suffer from unnaturally tiny worlds, it's better than being realistically huge to the point you have to book a flight (maybe even wait for planes to be invented as well) just to get anywhere in a decent amount of time.
Reminds me of a complaint some players had with Warhammer 40K tabletop, about how unrealistic it was for supersoldiers with advanced tech to miss shots at point blank range, or what would appear to be a close range firefight actually be long range. GW's response was basically "If we made distances realistic, good luck finding a parking lot to play a game in".
I had to sit there for a moment and wonder what Star Wars Space Texas had to do with anything. Then I remembered the actual town name. I think I'm more partial to "Correlites".
This is definitely way late, but considering how much sci fi this final fantasy has, do you think the crystals are some kind of terraforming or geoengineering tech considering the planet is bad at doing things naturally? At least in the earlier games
"L'art pour l'art in particular, appearing though it did in aristocratic and haughty guise and furnishing us - as Broch of course knew - with such convincing works of literature, is actually already kitsch, just as in the commercial realm the slogan "Business is business" already contains within itself the dishonesty of the unscrupulous profiteer, and just as in the First World War the obtrusive maxim "War is war" had already transformed the war into mass slaughter."
-Hannah Arendt
Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game where GOLD SAUCER. GOLD SAUCER. GOLD SAUCER TIIIIIME
Sometimes I wonder if I am approaching this Let's Play business right. Like, this entire update could have been, say, a single paragraph of a couple hundred words going "I went through Gold Saucer, it had a bunch of minigames, there were these positive aspects and these negative aspects, let's move on with the plot." Instead you get 8,5k words of me rambling about it in minute details. Was this necessary? Probably not. I did it anyway. Enjoy.
Also I cut it for space but there was a screenshot of Yuffie before boarding the Ropeway saying "I have no sympathy for Barret, he never should have trusted Shinra" which, wow, kid, that's harsh.
The game plays out this pretty sweet FMV which shows the Gold Saucer to be gigantic, an absolutely gargantuan casino-skyscraper, as well as having this weird, tree-like architecture with the 'leaves' forming the dome of each individual 'saucer.' The ropeway itself is pretty incredibly high up, and covers a surprisingly large distance.
Things become clearer if we leave North Corel through the other side from the ropeway and explore the map a little, because it turns out there's a reason we can't approach the Gold Saucer from the ground.
The Gold Saucer itself is standing in the middle of one of Shinra's trademark Mako-drained wastes, only one that is more treacherous than usual: the edges of this wasteland are quicksand, and if we approach them too closely, the characters start being pulled down into them and immediately backtrack to safety.
Considering the sheer amount of energy it would take to run an entirely artificial suspended pleasure palace that seems to be more or less a casino arcology, it's no wonder the Saucer is draining the land, but the sheer scale of it is impressive - we're at near-Midgar levels of wasting from a single casino.
Let's head back and check out the digs.
…is that 'Welcome' entrance a fucking poop emoji?
When we arrive, it's through this enormous… Moogle? Is that a moogle? No, the moogles are standing atop of it. What is that, Kirby?
Anyway, we arrive through that thing's mouth, and can talk to the receptionist, who will explain to us that a single-entry pass costs 3k gil, while a lifetime pass costs 30k.
That's… Steep. Mathematically I guess it's a simple question of, 'are we going to need to enter the Gold Saucer more than 10 times over the course of the game'. Hopefully we don't have to? For the time being, though, we don't have the cash for the lifetime pass regardless, so we just pay for a single ticket - if at any point we leave the premises, it will be void and we'll have to buy another. 3k is pretty damn expensive at this stage of the game, especially with my run of bad luck regarding minigames; it's about half of our total money. Still, nothing to do about it, we know that, inexplicably, Sephiroth appears to be here, and we have to follow.
First of all, we head for that save point, and…
…find out that we can't use it.
The save point costs money to use.
Holy shit. This is my first real sign that the game is out to gouge me with this sequence, and it's not going to be better. We can't even use the save point at all right now; it doesn't accept gil as currency, but instead GP, which I assume stands for Gold Points, the internal currency of the Gold Saucer.
That's right. We're going to be dealing in poker chips this whole time.
We don't get any GP to begin with, either, which is… Interesting. More on that in a moment.
We buy our ticket, enter the Gold Saucer, and find ourselves in the "Station," a hub which connects the multitude of individual attractions within the Saucer. As soon as we do, the group splits up, with Aerith finding her peppiness back and being extremely enthusiastic at the idea of having a good time at the casino.
Aerith says she knows now might not seem like a great time for it, but she thinks it'd cheer us up to just have fun at the Golden Saucer. Barret says he isn't in the mood for cheer, and there's that exchange where Aerith acts kind of dismissive of his feelings and when Tifa tells her she's being harsh, she whispers that when someone's acting up like this, the best thing to do is to just act normal instead of tiptoeing around them. Barret storms off in a huff, storms off in a huff, reminding everyone not to forget we're after Sephiroth, and Aerith is worried she's made him mad, but Tifa says that she thinks he did look a little more like his normal self.
This is another of these exchanges where the original translations has the general meaning come across but each individual sentence be slightly off from where it should be, and Aerith comes off as more rude than she's meant to be; the idea here is that she is a very emotionally intelligent person, who knows that when someone is sad/upset (because we just went through North Corel and Barret was confronted by his past and guilt), it's best not to make it obvious that you're treating them with abnormal mindfulness and making them feel pitied or singled out, instead acting casual and suggesting activities that would take their mind off things, without making it obvious that it's what you're doing.
Aerith is a great character, you guys.
Then, we take control of Cloud again, and we can choose one, and only one party member, to come with us during our trip through the Golden Saucer, Barret not included. When talking to members to pick them up, Tifa warns that Sephiroth might be around and they should be careful, Aerith says she wishes they could forget everything and have fun, and Red and Yuffie expresses bafflement that Cloud would pick them to go on such a suspiciously date-like activity. Funny.
Anyway, I pick Tifa, and then I jump into one of these tubes at random, and we emerge from a totally different tunnel in a totally different place.
This is the 'Chocobo Racing' dome, and the first time we enter it, there's a whole gang of Shinra soldiers on the steps. Looking for Sephiroth, perhaps? Or merely spending their ill-gotten gains gambling? It looks like the latter - their officer shouts "Attention! Dismissed!" and all the soldiers scatter into various areas.
Here, we have a much better look at what each of the domes is labeled, on those tubes: STATION, SPEED, GHOST, EVENT, BATTLE, ROUND, WONDER, and STATION. I'm… not interested in jumping immediately into chocobo races, whatever those look like, so I decide to head, at random, for the Speed Square.
What is it with this game and muscular older men in no clothing taking an interest in the protagonist.
This man, it turns out, is the owner of the casino, and wants to know if Cloud is having a fun time; his name is… Dio.
Insert your favorite Jojo meme here and let's move on.
Then there is an absolutely baffling piece of dialogue which I will render here in its entirety:
Dio: "By the way, boy, do you know what a 'Black Materia' is?" Cloud: "What is it?" // ("Yeah, I know.)" Dio: "Ha ha ha… That, I say, that's a good one, boy! But it's no good to lie. You can't fool me." Cloud: "Why d'you ask me?" Dio: "Well, a while back, a boy your age came in and asked me if I had 'Black Materia.' I thought you might know who he was, seein' as you're both about the same age." Cloud: "Did he happen to have… a black cape?" Dio: "Why yes, yes indeed. And a tattoo on his hand that said '1.'" Cloud: "Where did he go!?" Dio: "Ha ha, I have no idea."
…
Okay, so, first off, either the game or the translator need to learn the difference between 'cape' and 'cloak' or 'coat.'
Second, I - what? Why does he just bring up a 'Black Materia' totally unprompted? Why do Cloud and Dio act like they both know what it means while being completely cryptic about what that is? What's this about 'a boy your age' when Sephiroth is like, thirty? He's gotta be thirty, right?
This is a really clumsy way of broadcasting 'this is information that will be relevant soon so be prepared to recognize that name,' like… That's not how people talk. Does Dio just randomly chat up any of the hundreds of people going through his casino if they look like 'a man in his early twenties' asking about a Black Materia?
Well, we can't do anything with the information about the Black Materia, since we have no idea what it is. (Could it be related to Aerith's 'useless Materia' that she has as a memento from her biological mother? That was brought up once and literally never again, also very unnaturally at the time, though no mention was made of color.) The bit about the numbered tattoo is more interesting; we have seen someone with a numbered tattoo before - the 'This guy are sick' guy in Sector 5. And, in the retranslated mod, a guy in North Corel talks about numbered tattoos being popular in the city.
Sephiroth didn't have a tattoo in the Nibelheim Flashback, did he? I think someone would have called attention to it.
…at this point I think I can formulate a solid theory as to what's happening, but not based on the game's events alone - rather through a combination of this game and having played Remake, so I'll hold off on speculating for now.
One thing I'll say about Dio: He looks exactly like the kind of man who would create a place of such supreme kitsch as the Gold Saucer.
Dio leaves after inviting us to check out the Battle Square and his cool monsters he's been collecting; however, when we visit Battle Square, we're told it's under renovation and can't be visited for now. We met Dio himself in the Speed Square, whose attraction is a rollercoaster ride, but we have to pay GP to enter it, which we don't have. Instead, let's check out the Wonder Square!
The moment we emerge int a simple, lobby like area, we are approached by this baffling creature.
What in God's name is that.
Oh cool, it introduces itself as a 'fortune telling machine' and tells us that its name is…
…so this thing is a playable character.
We are firmly in the weird shit territory here.
The name 'Cait Sith' has been used for Coeurl-variant enemies before, as well as for one Esper in the previous game, though not one that had any story role. Here it's coming back for a playable party member that is…
…
What the hell is it.
It introduced itself as a 'fortune telling machine,' and a look at the retranslation uses the same wording. So I guess I'm dealing with like… A walking, sapient Magic 8-ball? Incredible. Although the cat looks organic, and it's riding…
That thing looks as to a moogle as an ogre is to a human, is what it does. It's vaguely terrifying. Doesn't seem to be alive, though. Maybe it's the 'slot machine' component and Cait Sith is its user interface?
Anyway, Cloud asks if it's true it can read the future, Cait Sith says it (he? Let's go with he) can find items, missing people, anything, so of course Cloud immediately asks if he can find a man named Sephiroth for us.
Man, we should be so lucky. I appreciate Cloud immediately reaching for any shot at sequence-skipping the plot, though.
Cait Sith says alright, and an animation plays out of the cat and moogle shaking in place, then the moogle swinging its arm, handing Cloud a ticket. And the result is…
"Ordinary luck. It will be an active fortune. Give into the good will of others, and something big'll happen after summer."
Well, that's… Vague. And strangely worded. What is an 'active fortune'? Luckily, it seems like Cait Sith isn't satisfied either. He (they?) decides to try again and get a more legible fortune, and the result this time is… "Be careful of forgetfulness. Your lucky color is… blue?"
Okay, 'be careful of forgetfulness' hits just close enough to Cloud's persistent memory issues that it's making me a little uneasy. And with his typical deflecting behavior, Cloud tells Caith Sith to just "Forget it" and turns around, and Cait Sith insists on trying again. This time, the result is…
"What you pursue will be yours, but you will lose something dear."
Well.
That sure isn't foreboding.
This, then, leads into the wildest party addition so far: Cait Sith declares that, as a fortune teller, having that kind of vague, unclear prediction hanging around is going to bug him; and he'll never be able to relax if he doesn't see how it's resolved, so he's coming with us. Tifa asks Cloud if it's alright letting them join, and then Cait Sith clarifies that this is not a request and forcibly merges into Cloud to join our party.
Incredible.
Cait Sith looks to be firmly into 'gag character' territory, but that may be me projecting the fact that I don't know, like… anything about them. They're not really a presence in any of the spinoff material I'm familiar with. Will they be another Mog and Umaro? Or will they be a character in their own right? Time will tell, I suppose.
For now, we have a new addition to our party roster, though it'll be a while before we have a chance to check out what it is they do.
Cait Sith has the 'Manipulate' Materia, which may be a kind of Command command, like Beastmasters/Relm? We'll see, I guess. Also their weapon of choice is… a phone??? Oh, no, that's just the character count issue, it's a megaphone. They attack by shouting at people. Incredible.
Well, now that we have a full party, let's head up those stairs into that glass corridor above and finally check out Wonder Square proper.
Alright.
Let's talk about GP.
I've never personally been in a casino, but having looked it up, the way most Western casinos work is they have 'casino tokens,' which are the same as poker chips, which are the casino's internal currency. They exist for a number of reasons that mostly have to do with convenience, security, and possibly psychologically incentivizing gambling, but they are, as long as everything is going well, a perfect 1v1 for money. You come in, you pay for $500's worth of casino tokens, you get $500's worth of casino tokens, you gamble, you win some and lose some, you end the day with $300's worth of casino tokens, you give the tokens back at the counter, they give you $300. Simple, right?
Japan doesn't have (legal) casinos.* Gambling is illegal in Japan… Except in all the ways it's legal. Horse racing, the lottery, and of course, pachinko. Which are a kind of gambling machine, kinda like slots. For reasons that have to do with the specifics of how Japanese gambling law works, pachinko isn't allowed to give money. It gives items, which can't (nominally) be traded for currency. You enter a pachinko parlor, you exchange actual currency for pachinko balls, then you spend them on pachinko machines, get rewarded a given number of balls, and you can then exchange these balls for item prizes, but not (nominally) money. When you spend a hundred bucks on pachinko balls going in, you're not getting that money back (nominally); you're hoping instead to get enough balls out of your session to get cool prizes.
*Japan has authorized the limited creation of casinos under a specific framework in very recent years; as far as I can tell, the pandemic put a stop on any actual construction and halted negotiations, so none of those casinos has been built yet, but they will be eventually. Not relevant for 1997, though.
In practice you can exchange pachinko balls for a 'special prize' which you can then walk out of the parlor to exchange for money in a shop right next door, which will then resell the special prize to the parlor (which often owns them in the first place). It's a very roundabout way to create a system of gambling for money through an accepted legal loophole, creating a gambling market worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Ain't capitalism grand?
The way the Gold Saucer operates is like an unholy mix of Western casinos and pachinko parlor. In order to enter, you pay money up front. That money doesn't entitle you to anything beyond mere access. Once inside, you cannot purchase GP with gil as if they were casino tokens. Instead, what you can do is access one of two activities - the Chocobo Races, or anything in the Wonder Square, and then pay gil to take part in that activity. Then, if you win, you get a certain amount of GP.
GP cannot be traded back for gil. GP can only be spent within the Gold Saucer to access either further activities or privileges, or prizes. So for instance, I can spend a few hundred gil on 'Sumo Wrestling,' gain 5 GP total, then spend some of that GP on a Potion.
Sumo Wrestling, a game which takes 100 gil a pop, is seemingly impossible to win, and only reward 1 or 2 GP if you miraculously do.
Since you can buy Potions anywhere and you lose significantly more gil in the 'translation' to GP due to high prices of entry and lost games, you obviously don't want to buy them with GP unless you're totally desperate to just get rid of your meager casino gains. Instead, you're being tempted by the real prizes - like a Gold Ticket for 300 GP, or the mysterious ?????? for 500 GP. Or, alternatively and more perniciously, you spend GP to take part in GP-gated games which give you a chance to gain a unique prize.
Everything about this is designed to lure you in with flashing lights and get you to spend all your hard-earned money gambling on gaining enough GP to get the big prize and leaving you out to dry without gil and without enough GP to get the big prizes anyway. And you can't save-scum it, because saving costs GP. And whatever GP you have at the end, it can't be converted back into cash. It's vicious.
God but I wish this had a quicksave. I can respect the effort put into replicating the predatory ruthlessness of a real casino on an intellectual level, but I don't want to suffer through it.
Still, I am a diligent LPer. I will give every game one shot, for you, dear reader.
We've gone other the Arm Wrestling minigame, it sucks; you're meant to simply click [OK] as quickly as possible, and this doesn't appear to be possible to do it fast enough on my keyboard. It's a waste of money.
The Super Dunk minigame is also simple. You push and hold [OK] to "gather strength" and release to throw the ball. Too quick, you fall short, too long, you bounce off. There is no gauge or anything to indicate the correct timing; you just have to waste money guessing on the correct timing on failed throws until you've figured it out and then try to replicate it. I don't have time for this.
The 3D Battler. Now we're talking. Each session costs 200 gil. The game produces a holographic simulation of Cloud and an opponent of a particular level, and we try to pilot Cloud to a win. We have three buttons, corresponding to high, mid, and low attacks, in classic fighting game fashion; each attack counters one another in a rock-paper-scissor pattern, granting one point to the victor of the exchange, until one character has won 10 points, defeating the other and, if victory is ours, advancing onto the next round with a tougher opponent. Exciting! Novel! Cool!
…or so you'd think.
If you're not familiar with this minigame, you might have guessed the issue when I said that there were three moves operating in a rock-paper-scissor fashion. For all intents and purposes, the game is rock-paper-scissor… Against an AI opponent that has no set pattern, no tells, no predictable moves, no way to mind game them.
The 3D Battler is purely random. It doesn't matter if you press Low Attack repeatedly over and over or if you randomize your blow entirely, it changes nothing. The outcome is completely random and probability-based, you have X% sense of winning or losing every time.
In our case, we beat the first two opponent and lose against the third, a fly guy in a disco suit and afro. This is not surprising. There is a cumulative 3.25% chance of beating this guy. For beating our first two opponents, our reward is… 3GP.
Again; the rewards we actually want are rated in the hundreds of GP. Even using the saving point is 5 GP. This whole thing is a ripoff.
There is, however, some light in this darkness. A kinda boring but cute game that has something resembling a real reward. Mog's House.
…
So I think what this game is doing with moogles is really interesting.
I have no idea if actual, flesh-and-blood moogles will feature in the game. As far as we can tell so far, they may be an entirely fictional creature in-universe, a fairy tale mascot. And that's the keyword; a mascot.
Moogles first appeared in FFIII. They were then brought back in V and VI, where both times, they acted as cutesy mascot figures. They're a well-established, successful mascot for the franchise; the US had this funny ad about Mog taking applications for FFVI bad guys. So what happens in this game..?
Moogles have been monetized in-universe.
Moogle iconography. Moogle plushies. Moogle video games. Moogle fortune-telling machine. Moogles have the density of presence in Gold Saucer of Mickey Mouse at DisneyLand, and they're all… wildly inconsistent. This pre-FF7-accurate moogle in his mushroom homes with its saccharine sweet adventure is inches away from Cait Sith's giant Moogle Ogre mount. The mascot of the franchise has been turned into the mascot of the exploitative Shinra-owned Gold Saucer in-universe.
Makes me wonder if some of the gamedevs weren't taking shots at corporate here. I imagine moogle merch was already on the shelves by the time this game was in development, and I think this might be making fun of it.
The Mog's House 'game' is exceedingly simple. The narrator first gives us a little story:
Narrator: "This is Mog's House. It's in Mog Forest on Mt. Mog."
[Mog comes out.] Narrator: "The beginning of another day in the life of a Mog. This year, Mog is pipapopupo years old. …that's 28 eight human years. He's at that age when he should be looking for a mate. But before Mog can become an adult, he first needs to learn how to fly. Even though Mog trains every day, he still can't seem to get off the ground."
[Mog attempts to jump off a mushroom and pratfalls into the ground.] Narrator: "Looks like he's still got a long way to go… Here's where you come in. Help Mog learn how to fly by pushing [OK] and feeding him his favorite Kupo nut. But don't overfeed him. He won't be able to fly if he's too fat."
Man. Imagine being over 28 year old and people asking you when you're going to find a girlfriend because you've been single for the last [UNDISCLOSED]. Let's not think about this again.
Anyway the 'game,' as it were, is perfunctory. You push OK. A berry lands in front of Mog. Mog makes a 'rubbing his belly hungrily' animation. Once you've given him the exact number of berry, he makes an excited jump animation. If you then give him another berry (why would you) he plays a 'feeling stuffed' animation and won't be able to fly, but you can just try again immediately. The only issues with this game are that it's boring and takes forever, it's effectively impossible to fail.
Once that's done, Mog climbs on top of a mushroom, jumps into the air, and…
Notably, the game uses 'Mog' and 'Moogle' interchangeably as both Mog's given name and the name of his species, so I think the translator might not have realized they were two different things and named Moogles 'Mogs.' This is actually something I remember from the French localization of FFIX, where 'Moogles' were just called 'Mogs.'
Mog goes back into his house to take a well-deserved rest, and soon, a female moogle (you can tell because she's pink) comes to his door.
Mog must fly again, in front of her this time, to impress her. The minigame is the same except the correct number of berries differ, but again, they're indicated by a very obvious tell from Mog when you hit the correct number. Mog flies, the girl (her name is Mag) 'falls for his graceful flying form,' and they move in together.
Sometime later, the narrator says Mog and Mag are doing well together, and that they are headed for a 'quiet date in the forest,' and wishes them 'lots and lots of healthy Mogs,' only to be surprised by the fact that they have, in fact, been way busier than he thought.
There is a comically long line of Mogs pouring out of that mushroom house, just straight up 'when you think it's done, suddenly another pops up,' to the point that the Narrator is completely taken aback. It's the one funny gag that makes this whole dull affair worthwhile.
(I'm sorry; the aesthetic of the Mog's House minigame is unbearably kitsch for me. I'm pretty sure it's the point, that it's meant to be tacky as hell as part of the whole 'Moogle Monetization' thematic angle, but urgh.)
Of course, since this game can actually be completed by a human being without sinking thousands of gil into it until it coughs up the correct random outcome, it has no reward.
Okay, that's not true, there's a one-time reward - the guy next to us is impressed we managed to finish it (HOW? IT'S THE EASIEST GAME IN THE WORLD) and gives us 30 GP for our trouble. It's a decent amount, in that it'll cover one save and a single turn at the GP-costing activities in the Gold Saucer. Thank God; the alternative was actually playing the Wonder Square minigames, and fuck that.
There's one decent minigame in the whole lot, and it is, of course, a repeat of the only decent minigame in the game so far:
You can replay the motorbike chase sequence. And I do! And it's fun! I enjoyed it the first time, and I enjoy it now. Unfortunately, getting any real rewards requires being really good at it, scoring over 10k points; I only manage 4,6k and I'm not going to ruin this for myself by trying it more than once.
And that's the Wonder Square and all its activities. There are a couple of items we can't access yet, a snowboarding minigame and a submarine minigame, which are occupied/in renovation, so they're probably minigames from later in the main story that will unlock once we've played them in the plot.
This place is awful, designed to drain of your money on the feeble hope of a great prize, doling out laughably small rewards as an incentive to convince you that you can slowly build up to a win, all the while losing all your cash.
It's awful. It's a perfect gambling establishment.
The overwhelming 90s ambience, though, is getting to me. As a cyberpunk fan, I used to think there was no such thing as 'too much neon,' but there is, and it's Wonder Square. Take me out of here.
Alright, what's left?
Oh, lord.
Chocobo racing.
I'm already afraid.
The (always female, of course) receptionists in this area are all in swimsuits with blue hair, which is notably not the case elsewhere, so I guess we're doubling on the draw of gambling on races with sexiness. Sure, I guess.
The most involved part of the process of betting on races is trying to parse out what the hell the rules even are. When you buy a ticket you don't just bet on one horse, sorry chocobo, you buy a 'box' and then you select combinations of chocobos paired with numbers and a 'limited wheel'?
I have no idea if any of this makes sense if you're used to horse racing. To me all of it is gibberish. There are 'ranks' of races, referred to by letter with C at the lowest and oh my gooood I don't caaaare. I just slam money on the table and then pick random bullshit when the table appears.
There are item ranks for rewards which are tied to I Have No Idea, each chocobo has a Top Speed and Stamina value and I don't know how they interact, whatever. Let's just roll with it.
Chocobo racing!
I knew Mario Kart. You, sir, are no Mario Kart.
This isn't a 'minigame,' really, it's just a spectacle. You watch the chocobos race, and find out if one of yours won. They race through a psychedelic landscape which we are informed is false - virtual reality projected on the sides of the race track to make it more exciting. I'll be real though, I have no idea which chocobo I even bet on. I have no idea what's going on.
But hey, didn't keep me from winning!
I think what happened is that one of the tiles I picked was labeled 1-2, and the winner in the end was Number 2, the blue chocobo? I had no idea that was what was happening while betting, I thought I was choosing which chocobo I was betting on by which one was highlighted on the screen when I confirmed, in this case the purple one, Rudy.
I am asked whether I want the GP or an item, and I pick the GP just because I have no idea what items I would even get. Looking through the screenshots, I think I might have missed my chance at a Megalixir by doing that.
Whatever. This is borderline incomprehensible to me. One of the characters says that if I owned my own chocobo, I might participate in the races myself; this at least sounds like a more worthwhile investment of my time than this.
There's only a couple more activities left to check, and they're… interesting.
The first time we went to the Speed Square, we couldn't pay for its actual activity. But now that we've made some GP, it's time to go back and see what this is all about!
The Speed Square offers us a shooting gallery-rollercoaster combo. The party splits, enthusiastically jumping into their seats, and the cart sets into motion, and our view shifts to…
…an FPS.
Or rather, a rail shooter, an older, more primitive form of the genre, and it looks like this.
Incredible.
I feel like I might have underestimated FF7's ambition. Are its games an overly quirky attempt to vary and spice up gameplay, or are they an attempt to make a game that is all genres of game, all at once?
If you've never played a rail shooter before, it's a kind of pre-FPS FPS. You're in first person view, but you don't control your character; rather, your character moves along a preset path, enemies appear along that path, and you control the aiming/cursor, trying to shoot down as many as possible.
These ghosts, for instance, drift across the screen, and we need to use the D-pad to move the cursor to them to shoot them and gain points. Different enemies have different speeds and movement patterns and are worth different points, but for the most part it all boils down to 'they appear on the screen very briefly and are gone.
The graphics are… primitive, to say the least, but at least there is some gameplay. It's not much; the rail shooter I grew up with was Time Crisis, which…
Okay so, Time Crisis looks like this:
Now, Time Crisis was originally from 1995, two whole years before FFVII, but saying that is slightly inaccurate; Time Crisis was initially an arcade game, only ported to the PSX in 1997 - but the difference between a single 3D minigame thrown into a 3D disc FMV extravaganza and a game actually designed from the ground-up as a rail shooter is, ah, stark, in terms of presentation.
Anyway I bring up Time Crisis mostly because if you've never heard about it, you probably don't know that it came with the most insane gimmick possible:
A custom controller that was an actual fucking gun.
The gun had a sensor of some kind, and basically you controlled the protagonist's aim on the screen by pointing the gun, and you shot by pulling the trigger. Another button was used to take cover/reload. Because the shooter is on rails, there was no need for any other form of controls; you just grabbed your gun and shot things. It was fucking sick.
And yes, it did mean you navigated the menu by shooting the options you wanted to select. This was a golden age whose heights civilization never reached again.
Anyway, the Speed Square rail shooter loops through a mountain, a crystal cavern, and outer space, fighting ghosts, fighter planes, and actual stars, before ending in a confrontation with an alien spaceship.
The gauge on the left is our energy. When we shoot while the gauge is full, we do max damage; when we shoot while it's low, we do low damage. For most enemies, that doesn't matter (they have very little health), it mostly matters in the flying spaceship fight (or "fight"; the enemies don't fight back, they just exist on screen) where if you simply pull the trigger down to unload the magazine into it, you end up running out of power and not doing enough damage to kill it in your limited time. Instead, we have to use burst fire.
…
This game is fun. It's nothing to write home about, but, as a "spend some GP to have a ride on the shooter rollercoaster," it does the job. I enjoyed myself. It functions as what I think it's meant to be, an ersatz of the arcade in your living room. Less relatable now that arcades don't… exist? Anymore? But it makes sense within its context. I had fun.
Now, as a way of getting prizes, it fucking sucks. You need 3000 points in order to get a prize, which I just about barely manage on a second attempt, in which case our reward is…
Another 1/35 Soldier toy.
I went and looked it up, and these items are, in fact, worthless. They're literally just useless. They're one of three items we can win at 3k points, the other being the Super Sweeper (another toy model, also useless), and… The Masamune Blade?!
Yes. A replica of the Masamune Blade. A mall katana fashioned after that of the famous war hero. Completely without purpose.
I love what this is saying, as a setting element, but yeah. At this score, the only rewards are literally worthless. Now, if we scored 5,000 points we would get a new weapon for Aerith, but… I'm not doing that. It would take a dozen tries, if not more. The reason being that the speed of the aiming cursor means it's impossible to beat the game on reflexes alone. You have to actually memorize where the various enemies are coming from and have your cursor already waiting there; they're just not on screen long enough for the cursor to travel the distance to them. And I'm just not going to dedicate mental space to memorizing enemy location in this one minigame. We're done here.
One last attraction. I've kept this one for last but, alas, it will be a partial disappointment, though still a spectacle.
This here is 'Round Square,' a slow ride on the outside of the Golden Saucer, in a cabin designed to look like a, well, wooden cabin, like at some kind of bucolic mountainside resort. Only two characters can ride at once, so Cait Sith will stay behind while Cloud and Tifa ride it.
Round Square is basically another flex on Square's part, and I can't say it's unearned. Essentially, we alternate between Cloud and Tifa riding the cabin, looking through the window in front of which pass things like a live chocobo race, with them looking out the window and showing us an FMV of the Gold Saucer from an outside angle, showing how thoroughly the devs designed it, with each individual section theoretically recognizable from above. All culminating in the cabin riding up to the apex of the Gold Saucer, the crowning jewel at its top…
…a giant gold-plated statue of a bare-chested Dio in a speedo and wrestling belt with tiny angel wings at his back.
Fucking. Incredible.
The funniest gag in this section is the controls. Because we do have control over Cloud! …'s head gestures. Like the incredibly socially awkward boy that he is, he spends the entire time sitting with his arms crossed. By moving the D-pad or pushing OK, we can cause him to tilt his head to the left, or the right, or to lean forward, and that's literally all.
Also he doesn't say a single sentence the entire ride even as Tifa points out stuff to him and goes "wow, look at this!" I take it back, this is the funniest gag, I tried setting them up for a date-like activity and Cloud is so bad at it it wrapped around to being hilarious.
Then the ride is over, and that's it. We've gone through all the attractions currently available in the Gold Saucer (more to be unlocked at a later date)!
Oh, wait, just one more thing. The Gold Saucer has, of course, an inn and item shop, in case we need them. And like everything else here, they're a ripoff. But they have one thing going for them…
The receptionist is an Igor and there are ghosts playing chess. Flawless.
Absolutely flawless aesthetic.
Look, it's campy as hell, for sure. This is some Hotel Transylvania-ass inn. But I love the childish spookiness of it, so over-the-top yet harmless, in direct contrast to the effective horror the game knows perfectly well how to utilize. This is just Having Fun With It. So is the rest of the Gold Saucer, but it doesn't resonate with me in the same way this does, maybe because when I was a child I had that PC game that was, like, a child-level point-and-click haunted mansion? I will probably never remember its name or find it again, but it exists as a vague memory, and it was kind of that level of kitschy spooks.
I will say the fact that the vendor you interact with to use the services drops from the ground as a hanged man is pretty startling.
However, beyond briefly enjoying the aesthetics, there's nothing for us here - we don't need to rest and don't need anything at the item shop.
So let's head onwards!
…
This is officially where any recollection I might have of the game ends. They were already fuzzy at best; even having played the game a decade ago, I had no memory of Mt Corel, or the boat trip; I basically remembered Midgar and the Nibelheim flashback, and even that in fuzzy details. But the Gold Saucer is where my playthrough ended. I hit the Minigame Wall and thought "a'ight, I'll get back to this later" and never did. Anything beyond this point I know only from pop culture osmosis or Advent Children or Remake.
…
So was the Gold Saucer trip worth it?
Hell no. This is a horrible place designed to pry you from all your money while dangling prizes you'll never get in front of you and foisting worthless trinkets as compensations when you fail. Most of the games suck to play, the ones that are moderately fun are impossible to play well enough to earn anything from, overall I rate this place Caesar Palace/10, a constant overwhelming assault on my senses from every direction. Please please take me out of here.
…what's this?
We headed back to the Battle Square, the one that wasn't available to the public, and what we see upon arriving is a Shinra soldier standing… And then dramatically falling to his knees, then face down on the ground, dead.
This is the second time you're using this trick, game; it's cool, don't get me wrong, but don't overuse it.
The party unfolds and Cloud leans down to examine the soldier, confirming he's dead - Tifa calls out to him to wait but, with the possibility of Sephiroth being this close overriding all concern, Cloud rushes up the stairs alone and enters the Battle Square lobby.
More dead bodies everywhere. Except, there's a twist. As Cloud leans down to examine the bodies closer, he finds that they weren't cut down - they're all dead from gunshot wounds. And Sephiroth, as Cloud says, would never use a gun.
(Who would have known the genocidal bad guy was so based tbh.)
There's one person still alive - though not for long. One of the receptionists is groaning in pain; Cloud rushes to them.
Cloud: "Hey, what happened!" Receptionist: "Ugh… ugh… a man with a gun… on his arm…" Tifa: "A gun on his arm!?"
The receptionist is silent, having likely succumbed to their injuries.
…
Obviously we're meant to go 'could this be Barret!?' He split off from the group angrily while ranting about chasing Sephiroth, he has a gun on his arm, easy connection. And, like, it's not like we haven't been killing Shinra everywhere we go. The scene is framed as another 'the party arrives on the scene of a mysterious massacre' scary moment, but… When you think about it, this is basically the scene countless Shinra troops have seen after arriving in the aftermath of an Avalanche raid.
But whoever shot everybody also shot the receptionists. And that is the one thing that makes me think it can't be Barret, because those guys are just civilians. They're just employees, and not even the bad, executive kind, just low-level clerks trying to make ends meet. I don't think Barret would just shoot them in a blind rage?
We know there's another plot-relevant gunslinger, because we got a firearm that no current party member can equip all the way back in Kalm. Could they be our mysterious killer? I mean… They would still have to have murdered those clerks.
Before the group can talk about this, though, someone arrives on the scene.
Dio, the owner of the Gold Saucer, along with what appears to be Gold Saucer security. Cloud tries to deny the accusations but, not only are we caught in the middle of all those dead bodies, we are, in fact, wanted terrorists with a massive body count of Shinra soldiers. Cait Sith, recognizing things are about to get ugly, starts hopping towards the exit, and Cloud and Tifa follow.
Unfortunately we are in Battle Square. And that means when we flee out of that door in the back, we end up cornered… In the arena.
Oh no, the doors opened to reveal robots!
Alright! Cornered by the Gold Saucer owner, who unleashes his robots on us, in the middle of the Gold Saucer's very own area! Time for an exciting boss battle after this past hour of weird minigames! We can finally see what Cait Sith can do in action!
…I'm sorry, what?
The robots just grabbed us without a fight and carried us off to Dio's disposal chute and dropped us down the Forgetting Hole?
That's bullshit, man.
Ah, well. Nothing to do about it, I guess. I do like the irony of the hole being labeled "Gateway to Heaven," at least.
I skipped some dialogue but it's all some variation around "Please listen to me this isn't what it looks like" vs "I don't need to listen to you criminal scum." Cloud, Tifa and Cait Sith all get dropped down the bottomless hole and land in this scrapyard-looking place; Cait Sith, who was probably an employee (slash possession) of the Saucer, knows what this place is: Corel Prison, a desert prison.
Oh.
Ooooh.
We are in that wasteland around the Gold Saucer. The same we couldn't enter because of the quicksands. The same quicksands that are now going to keep us in.
Welp. At least the game's foreshadowing/setup-and-payoff remains top-notch… When it's doing it with the environment, not with dialogue, at least.
Cait Sith: "I heard that once you get in, you can never get out… But, there was one special exception…"
But before Cat Sith can tell us anything more about that, Tifa looks around, and there, at the bottom of the screen, she spots - Barret!
Barret: "Stay back! This's something I gotta deal with. Jus' leave me alone…"
[Barret leaves.] Cait Sith: "Whew! That's one of your friends? He sure looks dangerous…" Tifa: "Barret…" Cloud: [Leaning next to the body on the ground] "This one's been shot, too…"
Well. It certainly looks like Barret is in trouble. However he found his way down there, whether he's the one shooting all these people for mysterious reasons or whether he's on the trail of someone else who's leaving these bodies behind for whatever reason, something is up here.
But for now, there is a Save Point nearby, and so we will save our progress and stop there for today.
I wonder what the others are up to. Are they just having a fun time in the Gold Saucer with no idea we're gone? Are they already looking for us and will be staging a rescue operation at some point? Did they get captured as well? More unknowns for until after we've dealt with whatever is going on with Barret!
Man, Golden Saucer. What a wild gameplay concept. Final Fantasy VI had a "flying casino" in the form of Setzer's Blackjack airship, but we couldn't actually interact with it, the casino angle was purely décor (and also there was oddly no sign that he was taking on patrons at any point), and I suspect that someone on the dev team wanted to make it "for real" but didn't get the chance until now, and were fully unleashed by the introduction of the Gold Saucer. I… would call the experience 'uneven' but that would imply it has peaks, which it doesn't really; it has novelty, that's for sure, a dazzling array of bullshit to throw at you. But mostly it's a parade of kitschy designs and flashy colors and weird, clunky minigames that are all rigged against you, all designed to drain you of your hard-earned gil. I walked in with 6,000 gil and walked out with 1,000 with absolutely no prize to show for it (though most of that was the inevitable entry fee that I had to pay no matter what); I would be objectively better off reloading my previous save and beelining through the plot events, recruiting Cait Sith and gunning for the Battle Square without spending a cent, than actually engaging with anything in the casino.
But the novelty is there. As clunky and overwhelming as it is, it is fun to walk through the first time around and trying out each minigame once. If I treat it as an amusement park, take a couple of rides on the Speed Square rail, take the Round Square turn, and try each game once just to see what it's like, I don't regret my time spending with it. Engaging with it as a casino and trying to actually win the top prizes, though? Screw that.
I can definitely see why my younger self tapped out here. It's intimidating and overwhelming and the Save Point gag, while funny, makes it extremely onerous to tap out of the Gold Saucer and try again if you find yourself having suddenly wasted your funds. So I just… didn't. And gave up.
Well. From now on, we're venturing into the territory Young Omicron never trod. A bold new world awaits.
This, then, leads into the wildest party addition so far: Cait Sith declares that, as a fortune teller, having that kind of vague, unclear prediction hanging around is going to bug him; and he'll never be able to relax if he doesn't see how it's resolved, so he's coming with us. Tifa asks Cloud if it's alright letting them join, and then Cait Sith clarifies that this is not a request and forcibly merges into Cloud to join our party.
The funniest gag in this section is the controls. Because we do have control over Cloud! …'s head gestures. Like the incredibly socially awkward boy that he is, he spends the entire time sitting with his arms crossed. By moving the D-pad or pushing OK, we can cause him to tilt his head to the left, or the right, or to lean forward, and that's literally all.
Also he doesn't say a single sentence the entire ride even as Tifa points out stuff to him and goes "wow, look at this!" I take it back, this is the funniest gag, I tried setting them up for a date-like activity and Cloud is so bad at it it wrapped around to being hilarious.
Cloud whenever he faces the slightest inconvenience in life be like:
Man though, I don't remember a thing about the Golden Saucer. Genuinely from the start to the Desert Prison it's nothing but static. The Desert Prison I remember perfectly, and it was after that I ended up dropping the game. I guess I just have an automatic mental defence against gambling, possibly that it makes me violent and desirous of crimes-
when I was a child I had that PC game that was, like, a child-level point-and-click haunted mansion? I will probably never remember its name or find it again, but it exists as a vague memory, and it was kind of that level of kitschy spooks.
I have a similar memory, and for me it was Hugo's House of Horrors. I particularly recall needing to talk to the waiter to get a pork chop to give to a guard dog, and learning the word 'bung' because I needed a boat to not sink.
I think what happened is that one of the tiles I picked was labeled 1-2, and the winner in the end was Number 2, the blue chocobo? I had no idea that was what was happening while betting, I thought I was choosing which chocobo I was betting on by which one was highlighted on the screen when I confirmed, in this case the purple one, Rudy.
Yeah, the bets you place are apparently for which one you think will win, which is... really not what I thought was going on in the image of the betting screen. I was thinking it looked like you're supposed to pick one Chocobo and guess where they'll place, so if you pick 1-3 you're betting it will be either 1st, 2nd or 3rd, but nope it's "Chocobo n1 and n3 will be the first two to cross the finish line"
Man though, I don't remember a thing about the Golden Saucer. Genuinely from the start to the Desert Prison it's nothing but static. The Desert Prison I remember perfectly, and it was after that I ended up dropping the game. I guess I just have an automatic mental defence against gambling, possibly that it makes me violent and desirous of crimes-
Every time someone tries to introduce me to a gacha game (which is like four times so far), I make it about as far as it takes for the game to try and explain to me its currency/pull/character-feeding mechanics at which point my brain starts doing a kind of static sound and I put the game down and never play it again. It literally won't imprint. I choose to see it as an innate mental defense against gambling-
This reminds me of Shin Megami Tensei 1's swap from yen to macca at about the quarter point of the game: a way of separating the player from their early game cash so that they'll actually take the time to fight enemies rather then do the bare minimum of grinding.
One of the characters says that if I owned my own chocobo, I might participate in the races myself; this at least sounds like a more worthwhile investment of my time than this.
I thought you didn't particularly enjoy the tutorial on how to capture the chocobo back before the Midgar Zolom? You'd need to engage with that to have a chocobo of your own to ride. If you decide to do that, I suppose the races are fun enough, as far as a racing minigame can be in a game like FFVII, if nothing else - but there's a lot more hassle involved there than it might appear at current glance.
Of course, they're certainly the best way to earn GP at the Gold Saucer, but ultimately the Battle Square is the only attraction that is actually worthwhile for the purpose of benefiting from the Gold Saucer, as it has prizes actually worth winning; the prizes you can win by racing the chocobo yourself are decent but not as good. Also, unless I'm misremembering, the Battle Square should open up much, much sooner than the chocobo races - I believe it should be already available on your next visit, in fact - although the best prizes only unlock at the same time chocobo racing proper (not the betting on it you can do now) does, very late in the game.
Man. Imagine being over 28 year old and people asking you when you're going to find a girlfriend because you've been single for the last [UNDISCLOSED]. Let's not think about this again.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed meeting Proto-Godbert. There is no Hildebrand prototype running around unfortunately.
Anyway Cait Sith. Probably the most contentious character in the game, partly because of that introduction. His limit break has two stages, the first is Dice, which level 1 throws two die and calculates the damage based on that, and level 2 throws four. Honestly it's pretty poor, and his stage 2 limit break isn't much better. His main thing is he has a lot of health, making him useful for the cover materia.
That manipulate materia is pretty useful though for getting some enemy skills by forcing the enemy to target you with those abilities. The only other option is to confuse them and pray to RNGesus. There's an enemy back near Fort Condor if you don't mind trekking all the way back there called Zemzelett which knows White Wind. There's also an enemy called Beach Plug you can find on the beach (what a twist) once you get out of Gold Saucer. That one gives Big Guard, which gives three buffs to all party members: haste, magic barrier, and physical barrier.
Well, welcome to the Gold Saucer prison. Have fun with the encounters, and I'm curious to see how you'll respond to a particular mechanic.
IIRC, part of the minigames were just letting interns get some experience in coding.
Omi, do you want to know the easy trick to make GP, or no spoilers even at the pain of minigames (won't spoil the plot, mind)?
IIRC, part of the minigames were just letting interns get some experience in coding.
Omi, do you want to know the easy trick to make GP, or no spoilers even at the pain of minigames (won't spoil the plot, mind)?
I believe, of the stuff introduced so far, the basketball game is the easiest one to rack GP up once you work out the timing. It's always the same and pretty predictable. In particular, the rewards scale upwards as you keep a streak going, with some double-or-nothing bits. Means as long as you've got gil you can get the GP you need to save or participate in the Battle Square. And while gil right now is limited, we all know how stuff like that scales.
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