- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It hurt itself in confusion!
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
It hurt itself in confusion!
Spectral Waltz
Scatterbrained Writer
- Location
- Walking the Endless Corridors
I still have some of the rants around Xande's motives, Galuf's uh... Stuff... and Sephiroth's origins saved as images for occasional sharing in meme channels. They amuse me so.
EDIT: These ones!
EDIT: These ones!
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
This one is actually very funny to me now, since I've just been putting a lot of time into writing about Omicron's writing, and do you know someone who is very blunt and overt with his metaphors a lot of the time? I bet you can figure it out.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
This comparison is obviously slander!
Omicron's works don't have enough pictures to count as visual metaphors.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Just stab me in the back, why don't you
- Location
- PA
Oh no! The most powerful technique of the Golden Boots!
The flash step.
…That's the compressed meme version and now BEHOLD MY VENGEANCE!!!
- Pronouns
- She/They
If it helps, while I'm sure it was frustrating in the end, reading through intense and in depth speculation on the villains' motivations very interesting at the time, and absolutely hilarious when you got to the end and it turned out we'd been bamboozled.
Not to mention that when the wild speculation manages to land on something that's actually true, you get to pull the "aha! I called it all along!" card. So really, it sounds like a win-win to me.
Final Fantasy VIII, Part 14: Escape from D-District Prison
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Welcome back, class, to Final Fantasy VIII 201. Today's lesson: Escape from D-District Prison.
Boy, it's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry about that. Let's get this show back on the road.
A recap: After fucking up the assassination attempt against the Sorceress Edea, our group was thrown into jail. Squall is being tortured; Rinoa was taken away to parts unknown; the others are in a cell together. Zell just escaped, retrieved everybody's weapons, and now it's time to break out for real!
Just as everyone has geared up and is preparing to break out, the "Mean Guy" guard comes in, and this time, he's got visitors. Not the good kind, though.
Biggs and Wedge survived the beating they got at the Comms Tower, and they're back.
Biggs stammers that he's going to 'teach us a lesson' and that, while it might seem cowardly to to fight unarmed prisoners, we have to understand his position, it's tough being a Galbadian officer.
This is, of course, the line on which our party chooses to draw their weapons, playing a victory pose animation to show them off while Biggs ramble until the realization sinks in. It's a funny beat.
God, they got demoted too. He's "Lieutenant" Biggs now. Wedge's own Scan description even says 'Unfortunately, still works under Biggs.' These two are bound together by some curse. And we're about to kick their asses again!
After I reload because I just realized I forgot to Junction everyone so only Zell has any abilities. Oops.
The fight itself isn't much to write home about, they're just extra strong G-Soldiers, we just run down their HP. Still, it's the opportunity to do something I've been forgetting to do this entire time:
Summon the Brothers. Remember, that Minotaur duo we fought and claimed as GFs in the Tomb of the Unknown King?
And I'm glad I did, because they have one of the funniest summon animation in the game.
It's a thirty-second skit in which the larger brother tosses the enemy into the air on a huge earth plate, then the two brothers play rock-paper-scissor to decide who has to do the follow-up, the larger one loses and is tossed into the air, tears streaming from his eyes, launched like a missile at the flying enemies. I love it.
When Biggs is beaten, he asks despairingly what's the rank below Lieutenant (I think it would be Sergeant). However, just like with the Black Widow mech, once we leave, Biggs mutter the strength to send out a call, and now the whole prison facility is on high alert.
Apparently they keep monsters either as additional security forces, or as wild beast like some kind of insane 'release wild tigers to put down a prison riot' scheme? That's another fascinating piece in the puzzle of Galbadian monster integration. They also 'lift the anti-magic field' to let those monsters and soldiers use their magic, which means the anti-magic field wasn't spell-specific but applied to everything, which I guess means we should take Zell being able to use magic as non-diegetic.
One of the mechs used by Galbadian forces.
The prison as a dungeon is… Extremely dull. You see that screenshot above? Every single floor of the prison is identical. They're just this big circle around the central well with a stairs up and a stairs down. Every floor has two doors, and on most floors, only one of those two doors is unlocked and leads to a cell, which are also identical. Some of these cells contain Draw Points or Items, and some contain prisoners. The prisoners show no interest in escaping (and to be fair, with monsters roaming the corridors, I get it), but they are, oddly enough, willing to… Play Triple Triad.
Man, that game really is the great unifier. There is only one thing common to all the people of the planet, and it's their addition to a children's card game.
Now, these matches are different from the usual; the prisoners ask for money before we can play, but they promise us a special reward if we win. Which in theory is interesting, but there's only one problem…
Galbadia uses the 'Random' rule. That rule means that instead of me getting to pick my cards for each match, I am given a random set of five from my library. And I have a lot of cards, and most of them are utter garbage. In this above match I actually got fairly lucky; the fish card with 3/5/2/1 is the only truly garbage card I got, and I actually drew Ifrit, one of my stronger cards. That's still not enough to pull off a win somehow (in fairness, I played very badly that time), and that means I lose the best card of the set - Ifrit himself. Most of the time, it's even worse; get a grab bag of utterly worthless cards that leave me no hope of actually winning.
I spend a couple of minutes thinking about this. I've essentially avoided playing Triple Triad in Galbadia entirely because everyone uses the Random rule here so most matches are unwinnable. Except…
Well, when you think about it, my problem is that my pool is too full of worthless trash cards for the randomizer to pick from, right? So what if I… Reduced the pool?
Quezacotl's Card Mod ability allows it to transform any card into a specific item, usually a crafting item or a combat consumable. I haven't been using it at all because my ambition was to gather a full collection of every card in the game; however, the Random rule has made that a liability. So, with a heavy heart, I proceed to transform almost my entire collection of cards into items. The actual items I gain from this are secondary; the goal is just to reduce my card collection to only the strongest.
Pretty soon, I'm able to actually use all those boss and GF cards I've been collecting and that were just sitting useless in my library this whole time, and that makes winning fairly easy. The first guy we encounter gives us an upgrade to our Battle Meter, the menu option that shows us our (very basic) battle stats; that new upgrade gives us a break down per character.
As you can see, Squall is by far the character with the highest body count of the party, which isn't surprising considering he's mandatory for most of the game. Other Triple Triad players in the prison will instead give out random items, which have a high chance of being something worthless like a potion and a low chance to be something highly valuable like a permanent stat increase item. I give it a couple of shots but ultimately I have no interest in spending an hour in there spamming Triple Triad matches (that cost money, although I don't particularly care about that given that I have an infinite supply of it thanks to our salary) for a 1/32 chance of a rare drop, so we quickly move on. Eventually, we find the torture chamber in which Squall's unconscious body is still tied up.
Everyone is briefly worried about Squall, who grimly says that "It was hell," but they don't have time to waste just talking about it so everyone is immediately ready to leave again.
There's one bizarre thing, though: That little critter there? The little lion guy thing that's been hanging out with us after we saved it from the guards' abuse?
It approaches Squall, seems to smell him, and then repeats, "Laguna! Laguna!"
So. That's weird.
I mean, okay, it's a magical mascot and so can probably sense some kind of psychic bond between Squall and Laguna, although what's surprising is that means it would know Laguna. But…
Wait a minute.
The Codex actually updated with information about those guys.
…
These things are Moombas, and they're mutated animals (probably transformed by the Lunar Cry) that 'remember people by licking their blood.'
It approached a wounded Squall. Played an animation like smelling (or licking) him. And then said 'Laguna!'
I can't remember who in the thread had the wild theory that Squall and Laguna were literally the same person, not some kind of reincarnation deal but literally the same person suffering from some kind of memory erasure or physical transformation, but that was not the theory I was expecting this game to validate.
It could mean about a thousand other things, admittedly. If Squall is Laguna's kid, the Moomba could just be sensing that he has half of Laguna's DNA or something. But it's very suspicious.
The Moomba also serves as a… shortcut? When we talk to it, it says "MMMake, SSShortcut! FFFloor, WWWhere?" and then gives us a set of three choices (Floor 12, Floor 11, Floor 10). There's no clear explanation of how the shortcut works, and it doesn't matter anyway - the floors are all identical looking so I have no idea which one is which or whether I should care to revisit one floor in particular. We'll just plug in Encounter-half and do the floors one by one until we get out.
Zell actually asks if Squall didn't come to the prison as Laguna in the 'dream world,' but as we saw in the previous flashback, he did not. Everyone discusses whether they should go up or down and decides that going up is leading them nowhere so they should try going down instead. I hadn't thought about it, but it's true that in this environment, with no view of the outside and identical floors, you would have no idea how to find the exit? And given that most buildings are built aboveground, going down to find an exit at ground level makes sense.
Zell then takes note of the structure in the center of the well and asks Squall if he knows about it; Squall explains that it's a crane used to move detachable cells around the various floors. Selphie, displaying an extreme amount of Selphie-ness, deduces that this means the central well must go all the way to the bottom of the prison, and that therefore, all they need to do is jump down, and they'll be on their way out! Zell immediately points out the main problem with this plan, namely that none of them would survive it.
Honestly, I'm not sure he's right. It's unclear how tough SeeDs are, especially when magic is involved, but the human body isn't that far below the threshold of survivability for terminal velocity, a little enhancement would go a long way. And I mean, we have Float, we could just… Drift down.
But, well, that kind of problem-solving is for immersive sims and TES III: Morrowind, not JRPGs. Walking down all the way it is. For some of us, anyway; Zell manages to recall from his dream life as a janitor that the crane must be operated from two separate rooms at the same time, meaning someone has to stay down there, which cues into a comedy beat of the girls wordlessly letting him now that he's the one staying behind.
And with this, Squall has rejoined the party. Yay! If I understand the level scaling correctly, this should mean that our enemy levels are going to jump up considerably, as Zell was by far our lowest-level party member and he is by far the highest. As usual, capabilities don't really change beyond that; I just swap Zell's entire Junction list onto Squall using the Exchange function, meaning he inherits the same GFs, Magic Junctions, and Abilities. What a truly weird system.
Yadayadayada, climb down etc, and we get to the second control room.
At first it seems like Zell's explanation of which buttons to press will lead into a crane manipulation minigame, but thankfully sanity prevails and it's just a cutscene. The group pulls up one of the detachable cells, plugs it in at their level, and then decide to check out the inside. Strangely enough, said cell has a door leading to the outside! However…
…opening it only results in sand pouring into the room and no usable exit.
Quistis realizes that this means the entire prison is actually underground. Which means going down was not, in fact, the way to the exit. Before they can decide what to do next, they hear gunfire; the wardens have found Zell and are pursuing him.
Unfortunately, as soon as we beat this guy and run to the next screen, Zell collides with one of the wardens and falls over; the warden points his rifle at him but, before he can shoot, Squall comes in with a dramatic rescue.
That is admittedly a cool pose.
Zell is immediately grabbing Squall thanking him profusely for saving him, which immediately causes Squall to freak out and try to pry him off him. These two continue to be comically unsuited for each other.
Selphie and Quistis quickly arrive, and Selphie asks Squall why he ran off ahead of them, 'is Zell that important to you?' This obviously causes Squall even more mortification while, on the other side, Zell strikes a pose like he's playing it cool. I'm not saying I'd ship it, but-
The guards interrupt this little comedy beat by firing at everyone from off-screen, they all take cover and start saying there's no way they'll make it out, but then the guards scream and stop all of a sudden, and who is it here but…
…Irvine, who shows up, shoots down the guard, tries to do a dramatic slow-walk in, and gets kicked in the butt by Rinoa which causes him to roll down a set of stairs while she berates him for not agreeing to come with her earlier. When she sees Squall, Rinoa has a bit of internal monologue where she's simultaneously relieved to see he's alive and trying to convince herself she knew it all along.
So I guess we're about to find out what was going on with Irvine and Rinoa!
Quistis: "Rinoa, you're all right!"
Irvine: "Uh huh." (He gets up from the floor.) "Of course. Courtesy of my escort."
Zell: "What's that supposed to mean?"
Rinoa: "My father pulled some strings with the military. He told them to get me, and only me, out."
Rinoa: "So this guy here…" (She facepalms.) "He came and got me. Just me! Knowing you were all captured!"
Irvine: "That's…"
Rinoa: "Isn't that horrible?"
Irvine: "Alright, alright…! I said I was sorry. That's why I'm here to help!"
Rinoa: "After I scratched you to death."
Irvine: "A-A-Anyhow, now's our chance."
…huh.
I mean, I guess it's as good a way as any to emphasize that Galbadia runs off corruption and nepotism, but, like… Rinoa and Irvine fought Edea. They weren't in some out of the way location like the Gateway Team, they personally joined Squall in fighting the Sorceress. But apparently Rinoa's father wasn't bothered at all, and Irvine was released, and Carraway had him sent to retrieve Rinoa? This is so strange. Also apparently Rinoa is a cat and scratches people when she's angry? Wild.
I can kinda see it as a continuation of the same theme of politics and plausible deniability that had Galbadia overlook Balamb Garden's kidnapping attempt by putting it on Seifer; Rinoa and Irvine are both way more obviously guilty than Quistis, Zell and Selphie, but Rinoa has a high-placed father who can tell everyone to overlook this youthful indiscretion and Irvine is a Galbadia Garden student who has certain agreements with Galbadia's government so he was sent back to them rather than arrested. Still, it feels like a stretch.
Irvine starts explaining that the whole prison is buried underground, but then more soldiers interrupt and it's time to run, with Irvine telling Squall to pick two party members and head up while he holds up the guards with the others.
One of the 'prisoners' we can run into, who runs an item store out of a cell, reveals that he's actually a Balamb Garden student undercover as a prisoner who is actually working for Galbadia right now. So even while all this is happening, Balamb is still hiring out mercenaries to Galbadia, at the same time it's taking hits on their major public figures? Incredible.
Anyway, it's mostly just ascending the same prison floors again. At one point, we run into another Moomba who gives us a Cottage, but other than that nothing of note until, finally, Squall and the others come out.
After so long in doors, it's nice to see the sky. Not much time to sightsee, though, as an alert says 'Prisoners may not go beyond this point, you will be terminated' and more guards attack.
…
I don't like this game's Limit Break mechanics.
Here's the thing: In FF7, the Limit gauge fills up when you take damage. Because of the pseudo-turn-by-turn structure of combat, you are guaranteed to be taking some damage over time. So even if you keep your characters always topped up, you are guaranteed to be seeing LBs fire off every now and then, which is good, because LBs are fun. But in FF8, LBs only trigger while in critical HP, which depending on how you play the game might either mean that you're spamming LBs every turn or that you will never see them.
Anyway, because the game is, broadly, very easy, it's easy to just kind of… Get bored with playing well and just facerolling through encounters. And here, it means I rolled into an actually decently tough encounter with two characters in critical HP, because most of the time that doesn't matter and it means I can proc LBs. Unfortunately, it mattered this time, and I got my team KO'd for my trouble; another problem I run into sometimes is that Life is a rare magic to Draw and most of my characters have GF rather than Item equipped, which leads to situations where I can't raise my KO'd party members because the only character left in the field doesn't have Life and can't use Phoenix Downs.
I suppose one might consider that 'difficulty' or 'challenge' based on the trade-offs of picking certain Abilities over others or how to allocated limited magic draw, but it doesn't really feel that way. It mostly just feels like busywork. When we reload and roll into battle with everyone healed up we just steamroll them.
One of Quistis's Limit Breaks is an instant kill attack with a delightfully cheap looking animation. So kitsch.
Before the group can proceed to leave the facility, however, they hear Irvine talking over the speakers and head back in. Irvine gives Squall instructions on how to operate the crane to get them out of the bottom levels, and once again it sounds like it's going to lead into a minigame and I am almost definitive it was planned to be one at a particular stage of development, but once again sanity prevails and we just move on with Squall's group heading out while the crane lifts up the others off-screen.
Squall, Quistis and Rinoa are running across a suspended bridge between two of the prisons' structures, when the game goes into FMV mode to reveal an outside view of the facility…
…right. Okay. That is one weird-ass building.
It is kinda weird that this structure is in fact fully emerged, considering we just said it was buried underground? But I guess it emerged at some point during our escape. The big secret of the D-District Prison, it seems, is that it is mounted on giant drills, so that it can either bury itself underground or rise into the sky depending on what is most convenient at the time. Prisoners heading down? Bury the whole thing in the sand. Fugitives heading up? Just pull the whole thing out and leave them dangling at five hundred feet. It's a… 'Clever' design is a little excessive, but in terms of overblown, excessive displays of fascist power and wealth, it does the job.
Rinoa is initially confused, saying the prison didn't look like this when she came in earlier, and the group decides to head to the next structure to try and figure out a way to make it out, but before they can reach it, the bridge they're on starts folding away and the drills start running, driving the whole place into the sand! We have to play Squall hanging onto the ledge and trying to shimmy his way out before he is buried in the sand along with the facility, heading towards the girls who are already on the other side.
It's a really cool scene, making fantastic use of the FMV happening in the background while the game plays out in front of it, and the camera moving angles as the drill gets further and further down. Plus, the group is split up, they have no clear way to escape. There's real tension here. And then…
It just ends.
The scene fades to black once Squall reaches the ledge on the girls' side and we move to them being in the garage of one of the upper sections of the prison. The prison is now fully buried in the sand aside from the three structures atop each drill which still just out. There are no guards coming in to intercept our party members, no explanation how Irvine's party made it out. We're just… Hanging out in the prison garage. The group talks a little about what a lucky break they just had, then steal two cars, one for each party, and leave.
What a weird anticlimax.
One transition later, our group parks in the middle of the desert. Selphie perches upon this rusted abandoned vehicle, looking at the horizon.
Squall: "What?"
Quistis: "The sorceress is about to launch missiles at Garden!?"
Selphie: "That's what Rinoa heard from Irvine!"
Squall: "The only thing we can do now is go back to Garden as soon as possible and warn the students."
Squall: "Alright, let's get in the car and go."
Selphie: "They're targeting both Balamb and Trabia Gardens! We have to interfere with the launch! We have to stop the missiles!"
…wait, did Squall just not tell anybody about the missile launch? Like, Selphie just said they learned about it from Irvine, does that mean Squall just forgot to mention it? And why is Trabia Garden even targeted? I guess the sorceress is planning to nuke both Gardens before they can pose a threat, even if only Balamb has moved against her now?
Squall can talk to everyone; Quistis and Irvine both comment that they understand how Selphie feels, but this isn't just about her. Selphie herself tells us that she just got transferred from Trabia Garden, which was previously obvious but I think is our first explicit confirmation? And that she can't just stand there knowing that her Garden is in danger. She tells Squall to please put together a group to head for the Galbadia Missile Base to stop the launch, presumably while the others head for Balamb Garden as planned.
Squall has a weird comment there:
I don't know if the implication is that he's growing more attached to his party members or… What? Is this a cheeky reference to Aerith dying shortly after leaving the party last game? Is this meant to be treated as an OOC warning, 'the characters you send on this mission might die/leave the story for a while'? As a bit of characterization it could be effective if that was a fear Squall had ever expressed before, but as it is it just feels odd.
Rinoa says that, as the squad leader, Squall should be part of the Balamb Garden team and choose who goes with him and who goes to the Missile Base. Which kinda sounds like it's Rinoa calling the shots while propping up Squall as leader, and he internally says he never asked to be a leader, which feels kind of hypocritical coming from him, but whatever.
All this is a distraction, because before the group can decide on anything, the missiles begin to fire.
It's sudden and legitimately kind of shocking; Selphie slumps to her knees in horror, and Irvine hesitatingly says that he heard Galbadia would be hitting Trabia first, then Balamb (again, why?).
Selphie: "Trabia… I'm sorry… I couldn't stop it… Please let everybody be alright. Please…"
(She gets up.)
Selphie: "That was a miss… right…?"
(She jumps down from the vehicle to talk to the others.)
Selphie: "Squall, we have to report to Balamb! Who are you taking?"
Zell: "C'mon, Squall!"
Quistis: "You have to decide, Squall!"
Rinoa: "Squall, think carefully now!"
Squall, mentally: "(I've had it up to here with this leader thing… Alright, alright… I'll choose.)"
Both Selphie managing her distress by hyperfocusing on the task at hand instead of thinking about it and Squall being browbeaten by everyone into acting like a leader against his will are fun character beats, but overall the construction of this scene is weird to me.
Anyway, I guess the implication is that Galbadia will be doing staggered missile launches, so there's still worth in heading to the Missile Base even after they already fired so as to prevent the second launch?
We are, again, dealing with a plot beat that arises from the insanely small size of Final Fantasy's worlds: Heading for a missile base that is in the same region, a few miles away and visible on the horizon in this screenshot is treated as a similar undertaking to crossing the desert, leaving the Galbadian Continent and crossing the ocean to reach Balamb Garden.
In any case, I put Rinoa and Zell on Squall's team, and Irvine and Quistis on Selphie's team. Squall asks Selphie if she actually has any kind of plan to get into the base, and she says she'll take that military vehicle to try and infiltrate it, but it's as far as she's thought it and she'll improvise on site.
Everyone piles up into their respective cars and splits up on their respective missions. We briefly follow Squall's team as they park near to a train station covered by an inexplicable green tint effect and hijack a train, again - they wait for the Galbadian soldiers at the control to leave briefly to take care of some business, then take the commands and start the train while the poor bastards is running after them begging them to stop.
I love that Rinoa is apologizing.
And then, somewhat to my surprise, we actually swap over to Selphie's party, in their military car!
Well, that'll do it for today! Let's save on the world map and come back to tackle the Missile Base later.
…
A bunch of life stuff happened that delayed me getting to do this update. But here's one thing I didn't tell you at the start:
I actually played through this section of the game about three weeks ago. I was planning to put it all into an update in the week that followed, but aforementioned life stuff happened that delayed me, I decided I needed to start a new creative writing project, I had assignments to finish, and so on. So when the time came to write this update, I had to reconstruct my play experience from screenshots with a significant delay.
But part of why it took me so long to get to it, even though I had already played through this section, is that I just found it… Uninspiring? I just really didn't feel like I had anything interesting to say. And that's made me drag my feet a bit because it felt like I was just recapping stuff without anything to comment on. If you compare this section to our previous 'bad dungeon,' the Centra Mining Complex, at least I had some stuff to say about how much it sucked. The prison didn't suck as much, but it was just… Very boring.
The only really interesting beat in this whole sequence is the missiles being fired and Selphie's reaction, which are a great moment of characterization for a character who has previously just been kind of in the background being light-hearted fun, but even so the whole thing is… Eh. The escape from the prison is confusing in terms of how this damned place works, what the politics of Galbadia around Irvine and Carraway are like. I found out after finishing the sequence there was a permanently missable item that expands Zell's Limit Break move list but hell if I'm playing it again.
But hopefully things will pick up from there!
Also, a side note on mechanics. I've started implementing some restrictions on myself. Nothing like a 'challenge run', just trying to make things a little more interesting than just having everything good on everyone.
Basically: Characters are only allowed to Junction magic that their GFs can with their Refinement Abilities, and can't have magic that is of an element or 'alignment' opposed to the GFs they have equipped.
That means, for instance, that if Quistis has both Quezacotl and Siren equipped, then she can junction Lightning Magic (because Quetz can refine it) and Life magic (which includes the basic healing spells like Cure, because Siren can refine it), and she can Store and Cast (but not Junction) most other Magic, except Water Magic (which is of an element opposed to Quezacotl). She also cannot Junction either the Water Summon, whoever that is (I imagine it's Leviathan), or… Carbuncle. Yeah, for some odd reason, Carbuncle and Siren oppose each other. This is very minor in actual mechanical terms (you lose a few points of Siren compatibility when summoning Carbuncle and vice versa), but it's useful for our purpose because it gives us another incompatible alignment to enforce.
So, for instance, here I decided that thanks to her high base magic stats, Selphie would make a good main caster:
I Junctioned Quezacotl, Siren, and Diablos. Under these arbitrary new rules I gave myself, Quezacotl means she can cast Lightning Magic, Siren means she can cast Healing Magic, and Diablos means she can cast Status Magic, so I Junctioned Cure to her HP, Thunder to her Magic for offensive power, and Shell to her Vitality for some resilience, and now she is a wizard with decent survivability and potent magical offense.
So did it make the game more interesting? A little. It did give me something to tinker with during the prison escape sequence, but it's a messy approach I had to tweak a lot in no small part because I don't have the full information required to obey my own rules. For instance, I junctioned Shell because I was under the mistaken impression that protective buffs such as Shell and Protect would fall under "Status Magic" which Diablos enables. That's not actually the case; those are classified as Support Magic, which I don't have access to yet, so this is actually an illegal set-up. I'll fix it next time.
Beyond that… Like I said, the game is mostly still very easy, but it's also slow. My offensive output is starting to seriously lag behind enemy HP, which is a big reason behind how frustrating the prison escape has been. I need stronger magic, but while I had been sort of expecting it to show up in Draw lists over time, it seems like I'm going to actually need to Refine it myself. Which I can do! I have the resources for it! But now this is turning into a game of inventory management, where I have to decide how many of my Thunders to turn into Thundaras and how many M-Stones to transform into spells.
The game is giving me choices to make, but they're frustrating ones, because they all have the question of 'how much grinding am I willing to do to feed these refinement cycles' behind them, and it feels easier to just coast by on what I have right now, even if it makes combat very dull, because it's still easy. I have effectively infinite Cures and enemy damage is too low to outpace my healing.
So, I don't know. We'll just keep going and see how it goes.
Thank you for reading.
Next Time: The Galbadia Missile Base.
Boy, it's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry about that. Let's get this show back on the road.
A recap: After fucking up the assassination attempt against the Sorceress Edea, our group was thrown into jail. Squall is being tortured; Rinoa was taken away to parts unknown; the others are in a cell together. Zell just escaped, retrieved everybody's weapons, and now it's time to break out for real!
Just as everyone has geared up and is preparing to break out, the "Mean Guy" guard comes in, and this time, he's got visitors. Not the good kind, though.
Biggs and Wedge survived the beating they got at the Comms Tower, and they're back.
Biggs stammers that he's going to 'teach us a lesson' and that, while it might seem cowardly to to fight unarmed prisoners, we have to understand his position, it's tough being a Galbadian officer.
This is, of course, the line on which our party chooses to draw their weapons, playing a victory pose animation to show them off while Biggs ramble until the realization sinks in. It's a funny beat.
God, they got demoted too. He's "Lieutenant" Biggs now. Wedge's own Scan description even says 'Unfortunately, still works under Biggs.' These two are bound together by some curse. And we're about to kick their asses again!
After I reload because I just realized I forgot to Junction everyone so only Zell has any abilities. Oops.
The fight itself isn't much to write home about, they're just extra strong G-Soldiers, we just run down their HP. Still, it's the opportunity to do something I've been forgetting to do this entire time:
Summon the Brothers. Remember, that Minotaur duo we fought and claimed as GFs in the Tomb of the Unknown King?
And I'm glad I did, because they have one of the funniest summon animation in the game.
It's a thirty-second skit in which the larger brother tosses the enemy into the air on a huge earth plate, then the two brothers play rock-paper-scissor to decide who has to do the follow-up, the larger one loses and is tossed into the air, tears streaming from his eyes, launched like a missile at the flying enemies. I love it.
When Biggs is beaten, he asks despairingly what's the rank below Lieutenant (I think it would be Sergeant). However, just like with the Black Widow mech, once we leave, Biggs mutter the strength to send out a call, and now the whole prison facility is on high alert.
Apparently they keep monsters either as additional security forces, or as wild beast like some kind of insane 'release wild tigers to put down a prison riot' scheme? That's another fascinating piece in the puzzle of Galbadian monster integration. They also 'lift the anti-magic field' to let those monsters and soldiers use their magic, which means the anti-magic field wasn't spell-specific but applied to everything, which I guess means we should take Zell being able to use magic as non-diegetic.
One of the mechs used by Galbadian forces.
The prison as a dungeon is… Extremely dull. You see that screenshot above? Every single floor of the prison is identical. They're just this big circle around the central well with a stairs up and a stairs down. Every floor has two doors, and on most floors, only one of those two doors is unlocked and leads to a cell, which are also identical. Some of these cells contain Draw Points or Items, and some contain prisoners. The prisoners show no interest in escaping (and to be fair, with monsters roaming the corridors, I get it), but they are, oddly enough, willing to… Play Triple Triad.
Man, that game really is the great unifier. There is only one thing common to all the people of the planet, and it's their addition to a children's card game.
Now, these matches are different from the usual; the prisoners ask for money before we can play, but they promise us a special reward if we win. Which in theory is interesting, but there's only one problem…
Galbadia uses the 'Random' rule. That rule means that instead of me getting to pick my cards for each match, I am given a random set of five from my library. And I have a lot of cards, and most of them are utter garbage. In this above match I actually got fairly lucky; the fish card with 3/5/2/1 is the only truly garbage card I got, and I actually drew Ifrit, one of my stronger cards. That's still not enough to pull off a win somehow (in fairness, I played very badly that time), and that means I lose the best card of the set - Ifrit himself. Most of the time, it's even worse; get a grab bag of utterly worthless cards that leave me no hope of actually winning.
I spend a couple of minutes thinking about this. I've essentially avoided playing Triple Triad in Galbadia entirely because everyone uses the Random rule here so most matches are unwinnable. Except…
Well, when you think about it, my problem is that my pool is too full of worthless trash cards for the randomizer to pick from, right? So what if I… Reduced the pool?
Quezacotl's Card Mod ability allows it to transform any card into a specific item, usually a crafting item or a combat consumable. I haven't been using it at all because my ambition was to gather a full collection of every card in the game; however, the Random rule has made that a liability. So, with a heavy heart, I proceed to transform almost my entire collection of cards into items. The actual items I gain from this are secondary; the goal is just to reduce my card collection to only the strongest.
Pretty soon, I'm able to actually use all those boss and GF cards I've been collecting and that were just sitting useless in my library this whole time, and that makes winning fairly easy. The first guy we encounter gives us an upgrade to our Battle Meter, the menu option that shows us our (very basic) battle stats; that new upgrade gives us a break down per character.
As you can see, Squall is by far the character with the highest body count of the party, which isn't surprising considering he's mandatory for most of the game. Other Triple Triad players in the prison will instead give out random items, which have a high chance of being something worthless like a potion and a low chance to be something highly valuable like a permanent stat increase item. I give it a couple of shots but ultimately I have no interest in spending an hour in there spamming Triple Triad matches (that cost money, although I don't particularly care about that given that I have an infinite supply of it thanks to our salary) for a 1/32 chance of a rare drop, so we quickly move on. Eventually, we find the torture chamber in which Squall's unconscious body is still tied up.
Everyone is briefly worried about Squall, who grimly says that "It was hell," but they don't have time to waste just talking about it so everyone is immediately ready to leave again.
There's one bizarre thing, though: That little critter there? The little lion guy thing that's been hanging out with us after we saved it from the guards' abuse?
It approaches Squall, seems to smell him, and then repeats, "Laguna! Laguna!"
So. That's weird.
I mean, okay, it's a magical mascot and so can probably sense some kind of psychic bond between Squall and Laguna, although what's surprising is that means it would know Laguna. But…
Wait a minute.
The Codex actually updated with information about those guys.
…
These things are Moombas, and they're mutated animals (probably transformed by the Lunar Cry) that 'remember people by licking their blood.'
It approached a wounded Squall. Played an animation like smelling (or licking) him. And then said 'Laguna!'
I can't remember who in the thread had the wild theory that Squall and Laguna were literally the same person, not some kind of reincarnation deal but literally the same person suffering from some kind of memory erasure or physical transformation, but that was not the theory I was expecting this game to validate.
It could mean about a thousand other things, admittedly. If Squall is Laguna's kid, the Moomba could just be sensing that he has half of Laguna's DNA or something. But it's very suspicious.
The Moomba also serves as a… shortcut? When we talk to it, it says "MMMake, SSShortcut! FFFloor, WWWhere?" and then gives us a set of three choices (Floor 12, Floor 11, Floor 10). There's no clear explanation of how the shortcut works, and it doesn't matter anyway - the floors are all identical looking so I have no idea which one is which or whether I should care to revisit one floor in particular. We'll just plug in Encounter-half and do the floors one by one until we get out.
Zell actually asks if Squall didn't come to the prison as Laguna in the 'dream world,' but as we saw in the previous flashback, he did not. Everyone discusses whether they should go up or down and decides that going up is leading them nowhere so they should try going down instead. I hadn't thought about it, but it's true that in this environment, with no view of the outside and identical floors, you would have no idea how to find the exit? And given that most buildings are built aboveground, going down to find an exit at ground level makes sense.
Zell then takes note of the structure in the center of the well and asks Squall if he knows about it; Squall explains that it's a crane used to move detachable cells around the various floors. Selphie, displaying an extreme amount of Selphie-ness, deduces that this means the central well must go all the way to the bottom of the prison, and that therefore, all they need to do is jump down, and they'll be on their way out! Zell immediately points out the main problem with this plan, namely that none of them would survive it.
Honestly, I'm not sure he's right. It's unclear how tough SeeDs are, especially when magic is involved, but the human body isn't that far below the threshold of survivability for terminal velocity, a little enhancement would go a long way. And I mean, we have Float, we could just… Drift down.
But, well, that kind of problem-solving is for immersive sims and TES III: Morrowind, not JRPGs. Walking down all the way it is. For some of us, anyway; Zell manages to recall from his dream life as a janitor that the crane must be operated from two separate rooms at the same time, meaning someone has to stay down there, which cues into a comedy beat of the girls wordlessly letting him now that he's the one staying behind.
And with this, Squall has rejoined the party. Yay! If I understand the level scaling correctly, this should mean that our enemy levels are going to jump up considerably, as Zell was by far our lowest-level party member and he is by far the highest. As usual, capabilities don't really change beyond that; I just swap Zell's entire Junction list onto Squall using the Exchange function, meaning he inherits the same GFs, Magic Junctions, and Abilities. What a truly weird system.
Yadayadayada, climb down etc, and we get to the second control room.
At first it seems like Zell's explanation of which buttons to press will lead into a crane manipulation minigame, but thankfully sanity prevails and it's just a cutscene. The group pulls up one of the detachable cells, plugs it in at their level, and then decide to check out the inside. Strangely enough, said cell has a door leading to the outside! However…
…opening it only results in sand pouring into the room and no usable exit.
Quistis realizes that this means the entire prison is actually underground. Which means going down was not, in fact, the way to the exit. Before they can decide what to do next, they hear gunfire; the wardens have found Zell and are pursuing him.
Unfortunately, as soon as we beat this guy and run to the next screen, Zell collides with one of the wardens and falls over; the warden points his rifle at him but, before he can shoot, Squall comes in with a dramatic rescue.
That is admittedly a cool pose.
Zell is immediately grabbing Squall thanking him profusely for saving him, which immediately causes Squall to freak out and try to pry him off him. These two continue to be comically unsuited for each other.
Selphie and Quistis quickly arrive, and Selphie asks Squall why he ran off ahead of them, 'is Zell that important to you?' This obviously causes Squall even more mortification while, on the other side, Zell strikes a pose like he's playing it cool. I'm not saying I'd ship it, but-
The guards interrupt this little comedy beat by firing at everyone from off-screen, they all take cover and start saying there's no way they'll make it out, but then the guards scream and stop all of a sudden, and who is it here but…
…Irvine, who shows up, shoots down the guard, tries to do a dramatic slow-walk in, and gets kicked in the butt by Rinoa which causes him to roll down a set of stairs while she berates him for not agreeing to come with her earlier. When she sees Squall, Rinoa has a bit of internal monologue where she's simultaneously relieved to see he's alive and trying to convince herself she knew it all along.
So I guess we're about to find out what was going on with Irvine and Rinoa!
Quistis: "Rinoa, you're all right!"
Irvine: "Uh huh." (He gets up from the floor.) "Of course. Courtesy of my escort."
Zell: "What's that supposed to mean?"
Rinoa: "My father pulled some strings with the military. He told them to get me, and only me, out."
Rinoa: "So this guy here…" (She facepalms.) "He came and got me. Just me! Knowing you were all captured!"
Irvine: "That's…"
Rinoa: "Isn't that horrible?"
Irvine: "Alright, alright…! I said I was sorry. That's why I'm here to help!"
Rinoa: "After I scratched you to death."
Irvine: "A-A-Anyhow, now's our chance."
…huh.
I mean, I guess it's as good a way as any to emphasize that Galbadia runs off corruption and nepotism, but, like… Rinoa and Irvine fought Edea. They weren't in some out of the way location like the Gateway Team, they personally joined Squall in fighting the Sorceress. But apparently Rinoa's father wasn't bothered at all, and Irvine was released, and Carraway had him sent to retrieve Rinoa? This is so strange. Also apparently Rinoa is a cat and scratches people when she's angry? Wild.
I can kinda see it as a continuation of the same theme of politics and plausible deniability that had Galbadia overlook Balamb Garden's kidnapping attempt by putting it on Seifer; Rinoa and Irvine are both way more obviously guilty than Quistis, Zell and Selphie, but Rinoa has a high-placed father who can tell everyone to overlook this youthful indiscretion and Irvine is a Galbadia Garden student who has certain agreements with Galbadia's government so he was sent back to them rather than arrested. Still, it feels like a stretch.
Irvine starts explaining that the whole prison is buried underground, but then more soldiers interrupt and it's time to run, with Irvine telling Squall to pick two party members and head up while he holds up the guards with the others.
One of the 'prisoners' we can run into, who runs an item store out of a cell, reveals that he's actually a Balamb Garden student undercover as a prisoner who is actually working for Galbadia right now. So even while all this is happening, Balamb is still hiring out mercenaries to Galbadia, at the same time it's taking hits on their major public figures? Incredible.
Anyway, it's mostly just ascending the same prison floors again. At one point, we run into another Moomba who gives us a Cottage, but other than that nothing of note until, finally, Squall and the others come out.
After so long in doors, it's nice to see the sky. Not much time to sightsee, though, as an alert says 'Prisoners may not go beyond this point, you will be terminated' and more guards attack.
…
I don't like this game's Limit Break mechanics.
Here's the thing: In FF7, the Limit gauge fills up when you take damage. Because of the pseudo-turn-by-turn structure of combat, you are guaranteed to be taking some damage over time. So even if you keep your characters always topped up, you are guaranteed to be seeing LBs fire off every now and then, which is good, because LBs are fun. But in FF8, LBs only trigger while in critical HP, which depending on how you play the game might either mean that you're spamming LBs every turn or that you will never see them.
Anyway, because the game is, broadly, very easy, it's easy to just kind of… Get bored with playing well and just facerolling through encounters. And here, it means I rolled into an actually decently tough encounter with two characters in critical HP, because most of the time that doesn't matter and it means I can proc LBs. Unfortunately, it mattered this time, and I got my team KO'd for my trouble; another problem I run into sometimes is that Life is a rare magic to Draw and most of my characters have GF rather than Item equipped, which leads to situations where I can't raise my KO'd party members because the only character left in the field doesn't have Life and can't use Phoenix Downs.
I suppose one might consider that 'difficulty' or 'challenge' based on the trade-offs of picking certain Abilities over others or how to allocated limited magic draw, but it doesn't really feel that way. It mostly just feels like busywork. When we reload and roll into battle with everyone healed up we just steamroll them.
One of Quistis's Limit Breaks is an instant kill attack with a delightfully cheap looking animation. So kitsch.
Before the group can proceed to leave the facility, however, they hear Irvine talking over the speakers and head back in. Irvine gives Squall instructions on how to operate the crane to get them out of the bottom levels, and once again it sounds like it's going to lead into a minigame and I am almost definitive it was planned to be one at a particular stage of development, but once again sanity prevails and we just move on with Squall's group heading out while the crane lifts up the others off-screen.
Squall, Quistis and Rinoa are running across a suspended bridge between two of the prisons' structures, when the game goes into FMV mode to reveal an outside view of the facility…
…right. Okay. That is one weird-ass building.
It is kinda weird that this structure is in fact fully emerged, considering we just said it was buried underground? But I guess it emerged at some point during our escape. The big secret of the D-District Prison, it seems, is that it is mounted on giant drills, so that it can either bury itself underground or rise into the sky depending on what is most convenient at the time. Prisoners heading down? Bury the whole thing in the sand. Fugitives heading up? Just pull the whole thing out and leave them dangling at five hundred feet. It's a… 'Clever' design is a little excessive, but in terms of overblown, excessive displays of fascist power and wealth, it does the job.
Rinoa is initially confused, saying the prison didn't look like this when she came in earlier, and the group decides to head to the next structure to try and figure out a way to make it out, but before they can reach it, the bridge they're on starts folding away and the drills start running, driving the whole place into the sand! We have to play Squall hanging onto the ledge and trying to shimmy his way out before he is buried in the sand along with the facility, heading towards the girls who are already on the other side.
It's a really cool scene, making fantastic use of the FMV happening in the background while the game plays out in front of it, and the camera moving angles as the drill gets further and further down. Plus, the group is split up, they have no clear way to escape. There's real tension here. And then…
It just ends.
The scene fades to black once Squall reaches the ledge on the girls' side and we move to them being in the garage of one of the upper sections of the prison. The prison is now fully buried in the sand aside from the three structures atop each drill which still just out. There are no guards coming in to intercept our party members, no explanation how Irvine's party made it out. We're just… Hanging out in the prison garage. The group talks a little about what a lucky break they just had, then steal two cars, one for each party, and leave.
What a weird anticlimax.
One transition later, our group parks in the middle of the desert. Selphie perches upon this rusted abandoned vehicle, looking at the horizon.
Squall: "What?"
Quistis: "The sorceress is about to launch missiles at Garden!?"
Selphie: "That's what Rinoa heard from Irvine!"
Squall: "The only thing we can do now is go back to Garden as soon as possible and warn the students."
Squall: "Alright, let's get in the car and go."
Selphie: "They're targeting both Balamb and Trabia Gardens! We have to interfere with the launch! We have to stop the missiles!"
…wait, did Squall just not tell anybody about the missile launch? Like, Selphie just said they learned about it from Irvine, does that mean Squall just forgot to mention it? And why is Trabia Garden even targeted? I guess the sorceress is planning to nuke both Gardens before they can pose a threat, even if only Balamb has moved against her now?
Squall can talk to everyone; Quistis and Irvine both comment that they understand how Selphie feels, but this isn't just about her. Selphie herself tells us that she just got transferred from Trabia Garden, which was previously obvious but I think is our first explicit confirmation? And that she can't just stand there knowing that her Garden is in danger. She tells Squall to please put together a group to head for the Galbadia Missile Base to stop the launch, presumably while the others head for Balamb Garden as planned.
Squall has a weird comment there:
I don't know if the implication is that he's growing more attached to his party members or… What? Is this a cheeky reference to Aerith dying shortly after leaving the party last game? Is this meant to be treated as an OOC warning, 'the characters you send on this mission might die/leave the story for a while'? As a bit of characterization it could be effective if that was a fear Squall had ever expressed before, but as it is it just feels odd.
Rinoa says that, as the squad leader, Squall should be part of the Balamb Garden team and choose who goes with him and who goes to the Missile Base. Which kinda sounds like it's Rinoa calling the shots while propping up Squall as leader, and he internally says he never asked to be a leader, which feels kind of hypocritical coming from him, but whatever.
All this is a distraction, because before the group can decide on anything, the missiles begin to fire.
It's sudden and legitimately kind of shocking; Selphie slumps to her knees in horror, and Irvine hesitatingly says that he heard Galbadia would be hitting Trabia first, then Balamb (again, why?).
Selphie: "Trabia… I'm sorry… I couldn't stop it… Please let everybody be alright. Please…"
(She gets up.)
Selphie: "That was a miss… right…?"
(She jumps down from the vehicle to talk to the others.)
Selphie: "Squall, we have to report to Balamb! Who are you taking?"
Zell: "C'mon, Squall!"
Quistis: "You have to decide, Squall!"
Rinoa: "Squall, think carefully now!"
Squall, mentally: "(I've had it up to here with this leader thing… Alright, alright… I'll choose.)"
Both Selphie managing her distress by hyperfocusing on the task at hand instead of thinking about it and Squall being browbeaten by everyone into acting like a leader against his will are fun character beats, but overall the construction of this scene is weird to me.
Anyway, I guess the implication is that Galbadia will be doing staggered missile launches, so there's still worth in heading to the Missile Base even after they already fired so as to prevent the second launch?
We are, again, dealing with a plot beat that arises from the insanely small size of Final Fantasy's worlds: Heading for a missile base that is in the same region, a few miles away and visible on the horizon in this screenshot is treated as a similar undertaking to crossing the desert, leaving the Galbadian Continent and crossing the ocean to reach Balamb Garden.
In any case, I put Rinoa and Zell on Squall's team, and Irvine and Quistis on Selphie's team. Squall asks Selphie if she actually has any kind of plan to get into the base, and she says she'll take that military vehicle to try and infiltrate it, but it's as far as she's thought it and she'll improvise on site.
Everyone piles up into their respective cars and splits up on their respective missions. We briefly follow Squall's team as they park near to a train station covered by an inexplicable green tint effect and hijack a train, again - they wait for the Galbadian soldiers at the control to leave briefly to take care of some business, then take the commands and start the train while the poor bastards is running after them begging them to stop.
I love that Rinoa is apologizing.
And then, somewhat to my surprise, we actually swap over to Selphie's party, in their military car!
Well, that'll do it for today! Let's save on the world map and come back to tackle the Missile Base later.
…
A bunch of life stuff happened that delayed me getting to do this update. But here's one thing I didn't tell you at the start:
I actually played through this section of the game about three weeks ago. I was planning to put it all into an update in the week that followed, but aforementioned life stuff happened that delayed me, I decided I needed to start a new creative writing project, I had assignments to finish, and so on. So when the time came to write this update, I had to reconstruct my play experience from screenshots with a significant delay.
But part of why it took me so long to get to it, even though I had already played through this section, is that I just found it… Uninspiring? I just really didn't feel like I had anything interesting to say. And that's made me drag my feet a bit because it felt like I was just recapping stuff without anything to comment on. If you compare this section to our previous 'bad dungeon,' the Centra Mining Complex, at least I had some stuff to say about how much it sucked. The prison didn't suck as much, but it was just… Very boring.
The only really interesting beat in this whole sequence is the missiles being fired and Selphie's reaction, which are a great moment of characterization for a character who has previously just been kind of in the background being light-hearted fun, but even so the whole thing is… Eh. The escape from the prison is confusing in terms of how this damned place works, what the politics of Galbadia around Irvine and Carraway are like. I found out after finishing the sequence there was a permanently missable item that expands Zell's Limit Break move list but hell if I'm playing it again.
But hopefully things will pick up from there!
Also, a side note on mechanics. I've started implementing some restrictions on myself. Nothing like a 'challenge run', just trying to make things a little more interesting than just having everything good on everyone.
Basically: Characters are only allowed to Junction magic that their GFs can with their Refinement Abilities, and can't have magic that is of an element or 'alignment' opposed to the GFs they have equipped.
That means, for instance, that if Quistis has both Quezacotl and Siren equipped, then she can junction Lightning Magic (because Quetz can refine it) and Life magic (which includes the basic healing spells like Cure, because Siren can refine it), and she can Store and Cast (but not Junction) most other Magic, except Water Magic (which is of an element opposed to Quezacotl). She also cannot Junction either the Water Summon, whoever that is (I imagine it's Leviathan), or… Carbuncle. Yeah, for some odd reason, Carbuncle and Siren oppose each other. This is very minor in actual mechanical terms (you lose a few points of Siren compatibility when summoning Carbuncle and vice versa), but it's useful for our purpose because it gives us another incompatible alignment to enforce.
So, for instance, here I decided that thanks to her high base magic stats, Selphie would make a good main caster:
I Junctioned Quezacotl, Siren, and Diablos. Under these arbitrary new rules I gave myself, Quezacotl means she can cast Lightning Magic, Siren means she can cast Healing Magic, and Diablos means she can cast Status Magic, so I Junctioned Cure to her HP, Thunder to her Magic for offensive power, and Shell to her Vitality for some resilience, and now she is a wizard with decent survivability and potent magical offense.
So did it make the game more interesting? A little. It did give me something to tinker with during the prison escape sequence, but it's a messy approach I had to tweak a lot in no small part because I don't have the full information required to obey my own rules. For instance, I junctioned Shell because I was under the mistaken impression that protective buffs such as Shell and Protect would fall under "Status Magic" which Diablos enables. That's not actually the case; those are classified as Support Magic, which I don't have access to yet, so this is actually an illegal set-up. I'll fix it next time.
Beyond that… Like I said, the game is mostly still very easy, but it's also slow. My offensive output is starting to seriously lag behind enemy HP, which is a big reason behind how frustrating the prison escape has been. I need stronger magic, but while I had been sort of expecting it to show up in Draw lists over time, it seems like I'm going to actually need to Refine it myself. Which I can do! I have the resources for it! But now this is turning into a game of inventory management, where I have to decide how many of my Thunders to turn into Thundaras and how many M-Stones to transform into spells.
The game is giving me choices to make, but they're frustrating ones, because they all have the question of 'how much grinding am I willing to do to feed these refinement cycles' behind them, and it feels easier to just coast by on what I have right now, even if it makes combat very dull, because it's still easy. I have effectively infinite Cures and enemy damage is too low to outpace my healing.
So, I don't know. We'll just keep going and see how it goes.
Thank you for reading.
Next Time: The Galbadia Missile Base.
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It's interesting. Final Fantasy isn't the first intellectual property I've seen that has a very small world relatively, of course, but it seems in particular to come up a lot in stuff coming out of Japan. DragonBall having a weird small earth with only like five major cities comes to mind, especially with how it's often depicted in games. I wonder if it's partly just a symptom of Japan being a fairly small place, so the sense of scale for spacing between locations is just different.
Yup, I had plenty of time to get ahead of the LP during the break!
I mean, I didn't due to a combination of laziness and needing a new PC on account of my old one starting to crash multiple times a day. But I could have.
Being fair, do you really need more than one character with Junctions to take on Biggs and Wedge? It's just Biggs and Wedge.
Also iirc this second encounter with them has a number of rare spells to draw, if you were interested in that. Haste and Slow I think were options, and maybe Life?
Hands down, one of the funniest summon animations in the game.
God, Galbadia Prison. Being honest? Half the reason I didn't continue my own playthrough is there's some loot you can only get if you go downwards to the bottom floors first, since cutscenes and story beats mean you can only access them before you get Squall. And I only learned this after finishing most of the dungeon, and just... really didn't feel like running around and looting 13 or so identical prison floors again.
It's been a while so I can't recall if I ever linked it, but there is a strat to cheese the rules system by running between Timber and Dollet to remove the Random rule from the Galbadia region entirely. Can't exactly do that from the prison now though.
Objectively, the correct choice. There's plenty of future opportunities for these rare loots that don't require hours of spending money and grinding out card games.
The shortcuts the Moombas do is just removing the barriers on the chosen floors that sit between the up and down stairs, so you can effectively skip those floors instead of walking the long way around the prison circle. Not a big deal other than saving time with Encounter-Half/None though.
Watching Squall just dive in from what is presumably a floor or two above to land in his cool pose and take out the guards was dope, not gonna lie.Unfortunately, as soon as we beat this guy and run to the next screen, Zell collides with one of the wardens and falls over; the warden points his rifle at him but, before he can shoot, Squall comes in with a dramatic rescue.
That is admittedly a cool pose.
Rinoa's getting put through the wringer in terms of "wait my pseudo-maybe-boyfriend is maybe dead, maybe not" between Squall and Seifer, huh?
It certainly feels like a segment that could have used a bit more flashback or something from Rinoa and Irvine's point of view, so we could get more detail.
Yeah, being honest FFVIII Limit Breaks, while fun, are also an inherently pretty broken system. Sure, there's some risk to the whole "when at low HP you can limit but also might die!" but most Limit Breaks, especially with a bit of min-maxing, don't really care because they end the fight so quickly. Quistis has Blue Magic under her belt so she's got all kinds of crazy battle enders, and Zell and Irvine can pump out absolutely insane damage numbers with Zell's potential for infinite combos and Irvine's Quick Ammo.
Hm, second time this update Omi mentioned "thank god no dumb minigames". Could it be he has some sort of trauma, over a recently played game that was filled to the brim with absolutely unnecessary minigames?
Nah, couldn't be.
IIRC it's possible to get a game over here if Squall sinks into the sand because you weren't fast enough... but outside of that tension that you might not even realize is there, yeah it does seem like it just kinda comes to a halt.
I'll be fair to Squall and point out that hey, he was just pulled off of a literal torture rack, so he might have been a bit scrambled and forgot about it briefly.
Rinoa's Shadow Clone No Jutsu practice coming in clutch. Hope she gets a new Limit Break out of it!
I'll be honest, this sounds neat, but also way more complicated than I would end up doing myself compared to just doing something like limiting junctions, or even being too lazy to go for the really overpowered setups (despite having 4-5 versions of HP Junction at this point I have yet to actually spreadsheet out my GFs to optimize giving everyone more Junctions).
Didn't you get Carbuncle from the boss before Edna back in Disk 1? Carbuncle qualifies as Support Magic, pretty sure.
In fact, every single spell in the game is coded with affinities for different GFs, giving them slightly more or less compatibility if cast while they're junctioned. Probably shouldn't look up said list because you'll get a face full of spoilers for every GF in the game, but it does sound like that's basically what you're doing already. Might be able to just post said spell lists for all your current GFs, if you want.
- Location
- The Middle of the Howling Wilderness
- Location
- Netherlands
Think you cut off a thought here.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
This elaborate design is what really makes me feel like this was originally built to house prisoners from the Esthar War and was simply repurposed for political prisoners after that ended. This is way too much for just holding normal dudes.Squall, Quistis and Rinoa are running across a suspended bridge between two of the prisons' structures, when the game goes into FMV mode to reveal an outside view of the facility…
…right. Okay. That is one weird-ass building.
It is kinda weird that this structure is in fact fully emerged, considering we just said it was buried underground? But I guess it emerged at some point during our escape. The big secret of the D-District Prison, it seems, is that it is mounted on giant drills, so that it can either bury itself underground or rise into the sky depending on what is most convenient at the time. Prisoners heading down? Bury the whole thing in the sand. Fugitives heading up? Just pull the whole thing out and leave them dangling at five hundred feet. It's a… 'Clever' design is a little excessive, but in terms of overblown, excessive displays of fascist power and wealth, it does the job.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Looking at the skit, it appears the smaller of the two brothers is cheating. Watching it at half speed, you can see that the smaller brother starts with rock and unfolds the hand into paper a moment after, when the bigger brother's rock choice is visible.It's a thirty-second skit in which the larger brother tosses the enemy into the air on a huge earth plate, then the two brothers play rock-paper-scissor to decide who has to do the follow-up, the larger one loses and is tossed into the air, tears streaming from his eyes, launched like a missile at the flying enemies. I love it.
"Yup, that's all my cards! Pretty good, huh?"
"I know you have more cards on you! Bring them out so you could draft from them!"
"What makes you think that?"
"THE HEART OF THE CARD KNOWSSSS"
This plus the "should be a minigame here" makes me think they kinda rushed out this sequence.
Eight won't go on the top 3 mechanical FF, I gather.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Negative Status Applier vs Positive Status Applier is the reasoning here, I believe - Siren applies Silence to all enemies, Carbuncle applies Reflex to all allies.
And yeah, when I think of the worst parts of Final Fantasy VIII, Desert District Prison is right there next to the Centra Excavation Site as the very bottom of the barrel. Look on the bright side though: now you can only go up! Nothing's going to be worse than those two sections.
Also, you could bring Selphie, Quistis and Irvine to Deling City to visit Rinoa's dad, if you want an update on the local political situation before the mission. He'll even play Triple Triad with you!
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I wasn't going to bring it up...but since you did, I'll have to say that I concur. I also hit a wall in my replay right around this same point where I just got really bored with the gameplay. It's not close to the worst I've ever played, but there's a real sense of trying to iceskate uphill if you're not making aggressive use of the more in-depth Draw mechanics to stay ahead of the curve. I still like the concept of Junctioning but IMO, X and XII's combat can't come soon enough.
- Location
- Sweden
Carbuncle has compatibility with Support and Restore magic (and is opposed to Status), but can't Refine any spells (it gives healing item refine) so under Omi's rules doesn't qualify for spell junctioning.
This is the price of two skipped minigames.
Was the cost worth it?
Rinoa sure can multitask.
You can have some fun with them if you cast Confuse on either of them. If Wedge accidentally attacks Biggs, Biggs will yell at Wedge and counterattack him. But if Biggs hits Wedge, Wedge just yells out for Biggs to "Stop picking on me."God, they got demoted too. He's "Lieutenant" Biggs now. Wedge's own Scan description even says 'Unfortunately, still works under Biggs.' These two are bound together by some curse. And we're about to kick their asses again!
After I reload because I just realized I forgot to Junction everyone so only Zell has any abilities. Oops.
The fight itself isn't much to write home about, they're just extra strong G-Soldiers, we just run down their HP.
Also, did you remember to mug them? They carry some good items to steal (Regen Ring and Strength Love)
When fighting the GIM52A, were you able to acquire a Missile item (either by stealing or as a drop)? Quistis can use it to copy that enemy's Micro Missile attack.After so long in doors, it's nice to see the sky. Not much time to sightsee, though, as an alert says 'Prisoners may not go beyond this point, you will be terminated' and more guards attack.
Yeah, that sounds pretty annoying.
Final Fantasy VII has scarred this man for life.
I think the intent here is that Squall initially didn't really give a shit about any aspect of command that wasn't 'getting the job done' but, like Squall's moment of clutching up and emotionally supporting Irvine during the assassination attempt, sheer exposure and time spent in the role is starting to break down the surface layer of dispassion. So, despite himself, he's starting to be concerned with whether his orders would get people killed.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
We're now moving into a scene I actually recognize. I was at... some friend's house, at some point, and I got to see what I'm pretty sure is the tail end of this same sequence. It blew my mind, at the time, but that was back when this games was new enough to be visually stunning instead of... no longer that.
Pretty sure that that was stabbing you in the front.
Pretty sure that that was stabbing you in the front.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
YEAH BOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
The Minotaur Bros are too stupid to hate, their animation hits a sweet spot between being involved enough to tell a joke without lingering on it too long.
I wish the franchise would bring them back a bit more often, FF14 has reference to them but it's a fate battle out in the ass end of optional content (Eureka); I wish they would get a full-blown trial battle.
One of Quistis's Limit Breaks is an instant kill attack with a delightfully cheap looking animation. So kitsch.
[flat emotionless deadpan] Sweet Jesus it's an anti-AT field.