ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
First, we run into some kind of chimera statue that has a ruby for a left eye. It does not say that the right eye is an empty socket, but you can figure it out from context. Note the time left on my counter. I grab the eye, then head up.
This statue has a ruby for a right eye, and an empty socket for a left eye. So I first put in the left eye, as you can see below:
At this point, nothing happens. I want to emphasize this because we're going to get into how fiddly these kinds of puzzles in old-timey games can be in terms of what is obvious to the dev and what is obvious to some players. Here, I put in both eyes, and the next dialogue window asks me if I want to take out the right eye or leave it as it is. Now, if putting in both eyes was going to do anything, I was expecting that to happen when I put in the eye. But no. The correct answer is to "leave it as it is;" you have to first put in the other eye, then step back, and only then do you get the intended result.
Shit like this is just plain malice and I would break a chair over the head of whatever dev was behind it. It doesn't make any logical sense in the context of the world, once you put the second jewel into the statue its effect should trigger, it's just there to trick your instincts as a player so that you think that you did something wrong to fuck with you.
Nida: "What do you think?"
Squall, mentally: "(They probably know we're here, too. If not, we'll make the first move.)"
Squall: "The battle is inevitable."
Nida: "The sorceress is with them, then? So this is going to be the final battle?"
Squall: "I hope so."
Squall, mentally: "(What should I do first? I have to give orders to everybody. It's my responsibility. I have to try to keep it simple. If I give out too many orders, it could lead to chaos. What should I say? Come on, think! There's no time!)"
Well, Squall, seeing as we are on Disc 2 of 4, I highly doubt this will be the 'final battle.' Anyway, I see this menu, get decision paralysis, close the game and don't open it again for three weeks.
Cue a long list of possible choices.
Squall momento.
Gee I wonder why they never went back to the Junction system it has so many benefits.
I can't wait for us to cut back to Rinoa to find her cornered by a pack of starving mountain lions.
So anyway at this point I take an hour off to play with spreadsheets.
3. Junction Schmunction
Okay, not spreadsheets as such, but I opened a gdoc so I could finally write out the various traits of all the GFs in one easily-referenced format so that I could try and craft something resembling actual builds. Not optimizing my characters as such, just trying to figure out how to do some combos.
Basically: Brothers grants Cover, a passive ability that lets a character take hits for his teammates. Carbuncle grants Counter, a passive ability that lets a character retaliate when taking a physical hit. Previously, I had Carbuncle on Rinoa, who was otherwise specced as a mage, but that meant her Counter was comically weak. If I want to take full advantage of it, I need Brothers and Carbuncle on the same character so I can combine Cover + Counter and Junction a strong spell to Strength so they hit as hard as possible.
Meanwhile, Diablos grants Darkside, as mentioned before, which hits really hard but costs 10% HP; however, if I had a GF with Status Attack Junction, I can junction 100 Drains to Attack, and Darkside will drain as much HP as it costs to use. However, the only two GFs with ST-Atk-J I have are Carbuncle and Siren. Seeing as Carbuncle is already going on whoever has the Brothers, that means Siren is the only other option. And given that neither Diablos nor Siren have Strength Junction, that means Darkside will be comically weak unless I also junction one of the GFs with Str-J: Shiva, Ifrit, or Pandemona (Brothers also have Str-J, but they're going on the Carbuncle team). Seeing as I have 9 GFs and three characters, so everyone gets three GFs, that means one character will specifically have Diablos/Siren/Shiva, Diablos/Siren/Ifrit, or Diablos/Siren/Pandemona. With me so far?
This is actually a fairly engaging exercise. It just runs into one problem: The actual effect of Junctions depends on what magic a character has access to. If my Darkside/Drain super-attacker has Blizzaga as their best Strength junction, they'll still be outcompeted by someone with Ultima junctioned to Strength.
This is ultimately what makes me give up on trying to handcraft perfect little builds. The magic menu is simply hell to navigate. Each character can have up to 4 spells on each page of their Magic menu, which has 8 pages maximum. This means each character can hold up to 32 individual spells. Which seems like a lot, except, this is easily filled up with instances of drawing 3 Blinds there or having 80 Thunders leftover from chargen, loading up the spell inventory with trash. In theory, members who aren't in the party could be used as a "storage chest" holding up the spells you don't need on your active members, and stray instances of 5 or 15 spells can be consolidated on one character. This is what I spent most of the first 20 hours of the game doing. It's just grown completely unmanageable over time. The tiny and inconvenient UI combined with the sheer glut of spells accumulated over time and the need to go back and forth between multiple menu to see if Blizzaga gives better Strength results than Quake gives better Magic results than Aura gives better Speed results than Tornado is a hell without escape or end. My previous approach of giving myself rules about junctions based on GF elemental affinities was fun while it lasted but, in case you think 'well just abandon that silly idea,' I already did that several hours ago; magic has simply grown too annoying to navigate even beyond that stage. The Magic menu management has defeated me. I abandon doing it this way and I just abandon managing Magic altogether. I just press "auto junction" and let the game do its thing.
My current build is: One character gets Diablos/Leviathan/Shiva (Darkside, Strength-Junction), Carbuncle/Brothers/Ifrit (Cover + Counter, Strength Bonus), Pandemona/Siren/Shiva (Strength and Magic Junction, Magic Bonus). This means I don't get my cool Darkside Drain effect, but the character with Siren gets Magic Bonus, which increases their Magic stat on level up, so I can train them to have a stronger magic baseline over time. Is this any good? Man, I don't know. I just wanna go back to playing the fucking game.
Gee I wonder why they never went back to the Junctioning system it has so many benefits.
And to think I found it intolerable trying to make it through FF13 constantly having to create a brand new set of Paradigms every hour and a half.
Zell: "Squall, Squall! We tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
Squall: "Remind me to recommend you for demotion."
Rinoa's not even dangling any more she straight up punched her way through the dirt wall Minecraft-style and hollowed out a little dwarf-home to ride out the rest of the invasion in, everyone else is playing FF8 while she's playing No-Chest Skyblock.
This game is insane.
