You aren't wrong, and it's also fairly entertaining as a game. Like, no it's not exactly Gwent, but as a side activity in a Playstation RPG? Not bad.
Take heart, Omi. While FF9 has things to criticize, too, I think in terms of actual gameplay it's way better than 8, even if the story is much more old-school Final Fantasy and tropey. You'll be there soon enough!
Duckstation (which I think is the one Omi is using?) has a x10 speed as defaul maximum, but it also lets you set speed as "unlimited", aka as fast as you PC can run the game. For me it reaches about x23 speed, but it fluctuates a bit. I'm quite sure ou can get to x50, of course at that point the game is sunning at around 1500FPS so good luck playing, but you can try.
Oh don't worry, it all good fun.
OTOH what emulator you're using? Also have you tried some filters like the CRT ones? They do help to make the game feel like it was at the time.
Oh don't worry, it all good fun.
OTOH what emulator you're using? Also have you tried some filters like the CRT ones? They do help to make the game feel like it was at the time.
Duckstation, and the answer is no, I'm basically tech illiterate and the interface scares me, all I do is map my controller buttons and press play and then I don't touch anything ever
Duckstation, and the answer is no, I'm basically tech illiterate and the interface scares me, all I do is map my controller buttons and press play and then I don't touch anything ever
First things first, open Duckstation, load a game and load a save, as usual. Then pause the emulation (spacebar by default). This way you can see the image change in real time, as you add/remove/customize effects.
Open the Post-Processing menu (Settings->Post-Processing).
In the "Display" tab, check "Enable Post-Processing". I have no experience witht he "Internal"
Now you can start adding post-processing effects. You just click on "+ Add" and choose the one you want from the list. It will be added to the main panel, called Post-Processing Chain, and will be applied to the game, so you can see how the game looks with the effect you choose.
If you want to remove an effect, just click on it in the main panel, then click on "- Remove".
If you click on a effect in the Post-Processing Chain panel the panel below it will show the effect's settings. Here you can modify it's internal settings; the "Restore Default" button at the bottom will restore the settings to the base values. The values you can change vary based on the effect you're customizing: a simple effect like "simple-brightness" has one value you can change, more complex ones have more.
If you add more than one effects, they will be applied sequentially, from top to bottom. You can modify their order with the "Move Up" and "Move Down" buttons. Personally I just move effects around until I like what I see.
The "Clear" button will remove all the effects currently applied and clear the Post-Processing Chain panel; it's a full wipe, use it if you want a clean slate.
The main advice I can give is to just add one effect to start with, and change it's setting around to see how it behaves. My current main effect is CRTLottes2: it has the option to enable warping like the corners of a CRT screen, and how much, and you can set what kind of mask apply (currently is Aperture Grille Lite). There's quite a few CRT effects, NewPixie is also quite good and I suggest to just compare a few and see what looks nice. Just remember to clear the effect list if you're just switching effects around.
My current setup for FF8 is this one:
TBH a lot of what I've managed to do is just me playing with effects and their order, this works for FF8 but maybe is bad on other games. If I were to play, say, Metal Gear Solid, I would probably go and change things around.
I think a more relevant plus for FFIX is that the gameplay is actually, you know, fun. There's not really any need to speed through things when it's not a boring slog.
I'll save any further commentary on the merits of IX for when Omi actually gets there, of course.
So I found some really cool fanmade globes of the game worlds on deviantart by someone named hechiceroo.
Edit:images aren't working gonna have to link to the page so spoilers unfortunately
Edit 2 oh come on! That didn't work either I'm sorry i guess search them up if you want
Huh that's weird they worked fine when I was previewing them
Edit they disappeared because I think the urls for all of them together was too long
Edit 2 I guess I'll just link to them but be warned there are spoilers for 9-13 on the page
Edit3 nevermind
You might be right that's kinda why I just ended up removing the link entirely and telling people to search instead if they wanted because I don't know what else to do
Welcome back, class, to Final Fantasy VIII 301. Today's lesson:
The Return of the Revenge of Running Around Doing Stuff
The endgame wrap-up is a tradition by this point. At some point every game, there is a point of no return, and before that point is the ideal time to run around completing sidequests. In VII, the point of no return was 'literally the screen before fighting Sephiroth', in VI it was Kefka's tower that was accessible very early and that 'optional' endgame was essentially the entire last third of the game, so there's some margin on where VIII could land. But the Lunatic Pandora feels point of no return-ish, and we just got the airship, so might as well do all these side quests now, right? Especially because of the way GFs work - you want them early so they have time to build AP so they can actually be useful in the endgame.
This is going to do interesting things to the pacing of the story, let me tell you.
First off, though, a small cutscene plays out once Rinoa is back in the airship.
Quistis: "What's wrong, Rinoa?" Rinoa: "I'm just a little… embarrassed." Zell: "Why?" Rinoa: "I was so set on staying in Esthar. But then, when you guys rescued me… It made me so happy, and…" Irvine: "No need to be embarrassed!" Selphie: "Yeah, happy is good." Rinoa: "Thanks… everybody." Squall, mentally: "(I have a lot on my mind…)" Quistis: "As an expert Squall observer… He's thinking: what do we do now? Blah blah blah…" Quistis: "If you think and worry too much, everything tends to turn out bad. Squall. Why don't we just picture a brighter future?" Squall: "...Whatever." Zell: "But seriously, what do we do from here? I'm not really sure, but… Don't we have to do something about that 'Lunatic Pandora' in Esthar? After all, the Galbadians are controlling it. Which means Seifer is behind this too, right?" Squall: "Seifer is… Ultimecia's puppet." Zell: "Yeah, and that Ultimecia! We can't let that sorceress from the future mess up our world! Let's go kick her ass! We're SeeDs! We're here to destroy sorceresses, right!!!?" Squall: "ZELL!!!"
[Zell looks at Rinoa and immediately realizes he's made a mistake.] Zell: "S-Sorry…"
[Quistis facepalms.]
I never get tired of seeing Squall's friends roast him. Zell putting his foot in his mouth is also a good 'ouch' moment and a reminder of Rinoa's conflict - when Irvine asks Squall where they're heading, Rinoa asks that she be taken to the orphanage, and when Squall says the place is a ruin she replies that she wants to stay away from places with a lot of people in case Ultimecia possesses her again. She's clearly worried she's a liability to her friends and the world as a whole, although now that Ultimecia has Adel available to her I doubt she'll settle for Rinoa again.
1) Lunar Cry
But of course, before we head there and go on with the plot, we should take a look at Esthar in the wake of the Lunar Cry.
It's a sinister picture. The skies are tinged with crimson, and everything underneath is bathed in that red, eerie glow. This is VIII's counterpart to the world of ruin and Meteor's appearance in the sky. It definitely sets an ominous tone, but at the same time… This is just a color filter, c'mon. We can do better.
Of course, the overworld only has so much visible information to give us. To find out what it's like down there… We'll have to actually set the Ragnarok down and see what new horrors greet us.
The very first thing we run into upon wandering down there is franchise staple Behemoth's first appearance in the game. It is a brutal swerve; Behemoth has over 45,000 HP, an unreasonable amount to carve through, especially as the party I'm currently dragging around isn't strongly optimized for shenanigans - with one exception; Irvine has 100 Full-Lifes junctioned to HP, so he can hang out in crisis range at the same HP as other characters' max and abuse his Limit Break. There's no particular reason he's the one I am using this tactic with, it just happened to turn out that way.
Behemoth's strongest attack is, of course, Meteor, which has a sick animation where a portal to the starlit void of space opens and meteors rain down.
The way Meteor works in this game is… interesting. On the one hand, it is a multi-hit spell, hitting ten times. Against a single opponent, that can be incredibly powerful; however, the targeting is entirely random, so we wouldn't want it against a big group. In this case, however, Meteor is… kind of pitiful? Each meteor only does around 200-300 damage, so that's 2500 damage total spread randomly across the party.
One thing I'm noticing across the next few hours of gameplay is that at some point my characters appear to have become basically immune to magic? I don't prioritize Spirit when giving them junctions or anything, but spells are just dealing pitiful damage to my party, even stuff like Meteor. It's strange.
Other than that, Behemoth doesn't end up being too much of a problem. Irvine's Limit Break deals tens of thousands of damage, Squall still has Darkside equipped, we hit hard and eventually tear through its HP and kill it. Still, this wasn't a boss, this was a random encounter. Can't afford to be tripping over one of these every ten feet, so we'll have to be careful going forward.
Behemoth isn't the only powerful foe brought on by the Lunar Cry, although most of the others aren't nearly as intimidating.
Kitty!
I hate those things. Their HP count is deceptively low, they can enter a defensive mode in which they resist damage to an incredible degree.
So. Red skies, red world, new monster. So far so expected. How is Esthar faring? Well first off, something I initially completely missed is that Esthar's Airstation isn't just there for flavor: We can actually set down there, and that gives us an awesome visual of the Ragnarok:
Dead bodies in the street. The lifter system completely broken. Soldiers guarding chokepoints with their weapons out. Random encounters in the streets. The city is in a state of disaster.
Disaster is not quite apocalypse, though. There are still civilians hanging out in the streets, the buildings are intact, the situation is bad, but it's the same kind of bad it was in Winhill with Laguna, where monsters were prowling the streets and people were afraid of leaving their homes but life still went on.
Civilian dialogue has updated, though it's mostly various expressions of confusion and fear. There isn't much else to do, so after checking the various screens and the presidential palace (no sign of Odine or the President at this time), we head back out.
That's about all there's to do here at this time. If we check out the Tear's Place monument, we can indeed see the Pandora hovering ominously above, including in the inside screens, but we can't do anything yet.
Also, the codex has updated with several new pages, some of which hold interesting information.
The Great Salt Lake is described as having been turned barren by Esthar's experiments - so much for the theory that it was the impact site for a Lunar Cry and the dinosaurs didn't survive. Although I guess the use of the Pandora could have been those experiments!
There's now an entry for the Moon, described as "a world of monsters. Many works of art and epics about the moon throughout history are evidence of its mystical powers." I hadn't really thought about it, but 'a world of monsters' does imply that the moon must have had like… An entire ecosystem. It must have an atmosphere, water… Basically a smaller planet? I wonder what life is like up there.
An entry labeled "Crystal Pillar" tells us that it is "A crystal that causes the Lunar Cry by producing a strong energy field between the planet and the moon. It's believed to have originated on the moon. The Crystal Pillar responds to a specific location on the planet, and sends a strong directional signal. More research is required to analyze this process in detail." It is followed by an entry for the Lunatic Pandora: "An enclosure for the Crystal Pillar made by Esthar. 3 miles tall and 1.5 miles wide, the enormous enclosure boasts a high tech facility. It floats by causing a reaction with the Crystal Pillar. A stone from the moon is sealed inside. It was probably built to cause the Lunar Cry by artificial means."
Okay. So the Crystal Pillar came from the moon, and its true nature and origin is unknown to use, but the Lunatic Pandora was then built by Esthar to encase and control the Lunar Cry. Given that the Lunar Cry happened several times through history before Esthar was around, it seems like the Pillar would cause it regardless of where it is or whether it's used, but Esthar attempted to control and channel it as a weapon of mass destruction? That's definitely much more recent than I would have guessed - I'd assumed the Pandora was already around in the days of Centra.
Further pages also inform us that Adel's Tomb was shot into space using the Ragnarok, and that this is how the spaceship was lost. The Ragnarok itself is based on "an ancient Centra legend of the Dragon Ship." Odine's page reveals that he is the man who discovered Guardian Forces, which is a wild sentence. Like, is this saying that GFs are artificially engineered? Or that they always existed as spirits but it was only until he came around that he was able to assert their existence? How do you even discover Ifrit, he was just a huge fire guy hanging out in a cave? Weren't the Brothers attached to the tomb of the unknown king centuries ago? The only way I can make sense of this is if it's saying that Guardian Forces have always existed and been mentioned in human legends and folklores under a vague understanding of spirits, but it was Odine who scientifically classified them as a specific order of being with specific traits. It's also said he developed paramagic by studying a sorceress with her cooperation, becoming the first sorceress researcher, I don't remember if we already had that information before.
Now let's head back home.
2) Squall's Promise
…and the first thing we notice is that, as we leave Esthar, the sky takes on its normal hue. The crimson skies of the Lunar Cry are exclusively limited to the Esthar region - as are its new random encounters. More on this later.
It's the field of flower we saw in the OP… Which also makes it the field of flowers Selphie sends enemies to when using The End, which recontextualizes it: Selphie's ultimate power is banishing enemies to her lost memories of her childhood home. Pretty neat!
When we arrive at Edea's House, we are greeted by Angelo. The dog continues to inexplicably teleport around without rhyme or reason. This time, its purpose is to indicate the screen to the left where we are supposed to go for the cutscene, as it is otherwise possible to completely miss it.
When we arrive, Irvine makes a quip about how he had to put up with Rinoa's "kicks and punches" for him, and seeing the two of them together makes it worth it. Rinoa apologizes, he tells her to not worry about it, and leaves them alone.
Rinoa: "What'll become of me?" Squall: "Don't worry about it. There've been many good sorceresses. Edea was one. You can be like her." Rinoa: "But Edea's still… I can't guarantee anything, either, if Ultimecia possesses me again… You saw me. She controlled me in outer space and made me break Adel's seal. What might happen next time? What will I end up doing? Will I end up fighting everyone? …Scary thought, isn't it?" Squall, mentally: "(Rinoa….. Even if you end up as the world's enemy, I'll… I'll be your knight.)" Rinoa: "If I fall under Ultimecia's control again… SeeD will come kill me, right? And the leader of SeeD is you, Squall… Squall's sword will pierce my heart… I guess it's ok if it's you, Squall. Nobody else." Rinoa: "Squall, if that ever happens…" Squall: "That's enough! I'll never do anything like that. The sorceress I'm after is not you, Rinoa. My enemy is the sorceress from the future… Ultimecia." Rinoa: "Ultimecia lives in the future and possesses me. She uses my body as her extension in this world. How? How will you save me?" Squall: "I'll come up with something… There's gotta be a way." Rinoa: "..." Squall: "Don't worry. Trust me." Rinoa: "...I trust you. Well, until you find a way, maybe… Maybe I should stay in Esthar, at that memorial? Wouldn't that be better?" Squall: "No… That'd be pointless. I'll just end up going after you again. Rinoa… Just stay close to me."
I love Squall straight-up admitting that it doesn't matter how sensible it would be to keep Rinoa in a place that can contain her, he'd just end up dramatically breaking in again because he's a lovesick idiot. Not that Rinoa is any better, already imagining herself tragically but romantically dying on the sword of the man she loves. Get a grip, girl. The parallels between Squall and Seifer were already obvious, but Squall outright calling himself her knight makes them obvious-er.
You know, it's funny. This is the second game in a row in which one of our core protagonists is compromised by the Big Bad having some ability to override their will and control them that is poorly understood in-character and with unknown but broad limits. Only, in VII, this was used as a tool of psychological horror, and Cloud's refusal to admit he was a liability along with everyone else's refusal to look at the problem nearly led to the end of the world. Here, however, the characters do acknowledge the situation and its risk… They just make an active decision to take those risks anyway out of love. Rather than horror, this serves as romance. It's neat how the context of different games makes similar beats hit differently.
This is followed by a very funny exchange in which Rinoa says that 'those words' ("Just stay close to me") are what started everything, and Squall acts confused - she's clearly referring to one of Squall's early lines, which he just meant professionally as a mercenary/bodyguard but clearly made an impression on her, so he doesn't remember it even though she does. What's funny though, is that he clearly sees this as a potential missteps on a 'forgot our anniversary' level and attempts to dodge… By blaming it on the GF memory erasure. Hysterical.
Rinoa recounts to Squall a dream she had in which she and Squall promised to each other to see shooting stars together, but then she forgot where she was supposed to meet him and runs across all the world without being able to find him, until she screams and wakes up crying. To which Squall first goes 'it was just a dream, it doesn't mean anything,' but then in a display of emotional intelligence that really shows his growth, realizes that this is actually affecting Rinoa.
Squall: "How about this… I'll be here…" [He motions to the field of flowers.] Rinoa: "...Why?" Squall: "The reason why you couldn't find me was because we haven't promised yet." Rinoa: "Promised…?" Squall: "I'll be waiting for you. If you come here, you'll find me. I promise." Rinoa: "I'll be here, too. It's a promise! Thanks, Squall! Next time, we'll meet for sure!"
The lines "I'll be here… I'll be waiting for you. So, if you come here, you'll find me. I promise," are, of course, the lines in the game's opening FMV.
We've come full circle!
This tender moment is followed by Zell coming in to say that they were just contacted by radio by Esthar's presidential palace, with a plan to defeat Ultimecia for which they want to hire SeeD - it's honestly kind of surprising how quickly Esthar was to reestablish radio contacts after seventeen years of them being shut down. Squall suspects this is a trap to draw Rinoa back to Esthar to seal her again, but Zell reveals that the name of the man who contacted them is… Kiros. And that's enough for Squall to decide to take the chance and trust Esthar on this.
Before we go, though, there's some dialogue with Edea - she and Cid are still hanging around their ruined orphanage. I guess they don't have anywhere else to live. As Squall is about to leave, she interrupts him.
Edea: "Squall! There is something I must tell you. It is about me…" Edea: "Yes… I believe it was 13 years ago… This is when that story begins. I first became a sorceress when I was a child. And once again… 13 years ago. That day… right here, I encountered a sorceress on the verge of death. I received her powers of my own will. That sorceress was an entity of fear for my children. I could not let her get to them. But… This turned out to be the beginning of my painful story." Edea: "At this very minute, my bitter story has ended. I now understand there is an end, no matter how painful it might be. Therefore… Squall? You must fight to the end! Even though it may bring tragedy to others!"
This is wild. So far it seemed like Ultimecia was projecting her spirit from the future back in time, like Ellone did with us, but Edea actually met her while she was dying? Like, physically? Did Ultimecia move herself physically back in time, but then died and only her spirit or ghost is hanging around and possessing people? It's frustratingly hard to figure out from just these lines!
But the encouragement is nice. Of course, by now, we should all be fully familiar with the expectation that Edea sending us off with one last encouragement doesn't mean we're done, and we should backtrack to her for a missable dialogue.
It's easy to forget, but Edea and Rinoa have never actually talked. Ultimedea briefly mind controlled her but did not actually talk to her; then Rinoa passed out when they beat her and she's been unconscious for the entire time we've known the 'real' Edea. This is their first time speaking to one another. And now, they're meeting as a sorceress of the present, and a sorceress of the past. Rinoa asks Edea for advice on how to live as a sorceress, and Edea's recommendation is simple: to find herself a knight. Someone who will always be by her side. In fact, Edea tells us that there is a direct link between the sorceresses being knight-less and going evil - a knight "presents her with peace of mind."
What I think Edea is saying here, implicitly, is that it is the experience of being loved that keeps a sorceress righteous. And it is being without love, or at least without evidence of love, facing only fear and prejudice, that eventually turns one's feelings bitter and selfish, for there's no one in the world to stand with you.
Squall is this to Rinoa. Seifer believes that he is this to Ultimecia, but it's obvious the relationship is entirely one-sided. Ultimecia turned to evil long ago, and has no regard for him as a knight - only as a pawn.
Rinoa asks if Edea herself has a knight, and she says yes, and he is with her even now, which means. She is, obviously, referring to Cid. lmao.
Rinoa laughs, and says - she's found an apprentice knight. Squall will grow into the role, I'm sure.
And this concludes our little jaunt back at the orphanage. Our next step is to meet with the President of Esthar to discuss the attack on the Lunatic Pandora, but that sounds final dungeon shaped, so instead it's time to do… Really just a bunch of random, unassorted stuff.
We have the airship now! Let's explore the world!
First off - I'd like an update on the various towns across the globe. Going back to just talk to NPCs is much easier with the airship than the Garden's slow and difficult movement. First off - without any particular reason, I just happened to get there - Winhill.
Unfortunately there is very little to report there. The sleepy little town with its two washed-up Garden students standing guard is exactly the same as it was the last time we visited it. Disappointing start, but the next stop is more exciting.
3) Children's Card Games
We can park the Ragnarok at the FH airport in order to access the Garden, which is still there where we left it, and talk to the student body to find out their feelings about everything that's been going on.
Irvine and Selphie are hanging out in the classroom, Quistis is on the bridge, and Zell, if not in the party, is outside the library, the only member of the party to actually put on his student uniform while in the Garden. Checking out the BBS, there have been updates to the Laguna page, Selphie's diary, and her friend posts. Let's take a look!
Rinoa left a message on her friend page. It's sweet.
Funnily enough, while no one in-character has acknowledged the obvious possibility yet, Selphie's last diary entry is labeled "a day of anticipation" and says that she may actually meet Sir Laguna soon. In spite of her hectic behavior, she's clearly paying enough attention to have caught the thread on President Laguna. She's also recorded how excited she was about being the first non-Esthari to fly the Ragnarok. It's very cute.
I like this line of dialogue from Xu because it gets at the heart of the duality of FF8. On the one hand: The character's dialogue is updated, even a minor character like Xu has her own desires and interiority. On the other hand: The Ragnarok merits mention but uh the apocalyptic descent of millions of monsters doesn't.
This is consistent all across the Garden. It's a little slice of peace in this chaotic world, but that peace feels a lot like it kinda forgot some of the stakes. We can get updated on the romantic shenanigans of unnamed background students, which is cute!
But also? No one has a single thing to say about the Lunar Cry. For all that you'd know talking to them, it didn't happen.
Anyway, it's time to challenge the Card Game Elite Four.
A while back, we were introduced to the 'CC', or Card Club, a secretive group of elite card players within Balamb. They are ranked in order of ability and named after suits - the Knight of Clubs, etc. They conceal their true rank from all others, and the only way to get to fight them is to fight your way up the ladder; once we've fought the lowest of the rung, Jack, then the Knight will reveal themselves to us when addressed. He's still tricky to find, however; he's one of the unnamed SeeDs who wanders the corridors at random. He introduces himself saying it's been a while since anyone beat Jack, and once defeated, he falls to one knee and tells us to beware the others in the CC group who are better than him.
Next up the ladder, Princess Diamond; this player is actually two players fighting as one.
They are two girls (possibly sisters? unclear) who are always walking as a pair in the atrium, always doing the same animation of walking up to the info board and pausing there. They finish each other sentences, and are fought as a single opponent, the Diamond Duo.
…unfortunately they ask us to use the Luna Base rules, which would be a nightmare. We have to back out several times until they finally drop the matter and we can fight them under Garden rules.
Wow, I wonder what a Jumbo Cactuar is!
They 'can't remember the last time they were defeated,' and on second thought, reminisce that it was Headmaster Cid.
I swear to God. The whole Card Club quest line works off magic school anime rules. The principal is a legendary player, people fight in duo, every victory is followed by a comment to the effect of "I can't remember the last time I lost… You're good, kid…" I kind of love it.
Now we must find our next opponent - Prince Spade. As it turns out, it's an old friend; the very same student who gave us our first pack of cards and allowed us to start playing Triple Triad in the first place.
Once defeated, he says: "Wow, you are good… I accept defeat. I can tell you've collected and played cards all over the world. And you remind me of her… Her talent, especially. Oh, now I've said too much. Well, there is one more suit for you to defeat. But Heart is no ordinary player. She became the top player of the CC group in only 3 months. She is a true genius. You two seem to have a similar learning ability."
THE TOP PLAYER, A CARD GAME PRODIGY WHO ROSE TO THE TOP IN THREE MONTHS. Love it. Who is that mystery player, then?
Xu: "Oh, Squall. I'm a bit surprised. I didn't think Spade would lose… But this is good. I haven't been able to find a worthy opponent lately. That's right. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Xu. Otherwise known as… The CC Group Card Queen Heart. Whenever you're ready, let's go."
Once defeated, Xu dramatically drops down to one knee. She knew this day would come, but didn't want to believe it - we are the second ever person to defeat her. The only one left King, the CC Group Card Master. However, the King is not easily found - we'll have to look for them ourselves.
In hindsight, it seems obvious that the game was trying to dangle a red herring that Cid was the Card King, but I don't know why, I fully mentally checked him off as 'old man's out of the game.' I think I may have just mentally balked from the very idea of needing to leave Garden, go all the way back to Ragnarok, then the orphanage, then back to Garden if Cid wasn't it.
But Cid is not, in fact, it. I am unable to identify the King myself. Regrettably, I had to actually look up a guide to figure it out - because in order to unlock the King battle, we need to do something I have never done before and did not realize could even be done. I simply would never have figured it out myself.
First, we need to approach Dr Karowaki and use the challenge button on her, as we did before, only this time she does not actually answer with a challenge.
Dr Kadowaki: "Congratulations, Squall. I heard you defeated all 4 suits of the CC group. Oh, me…? I have nothing to do with the CC group. …Well, I guess it's ok to tell you. I was the CC group King for a long time, but I passed the position to another girl 4 years ago. Oh, you want me to know who she is? Sorry, I can't tell you. Look for her yourself. You'll probably find her soon, now that you've defeated the 4-Suits."
Hm. A prodigy girl, who won the title 4 years ago… Now who could that be?
To find out… We need to take a break.
Squall's bed functions as a free inn at which we can rest. I've never used that function before, because Tents are cheap and faster to use from the save screen, so I never noticed that there was a secondary rest function: "Leave me alone," which dismisses the party.
There isn't a massive use for this, except this: With the party dismissed, they (normally) return to their various locations in the Garden, so we can go around and get unique dialogue from them!
Zell in his uniform.
Unfortunately, despite exploring everywhere I could think of, I wasn't able to find Rinoa. She's supposed to be in the library, but she wasn't, so I don't know what's up with that. In any case, this function is the key: Squall needs to go to bed alone. Then, in the night…
Quistis please you have to not manifest in people's bedroom at 3am. Please. The optics, Quistis.
Quistis: "The CC group leader, the card master King... Is I, Quistis Trepe. All decked out in my uniform! Squall, you really are something. I can't believe how much your game has improved. I knew we were destined to play. Let's begin!"
We can't actually back out of this fight. Unlike all other Triple Triad encounters, we are given no choice to refuse - this is a fated battle against the CC Group King, and we must win or fall.
We win, anyway. The reality is that most of the challenge of Triple Triad is in the way its rulesets constrain your abilities and chief of these is the Random rule - no other players has as good a set of cards as we do, but Random can limit our options and force us to deal with trash cards that even the odds. Unfortunately, fine-tuning the rules in play in any given region is a logistical nightmare that involves deliberately losing to a specific NPC multiple times while she moves across the world. If there was a toggle button where I could select the Triple Triad rules I want to apply or not it might be possible to make the game more challenging, as it stands it's either we absolutely crush the opposition or we deal with trash fires like the Lunar Base rules.
I love how every single CC member does that 'kneeling in defeat' animation.
Now defeated, Quistis tells Squall not to get cocky - from now one they'll challenge each other as equals. This is our cue that Quistis can now be challenged as a repeat opponent on the Garden's bridge. Which we will have to do, because otherwise than its cute but very light narrative, all this was in purpose of one thing - a rare card exclusive to Quistis, the King of Cards.
Gilgamesh.
Given the self-referential approach of the Final Fantasy games, the way they constantly bring back and iterate not just on monsters but on characters or boss types, it's no surprise they would bring Gilgamesh back eventually. But this small preview that Our Boy does in fact exist in this game, without telling us anything else about him, is only making me want to know more, and unfortunately I can't. All this is is a card, and a spoiler/reveal that Gilgamesh is in the game, somewhere.
Still. Beating the card is a powerful boon. Not for Gilgamesh himself - his card is only kind of good - but because it refines into something very special:
10 Holy Wars.
The insanely named Holy War is an item which turns the entire party invincible for a period of time. Which seems, uh… Ridiculous. Absurd. This, too, could solve our Malboro problem easily. We'll end up going a different route, but at least the option is always there now. Very good.
And now, the Card Club questline is over, and it's time to explore more of the world!
4) A Brief Overview of the Rest of the World
I really hope the pigtail girl X Zell subplot is going somewhere eventually because it's drawn far too much attention to itself not to. It's cute! But like, now you have to deliver.
Quiet seaside Balamb is enjoying a breath of fresh air after it was under Galbadian control the last time we visited it. Definitely plenty of new dialogue there to reflect that - citizens expressing how overwhelming dealing with all these goings-on is, and asking "What's next, sorceresses, monsters, natural disasters? Jeez!" A funny bit about how the car shop assistant talks to the memory of his dead boss about how the town is finally free, only it turns out the boss wasn't dead at all, just working under one of the cars. If we head to Zell's house, he asks his mom whether the pigtail girl showed up, though she seems not to have met anyone like this. And that's about it!
No, there is no one in the town who is actually acknowledging the Lunar Cry in as many words. The question "what's next, monsters?" is phrased as a hypothetical. Everyone in Balamb is acting with a mix of relief that they can now chill again, and frustrations from having had to suffer Galbadian occupation, and that's about it. Nor does Zell have anything to talk to his mother regarding his recent realization that he was adopted.
Next stop: let's quickly stop by the Shumi Village!
The Shumi have been busy. Their statue of Laguna is finished at last, and they want to show it to their Elder, who appears with the Master Fisherman in tow. The Elder thanks him for his help; there's a fourth wall-leaning gag where the Master Fisherman says this doesn't give him the feeling of completion and he somehow has the Shumi Village BGM switch to the Irish Jig from the concert as a 'victory fanfare' of sorts. Squall asks him when he's going to head back to FH, as the people there might be getting worried.
Master Fisherman: "I don't know why I came here, boy. Probably curiosity, more than anything. For some reason, I had to see this statue. I'm not into ceramics, or this Laguna fella. I just had to come and see it. Couldn't resist the urge. You'll understand when you get to my age." Master Fisherman: "It's important to act on your urges, especially at my age, since they're so rare."
The Elder congratulates everyone on a job well done, and the Shumi file out of the room. As the Master Fisherman leaves, Squall holds him back and asks - is he still not going to tell them where the name 'FH' came from?
Master Fisherman: "Heheheheh… Some other time, boy." Squall: "I'm looking forward to it."
I've seen my fair share of 'young character bonds with older character over some trivial question that the old character doesn't want to answer but the younger character keeps asking it to show that he cares' so it's not like I can't see where this is going, but the entire Shumi Tribe subplot is just… Entirely too weird for me to really connect to any of what's happening there.
Once everyone is gone, the Elder and his Attendant reminisce about their time with Laguna - the Attendant first mistook him for a bandit and mistrusted him, but eventually he found Laguna to be an incredible man, whose 'strong eyes told it all,' and his attitude towards his own future changed. This leads into a flashback where Laguna visits the workshop for the first time shortly before leaving the Village for good, and Elder and Attendant get into a fight over whether they should enjoy the perpetual stability of the Shumi Village's fixed fates or seek to change themselves just as the world outside their walls is changing; Laguna ends up breaking that fight by prostrating himself, which makes both Shumi terribly embarrassed.
The takeaway here, I think, is that Laguna is the kind of person who has no issue deliberately setting aside his pride and doing cringey things for the sake of stopping fights and helping others get along. He tells them that as long as they have heart, it will bring them together and help them find an answer in the end, and then everyone pauses for a picture.
Laguna's picture fades as we move from the flashback to the present.
Man, it's incredible how much Laguna is coded as a dead guy whose memories linger and still impact people, for someone who is, right now, almost definitely the President of the most powerful nation on Earth.
Attendant is still wondering about his own evolution, and seems to realize that what's holding him back from being able to accept his change is that he wants to see Laguna again and show him how the Shumis have changed. This trails off on a last shot of the Laguna statue, and then we finally regain control of the party.
God, I'm sorry, the Shumi Tribe subplot about the Elder and Attendant just isn't doing it for me, this is all whatever. At least these cutscenes are so fucking long that we can draw Ultima at the entrance both coming in and coming back out. Hopefully this'll have a payoff at some point.
We do a quick drop by Timber, which is completely unchanged. It's possible some NPC dialogue has been altered at some point but the content has not changed in any way, this town is exactly the same as it was thirty hours ago. The same is also true of Dollet, and Trabia Garden.
…
Basically, the Lunar Cry has only affected Esthar. Not a single other town in the world is even aware that it happened at all.
There's… something, there, about how Esthar's self-imposed isolation means information is kept in a closed loop. Most people don't know anything about what's going on in Esthar, to the point that the entire nation is surrounded by holo-camouflage walls walling off every valley leading into it so that people can't even see Esthar without being there. Those autarky measures are so successful that no one outside the borders is even aware that a localized apocalypse is unfolding there; Esthar's greatest triumph being now its greatest curse.
But also are you fucking serious, for real?
THE MOON CRIED. A GIGANTIC PILLAR OF BLOOD CONTAINING MILLIONS OF MONSTERS REACHED DOWN TO CONNECT THE MOON AND EARTH. How has no one else noticed? Hey, how about the fact that radio waves are working again and long range communication is possible for the first time in 17 years? No? Yeah, don't think so.
This wouldn't bother me nearly as much as it does if the Lunar Cry itself hadn't be so lavishly produced, with so much CGI going to emphasize its terrifying, celestial scope, only to turn to actually just… Not mean that much at all? I mean, it's pretty rough being an Esthari right now, but the city is still standing, and nobody outside it has even been affected at all. The basic encounter outside of Balamb is still a solo BIte Bug.
I feel like I was misled by false advertising.
Deling City is a mildly different case, in that it does have some up to date dialogue about the state of the world.
The trick is that it's still entirely devoid of any mention of the Lunar Cry. All of it basically follows one of three themes:
Everyone is waking up a little hungover from Edea's mind control and looking back at their own actions… And failing to experience any kind of regret and mostly just being okay with carrying on in the same way they'd been doing before with the world domination.
Edea is gone, but now they have Ultimecia as a new sorceress, who is even better and will take them to even greater victory. All hail! Only a few people seem legitimately worried about this being a threat to the world.
Seifer Almasy is now the one who is actually 'in charge' (as far as they're aware), with Ultimecia being a sort of power backer figure rather than in charge like Edea was, and Seifer is having the army investigate ruins and shit.
We can also visit Carraway at his mansion, and he has a small dialogue menu about the sorceress and Esthar, though none of it is new information to us at this stage. And that's about it!
Well, if the game isn't going to treat its third act ultimate disaster with any kind of urgency, why should we? Let's just hang out and do random mechanical content to make up for the narrative's shortcomings.
Did you know that there are two islands in the world where all the monsters are hard-locked to lv 100?
Let's cut for image count.
Final Fantasy VIII, Part 29.B: Squall's Promise, the Card Club, Cactuar, Doomtrain
This is an interesting twist of the interaction of the level scaling system with junctioning. You could, in theory, just drop any monster there, and simply by virtue of being locked to lv 100 they would be a terrifying threat. However, because the vast majority of a character's power comes through junctions, it's entirely possible to trivialize these lv 100 monsters at lv 40. Furthermore, if we don't get stronger junctions from these monsters, then blowing through a bunch of them will raise the level of everyone in the party, making every monster in the rest of the world harder to defeat while our own power has barely gone up. It's very curious. Are the lv 100 islands (apparently nicknamed in the community the Island Closest to Heaven and the Island Closest to Hell) a good grinding spot or not?
Well, they do have incredibly powerful invisible Draw Points. Not even Move-Find will reveal them; we need to just press X at random while walking the island and boom, Ultima.
However, we don't have to engage in those lv 100 encounters to get those rewards. We can just trigger Enc-None and both those islands just become free spell giveaway zones. The main reason to engage these monsters, then, would be their drops - the Grendel drops Dragon Fins, for instance.
As it stands, I am not able to trivialize these fights. Those monsters are extremely tough with tens of thousands of HP, and some of them deal "one hit KO" levels of damage to most of my party. I can eke by a win, but that requires going very hard, using a 100 Ultima-Str Squall's Darkside with Rinoa healing him with Curaga, which is still pretty scuffed. There are other alternatives, though.
We've been ragging on the junction system for the entire game so far, with good reason. But that's been largely a matter of the obstructions it throws in our way, the little inconveniences woven all through the system, the annoyance of Draw, how things are on the perpetual edge of either breaking the game or being broken by the game…
Let's talk about two case studies of what the junction system enables.
6) Jumbo Cactuar
In the southeast of the world, there is a remote desert island, seemingly identical to the main landmass of desert rock it's attached to, save for one detail: sometimes, as above, we can see a cactus pop out of the ground. This is a distinctive enough sight to warrant checking out.
Oh, my god.
The Cactuars are back. Introduced in VI, they were present in VII but I don't think we encountered them in this LP. They've always been goofy little guys, but they've never been this goofy; their ridiculous pose and rapid yet stilted movements have now become so iconic they are part of a running gag in Rebirth. Mechanically, Cactuars have a simple gimmick: they have very low HP but very high Evasion and flee from fights very quickly, taking any rewards with them. Of course, Squall has perfect accuracy, so all we need is to have him hit quickly and hard. Some Cactuars still escape, but as it turns out they each reward 20 AP for our GFs, so even without further optimization it's an easy way to grind some AP.
That's just a random encounter, though. We are looking for the cactus that keeps popping up in the overworld, then disappearing after a few seconds. We need to be quick in order to run into it before it can vanish again, and when we do…
Jumbo Cactuar, King of the Cactuars.
God, look at him. He looks so goofy, I love him. The pose! The : o expression! The moustache! The fact that his 'hair' is three spikes on top of his head! He's perfect.
He's also a mean sonuvabitch. Scan fails to register his HP count, but I can guesstimate it as being well over a hundred thousand at this level. Its resistances are also high: Squall's Renzokuken only deals 500 damage per hit to him, although it also has a unique animation that is frankly its own reward - Squall jumps on top of Cactuar's head and hangs on to it to bash it up the head.
Goofy.
There's one significant problem, however. Jumbo Cactuar is not a complicated boss, it has no weird spells or status effects, it just uses physical attacks… And one move called 10,000 Needles.
10,000 Needles deals 10 damage 'one thousand' times. I don't think it actually animates a thousand 10 counts, but the point is, the end result is 10,000 damage, which cannot be reduced in any way. As a reminder, the maximum HP of any character is 9,999. This means 10,000 Needles is effectively an instant death effect that always succeeds and ignores instant death resistance. It's nasty, especially on a monster with that much HP.
However, I am trialing out a new tactic based on advice from the thread: Meteor Rinoa.
Here's how it works: As said before, Rinoa's Angel Wings takes away player control and causes her to cast a random offensive spell each turn with magic power multiplied by about 5. The spell is not fully 'random,' but prioritizes spells in her spell list in a certain order. Thus, we've curated her spell list by removing every offensive spell that isn't Meteor or Ultima. She gets 100 Ultimas, junctioned to Magic. She also has Aura stored. At the start of the fight, Rinoa casts Aura on herself, while Squall casts Meltdown on the boss, reducing its physical and magical defenses by 0 (okay so I forgot to use Meltdown on Turn 1 hence the weak damage from Renzokuken but that's the ideal, the important point is I remembered it afterwards). On Turn 2, she has a very high chance of having her LB available even at full HP, so we use it. On Turn 3, she starts raining down hellfire. Meteor hits ten times, and each hit deals in excess of 3,500 damage. That's 35,000 damage, vastly exceeding the upper limits of even a maxed out Ultima.
This should fold the fight within a couple of turns, were it not for one small problem.
Despite one of my readers explicitly warning me of this, I forgot that Scan was technically an 'offensive' spell, as it is targeting an enemy. Therefore, Rinoa spends every other turn casting Scan instead of Meteor or Ultima, and for obvious reasons Scan does not benefit from a boost in magic power.
So that means Squall and Irvine have to buckle up do their part, dealing their own (comparatively meager) damage while keeping revive spells at the ready for when 10,000 Needles drops. Thankfully, Meltdown's Vit 0 status effect means that everyone gets to actually do some damage. The problem is that even with regular visits to the Shumi Tribe and our trip to the Island Closest to Hell, I don't have 200 Ultimas - more like 130 or so. So since I had to pass the 100 to Rinoa for her magic abuse, Squall's strength has severely tanked. The nest best Junction for Str is Meteor, but obviously Rinoa also gets that (and we have like 10 of them besides), down below that is Triple (which is currently equipped to someone else's Speed), and down below that is Flare, which is only slightly more than half the strength of Ultima, so even futzing around to get Squall the second best replacement his damage has tanked terribly.
Not so terribly that Meteor Rinoa isn't still our best damage option even with the unintentional nerf from constantly casting Scan.
The reward for defeating Jumbo Cactuar is getting Cactuar as a GF. Like most of the more optional GFs, it eschews the basic ability Junctions in Strength/Magic/Vitality/Spirit/HP in exchange for more second-order ones like Evasion and Luck. Furthermore, Cactuar starts with Strength Bonus, Vitality Bonus, Magic Bonus and Spirit Bonus; each of these abilities makes it so the character who has them equipped gets +1 to the appropriate stat when leveling up. I have in the past tried to use this to build some characters towards some archetype (Zell with Ifrit's Strength Bonus in a rapidly leveling party, for instance) and because it's one of the few ways to increase stats outside of Junctions. But practically speaking it's unfeasible. Unless your mind is made of spreadsheets keeping track of who needs to level what and which GFs to pass around like Super Candy is way too much time and mental load. I just slap Cactuar on Squall, who probably won't benefit from it much given that he's already so high level he won't be leveling up much more for the endgame, and call it Whatever.
As a fight, this was FF8's best and worst. Meteor Rinoa really showcased the depth of character building the system enables, creating a unique interaction between GFs, Magic spells, and a character's innate Limit Break ability to create a powerful unique build that was the cornerstone of the fight and ended up carrying the victory with her two partners as support. It was fun to put together and watch in use (at least until the first Scan fired off). It's also a demonstration of the way the spell resource system throws this character building into total chaos, with the fun 'how to build Meteor Rinoa' part followed by 'oh fuck I swapped out Squall's Ultima so now his Strength is unmodded I need to rummage in the Magic menu for five minutes to find someone he can bum 100 Flares off, wait is Flare even that good, should I give him the Triple instead, but then that other character loses their Speed stat' which is just a chore.
It's also a good example of how FF8's strategies are done almost entirely in the menu. Everything that just happened was based on pre-fight set-up. Once the fight begun, I literally handed over control of Rinoa, letting her do her thing on autoplay while my inputs were focused on minor additional damage and keeping healing spells handy in case of a backfire.
…when I said 'unless your mind is made of spreadsheets,' but I am starting to think that FF8 was designed by, and for, people whose brains are indeed made of spreadsheets, and for whom winning the combat by setting up the right configuration in the menu before the battle even starts and then executing that configuration with minimal input is the apex of intellectually stimulating combat.
Food for thought.
Anyway, we have the Cactuar GF now, so let's finally tackle our greatest challenge to date and our second mechanical case study of the game:
7) Malboro My Beloathed
Malboro is harder than any boss we've encountered so far, Jumbo Cactuar obviously included.
The main logistical challenge which Malboro poses lies in Bad Breath, and overcoming Bad Breath is almost synonymous with defeating Malboro. Bad Breath is always Malboro's first move in a fight, and it has a 100% chance of inflicting almost every status effect in the game: Poison, Darkness, Silence, Sleep, Slow, Confuse, Berserk, Petrifying, and Curse. We can basically disregard Poison, Darkness, Curse and Slow as merely nuisance. Petrifying is a long term threat (every character gets a countdown, when that countdown reaches 0 they turn to stone). Sleep is secondary problem - characters wake up when physically attacked, but Malboro has a bunch of non-physical attacks it likes to use that could keep hurting characters even while they stay asleep. Silence is… problematic, because winning with physical attacks alone would be challenging. However, it doesn't prevent item use, so a Silenced character would still be in a position to apply Remedies if I equip them with the attack command. That makes Confuse and Berserk the real fight-enders - there is no way for me to win with them. A Berserk character is still attacking Malboro but won't be using items or curative magic, so another character needs to save them, which means at least one of my characters needs to be immune to Berserk and have the Item command. Confuse can actually cause friendly kills, as characters are totally unpredictable. I need any character I can afford to to be immune to Confuse, and I absolutely need the same character to be immune to both Berserk and Confuse so they can use Treatment or Items on the others, and hopefully not die before that happens.
This is, as you can probably tell from the previous paragraph, a fairly intricate logistical challenge. Ideally, everyone would have Status Defense x4, and I would equip them all with 100 Sleep, Confuse, Berserk and Silence to those four slots, making Bad Breath easy to overcome. That's not possible, however. I only have one character with Status Defense x 4 (currently equipped to Squall), the others will need to be hit by at least some of those status effects. Furthermore, I don't have 300 of these spells. I barely have 100 Confuse. I can make one character immune to Confuse, and that's it.
So, the basic outline of the strategy that is starting to form is to stack all the immunities on Squall, then have him rapidly use Remedies on his teammates before they can get the chance to kill him, then kill the Malboro before it has a chance to Bad Breath again (I don't know if it does so only once per fight or can do repeats, but we can't afford to take any chances). That's tricky, but doable.
…
However.
There is another way.
Quistis's Degenerator, the most overpowered Limit Break in the game, which instantly removes an enemy from battle with 100% accuracy unless they're immune. Malboro is stronger than any boss, but it is not a boss. It is not immune to Degenerator. Of course, the Curse status it inflicts renders characters unable to use Limit Breaks, on top of the laundry list of status effects it inflicts that would disable Quistis anyway - the main point here is that I can't make her immune to Curse, so I have to hit Degenerator before Bad Breath.
I first test out the efficacy of this tactic against the overpowered lv 100 mobs of the Island Closest to Hell. And it works. By god, it works; it is if anything more effective than Meteor Rinoa which I'd been using previously. Instant victory after instant victory.
The trick is: Quistis needs to have Full-Life Junctioned to HP, so her max HP is 9,999. This means that even at 2,000 actual HP she is still in Crisis (and outside range of an early one shot by most things). Then, we have someone cast Blind on her, compounding her chances of entering Limit Break. On top of that, we give her a Speed Junction with 100 Triple, ensuring the highest speed in the game, and Initiative, which ensures she always starts a fight with her ATB gauge full. This means Quistis always goes first before anyone else, and in case she didn't 'roll' her limit break, she goes so fast that she can cast Aura on herself and then go again hopefully before anyone else acts,* hitting Degenerator and sending them to Eeby Deeby.
*Due to peculiarities of how the game's ATB works, we can actually 'quit out' of Quistis's menu which will cause it to roll the chance of a Limit Break again as many times as we need in a few seconds, but for the purposes of this exercise we'll play 'fairly.'
Once this strategy has proven effective against the mobs of the island, it's time to find Malboro. Which proves trickier than expected. Allegedly there are Malboros on the island, but I'm not finding them and actually fighting through all these encounters is shooting up my character levels to something unreasonable. So it's time to just look it up.
Turns out, there is a special area accessible only through chocobo that houses the Malboro at a normal, scaled level instead of lv 100.
KWEH!
It looks like this the entire time. The camera is tilted at a really annoying angle and our characters are only visible as a motion of leaves in the forest. It's very impractical.
Once there, we still had to contend against a bunch of random encounters, but eventually, the big boy is here.
Malboro, instant death. Killed before it even had a chance to use Bad Breath.
Overpowered enemy with a broken gimmick build, meet even more overpowered enemy with a gimmick build.
That was… satisfying.
Now, we need 6 Malboro tentacles for the Solomon Ring's summoning ritual, and the idea of running through the forest for another Malboro encounters five more times (this already took like ten minutes) made me wanna die a little, but as it turns out, this singular Malboro dropped 8 tentacles, more than enough to teach Quistis Bad Breath and have spares for the ring!
Now that the hard part is done, all we need is six Steel Pipes, and six Remedy+. The Steel Pipes are easy enough; they were dropped by a Disc 1 enemy called Wendigo back in the Deling Plains, so we just head there.
Wait, what are those HP counts?
This next part pulls the soul out of my body.
It's just… The problem is I have run against the limits of my ability to bear with the repetitiveness of running around and fighting enemies that have extremely basic mechanics. I unplugged both Meteor Rinoa and Degenerator Quistis because they are highly specialized skillsets that require specific GF Junctions, and went back to my 'normal' spread where everyone is fighting with moderate effectiveness and Squall's Darkside does most of the job. One reason for this is so I can just speed through the battles while pressing attack because fuck me there are so many of those. Wendigo decided to make itself scarce and so I am just cutting through dozens of Archeoaevis and Geezards and other enemies that do nothing but take precious minutes of my time on earth to kill. This might have taken me an hour of just doing random encounters without autospeed, bored out of my skull the whole time. So I put on the autospeed, which breezes through most of the fights but at the cost of actually suffering damage over time that I don't pause to heal because I just want to be done.
The problem being, of course, that Wendigo is actually strong. So when I roll into the fight with characters at mid-to-low HP, they start wrecking my shit. I immediately course correct and start healing and firing back, but they are just so fast. Wendigos have multi-hitting physical attacks with high damage and a huge amount of HP, and I realize quickly to my horror that… I'm not actually fast enough to heal then kill them faster than they can kill me.
So we wipe. To this Disc 1 trash.
My agony is real.
It's whatever. We reload, take a little more care this time, and we kill them. They drop multiple Steel Pipes, and it's over. We next buy 60 Remedies and use Alexander's special ability to convert them into 6 Remedies+, and this quest is done.
Doomtrain.
Doomtrain provides us with our second source of Status Defense x4, so GFs willing we will soon no longer have to worry about status effects. It also has some funky stuff like Auto-Shell, which casts Shell on everyone at the start of a fight, and Forbidden Medicine Refinement, which probably unlocks high tier items.
And now we're done!
I mean, not like done-done, there's probably still stuff to do in the world, but I sure am done for today. Cactuar and Malboro were interesting (frustrating, but ultimately gratifying) challenges, the hunt for Wendigo just drained the spirit from my body.
Like, okay, let me give you a point of reference here: When we captured Cactuar, Squall was lv 47, and Quistis and Rinoa were both lv 34. Squall is now lv 57, Rinoa lv 45, and Quistis lv 48. They have gained more than ten levels each, during a sequence with no story beats that included nothing but tearing through random encounters until we could finally found Malboro and the Wendigos (and also visiting Trabia to check for new dialogue and not finding any). This can be blamed in large part to my pushing a little at the Island Closest to Heaven trying to find Malboro before tapping out and getting a bunch of levels I didn't particularly want as a result, but… Damn, those Stat Bonus abilities really would have benefited a character if set up properly, huh. Well, Squall had Cactuar the whole time, so checking… Yeah, he just gained about +10 in every stat. But I could really have buffed Rinoa and Quistis if they'd had the GFs with Stat bonuses equipped, I'd just not anticipated such a massive raise in levels.
The game's internal clock measures about three hours between me obtaining Cactuar and getting Doomtrain, so the autospeed was a godsent.
Alright. We can't leave on such a sour note. The main utility of GFs in this game is for Junctions, but even if we use them rarely, they do have utility as actual summons - and more importantly, most of them kick ass. So let's check out our new spirit buddies.
Incredible. Cactuar appears to deal damage equal to 100 times its level (it's lv 30 and dealing 3000 damage). Which means, if GFs reach lv 100, it could actually be a cap-breaking attack dealing 10,000 damage, as it was in our fight? Mostly I just like how it's a goofy little critter with a ridiculous animation.
It's. It's an actual train from hell. It literally has the yellow striped bars that go up and down. It has rails made up of ghostfire. Its locomotive has a demon face.
This seems to be paying direct homage to the Phantom Train from VI, and you know what? I am living for it. This is the kind of over the top nonsense I love in VIII's summons. Doomtrain deals damage, though it appears to not be particularly strong; however, fitting of the reward for harvesting Malboro tentacles, it is our own Bad Breath, inflicting almost every status effect in the book, from Confuse to Vit 0.
In most FF games, random encounters are weak enough, and summons MP-expensive enough, that pulling out a status-based summon (like Hades in VII) wouldn't usually be the most effective choice in combat. But given that VIII does not have MP costs and random encounters can be very tough when scaled up at high level, this might be a very funny way to deal with mobs.
And that's it for today. I have not played any further. I am sure there are other things to be found using the Ragnarok, and I'm happy to listen to directions, but for now that's enough.
Plot-wise, I knew going in that this update would mostly just be mechanical content, but the fallout of the Lunar Cry has honestly been so… limp it's a disappointment. Maybe this will change later as monsters spread from Esthar over the world, but nobody on the planet noticing the Moondrop baffles me. Mechanically, there were, let's say, highs and lows. The Shumi Tribe quest continues to be one of the quirkier and weirder subplots in a Final Fantasy but I am having a hard time getting into it, these yellow blob people frustrate me more than anything. Still, strong emotional beats from Squall and Rinoa!
Honestly? The high water mark of this update for me was the Triple Triad questline. That is my jam, it's like I was playing Yu-Gi-Oh: The Sacred Card again for about five seconds, even if the actual gameplay of it was just a series of easy wins (due to my stubborn refusal to accept foreign rules in Balamb Garden, admittedly).
Honestly , my assumption with the lunar cry is its a issue of a planet being a sphere, namely that esthar is on another hemisphere and so the galbadian and balamb continent missed the cry because the Planet was in the way during the time that happened.
Like, physically? Did Ultimecia move herself physically back in time, but then died and only her spirit or ghost is hanging around and possessing people?
Having a mind for spreadsheets is a good way to describe it.
But there's a lot of low-effort strats that pay off well, and just require knowing what happens. Which you can't do in an actually blind playthrough.
For example, the cacturs? They don't just show up on the island. The big honking desert next to the island also has it, as long as you're close to the island. So as soon as you get balamb garden mobile, even on a low level run, it's trivial to get all the GF abilities you want pretty quickly. (Cacturs give single-digit XP if you hadn't noticed)
And recall that each level for each character is 1000 XP, but as monsters go up in level they give more XP. Once you get a 'build' for leveling, it goes really fast compared to any previous FF game where leveling gets slower and more tedious.
At this point with Cactur and other GFs collected during the story, you have two sets of of every stat bonus ability, and the rosetta stone teachings abilityx4. There's other ways to get Abilityx4 that are open to you now, so you could have two characters getting +4 stat points every level up, on top of what they naturally get. Island closest to hell/heaven (official names btw, I think it displays in the menu if you save while there) are the meta for fast leveling up, but you could level grind almost anywhere with decently strong enemies. And once a character hits 100 (or the point you decide their OP enough) you can use them for a more-killy junction load out and have the other two characters be leveling.
Yup, Quistis has definitely grown to be a powerful shipper. She confidently stood up, announced what the brooding bad boy was thinking and got it wrong without a second thought.
We don't get that skill before, like, Level 23. It is impressive she has reached that far.
I'm just tickled you gave the 'too lonely for her own good' Quistis Bad Breath versus some of the other options…
I don't have much else that I think I can meaningfully comment on.
Truly every time you see this pair it drives it further and further home that Cid and Edea Kramer are the story of a former psychic super-soldier girl and her house husband. Massively underrated.
A part of me thinks the Shumi should have been cut from the final game. That's a painful thing to say after making NORG jokes for half the playthrough, but the Shumi affect very little and their place in the story is ancillary at best. That and the way they turn into moombas when old is just weird and off-putting.
