Satai's Final Fantasy VIII Playthrough

satai_delenn's well-documented epic journey on the world of Final Fantasy VIII for the first time, with some input from an unwelcomed guest.

Chapter 1
So I started this a little earlier in the week than I expected. I have now begun my very first playthrough of Final Fantasy 8. Hooray! ...okay, and by "begun" I mean I've played the entirety of disc 1 in two days. >_> So here we go! No spoilers for me, please, in your comments, of course. Danke.

Balamb Garden - the beginning. Seifer and Squall duke it out on the practice field and Seifer gets a little carried away. Squall goes back to class and we begin to learn a bit about this world and this school--aha, we're mercenaries here. Or at least, we will be if we pass the test and become SeeDs. I read through the tutorial and it...kind of makes sense...but I learn best hands on, so I don't worry about it too much. Going to the Fire Cave with Quistis (bow chick-a...oh wait, it's Squall) yields Ifrit and my first bunch of combats, during which I mostly perfect my timing with the gunblade. Fun! The junctioning system slowwwwly begins to make some semblance of sense.

And now it's time to prove my worth! Who's on my team...my partner is...Zell Dincht. Squall's reaction: "He's just loud. Can't we switch teams?" My reaction: this guy is awesome. Watch out, Zell has backflipped into your life, nothing will ever be the same! SO MUCH ENTHUSIASM it's greatness on a stick. And of course, the squad captain is none other than our good friend Seifer. The scene in the boat on our way to Dollet was hilarious--Zell's just got so much energy and Seifer's such a dick. Good times. And of course we can rely on Squall to...brood and continue to ignore Quistis' vague flirting.

Dollet - SeeD candidates, go! Taking out some Galbadian troops, watching Seifer yell at a dog, noting that somehow Zell is the one with the brains around here when Seifer decides to go on an unauthorized field trip to the communications tower and for some reason Squall agrees to this. I'm like "Quistis is going to skin you guys alive...!" Zell agrees with me, but he doesn't have much choice in the matter, so off to the tower we go--and Seifer informs me that he's got a ROMANTIC DREAM...! Yeah, er...okay, Seifer. Sure. Squall apparently has no dreams, or at least none he feels like sharing. And then--incoming! A messenger from Squad C! It's...Selphie! From the little I'd seen of her in Kingdom Hearts I was expecting not to like her very much, but I was pleasantly surprised. She's kinda fun.

And hey, it's Wedge and Biggs! Hooray! Long story short (too late!), we kick their asses but not before they get the tower repaired, and then a huge freaking robot comes after us. Like five times. Anybody else getting flashbacks to DMC1's Phantom fight? Yeesh. Though this is not nearly as deadly. I'm beginning to suspect that FF8's gameplay was designed less to make the fights challenging and more to make the player feel like a badass. Which is okay with me! But being able to summon GFs whenever the heck you feel like it with no drawbacks seems pretty insane. We eventually escape the robot for good, after a few minutes of "noooooo run faster, Squall!!" and Quistis breaking out the machine gun, which was kickass.

Balamb Garden, take two - so how'd we do? Well, of course Seifer gets yelled at for his rash behavior, and meanwhile the rest of us become SeeDs. Woohoo! Zell is SO EXCITED AND OH MAN HE WILL TELL YOU HOW EXCITED HE IS OHHHH YEEAAAAHHHH. ^_^ Zell is great. Squall is...uh, well...who knows whether he's excited or not? Pretty much all of his lines to this point have been "..." or "Whatever." But damn does he look good in his new SeeD uniform. And apparently Mystery Chick (who I know by sight to be Rinoa though she isn't named yet) thinks so too, because she decides that he is damn well going to dance with her no matter what he actually wants. I begin to feel bad for Squall--leave the guy alone already, clearly he's not into this dancing thing, geez. Then the creepy vibe when Quistis shows up and is like "it's nearly midnight...meet me in the secret area, and that's an order, okay Squall?" Yikes.

But it turns out that it's not as creepy as it seemed (not quite, anyway)--she just needs someone to talk to after hearing the bad news. She uh...picked the wrong person. This is the first scene where Squall really has anything major to say, and my jaw just DROPS at how callous he is. "Why are you telling me this? I don't care. If you want to talk at someone, go talk to a wall. Everyone can take care of themselves. I don't want other people's burdens." *leave* Wow, Squall. And oh yeah, there's this Mystery Chick #2 who appears to know Squall and Quistis, but they don't know who she is, and after we save her from monsters she's escorted away by some dudes. Weird.

Next day, our first mission! Woo!

Timber - getting a vibe here, folks. The Garden faculty really are just a bunch of moneymakers, aren't they. Cid, on the other hand, is like the kooky old grandpa in the midst of a horde of hardened mercenaries. He makes me laugh, I like him. Anyway, we're on our way to our very first mission--go help a resistance movement. Squall begins to have a few more lines and a lot more internal monologue, and despite his utter jerkitude earlier, I find myself liking him. It's very interesting to see a protagonist who doesn't say much but to whose thoughts we are privy. Neat to see the difference between what he thinks and what he says out loud (or doesn't say). Also Zell has a HOVERBOARD dear lord that's cool.

Taking the train to Timber, and now I'm beginning to understand why the only thing I've ever heard in connection with Selphie is trains. She sings a SONG about them. I like Selphie. And then, uh...whoa. We all pass out and suddenly I'm someone else entirely. Enter Laguna and his friends. Squall is just as confused as I am, which is kind of comforting. Laguna gets a bit turned around but eventually he leads his friends back to town, where he goes to the Galbadia Hotel (oh ho!) and we get to see him interact with Julia. I've only known Laguna for about ten minutes but I really like him, he's just so down-to-earth and kind of goofy. ("Aaahhh my leg is cramping up oh man what am I going to say to her hey guys come back don't leave me here alone ah dangit I'm talking too much!") <3 And I love Squall's reactions too-- "(This guy talks to himself way too much.") Heh heh.

Addendum
I've heard that, that people don't like Zell. They must be crazy, Zell is awesome!

And yeah, I've not been summoning the GFs very much because the animations take for freaking ever and they make the fights kind of boring. I do admit that mostly with Squall I just Attack even when it comparatively does crap damage because using the gunblade trigger is fun. <_<

I am sad that Limit Breaks are only usable at low HP; I rarely allow my characters to fall into the yellow because I don't like having them close to death. So I've only seen the Limit Breaks a couple of times; I've not actually seen Rinoa's at all (of course I never use her, that could be why). Selphie's is straight up broken, wow. Five hours into the game she was pulling out Holy and Full-Cure. Damn, girl.

Oh, I forgot to mention! I suck utterly at Triple Triad. XD

Chapter 2
Well, I suppose at least Triple Triad makes some sense. The same cannot be said of whatever the card game in FF9 was called. >_> And yeah, Sphere Break is the one from X-2.

But now, on with the playthrough!

The gang wakes up and Squall has this awesome line: "I had a dream too, but it wasn't so nice. ...I dreamt I was a moron..." XD More greatness points for Squall. We meet up with the Forest Owl folks and hey, there's Rinoa. And her dog. These people are, for lack of a better term, n00bs of pretty much the highest degree. I love Watts though, he's awesome. "Gathering information is my specialty! I'm going to go gather some more information! You need information, I'll gather it!" XD The train mission is pretty cool, even if the plan sounded incredibly half-baked on paper. Too bad it isn't really the president...this thing is SO CREEPY I love it. And ha ha, oh yes--thank you very much, Cid, for giving Rinoa a contract that says we have to work for her until Timber gains its independence. WHAT. Argh.

So far, FF8 has entirely lived up to the Final Fantasy tradition of making even silly little random NPCs memorable and great. I felt so bad for the Galbadian soldier who kept pissing off the "president" just by doing his duty and couldn't propose to his girlfriend because he kept losing paychecks. D:

Back to Timber, where I find this absolutely hilarious scene in the publishing house of the Timber Maniacs--Squall's internal monologue is just amazing. The editor's droning on and on about various things and meanwhile Squall is thinking things like "(Adults are so boring, why do they have to go on and on about all this regret stuff. I never should have brought it up, now he won't shut up about his dreams. ...Big mistake.)" Heh heh. Then we discover that the president is going to give the first live broadcast in 17 years from the Timber television station--time to stop him and make history! A few interesting scenes here. I've been giving Squall as many of the harsher lines as possible when given the choice--it seems more in character. And I found myself agreeing with him entirely when he chewed Rinoa out for being totally unprepared, she deserved it. Risking people's lives on half-thought-out childish plans, geez. I mean, I can see Rinoa's point of view too--she IS serious about it--it's just that as the mercenary she hired, it's difficult for me to feel as though it's all worth it.

But now the broadcast is starting, and we learn two things. One is that the president is forming an alliance with a Sorceress, about which I know very little. The other is that Seifer beat us to our job... *sigh* What a hothead. At least he seems to have his heart in the right place. And actually, it's pretty damn impressive that he managed to get to the president by himself when there are three of us plus Rinoa and we were saying that there were too many guards for us to take head-on. Quistis wants us to come help her stop Seifer from being an idiot, so we run up there only to have Zell open his big mouth and reveal that we're from Garden. *facepalm* But there's no time to worry about that because the Sorceress has goaded Seifer into coming with her who-knows-where. Dammit Seifer...!

Rinoa does some more yelling at Squall for being heartless, which is both somewhat deserved and extremely childish at the same time. I really liked one of the lines in his internal monologue here: "(Think what you want. ...Reality isn't so kind. Everything doesn't work out the way you want it to.)" Squall may be cold and aloof, but at least he has a reason; he's not just being a jerk because he can be. Half the time he doesn't even seem to understand why people think he's mean. Granted, that's mostly because everything about his viewpoint that's telling is inside his head and there's no communication, but hey. Off to Galbadia Garden, since Balamb might not be safe! I felt really bad for Zell throughout this next bit, it's the first time he's quiet for a long period of time, because he's worried that if something happens to Garden it'll be all his fault. v_v

We get off the train and after some fruitless wandering around which I'll mention again in a second, we're on our way through the forest when our good friend Laguna comes knocking again. Innnteresting. I have to wonder how the heck Laguna got put in charge of this team to begin with--he keeps getting them lost, he's clearly not really a fighter, and he complains about his itchy nose, heh. They eventually escape from the Esthar soldiers by leaping off a cliff into the sea in hopes of getting a boat ride back to Galbadia. I think I love Laguna solely because he uses the phrase "way uncool." :P

Galbadia Garden - so yeah, I'll go ahead and admit that I had some trouble finding this place. I ended up walking all the way the hell back to Timber by accident. And this after Squall made such a big deal about catching the last train...! Oh well. I have this great image in my head of the party being like "Squall, what are you doing?" Squall: (I just wanted to take a walk, is that so much to ask?) "...nothing." XD

But I do find it eventually and we have one of my favorite scenes so far, which is the scene in which Quistis informs us that Seifer is probably dead. It was very interesting to see how each of them reacted to the news. I will say that this was where Rinoa first started to bother me. She spends five minutes explaining how she thinks she's in love with Seifer, but she doesn't really seem all that choked up about his having died beyond "I wish he wasn't dead...oh well, let's move on." Maybe it's just a translation thing, I don't know. But it comes up again later, I'll talk more about it when I get there. The thing I liked so much about this scene, though, was Squall's reaction. He starts off calm--Seifer's dead...he wasn't such a bad guy, I liked him. Then he realizes that they're all sitting around talking about him in the past tense, and wonders whether people will do that if he dies--and comes to the conclusion that under no circumstances does he want that to happen, and he sort of lashes out and leaves the room in a stew. It's kind of a strange reaction on the surface, but it just struck me as so...honest. Beginning to like Squall more.

Taking another pause here.

Lopen Surprise Comment
Maybe it's just a translation thing, I don't know

See, the reason I thought that is it seems really... cold, for Rinoa to say it that way. Has she no HEART? NO SOULLL. ... right. And, now you're saying it comes up in two distinct places like that, which I didn't remember. I believe I just shrugged it off as bad writing and disliked Rinoa for other reasons, but if it was in two places that were far away from each other, it's likely intended that way. Yay for more reasons to hate Rinoa!

And yeah, that scene with Seifer was good. Course I already loved Squall as the virtually one dimensional internal monologue based insult machine he was at the time, but I think that was one of the first scenes that made him think something that wasn't something along the lines of (please stop talking now, thanks.)

This topic is great. I'll use it as a springboard to resume play at disc 3 after having got a refresher on the story so far (I think I remember it well enough, but it doesn't hurt! Plus, you know, it is my tradition to mooch off of the glory of your playthrough topics when they're done.), it'll be marvelous!

And yeah, Zell is awesome. If most people dislike Zell, they're total fools.

(augh Selphie not being referred to as horrible why)

Chapter 3
Just as long as there's no erotic gunblade fanfiction in my topic, Lopen. >_> *ahem* Moving on!

Still hangin' at Galbadia Garden. Fujin and Raijin show up briefly and refuse to believe that Seifer is dead ("FIND!"). She is so weird. She's even weirder than she was in KH2 because everything is in caps. Then we all meet up and are given new orders--we're to assassinate the sorceress. Whoa. And we will be joined by...elite sharpshooter Irvine Kinneas. *cue wild west whistling and tumbleweeds at high noon* The scene I get just before leaving the Garden is hilarious. I let Irvine keep the party he suggested at the get-go--him and Selphie and Rinoa--and man. This is the first time I see Squall really off-balance, and it's funny. Squall's like "Have a good time..." which elicits a rather indignant response from Selphie and Rinoa, who proceed to hang all over Irvine just to show Squall (IRVY KINNEPOOO!). Show him what, who knows. He certainly doesn't know. "(...H-Hey. Did I say something terrible? Women... I don't understand them.)" Quistis continues her tradition of being awesome and vaguely flirting with Squall just to watch him squirm, and then we're off.

Deling City - political intrigue ahoy. But first, another train, and this time Irvine's aboard to give us entertainment. Such an odd fellow, Mr. Kinneas is. One minute he's pulling a Zelos with Selphie and Rinoa, and the next he's talking about how hard and lonely it is being a sniper, "so just leave me be, you catch my drift?" Kind of a weird dude, but I think I may like him. Meanwhile, after a detour to the Tomb of the Unknown King in which I receive a new GF, we go to meet General Caraway and hey, turns out he's Rinoa's father. Some things about Rinoa are beginning to make some sense, like why she's a spoiled brat half the time and a desperate idealist the other half. Doesn't make me like her a whole lot more, but at least I'm starting to understand her.

Caraway explains the plan, which seems...a bit ridiculous, and I have serious doubts about it, but hey--like Squall says, SeeDs are not meant to question why. A few very interesting conversations here, including one in which Quistis snaps and says to Rinoa all the things I wish I could say to her--this is not a game, stop being such a child, you're going to get everyone killed. Unfortunately she ruins it by going back to apologize later... *sigh* But I forgive her. There's also a neat one in which Irvine asks Squall what it's like to be a SeeD and we get some more insight into Squall's mind--good and evil, right and wrong, there's no such thing. Only groups of people with different viewpoints, which leads to conflict. Forgive the excessive geekery, but Squall is pretty much the definition of the true neutral alignment here. It's also neat to see him begin to think, hey, maybe SeeDs should question orders...but then of course there's no time for that.

The mission starts and of course right away stuff begins to hit the fan. Quistis decides to go back to apologize to Rinoa, while Rinoa decides to defy her father and go to meet the sorceress alone. What a great idea...! >_> (So much for "Don't leave me alone in this house, okay?") So Quistis and friends end up having to navigate the sewers to get back to the gateway. Meanwhile, Edea announces that she is poised to take over the world and enslave humans or whatever it is that evil sorceresses do (big shocker there) with a mind-controlled Rinoa in tow, and then looses some lizard monsters to kill Rinoa as a sacrifice. Irvine urges Squall to do something to save her, but Squall sticks to the plan--the gate isn't open yet, we hold position. A sharp contrast to Quistis' ready abandonment of her post just to spare Rinoa's feelings, eh?

Finally the parade begins, Quistis and the others get back in time to flip the switch, Irvine finally convinces Squall to go save Rinoa before carrying out the rest of the plan once the gate opens, and then it's time. Time to make the shot. Right, Irvi...oh what. Squall facepalms as Irvine freaks out and confesses that he always caves under pressure, and I can't help but sympathize with Squall's frustration. He's surprisingly good at calming Irvine down in the end, though, considering his usual inability/unwillingness to connect with people.

Oh, that scene is also the other place where Rinoa annoyed me. Squall shows a rare moment of thoughtfulness by informing Rinoa that he's seen Seifer alive...with the sorceress. Rinoa's entire reaction to this news is "oh, what does it mean?" Squall goes on to explain that he may end up having to kill Seifer, and all she says is "ho hum, wouldn't that be a shame." I just...what? And she accuses Squall of being apathetic?? Freaking sixteen year old spoiled fickle...argh. The only thing I can think is that maybe it's just because she's so young and she doesn't quite fully understand death. Squall was having enough trouble wrapping his mind around it earlier, and she's a lot more sheltered than he seems to be. That's sort of the point of all these scenes with Rinoa, I suppose; she isn't ready for all this, as Squall says--well, thinks--and she's beginning to learn just how far in over her head she is.

Anyway, Irvine finally does take the shot, but of course it turns out that the incredibly powerful evil sorceress has defenses--who'd have thunk it? So Squall badasses his way down to the street, steals somebody's car, and finds himself face to face with Seifer on the float. Dueling Seifer was fun. I deliberately only used the gunblade and a couple of spells here--I didn't want to cheap my way through the epic tense duel with GF summoning. I beat Seifer handily, he's all surprised, and then Edea attacks, while Irvine and Rinoa arrive to help Squall out. I like Irvine's attitude here-- "I have to redeem myself." No slacker, him.

Finally, after I summon Ifrit about a zillion times, Edea backs off, but not before stretching forth a creepy hand and impaling Squall through the chest with a huge icicle. D: And he falls to his doom...end disc 1!! That's where I stopped.

So far, I am really liking this game (as evidenced by the fact that I was entirely unable to put it down yesterday). It took me a while to get used to the junctioning system, and I'm only just now beginning to acquire enough GFs and abilities and magic to really make full use of it, but it's interesting. (Squall has more HP than is probably healthy for a 17-year-old, haha.) This is without a doubt the easiest FF game I've ever played so far, but I don't mind.

I'd say my order of characters at the moment is something like Squall = Zell > Quistis > Laguna > Seifer > Irvine > Selphie > Cid > Rinoa. And the only one I really don't like all that much is Rinoa, everyone else is awesome. Of course, there is still a lot more to the game left during which I may change my mind about all these people, but we shall see!

Addendum
I don't generally use summons much either in FF games, they're kind of boring. I've only been using them in boss battles in FF8 when I didn't want the battle to take a year and a half; the game without the GFs is still exceptionally easy (as in, I'm not in danger of dying), it just takes longer--but as I say, I don't mind. I guess the reason it strikes me so much in this game as opposed to other FF games is that the GFs are unlimited use, Selphie's Limit Break seems pretty broken, and I haven't gotten a single game over yet not counting the one where I deliberately let the party die because I was trying to take on Diablos at too low a level and it was just taking for damn ever and I got sick of it. I could certainly have won the fight if I'd felt like spending another hour on it.

Lopen Quick Chip-in
Psh, erotic sword related fanfiction from me does not exist without Sephiroth, you may rest assured of that.

It's funny, at the point of the game he debuted, Irvine kinda annoyed me. Despite, as you said, being somewhat Zeloslike. Very odd, I dunno, maybe it's because he had the cowboy look going for him, maybe it's because he wasn't as funny as Zelos so the ladies hanging off of his shoulder made me like "no, hang on the Squall's arm, he's a stud! Whaddaya mean 'he's an aloof jerk?' " (Or Zell, because Zell is so unbelievably awesome! ). I grew to like him more after his little sniper incident, though.

And yes, sniping the sorceress is a good idea, dammit! Master Chief would've had that done. See, maybe if Irvine had a Convenant Beam Rifle...

... what?

Chapter 4
It's true, no worries on the overleveling score, I hate level grinding, heh.

So, disc 2! Here we go!

Winhill - where the heck am I? Oh hey, I'm Laguna again. Only this time I appear to be living in small-town paradise with a ridiculously cute little girl and her...caretaker of some kind. Lots of plot development here. We find out that Laguna was taken in by this Raine woman and nursed back to health after his ridiculous leap from a cliff a year ago. He seems now to have fallen in love with Raine and Ellone, and doesn't really want to leave when Kiros comes to find him. It also seems that Julia the pianist/singer has married--oh ho. General Caraway. Innnnteresting. Making her potentially Rinoa's mother. There's also this news that this country with which Galbadia is at war is ruled by a sorceress who kidnaps little girls. >_> My assumption is that she wants to make new sorceresses out of them, though I still don't know much about the sorceresses in general. Laguna continues to be awesome--his flustered unwillingness to discuss his personal feelings combined with his somewhat silly side and his badassery make him a character I really like. Also his Limit Break is ridiculous. XD

One neat thing--during a moment where I have a choice of responses for Laguna, one of them is Squall's "(...Where am I?...)" I choose that one, and Laguna says to Kiros "...I think the faeries are here." They go on to discuss briefly that with the "faeries" around, the fighting should be easy. So Laguna and friends have begun to really notice the presence of the main characters...interesting.

Galbadia Prison - Then I switch perspectives after a heartfelt admission from Laguna that he prays he doesn't wake up anywhere but in that small town--and what do you know. I'm ZELL! And I'm...in prison, along with everyone else. Well, we did try to assassinate the new leader of Galbadia, I suppose we should be grateful we're alive. So goes the conversation. Some scene switching back and forth--Squall is alive, Zell gets beaten bloody by some pissy guards >:-| and Rinoa gets separated from the group. Meanwhile, Seifer is torturing Squall, apparently to discover the true meaning of SeeD. I'm rather glad to see that Squall has no more idea of what Seifer is talking about than I do, because it means I haven't missed anything, heh. Eventually Seifer gets called away and Random Guard continues the interrogation...and Squall decides to find some deeply hidden wellspring of creativity and tell this absolutely ridiculous lie about filling the world with flowers and sapping people's will to fight. I just about fell over laughing, this was so great. I didn't think Squall had it in him to come up with something like that on the spot.

One of the interesting things about that scene is when Seifer begins to go on and on about how he's fulfilling his childhood dream--and he refers to Squall as the "evil mercenary" to his "knight." Clearly Seifer seems to think that he's the good guy in whatever fairy tale he's living in, and Squall is the villain who's come to ruin everything. And to some extent it's not a wrong assessment of the situation--after all, everything Squall does is just for money at this point, he is a mercenary. The only problem with Seifer's delusion is that the person he's working for is...an evil witch who wants to take over the world or something. Good job choosing priorities, Seifer. Thumbs up. >_>

Back at the ranch, Zell and the others have picked up some manner of little orange sidekick or something, and then Zell's genius intellect informs him that while the others are bemoaning their lack of weapons, he doesn't in fact use a weapon and can therefore still fight. Clever man. So he escapes and brings the weapons back, and we're off to find Squall! (I like the music throughout this part. Very tense.)

We do find Squall after some messing up of guards, and eventually we get the crane thing to take us all the way down to the bottom floor...leaving Zell behind and forgetting entirely about him. Geez! At least they have the decency to be concerned when they realize he's in trouble. Have to say, it's pretty badass when Squall leaps in to come to Zell's aid. And then there is hilarity as Zell decides that the best way to thank Squall for saving his life is to get on his knees and hug him. Squall: "W-what!? Let go." *shakes Zell* "I said, let go!" *shakes Zell some more to no avail, proceeds to bonk him on the head with the hilt of the gunblade* Then Selphie's like "Squall, why did you run off on your own? Is Zell that important to you?" Squall: *facepalm* XD.

In a bit we meet back up with Rinoa and Irvine, who's been sent by Caraway to get Rinoa out of prison and been kicked down the stairs by Rinoa for trying to strut like some manner of peacock. Geez, Rinoa, let a guy look cool once in a while, will you? :P Escape plans continue, we discover that we are in fact in the middle of Desert McNowhere, we fight some dudes, danger, excitement, yadda yadda yadda, and we end up with some stolen Galbadian vehicles and some rather disturbing news: the sorceress is about to launch missiles at both Trabia and Balamb Gardens. Yikes! Never mind that Squall knew this already because Seifer told him as much and he doesn't bother to mention it to the others. Nor does he mention Seifer, for that matter. I suppose he figures there isn't anything they can do about it, so why bother? As they stand around debating what to do, the missile volley to Trabia is launched. Oops. Turns out that Selphie is from Trabia, and she's devastated by this turn of events. But, being Selphie, rather than letting it get her down, she insists with a fury born of revenge that they will not allow Balamb to suffer the same fate!

This scene is very interesting from a character development point of view. Through his internal monologue, we begin to see Squall's belief that everyone should take care of themselves manifest a bit more practically: he does not want to be responsible for these people's lives and actions. They all badger him to be the leader and make a decision, choose people and delegate tasks, and he doesn't want any part of it. He didn't ask to be the leader and he doesn't want to be pressured into making life-or-death decisions for other people. It's something that comes up a lot after this, and it's interesting to watch him deal with expectations being thrust upon him for no real discernable reason that he can see; he has a lot of trouble figuring out people's motivations for following him despite no effort on his part to take charge. Another interesting thing about this is that he never had a problem with being put in charge before--I suspect it's because before, he was part of something larger and him being made the leader was simply his duty, whereas now there is no mission and people are just deciding that he is in charge based on some insubstantial thing he can't fathom. Lawful indeed...!

Lopen Time
You know, it's odd, for some reason I thought that prison part was at an entirely different place in the game, despite it making so much more sense there than anywhere else I can think to put it. <_<

I'd also completely forgotten that Laguna and crew seemed to notice at that point. I mean, I'm sure I realized this at the time... though you know, maybe I was like "faeries, crazy kid!" ... no, really, I didn't think that. Though faeries are pretty cool... um... the hell was I saying? Right, right.

That flower nonsense was pretty amazing, I have to say. Might be my favorite Squall moment to date... but he has a lot! Well hell, he's got another great one right there... "... let go." Though you know, that was all Zell carrying that one...! ZELL WHOO ZELL! (what what tranny what)

Poor Squall, always gettin thrown into situations he doesn't wanna be in. Really bad combination... that and being introverted. Heh.

Anyway, cool beans. Still lovin this topic... finally getting to finish FF8 without having to restart, whoo! Unfortunately towards the end I'll have to stop reading. Well, I dunno, maybe I wouldn't mind... the story is good... but man, I dunno. Game kinda started slow for me so yeah. And ugh at stupid things like drawing... I wouldn't wanna have to restock my 99 Cures and such without a gameshark...! (The one thing I'd openly cheated about in my first playthrough of an RPG... well worth it, dammit. Though I suppose the game is so easy maybe I shouldn't have... but dammit, I like using magic a lot!)

Chapter 5
Galbadia Missile Base - All right, here we go, to the missile base to stop the launch! Selphie takes charge! We sneak in using the army car and some Galbadian uniforms which, according to Selphie, are rather itchy. The whole next bit is a fun dungeon--delivering messages, choosing whether to sneak or talk or fight, figuring out the launch controls, finding the self-destruct mechanism. I actually ended up doing this part twice. The first time, I figure I'll see what happens if I just fight the second guy that gives you the choice--the red alarm goes off and I have to book it to the control room, where I fight some more guys and then stop the launch, turn the self-destruct on with a 20 minute delay, and then leave only for one of the Galbadians to wake up and turn the launch back on. No! Jerk! The party is alerted to this by a big jarring noise, so I go back to find the guy wounded at the bottom of the stairs. But I convince him with my determination that I'm awesome, and he gives me the card to operate the machine. Then I go outside only to get attacked by this huge machine thing. This would be fine except that the clock reaches 0:00 during the robot's death animation. Bah! The base explodes, we die, game over.

So the second time I decide to see what happens if I try not to fight at all, and I get an extra little "push the missile" minigame thingy and a few more lines of dialogue before getting found out in the control room because our salute is wrong. Picky, picky! This time I give myself 30 minutes, just in case, and beat the robot with plenty of time leftover. But the missiles launch anyway, and we get locked inside the compound. Ack! Selphie, Irvine, and Rinoa each have their own little take on the situation--Selphie thinks that Squall believed in them and feels bad about letting him down, Rinoa thinks she's much too young to die, and Irvine thinks Squall might have chosen him for a team he figured was doomed to failure because he didn't trust him. How depressing, Irvine. Scene change!

Balamb Garden - Ahh, home at last. It's in one piece, huzzah! Whew. Time to go warn the headma--uh what. Everyone's running around like maniacs and the faculty is getting students to hunt down Cid and the SeeDs?? In the name of...Garden Master NORG. The hell...? Luckily once again Squall has no more idea than I do, so we run around looking for Cid and on the way help out a bunch of fellow SeeDs who are having some trouble with the monsters that the faculty released. I knew there was something fishy about those guys...! We get shoved into the "Cid's followers" category for helping the SeeDs and pretty soon we're getting attacked on sight. We also run into Raijin and Fujin who help evacuate Garden but assert that they're not on any side except Seifer's, which causes Squall to wonder whether they're okay with Seifer having sided with the sorceress. But of course he doesn't ask them out loud, so they leave.

Eventually we find Xu who takes us to see the Headmaster, who was in fact in his office the whole time. I liked the fact that despite helping out the SeeDs, Squall still tells Xu that they are on neither side because they still don't know what's going on. No jumping to conclusions, no irrational siding with Cid just because. The conversation with Cid here is chock full of interesting internal monologue from Squall, and it's neat to see the dynamic it causes with the people he's talking to. Because, of course, when he has internal reactions to things they say and doesn't voice them out loud, to them it just seems like he's standing there. But you can tell that sometimes his expression or demeanor changes when he thinks things, because they do notice that. "You can tell me later." (You might be dead later...) "Do you have a problem with that?"

I think though that he's showing more and more of his emotions on his face as time goes by and things fall more to pieces. Because earlier on in the game when he would think things, people would just talk at him for a while and then go "Squall, are you listening?" But lately they've begun to notice that he's having responses to things and just not saying anything.

But the part of this scene I liked most was the part where Cid asks Squall why he wants to be involved in his plan despite not knowing what it is. Squall must have been standing there staring at him for quite some time, because inside his head he goes from not knowing why to listing lots of reasons to being too overwhelmed by those reasons to formulate anything and ultimately decides, who cares what his reasons are? He ends up telling Cid only that his feelings have nothing to do with it, and here we finally see the full thought process behind all those moments early on when he seemed cold and distant. Cid only finds this vaguely amusing as he tells Squall that Quistis had been right about him having a hard time expressing his feelings, and Squall fails to see why he should bother and is annoyed that he's apparently being judged. Can't help but sympathize a little--I wouldn't have felt that it was Cid's or Quistis' business either, heh. Of course, it turns out later that there probably WAS a reason it was their business...but we'll get there.

So we head down into the basement, ending up having to climb down the elevator shaft, and eventually coming to some weird device after they force Squall to make some more decisions (...I have to decide?) and ask him a bunch of unanswerable questions (...How am I supposed to know? Even the Headmaster doesn't know) and then yell at him for trying something (Zell: "What the heck are you doin'?" Squall: "I don't know! What else can I do!?"). Typical, really. :P Poor Squall. And then...the missiles are seen to be on their way. Oh no! One thing that's really cool about this game that I don't remember if I've seen in other games is that occasionally it will go into FMV to show you things completely seamlessly, right out of the regular scenery, sometimes even with the sprites still visible and movable on the screen. It's nice to see the FMV and regular gameplay not interrupting each other constantly.

So we activate this device with no knowledge whatsoever of what we're doing and...we manage to avoid getting blown to bits because the Garden moves. It in fact flies. This is pretty much the coolest thing ever. ...well, you know, until it becomes clear that we have no idea how to steer and we're about to crash into Balamb. Whoops. Once again it's all "Squall, do something!" and once again I find myself sympathizing entirely with Squall's frustration (... ...How should I know!?) He mashes some buttons in a last ditch effort and we manage to avoid hitting Balamb, instead...crashing into the ocean and drifting aimlessly out to sea.

And now...now for the first time, Squall has nothing to do and nowhere to be. And he's bored and annoyed because being bored means that he thinks too much, and there are lots of things he doesn't really want to think about. Another thing I can sympathize with. Luckily, he falls asleep, and is woken by Zell who is like "Yo Squall, we've been a team all this time but we never talk or anything, so we should! ...Not that I have anything to say, actually, but um...hey, let's go to the training center and kick some ass!" Heh heh. Zell is awesome. (Hush tranny, it's true!)

Chapter 6
At the risk of Wall o' Texting you guys to death, I'll continue, since it seems that this portion isn't eliciting much response, heh.

OH! I forgot to mention. While we were in the prison, when the little orange thing was following us around, when it saw Squall it started jumping up and down going “Laguna! Laguna!” Creepy. And creepier for it not having recognized Zell as Ward or anyone else as Kiros.

There was also an interesting moment back when we were helping out the SeeDs fighting the Garden faculty, where one of them was like “Hey Squall, you remember me, right?” Squall’s like “…no, sorry.” And the SeeD, named Nida, is like “Man, really? But we took the SeeD test together and everything. You really don’t remember me? Lame.” At the time I chalked it up to Squall not noticing people and moved on.

So anyway, Zell and Squall head out to the training center, but are interrupted by an announcement--Squall is to report to the Garden Master. Uh oh. That can't be good. We go down there and Cid is in the process of getting kicked out of the office, yelling something about how he wishes he could go back ten years and tell himself not to listen to NORG because he's greedy and money-grubbing. ...which makes me awfully suspicious because nobody says "I wish I could go back in time" in a story without actually ending up doing it. Hmmm.

But we go to meet NORG, who I swear is Jabba the Hutt. Fushururururu...HE-TALKS-FUNNY. :P He proceeds to explain that he ordered Galbadia Garden to assassinate the sorceress so that he could stay blameless, only to have Martine take advantage of the PCs' presence to throw the blame back onto Balamb anyway. In order to appease the sorceress, then, he'll have to hand over the SeeDs who did the deed and pretend to obey her. And apparently, NORG is against Cid's plan of using the SeeDs to fight the sorceress because he doesn't want to lose "his Garden." What a jerk. And oh yeah, by the way, Cid is Edea's husband.

...

Uhhhh. Sure...why not? But we fight NORG and win, and then everyone bugs Squall about what's going on! Like he knows! So we go to find Cid and ask him a bunch of questions. I was a little surprised to find Squall being so polite, but then I suppose he’s always been that polite to Cid. Just not to anyone else. XD We find out a bunch of things. SeeD was created originally for the express purpose of training people to fight the sorceress. Then things start to get a little weird. Cid knew Edea was a sorceress when he married her, and the two of them started the Garden and SeeD together, with Edea thinking that of course, SeeD would never fight her. …what? My guess is that perhaps SeeD was originally created to fight the OTHER sorceress, the one who ruled in Esthar, which Galbadia was at war with. I suppose I will find out!

Addendum
But really, most FF games have ridiculous plots, or at least the ones I've played (i.e. all of them except 4, 7, and Tactics). Aside from FF12 which had so many other problems that I kind of would have preferred a ridiculous plot. >_>

And hey, if Laguna had been in it again, there would be more Laguna hype! Laguna is all kinds of great.

Well, given that a scene later, Selphie is trying to use Cure magic on Zell's wounds, I'd imagine that Squall was healed similarly after the icicle event at the end of Disc 1. They clearly didn't want him dead, because they planned to interrogate him.

And yeah, considering the place where I actually stopped playing (will post more in a minute), the plot's...a little odd. But characters are always more important to me than plot anyway, so hey. :P

Chapter 7
Going on!

In the meantime, a ship is approaching, containing…the sorceress’ SeeDs…? And they’re here to get Ellone. !! Whoooaaaa okay. Things are starting to both fall into place and get even more confusing. So the little girl that Laguna was taking care of is now…someone hiding out in Balamb Garden. I recognize these guys from the beginning of the game when they came to collect Mystery Chick #1 who seemed to know Squall and Quistis, so I surmise that Mystery Chick #1 must be Ellone. Squall finds her in the library and she proceeds to pull a Princess Leia—“Help me, Obi Squall Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” I’m with Squall, here: (Change the past? Is she serious? Give me a break…) So not only am I watching the past, but I’m supposed to be changing it somehow. And Ellone just sort of decided that this was my job. So once again people are throwing themselves into my hands and expecting that I’ll fix everything. Squall’s outburst here—“Why me!? I have enough problems as it is! Don’t get me involved in this!”—is about the most emotion I’ve seen him put into anything so far, and it’s a little unnerving. He’s getting kind of desperate, with so many people depending on him for things when he doesn’t even understand half of what he’s doing.

I’m beginning to feel a little bit like Raiden here, heh. I’d elaborate but I wouldn’t want to introduce MGS2 spoilers for those who haven’t played it…! So I’ll save the Raiden/Squall discussion for later. What I will say is that the internal monologue that follows, when Squall goes back to his room, is among my favorite parts of the game so far. It’s really the first time we see him questioning his firm belief that he can do it all alone, and the point at which he sees the irony in wanting someone to tell him how he can go about not depending on others is a somehow almost painful moment. I’m pretty impressed at how well this game does character development. I find it easier and easier to relate to Squall as time goes on and I like him a lot as a character; the others haven't gotten quite as much time, of course, but they're all unique and have their own complexities that are nice to see as well.

Fisherman’s Horizon - Squall has a brief dream which seems to be a flashback of himself as a kid, attempting to convince himself that he’d be okay on his own without his sister who apparently left, and then he wakes up to the distressing sounds of being summoned to the Headmaster’s office…because the Garden has crashed into a town. *sigh* So we’re ordered to go ashore and apologize to the mayor. Squall pulls another “no, I don’t remember you” moment with the guy who operates the elevator, which is even more concerning given that he’d just met the guy five minutes before, and then it turns out that just beyond this town is the country of Esthar—the place that Galbadia was at war with when Laguna was in the army, the one ruled by a sorceress. Or at least, it was at the time. Wonder whether that’s still true, and if not, what happened to that sorceress? We shall see!

Meantime, the mayor is kind of a jerk but his viewpoint is understandable, Squall has some more great internal commentary, and Galbadian soldiers show up. The mayor goes to try to reason with them and Squall facepalms at his stupidity. (I swear, I think he’s facepalmed more in these eight or so hours of gameplay than he did the other day than during the entire first disc, haha.) The party follows and leaps in to save the mayor, while discovering that the Galbadians are here because the sorceress is looking for Ellone in port towns. …huh. So apparently the “sorceress’ SeeDs” are not under her command. Or else something weird is going on. Then we destroy the giant robot thing from the missile base, and then who should appear but Irvine, Selphie, and Rinoa! Huzzah, they’re alive!

So they all head back except that Rinoa hangs around to talk to Squall briefly, and she’s like “Hey, Squall, I missed you. I mean, I thought I was going to die back there at the missile base, and that’s when I really missed you.” There’s a choice here, and I choose “Why?” And she laughs at me. I mean, what? Geez. Actually, you know, I have to interject here. I’ve been using the script to remind myself of little details as I go. The guy who did the script had Rinoa in the party instead of Quistis during this whole last bit before Fisherman’s Horizon. And I am SO GLAD that I chose Quistis instead, because the scenes with Rinoa that I missed would have made me dislike her even more. “Squall, give me a tour of Garden! Your tour isn’t fun enough! Squall, take me on a walk! Oh, your highness is in a foul mood, I see.” Agh. It’s the case here, too; all of the conversation choices at this point if Rinoa’s been with the party the whole time are even worse than what I saw. She’s patronizing and immature and she really annoys me. It’s a shame because even after her flighty behavior on disc 1, I was prepared to try to like her. But she gets worse and worse.

So anyway, we go back to Garden, and Irvine says “So like, Selphie’s really down, you’re the leader, you should cheer her up. But I know you’re a klutz at talking to people, so I’ll back you up.” Mr. Tact, there, Irvine. :P We find Selphie and because I want to see more Irvine character development, I choose “Let Irvine handle it” when Squall observes that Selphie really is upset. Then I feel kind of bad when Squall literally just says “I’m out of here” and leaves. XD Ah well, what can you expect? Irvine cheers her up by helping her plan some manner of concert festival thing, and we move on to Squall, who’s been called to the Headmaster’s office yet again.

This time Cid is getting hardcore. He announces that Garden is making a stand, becoming a mobile base of operations for Mission: Defeat the Sorceress. Huzzah! And who should be appointed the commander of said mission but, of course, our very own Squall. …man, if I were Squall, I’d have flipped out too. What the hell. Cid informs Squall that it’s his fate to do this, and Squall just can’t take it. Not only is he being asked to take responsibility for the entire Garden, after all of his problems handling leadership to begin with, but he doesn’t even begin to get a choice in the matter. There’s an interesting moment where he considers quitting SeeD, but immediately decides that thinking about what he’d have left without SeeD is not something he wants to do, and that no thinking at all would be vastly preferable, so he’ll just have to do as ordered. It occurs to him and to me at about the same time that Cid just ordered us to kill his own wife. Yikes.

Meanwhile, Selphie gathers the party together in preparation for the concert…because it turns out that THEY are going to be the ones performing. HA HA ha ha ha ha hahahahahaha oh man. This minigame of deciding which of the two songs to perform and putting the parts together and assigning people to instruments is possibly my favorite FF minigame ever. I pick the fun jig-esque song and my band is as follows: Irvine on acoustic guitar, Selphie on flute, Zell on fiddle, and Quistis going all Riverdance. Holy crap this was awesome. I also just loved messing around with putting everyone on different instruments just to see them. Zell playing the flute was so priceless. Also great was telling Zell to play the piano and having the huge piano just sort of appear out of nowhere. +20 awesome points to this game just for this scene. ^_^

Then we cut back to Squall, who is bored enough to go find people and see what they’re doing. Holy crap. Squall going off to seek human company? He really must be bored. Rinoa shows up in her fancy shmancy dress and proceeds to be incredibly annoying. I guess she might have been less annoying if I’d just agreed to go with her in the first place XD but I was being difficult, heh. So Squall and I both facepalm at her ridiculousness and we head off to the concert, where Irvine drops not-so-subtle hints and Squall screws up his attempt to hit on Selphie. Then the concert begins, much to Squall’s discomfort, and Rinoa lectures him about opening up to his friends and trusting them more. This conversation was both a really good scene and really annoying at the same time. It was a good scene from a character-development standpoint—interesting to see Squall question himself, and realize that really he’s terrified of making connections with people because inevitably those people will go away and he can’t take that happening to him again. But it also makes me dislike Rinoa more because she’s so patronizing. There’s a point at which he says something vague about not wanting to get too involved and she laughs at him again and says something that really doesn’t help about how we only have this brief time together, so we should make the most of it. And when he says “I don’t want friends who are just going to take off,” she laughs at him again. I was so insulted. No wonder he never tells anyone what he’s thinking, if that’s the way they respond!

Something odd here: when I went back to look at the script to remind myself of specifics, this conversation was entirely different after the halfway point where Squall has the long internal monologue. I wish I knew what I’d done to get the different conversation. My only thought is my choice of song—maybe you get this other conversation if you pick Eyes on Me? The only reason I’m thinking that’s it is because the conversation in the script makes mention of the music, and mine didn’t. I kind of wish I'd gotten the one in the script, it has Rinoa flipping out and running off, heh. I guess another difference might just be the responses I’ve been giving her on things, I dunno.

Balamb Town - Squall has his dream about the kid in the rain again, and then the next day we head to Balamb to check on it. Turns out that the Galbadians are here looking for Ellone too. Noooo, Balamb! Gotta go check on Ma Dincht! Ah, she’s fine, cool. And from the sound of things, Fujin and Raijin are in town. Which means perhaps Seifer is here…which means perhaps the sorceress is here…! We jump through a few hoops and eventually it comes down to a fight because Seifer has told the two of them to “give us a whoopin’” if they saw us. We beat Raijin pretty handily, and then we go inside and end up having to fight them both at once—that fight was a little harder. Good stuff. We beat them after a while and try to talk them into coming back to Garden or maybe convincing Seifer to stop being crazy, but to no avail; Seifer has no other friends, and he needs the two of them to stand by him. So Squall, in his usual harsh way, informs them that if that’s the case, next time he won’t hold back, though afterwards he wonders whether perhaps he does find it a little sad.

Might as well finish this out, this is the last bit.

Trabia Garden - Next we head for Trabia Garden because Selphie is worried (I love Squall’s thought process when she asks if they can go: “But I thought it was destroyed by missiles. …Oh, I see…that’s why. Of course she’d want to go.” He’s catching on…!). It’s pretty messed up, this place, but it looks like the people are pretty resilient and they’re carrying on regardless. Good to see! So we all go to wait for Selphie, and when she finally arrives we discuss our next step. Rinoa, having lost some confidence by continually being left in the dust by all these military types, wonders whether there’s a way we could deal with the sorceress without fighting. Squall is a bit taken aback—weren’t you a resistance fighter? what's the deal?—and in his mind, (I don’t have any other way to deal with it, what do you expect from me? I grew up in Garden, I’m a SeeD, don’t you get it?).

But Irvine says, no no, I understand what you mean, Rinoa. Sometimes you live your life wondering whether the people you care about are going to come back. Like when I was a kid, I lived in this orphanage, and there was this girl I really liked…

…

…

hay guys we all grew up in the same orphanage

>_> Well, now I know where the joke comes from. I have to say, I think this whole thing wouldn’t have struck me as quite so completely bizarre if I hadn’t heard the joke before, heh. Because despite not making a whole lot of sense, it was quite well done. I really liked the bits where “ghost” Squall is walking through the place and thinking about each of them in turn as they disappear. And I think the part that got me the most was when Zell realizes that he, too, was there—which means that his parents in Balamb aren’t his real parents. But a lot of things are revealed here; Seifer was there with them too, they all got sent to various other places over time, the girl Squall was waiting for was not actually his sister but in fact was Ellone, and Quistis’ constant obsession with Squall was apparently leftover from a childhood need to replace Ellone as the big sister figure. So how is it possible that they forgot all this? That was certainly my question, and I was glad to hear Squall echo it. Turns out that using GFs screws with the memory. The most interesting part of this bit was seeing how each of them feels about this; Selphie and Quistis wonder what they should do about it, while Squall and Zell figure it doesn’t matter. Who cares whether they remember a painful childhood while there’s still a need to use the GFs’ power to help the people that matter now?

And then the biggie: the Matron of the orphanage was none other than Edea. Huh. Okay. Once this revelation is made, Irvine has a very long speech about his reasons for wanting to fight (which incidentally really didn't make all that much sense--his choices were limited in life and so he's walking the path he had to walk, but it's not like it was fate because he chose his path...eh? Irvine, make sense, please...), and despite Rinoa’s misgivings they all decide that fighting is what needs to be done. Squall wonders the same thing I do, which is—if Edea helped Cid create SeeD, why did she tell Seifer to torture Squall to figure out what SeeD’s secret was? But there’s nothing for it but to go on, and as they leave, snow begins to fall. Selphie comments that it’s a “gift from the faeries”—which is making me remember Laguna’s comment about faeries earlier and raising vague questions, but I guess we’ll see whether that means anything or not—and they decide to go check out the orphanage to see if they can find any clues to anything there.

That's where I'll be picking up next time I play (which is potentially right now, heh). So uh...bizarre. I think my character inequality is more or less the same as it was before except Squall might be > Zell now instead of = and I have to stick Fujin and Raijin in there someplace. And maybe NORG. :P Despite the weirdness of the orphanage thing and the NORG thing (the dude in the fishing village who was like "I wonder what NORG will evolve into?" creeped me out), I'm still very much enjoying the game except that I wish I liked Rinoa. *sigh* Oh well, what can you do.

The Lopen's Comment
Hahaha. Holy crap, Satai. FFVIII: The playthrough novel!

Hmmm, anyway, yeah, I agree with you on most of this, and it continues to be fun to read. That orphanage thing was ridiculous, but at least it was executed well. I guess since it was executed well I can appreciate that they somehow made it sorta work and not just say "man most nonsensical plot twist ever!" Well I still say that... but uh... I say it with a positive spin!

And man, I'm surprised that the scripts only cover one set of dialogue. Usually good script FAQs will go over every possibility. And FFVIII, being a game where the script is so important, and being out for what... 9 years now, I figure that they would've updated the script FAQ for goodness over the years at some point. Pretty lame.

I find it odd that Rinoa flips out when you're not utterly aloof towards her. Or I guess it might be the song, as you said... that'd make more sense... the song puts her in a less tolerant mood, or something. The jiggish song was more uplifting and all that! I actually got the one you did too, of course, being all elliptical (it's not just for orbits anymore!) towards Rinoa and dreading how obnoxious Rinoa might be if I chose Eyes on You. Plus you know, jig-esque songs are awesome.

As for the faeries thing, I sorta just assumed that was just their chosen way of saying "spirits" or whatever which is pretty damn awesome. Faeries for the win! ... what? I'm curious what these vague questions are (were?) though, since I never really thought anything of it.

Addendum
Aha, indeed--I found both of the GFs you were talking about! Just got back from finishing disc 2. I've decided that this is the easiest game to break on the face of the planet. I wasn't even trying, and my party is now utterly ridiculous. And this is, mind you, without summoning a single GF that causes damage.

First of all, the fight against Cerberus was actually pretty hard--I died the first time--but the second time he made the mistake of berserking both Zell and Squall. So all I did was Haste Quistis and then use her to Cure while Squall and Zell pounded the crap out of him. After this fight was the first time that one of my GFs learned to refine. >_> I had no idea what refining was or how it worked, so I focused on other things. But I decided tonight, hey, why not, I'll check it out. ...I now have several hundred Curagas and Cures, among other things, and some of the characters' stats are now just silly. Quistis' speed has been junctioned up to 65. 65! She's basically auto-hasted all the time. Squall's Strength is over 100, he's doing a cool 1500 or so damage with each triggered hit. And Zell...oh, Zell. Zell has more hit points than God. Zell is level 30 or so and has over 8000 HP.

Cerberus himself as a GF is pretty broken, though the best use I've found for him is just to be able to cure or buff the whole party at once. Which I was pretty disappointed to find couldn't be done normally, like in most FF games. However, it was fairly satisfying to hit Seifer with three Thundagas a round from one person. >_> Also ridiculous is having recently given Squall the ability to counterattack. Go ahead, hit Squall. I promise you'll regret it. Zell also has the ability to Mug, which means that I have a continual supply of more things to refine. So yeah, we took down Seifer in about two minutes, and Zell didn't drop below 5000 HP. ...I feel kind of dirty.

I'll come back to respond to comments and talk about the actual events of the end of the disc tomorrow, right now it's time for bed. I just felt that I needed to mention how ridiculous the last hour or so of gameplay was. :P

Chapter 8
Hooooo boy wow. I've gone through a LOT of FF8 today. (God I love being on vacation!)

Picking up where I left off last time...

We head for the orphanage, but oh man yikes it's Galbadia Garden. Guess it's time for the final showdown with Seifer and Edea! And of course, everyone turns to Squall for guidance. Squall, time to give some orders! What are you going to tell everyone?...is it wrong that I just had to include the order about what to do about the hot dogs? XD I mean, for Zell's sake, it was my duty...! This whole next bit with the battle and everything was pretty epic. It was awesome to see Zell take charge and kick ass, for one thing. LOOK AT ME I'M GIVING ORDERS OHHHHH YEAHHHH! Then this whole mysterious deal with wanting to borrow Squall's ring, which...o...kay. At this point I'm just agreeing with Squall on this one--confused, but there's no time to worry about it. And Rinoa wants to prove herself... *sigh* Which, you know. I understand, but this is sort of a crisis situation and there isn't time to baby you, Rinoa. But as Squall would say, ...whatever.

Of course this comes back to bite Squall, because five minutes after she says "I'm going to prove myself and fight!" she falls off the freaking Garden. Blagh. So Zell runs off to find help. Meanwhile, the crap is hitting the fan everywhere as the junior classmen are in danger, the enemy is coming in through the front gate, and Squall is being hounded from all sides with "help what do we do!" So he delegates tasks, sending Zell back to help Rinoa while Irvine goes to help Xu and the rest of us go stop the Galbadians from entering the classroom...but Zell fails and then the rest of the party is adamant that no, Squall, you have to go save Rinoa yourself, stop being so heartless gawd! And Squall and I both are like "I'm kind of in the middle of leading a full assault here...!" (Once again I'm beginning to feel a lot like Raiden...!) But they insist, so while everyone else prepares for the ramming and boarding of Galbadia Garden, I head off to rescue Rinoa. Again.

Before I do that, though, Dr. Kadowaki (who continues to be exceedingly cool) reminds Squall that as the leader he should talk to his peeps and lift their spirits. I'm sitting here in dread, remembering what happened the last time someone tried to get Squall to make a speech ("Wait, what, a speech? Forget it. Turn the mic off...!"), but he thinks about it for a moment and then for the first time he finds the words to express what he feels, and what people need to hear. It's really quite stirring to watch, and people certainly seem to be spurred onward by it. Very nice, Squall!

On the way to save Rinoa, I'm accosted yet again by someone who needs my help--"(...I guess I have no choice.)"--and I send the kid back to where he belongs only to be attacked repeatedly by a Galbadian in a mech. It takes me one full round of dying before I catch on to what's going on here, but eventually he knocks me out of the emergency exit, I punch him in the face a few times to get rid of him, and then I realize that I'm falling past Rinoa and move in so she can grab the rope, and we run to the entrance to Galbadia Garden. At which point we proceed to have one of the most annoying conversations I've seen in the game thus far...agh. Shut up, Rinoa. "Your ring is so cool, I'm keeping it until Zell makes me one just like it, oh and people might get the wrong idea about us, teehee"...give me a break. At least it did elicit a chuckle-worthy internal response from Squall: "(Everyone is trying to get us together. It's so obvious even I can tell.)" Yeah, tell me about it. Sheesh.

Then there is some running about inside a nearly abandoned Galbadia Garden, where I pick up Cerberus (oh god broken) and the ability to refine items (oh god what is wrong with this system XD I love it) along with the Mug ability (oh more refining madness) and me getting some practice in on getting Perfects for Renzokuken (awww yeah Squall do it again), and eventually...I hear it. That music, the wonderful awesome music that means some sorceress stuff is about to go down. Fithos...Lusec...Wecos...Vinosec...I love this song. Gives me chills.

For there, there is Seifer, and behind him, Edea. Seifer has some snarky words for everyone, which is really a nice touch, especially since my party consists of Squall, Zell, and Quistis; they all have some history with each other and it's a very charged scene. Go rivals go! The three of us hand Seifer's ass to him twice before pounding on Edea for a while. After the fight, everything goes all white and funky, Rinoa seems to care an awful lot about Seifer's well-being before he leaves and she collapses, and then Edea says some things that make her seem an awful lot more like this Matron they've all been talking about. Innnteresting. End of disc 2!

So yeah, pretty epic disc finish, overall. The FMVs of the two Gardens colliding were pretty kickass and I really wish I knew what was going through Seifer's brain, heh. And that was where I picked up again today...more to come.

Addendum
Well, two things. One, I've always had a big problem with pushy, patronizing, manipulative love interest characters. I cannot figure out why that type is appealing. Rinoa's not the worst I've seen, but she's pretty bad. But two, now that I've played a heck of a lot more of the game (my writeups are quite a lot of gameplay hours behind where I actually am, heh) I've stopped disliking her quite as much as I did at the end of disc 2. Partially it was something of a subconscious effort, I think--I didn't want to ruin the rest of the game for myself by hating the main female, as you say--and partially I didn't see her for a long time which helped. XD But more on that when I get to it.

Lopen Appears
''I'm sitting here in dread, remembering what happened the last time someone tried to get Squall to make a speech ("Wait, what, a speech? Forget it. Turn the mic off...!"), but he thinks about it for a moment and then for the first time he finds the words to express what he feels, and what people need to hear. It's really quite stirring to watch, and people certainly seem to be spurred onward by it. Very nice, Squall!''

This scene (I mistook another scene for this one before when I was commenting on this) was really awesome for me. This is one of the big scenes that made me like Squall a lot more. Very cool to me to see him suck it up in crunch time and deliver a good speech... who'da thunk the guy could do it? Heh.

Started playing the game again today. Won't say anything related to the story I just got because I don't wanna spoil anything if I repassed you... and also, because well, wouldn't wanna steal your thunder...! But man, yeah... this system really is too easy to break. I refined a tonna Full Lifes and man Quistis now absorbs all types of elemental damage it's pretty good stuff. On a random note, what the hell kinda status is Pain. Well apparently it's poison, blindness, and silence. Not sure if that's the essence of pain, but sure, funny spell name! I also thought it was funny that Mug would steal 8 of an item at once. That's just silly to envision... well you know, I guess if the item is small it isn't too weird.

And man, Meteor Drive or whatever that Zell thing is? Man half the time it misses or does horrible damage... but I just whacked something for like 8000 (when normal attacks were doing around 2000) with it today. Thou shalt not doubt the meteor drive!

Chapter 9
In the words of the immortal Terry Bogard, OH-KAY! Writeups, disc 3, start, woo!

Edea’s House - Disc 3 begins with Squall in his room, after the battle is all over. Balamb Garden appears to be in one piece, which is nice. He wonders what happened to Rinoa and goes to see her in the infirmary, and then is called to the bridge and informed that Edea…Matron…is back at the orphanage. We head there and find not only Edea but Cid as well, who seems to have run off when the battle began, after having manipulated Squall into taking over for him. Geez, man. Some great SeeD founder he is. Talking to Edea, we find that her megalomaniacal takeover of Galbadia was actually caused by her having been possessed (not a big surprise) by a sorceress named Ultimecia from the future (slightly more of a surprise) who is after Ellone for her powers of…past-viewing, or whatever you want to call it. Not totally clear on why Edea seemed to think that surrendering herself to Ultimecia was going to keep Ellone out of danger, but uh…let’s move past that.

Edea’s guess is that now, having lost to these impudent SeeDs twice, Ultimecia will be looking for Sorceress Adel—the previous ruler of Esthar who has apparently disappeared—in order to form some manner of Uber Ultra Super Saiyan sorceress, and this is a Bad Thing. But Squall doesn’t appear to care much…because he’s too concerned about Rinoa…? Eh? That’s kind of odd, given the frustration and lack of interest he displayed last time he talked to her. But okay, maybe he feels guilty about not having stopped bad things from happening to her—after all, she is a comrade, and not only that but with his earlier fear of being responsible for the fates of people following him, he could easily be feeling like if she died or never woke up it would be his fault.

Meanwhile, Edea informs us that Ultimecia’s aim appears to be getting Ellone to send her consciousness further into the past so that she can accomplish something called “time compression”—merging the past, present, and future. For what purpose, it’s not clear, but apparently Squall is totally uninterested, because during this entire conversation his internal monologue is running rampant. Normally I’m very interested in seeing his thoughts during scenes like this, but this time I’m just…confused. Because he’s suddenly going on about how though he and Rinoa had a lot of arguments at first, things changed over time—okay, I can kind of see that…at least they stopped having open conflicts—and about how her eyes and her smile made him feel tranquil…what? Since when? “(Rinoa, give me another chance)”? Sure sounds like he’s falling in love with her to me, except that I seem to have missed the bit where that actually started happening.

Still, this isn’t so ridiculous; he could just be saying “give me another chance to not be an utter dick, because I feel bad that I was so harsh to you before you were put into a death-like coma.” And if he’s feeling guilt over her getting hurt on his watch, that could help with this newfound soft spot for her. But this hasn’t been addressed, and I can’t help but get a Vibe here, my hackles are up. Are they going to do this right, or just take a half-justified plunge into love story city? We’ll see.

Chapter 10
Balamb Garden - Squall makes the announcement that we’re looking for the White SeeD ship to get Ellone back so we can protect her—he seems to be getting into the swing of this leadership thing, no longer so hesitant and worried, no more insisting that he didn’t ask for it—necessity is the mother of things like invention and coping, after all, heh. Then he heads to the infirmary to check on Rinoa, and…agh, my red alert is going off again. With this scene, it’s official, they’ve taken Squall from “holding people at arm’s length and not understanding Rinoa at all” to “obsessive about Rinoa” with no real transition in between.

This is the part where I kind of feel like the writers thought, whoa, we have to hurry up and develop Squall’s feelings for Rinoa, but we don’t have much gametime left, so uh…let’s make it all offscreen, before disc 3 starts—yeah, that’s the ticket, he’s already been thinking about it for days! It’s not entirely out of left field, but it’s pretty close. Granted, part of this could be because I did make all of the harsher dialogue choices for him, but given that they’re available as choices the game should take them into account. I spent a bit of time as I went along rationalizing his massive turnaround and managed eventually to convince myself that I believed it…and it wouldn’t have been so bad with any other character, but with Squall I feel like they needed a really convincing, really real way of getting his feelings to develop in that direction in order to do it successfully, and I don’t think they quite got there just because they didn't spend enough time on it. It was pretty jarring for a while, and I wasn’t entirely certain I was going to be able to buy the rest of the love story…but I figured I’d at least try. However, at the moment there are other things to worry about, because…

Somewhere in the mountains - it’s Laguna! WOO! Yay! I’ve missed him, it’s been a while! And, true to form, he and Kiros and Ward are getting into mischief. This time they’re trying to make some money, so Laguna has become Sir Appearing In This Film, complete with shiny armor and gunblade. But as luck would have it, instead of the Kiros-run fake dragon attacking him as the camera rolls, it’s a real dragon oh crap. But Laguna is a badass, and he manages to beat the dragon off and make his way down the mountain, where Kiros and Ward join him and we fight once again to the awesometude that is Laguna’s battle theme. Awww yeah. Laguna also apparently has the same superpower Selphie and Co. had to change clothes at a moment’s notice. Awesome.

…and then something appears to be wrong, as Present Ellone informs Squall that she can’t disconnect him from the past. Yikes. Meanwhile, Laguna looks for Tiny Ellone all over the place, including at Matron’s orphanage, but she isn’t there. Cue facepalming on my end and brief confusion on Laguna’s as Squall interjects with “(I want to hear Rinoa’s voice.)” v_v He goes on to insist to Ellone that he wants to use her ability to go to the past to save Rinoa, but Ellone tells him that, as she has discovered, you can’t change the past this way. She’s tried: she wanted to use Squall’s interference to stop Laguna from leaving Winhill before Raine died shortly after childbirth, but it didn’t work, and because he was out looking for Ellone, he wasn’t there for Raine. This bit really upset me, I have to say. How many times is Laguna going to lose someone he cares about? D:

When Squall wakes up, he heads for the orphanage to see Edea again because he figures she might know the whereabouts of the White SeeD ship, considering that they claimed to be her SeeDs. He is obviously being motivated by this obsessive need to save Rinoa, however, and not much by any wish to protect Ellone or stop Ultimecia. Hmm. She tells him where to go with a letter of introduction, and we go!

White SeeD Ship - At first they’re not very welcoming—who can blame them, especially with Squall’s very diplomatic opening of “… …I want to see Ellone.”—but we show them the letter and they let us onboard. And hey, check it out—it’s Zone and Watts! I love those guys. Unfortunately, they ask after Rinoa’s well-being and Squall tells them the truth…and Zone flips out. I feel pretty bad for Squall here; if his feelings for Rinoa were initially spurred by guilt, being called a pathetic lying scumbag son of a ***** probably doesn’t much help. >_> But he simply apologizes and explains how he’s trying to help, and they calm down, with Watts just as full of helpful information as ever. (Gotta love this guy!)

Talking to the leader it becomes clear that Ellone isn’t here—the ship got caught in a fight between some Galbadians and Esthar…ians…? And Ellone apparently went willingly over to the Esthar ship before they left. Interesting. First of all, I love the little details in this scene, like Squall’s observation that not only do the White SeeDs also call Edea “Matron,” but their salute is the same as the Garden SeeDs’ salute. Neat! Second of all, I can only think of one reason why Ellone might run off voluntarily—did she go because Laguna was there? I suppose we’ll find out! Having Squall meet Laguna in the present would be pretty dang awesome. *gets my hopes up*

But, as Xu and Nida inform me, Esthar is hidden away in the mountains somewhere and is extremely hard to get to. Nida: “That area’s terrain is not really suited for flying the Garden.” Squall: “Anyway, set a course for Esthar.” Glad to see that Squall is still listening to people wholeheartedly when they talk, as usual. XD Weirdly, I managed to entirely miss part of the proceedings here, because I went to rest and save the game in Squall’s dorm and then stopped by the infirmary to see Rinoa before even trying to get to Esthar…which of course triggered the next scene. So I totally missed the part where we docked the Garden at Fisherman’s Horizon, making the scene where Squall walks with Rinoa across the machinery and down the train tracks kind of confusing, especially when on the map there was the red blinking thing that represented the Garden in the middle of the ocean, haha. I only got what had happened later when checking the script.

Regardless, though, Squall goes to the infirmary and apparently simply cannot stand to wait around any longer while Rinoa is in this condition. He slings her onto his back and decides to walk to Esthar from here. …what?? Good lord, man, that’s halfway across the continent! And the trains aren’t running! I…what. This is what I mean by sudden obsession. I could not imagine Squall abandoning his duty like this even at the end of disc 2. Which was all of two or three gameplay hours ago, and half of those were Laguna. I mean, sure, love can override prevailing duty in lawful characters, it happens in stories all the time…but the way this was done was a bit too sudden and unrealistic for my tastes. Still, the impact of the next few scenes is not lost on me, and the bit where he pauses to rest and muses—out loud, for once, though he’s for all intents and purposes alone—about how he’s changed and why he’s tried to keep people at a distance all this time is a moving little scene. “That’s a secret between you and me. Got that?” There’s something about this line that kind of got to me. Like he’s so unwilling to share his feelings with others that, even half-jokingly (Squall, joke?? wow), he has to make himself feel better about speaking out loud to someone who’s unable to hear him at all. Not to mention the sheer wonder that one has to feel at the amount of dedication he’s putting into saving her right this very instant. I can begin, with this scene, to rationalize his turnaround enough to make myself believe it. (The “cinematography” helps too. So well done.)

Lopen The Pen
Aw, poor Laguna.

That's pretty hilarious about the random scene transition.. I didn't know that could happen. Me? Go see Rinoa first? Haw!

And yeah, the transition was probably so jarring to me because of the fact that I picked all the nasty lines too, but it really pisses me off that much more because of that. And unfortunately, unlike you, the fact that the scenes were done well was not enough for me to accept it, and all of these well done scenes just bugged me enough to virtually ruin Disc 3 for me. Honestly, I'm not sure whether I'd rather just be denied the ability to choose lines over the course of the game... at least then I might get a transition that made sense and hell, I might even have not have hated Rinoa as much... because her dialogue seems less obnoxious when you pick the less mean lines.

But I mean, it's just like, a slap in the face when you make all these dialogue choices throughout the game, and then the character acts in exactly the opposite of what you've been choosing. I know RPGs often have meaningless dialogue choices, but it's a rare occasion indeed that the RPG will force your character to do, again, exactly the opposite of the behavior you've been choosing the whole game. Role playing game my ass.

I shall try not to rant about this anymore.. I know you've heard it already, but bleh.

Chapter 11
Yep, I've finished the game, though I plan to go back and do a few sidequests that I didn't do the first time around. Nope, not familiar with the U = R theory, though based on the initials I can guess what it means; I'm not sure where the evidence for that would come from, but do tell!

Meanwhile...

Eventually, Squall runs into some familiar faces—and rather than being angry or laughing at him, as he thought they might, they have all come to help, including Edea! Who wants to see this Dr. Odine about ridding herself of her sorceress powers. …oh man she’s in my party. Whoa! Neat! She ends up being a lower level than my three generally active party members (Squall, Zell, and Quistis) but I put her in anyway just for fun. Her Limit Break is a damage machine, wow. Go go sorceress magic! I also appreciated the fact that despite his recent change of heart toward Rinoa, he’s still Squall—when Selphie goes “psssst isn’t Rinoa cute when she’s asleep,” blushing or not, his response is “Whatever.” :P This gave me some hope that the writers weren’t going to change his character just because they changed his mind. Also, I’m really liking the way that Selphie and Irvine are sticking together more and more, clearly there’s something happening between them…I just wish it wasn’t all offscreen, it would be nice to get some more development for the secondary characters too! Ah well.

Esthar - We find a way through the illusion that covers the city—this was really neat—and after a maze of conveyor belts and elevators we are dumped out onto a platform. Welcome to Esthar! Zell is flippin’ out man WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?? Heh heh. Zell is so great. Before we can start exploring Esthar, though, that high-pitched noise starts again and, much to Squall’s annoyance, we’re back with Laguna and friends. Hooray!

This time, they seem to be prisoners or indentured servants or something of the kind, working in a high-tech lab. And hey, there’s one of those little orange guys. Maybe it’s the same one from the prison? Guess we’ll find out! Laguna is his usual optimistic, wacky, caring self and manages to help the little orange dude—ah, they’re called Moombas, says the other prisoner guy—and piss the guards off while attracting the attention of the random NPC who turns out to be part of a resistance movement against the rule of Sorceress Adel. He seems to think that Laguna would be prime leader material for the movement—neat! Then Kiros and Ward show up and we fight our way out, only to hear some stuff about a Lunar Base and some weapon called Lunatic Pandora. It also turns out that Odine loves to do research on Ellone and her weird powers and would know where she is—so back in we go! But not before Kiros has some awesome lines and Laguna spontaneously agrees that in return for the resistance’s help finding Ellone, he will help their movement. And a bunch of the things I love about Laguna are demonstrated in what he thinks to himself as he runs back into the lab: “(Darn it, did it again! Why don’t I ever think things through before I answer? Well… It’s been ok til now. I’m sure things will work out.)” Then we comically chase Odine around the lab—this whole scene was so hilarious—and then he finally tells us where to find her, and we get directions which Laguna can’t follow (of course! <3) so Kiros becomes his navigator. And we rescue Ellone, huzzah!

Chapter 12
Going onward!

Squall and the others wake up and we get along on our way to see Dr. Odine. Esthar is KICKASS. For those of you who get this reference, Esthar reminds me of Nivix. It’s so damn shiny, heh. Airways and lifts and online shopping on touch screens, haha. This place is so cool. This is where I pick up the magazine that shows me how to make the Lionheart…man, I want it! But no time for ingredient-collecting now, we’ve got to talk to the Doc—after Irvine mentions that the president must be a real big shot to have such an awesome palace, and I start getting wacky ideas. That guy recruited Laguna to be the leader of the resistance, right? Hmmmm. *gets my hopes up more* They leave Rinoa to be observed by Odine and we head for someplace called the Lunar Gate. Which is just what it sounds like: a gate to the moon! Or, more accurately, to space. Oh man we’re going to space. That is so damn cool.

I choose to “Trust Zell” to guard Matron when the choice comes up, which makes him ECSTATIC OHHHHH YEAHHHHHH! :P Which means that I bring Irvine along with me and Rinoa. Normally I’d have brought Quistis, but I’d just gotten a whole slew of new kinds of ammo and I wanted to try them out. The ship takes off and we’re left with Zell, Quistis, Selphie, and Edea—who rush back to the city to see what the heck is up with the giant thing that’s flying in the sky whoooaaaa. It’s the Lunatic Pandora! Piloted by Galbadians, yikes. Zell freaks out a little and then we’re off! The timed bit is fun, a neat concept—but odd in that I reach the second contact point with something like a whole minute to spare, and I wait around, and the entire window of time goes by and nothing happens while I stand there. Huh. So I just go to the last contact point and wait around some more, and that works just fine. We board the Lunatic Pandora, only for some sort of giant monster robot thing to *****slap us back to the ground. Bah! Get back here, giant weapon thing!

Space: the final frontier - This is so freaking awesome. A beautiful FMV of capsules flying around and getting brought in by the space station, so great. And when we disembark and they turn the gravity on the room is all skewed and sideways! Hee~ I had way too much fun with the fact that we were in space, heh. Some conversations with NPCs tell me that the Sorceress Adel who used to rule Esthar is sealed in this huge machine here in space, and that it’s this seal that stopped all radio communications on Earth 17 years ago. Innnteresting. Not only that, but it also stops all junctioning in the vicinity—and sure enough, while you’re in the Lunar Base you can’t have anything junctioned. One thing I love about this game is all that attention to little details—so great. Also it seems that the President of Esthar is out inspecting the tomb personally with a space suit. (This is just strengthening my suspicion…!) Then it turns out that the moon is in fact crawling with monsters everywhere, and the Lunar Cry that Edea mentioned was an incident where they all came down to the earth and obliterated a city…and it’s about to happen again. Dun dun DUNN!

Meanwhile, Squall finally shows a little interest in the well-being of Ellone…oh wait, no, this is all just the prelude to “take me into Rinoa’s past so I can save her do it now” despite Ellone’s insistence that you cannot change the past that way. But before we can try this out…holy crap. Rinoa’s going insane! Why they don’t realize right away that she’s being possessed by Ultimecia, I’m not sure--I did--but this whole thing is extremely creepy and awesome. The visual effect that’s used here, with the strange “echoes” of her as she walks, is really neat. And uh…Rinoa deactivates one of the seals on Adel’s Tomb, dons a space suit, and heads out to deactivate the other one. Whoops. Squall dons a space suit too and tries to follow, but can’t get out, so he returns to find everyone evacuating the base. Along the way he sees some crew members trying to convince the President to get aboard an escape pod, and before he gets dragged away he yells at Squall, “Hey you! Take care of Ellone!” Oh man I was right it’s totally Laguna hey come back!! But alas, he is gone for the moment.

Addendum
More writeups coming, but man...yesterday I went back and did a bunch of sidequests. The hilarious part was that by the time I actually got all the pieces to make the Lionheart, Squall's Strength and Hit were already maxed out. XD But of course I did get the rest of the Renzokuken finishers, which are totally kickass. He makes a several thousand mile long sword, okay. :P

Then I went and got Bahamut. Incidentally, I pumped Squall's luck up to 60, and when I fought the three Ruby Dragons here, Odin showed up and killed all three of them in a row. What. It was insane. That wasn't the only time it happened, either; while I was item-farming in Esthar to get energy crystals, he showed up four times in a row once. This game is so great.

On that save file, my Squall is now level 100; my Zell is level 98; and my Quistis is level 92. I think I'm going to go beat the game again with this party and see what it's like! Heh heh.

I also finished the Shumi Village sidequest and got the mini-dialogues with Kiros and Ward and Laguna on the Ragnarok that imply that Squall is Laguna and Raine's son. It's odd because I'd thought I'd heard somewhere that Laguna was Squall's father, but I beat the whole game without hearing any such thing and was a little confused. That's the whole reason I did the Shumi Village quest at all, actually--I wanted to get all the Laguna backstory I could, heh. So, neat! The only thing that bothered me about all of this is that I would have liked to have actually seen Squall learn this and have a reaction. Ah well, I will use my imagination.

Chapter 13
After Squall gets back to the others, Rinoa releases the seal and gets knocked away into space by the rush of monsters coming from the moon. Whoops. But we have to evacuate the station before the Lunar Cry comes to kill us all, no time for Rinoa-rescuing!...or is there? This bit with Ellone is a little odd…since when does she have the power to sense people’s thoughts and feelings? That has very little to do with sending people back to the past…well, I guess you could say that if she can send someone’s consciousness back in time, she can also read that person’s consciousness…er…sure. That makes sense. >_>

So her saying “Squall, she’s calling out to you!” was a little much, but I can kind of accept my half-assed explanation. That said, Squall’s desperation to save her was well done and easy to sympathize with—there aren’t too many more ways to feel utterly helpless than having someone free-floating in space. So Ellone sends him back…it’s pretty neat to see some things from Rinoa’s point of view, and actually this was the point at which I stopped disliking Rinoa quite so much. (Well, this and the fact that I’d played almost an entire disc without her saying anything… >_>) The scene where she forces Irvine to come back and rescue the others is funny, especially her take on why they might not escape (“Squall might say ‘but no one has ordered me to escape’, and end up staying in there. We can’t have that!”)—I imagine her doing some kind of silly Squall voice there. :P The other thing that makes Rinoa less hateable is the fact that she didn’t actually tell Zell to ask Squall for his ring—she in fact didn’t want to do that because she’d have been embarrassed, and Zell seems to have taken the initiative and done it anyway. Makes her seem a bit less pushy.

But then we arrive at the moment in time that Squall wants to see—Ultimecia has, of course, possessed Rinoa. I’m still not totally clear on why Rinoa fell into a coma—that didn’t happen to Edea—but hey, whatever. It makes for good drama! And Seifer was the one who retrieved Lunatic Pandora and activated the Lunar Cry, not shocking. So Squall, not having been able to change what happened, seeks another way to help Rinoa, and Ellone comes up with an idea that’s actually pretty neat. She sends Squall into Rinoa’s most recent past, like a second ago. And we know from Laguna’s comments earlier that it is possible for the person to sense the presence of people sent into them, so the fact that Rinoa hears Squall this way isn’t actually as strange as I thought at first. Though why Ellone insists that Squall didn’t need her help after all, I don’t know. I guess she’s just, uh…being metaphorical or romantic or something.

A note about the Rinoa-floating-in-space scene: it was INTERMINABLY LONG, but I found that I didn’t mind. It was a nice touch, it got across very well the feeling of helplessness and solitude that Rinoa was experiencing and helped me sympathize with her. Good stuff.

So Rinoa is given fresh hope and holds on while Squall decides to go free-floating into space to get her. Where he thinks he’s going to go after that, I have no idea; I don’t think he actually gives it that much thought, heh. Which seems to be somewhat counter to Squall’s normal practice, but then he also has never been this passionate or desperate about anything before, so such uncharacteristic behavior is understandable. It’s gratifying to see Squall change over time, do the unexpected thing.

And now…time to play Grab the Rinoa! I actually failed the first time because it took me a few seconds to orient myself with the camera controls and then I couldn’t catch up. I literally missed her by inches, it was kind of silly. Got her just fine the second time, though, and I liked this part. It was nice of the game to allow the player to actually save her hands-on. MGS does stuff like that too, and I appreciate it when a game gives me a chance to personally achieve something that could just as easily have been done in FMV. It helps me relate better to the protagonist in a dramatic scene like this one.

The Ragnarok - So Rinoa is now “safe”, for some strange definition of the word—at least she isn’t alone in floating in space with limited oxygen…! But by some stroke of luck, Squall is able to save the day once again by getting them aboard an abandoned ship called the Ragnarok, and the little scene that happens when they take off the space suits gives me the first sign of assurance that the somewhat forced love story isn’t ruining Squall’s character. Rinoa wants a hug!...and Squall just…does not understand, heh heh. Even after she explains, he’s still very Squall—get the mission done first, other stuff later. He’s changing, and growing, but he’s still himself. Nice to know they aren’t just tossing two and a half discs of character development out the window, which I’d been afraid they might do when the Rinoa obsession began.

The monster puzzle is kind of annoying only because I can never remember where I’ve seen the other monster of the same color and I keep getting caught by monsters of other colors on my way around looking for it. This is due no doubt to my terrible sense of direction in video games…oh well. I do eventually kill them all and find my way to the cockpit, where holy crap a RADIO SIGNAL whoa. It’s a nice little touch that they’re so disoriented by the first radio communciation to a ship in space in 17 years that at first they’re not even sure what’s going on. Also a nice touch is Squall’s “There’s too many seats here” when asked whether he’s sitting in the pilot’s seat. XD I mean, how the heck is he supposed to know? “From all of us at Ground Control, we wish you godspeed.” This whole scene was just so cool. Yay space travel and radio signals!

And then there’s the scene that scared me to death when it started, because I thought it was going to become horribly mushy and terrible. But once again the game pleasantly surprised me by keeping Squall’s character consistent. “No, seriously, you should go sit down and put your seat belt on, it’s safer that way…what the heck are you doing?” Heh heh. And the conversation in which he finally admits out loud to her the reason for his keeping people at a distance was well-done too. Rinoa gets mushy, Squall gets taciturn. Rinoa: “I like it like this. I liked having my mom hold me.” Squall: “I’m not your mom.” XD Squall is awesome. He even throws in a “…Whatever.” Good times, good times. And he’s still hesitant to acknowledge that he wants to stay with her when he’s talking directly to her—still afraid to say that only to have it all taken away later. It’s a very well-written scene.

Back in Esthar - Oh hey, that’s not good. Rinoa’s become a sorceress and the Estharians plan to seize her upon arrival. Well, it’s perfectly understandable—Ultimecia could theoretically re-possess her at any time, which would be extremely dangerous. Still, it’s also easy to see why Rinoa is terrified to land. But they really have no choice, and upon landing she is in fact taken away. Here is another reason that Rinoa—and in fact the whole relationship—became more likeable for me; Rinoa faces her fears and makes the mature decision to go willingly for the sake of the world (though there is also the fear of being shunned fueling this decision, which is also understandable), and Squall respects that decision and doesn’t make a huge scene. (Just a tiny one, one brief outburst, it’s forgiveable. :P)

…hahaha, wow. Reading the script is funny sometimes. I had Irvine with me in space, so he’s the one who comes aboard the Ragnarok first while Squall is sitting there alone. It turns out that if you have Selphie instead, the story behind what happened to the other party member is totally different—instead of waiting with Piet and getting a ride to the ship from the rescue crew, she finds a chocobo and randomly wanders around until she stumbles across the Ragnarok. XD Selphie is great.

Irvine calls Squall a hero and asks after Rinoa, but before Squall can tell him the bad news, the rest of the party arrives! “S’up Squall!!!” Yay, Zell is back! Turns out that Edea gave her powers to Rinoa without realizing it. Whoops. And Adel fell into the Lunatic Pandora, which is as we knew being controlled by Galbadians—which of course means Seifer. But Squall remains distracted by having turned Rinoa over and upon hearing what happened Selphie immediately runs out of the room, followed shortly by Irvine. The others are too busy berating Squall for not having stopped them from taking Rinoa away to pay much attention to Selphie and Irvine, and Quistis has one of her patented “stop that and think for a second!” speeches, of which I am quite fond. Squall realizes eventually that he can’t really do anything about the rest of the world’s problems at the moment, but he can save Rinoa (again)—but before he can do anything about it, the ship lurches and takes off…!

This is so hilarous. Quistis: “Excuse me, we’re flying?” Zell: “I hope this ain’t the case, but I can picture Selphie in the pilot seat, and…” Quistis: “…Selphie screaming, ‘Whoo-hoo, we’re flying!’ (And standing next to her, a very excited Irvine…)” They rush to the cockpit, where lo and behold Selphie screams “Whoo-hoo, we’re flying!” and Irvine follows up with “Selphie’s just amazing!” XD Stuff like this is why I wish Selphie and Irvine had more screentime. Ah well. I have to say, despite getting an airship or similar in pretty much every RPG I’ve ever played (okay, not EVERY one, but close!), I still get excited about it. I’m with Selphie, man, WOO FLYING! …Shut up, it’s fun. <_<

So we fly to the Sorceress Memorial and break Rinoa out, and Squall finally gives her that hug awwwww. We run out expecting to fight some guards, but…dude it’s Ward oh man I wanna meet Laguna!! But the party doesn’t recognize him right away and we leave, with Quistis the self-proclaimed expert Squall observer trying to cheer him up and him responding in his usual way, and Zell putting both feet in his mouth while they discuss potentially going after Seifer and stopping Ultimecia. “Let’s go kick her ass! We’re SeeDs! We’re here to destroy sorceresses, right!!!?” Five minutes after Rinoa admitted to thinking that no one would want her around now that she’s a sorceress. *facepalm* Oh Zell. Heh heh. But we head to the orphanage first because Rinoa wants to be somewhere where there aren’t a lot of people, in case she gets possessed by Ultimecia again.

Edea’s House - We make fun of Zell a bit and then Rinoa and Squall have another heart to heart. Once again it’s a pretty good scene, not overdone, and they promise that this orphanage is the place they’ll meet if they ever are separated again after Squall internally decides that he’ll be the knight to Rinoa’s sorceress. What a twisted parallel Seifer makes to this. As though Squall has done what Seifer has been trying all this time to do, only he’s done it right. Just like Squall managed to become a SeeD while Seifer failed yet again. No wonder Seifer decided to cut corners and give in to Ultimecia’s offer. Unable to achieve his dream by his own hands, but determined to achieve it one way or the other, he allows himself to be manipulated through his desire for glory. Seifer is a great rival, I really like him a lot.

But okay, this scene has nothing to do with Seifer, so I’ll move on, heh. Zell interrupts with a message from –OH MAN from the president of Esthar YESSSSS!! And the message was communicated by radio by KIROS WOOOOO! The president has an idea and he’s hiring SeeD to carry it out. Awesome. As we leave, Edea decides to inform us that thirteen years ago, right here on the doorstep of the orphanage, a dying sorceress showed up, and Edea took that sorceress’ powers in order to keep the children safe. Uh…thanks for that story, Edea. Not sure what prompted this or why it’s relevant, but thanks anyway!

Esthar Presidential Palace - Woooooo! Man, I was so excited on the way here. Not only are we back in Esthar, which I love, but we’re gonna meet Laguna OHHHH YEAHHHH!! As usual, I love Squall’s internal monologue during this scene. (What is up with this country?) when the lights on the floor come on, heh. Also Laguna is kickass. “Hey, you’re the guys who were inside my head, right? Cool! If we weren’t in a state of emergency, I’d talk more, but—well, what the hell, let’s talk.” XD So I spend a bunch of time asking Laguna all the available questions. This entire scene was just amazing on so many levels. Odine is HILARIOUS – “You vant to go outside!? You vant to fisticuffs!? Ok, we continue ze story!”—and dammit, Ultimecia’s ability to come back to this time and possess people is his fault. Bleh. Oh well, scientific progress stops for no one, what can you do? So the plan is to deliberately allow Ultimecia to possess Rinoa again and compress time, then use the time compression to go to the future and kill Ultimecia there. How that will revert time to normal, I’m not sure, but uh…I trust the Izzet! I mean, scientist!

Meanwhile, Laguna tells the story of what happened to Ellone, how Cid and Edea gave her to the White SeeDs to protect her from Odine’s research, and how she was kidnapped by Galbadians and taken to Lunatic Pandora, from which we plan to rescue her. He also tells the long story of how he led the effort to seal Adel and became the president of Esthar, which was just awesome on a stick. I also love Squall’s commentary—“You were a silly Galbadian soldier. I didn’t like your attitude at all.” Heh heh. Also great is how Laguna became president because he wasn’t paying close enough attention while the debate was going on. <3 And I really like the fact that they give you the option to ask about Raine just so that Laguna can show a bit of what he must feel about what happened to her, despite deciding not to tell the story right now.

Then Laguna’s back to his usual enthusiastic self once I accept the mission—he’s always wanted to ride the Ragnarok, you see, plus it has a cool name…!—and he goes over the plan in detail once we’re on board. It’s a nice touch that he makes sure Rinoa is cool with accepting Adel’s powers and being possessed again before proceeding, and a sign of Rinoa becoming more mature that she is cool with it. Facing her fears again, good to see. But the best part of this whole scene is the cheesy Laguna goodness. Love, friendship, and courage! WOOO! Hehe. No wonder they made him president. Squall thinks it’s corny, but can appreciate the way it lifts morale in the party, and we’re off to Lunatic Pandora!

I stopped to get Odin on the way to Lunatic Pandora, which was fun. I also fought a Tonberry. I love Tonberries. They’re so creepy. Oh, which reminds me—do you guys have any idea how happy I was to see that this game didn’t contain moogles? Moombas > moogles any day. Aw yeah. Speaking of which, I also went to Shumi Village here and learned of the existence of the sidequest there. I got as far as hearing the elder explain the deal with Moombas and having the sculptor ask for my help with gathering stones, and then I didn’t feel like doing a fetchquest before getting the rest of the plot, so I moved on.

Lunatic Pandora - And speaking of the Ragnarok being badass, check THIS out. We use our airship to rip a huge hole in the side of the giant moon weapon! Awesome. And who should we meet upon arrival but our old friends, Fujin and Raijin. Raijin insists that Squall is being greedy and unfair because he doesn’t want them to kidnap Rinoa, or keep Ellone, or unseal Adel. This strikes me as kind of funny—as if Squall had said “no, I won’t give you a piece of my sandwich, OR let you play marbles with us, OR help you with your homework,” or something equally mundane. We defeat them handily, only to run into them again a while later…except this time they sic a huge machine on us. Geez! But we defeat this thing handily too, after getting an item from it that teaches Quistis Homing Lasers, which will end up being incredibly useful later on. (On that note, I also adore Micro Missiles.)

Addendum
Yeah, Ragnarok is definitely the most badass one of the FFs I've played so far! (I still have yet to play IV, VII, and Tactics. I have IV and VII now, though, and plan to play them soon; VII is next!)

Oh! Also I realized something neat the other day. Laguna, Raine, and Squall all have water-related names. Just another hint, I suppose, heh.

Yeah, I considered finding the Tonberry GF, but on my first playthrough I don't like spending too much time on sidequests, and then when I went back and made a new save file and did a bunch of things like made the Lionheart and finished Shumi Village and did the Winhill vase puzzle and got the party to level 100 and whatnot, I eventually got sick of sidequests and stopped. So now the only thing I have left to do is replay the Castle and the final sequence with my level 100 party just for kicks. Then I will start FF7!

Chapter 14
Finally, we reach Seifer, but—what’s this? Fujin and Raijin have decided enough is enough! (And Fujin is speaking in real sentences, holy crap!) They let Ellone go and explain to Seifer that, while they are and always will be a posse, they don’t like to see Seifer being manipulated, and they don’t want to help him fulfill someone else’s dream. (“Sad that we only have Squall to rely on…” XD) To Seifer’s credit, he’s remarkably okay with this…but he still insists on playing the “hero,” despite seeming to understand their point of view. He’s acknowledged that he’s not really any sort of knight, but his pride won’t allow him to back down or admit that he was wrong, nor will it allow him to accept working with Squall and therefore sharing any sort of victory that might be achieved. So here we are, the final showdown with Seifer!

And uh…what. Odin?? The hell are you doing here, get away, this is my fi—oh. Oh, I see. Seifer just kind of…told Odin to piss off. And he did. That was…that was awesome. Then some odd hand grabs Odin’s sword or something, and then the fight begins for real! Unfortunately, Seifer is a pushover and we kick his ass rather quickly. The man really needs to learn how to use his gunblade properly, I’ve never seen him actually pull his trigger except when I was controlling him. Squall’s about to deliver the final blow, when…uh…?? What the hell. It’s GILGAMESH. Hahahaha! Now I get it! Gilgamesh took Odin’s sword to complete his set! That was so weird. What this means for my GF, I have no idea, but no time to worry about it now! Because now Seifer has run off and grabbed Rinoa, and it’s time to put our plan into action! End disc 3 whooooaaaa

And begin disc 4. Seifer brings Rinoa to Adel and they…merge…or something. So we fight Adel and beat her down, and then as she starts to die, Rinoa absorbs her powers. Right on cue, there are LAGUUUNAAAA and Ellone, and the plan happens just as we’d figured. “Love, friendship, and courage! Show ‘em what you got!” <3

And then…

…

Time compression.

Everything goes all crazy whoooaaaaa oh man trippy. We fight a whole slew of weird-ass sorceresses that seem to be coalescing out of the warped timeline and then disappearing again as we beat them and the scenery is changing and what’s going on and there’s a huge slug woman thing and uhhhh I’m so confused but hey now it’s over and we’re in the future! That whole sequence was pretty cool, I have to say. Trippy creepy sorceress madness is great. And now we have appeared in the place we promised to meet—Edea’s house—but in the future, with a huge Gothic castle floating off the shore. It looks pretty awesome. I didn’t quite understand what the three doors to the world map were for, during the journey up the chain…they deposited me in random places, and there was some weird shield thing surrounding Deling City. Oh well, moving on!

Ultimecia’s Castle - Oh my lord this castle. Agggghhh. The game was so good until this point, I don’t know why they felt the need to stick a giant plot-less dungeon in here that takes forever and a half to figure out. It would have been a really cool dungeon in some other game that didn’t lead up for three discs to a lot of complex plot and character development…but man, I did not fall in love with these characters and this setting just to get an entire final disc of puzzle-solving and having to redo whole sections and fight half-hour-long fights against stupid Tiamat because I ran into her before I got most of my abilities back. Blagh!

The first thing I did when I got inside the castle was fight the big guy on the stairs, who was a pushover, and when it asked what ability I wanted, I was like “well, I should get the ability to save the game first because that way if I die at least I won’t have to do this whole thing over again.” Then one of the random enemies did like 4000 damage to Quistis in one go and I couldn’t heal her, and then the second boss I ran into was the elemental guy who did huge lightning attacks on my whole party at once. …that fight didn’t end well. *sigh* So I started the castle over, and this time I started out getting Magic back. Yay! And I finally learned the No Encounters ability and had that going, no sweat, right? …then the elemental guy did some thing that killed Squall, and I couldn’t resurrect him. …then I ran into Tiamat. v_v Starting over AGAIN. This time I was more careful in the elemental fight and got back Resurrection before going to fight Tiamat because I hadn’t found any of the others yet. Without Limit Breaks or the Revive/Restore Command Abilities or GFs, that fight took me half an hour. But I did it, dammit! I didn’t really feel like starting over again, so I just muddled through. And after that they were all much, much easier.

Funny story: the bit where you have to use the other half of your party to cross the chandelier? I was worried because my main party was Squall, Quistis and Zell at level 70 or so…and Irvine, Selphie, and Rinoa were hovering somewhere between level 13 and level 18. >_> Imagine my concern when I had to walk into a big boss fight with that party! (Yes, I'm aware that the bosses scale to your level, but I was still paranoid!) I was very worried that I’d have to do the whole damn thing again…and then the fight started…and then Gilgamesh showed up and killed the boss in one hit. What!!! I laughed for like five minutes straight, it was so incredible. Woohoo!!

Unfortunately, the puzzles were so convoluted and ridiculous that I spent fooooreeeeeeveerrrrrrr wandering around the castle looking for the last couple of bosses. Also I couldn’t find the key in the fountain for like a year and a half. Also the painting puzzle took me for damn ever. Seriously, by the time I got to the final fight I was just kind of fed up. And we didn’t even get any cool plot or character scenes when we got there! Agghgh. But okay, final fight. Here we go.

Addendum
...what the freaking Christ. The fight with seventy million different forms of Ultimecia and her GF.

I don't really have the patience for doing this hour-long final boss fight more than three times in a row. I really, really don't.

...

There we go! Of course, after I got annoyed and posted about it, I went back and beat it on the next try, and it wasn't that hard. I just had to get my rhythm and strategy down. Triple + Holy for the GF forms, and then Squall and Quistis both with Aura doing constant Renzokuken and Homing Lasers during the final Ultimecia bit while Zell's job was to keep the others hasted and hang onto his 9999 HP. The first three parts also went WAY faster this time around.

The ending was pretty fantastic. I think I'd say it made the hell that was Ultimecia's castle worth it. But I won't go into details now--I'll do my writeups on the rest of the game and get here when I get here, heh.

Lopen Surprise Section
Haha, okay. Yeah, I only just beat the game last night like Satai did! I don't know!

But yeah, I guess I use Armageddon fist all the time then. Sometimes I do Booya->Heel Drop instead. Though honestly, I've become good enough at dueling that I can throw in anything that isn't a Meteor Strike without losing much time. I've sorta memorized (unintentionally!) the command inputs for a few small loop combinations. It's more interesting to watch him throw Dolphin Blows (might be worth it too if you're good at it, Dolphin Blows seem to do pretty significantly more than Punch Rush/Booya sometimes) in once in a while!

Though really... the fact that spamming Punch Rush->Booya has you using Booya, the move with the coolest name ever, so often, I do default to this Armageddon Fist often.

And I, like Ashe, only had one save file. Didn't have the space on the memory card... you know how it is! ... what? Eh, wasn't a problem for me... just means I can't do any of the sidequests. A shame about those elite 4 too... my card collection was pretty cool, but apparently not good enough for them! I had almost every card though... jerks.

I can't say I had quite as much problems as Satai with the final boss, though it did take some time. Zell's strength was only like 200 and Squall's was far less, so I was far from maxed out. Still Zell was dueling that bastard for like 60000 regularly. Squall doing less but you know... adequate damage, and Quistis played support with the awesome Mighty Guard/Triple casted Aura/Triple casted Curaga. Still, probably took a good half an hour. A bit longwinded, that boss.

Then I caught the hint that you could draw Apocalypse in the last part and I had Quistis being a damage machine too with triple casted Apocalypse for 9999 3 times. It was beautiful.

And yeah, that castle was pretty awful. What an obnoxious final dungeon that was. Half the annoyance was just FINDING the servants. And that painting puzzle could've taken quite some time... luckily I caved and asked Satai for a small hint and so I was told to stop looking at the paintings themselves for clues. I did not like disc 4 very much... though the final boss fight was interesting (if not a bit long) and the ending was very good.

Oh I could've used an FAQ to do it quicker... this is GameFAQs after all... bah, never!

And man, that final battle.. nothing sucks more than her taking Zell's Meteors that I had junctioned to attack. Aghghgh. That made it take a little longer.

Chapter 15
But as frustrating and long as disc 4 was, I will say this: the ending made it all worth it. I adore the creepy time warp stuff, and Squall wandering around alone in the dark is rather upsetting—I find it interesting that the rest of the party is surrounded by white, and Squall is surrounded by black. Then…oh man. Then the coolest thing ever. Squall has arrived at the meeting place, but in the wrong time period—he’s in the past. There is his younger self, determinedly running around looking for Sis. There is Matron, asking whether Squall has seen a little boy, and they agree that they don’t think the boy will really leave. And hey…there’s Ultimecia. What! Oh crap! But she’s dying, and she…needs to pass her powers on to someone….ha! Haha yes!! TIME LOOP oh man. Even better, SeeD was an idea given to Edea by none other than Squall himself. Do you have any idea how happy I was to see this scene? This makes some things early on in the game make SO MUCH MORE SENSE. Like why Cid was so adamant that Squall had to be the one in charge, why it was Squall’s “destiny” to be the SeeD that defeated Ultimecia. It was because Edea had already seen it happen. She knew that it was supposed to be Squall, and that if something happened and Squall couldn’t do it, Ultimecia might never be defeated. Nice!

I also just loved the scene in and of itself. The child Squall asking who this guy is and Edea’s response “The only Squall permitted here is you” just strikes me as a great set of lines, I’m not sure why. And it’s nice to see that Edea doesn’t just abandon the grown-up Squall—she seems legitimately concerned about whether or not he knows how to get back to when he came from. He does find his way out of the past, but now he’s wandering again…at first firm in his belief that he isn’t alone and will therefore be able to make it back to the present, but as time goes on and he can’t find anyone, he begins to doubt. I can’t blame him—he isn’t used to this “love and friendship” thing (though he’s always had the courage) and it’s not surprising that of the party, Squall is the only one incapable of holding on, the only one who gets utterly lost in time. Eventually just exhausting himself beyond the breaking point, he collapses in the midst of a harsh, timeless world, nowhere left to go. And this world mocks him as he tries to find his way back to Rinoa…so creepy…as much as I’m not the world’s biggest Rinoa fan, I find myself wanting time to quit messing around with the festival scene and bring her face back into normal focus dammit! At one point she vanishes altogether for a moment, which is also kind of distressing—as if the timeline just erased her from Squall’s past entirely. Yikes. Finally, the deluge is too much and Squall loses his grip on reality….noooooo! Luckily, it’s Rinoa’s turn to do the rescuing, and through sheer determination…or maybe through being so pushy >_> she manages to find Squall in this desolate timeless abyss and bring him back to the present. Yay!

FMV! So, so great was this ending. So great. First the scene with Seifer and Fujin and Raijin, a posse once again. Seifer sucks at fishing, Raijin shows off and pisses Seifer off, Fujin kicks Raijin into the water, everything is cool. ^_^ And then…aaahhh. Then the one and only scene in the entire game that brought me to tears…

Laguna and Raine. The flashback to the moment he proposed to her, fading into the present in which he visits her grave. Oh man, agh. This really got me.

Then the credits started rolling, and at first I was like “what, how can that be it??” but then there’s Selphie’s home video which is hilariously awesome. Zell finally gets his hot dogs…!! OHHHH YEAHHHHHH!! More Selphie and Irvine antics which once again make me wish they’d gotten more screentime, Cid and Edea hangin’, Quistis lookin’ hot, Zell throwin’ food at the camera—all kinds of awesome. And then at the very very end, Rinoa and Squall have some alone time out on the balcony…and Squall smiles what is this! Even here at the end, I remain impressed by the game’s ability to make sure that Squall is still Squall despite the changes he’s gone through—that smile is hesitant, small, as though he still can’t quite make up his mind about whether he’s really doing this.

Yay! FF8! Loved it! It ended up being number 14 on my list of favorite games, and third in terms of FF games. (9 > 6 > 8) Two major reasons that FF8 didn’t surpass FF6: the lack of transition between no-romance to romance, and Ultimecia’s Castle. Let’s see, what else… Disc 1 > Disc 3 > Disc 2 > Disc 4. You’d think I would like 2 better than 3 given that 3 is the disc where the Rinoa obsession occurs, but disc 2 was the one with all the bizarre wtf moments like NORG and the orphanage—and disc 3 has Esthar and meeting Laguna! That > is really pretty small though. It’s perhaps more like Disc 1 >>> Disc 3 > Disc 2 >>> Disc 4.

And my final character inequality: Laguna > Squall > Zell > Seifer > Quistis > Kiros > Selphie > Irvine > Odine > Fujin > Raijin > Watts > Zone > Ellone > Cid > Edea > Rinoa. And the only one I kind of actively dislike is Rinoa. And I guess by the end of the game I didn’t really actively dislike her…I just didn’t like her either.

Aaaand I'm spent. Comments? Questions? Snow leopards?

Lopen Last Words
You leveled up to 100? Wow. Didn't expect that. Guess leveling is pretty quick in this game, though. And man, good thing you didn't actually save after picking to unlock save first... that would've made things so frustrating, I bet! Gawd. My time through that castle wasn't too much better, as you know. I died twice... first time I unlocked draw first... being the greedy bastard I am. That was a mistake. Though it was useful to unlock fairly early as some of the bosses have good stuff. And yeah, I hate Tiamat too... I spent nearly half an hour killing it with Quistis (she was absorbing Mega Flare... the others weren't so lucky) with draw-casted flares the first time... then died afterwards, of course. Second time it was much quicker.

As for disc ranking... I dunno, I never considered the WTF moments in Disc 2 to be a problem. Yeah... they're ridiculous, but I thought they were pulled off well enough that it didn't matter. Disc 1 was still my favorite, but Disc 2 isn't a huge step away from it. For me:

Disc 1 > Disc 2 >>>> Disc 3 > Disc 4.

I really hated the romance transition in Disc 3, but at least it had some awesome parts too. Disc 4... the only good part was the ending, basically. Now that'd possibly be enough to put it over 3 for me, but that final dungeon was just so obnoxious.

Also, my character ranking because now I feel like posting one too... even though you pretty much already know it: (I have a feeling Selphie would go up if I replayed the game again from the beginning, though... I mean, not that far up... but maybe around Irvine. Maybe... no promises!)

Zell > Squall > Laguna > Seifer > Quistis > Fujin > Kiros > Irvine > Odine > Raijin > Watts > Cid > Selphie > Zone > Ellone > Edea > Rinoa

Speaking of snow leopards, I'm tempted to go get the snow leopards from Dorobou for calling the Rinoa-Squall scenes well done and saying you no longer actively dislike Rinoa... but I'll let it slide, I guess!

(and Gilgamesh killing a boss in one hit is pure win... for me he was never so useful! I swear I got Excalipoor over half the time he came to help me.)

Post-Game
I'm glad you guys enjoyed it! ^_^

1) Did you do the Zell specific sidequest with the libriary lady?

No, I missed it! Drat. What is it?

2) What do you think of the "Zell is gay" rumors?

Hmm. Well, I know someone was saying that in the Japanese script it seems "obvious", and sure, you could easily interpret things that way. But really, they did the usual Japanese game/anime thing and dropped hints while leaving it vague enough that people could read into it whatever they wanted. So I prefer to think of Zell as just harboring this exaggerated amount of hero-worship for Squall--he just thinks Squall is so cool and wouldn't it be awesome to be better friends with such a cool guy oh man! Heh heh. <3 Zell.

3) Quistis, what are your thoughts on her?

I really like Quistis a lot. It's a shame she got less development later on in the game, it would have been nice to see more of her after disc 1. She's smart and no-nonsense, but flirty and teasing at the same time--she tries to be stern but occasionally her "softer" side gets the better of her, which is partially why I imagine she ended up not being such a great leader. I love to watch her get exasperated with the others and play mother hen in a sassy sort of way rather than in an annoying mothering way. Quistis is great.

4) In regards to the "transition", ive heard it suggested that Squall actually really did love Rinoa for a long time, but refused to conciously acnoledge (argh my spelling), and it is only through his desperation that his true feelings come out.

Sure--it's not a bad explanation. The only trouble with it is that generally, in a story, if you're going to pull something like that, you have to at least show hints of it to the reader/player/audience even if the characters themselves don't see it. Otherwise it ends up coming out of nowhere and being unconvincing. If that was the writers' intention, they needed to somehow show the player that Squall was developing feelings for Rinoa even while he didn't realize it. It didn't help that the other party members were actively pushing them together, which effectively squashed any potential hints we might have gotten because Squall's instinct in the face of their machinations was to retreat into himself even more. There are any number of good ways the transition could have been handled, they just didn't use any of them. >_>

5) Favorite cutscene, and fight?

Ooooh, that's a hard question. Hmm. I think my favorite cutscene is either the whole ending sequence, or the parade scene with the sniping and Squall leaping down to fight Edea and all of that. The former is a roller coaster of emotions and the latter is sheer badassery on a plate. As for fights...it occurs to me that unlike some of the other FF games, this game didn't have very many quirky, interesting fights. Most of the fights I liked, I liked because they were dramatically set in the story, not because of the fights themselves. I'd say my favorites are the duel with Seifer simply because it was a duel with Seifer; the fight with the fake President Deling because it was so creepy, and...oddly enough, the final boss sequence. The first time I played it, it annoyed the hell out of me because I didn't know what to expect and I was getting frustrated. But since then, I've played through it three or four more times, and the more I do it the more I realize that it's actually pretty awesome. You have to switch up your strategies depending on which part of the fight you're in, each form has different strengths and weaknesses, they do things like steal your spells and Draw things from you to make you change what you're doing, they eat GFs so you can't rely on them, it's neat.

And speaking of the final boss sequence...

I just finished beating the game with my level 100 party. That was UTTERLY RIDICULOUS. Squall soloed the first part and nearly soloed the entire second part as well; Irvine didn't disappear into the timeline until halfway through the Griever fight, and he got replaced by Rinoa, and I didn't get Quistis until just before he did the mandatory Shockwave Pulsar. I didn't get Zell until the third form. Then the third form went down pretty darn fast with a couple of Renzokukens and Homing Lasers--and Squall wouldn't even do Lion Heart, he kept doing Fated Circle instead.

Then there was such hilarity as I have never seen when I hit the final form. I couldn't get Squall to do Lion Heart to save his life before, but he pulled it out FOUR TIMES in a row during this last part of the fight. Then I had Quistis draw Apocalypse and triple-cast it, which I learned from Lopen that you could do. This fight was so...broken, haha. I counted--Lion Heart does about 20 hits, each of them was doing 9999 damage, and that's after the rest of Renzokuken happens. Lord.

Another fun fact: I got Eden from Tiamat this time around, and the animation takes like a week to watch. <_< Also I had a chance to try out Devour, it is very silly. "Censored--please stand by." XD The major thing I really wanted to do with Eden was to finish learning Luck +50% and then give it to Squall and watch his luck get totally insane (it's 70-something already without it) but I ran out of patience and decided to just finish the game. I suppose it's just as well, otherwise Gilgamesh would have been showing up every turn...! XD

Oh man, haha, that reminds me--sometime during the ridiculous damage-fest that was the last part of the final boss fight, Gilgamesh showed up...with Excalipoor. So Squall had just finished doing about 200,000 damage in one turn, and here's Gilgamesh with his ONE DAMAGE. ...thanks, man. You're a helper! :P

Also--having Zell with a speed of 117 and auto-haste is just insane.