Satai's Crisis Core: FFVII Playthrough

satai_delenn continues her journey through the Final Fantasy VII universe, now assailing unto Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII game for PSP.

Satai's FFVII Playthrough Collection
 * Satai's Final Fantasy VII Playthrough
 * Satai's Crisis Core: FFVII Playthrough
 * Satai's Dirge of Cerberus Playthrough
 * Satai's Other FFVII Compilations "Playthrough"

Chapter 1
Opening movie = bad ass. A nice parallel to the opening of FFVII, of course, and god damn Zack is already flipping around like a crazy person. My first combat kind of just threw me in to teach me how to swim, and it was pretty confusing at first, but pretty intuitive once you get the hang. Only thing I still don't quite understand is exactly how the reels work, but I don't have to control them so it doesn't matter much, heh.

Zack's pretty much exactly as I'd imagined, which is a good sign. A little overexcited, a little too cocky for his own good, but a really good guy at heart. He finishes off his training session on a pretty good note...at least, until the VR version of Sephiroth owns him because he was too busy gloating. Whoops. Thanks, Angeal.

"You're not the only hero"--first thing he says to "Sephiroth" and already I get the picture. It's not quite right to say he's idealistic, but he certainly has a dream, which Angeal encourages him to embrace, and then we move to the next chapter.

I like Kunsel, he's a good mix of "hay here's important game information" and an actual character. Turns out that Zack's not been given any assignments because this SOLDIER Genesis took a bunch of lower-class dudes and went renegade. So now, Zack's being sent to finish the assignment Genesis was supposed to have done. Lazard is pretty cool, though I was disappointed to learn later that the director of SOLDIER is not in fact a fighter himself. Oh well. Off to end the war with Wutai! And screw over the town in the process, though I doubt very many of the Shinra employees currently see it that way.

Which reminds me, it's very strange to be playing from the inside-Shinra perspective here. It almost makes it hard to remember what the company was like in FFVII. Of course, this is before Rufus got hold of it, but still--Heidegger and Scarlet are still there somewhere, and the elder President Shinra wasn't the world's most compassionate man either. But a lot of these other guys--the SOLDIERs, the security guards, even the researchers who aren't Hojo--come across as just people doing jobs. They're not out to make life miserable for other people, they're just absorbed in their own little worlds. It makes Barret seem like more of an ass for the way he went about things.

Anyway--oh yeah, haha. "ANGEAL! I love you, man!" XD Zack is great. So we're off to Wutai. And oh man, Zack has all of Cloud's mannerisms. (I mean, they were his first, technically, but hey.) The shrug, the win pose!, the head scratch, everything. I'm really starting to like Angeal a lot, I loved his line, "No story is not worth hearing." And his subsequent laughter when Zack didn't get it. :P He kind of reminds me of a more personable, less jaded, younger Auron. Fightin' Wutai dudes, and eventually we come upon their fort, where Angeal explains the plan. Haha, I loved when Angeal paused in the middle and Zack was like "...and? And and and?" All excited, heh. And upon being ordered to "indulge himself," he does so--I hunted down every enemy in the fort, heh. A few neat character things for Angeal here, like how he never uses the Buster Sword because he's used to being thrifty, having grown up poor, and he doesn't want to ruin the sword with use. I'm trying to imagine Zack doing his job without using his sword. ...hahaha, yeah, no.

So then I head into the central area and run into...Yuffie. Who's gotta be like ten years old or something, but she calls Zack ugly (hahaha what she has no taste) and then pretends to fight him. His reaction was pretty awesome, oh nooo, you got me! *fall over* Then a boss fight, and a couple of little things that are bugging me about the battle system occur to me here. For one thing, it's a little annoying that when a boss does one of those big special moves, there's no way to even attempt to block or dodge it (and sometimes you have to sit through a really long animation like four times *coughMegaFlarecough*). For another, the dodge roll is a little sluggish, it doesn't quite come out right away and he's not invincible during it, so it's kind of hard to use it for complete avoidance (though I think it does let you take only some of the damage from multi-hit things). I do like that the game gives you the option of either dodging or blocking, though.

I win, yay! ...except once again, Zack isn't paying attention after he thinks the fight is over and almost gets smashed to little bits. ...thanks, Angeal. This is becoming a trend. I totally knew Angeal was going to follow up his line about Zack being more important than his sword with "...but just a little bit." :P Lots of praise from Lazard for Zack's performance, yay! I wonder if his reaction is different if you don't kill all the enemies in the fort? And oh man, Zack is just so excited to meet Sephiroth and he will tell anyone listening about how excited he is! But first, we get attacked by some guys who aren't Wutai guys, so I escort Lazard to safety and then come back to help Angeal...only to find that he's gone. D: And I fight Ifrit, woo.

But here's Sephiroth! Oh man, Sephiroth in good graphics, this is awesome. He seems to believe that Angeal has deserted SOLDIER, but Zack doesn't buy it. Honestly, I wouldn't buy it either if I didn't know that Shinra is an evil evil corporation of badness. Maybe Genesis and Angeal discovered some of the rotten things the company does. Lord knows its policies certainly aren't the most honorable in the world, which seems to be Angeal's biggest concern. Buuuuut...something is weird, because the guys who just attacked us? Are clones of Genesis. (I guess I should say "copies," since that's the term they're using here, to distinguish them from FFVII's "Sephiroth clones" I suppose.)

Next chapter! Angeal's been missing for a month. That month must have sucked for Zack. But now there's a new assignment--hey, it's Tseng! Woooo Turks! (I did see Rude and Reno very briefly in the intro movie awww yeah.) Apparently Genesis' family is under some suspicion given that, well, they're his family. (Ahhhh, says Zack. Clever man.) So we're to go find out what the deal is. But first, Kunsel invites me for a night on the town in Sector 8! Time to explore!

Oh god XD what the hell. There are fan clubs for the three first-class SOLDIERS. The woman from the Sephiroth fanclub made me laugh so hard. The game is entirely making fun of crazy fangirls, this is hilarious. So Zack joins the Angeal fan club and the Genesis fan club because more mail is fun. The stupid creepy Sephiroth lady wouldn't let me join that one though. :P Then I got challenged by the Shinra Security Department who apparently think they're way cooler than the SOLDIERS. Mm-hmm. Oh, and the random dude wandering around who was like "I-I'm a civi-civilian! Definitely!"? I bet that's the journalist that the security guard was looking for.

Then I did some missions, the first couple of Wutai ones and the first challenge from the security guards. (They were total wusses, of course.) I love how every female NPC Zack talks to assumes that he's hitting on her. XD And somehow I managed to master a materia already, the progression in this game is really really fast compared to FFVII. (The HP Plus materia.) Then after keeping Tseng waiting forever and a half, we head off for the assignment.

Turns out that Genesis' family lives in Banora, of dumbapple fame, along with Angeal's mother. And they were best friends. Oh ho. I like Tseng's VA, by the way. I defeat the big robot weapon machine thing, woo! Haha, and when I try to go look at it, Tseng's like "Zack, we don't have time to fool around." Oh yeah, and apparently this mission was apparently supposed to be for Sephiroth, but he refused to come. I love when Zack's like "Man, they spoil him too much" and Tseng's like "Why don't you say that to his face?" Zack's reaction = priceless.

Uh oh. Foreshadowiiiiiing, Tseng says that you can only make copies of SOLDIERS...and monsters. Zack's all >_> and then Tseng digs up a grave while Zack looks for Angeal's house. (The Turks get paid more than the SOLDIERS, much to Zack's chagrin. XD)

Man, okay, there are all these little green fountains here and Zack keeps deciding that he can look at them later. But later the town gets destroyed! I hope I didn't miss anything important there. Oh well. Anyway, I find Angeal's mother, who calls Zack a puppy (...thanks, Angeal) and seems like a very nice lady, who tells me a sad story about Angeal's father and explains a bit why honor is so important to him. She also seems to believe that Genesis can't hurt her, dunno what that's about.

Then a call from Tseng, and I go to meet him above the factory. (I tried to go in from the ground first just to see what Tseng would do. He yelled at me over the phone and Zack was disappointed. XD) And interestingly, it seems that Sephiroth refused the mission because Angeal and Genesis were his only friends (Sephiroth has friends, whoa) and he didn't want to fight them, and he thought that Zack might be able to bring them back to SOLDIER. Wow. Sephiroth put some serious faith in Zack. So we infiltrate the factory...and find Genesis on the second floor.

Such a poetic guy, Genesis. Very dramatic with his red leather coat and his play-quoting ways. I can't decide yet whether I like him or whether he's a little silly. Possibly a bit of both, we'll see. I do like his character design a lot, at least. Zack certainly doesn't like him, given that he's greeted with more of this puppy business. Man, how many people did Angeal call him a puppy to? That's got to be kind of annoying. But Tseng meets up with us with info--looks like Genesis killed his own parents. He claims they betrayed him and needed to die, and then he calls us Shinra lapdogs and fries us a little. Ow.

And whoa, Angeal! Of course, he doesn't want to use his sword, so he takes mine. But Genesis seems to have gotten to him with his talk of "can you live on that side?", because when Zack tries to talk to him he shoves him away and leaves. Zack follows, but can't find him, and Tseng informs me (after some fancy shootin') that Shinra is bringing in an air strike to destroy the town in order to cover up Genesis' actions. Now that sounds like the Shinra I know. Though at least there aren't people living here and we're going to get Angeal's mother out. ...what the hell is she doing here as the sole inhabitant, anyway?

No time for that now though, it's time to chop missiles in half! Haha, what a badass minigame. I missed two of them, which was annoying--one because I jumped the gun and one because the camera angle changed on me. Tseng buys me a little time, just enough to get to Angeal's house and...uh...oh god. Angeal's mom. ;_; Angeal claims that she could no longer live, and neither could he. Have to say, they did a good job with Zack's reaction here. So much for honor, eh? And as Zack tries to go after him again, Genesis trips him. :( What a jerk. More poetic dialogue (better this time) and then he says that he doesn't see Sephiroth today, but perhaps Zack would like to have a go?

Another summon uhhhh why did I go from Ifrit straight to Bahamut?? But then I remember that in FFVII Bahamut was actually kind of a wussy summon. This fight was pretty hard, especially since for some reason I was hardly getting any limit verges at all, much less actual limit breaks, and then I had to sit through Mega Flare four times with no way to dodge or block it. But I beat it, and then after Zack tells Genesis that summons aren't meant to be used this way, he replies that "we are monsters"...and reveals that he has one black wing and can use it to fly. Zack is a bit in awe, but maintains that SOLDIERS are not the same as monsters.

Soooooo hey I think I might see what's going on here. My theory is that Genesis and Angeal were created the same way Sephiroth was, and Genesis found out about it somehow. Except instead of going insane and trying to summon Meteor, he decided to take a bunch of SOLDIERS and clone himself repeatedly for lord knows what purpose. This would explain why he was hoping Sephiroth would be there--presumably he wanted Sephiroth to join him as well as Angeal.

The next chapter begins, and one thing I learn is that Angeal's mother used to work for the science division of Shinra. Which says to me that, like Lucrecia, she was used in a Jenova insemination experiment, which is I suppose why Angeal killed her (and why Genesis killed his parents). Seems a bit extreme to me, but maybe there's more to it. And then Kunsel tells me that Hojo is in the training room, so I go talk to him. Haha yessssss he's even more creepy and awesome in this game than before. I ran his whole gauntlet, including the Behemoth, and he was taken aback. I loved Zack's response: "Uh...you were saying something about my remains?" :P But apparently now that I've beaten his pride and joy, he thinks I'm his ideal experimental subject. Waaaagh. Zack is smart and knows that whatever Hojo means, he doesn't want in. But of course, I know that eventually Hojo will get what he wants. v_v

A phone call from Sephiroth (whoa Sephiroth's on the phone) and a summons to Lazard's office. I stopped before going to hear what they had to say. So far, I'm enjoying the game a lot. I like the little details, like the memory scenes that play when you get a certain kind of limit break and just Zack's reactions to things. Also of course all the things that tie in to FFVII's plot. This game seems a little more formulaic/predictable than FFVII was, but the game could very well throw me for a loop, I'll wait and see. I have a really bad feeling about how Zack will eventually end up with the Buster Sword, for one thing.

I think it'd be hard to do initial character rankings since I already know some of the characters from FFVII...well, I can try. Based mostly just on what they've done in this game so far:

Zack > Angeal > Sephiroth > Hojo > Lazard > Genesis > Kunsel.

Chapter 2
Missions are so addicting.

I started out doing a few of them, some Wutai ones and some Genesis army ones. Then I met a 3rd class guy in the briefing room who kept screwing up his missions, so Zack said he would do the guy's next mission for him so he could watch and learn. A nice gesture, man, but I feel like he might not benefit as much as you think...but I figured I'd do that one later, since Sephiroth and Lazard were waiting for me. I did, however, run around and talk to some people before leaving, and I got a mail from Lazard--an announcement to the company that Angeal and Genesis (Genesis Rhapsodos could his name get any more pretentious?) were killed in action. Shinra loves coverups, don't they. Even Kunsel wasn't fooled by that crap. (Jerk went to see Loveless without me...!)

Then I went out to see how the fan club chicks were doing. The Genesis woman was running around like a maniac, and the Angeal woman was very sad. And the Sephiroth woman was...pretty smug. Kind of appropriate, really. XD I got an interesting mail from one of the others though that had this conversation between Angeal and Genesis, a disagreement about plants in Midgar and having bugs around and stuff.

So I go talk to Sephy and Lazard, and oh man Zack is promoted to 1st class woo! Except it's a little hollow without Angeal around. D: Then Lazard has an assignment for him, and Zack's a little annoyed with Sephiroth ("you gonna shove another mission on me?") but Sephiroth apologizes. Pays to be ballsy sometimes. Zack goes and changes into his 1st class uniform, which is the same thing except black. How come Genesis and Sephiroth get to wear whatever they feel like but Zack has to wear the uniform? At least Angeal has proper respect for the dress code. XD

Everybody congratulates Zack (and/or is jealous/surprised, heh) and then I learn about materia fusion. Which by the way is an awesome, awesome addition to the system. I messed around with it a bit and ended up with some neat stuff, including Dark Thunder, Cura (after I'd mastered my Cure materia), and my favorite so far--Thunder Blade. Woo!

So then I go back to hear about the assignment. But first, Lazard mentions that the Shinra army...and Sephiroth...have been dispatched to assassinate Genesis and Angeal; they can't keep the coverup going forever. And of course, they're not sending Zack because his emotions would cloud his judgment, and Zack's response is "Well, of course!" For once, a character isn't trying to deny this accusation--refreshing. What's interesting in retrospect is that actually, Sephiroth let his feelings "cloud his judgment" too...but no one could ever accuse the great Sephiroth of anything so unprofessional, so he gets away with it, heh. But before more can be said, red alert! Intruders! Crap! Sephiroth heads to protect the president (haha, ironic) while Zack goes down to secure the entrance.

Only on the way down the elevator stops, and I get off to see what the trouble is. Ack--Shinra robots are attacking the employees! So I go around this floor and save some people, including a 3rd class SOLDIER who seems like he's probably the same guy I'm doing missions for and a couple of employees who were clearly using the training room for illicit sex and who bribe me with 5000 gil to keep my mouth shut about it. XD

Then I hurry down to the entrance, where I fight a whole slew of incoming machines and Genesis copies. Luckily, I'd encountered these big machines in one of the missions before this, so I already knew their pattern and they were pretty easily dealt with. Thunder Blade ftw! (Though it inexplicably takes MP despite being a yellow materia, which keeps weirding me out.) Once I finish, Sephiroth comes down and explains that Genesis was able to infiltrate thanks to Professor Hollander, a Shinra scientist who lost his bid to become head of the science department and so now presumably wants revenge. (What I find hilarious is that he lost his bid to freaking Hojo. Is there ANYONE normal in Shinra's science department...?)

Zack thinks that's pretty petty of Hollander and can't figure out why Genesis and Angeal would go along with such a thing--and I really like the little conversation with Sephiroth here, where Sephy says "I'd prefer not to believe it, but..." and Zack replies "Then don't believe it." And Sephiroth agrees--then he won't. It's been interesting to interact with Sephiroth as a normal person here--he's still a little cold and a little aloof, but he's also reliable and dedicated and a regular human being. Well...a regular human being with like four extra helpings of badass. >_>

But there are still machines and copies running amok in Sector 8, so we split up to go take care of them...and oh man Reno!! And Rude too, and Tseng is back. And I can immediately hear that Reno's VA is Quinton Flynn, which makes me so happy, I love that guy. Reno and Rude are like "out of our turf, SOLDIER, this is Turk territory" and Zack's like "...but we have the same goal...?" and then I meet Cissnei. What a weird name. And I don't think I like her VA much, and she basically uses some weird cross between Yuffie's giant shuriken and one of Axel's chakrams as a weapon, but she seems okay so far. And her limit break gives me Critical status, which is sweet. And maybe it ups the emotion level on my limit reels? I'm not sure, but it seems like it might.

Get back here, Reno, you need more screentime. >:-| But Zack goes off to finish scouring the streets of baddies, and eventually I fight the Genesis copy that actually looks just like him. He uses some kind of weird fire staff thing, and this was a fun fight, seeing how many of his combo attacks I could dodge and stuff. Take him down, get a free insider scoop on the address to buy things from the exclusive Turk store, woo! By the way, I kinda like how this game sort of updated the Final Fantasy system with more modern technology, where you can buy things online with your phone instead of going to stores. XD Also the mail system is cool (though, just like real life, whenever I get a new mail I have to immediately stop what I'm doing to read it even if it's totally unrelated to the plot >_>).

Sometimes it's a bad thing that Zack's so impressionable, and sometimes it's a good thing. With a few eloquent words, Cissnei manages to get him out of the mindset that wings are the sign of a monster, and into the mindset that they're more like angel wings. Of course, having only one of them might still be a little weird...but hey.

Then I really liked the phone conversation with Sephiroth here; he tells Zack to meet him at reactor 5 (familiar place) because Angeal's been spotted, and while the army is on its way, we can find him first and... "And WHAT??" *Sephiroth pulls the phone away from his ear* "...and fail to eliminate him." "Whoa, for real??" "...yes, for real." Zack really is kind of puppyesque, haha. And I find it very interesting that in the absence of Angeal, Sephiroth is becoming a sort of mentor figure for Zack, instead of just a distant hero figure. Which makes the eventual events at Nibelheim so much worse. ;_;

The enemies at the reactor were really annoying, it was hard to see their visual cues for when to dodge and it took me like four fights to get the timing down to dodge Jump. Also, haha, I loved the part where I got into a random fight right before reaching Sephiroth as he was waiting for me, and so it was basically like Zack got attacked with Sephiroth standing right there and he just stood there and watched. Not that Zack needed the help, but it struck me as funny. :P

These enemies are also pretty freakish, what with having Angeal's face and all. And then there's an extended flashback cutscene in which Sephiroth wonders whether he was really as good of friends with Angeal and Genesis as he'd thought. And holy crap, they obviously made this scene for the sole purpose of showing off FMV fighting badassery, but who cares, it was cool. At first it's just training and Sephiroth kicks both their asses at the same time, aww yeah. But then Genesis is all "no, I wanna take Sephiroth on by myself." I was rooting for Sepiroth so hard it wasn't even funny. I'm beginning to think I don't like Genesis much...he's a little too overdramatic, and a little too pretentious, to even be a good villain. He makes me want to smack him, not fight him in epic battle. He comes across as just kind of whiny, to tell the truth. "I'm better than you, Sephiroth, really! Even though I'm losing this fight, I'm totally cooler!" Bleh. Not that Sephiroth wasn't acting kind of smug about it, but still. Though occasionally the Loveless quotes do make a neat parallel or backdrop to the scene. But Sephiroth entirely shows him up, slicing the training room version of the Sister Ray into pieces and pretty much ignoring Genesis' huge inferno entirely. I feel so bad for Angeal, trying to stop them from taking their rivalry too far only to get burned for it (literally).

I liked the little moment of "yeah, I get that lecture from Angeal too", and then we go on to find Hollander's headquarters--oooooh giant test tube pod things, creepy. All this foreshadowing and buildup to Nibelheim is so good. And honestly, it's really nice to get a full explanation of all the events beforehand, because with the original Nibelheim scene it makes sense that Sephiroth had to have known more than he let on in order to jump to the conclusion he did. So it turns out that Genesis is named such because he was the first child born of Project Genesis, a type G SOLDIER, and Angeal is one as well. And apparently, SOLDIERS born from this project started experiencing some degradation of their abilities after a while, as evidenced by Genesis healing too slowly from his wound in the training session. Sephiroth was chagrined to be told that he was not eligible to donate blood--and here perhaps is the start of him feeling a bit alienated even from his friends. Though from the reports in this room, Project Genesis sounds a lot like Project Jenova--so maybe Hollander didn't know that Sephiroth was also a product of the same project. Or I suppose it's possible they were two different projects, but that seems kind of unlikely. I love the report that says "these remains are absolutely definitely those of an Ancient." XD Whoops.

Hollander comes back and is all "oh crap Sephiroth--I'm the only one who can stop the degradation, you know!"--which explains, I suppose, why Genesis and Angeal are working with him--ah, but Genesis is here too. So Zack goes after the scientist while Genesis asks Sephiroth--in the story of three friends where one is captured, one flees, and one is the hero, are you the hero or am I? "It's all yours," says Sephiroth, and Genesis is all damn straight, your glory should have been mine! But now all I want is the gift of the goddess. Hmm. Something Planet-related, perhaps. I want to see Loveless...! >_> I was just waiting for Sephiroth to kick his ass again, but instead I gain control of Zack as we chase down Hollander, so I don't know what came of the rest of that encounter. As a side note, in my mind I'm already attributing foreshadowing to Genesis' question, and I feel like in the end Angeal is actually the most likely hero of the three. But we'll see.

Eventually I catch up with him only to find that Angeal blocks my path. With the Buster Sword. I liked the conversation here, Angeal's dark humor in the face of Zack's earnestness, and I really liked Zack's reaction to "Defend yourself!", an almost desperate grin as he refuses to fight his mentor and friend. This game does a really good, subtle job with the facial expressions and stuff, even outside the FMV. Oh yeah, and Angeal's wing is white, and Zack tries to tell him that no, he's not a monster, he's like an angel! This was a really cool scene. "What do angels dream of?? They have only one dream. ...to be human." Zack's expression is like "whoa, that backfired, uhhh...crap." (Ah, I see. Angeal = angel. Subtle, Square.)

And then another FFVII parallel as Zack is knocked through the floor and crashes into the church from above...and wakes to Aeris (augh the game is saying Aerith) going "Helloooo?" I don't think I like Aeris' VA that much either, but I guess she isn't terrible. Of course, Zack offers to repay her "kindness" (though as she insists, she didn't actually do anything) with a date, and she's like "haha, what is that? you're weird" which was a little unexpected and therefore kind of neat. And of course, this helps make her introduction in FFVII even less Rinoa-esque, which is nice too. And Zack is also the reason Aeris was selling the flowers (though I didn't get that conversation in FFVII since I had Cloud just walk away from her at the beginning >_>), and that was awesome--"Midgar full of flowers...wallet full of money...?" :P

Then I spent at least an hour at the save point in the church doing missions. I finished the entire first folder of Wutai ones and most of the first folder of Genesis army ones, and then I did most of the ones with the 3rd class guy who progressed from being a wuss to being a mooch to being way overconfident to being a lot more eloquent than he'd used to be. I haven't finished all of his yet, but man, I'm with Zack--what did I get myself into here? XD Then I did a few of the materia ones, I got Ifrit and killed some random monsters. Then I stopped playing, so next time will be some more conversation with Aeris, presumably.

One gameplay thing--holy CRAP Zack becomes a freaking force of nature once the emotion level on the limit reels gets going. It was at "sky high" for a really long time, and my HP/MP/AP were all waaayyy above the max and I kept getting limit break after limit break. Zack leveled twice in one fight at one point, that was awesome. (He's level 17 now, I think.) And oooh! The limit breaks have started to be accompanied not just with still pictures, but with actual scenes with dialogue that happened in between the stuff I've already seen.

My favorite one was Zack and Sephiroth chasing down the machines in sector 8, they run into a group of enemies and Zack's like "go ahead, Sephiroth, I'll handle these guys!" and Sephiroth walks forward...and before Zack can even jump into battle they're all dead and Sephiroth turns around and is like "did you say something? ...let's go." awww yeah. I also like the one where Zack's hitting on the girl at the front desk and Tseng calls and he's like "I'm busy" and then Tseng is right behind him. XD

What does it mean when you get a limit verge and the reel in the middle stops at one person and then slowwwwly shudders its way to the next person?

Characters, here we go. Can't really rank Aeris or Reno or Rude in this game yet, they haven't really done anything. Oh yeah, so Cloud's the only one left on my limit reels that I haven't met yet. (Can totally tell it's Cloud by the hair. XD Okay, and the picture on the save screen.)

Zack > Sephiroth > Angeal > Hojo > Tseng > Lazard > Kunsel > Cissnei > Genesis.

Addendum
Ooh, neat. Yeah, the Japanese voices go well, though it's hard for me to really compare since I don't speak Japanese. The only VAs that have bothered me in the English so far have been the girls; I don't know why so many RPGs need to have such high-pitched voices for the female characters. They all sound like they're twelve. But I actually like Zack's VA a lot, and Tseng's too. (And of course Reno.)

And man...watching that scene again reminded me of a few things. Like freaking OWA, I can't believe I forgot that played in there. And I didn't notice before that Sephiroth is left-handed. Did he wield the Masamune in that hand in FFVII too? I can't remember. Also, even in Japanese Genesis annoyed me. >_> I mean, maybe he's supposed to, but lord. He's so sulky about playing second fiddle to Sephiroth, and he tries so hard to be cool.

Chapter 3
Woohoo, I come back from playing CC and Zack's got over 43%! Excellent.

Started off with a couple of missions as usual just to warm myself up, then hung out with Aeris who was pretty straightforward about the fact that she'd asked to walk Zack around the slums so that she could spend more time with him. Well, I mean, who wouldn't? XD She's been annoyingly...timid, though, which I'm not used to from her. Where did my "yeah, it's dangerous, whatever" Aeris go and who is this "oh no, Zack, it's dangerous" wallflower? Hopefully, this is representative of the fact that she will develop and grow in the process of hanging out with Zack, and not of the fact that they just ruined her character. >_>

Zack gets a little taste of what it's like to live in the slums where they never see the sky, and he tells Aeris that sometime he'll take her to see the real sky and it won't be scary at all. It was kind of interesting listening to Aeris worry about what's "normal" and what's not, given that she's got to feel pretty alienated from the rest of humanity. So then we go into the marketplace...and some punk kid steals Zack's wallet. Hey! We split up to look for him, and man, I felt so bad for Zack during this whole thing. I mean, from having played FFVII I entirely understand why the inhabitants would screw around with a Shinra employee, but at the same time of course it's Zack and therefore not cool! :P So after running around a ton and getting played over and over again, finally Aeris decides to actually help me once I promise to be nice and ask the kid why he did it.

We corner him and it turns out that, contrary to what I expected him to say, the reason he stole my wallet was that a monster had eaten his. Haha, what. So Zack says, fine, I'll go get it back! Hunt down some monsters, no big deal...of course, as Zack soon realizes, in order to get the wallet back he's going to have to extract it from the monster's stomach. "Oh, gross. Gotta love this job." XD So then the kid's all whoooaaa, thanks, mister! And by the way, you're totally perfect for Aeris, she totally digs you. Bye! *run off* Ah yes, and this is after Zack tells the kid that he and Aeris are going to be selling flowers all over Midgar together, much to Aeris' surprise. Then, having heard how nice I was to the kid and having seen that I'm hanging with Aeris, the people are much nicer to me and they apologize for tricking me and give me things. Woo, free stuff.

Then Aeris asks if she can stop in this shop to look around, and Zack jokingly is like "psh, so that's why you wanted to go out", and she's all "oh, sorry, no, I don't have to"...argh, Aeris, come on, chill out! I'm assuming once again that Zack's the one who teaches her to chill out, so I'm not too worried yet. I did like the conversation with the shopkeeper who was like "you've found a good guy here, Aeris, this one's a keeper" and she's like "nah, I just met him" but then afterward she agrees to the date that Zack proposed as payment earlier. And hey, Zack is the one who bought her the pink bow, neat.

Then they go for a walk in the park (if you can call that thing a park, poor Midgar) for their date, and again an interesting conversation where Aeris reflects on how SOLDIERS are kind of scary because they're not normal--and I can't help but feel that she's gauging how Zack feels about people who aren't normal because of course she isn't either--but Zack informs her that he's a SOLDIER. Awkward silence...but they get over it pretty quickly. Haha, Zack is great--Aeris goes "Ooh, pretty!" and Zack goes, "The face, right?" XD But no, it's his eyes she's looking at--the first mention of the mako-enhanced eyes, same as Cloud's later on.

But then the date is interrupted by a call from Sephiroth--Genesis is attacking the Shinra building. Crap! Time to head back! Running along the highway (and I can't help but think that this is the same highway Cloud later rides the motorcycle on, woo), getting attacked--Zack's commentary the whole way is pretty great--and then whoa, it's Angeal. How the hell does flying with one wing work?? That should entirely not work. But anyway.

Zack asks him what's up and for the first time since he originally left, Angeal seems more himself. He himself isn't sure what he's after, he only knows that he must maintain his honor...and he asks Zack to fight with him. It's telling of how much Zack still trusts him that he agrees almost immediately without even asking "for what?" But Angeal doesn't leave him much time for that anyway, instead just grabbing him and flying off. "Flying feels...pretty nice." Angeal is cool. :P

A little surprisingly, Angeal takes me right to Sephiroth, who appears to be in a bad mood for one reason or another and about all he says to Zack is "you're late." It appears that Angeal has turned on Genesis, at least for the moment, because he explains that Hollander will have sent Genesis after Hojo out of spite and so someone has to protect him. Sephiroth, true to form, tells them to "Forget about Hojo" and stalks off to probably go kill him some copies or something; I don't know why I get such glee out of Sephiroth's eternal grudge against Hojo, but it's fun. Which reminds me--in FFVII, Sephiroth never did learn that Hojo was his father. Probably best, really, he was already completely insane. I wonder what it was that originally pissed Sephiroth off about Hojo? Possibly just that he's creepy and arrogant and kind of mean. And Sephiroth could have been bitter about Gast's death and taken it out on his replacement not even knowing that he was actually responsible.

So Angeal tells me to go get Hojo to safety--man, how backwards is this. XD And I really like Hojo a lot in this game. He's not any different than he was in FFVII, there's just more of him, and he's great. I get there and tell him to evacuate but he doesn't really seem to be concerned, apparently not viewing degrading experimental failures like Genesis as much of a threat. He mentions Jenova, of which Zack of course knows nothing, and hey, it seems that Hojo at least knew that Jenova wasn't an Ancient. It's a little strange that Gast hasn't been mentioned at all, we've been focusing more on this Hollander guy whose role in the Jenova project is still kind of vague, but we'll see.

But as Hojo says, a SOLDIER's job is to protect the people with the brains, not use their own, so he doesn't bother to explain any more about Jenova to Zack. I love Hojo's lab in this game, there are so many shiny buttons to press...! :P Oh man, I got such a bad feeling when I went to look at the big pod (I loooove seeing the FFVII settings in nice PSP graphics, the place at the bottom of the elevator where Cloud later sees Jenova was so creepy, I kept seeing the trail of blood in my head) and Hojo was like "oh, no, there's actually something intriguing in there, look closer." Waaaagh! But it didn't turn out as bad as I'd thought, he just wanted to ask me some questions and upgrade my abilities.

My responses were that Zack admired Sephiroth (partially because I like Sephiroth better and partially because I figure Zack must still be kind of confused about Angeal anyway), that Shinra needed lots of powerful SOLDIERS, and that a SOLDIER should give his all for Shinra. Hojo calls these standard SOLDIER responses and increases my SP, woo! And apparently, Zack feels slightly closer to Sephiroth. I wonder what that did, gamewise. Then I poke around some more and find a machine with a button on it. Well, of course I had to press it.

But whoops, I just released a bunch of ferocious monsters of which Hojo had been planning to dispose. So he says that I should go down and get rid of them. Zack's like "what, me??" and Hojo is amused--not satisfied? Then how about this--if you get the keys from them, you can help yourself to whatever items you find in the cells they unlock. You have three minutes before the area will fill with tranquilizer gas. Zack's like "You're not going to tranquilize me too, right?" And Hojo's just like "Hehehe..." o_O So I go and do my thing, get all the items, and come back with something like 45 seconds left on the clock, woo! And Hojo says something cryptic about having gleaned interesting data, and Zack's like "man, this guy is creepy." You said it.

So then Hojo prepares to leave, saying that he supposes Zack is badass enough to be his escort, and asking him if he's prepared to give his life to protect such a brilliant mind as his own. But before we can leave...Genesis shows up with his sword and some quotes from Loveless. Hojo is pretty disdainful of Hollander's claim to be able to repair the degradation of the type G SOLDIERS, but then Angeal shows up and tries to tell Genesis to quit it. And man, now Hojo's calling Angeal part of Hollander's freak show and Zack and I both think that's pretty uncool. But Genesis just quotes some more Loveless and surprisingly, it's Hojo who recognizes the reference: an epic duel between friends. But the last act was lost and nobody knows who won the duel. I love how Hojo makes a point of saying that he read it thinking it'd be useful but in fact it was just drivel. XD

Genesis wonders what the gift of the goddess means for them, and then smashes the pod and the wall to little bits with fire and flies off. Angeal grabs Zack and goes after him--apparently Hojo can live without protection after all--and after some eloquent quotes from Loveless' epic duel of friends about a soul scarred by revenge and that revenge being his salvation and the other's eternal slumber, Genesis summons another monster (another type of Bahamut, I think). Angeal tells Zack to deal with the summon while he goes after Genesis, and Zack is like "gah, what? Don't leave me here!" but the epic duel has begun and now I've got a giant summon attacking me. ...and then Aeris calls. Zack's like "uhhh kind of busy, I've got company, call me back later" to which her response was apparently "don't keep your guests waiting." XD Classic.

This fight wasn't so bad, though it took me a while to get the dodge timing down on his physical attack--finishing it off by calling in an air strike from Tseng didn't hurt--and lo, the end of the chapter has arrived. At the beginning of the next chapter, Zack's been trying to call Sephiroth for days with no response, and some 2nd with a name who's not Kunsel informs him that Sephiroth has locked himself in the data room researching the history of the science department and won't come out. Uh oh. When Sephiroth gets into hardcore research mode, something bad's about to happen. I wonder what exactly he's looking for at this point? I suppose I'll find out eventually!

In the meantime, I have a funny conversation with some other SOLDIERS about who the hottest person in Midgar is (I tried all three responses but my favorite was "Are you blind? It's me!" "Ahh, of course. You're an idiot." XD) and then I pay a visit to Director Lazard because it seems he's pretty bummed after the attack. This was an interesting conversation, in which Zack expresses some frustration with Shinra's policies because the security department is still out to kill Angeal despite him having helped against Genesis and Lazard reveals that he has never once ever considered leaving the company because when you work for a worthy goal, obstacles and difficulties are nothing. Zack asks what kind of goal, but Lazard waves him off, and suddenly I have a bad feeling. I hope Lazard's not going to end up being a bad guy somehow. That would suck, I really like him. *paranoia* >_>

Aeris calls and wants to know when Zack's going to make the flower wagon he suggested earlier. Bah, go away woman, can't you see I'm busy with oh wait I have no assignment right now. But first, it's time to re-explore sector 8 for the new chapter! Red Leather is in debt now because apparently their apple jewelry didn't sell as well as they'd expected and the Keepers of Honor are straight up disbanding, and the Sephiroth woman tells me about the Silver Elites--"the hardcorest of the hardcore Sepiroth fans" oh god what is wrong with this game. XD Sounds like a sidequest if I ever heard one. I also found this woman hanging out in a dark alley who was part of another, rather more successful Genesis fan club who specialized in analyzing Loveless, so I joined her group too.

Oh yeah, and this woman mentioned that the interpretation of the "goddess" is vague and people have various theories, and suddenly something clicks in my head--duh. I'd already guessed that the goddess was the Planet; the "gift of the goddess" sounds like Holy to me. Could Genesis be looking for Holy? Does he even know what he's looking for? And why is he looking for it, for that matter? I hope that I'll like him better as a villain once he gets a real motivation.

I also went on the hunt for some Wutai spies and ah, I see, the suspicious guy here wasn't the reporter (who, by the way, the security guy is still looking for) but a spy! I catch him and bring him back only to be told that there are five more and one of them is posing as a Shinra infantryman. I know who that is, too, it's the guy in the sector 5 marketplace who was acting all suspicious! But I haven't been there to get him yet.

Because after this, instead of going to see Aeris I spent three hours doing missions. >_> At one point I found some kind of Shinra Lunch Cart Guide or something...no idea what that's for, haha. Then I did all but one of the suspicious mail from "Treasure Princess" missions, who turned out to be Yuffie getting me to do the dirty work for her on some treasure hunt. v_v Geez. I love how Zack basically did all this because he felt bad about having made Yuffie cry, even though I'm pretty sure Yuffie was totally full of it. XD Zack's so nice. I also finished all the "collect mako stones" missions, and this was neat because then I took them back to the scientists and they turned them into materia. I have so much extraneous materia now it's unreal. I'm just waiting to get rid of it until I have the option to fuse with items, then I'll see if the extras are useful and if not I'll just convert them to SP. I did a few other random missions too, nothing major; I was disappointed to find that after the last of the rivalry with the security department ones and the last of the helping the 3rd class SOLDIER ones, there was no wrap-up dialogue. >:-| Oh well.

You know, one of the things I like about this game is that it's giving me a neat insight into "a day in the life of Zack Fair." Between the mails and the missions and hanging out with the NPC SOLDIERS, I'm basically getting a feel for what it's like to be Zack. Running around a lot, always busy, people always expecting things of him but he doesn't mind, because that's his job and he likes helping people (even if sometimes it's frustrating or tiring and people take advantage of him a little). This occurred to me when I brought all the mako stones back to the Materia Room at the same time and got the whole story of how Scarlet wanted to shut down the SOLDIER materia-processing center because they weren't producing enough and they were underfunded, but because of Zack's efforts hunting down the mako stones, they were able to step up their rates and get funding and make Scarlet look like a fool while keeping their jobs and getting raises. Huzzah!

Oh yeah, I also went to the Training Room and they tested Zack's physical fitness by pitting him in a squat competition against a security guy. XD Woo FFVII references. I also love the girl at the front desk who keeps getting more and more into Zack every time I visit her, heh. So yeah, lots of neat little things, not quite as much plot advancement because I did a lot of missions, but this is okay. Last chapter had an inexcusable lack of Sephiroth and the Turks, but I'll forgive it. :P

Zack > Sephiroth > Angeal > Hojo > Tseng > Lazard > Kunsel > Cissnei > Aeris > Genesis.

Cissnei is pretty cool! Aeris is bugging me in this game. >_> She's lost a lot of that quiet wisdom and self-sufficiency she had in FFVII. Well, I guess it's fairer to say she doesn't have it yet, but still.

Chapter 4
All right, to the slums to build a flower wagon! Except on the way there, I get intercepted by Angeal--where the heck have you been, man? Well, it seems he's been busy--he tells me that Genesis and Hollander are in a place called Modeoheim, and he's told Lazard as much as well, so pretty soon I'm going to be picked up for an assignment. Cool. Angeal also says that he supposes he's still a SOLDIER at heart--and really, I think Zack could have told him that. :P On to the church, then, where before I can go inside, Tseng shows up and tells me that Aeris isn't at the church. Zack asks how he knows her, and Tseng is all mysterious about it--"it's complicated." Nice touch, throwing in that little detail. So we head to Modeoheim in Tseng's chopper.

...except somehow we manage to crash it on the way there. Whoops. We're all okay, though, and Tseng says that we're lucky we've got Zack along because he knows this kind of terrain, being a country boy. I'm not sure quite how that follows since Gongaga isn't snowy or cold, but sure. I guess to someone from Midgar, anything outside the city is "this kind of terrain." :P So I lead them forward for a while, but they get slowed down by the snow...well, most of them. This one infantry dude is keeping up just fine. Zack makes a note of it, and before the guy opens his mouth I was like "oh man it's totally Cloud wooo!" And so it was. Yay!

I like the little conversation they have about both being from backwater places, and man, my first reaction to the name "Gongaga" was entirely the same as Cloud's. Zack's like "why is that funny? have you even been there?" And Cloud's like "Haha...no...but it sounds so backwater." To which Zack replies "Ditto Nibelheim." But no, Gongaga is much funnier-sounding than Nibelheim. XD And then they have a jinx moment as they agree that in a small town with a mako reactor, there's nothing else there. Hooray, Cloud!

We get so far ahead of everyone else that we take a break, and Cloud asks what being a SOLDIER is like and expresses doubt that he'll ever make it, and Zack assures him that if he can do it, so can Cloud. Haha...more irony, yay. Then Tseng catches up and tells us that in this case it's best to sneak in instead of storming the place, and for once Zack is down with this plan--he's in fact excited to show that SOLDIER is more than just brawn. Honestly, I wouldn't put it past him to have said all that for Cloud's benefit, to make him feel more confident. And then I began to get the horrible feeling that the game was going to ask me to perform some manner of stealth.

And unfortunately I was right. Augh augh augh, so much fail. I'm not that great at MGS stealth and that's a system actually set up for such things. This? This was impossible. First I failed to take into account the guy hidden behind the wall on the left, then I got a ways into the compound but ended up somewhere where there was nothing to hide behind, then I made it all the way around to the back of the shed but then someone spotted me and I didn't know where I was supposed to be running and he caught me, THEN I tried to go in from the right instead of from the left and the game assumed I was trying to abort the infiltration. AUGH. Eventually the game took pity on my excessive failure and just had the guys all leave at once. Geez. Way to make Zack look like a sucky infiltrator, me. XD

Oh yeah--somewhere just before all this, I think when I was in the slums, I got a mail from Lazard that thanked the SOLDIERS for their daily hard work (as usual) and then went on to say that he hoped they would continue to do all the good stuff they do even without his leadership. ...uh oh. That sounds ominous. I was a little surprised not to find another mail from Kunsel talking about it, actually, since he usually comments on this kind of thing. Noooo Lazard stay awesome...!

Anyway, finally I made it inside and wandered around for a while until I found Hollander. Sweet! ...and Genesis, threatening to kill him. Oh, I see. Zack interferes and Hollander tries to use this opportunity to escape--but hey, Cloud stops him! Go Cloud! Hollander wonders how Genesis will overcome the degradation without him, and his response is...Jenova cells. Oh ho. Genesis isn't looking so good here, either, the degradation is definitely getting to him. But Hollander laughs and says no one knows where the Jenova cells are, not even Hojo, there's no way Genesis will find them. Now that's interesting. Presumably someone hid Jenova in Nibelheim, I have to assume at this point that it was Professor Gast, unless Hollander did it and is just playing dumb so he can continue to use Genesis for his own purposes. Either way, Genesis isn't much fazed, deciding that well, if he must accept his fate, then so be it...but he won't go alone.

Hollander breaks away from Cloud and runs, so Zack sends Cloud after him while he takes care of Genesis. This fight was a good one, Genesis was kinda tough but not stupidly unfair the way hard FF bosses generally are. It helped that my sword inflicts poison now, and also that I got a few Limit Breaks to help out. (And I have to say, the Chocobo limit break is so hilarious. I didn't get it in this fight, but I got it a ton of times later in missions, and I just love the idea that for some reason Zack is hanging out with this chocobo and together they perform Choco Kick to the wonderment of all...! XD) I did get Sephiroth at least once in this fight, which was neat, and I've been getting a few new little scenes with the Limits too, which I really love. One thing that bugs me is that I actually don't want the summons, I'd rather have the character Limits, but there's no way to control whether you get a summon or not. Bleh. Actually, really the limit reels make most fights in this game a bit too easy. Most of the time I'm only trying to dodge things in order to practice dodging things, because I have almost 10,000 HP almost all the time despite my max being around 4000 and Aeris gives me Invincible and Cissnei gives me Critical and it's pretty silly all around. Not to mention the random effects like No MP Cost and Null Physical Damage.

Anyway, after the fight, Genesis is looking pretty soundly defeated, and he quotes a bit of Loveless about a corrupted soul losing its wings and such and then says that such is the fate of a monster like him. Zack tries to tell him that no, the both of them are SOLDIERS, not monsters...where is your honor? But Genesis only quotes back at him what seems to be his favorite line from Loveless, which he's said enough times now that I can actually remember it now--"even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall forestall my return." It's a pretty cool line, gotta say.

And actually, Genesis was pretty cool in this scene as a whole...it's just a shame that this scene was better when it was in FFIX. >_> He drags himself over the edge of the scaffolding and drops, claiming that if this world wants his destruction, it can be destroyed along with him. And then he's gone. Hmmm. Dead, I doubt, but gone at least.

Zack goes back outside to find that Tseng and Cloud are gone, but he sees that the path to Modeoheim is open, so he follows them there. What a creepy little ghost town. Pretty scenery, though, looking out over the sea at sunset. I sat and listened to all 23 voicemail messages on the answering machine in the bathhouse only to be rewarded with a lame accessory that I already had three of... >_> Oh well. Then Zack wondered how one might go about lowering the temperature of the water in the back room because there was a treasure chest in there, but I looked around and couldn't find any way of doing it, and then going up the stairs triggered a cutscene.

Poor Cloud. It's pretty interesting to see this younger version of him, prior to all the crazy stuff that's going to happen to him at Nibelheim; he's weak and unsure of himself, and longs for things he doesn't have, and at the same time he's able to be more open than he ends up later on. But Zack helps him and Tseng get back on their feet, and Tseng tells him that he needs to move on--Hollander's getting away and Angeal is waiting for Zack. Waiting, eh? At the time I thought maybe he was waiting for me so that I could help apprehend Hollander and then take him back to Shinra since Angeal couldn't really go back himself, but I wasn't sure what had actually happened to Cloud and Tseng, so I was wary.

And when I got there, Angeal was being cryptic and serious again, and I got a really bad feeling. This is about what I'd figured was going to happen that would lead to Zack acquiring the Buster Sword. D: Angeal insisted that he had a job that was specifically for Zack, and then Hollander showed up and tried to convince Angeal to continue helping him by mentioning something about revenge and family. Bad choice of subjects to bring up, really, since Angeal replies that his father is dead and only gets angrier as Hollander proceeds to talk about his mother.

So Project G was her experiment--not Project Genesis, as Sephiroth thought, but Project Gillian. And she killed herself out of shame. Apparently Genesis was a failed product of this experiment--presumably the reason he's degrading and I guess the reason his wing is black--but Angeal was the success, a perfect recipient of Jenova's power. Angeal tries to explain to Zack that sure, he's perfect, but he's still a monster, and do you remember when you agreed to fight with me against the ills of the world? Zack protests that Angeal is not one of them...! But Angeal intends to show me. Oh crap.

He calls a bunch of Angeal-faced monsters and merges with them, while Hollander asks whether he could just have one sample before--but Angeal shoves him away, and becomes a monster in reality. Zack wonders what happened to his honor, and seems hesitant to fight, but this time Angeal isn't having that, and he gives Zack a warning slice across the jaw to let him know he means it. Boss fight time! This was a fun fight too.

Afterward, Angeal is back to his own form and clearly fading fast, but he thanks Zack and tells him to take the Buster Sword. Zack is at a loss, but takes the sword, and Angeal dies as it begins to rain through the open roof. What I liked most about this scene was that Zack was left entirely speechless the whole time. No protests, no optimistic encouragement, he was just...unable to find anything to say. Very well done. And he remembers Angeal's words: embrace your dreams. If you want to be a hero, you have to have dreams. And always protect your honor.

Later, Aeris tries to talk to him about the sky and whether the flowers will like it, but he just can't even pretend to be able to converse at this point and breaks down completely. This was a nice little scene with Aeris, where I feel like she was trying to help by taking his mind off of his grief, but he wasn't ready for that yet. But, being Zack, he does manage to bounce back relatively quickly, and a bit later he seems to have accepted the Buster Sword as his own (woooo the victory pose for the first time with it!). And then he's off to prep some infantry and SOLDIERS for a mission. I liked the way he stopped to give some encouragement to one of the infantry--Cloud, of course--and then his speech to the SOLDIERS was pretty cool, even if he stole most of it from Angeal. :P But the bits that were all Zack were good too, his insistence that they were all going to come back from the mission and whatnot. And he's all sporting the scar now from his fight with Angeal.

Next chapter! Zack's apparently been taking something of a forced vacation under the surveillance of the Turks. Presumably Shinra wanted to keep an eye on him after the stressful and traumatic things he experienced on his last assignment, make sure he wasn't going to break down or anything. But no, he's fine, if restless (as usual) and annoyed about this vacation farce. Though he does wonder why no one ever mentions Angeal or Genesis, as though none of it ever happened, and what he's supposed to fight for, what the honor of a SOLDIER really means. Interesting.

And you know, I didn't notice until MUCH later, like when Aeris actually pointed it out in one of the Limit Break scenes, that Zack changed his hairstyle. Geez. Anyway, Cissnei shows up and Zack complains about being put out to pasture, and decides that he's going to call HQ...only to be told that things are out of whack there because it turns out that Lazard was the one funding Hollander's research, with company money. WHAT. Why!? Argh! Lazard! Why would you do that?? They're apparently questioning Hollander to find out things like that, but dammit I want to know now! Zack tells Cissnei to go do something and she asks whether he'll be calling Aeris...and then informs him that Aeris is being watched because she's the last Ancient. Oh ho. I wonder though...in FFVII, she'd said that Shinra had been after her pretty much all her life. But so far here they're just...watching her. They know she's there in that church, but no one has done anything about it. I guess maybe Hojo hasn't gotten wind of her whereabouts yet and so they don't have a specific use for her yet...and I guess the president doesn't know about her yet either, because I think I remember that the whole "find the Promised Land" plan had been his.

But no more time for chitchat now, because as Tseng warns us, there are Genesis clones coming out of the water! Genesis clones, really? Again? Oh god ha ha ha ha ha ha I really just beat up about ten of these guys with a beach umbrella. The best part was when I got a Limit Break during this fight and he sheathed the umbrella somehow on his back. What the hell. XD He even did the victory pose with it and everything. This game is hilarious.

So afterward, Zack wonders how there can still be Genesis clones around when he's dead. I don't know why he assumed Genesis died since the man could fly, but okay. Tseng's suggestion is that maybe he's controlling the clones from somewhere in the Lifestream, which would sound as silly to me as it does to Zack if I hadn't already seen the story of FFVII. :P But now Zack's vacation has ended, because an unknown force is attacking Junon and he's been ordered to go with the Turks. To Junon!

When we get there the place is a shambles, under serious attack, and Tseng orders Zack to go make sure Hollander is both safe and secure. Zack protests a little about the babysitting job, but goes anyway, and when I get to the upper level...there are a bunch of dead SOLDIERS. D: Killed by--not Genesis, but a very convincing clone. ...does he have a gunblade? Yes, yes he does. This Genesis copy has a freaking red gunblade. Wow. I can't decide if that's awesome or silly. XD

Of course, while I was busy dispatching him, Hollander escaped, so it's time for another wild Hollander chase through the streets, complete with plenty of Genesis copy interruptions, much to Zack's annoyance. Eventually I find Hollander, but he releases a giant robot thingy for me to fight, which I do. You know what's really silly and broken? Getting Cissnei's Limit Break and still being in Critical status when Angeal's Limit Break happens. Rush Assault with every hit a critical? Yes please. XD Alas, Regen is no longer broken, but that's probably for the best.

Oh, and I like the little Limit Break scene where Zack asks Cissnei out to dinner and she declines saying that she's on duty, and when he asks if she wants him to talk to her supervisor, she responds that she doesn't advise it, given that the Turks' supervisor is pretty scary. Do I know who the Turks' supervisor is...? I don't think so. Now I'm curious...! Which reminds me, I'm also curious how they're going to resolve the chain of command issues in SOLDIER now that Lazard is missing. I half expect them to put Sephiroth in charge. I mean, that's what I'd do.

After the fight, the Turks bring a bunch of evacuees to this little secure place and I have a chance to talk to everyone. The most notable thing here was when I talked to one of the infantrymen and he was facepalming about another grunt who had gotten airsick on the helicopter. Gotta be Cloud. And lo, it was, and I had another cool conversation with him. He was pleasantly surprised that Zack remembered him (he doesn't know Zack very well yet, heh) and lamented that he gets sick on vehicles all the time. But Zack made him feel better by saying that after the mission he'll treat Cloud to a meal. Man, Zack is the best friend ever.

So then I go after Hollander again. The little "stop the enemy from getting to the door" minigame was a little annoying only because the camera screwed me out of getting them all, I missed one set of robots, bah. I chase Hollander to the airport, where he releases a giant scorpion robot (even Zack is like "what, it's scorpion mechs now?? geez") which I have to fight. I'm getting significantly better at dodging things now, which is nice, though I hate stuff like EM Field that you just can't really dodge at all. Kind of a fun fight, and then afterward I corner Hollander at the edge of the helipad only to see him pull the classic Marty McFly (or Yuna, I suppose) and jump backwards off the edge only to be carried off by flying Genesis copies. Jerk!

And who should come to witness and acknowledge my failure but Sephiroth. Zack seems annoyed to see him at first, most likely feeling a) a bit shunned and b) a bit embarrassed at having failed his mission in front of the Great Sephiroth. But he forgets that quickly enough when Sephiroth explains that he had been on his way to Modeoheim because there were sightings of Genesis copies there, too...and all over the world. But he stopped here in Junon because he'd heard Zack was there and wanted to tell him that the copies had been spotted in the slums of Midgar, too. ...wow. Sephiroth just did something nice for Zack, and to top it off it involved protecting Aeris. This whole game is so backwards whoooaaaa makes my head spin. :P

But Sephiroth is his usual vaguely smug self when he asks Zack whether he's sure that Genesis is actually dead? Zack realizes that no, he's...really not. Whoops. But then Sephiroth tells him about the copies in the slums and grants him permission to return. I really liked the end bit of this scene when Zack hesitates to leave because there's clearly something he wants to say to Sephiroth but he doesn't know how to say it, and Sephiroth responds "We'll see each other again soon." And Zack goes with a smile, telling Sephiroth "I'll hold you to that." Their relationship is an interesting one, it's part hero worship, part mentor/student, with a little "shared pain" and a hint of actual friendship that's just going to make Nibelheim that much more horrible. Really liking Sephiroth here.

And then I guess Genesis was there the whole time up on top of the Sister Ray, because there he is, quoting Loveless. Something about the gift of the goddess and a sacrifice and the world's end. Yyyyyeah, I can't see this being about anything but Holy at this point, unless the game is just trying hard to make me think that's what it's about. I will say this--while some of the things here have been pretty predictable, I can't predict at all how Genesis' story will resolve. I mean, obviously someone kills him and it's probably Zack, but the rest? I dunno!

Next chapter. (That last chapter seemed kind of short, but that could be my imagination.) Zack heads to the church to check on Aeris and is weirded out by a strange presence before he goes inside. Then he gets there to see an Angeal copy monster...kind of hanging out in there. I liked Zack's reaction, sort of like..."I should probably kill this? but it's...not attacking Aeris, and why are there still Angeal copies anyway--oh man does this mean Angeal could be around somewhere...but that's impossible...?" Heh, he was so confused. Then a rogue robot comes into the church and makes ready to shoot someone, but the Angeal monster destroys it and then flies up to watch over them from the ceiling beams. Zack is pretty taken aback and tells the thing to sit right there until he has a chance to ask it some questions...! Heh. I guess it could be that Tseng was right after all and someone could control copies of themselves from the Lifestream, who knows?

So now Aeris wants me to make her this flower wagon, and here's where I stopped the plot. I did a whole bunch more missions though, including the rest of Yuffie's...or at least, I thought it would be the rest. But no, she cried again and ran off after Zack criticized her stupid methods (that was awesome), and then sent him another mail apparently trying to use a different tactic that's almost the same as her original one. Haha, what. I loved Zack being like "...wait a minute, how did she get my mail address?" Heh heh.

I've been messing around some more with materia fusion and making some fun things, like Power Osmose. Oh, and somewhere I got a Jump materia! awww yeah. It's not as good as Jump usually is in other games, but it's still fun. I also got a few more Limit Break scenes, a few of which had Reno and Rude kind of hanging in the background. Come on, Reno, be in it more. Have lines. Do things. >_> Dammit, why is Tseng the plot-intensive Turk, no fair.

Oh yeah, and I have to say, it was pretty awesome that after the fight with Genesis he was added to my reels, but he didn't actually show up as a regular one until at some point he randomly took over the Limit Break I was about to get and was all "Show me the true power of SOLDIER!" and Zack was like "Mind your own business!" and unleashed some Apocalypse action. Genesis' Limit Break is pretty cool. Ugh, but at one point I got the chocobo reel only instead of three chocobos I got two chocobos and something else in between and it gave me a Dud and dropped an anvil on my head just like back in FFVI. Bah!

I also got a very creepy mail from Kunsel who was like "I see everything. See how I know everything about you even though you don't tell me anything? I have ways of getting information. So talk to me, Zack. Tell me about what's stressing you out." I mean, I guess it's just supposed to be a "don't be a stranger, you can talk to me" kind of deal, but it came across as really weird. Also Luxiere is pretty funny, he's like a one-man Zack Fair fanclub. He needs to get some more people together and write a newsletter or something. XD

Characters, let's do this.

Zack > Sephiroth > Angeal > Cloud > Hojo > Tseng > Lazard > Kunsel > Cissnei > Genesis > Aeris > Yuffie > Hollander.

Hollander is some serious weaksauce compared to Hojo. Get this lamer scientist out of here and give me back my evil genius. And Aeris needs to start resembling her FFVII self more, pronto.

Yeah, I tend to like the underdog sort of character, and in this case I probably can't help applying some of what I know about what happens to him later to what he's doing now. But I like the way he's willing to try his best to help even though he doubts himself, and I like watching the process of Zack bringing him out of his shell. I guess that's part of what I like about Cloud in general--he's a flawed hero, and sometimes he's barely a hero at all, but he manages to pull through anyway and become more than he started out as.

Addendum
Unfortunately I have nothing particularly interesting to write about this time because I spent the last four hours doing nothing but missions. >_> I'm at 33% mission completion...! I started the next set of Yuffie quests but I stopped when I hit the one that had these Mover things in the cave that kept doing Delta Attack on me and killing me from full life. D: So then I went and did a bunch of the treasure/materia hunting ones and the City Development ones and some of the EM field ones...I finally got access to fusing items with materia but it doesn't appear to be all that useful. I also got addresses for three more shops, but I already had all the materia there. I'm so overloaded with extra items and materia it's pretty absurd, I'm going to start selling them/converting them to SP soon.

What else...oh, apparently I've now made 100% progress with Tseng's limit break. I don't know what that means for me, but so says the menu. I also now have the 1000 Needles limit, but I haven't seen it yet. So far I haven't been able to find the missions that will get me the rest of the summons, I guess they're not available yet.

And then oh man, the last bunch of missions I did were the vacation ones. More beach umbrella yesssssss! Poor Zack, trying so hard to just chill out but never gets a break. Though apparently his idea of a relaxing vacation on the beach is...doing squats. XD Love this guy. I didn't quite finish them all, I did the first folder and started the second one but got tired and left two or three for later. I love how the mission descriptions from Shinra get more and more impatient, like "okay, so this time we really hope you actually can take a vacation (so we can stop giving you time off)". :P

And okay, it's really annoying me that for some reason whenever I get a Sephiroth limit verge it ends up being the stupid chocobo instead more than half the time. I assume it's just random when you get the chocobo, but really it's almost every single time I get Sephiroth. Argh. I wish I could turn those off somehow. It's not that I don't like the chocobo limit, I just wish it didn't get in the way of my other limits. And I wish there were more little scenes with Cloud, but I guess I'll get more of them once he's been in the game a bit more.

Chapter 5
Weeeeeeee.

So, first order of business, collect wagon-making materials for Aeris. Of course, she isn't going to help or anything. But outside, there are more of those machine deals attacking me. Buh? So I destroy them, and afterward I run into Tseng, who is of course doing his surveillance thing again. Can't help but have the feeling that he wasn't so much specifically ordered to take this job as he volunteered for it when it came up. Definitely some tension going on here, but Tseng has answers that Zack wants--it turns out that these machines are actually anti-Genesis copy weapons which have taken out most of the copies in the city. I'm with Zack here--impressive, but why are they attacking me? Guess they can't tell the difference between SOLDIERS and monsters. No symbolism there or anything.

Tseng gets a little dig in at Zack when he tells him that he can continue playing with Aeris if he likes while the Turk does his job, and Zack's all "hey no no, see, I'm doing my job too, I'm protecting--!" Unfortunately the kid who stole my wallet earlier decides now is an awesome time to run up and say "I heard you were making a flower wagon for Aeris, I'm gonna help!" Tseng just...walks away. Poor Zack.

Now we're running around looking for materials, and I thought this bit was going to be kind of boring but actually it was really cool because most of the NPCs had new things to say and there were some Easter eggs thrown in. First I found a broken camera lying on the ground...with Tseng's name on it. Fortunately for Tseng, Zack doesn't know how to spell his name and doesn't know how "Tseng" is pronounced--haha, I love that there's a reason they don't pronounce it phonetically. XD I mean, maybe it's pronounced that way in Chinese anyway, but I like it nonetheless. Kinda creepy, Tseng. Not sure the pictures are really part of the surveillance job.

Then I find a Shinra army helmet lying around...okay...and then I find some tools. Sweet. Market time! On the way to the market I had some great NPC conversations. Like the girl sitting around waiting for her uncle? Turns out her uncle is Don freaking Corneo. "He's nice to girls and his house is shiny!" Hahaha what, that's awesome. Zack's like "Don? What kind of job title is that? ...wait, is he with the mob?" XD There's also the woman who'd been complaining about Shinra not doing so well, and now she says "Like that idiot 1st class who failed to apprehend a wanted criminal in Junon, geez." Hey now, lady, that's low...! Hehe. And then there's the guy I get the wood from for the wagon, who wants to use his pile of wood to build a bar in Sector 7. I started to get the feeling I was getting pretty close to things coming to a head now that all this direct FFVII stuff is cropping up all over the place. So of course I tell him to name the bar Seventh Heaven, and he's all "Yeah, I like it! And I can have a young girl be the bartender!" And Zack's like "great idea!" And then the guy goes on with "Yeah, she'll have a big bosom and long legs, killer figure, aww yeah" and Zack's totally all for that too. XD

Then I take the train up to Sector 8 to take the tires off the car on Loveless Avenue, but first, time to talk to some people standing around. Like the guy who'd been waxing philosophical about the Weapons and how the planet was dying--Zack boasts, see? Those "Weapons" were a piece of cake, I destroyed them already. But the guy is disdainful and says that Shinra just doesn't get it, the planet's in trouble. And no, I'm not with Avalanche, those guys are stupid too--just like Shinra they're willing to commit murder under the guise of "saving the planet."

Zack gets indignant, but the guy walks away. This was a really neat conversation. I'm guessing this was the closer conversation to the "Monsters in the Slums" set of missions; I wasn't paying attention to when that set became available but that's the feeling I'm getting.

Then the Sephiroth fan tells me that the Silver Elites are now taking new members, woo! But she won't tell me how to find them, dammit. The Genesis fan is despairing because Red Leather is going bankrupt and all they have left is apple jewelry; Zack suggests first getting jobs at Shinra and then mooching off I mean merging with a richer club. But that doesn't help her either, apparently. Then it turns out that the Angeal fan ran off and abandoned her kid to go look for Angeal. Man, what? Most terrible mother ever. I found her later at the train station though and sent her back. This was neat because Zack's method of doing this was "what do you think Angeal would say?" And I chose "He'd say a mother without honor is nothing more than a monster." I kind of wish I'd been able to see her responses to all of the choices, but this one was neat. And it didn't make sense to me to tell her to embrace her dreams, because, well. She might take that as confirmation that leaving was a good idea.

Then I found the security guy who challenged me to all those fights, and it turned out that he was trying to get his men to work a little harder because they felt that with SOLDIER around, what did they need to do? Zack tried to be his optimistic, friendly self, but the guy was still annoyed--though he did say he would remember Zack's name. Poor security dude. Oh yeah, and I got a mail that officially announced that Lazard and Hollander were killed in action. Lord, Shinra, don't you ever tell the truth about anything? Lies upon lies. Somehow though it wasn't until the mail from Kunsel that I realized what Lazard's motives were for the embezzlement--Kunsel noted offhand that oh by the way, Lazard was gunning for VP a while back. How cool--I remember the mail I got a while ago that announced Rufus' appointment as VP. So Lazard was embezzling to take revenge on the company for ending his progress toward his ultimate goal (president itself, most likely) via nepotism. Poor Lazard.

And I found the other Genesis lady in the alley and convinced her to help out Red Leather so that they could all continue their fan clubs. ("It wasn't the jewelry that did it, it was totally your passion!" Suuure. XD) And here was where I realized just how many lives Zack was improving, how many people he was helping, on a daily basis. He doesn't realize it, but to these people? He's already achieved his dream of being a hero. It almost makes me regret my decision to quit doing missions for now, because I'm too hungry for plot, but I figure I'll come back to the older save file I kept and 100% them after I beat the game--I want to see all the rest of the conclusions.

Finally, the guy with the car decides to give me his tires. Oh, and for some reason I can't fathom, the security guy gave me some kind of magazine on crafting carts or something. I figured it was going to be used to make the wagon--and that was when I remembered that I also had a guide to the specs of the Shinra lunch cart, maybe that'd get used too--but no, it turns out that the Shinra helmet I found before was where the kid had hidden the instruction manual "How to Build a Wagon". ...what? But then what are the rest of these things for?

So I took the stuff back to Aeris and we made the wagon, and...uh...she wasn't satisfied. What? Are you serious? "I want a nicer one." She has to be joking. But no, it doesn't really seem like she's joking, especially when later she whines that the reason she has no customers is because the wagon's not nice enough. Oh man, what. Augh. This is not the Aeris I remember from FFVII! Luckily, this conversation gets cut short by a phone call from Sephiroth--we have a lead, get back to headquarters.

When I get there, Sephiroth tells me that monsters have been popping up in droves around reactor sites, and at one particular reactor, a bunch of SOLDIERS went to investigate and never came back. So Shinra wants to send their very best--Sephiroth, of course. Who in turn wants to bring Zack along, which is a really nice touch, a sign that Sephiroth trusts him. Which is terrible because gosh, this mission sounds familiar. It's beginning.

One interesting thing here: in giving Zack the details of the mission, Sephiroth noted that Shinra had only ordered them to investigate the monsters...no mention of "old friends." Genesis, Lazard, Hollander...apparently, Sephiroth and Zack weren't supposed to get involved with them anymore. And Sephiroth follows this up with by the way, depending on what happens, I might leave Shinra after this. Zack's like "wha??" and Sephiroth assures him that until then, he will remain loyal to SOLDIER. Whoooaaa foreshadowing, though not in the way Sephiroth expected. He didn't spell it out, but the way I see it, there are two possibilities for what he meant. Either, after having done some research on the science department and after Lazard's betrayal and after Angeal's death, Sephiroth may have been losing faith in Shinra as an entity with which he wanted to be associated (can you blame him?); or else his thinking was that if Shinra was keeping even him out of the loop on this whole mess, they might be preparing to get rid of him in order to eliminate of all the "evidence", so to speak. Or possibly he suspected the latter and was going to leave before they tried to have him killed. Either way, an interesting conversation, and one that Zack certainly didn't expect.

Knowing where we were headed, I decided to comb the building and talk to everyone first. I found the 3rd class guy who I'd helped in the missions, and he was going to leave SOLDIER but his superior came in while Zack was talking to him and said that his mentor had told him to embrace his dreams--well, what were his dreams? His dream was to become a prime SOLDIER operative just like Zack. Well, there you are. And Zack's like whoa, his mentor was Angeal too! And then the guy decided to stick with SOLDIER after all, and began with...practicing his squats. Heh heh, awesome. ...and for some inexplicable reason, this netted me a nice tire. What? But I've already done the wagon thing. What is this for now?? Kind of confused here, but whatever. (It occurred to me much much later that maybe I should take it back to the car guy or something.)

Kunsel tells me that I still have a bit of time, so if I'm bummed about leaving Aeris I should go see her before I leave. So I do that, and tell her that she can totally call me, and I won't be gone that long. Sorry, Zack...not so much. >_> But since there's a little time before he has to go, she decides we should go sell some flowers right now.

So we spend some time...not selling flowers, because no one shows up (well, she's in the corner of the park in the slums, what did she expect?). It was pretty funny talking to the kids running around there, the ones who previously had been playing Sephiroth and Wutai warrior. Now there are three of them, but the new kid confuses the other two because he wants someone to play this "Zack" person. Is he even a SOLDIER? Why would he want to be someone so minor? XD Woo, one person closer to a Zack fanclub!

And then, as Aeris talks to a potential customer, Zack sees Tseng out of the corner of his eye. Tseng seems to assume that Zack is there to admonish him again for spying, but in fact what Zack says is that with him leaving on a mission elsewhere, Tseng is the only one he can turn to to protect Aeris. And Tseng...laughs. I'm not sure if I think he was laughing because he was kind of bitter/jealous--sure, I get to protect her for you--or because Zack wasn't quite understanding his purpose here--you don't need to tell a Turk to do his job. Maybe a bit of both. But Zack insists--I'm counting on you--and then leaves. And it's almost painful to watch Zack trust Tseng so much knowing that later Tseng is going to kidnap Aeris and give her to Hojo. But of course, it's like Tseng always tells Zack, as a Turk it's his job to uphold company policy and do what he's told, whether it's bomb a town to oblivion or kidnap his childhood friend for creepy experiments. D: Lawful neutral to the core, this guy.

When I get back to HQ, Cloud is waiting for me there, trying to round up the rest of the infantry guys for the trip. Oh man, Zack and Cloud have like a fist-bump handshake thing, that's awesome. So Cloud gets the dudes and then Sephiroth comes back and we get ready to leave. Zack asks, where are we going, anyway?

"To Nibelheim."

I loved that the "camera" was placed so that Sephiroth was in the foreground and Cloud was visible behind him, so that when he said Nibelheim Cloud could go "!"

End of chapter! Well, of course I continued. Aaaaand here we go, the gates of Nibelheim. Oooooh with the Nibelheim music and everything, oh man I love this music. "So, how does it feel?" Well, Sephiroth, I'm terrified and excited. :P I liked the way they added a few words in here to make Sephiroth's lines make a bit more sense, like when Zack asked about his parents, his laughter wasn't so much "uhhhh why is he laughing, creepy" as "...haha, why am I talking about this?" Also nice was that Zack recognized the name Jenova--from when Hojo had talked about it. But he didn't seem to quite remember the context.

Then I run into Tifa whoa hey there, she had quite the rack even then, and now she's got the graphics to back it up. XD In true Tifa fashion, she almost asks about Cloud and then doesn't. Then some kid starts talking about the Seven Wonders of Nibelheim and how he wants me to help confirm or debunk them. Geez, it's Twilight Town all over again. I did the first few, and they were actually kind of neat--the materia in the water, the girl in the painting. Hunting down the weird bombs was a little annoying because at that point I kind of wanted to move on with the plot, and then for the fourth one he wanted me to open the safe in the mansion. Haha what. Well, I was getting tired of doing them anyway and I didn't want to go into the mansion until the big plot bit, so I figured maybe I'd come back to finish these after I beat the game and moved on.

Sephiroth thinks Nibelheim looks familiar but he can't place why--I'd forgotten about this line--and it occurs to me now that he remembers it because Jenova's been here all this time. This must have been where the original experiment that created Sephiroth was done. Next day, scene progresses as expected, we take the picture, and head on up to the reactor. The photo montage was kind of interesting, with the lines from FFVII going on as the pictures were taken, though a bunch of the scenes were missing. One neat one they added was Zack telling them that he wasn't killing the monsters, just knocking them out, because he usually only used the blunt end--because use brings wear, tear, and rust. Angeal ;_;

Oh yeah, one cool thing: before all the plot stuff started, Zack got a whole slew of mails in a short period of time, mostly from friends. Kunsel, Luxiere, Cissnei, even Tifa. The former three were all "hey, guess you're busy, when you get back blahblah" kinds of mails--but he's not coming back ;_; --and the latter was Tifa offhandedly mentioning "you don't know any blond guys in SOLDIER, do you? ...haha, never mind, just a silly dream, blond knight in shining armor, don't tell anyone I asked okay?" Aw, Tifa.

We hit the reactor, things are just the same as before, and then we go inside. I was a bit disappointed to find that they didn't use "Those Chosen by the Planet" at all anywhere in here. Not even in the mansion later. Though I did notice that they'd recently started using FFVII's "evil Shinra" music, that was pretty cool. Seeing this scene with voice acting and real graphics (and Zack) was pretty awesome, though now I have no idea how Cloud knew about this part to retell it in the flashback scene later. He wasn't actually there yet. >_> I guess you could assume that he told Cloud about it over the course of the week they spent waiting for Sephiroth.

But thank god this game finally explained how Sephiroth leapt to the conclusion that he'd been created here like these monsters: he was remembering it. Flashes, of course, nothing too detailed, but things were familiar here. Which made more sense than "Sephiroth, are you different from normal SOLDIERS?" "Yeah, I've felt that way ever since...OH WAIT!" Not to mention of course that the name Jenova was on the sealed door, which Sephiroth never drew attention to in the original scene--but Zack started to remember where he'd heard the name in this version, right before Sephiroth drew his attention to the monsters, which helped.

Here unfortunately is where I felt like Zack started to kind of fade from things a bit. And I realize that Nibelheim wasn't really about him, it was about Sephiroth, but because they cut a bunch of stuff, it was a little harder to continue seeing things from Zack's perspective. He had fewer lines and fewer meaningful contributions altogether than in the rest of the game. I mean, I get that they didn't want to make you feel like you were replaying FFVII all over again, but personally I wouldn't have minded replaying the whole flashback. Instead they made it a little montage-y. Oh, also? NOW LOADING. The load times on this thing never bothered me that much before, but during Nibelheim it was every five seconds, more sitting at a black screen waiting for the next thing to load. Argh, this is not the chapter to be doing that, game! >:-| So that contributed to the disruption of the flow, too.

Anyway, Sephiroth freaks out a bit, and then who should show up but Genesis. He's much more tolerable now than he was earlier in the game. In response to Sephiroth's self-questioning, he tells him that in fact he too is a monster, created via Jenova Project S, the culmination of the earlier project that produced failures like Genesis. Unlike Genesis and Angeal before him, Sephiroth was a complete success--he couldn't transfer his genes into copies, and his cells couldn't be changed, so he'd never deteriorate. This was a little confusing, since I thought the latter had been the case for Angeal as well, but I suppose not! Genesis asks Sephiroth to help him by giving him some of his cells--pure Jenova cells--but Sephiroth refuses, saying that whether Genesis was just trying to confuse him or whether this really was the truth he'd always searched for...Genesis could rot.

I think at this point Sephiroth was just so disgusted with both Genesis and Shinra that he wanted to wash his hands of them all. "Perfect monster, indeed." Yeah, that's rich coming from you, Genesis. Pfft. Some Loveless quotes that clearly are talking about Black and White materia (oh yeah, which reminds me, earlier Study Group sent a mail that said something similar about an interpretation of "the gift of the goddess" that could either be taken as the ultimate destruction or the ultimate salvation, and that Genesis believed the latter--he is after Holy, he just doesn't quite know it) and then they both leave Zack behind. It's interesting to think that Genesis' motivations appear to be trying to find the ultimate salvation for the world, though I think it's because he thinks it will give him immortality (or at least stop him from degrading into nothing). Saving the world from its ills, just a side effect. Of course, he's creating plenty of those ills himself in the process.

So Zack tries to follow, but is slowed by having been blasted a bit by Genesis earlier, and only gets outside in time to see Cloud shot by some Genesis copies. Crap! So I kill those guys and then Tifa helps Cloud (not knowing who he is) back to town while I escort them by killing some monsters. Where's Sephiroth, Zack wonders when they get back? Tifa says she'll find out, while I take Cloud upstairs to rest.

Then there's a neat conversation in which Cloud once again wishes he were a SOLDIER so he could have protected Tifa, Zack asks if he knows Tifa and gets enough of an answer to realize there are issues with that, and then starts to tell Cloud that maybe he should say something to her only to realize that he has no room to talk--he's been a good SOLDIER all this time, doing what he was told without asking too many questions, and feels now that he's been blindly following orders without insisting on knowing what was going on, who the real enemy was, or anything. This is really the first time I've seen Zack this...disgruntled. He's beginning to realize that just being a SOLDIER doesn't make you a good guy, and things are nowhere near as simple as he'd always thought. He's getting confused--reminded me pretty strongly of MGS here--and it's hard for him.

But he calms himself with the Buster Sword, and Cloud mentions that he's never seen Zack actually use the thing (have to assume he means the blade edge here, since Zack's definitely fought in front of Cloud before!)--which takes Zack off-guard, and Cloud's words remind him of everything Angeal taught him, which reminds him that though he's confused and hurt, if he just stays true to his honor, things will make sense. I liked this moment, it seemed sort of a "complete" moment for Zack--he's come full circle, in a way, and finished his journey, perhaps to manhood. No longer a puppy, he. He realizes fully now that it isn't orders or loyalties that define a SOLDIER, but each individual SOLDIER's honor and how he upholds it. And I love the cyclical nature of all this--Angeal taught this to him and now he's teaching it to people like Cloud and the 3rd class SOLDIER he helped. It was also awesome when, the next morning, Cloud sent Zack a mail that said "I was too embarrassed to say this out loud, so I'll write it to you instead--your words on the day you changed your hair, when you told us rookies all those things, have kept me strong. Thanks, Zack." Pretty great.

Satisfied with his epiphany, Zack thanks Cloud and goes to sleep, and Cloud's all "...huh? Uh...you're welcome?" :P And the next morning, Tifa's learned that Sephiroth is in the mansion. Ohhhh here we go! On the way there, Aeris calls and Zack has to tell her "not now"--but he promises to call back, and to visit. I actually liked that this was in here because it helped give an idea of what things looked like from Aeris' point of view--he goes off on this mission of indefinite length, he can't talk on the phone despite what he promised earlier and makes more, hurried promises before hanging up, and then she never sees him again. No wonder Elmyra didn't want her getting involved with another SOLDIER later.

So I go into the mansion and it was really cool to see it with better graphics, but again...no mansion music. The "oh crap Sephiroth" music was one of the things that made the mansion for me in FFVII, I was pretty disappointed that Crisis Core didn't use it. But the music they did use was pretty good, a dissonant and creepy version of the piano piece that crops up a bunch of times earlier. I found the safe and kind of figured out how to solve the puzzle, but apparently I'd done something wrong because it wouldn't open and I didn't really feel like spending time on it right then so I went on. Down into the secret passage!

Then I kill a monster and receive...a Coffin Key. ...hahaha what. Seriously? Oh man where's that room. Nice little Easter egg here, Zack actually finds Vincent and is like "uhhhhh why is there a guy sleeping in here?? M-maybe I should just let him sleep..." I imagine him like...tiptoeing backwards out of the room, all freaked out. :P So I go into the library and this was all mostly word for word from FFVII. Pretty cool except this was another place where I felt like Zack could have had more to say/do.

Then Zack narrates that seven days had passed--oh oh oh, so maybe he's telling Cloud all the stuff that happened while they're on the road to Midgar or something. That would explain how Cloud later knew all of it. It would also help explain why Cloud thought those memories were his own--if Zack was telling him while he was still all messed up from the experiments, I could easily see his mind being all muddled about what he'd heard.

And then at the end of seven days, Zack wakes up one morning at the inn to find that the town is on fire. Wait...what? Seriously? What happened to going into the mansion again and having the conversation with Sephiroth about how the humans stole the planet from the Cetra and then chasing Sephiroth outside to find everything on fire? That was so much better! Augh why did they do this. Zack finds Cloud barely conscious--and see, this makes no sense, why wouldn't Cloud have woken him up?--and then rushes off to the reactor after reading the mail from Cloud that said "Where are you? Sephiroth set the village on fire!!! Tifa and her father are going after him at the reactor, you have to stop them!"

And lo, there is Sephiroth, wreathed in flame. "I'm coming to get you," he says--assuming he's talking "to" Jenova--and god damn the FMV version of this was awesome. Only thing that bugs me about this is that unlike in FFVII, he wasn't actively stabbing townspeople. A small detail, but one that was pretty glaringly missing for me. Hmm. But I go to the reactor and find that he's already injured Tifa and gone inside Jenova's chamber. A shame, I would have liked to have seen that scene happen here, but ah well. I loved the addition of Tifa's refusal to let Zack help her because of her hatred for all things Shinra. Especially hard on Zack, I imagine, since all he ever really wants to do is help people. :(

Zack is rather upset and doesn't bother opening the door, instead just destroying it and running after Sephiroth. Scene progresses as normal, and then suddenly somewhere halfway through Sephiroth's dialogue it hits me that I will get to play the fight that ends in Zack getting tossed down the stairs. Cooooooool.

Fight time aw yeah. Oh man, this was so great. Sephiroth looks awesome in this fight. I love his little teleport thing, I love the way he stalks you across the screen and nothing is hurried in his motions until suddenly he's comboing you out of nowhere. I love how scary it is when you're chasing him down and he teleports and is suddenly descending right behind you. He has Heartless Angel, he has a Vergil-esque screenwide ranged sword strike, what a great fight. Unfortunately it was a little too short, I finished it too fast. I blame getting two Octaslashes (and yeah, that's right, three Limit Breaks during this fight and two of them were Sephiroth! The other one was really annoying, I was about to get Cloud which would have been AWESOME and hopefully given me a new little Cloud scene because I'm only at 35% on his, but no I got the stupid Cactuar instead ugh ugh). I did get two new little scenes with Sephiroth though, the one on the way up Mount Nibel with the materia fountain and the one with Sephiroth telling Zack about how humans are traitors, that was cool. I...have no idea when that conversation was supposed to have taken place since they changed the continuity, but okay!

Then? Then he shattered the glass floor (as soon as I saw the glass floor I knew that was going to happen at some point) and came at me again! And if I fell off the beam I'd die (even though afterward Zack was thrown off it anyway and didn't die...but whatever, it was cool)! VENI VENI VENIAS wooooo One Winged Angel. Unfortunately this one was also too short, I didn't even come close to falling off or dying. I got an Angeal Limit Break this time, which was cool (got my last 100% scene with him, woo) and in fact was what finished off the fight.

Sephiroth wins, though, in the end, barely seeming perturbed by the fight, and after Zack is down, Cloud arrives. Woo! Everything as expected here. Watching Cloud stab Sephiroth in the back and then throw him into the reactor was even more badass with good graphics. Hell yeah. Unfortunately he'd been sort of impaled, so he wasn't in such great shape afterward and rather fell down the stairs, where he and Zack both passed out. End of chapter!

Later, Zack is half-conscious and hears Hojo get all excited about how interesting an experimental subject Cloud will be, and then he's out again...only to dream about Angeal telling him that he's making kind of a lame excuse for a SOLDIER right now. Then he dreams in FMV of Angeal's white feathers, and how he wants wings like that too...and dreaming of Angeal, I suppose, gives him the strength to wake up and smash the pod into little bits. Wow, in this version he didn't even bother waiting for feeding time, he just broke the damn thing. Go Zack! Researcher is clobbered, Cloud is rescued, and I escort him downstairs. I found a "Dresser Key" in the researcher's pocket, but I forgot to go back into the room with the locked wardrobe thing in it--gotta remember to do that next time. The save point on the first floor is where I stopped, though I did do two missions before turning the game off--both of them were rematches with Hojo's data version of Sephiroth. Felt like fighting him again :P partially just to do it and partially to see if I could stall him for a while and get new Limit scenes (I didn't).

So, Nibelheim completed. It was pretty damn awesome, but also a disappointment in some ways. Ah well--I don't think there was really a way it could have 100% lived up to expectations anyway, though I do think it could have done a bit better. But it was still sweet. And at the end there right before I stopped, Zack received two mails. One was from Shinra HQ, declaring Sephiroth and Zack Fair killed in action. Ohhhh so many lies, so many coverups. And wow, SOLDIER is now entirely bereft of leadership. Not a single 1st class left and no director. The second mail was from Kunsel a minute later, saying "Wait, no no, mail me back and tell me that's not true. Those announcements are never true anyway, right?" (haha, and he's right) "What the heck did you do to get yourself proclaimed a dead man? Talk to me, tell me what's going on." Well, Zack didn't really have time right then, he was too busy trying to get himself and Cloud out of Nibelheim in one piece. I wonder though whether he ever mailed Kunsel back later? Maybe I'll find out, who knows.

Zack = Sephiroth > Cloud > Angeal > Hojo > Tseng > Kunsel > Lazard > Cissnei > Genesis > Aeris > Yuffie > Hollander.

Couple of minor changes. Just like FFVII, I wish there were more time to get to know the characters that aren't the story's primary focus, but what can you do. Aeris got worse ;_; but still not as bad as Yuffie. Game needs more Reno. >:-|

Chapter 6
Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, Zack!

First, of course, I went back upstairs to open the locked dresser, and there was a bunch of gil and a SOLDIER uniform inside. Ah ha--so that's where Zack got it from to give to Cloud. On my way out, then, and Zack helped Cloud down the stairs and back to town...where a whole slew of infantry were waiting for us. Crap! And there were so many of them that while Zack was fighting them, a few kept trying to drag Cloud off. Get back here, you! But I managed to stop them before they got him out of town, just in time for Zack to experience a moment of weakness. Whoa, he wonders, what's wrong with him today? I imagine "genetic experimentation" is the answer, not to mention fighting off hordes of men with guns by himself (though I suppose that's more of an everyday occurrence).

Zack decides that he's pretty beat and they should rest before venturing out of town, so he takes Cloud back up to the mansion. Just like the flashback in FFVII, I like the way he keeps talking to Cloud despite no real sign that he can hear any of it--a comfort to himself, perhaps, but if Cloud can hear him (which I'm sure he can) then it's also a comfort to him. And man, poor Cloud, getting severe mako poisoning not once but twice. (Which reminds me, they pronounce it "mah-ko" in this game, but in my head it's always "may-ko". Silly Japanese.) Realizing Cloud's predicament, Zack asks an absent Angeal whether he'll ever be able to save anyone--but this funk doesn't last long, as his natural buoyancy kicks in and he begins to search for solutions. So he dresses Cloud in the SOLDIER uniform he found because he figures it'll be easier for him to recover if his clothes aren't drenched in mako--logical--and remarks that it looks good on him--which I hope Cloud could hear because it might have given him some hope that Zack thought he'd make a good SOLDIER (not that it matters much given what's about to happen D: ).

Then he finds the "list" of wishes that Aeris wrote for him in his pocket and it turns out that in fact all 23 of her wishes boiled down to "I want to spend more time with you." I actually quite liked that. This spurs Zack to realize that he does, in fact, want to return to Midgar--which is good in a way because it gives him direction, but bad in that it gives him an incredibly dangerous direction. Ah well, where was he really going to go anyway? It isn't as though Shinra doesn't control most of the world at this point. And he makes a point of telling Cloud that he's going, and asking if he wants to come. Clearly he's not being literal, but it's a nice gesture--a sign that he believes (or is trying to believe) that Cloud will recover.

Leaving Nibelheim after taking out some more infantry led to some really well-done scenery--the moon, the lighthouse--and some sniping that was fun if simplistic. This was pretty neat, I like the way this game tosses in something a little different every once in a while. (If only the stealth part hadn't been utterly impossible...!) So I snipe all the robots and eventually come to a beach, where I pick up the Dash materia, which I love since I never used the block anyway and running faster in battle is useful (and fun!).

Zack talks to Angeal again, wondering what he's supposed to do now that he's got Cloud to worry about, he has to be more careful than he might otherwise have been...and then it turns out that he's got an audience, but it's not Angeal. It's Cissnei. Huh--that was pretty unexpected. Though it probably shouldn't have been, it makes sense that Shinra would send the Turks after an elusive target that could take down normal infantry all day long.

Zack asks her to just walk away, and at first she can't--this is her job, and she throws her weapon...but it seems halfhearted, and Zack can tell. He deflects it and holds the Buster Sword out blade-first to let her know that he isn't messing around, and she backs off long enough for Zack to get back to where he left Cloud.

He tells Cloud that since the Turks are here, we have to move on, but Cissnei has followed him, and he gets ready for a fight. But she seems to feel sorry for Cloud, and she calls Tseng to tell him that she's lost the target. Zack's a little surprised, and he's moreso when she gives him the keys to a motorcycle that even has a little sidecar thingy for Cloud to ride in. awww yeah. I'm liking Cissnei a lot, I'm glad she's finally getting to do some things.

So! Life is a highway, Zack's gonna ride it all night long...until he runs into some Genesis copies. (By the way, I love that even after all this Zack still derives enough total enjoyment out of riding a motorcycle to be impressed with Shinra technology. XD) He's about to kick some copy ass when Genesis himself shows up to take Zack by surprise and get his goons to yank out a handful of Zack's hair. Ow. And he's still got that apple he's been carrying around--the last of the Banora Whites, and I'm still waiting to see why it's so important--and he's quoting Loveless again, more about the dark and light wings of the goddess, beasts bringing the end of the world, etc. Then he tells Zack that Hojo's experiment involved infusing him with Jenova's cells, and I love Zack's reaction to what happens next: "...no way. He just ate my hair." Yeah, he did, that clone over there. Shlrp. Eugh.

Genesis informs Zack that his cells should stop the degradation--and now that he's a monster he really shouldn't complain--but then he...leaves, just in time for the copy that ate Zack's hair to be transformed by Jenova's cells into a horrific beast. Why Genesis left, I have no real idea; it wasn't like he saw the results of the guy eating the hair and then left, so it wasn't because he'd already seen that Zack's Jenova cells weren't useful. Maybe he figured he'd watch whatever might happen from a safe distance, I dunno. So I kill this thing, and once again Zack wishes he had Angeal around to give him advice. Well, who can blame him? His world's been turned completely upside-down, and this is after he "killed" his own mentor. Though, according to some mails from the Keepers of Honor, there have been Angeal sightings, and the game is definitely hinting that Angeal is not gone.

I also got a few mails from Kunsel, and one from Luxiere. Both of them are entirely unconvinced that Zack is dead, and they beg him to contact them and let them know where he is. Luxiere offers to come pick him up under the pretense of capturing him and then using his supposed newfound promotion to pull for lighter punishment, haha, like a true Shinra employee. Kunsel meanwhile just wants Zack to come back alive (buddy). I figure Zack isn't responding to these mails because, while at least Kunsel is probably sincere, Zack just really can't trust anyone from Shinra anymore. He managed to trust Cissnei after she blatantly spared them, but only just. Not only that, but even if he could trust Kunsel, there's no guarantee that Shinra isn't monitoring people's mail. So "radio silence" is probably the smartest thing here.

Oh yeah--and in one of these mails, Kunsel tells Zack (or maybe this was Luxiere, I forget) that an entire battalion of infantry has been dispatched to retrieve them, so he should watch his back. And I was thinking about why Shinra would use so much of their resources just for two experimental subjects, especially since apparently the results they were getting from Zack weren't even that interesting. But I think it's because Shinra desperately needs to cover up the experiments, they don't even care at this point about killing Zack, they just need him to not tell people what happened. It's interesting to me that Shinra values Hojo's work enough to do all this to protect him; he's yielding results, and that's much more important to them than the value of individual SOLDIERS, or you know, ethics or any of that stuff Shinra never bothers with.

Zack and Cloud spend more time on the road--most probably a lot more, they are after all driving across like a continent and a half--until Zack suddenly realizes where they are. It's Gongaga! He himself admits out loud to Cloud that visiting his parents is a stupid idea because he'd probably be walking right into an ambush...but he's worried and he has to see for himself. So he leaves Cloud by himself near the destroyed reactor (Zack no! this is a terrible idea! don't do it!) and heads into town, only to be intercepted by Cissnei again.

She wonders why Zack would come here, he had to have known that this would be the first place they'd look for him. He agrees that it was reckless, but he felt he had to do it...but she assures him that his parents are fine, and that currently his mother's biggest worry is that he won't be able to find a wife. The problem here is that in FFVII his parents hadn't heard anything from or about him at all in ten years. Which says to me that Cissnei must be lying, or I guess it might be a plot hole. I prefer to think she's lying. >_>

She also says that Angeal has been spotted in the area, which is another reason the Turks are about, but Zack isn't that surprised by now--he suspects that Angeal was really there to help him escape from the mansion. And it turns out that Cissnei was raised by Shinra. Yikes. How is she this nice? :P She says she'll give them ten minutes, but then she'll have to return to the Turks...right now she's not in the mood to give his mother bad news. Once again she saves our asses--and apparently Cissnei isn't her real name, that's interesting--but instead of taking Cloud and getting the hell out of there, Zack decides to go follow up on having seen something he thought was Angeal. Oh, this is a bad bad idea. Zack, you are being stupid. But I understand entirely why--he's getting desperate for Angeal's help, because now he doesn't even have his parents to turn to and everyone else he knows is affiliated with Shinra. Man...it just hit me that one by one Zack is losing contact with everyone he ever looked up to. Angeal, then Lazard, then Sephiroth, now his parents. He really is having to grow up fast and do things on his own.

So he reaches the summit of the hills only to find Genesis clones, who attack him, chanting "S-cells, S-cells" which by the way was really creepy. I fight them, but after a time, who should show up but Genesis and--Hollander. Whoa. Not looking so great there, buddy. Hollander tells the clones not to bother with Zack, because having been SOLDIER already, his cells aren't going to work for them. And apparently, Hollander used some of Genesis' cells to stay alive after Genesis nearly killed him. I suppose now they're working together again since they're both degrading and it's in both their interests to fix this.

And then Genesis informs Zack that, while his so-called S-cells ("Sephiroth" cells, of course, Hojo's clone experiment) were already contaminated by mako and therefore won't work, there are still pure S-cells. And oh god, it hit me right before Genesis explained it to Zack, they're talking about Cloud. Not having been SOLDIER, the Jenova cells he's got are pure Hojo-experiment. Waaaaagh why did you leave Cloud alone, Zack?? And why are you still hanging around talking to Genesis while Hollander's gone after him??

I can understand not wanting Genesis to stab him in the back or something though. So he listens to Gensis wax poetic again about the sacrifice at the end of the world and the gift of the goddess, and how one of the lines in the poem was always a mystery--the origin of the gift, the water over which the wind flows quietly. He says there are many theories, but he believes his is correct--the water refers to the lifestream. Neat, and of course full of FFVII prophecy. But Zack doesn't know much about this and doesn't much care, and he tries to attack Genesis only to watch him fly off...leaving his apple behind. Hmm. I remember that there was a mail in which the Study Group postulated that the apples were something to do with the gift of the goddess, and there was definitely something fishy about Banora's connections to Shinra. I wonder if the apples were part of another experiment? Angeal said that the trees bore fruit at weird, random times of year. Maybe the apples are connected directly to the lifestream? I'm getting weird ideas about what that apple is foreshadowing. Possibly it will be the cure to Cloud's condition or something, who knows. Why hasn't that apple gone bad yet, seriously, it's been a year or something. XD

So now I'm off to try to get to Cloud before they do. "Run like you mean it, Zack!" I got tired though, so I stopped at the save point at Gongaga. Aaaaahhhhh run faster Zack! Save Cloud! I wish I had the Dash materia outside battle. :P I'm really liking this whole section where we get to see what happened to Cloud and Zack between leaving Nibelheim and getting a ride from that random dude in the truck. It's making me wonder what's going to happen to the motorcycle, heh. Maybe there will be an epic crash...!

I just haven't felt like stopping to do missions in a while, it seems silly to do them in the middle of all this plot. I kept a save point from before Nibelheim, so later I can go back and see them all. I wish I was getting more DMW scenes, the few I've gotten have been ones I've already seen. OH! I found this treasure chest with the address to a better Turk store (gotta assume Cissnei left it for me, heh) and they had materia that increased the chances of getting certain limit breaks! So I got one for Cloud and one for Cissnei, those are the two I have the fewest scenes with so far. Come oooonnnn Meteorain! (or whatever this game calls it)

Zack = Sephiroth > Cloud > Angeal > Hojo > Tseng > Cissnei > Kunsel > Lazard > Genesis > Aeris > Yuffie > Hollander

Minor shift, I really liked Cissnei in that last bit.

Chapter 7
"Run like you mean it, Zack!" So I did! And when I got there, Hollander was about to ...eat Cloud's hair, I guess, or whatever he was about to do. Along with some Genesis copies. But here comes--whoa, Angeal...? Maybe? Angeal but dressed funny. He helps keep the copies at bay while Zack goes after Hollander--I guess we didn't want Hollander getting away because he'd eventually come after us again with more reinforcements or something. Fight!

This fight was actually pretty cool despite me not liking Hollander very much on the whole. He pulled a Hojo and summoned some creepy Jenova-spawn monster things, and he had various potions that did things like heal him and make him invincible and whatnot, and occasionally he whacked me with his bag like some kind of old lady. But the best part was definitely his big undodgable move--Dimension Missile. How in the hell did he fit that thing inside that bag!? Well, duh, satai, it's a Dimension Missile, he stored it in another dimension...! Shinra has invented bags of holding, awesome.

Hollander ends up not only dying but uh...degrading so far that he dissolved into the lifestream immediately, I guess, or something. So I go back to talk with "Angeal", only it turns out that in fact it's...Lazard. Whoa! Okay, didn't see that coming. Hollander and Genesis ended up turning Lazard into an Angeal copy. I guess uh...to...make him cooler, or something. It didn't make him that cool, apparently, because as he says, he can't fight like a 1st. Why was the director of SOLDIER not actually a fighter, anyway? Bureaucracy, I suppose. Shinra's good at that. So he explains that ever since he was changed, his desire for revenge has faded, and now he just wants to help. Zack, Genesis, the world. Yay, Lazard ended up on my side after all! This is good, I liked him. And once again, he asks Zack--what's your dream? To be a hero, is still the answer, and Lazard's response is still that unattainable dreams are the best kind. Pshaw, Director, I am totally already a hero. I liked Zack's speech here though, about how of course Lazard suddenly felt like saving the world--he was part Angeal now! And about how if they all worked together, they could all become heroes. No matter what happens, he's still Zack. Greatness.

So then he says, while saving Genesis is a good idea, they have to stop him from acquiring the gift of the goddess first, because...some reason that isn't clear. I guess he figures Genesis is so far gone now that getting his hands on massive power would be a bad idea. Where is he, we wonder? And then Zack takes a look at the apple in his hand and oh ho! He's in Banora, of course! I guess it's been a different apple every time. Which, you know, I thought they'd all been destroyed when we bombed the crap out of the place, but I guess not!

So we head on to Banora, which has been reduced to kind of a mini-crater infused with lifestream. Considering the dumbapples only grew there because of some quality of the soil, as Lazard tells me, I assume that Banora, like Mideel (or whatever it was called), is a place where the lifestream bubbles up from the depths of the earth, and bombing it brought it to the surface. I leave Lazard to protect Cloud (is that a good idea? Lazard is a sucky fighter...oh well!) and descend into the crater.

Down here there is apparently the remains of the factory. With...prison cells? And a lake, and some caves where Genesis has apparently stored some of his stuff. There's no solid explanation for why Shinra was funding the town's economy; I can only assume that in actuality the town was created by Shinra in the first place in order to have a remote place to hide everyone involved in Project G. I find a scrapbook or something of Genesis', and apparently he'd had this great idea to make juice out of the dumbapples and he won a prize for it or something, and his dream had been to serve the apples to the hero Sephiroth. But of course, yet another young man struck with hero worship for the great Sephy. Though at some point, Genesis decided he too could be that cool. You know, it just now occurred to me that I'd forgotten all about the bit at the very beginning when the VR Sephiroth pwned Zack and his response was "you're not the only hero!" Which is, I think, the same thing that Genesis said to Sephiroth in the flashback. Kinda neat.

Zack hopes he can find a way to save Genesis from degrading, and moves on. Eventually I go through some room where the lifestream is crystallizing into monsters as well as actual crystals, and then some prison where I couldn't find the key to the door where the boss was and decided I didn't care that much, and then finally to the room with the big shiny door. On the way I'd managed to pick up all seven "goddess materia" (whatever those are supposed to be) and also to see two or three more of Cloud's DMW scenes (yay!) and also one more of Cissnei's. The latter was hilarious, it was about how Tseng always wears a suit, even on the beach. :P There was also an elevator that wasn't available for use, and even after I opened the big door and it was like "Genesis is past here, are you sure you want to go?" and I said no and went back, the elevator was still unavailable, so who knows what I was supposed to do with that.

Oh yeah, and there was a fight with a Genesis copy here. Is this the one that was supposed to be hard? >_> I already knew his pattern because I'd seen one like him before, he wasn't very difficult to dodge. His big Stranglehold attack wasn't very scary either, Hollander did more damage than this guy.

So into the shiny door we go! And there is Genesis, quoting Loveless at me, in a room with a big statue in the middle, holding a huge shiny thing. Materia, I guess, or at least some kind of mass of gathered lifestream. Genesis appears to think that this is the gift of the goddess. Though, he says, being able to even ask the question is also in itself a gift. Zack is confused (I don't blame him!) and tries to get Genesis to understand that he has come to help him, and that Genesis isn't a monster, but a SOLDIER! But Genesis isn't really listening, and he says that the planet has become his guardian (...okay?) and that we'll all return to the planet...even Zack. And then of course he transforms into some manner of giant monster thing.

Oh, and Genesis claimed something like Loveless had finally been reenacted since Zack had inherited the spirit of Angeal and the cells of Sephiroth, and so the three friends were reunited, and Zack was like "No, you're wrong!" I guess Genesis was trying to imply that reenacting Loveless would bring about the end of the world via the beasts, or something, so that then he could use the gift of the goddess to save the world and be a better hero than Sephiroth? The game was pretty vague about all this, but this is about what I could glean of Genesis' motivations. Kinda weak, honestly, and it seems a bit contrived, but whatever. Genesis was by far the least relevant part of this game for me anyway. It was a story about Zack and his growth as a person. Don't care about Genesis.

This fight was kind of lame, honestly. I've never liked fights with big giant monsters as much as fights with relatively human-sized opponents, because they end up being fairly boring. This wasn't really an exception. Especially since Shadow Flare was easy to dodge and the little guys were just kind of a nuisance. I did end up getting Meteor Shots about a zillion times though. XD Hooray for Cloud! (It helped that at one point during the fight, I got a limit verge that gave me not two but THREE ones, which leveled the materia that upped the chances of getting Meteor Shots to master level and I had a x10 chance of getting it after that. >_>) So I defeat him, and everything goes white, and afterward he's back to regular old Genesis again. Without the degradation, no less. I guess the lifestream healed him?

So why is he insisting that I fight him? Zack says something like "Wait, you knew all along?" But I couldn't figure out what he was talking about. It was in response to Genesis quoting the bit of Loveless that talks about "In my salvation, and your eternal slumber." Knew what...? Meh, whatever. Zack is getting really frustrated with all these people pushing him into things like this all the time, but he brings out the Buster Sword anyway--time to end you, Genesis, since you're a jerk who won't listen. This is a cooler fight than the last one (not that that's not hard to accomplish) and then eventually he backs off and heads instead toward the shiny statue. The FMV bit here, in Genesis' mind, indicated to me that he was dying and imagining that he was finally coming to accept the gift of the goddess. So maybe Genesis wanted Zack to kill him so that he could become one with the planet and accept the gift? It would make some sense, I guess, that originally he'd wanted Angeal and/or Sephiroth to be the ones to do it but they were gone, so Zack would have to be good enough. The duel between friends, as depicted in Loveless. But apparently the "goddess" decided Genesis wasn't cool enough. Rejected! No gift for you!

Not really certain what that was all about. Linking it to FFVII, about the only thing I can come up with is that he tried to access Holy, but not being an Ancient he couldn't do it. That makes sense, I'll go with that. So Zack, feeling sorry for Genesis, carries him back outside, where Lazard and Cloud are waiting. But Shinra attacked while Zack was gone, and Lazard managed to protect Cloud but seems to have nearly died in the process. Cloud probably also would have been dead meat if it hadn't been for...the Angeal copy monster from the church, which apparently showed up to help and was also fatally wounded. ;_;

Zack picks apples for each of them, and oh hey, look at the symbolism. Cloud in the chair with Lazard and Genesis on either side, the three friends: Genesis, "Angeal," and "Sephiroth." Cute, I guess. Kinda heavy handed though. I get it, Loveless, no need to continue beating the horse. Then it turns out that Genesis isn't quite dead, and he says that they've achieved the gift of the goddess after all, the dream has been fulfilled. Zack doesn't get it, and I...don't quite get it either. I guess maybe he means the friends being reunited? The "bliss" that the three act summaries in the cave talked about? I don't even know. Whatever, Genesis.

And it turns out that the Angeal copy monster brought a letter from Aeris. It's been four years since he left for Nibelheim. Holy crap. No wonder Cloud was confused about how much time had passed...! Zack was conscious and he hadn't even known. Wow. And this is the 89th letter Aeris has written, but it'll be her last one, since she doesn't even know where to send them anymore. Zack's like hey, what do you mean the last one!? Then and there he resolves to get back to Midgar, and he takes Cloud and goes, leaving Genesis there, presumably for dead.

But no! Shinra shows up with some 1st class SOLDIERS to bring Genesis back! Well, I guess there are 1sts left somewhere. Maybe people have been recently promoted. Would make some sense. The voices sounded kind of familiar, and it sounded like I was supposed to know who they were given that they were like "I can't believe WE were sent to do this, blah blah", but I have no idea who they were supposed to be. They said something weird about how the subject was going to be their brother, but would he accept his fate? And they showed a tiny bit of one of their faces, and he had white hair like the degrading copies. Did they like...make more Angeal/Genesis copies and make them SOLDIERS? I have no idea. And then the lifestream finished the incomplete fourth act of Loveless? I think? Or something? I still do like that one line that Genesis always quoted though, "Even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall forestall my return."

Okay, finally, time to get to the good stuff! Tseng sends Cissnei out to find Zack before the army does, so that they can save his life. Yay, Tseng still likes me! And he has 88 letters from Aeris to give me. Cissnei goes off, and OH MAN RENO! Reno and Rude are out in a helicopter too, helping out, even though Reno seems kind of bored with the whole deal. :P The worst part about all this was, of course, that I already knew that the Turks would fail. Noooooo.

They showed a teeny bit of the scene with Zack and Cloud hitching a ride to Midgar (what happened to the motorcycle?) but I was disappointed that they didn't show the whole thing. I'd really liked that scene in FFVII, I wanted to see it here! Blah. But then it's the moment of truth. Zack finally runs into the army. He leaves Cloud behind a rock and goes out to face them. Obviously, he can't have expected to win this, but from his point of view, there was nothing else to be done. Perhaps he could hold them off long enough for someone to come and rescue Cloud, or for Cloud to regain consciousness and escape. If nothing else, as he reminds himself, he will have embraced his dreams, and upheld his honor as a SOLDIER.

I really liked the moment right before the battle, when Zack first put Cloud down and just paused to mess with his hair for a second. As if saying goodbye. And of course, the horrible moment when Zack turns his back and Cloud regains just enough of his senses to reach out, to try to tell him to wait, but it's too late. Aaaaggghh!

And man, they did a good job with the drama here, letting the player actually play through this fight. Honestly, I probably could have held them off for a good long while, but I liked the way the game forced you to lose...via the DMW. The first time I got a limit verge, there was clearly something weird about it, and then it dropped people from the reels. Zack was, one by one, saying goodbye to everyone he knew. Then there was a point at which I ran out of MP and started relying on potions instead, and I just let it happen because it helped enhance Zack's mounting desperation as the fight went on. Then I got another limit verge--and it was Cloud, even--and it dropped everyone but Aeris...and then Zack just couldn't continue.

Finally, with the sky darkening with clouds, Zack was slowing down. Three infantrymen, and Zack was so slow that I couldn't even kill one of them before getting my last limit verge. Goodbye, Aeris. And then they shot Zack about a thousand times. ;_;

The army left him for dead, and once they were gone, Cloud managed to make his way up to the cliff as it began to rain. But every good SOLDIER has time for last words, and man, this scene just about floored me. So. Sad. I loved the way Cloud seemed so lost, so out of it, barely able to grasp what Zack was telling him. He definitely got the "living legacy" part though, heh. And by passing his dreams and his honor on to Cloud, Zack was able to die with a smile on his face. Which was very fitting. And finally, at the moment that Zack died, Cloud caught up with reality and figured out what was going on, that Zack had given not only his life, but the last four years of his life, to save him. Poor Cloud. ;_; It was really neat to see the flashes of his memories of Zack from his point of view, remembering Zack's inspirational words, his smile. aaaagggghhhh so much tragedy.

And then he drags the Buster Sword as best he can across the muddy plains to Midgar, while Zack's departed spirit goes to join Angeal, hopes that if Cloud runs into Aeris he'll say hi for him, and wonders whether in the end, he'd become a hero. Of course you did, Zack! The end.

Hoo, wow. All that Genesis stuff ended up being kind of lame, but the end absolutely delivered. So good. And I loved the medley that played during the credits, all the orchestrations of FFVII music plus the "Zack" music at the end. And oh man, at the very end they had the FMV that leads into the beginning of FFVII! Or at least, part of it. (I'd seen the PS3 tech demo thing on youtube a while ago.) And it ends with Cloud jumping onto the train just like Zack did at the beginning. Which really made me wish there was a remake of FFVII with beautiful graphics that I could start playing right then. >_>

But okay! Crisis Core, finished! Overall, I really liked it a lot. I think the Genesis stuff could have been handled better, I didn't really like all the Loveless parallel stuff and the vaguely contrived nature of all of his plot. I kind of wish they hadn't tried to tack on this extra villain, it didn't really gel with the rest toward the end there. Otherwise though, it was pretty awesome. At some point I'll probably go back and finish all the missions, and try to figure out what was up with the rest of the "final dungeon," the elevator and whatnot.

Final character rankings go!

Zack = Sephiroth = Cloud > Angeal > Hojo > Tseng > Cissnei > Kunsel > Lazard > Aeris > Genesis > Yuffie > Hollander.

Kind of a cop-out, I guess, those first three, but I just can't decide who was more awesome. I loved all three of them. I have to wonder what it would be like to play this game before playing FFVII. On the one hand, I imagine some of it would have more of an impact because you wouldn't know it was coming; on the other hand, I can imagine that some of it wouldn't really make complete sense because they do skip things and gloss over things. And playing the whole game knowing that in the end Zack was going to die was an interesting experience in and of itself.

Now I want to find a translation of Before Crisis' story somewhere. Youtube time. Then Advent Children. Wooooo!

Addendum
Well, even in FFVII the Turks come to an understanding with Cloud and the rest. Reno decides not to report them to Shinra after Wutai, and then if you don't fight them at the end there's another place where the Turks kind of go "...yeah, we'll just pretend we didn't see this." I mean, they did a bunch of terrible things in the name of following orders, but Tseng does the same thing in Crisis Core. Zack expresses disgust for the destruction of Banora and Tseng is like *shrug* That's my job. Cissnei is the only one who directly disobeys orders to save Zack; Tseng still wants them to bring him back, he just wants them to bring him back alive. And I get the feeling that he only wanted that for Aeris' sake, not Zack's. The Turks' behavior between the two games didn't seem inconsistent to me.

As far as Sephiroth...well, for one thing, I haven't seen Advent Children yet. >_> But this was another thing that didn't strike me as inconsistent. I don't think that Sephiroth literally thought that Jenova was his mother. It was pretty clear from Project G that the Jenova cells were used in an experiment that involved actual parents, and he did plenty of research on that. It was more a metaphorical thing, that he figured well, if I'm to be an inhuman monster, then I suppose it's only fitting that I adopt another inhuman monster as my "mother," since I never knew my real parents.

As for Hojo, we have plenty of evidence that he regularly kept what he knew from other people at Shinra--Rufus warns him about it a few times in FFVII and he displays plenty of disregard for anyone else's right to know what he knows in Crisis Core. I have no problem believing that he happily allowed others to think that Jenova was an Ancient so that they would continue using it for experiments and he could do whatever he felt like.

Yeah--see, this is what I didn't like about him. He was contriving this big silly petty plot so that he could say "look, Sephiroth, I'm just as cool as you, so nyah!" The whole Loveless parallel thing just struck me as so overdone and pointless. And if his only reason for wanting Zack to fight him was so that he could recreate the epic duel for no good reason, I like him even less. >_>