Satai's Final Fantasy VII Playthrough

satai delenn chronicles her journey throughout the vast land of Final Fantasy VII for the first time. However, it appears that she already knew about a certain spoiler in advance thanks to the internet.

Post 1
Yep, first time playing FFVII, here we go. Possibly not as long-winded as my usual fare, but we'll see. (…okay, I just came back to this paragraph after finishing. This is kind of a lie. >_>) I just played the first nine or so hours of the game, I stopped just after leaving Midgar for the first time. Starting from the beginning, thoughts...

General stuff first. The graphics aren't as terrible as I'd been expecting, though granted I'd been expecting really bad graphics. You can actually occasionally make out faces on the battle sprites if they're close enough to the camera. The soundtrack is a bit underwhelming for an FF game, but that may improve, so I'll give it a chance. (I do like the basic battle theme.) The Materia system is pretty cool, though it does make the characters kind of interchangeable in some ways. It'd be worse if I went out of my way to buy multiples of all the Materia, so I haven't done so, and I’ve been trying to keep certain characters using certain Materia when I can. The game has been pretty good so far about letting me switch them around when they split us up, so I'm not too worried on that score. (Plus the game hasn't been hard at all, no game overs thus far, and that's including a fight where I accidentally had only Cloud equipped with any Materia.)

The action-packed opening was good, hey there Biggs and Wedge, whoa we're terrorists blowing up a reactor. Starting off with a bang, har har. Of the Avalanche lackeys though, I like Jessie best. I deliberately gave Cloud all the jerk responses to the other two and nice responses to Jessie after that first time I helped Jessie with his injured leg. I think Cloud emphasizes his ex-SOLDIER status like ten times in the first half hour of the game, and that plus some other things (Barret: "Lookit you, waltzing in here, making a big scene." Cloud: "Yeah, that's what I always do") give me a first impression of Cloud as a little bit of a dick and fairly full of himself, but not in a bad way.

So we blow up the reactor and escape with time to spare, and I run into Aeris in the alley. In keeping with my perceived characterization of Cloud at the time and probably a bit influenced by my predisposition to dislike her because of Kingdom Hearts, I gave her the jerk response and kept going. Turns out we all live in the slums because The Man I mean Shinra is keeping us all down while the rich live up on a huge platform. Sucks to be us! My first impression of Tifa wasn't very positive, but being a bartender gave her immediate cool points and the "promise" she talked about wasn't quite as lame as I'd expected, so it all evened out. Barret, incidentally, reminds me a bit of TWEWY's Beat. Not a bad thing. Oh yeah, and I hadn't in a million years expected Tifa to refer to the game's villain as "The Great Sephiroth." Weird! I'll be interested to see where that goes.

So Cloud gets bullied/coerced into accepting another job for more money (Marlene's schoolin' money, at that--damn Cloud, you are cold) and we go off to sector 5 to blow up another reactor. It's interesting that the main characters are actually willing to kill innocents for the greater good--most games draw clear lines in the sand about stuff like that, so props to FFVII for being a bit darker. Unfortunately for us, President Shinra set a trap for us and we never did get to blow the second reactor because we were too busy fighting for our lives and then falling into churches. Oh hey, it's Aeris again, and Cloud smushed the flowers. >_> Whoops.

Post 2
At first the whole flower girl thing was kind of eye-rolling...until the game made it clear that having flowers at all in Midgar was a pretty big feat. But she immediately destroyed that vaguely positive note by pulling a Rinoa and asking Cloud to accept a date with her as payment for protecting her on the way home when the Turks showed up to kidnap her. (Or "recruit her to be a SOLDIER", ha ha--lord, she's a terrible liar. XD) Gameplaywise this was pretty neat though, since I had the choice of doing something creative (knocking the barrels on their heads), skipping past all that (run, Aeris, run!), or doing what I did and getting her some XP by fighting on her own (the Turks were wuss-ass, gotta say). And I got to meet Reno, who seemed pretty cool from this brief introduction.

Take Aeris home, try to sneak out, she comes with me anyway, blah blah...have to give her credit for just matter-of-factly showing up and being like "well, obviously I wasn't going to fall for that, haha." Less Rinoa-esque now, which is nice. And then oh god, Don Corneo. I laughed SO HARD at this whole thing. Aeris gained major points when I realized that the only reason she suggested that Cloud dress up like a woman was because she thought it would be hilarious. If that hadn't been the case, she would have just been like "I told you, I'm used to danger, I can handle it myself" and gone in without him. It's a shame the graphics are so incomprehensible, Cloud in a dress could have been a lot funnier...but it was pretty funny as it was. Especially since I didn't fully absorb the extent of the ridiculousness of his hair until there were braids attached to it. XD And man, he even changed the way he walked! And folded his hands in front of him all demurely! So great. And I loved his reveal, too-- "No, I'll be fine...because...I ain't INTERESTED in scum like you!" *throw off the dress and kick ass*

Oh yeah, haha, the conversation when Tifa and Aeris meet was so facepalmable. All this vaguely jealous subtext and Cloud was just not listening at all, over in his corner going ("oh god I don't want to face Tifa looking like this"). :P I'm told that if I'd done the little fetchquest differently, Don Corneo would have chosen someone other than Tifa to go to his room--I wish I'd done it so that he'd chosen Cloud, that would have been great. Ah well. Also great was the interrogation of Corneo, when he balks and Cloud leans in and confides that if Corneo doesn't cooperate, "...I'll chop them off." Immediately mirrored by Aeris, which I didn't expect at all and man, the thought of her saying "If you don't...I'll rip them off" just puts a smile on my face.

Unfortunately, Cloud (and I, actually) underestimated Corneo, and he dropped us into the sewer. Blegghh. Also it turns out that Shinra's planning to destroy the support under the plate that covers Sector 7 and just smash the whole thing to smithereens just to eliminate Avalanche. Well...crap. In true FF fashion, this game has little minor NPCs with their own little stories that end up coming up in poignant ways later, like the guy who had been looking up at the support column earlier on and telling Cloud that he could come look at it with him whenever he wanted. OH and the guy on the train platform talking about how he's become numb over the years to the joy and pain he witnesses every day, which came up again in my mind later when Aeris' "mom" told her backstory.

We make our way back to sector 7 just in time to see the rest of the members of Avalanche on their deathbeds (nooooo Jessie!) and Reno setting the bomb. Then I get to fight Reno, which is really cool because his weapon appears to be some manner of giant taser. Plus I like his style, what little I've seen of it so far. We kick his ass and he escapes, but then it turns out that we can't actually disarm the bomb anyway, AND the Turks have got Aeris. We manage to escape the blast just barely, but the rest of the sector is crushed utterly. Biggs and Wedge and Jessie and everyone are all dead. D:

Going to Aeris' house nets us some interesting information, like how Aeris is an Ancient with weird powers who's supposed to inherit the earth or somesuch. She's not THAT meek...! >_> Anyway, Marlene is okay, much to Barret's and my relief, and then Tifa and Barret decide to come with Cloud to rescue Aeris since they feel responsible for her getting involved/kidnapped. After hearing some more about Aeris' life and realizing that, while she did get herself involved to begin with, a) it must suck to have Shinra after you all the time and b) she did give herself up to save Marlene, I'm beginning to warm to her a little bit. Certainly one could not quite call her a stereotypical damsel in distress, at least. Tifa's also gotten cooler over time than my first impression suggested.

So to get up to Shinra's headquarters, we climb. A lot. (Shiny gold wire of hope!) And then we get there and go up. A LOT. Of stairs. I liked this part because it was fun watching Cloud catch up to and then surpass them on every floor as they got more and more tired. "We can't all be big tough ex-SOLDIERs." :P Also fun hearing Barret and Tifa banter back and forth a bit. We infiltrate the building, solve some puzzles to advance (I really liked the one with the mayor and the library files), and reach a floor where a conference is being held. Sometimes it's the little things: I'd noted earlier in the game that this was one of the only RPGs I could think of that allowed you to go into the bathrooms everywhere, and here was a place where it was actually relevant! They talk about the Promised Land and Neo-Midgar and how Palmer and his space program won't get any of the extra money from some kind of Mako rate boost (not sure exactly what that's all about yet, but Palmer was pretty funny--lay off the sugar, man) and then I get to meet Hojo.

I'd heard vague things about him, mostly just that he was an evil scientist. Well, he is. And how. Pretty much the epitome of the calculating, emotionally distant mad scientist type. From the little I've seen so far, I like him. We follow him and end up in a lab containing two weird things: a "specimen" (who I knew was Red XIII before I actually met him) and "Jenova". I've heard the name (and the song) but couldn't tell you who/what it is, which is nice. It looked to me like some kind of freakish blobby thing, from the little peek I saw before Cloud kinda freaked. I have a very bad feeling about the weird things that have been going on in Cloud's head so far--a weird voice, flashes of red, and every once in a while a flash of white with some static. That's the one that worries me the most--the only specific time I can remember is when Aeris asked him what SOLDIER rank he'd been. Makes me think of subliminal manipulation and stuff. Scary! Oh, speaking of the scene where Aeris asked him that, that was also the conversation in which she confided to Cloud that her previous boyfriend had also been a first-class SOLDIER. Curious. My first instinct was "...is she talking about Sephiroth?" Came to mind again when I learned that both of them are Ancients. But I guess we'll see.

So we go up and interrupt Hojo's horrific breeding experiment, fight a beast thing while he escapes, and meet Red XIII. So far I agree with Barret's assessment: "You're so boring." But then, I've only had him in the party for about half an hour, so I think it's fair to say I'll probably get more out of him. We split up and end up waltzing right into a trap. Again. Man, we just don't learn, do we? The Turks seem pretty cool so far, I'm looking forward to seeing more of them. So we get thrown into prison, whoops. Only after taking a nap, Cloud discovers that something horrible has happened inside the building--everyone appears to be dead and there's a very unsettling trail of blood leading from the container where Jenova used to be up to the top floor.

And we go upstairs to find that President Shinra...is dead. Impaled by a sword that can apparently only be wielded by the one and only Sephiroth. I continue to be intrigued by all the mystery the game is purposefully creating about him--almost ten hours into the game and I still haven't seen the main villain yet. What I didn't realize until that scene was that he was thought to be dead until that point. Interesting! Which explains why they thought Aeris was the last surviving Ancient, too. Meeting a lot of new characters here, as Rufus Shinra--the late President's son--shows up in a helicopter to claim his father's position. Three figures now that seem to be working in tandem: Rufus Shinra, Sephiroth, and Jenova (though for the latter I use the word "figure" loosely). Rufus promises to be a pretty darn sinister villain, since his father's idea of absolute power through money and manipulation wasn't good enough--he requires absolute power through fear and intimidation. Yikes. :(

Cloud pulls a very protagonist sort of move and shoos the rest of the party to escape while he deals with Rufus--surprisingly, they go with that without much argument. Usually games make a big deal of this sort of thing, it's refreshing for the party to just go ahead and let the main character play hero. Cloud must have really impressed them with his "I'm an ex-SOLDIER, this means I'm truly badass" spiel early on. Barret, Aeris, and Red fight some robots on moving elevators--this would have been so much cooler with good graphics, it was an awesome concept--and then as Cloud I get to fight Rufus. He has a shotgun and some kind of tentacle cat thing! But I have Materia and a sword bigger than he is. Guess who wins! Though damn it was impressive when he leapt off the roof and grabbed the helicopter one-handed to escape. :P

All of this is followed by the single most badass thing I've seen in a while, which is Cloud riding a damn motorcycle down about thirty million flights of stairs and then crashing through the window in a flying leap onto the highway. THIS is the motorcycle scene! I knew some FF game had a motorcycle scene in it, but I'd thought it was FF8, so when there wasn't one in FF8 I thought I must have imagined it. But no! Turns out that with me at the controls, Cloud's a sucky motorcyclist...but we made it anyway, and this is the part where I was so busy trying to kill Shinra goons that I forgot to switch my Materia around before the fight with the freaking Bat-Tank. It turned out fine though, we all got Limit Break (Barret got it twice) and Cloud took care of all our Materia needs, it was a grand old time.

Now we're heading northeast to someplace called Kalm to regroup and figure out how to stop Rufus and Sephiroth from "getting" the Promised Land. Whatever that means. That's not been made very clear. One thing is bothering me right now, which is primary motivation for Cloud--he mentions that he has to "settle the score" between him and Sephiroth, but hell if he's ever mentioned what kind of score or why or anything. I can only trust the game and assume that when the question gets answered it'll be answered in-character and not in some stupid "just accept this" way. It bothered me a little that none of the other characters asked him about it, but we'll see. Oh yeah, random comment, the fact that Cloud was infused with Mako when he was a SOLDIER and thus his eyes are weirdly glowy is kinda neat. (Why is SOLDIER always capitalized like that, anyway? I guess to vastly differentiate it from regular ol' "soldier.")

Will probably play more tomorrow, so stay tuned! So far I'm not getting a "BEST GAME EVER" vibe, but it's interesting and pretty good. It's at least got me looking forward to seeing more out of the characters, though thus far none of them have really jumped out and grabbed me. Not even enough to make an inequality yet.

Gameplay notes: made Aeris my primary healer, of course; she’s also my primary spellcaster, though Cloud’s magic stat is so good that I always give him Element + Lightning and usually a Fire spell so he's got both at hand for casting. A lot of our enemies have been mechanized, so Lightning has been really useful. Barret does healing when Aeris isn’t around and I gave him Cover because he has high Defense and a crapton of HP, that works out well. (Though Cloud had Cover for a while and I found that vaguely appropriate.) I don’t ever give Tifa any spells because I don’t want to lower her physical stats, so she generally gets things like Steal (she started off with a high Dex and I ran with it) and Sense and Enemy Skill (haven’t gotten to use it yet, I assume I just haven’t hit an enemy yet on which I can use it). I…haven’t used Red XIII yet when it wasn’t required, he doesn’t seem all that interesting to me, but that could easily change.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: the tutorial was hilarious. Not only was it a turnaround in which instead of some other character explaining things to Cloud, it's Cloud going "psh, I have plenty of experience--I was a SOLDIER, you know, I'll tell you anything you want to know!", but it also had awesome things like "Finger? What the hell??" "I'm the pointer!" "You stand out more than I do, geez." and "I'm the save point, I'll probably see you again--" *interrupt* "Look at me, I'm the treasure chest, don't forget me!" XD

Addendum to Post 2
Hmm, initial character rankings. Very very roughly, something like...

Reno > Hojo > Cloud > Barret > Tifa > Aeris > Rufus > others.

And wow, a fully explorable Midgar would be pretty sweet. It really is a neat setting, the slums in particular being made mostly of discarded trash and the dregs of society was an interesting thing to see as I wandered around. The train graveyard was cool. I did wonder though how Aeris' house managed to be a normal house amidst all this. Also there were flowers all over that area despite Aeris saying that they only bloomed in the church...! >_>

Post 3
Well. That got...interesting. The quick version: I just got put into a desert prison under the giant scary casino. wtf Cait Sith.

Let's rewind. I headed off to Kalm and okay yeah so the game really did explain Cloud's beef with Sephiroth. v_v The extended flashback was pretty cool, I really liked the mansion itself, oddly enough. It was a well-designed setting and fit the mood perfectly. Actually, the whole thing was well-"directed", if that makes sense--cinematic camera angles, the Sephiroth Does Research montage, timing, all of that stuff was well-done. It was interesting to see Cloud as a teenager being impressionable and full of hero worship, and then watching his hero lose his mind. So Sephiroth was created by the late Professor Gast from the DNA of a dead Cetra--like Jurassic Park but with fewer raptors. (Forgive me, it's nearly 7 am.) I begin to see why people like Sephiroth, though I've really only had contact with his 5-years-ago self thus far; his transition from slightly aloof prodigy SOLDIER to homicidal madman was made in a suitably dramatic way and it's hard not to think it's pretty horrifyingly impressive to watch him impale townsfolk on his gigantic sword and then walk off through the flames of a dying village. Also fighting with Sephiroth "in the party" was pretty cool--like when the monster killed Cloud outright with one blast of fire and then Sephiroth fairly chopped the thing in half. Lord, the Masamune is ridiculously huge. I kept thinking he was going to accidentally decapitate Cloud with his win pose.

A few minor interesting things as well, like the bits of Cloud's memory that are missing (both the major chunk--what happened after he challenged Sephiroth?--and the little chunks--why couldn't he remember the whole conversation with his mother?) and the fact that Tifa was in some unknown mystery place when Cloud and Sephiroth arrived in Nibelheim, brought up by the voice that keeps popping up in Cloud's head. A thought that occurs: when they visited Jenova in the flashback, nothing strange happened to Cloud, but when they saw it (her?) back at Shinra Headquarters, he freaked out. Same as the other couple of times he freaked out, like at the two reactors. What's different now? I love mysteries.~

Also, orthopedic underwear. XD

After all that, we follow rumors of Sephiroth sightings east and I begin to wonder why Red XIII is still with us...? Have gotten no explanation as of yet. Haha, oh man, it's the Midgar Zolom! I figured I'd try to fight it once and then if I died I'd just grab a chocobo now and kill it later. Lo and behold, the Zolom did bestow upon me my one and only game over thus far (mostly because I ran out of Phoenix Downs, but what the hell is Beta??) so I got a chocobo and went to Junon. Well, I went to Fort Condor first, but at the time I didn't have nearly enough money to participate in the battle, so I figured I'd come back later.

"High-voltage tower? Cloud can totally handle that for us! Right, Cloud?" "...uh...sure." XD Cloud made a terrible grunt soldier, as it took me like ten tries to get the parade right. He freaking told me to get into line from the back, but that's obviously not what he actually wanted me to do...! Bah. I kicked ass at the other little performance though, got a great sword from Rufus for it. Ooh, and I ran into Reno in the Turks' little hideout thingy but of course he didn't recognize me since I was in a Shinra uniform. Tseng told me earlier that Reno wants to meet us again because he has a new weapon or something--looking forward to that!

We get on the boat, Barret looks hilarious, and then uh...Sephiroth kills a bunch of people. Wagh. We run down to intercept only to find that he doesn't recognize Cloud and is talking some nonsense, and then we get attacked by Jenova as Sephiroth...flies away or something. Wha...?? a) He can fly? b) I thought Jenova was the remains of a person 2000 years dead, why and how is it attacking me? (Maybe those should be in reverse order.) I did get to fight to the Jenova music though, which was cool.

Well, either way, we smack Jenova around for a while and then arrive at Costa del Sol, where we...run into Hojo on the beach and talk to him as he's trying to get a tan while wearing his lab coat (what?) and surrounded by bikini-clad women (what?). That was pretty weird. Though I did like how amused he was by the fact that we couldn't kill him because he had more information than we did. Hee. Heading into the mountains, falling repeatedly off this roller coaster thing, following more rumors of Sephiroth sightings, fun times.

Then Tifa told Cloud that his hair looked like a chocobo and then I killed some chicks' mothers in order to get some materia despite Aeris and Tifa thinking the chicks were really cute. >_> And then we found ourselves in what was left of Barret's hometown. Dude needs to stop blaming himself, though I understand his feelings. Poor Barret. We continue tracking Sephiroth until we arrive at the Gold Saucer, the Vegas of FFVII, complete with terrifying brightly colored things and a ridiculous need to spend all my money. It costs GP just to save the game, and you can't even go back out to do it once you've entered without having to pay the entrance fee again (or buy the lifetime pass but oh god why would I want to come back). I took Tifa with me and wandered around the casino for a while--I do have to love the Ghost Hotel--and then I met Dio, who told me that Sephiroth was poking around asking about Black Materia (sounds ominous). And then I met Cait Sith, who gave me a few silly bogus fortunes and then managed to tell me that I would get what I pursued but I would lose something dear.

Unfortunately I do already know that Aeris is going to die at some point (couldn't really avoid THAT one, alas, and it's why I've been giving Cloud all the Mind Sources instead of her) so this fortune lost a lot of its impact. Still, it's a neat little detail, kind of reminiscent of Chrono Trigger. And then Cait Sith up and decides it's going to join the party whether I want it or not. O...kay. I lose two chocobo races (really wish you could skip watching the whole damn thing) but then manage to pick up 80 GP in one of those claw machines (what the hell, they never work out that well in real life...!) and win an arm wrestling match. But the casino kind of gives me a headache, with the lights and the colors and the incessant carnival music, so I was glad when I went to the Battle Square and the music changed.

At first we think that all these Shinra guys were killed by Sephiroth, but no--they'd been shot, not sliced. Oh god, Barret. Stupid Aeris and her wrong ideas about how to cheer someone up. >_> Though really, I don't think she caused anything that wouldn't have happened anyway, he was already in a terrible mood and her idea wasn't a bad one. Can't blame her for that. Before we can get out of there, though, Dio and the police show up and arrest us. ...well, crap.

And we end up in the desert prison, where I spend a little while fighting random creepy things and finding Barret before hitting the save point and stopping. Cait Sith's got the die-rolling random damage Limit Break, which is neat, though I feel like this character is going to be largely useless since its stats are crappy compared to my normal party and Manipulate didn't work any of the seven or so times I tried it. Oh well. Also, the damn bouncy ball monsters keep Self Destructing and causing like 500 damage to a party member, which wouldn't be so bad if Aeris didn't have all my healing materia. Somewhere else. >:-|

Gameplay stuff, let's see. I've got a good spread of materia now, a wide range of different types of effects, and some of them are finally beginning to level up. Tifa's thievery is juuuust beginning to actually work a decent percentage of the time, and OH YEAH I just got Climhazzard for Cloud which does a ridiculously insane amount of damage. FFIX nostalgia, woooo. (Yeah yeah, this one came first, whatever. :P) Aeris has a second Limit now, Silence on all enemies, occasionally useful. I have three summons, I gave Shiva to Cloud and Ifrit and Choco/Mog to Tifa. (The latter is pretty scary, but it's the only Wind attack I've got at the moment and it does decent damage.) I've been primarily taking Tifa and Aeris in the party, figuring that after Aeris leaves I'll make Barret my healer. I just don't know what to do with Red XIII, his lack of motivation and backstory are really sapping my interest in using him for anything. He did have a few amusing lines, I guess. >_>

Also in random treasure chests I've picked up two weapons no one can use currently, a shuriken looking thing (for Yuffie, I assume) and a Peacemaker revolver (for Vincent, I assume). Haven't run across either of them yet, but I'm kind of looking forward to expanding my party options and spreading the materia around a little more. Though Cloud does make a good black mage in addition to a swordy type dude, his magic stat remains better than most. I would have made Aeris my black mage but getting All + Restore, along with Heal and Revive, didn't leave her many open slots even with Four Slots equipped. She does also have Bio and Ice 2 though.

You guys were right, leaving Midgar made this game feel a lot more like a standard FF game than it did before. Not a terrible thing, but I did like the unique feel of Midgar while I was there. I haven't seen Reno in a while, nor have I seen much of any of the other Shinra-related characters, so my inequality is pretty much the same as it was before. Possibly Hojo has dropped below Cloud/Barret/Tifa/Aeris just because I've seen a lot more of them than I have of him lately. Unrelatedly, I wish there were fewer moogle references in this game. >_>

Addendum to Post 3
Oh right, Sephiroth, time for a new ranking. Hmm, let's see...

Cloud > Sephiroth > Reno > Barret > Tifa > Hojo > Aeris > Rufus > others.

I guess there was some shifting, mostly due to lack of further screentime from some of the characters since we've been gallivanting around looking for Sephiroth instead of interacting with them. :P The gap between most of these isn't that big though, really.

Post 4
Okay. So the guy who follows you around in the desert going "Ha ha ha" is kind of creepy, as are the three dudes who tell only lies and echo each other. Lots of Barret backstory here, as we discover the rest of what happened back when Shinra destroyed Corel. Dyne is alive, though, has a gun arm just like Barret, and is a bitter, bitter man. I liked the duel a lot and the scene that followed it, though it made me wonder why the game bothered to make me choose who else to bring since they didn't do anything. It's done that a few times, actually.

So after a really good scene, Cloud becomes a chocobo jockey in order for us to get the heck out of here, and the race took me three tries to win, mostly because I didn't know the course well enough and kept misjudging how much I had left to go. Ah well. Dio's letter was pretty great-- "Hey, I just met Sephiroth, isn't he awesome, you must just love him, here's where he's headed, go get his autograph!" His autograph, sure. Maybe he'll write it in my blood after he impales us all like a huge kebab. >_>

So our wild goose chase for Sephiroth continues, in a little red car, and like I said, I happened to have Tifa and Aeris in my party when I went to investigate the ruined reactor. Apparently Zack is quite the ladies' man but now he's missing and nobody's heard from him in a long time. I keep seeing weird little parallels with FF8 in this game, like the little Zack-Aeris-Cloud deal reminds me a bit of the Seifer-Rinoa-Squall deal. Other stuff too, though I can't think of what they were right now. Not much else to see here, other than I think I picked up some materia or other. Oh right, and I ran into some Turks too! I got to fight Reno again but he had the same weapon as before, and this time he had Rude as well. This fight was disappointingly easy and over way too fast. Come back, Reno, I want more screentime out of you! Bah. And then Scarlet and Tseng showed up and discussed how they were looking for some huge materia for an ultimate weapon. Yikes.

Then I ran around in the forest for a while until I found Yuffie. And then I ended up having to fight her four times because she kept responding unpredictably and running off with my money! XD Eventually I figured out the correct responses to get her to actually join the party, as opposed to giving me the option to name her and then running away again. I have to say, though, it was pretty disappointing that she's completely irrelevant to the plot, at least for now. She had no reason at all to join the party other than "let's fight again! I'll totally win next time!", even less of one than Red XIII had. But as long as she gets cool later, I won't mind too much.

Driving around, I found a little house but no one was home and Cloud insisted that we had to come back later. Who knows what that was all about. So onward to Cosmo Canyon! I like the music here, it's only the second song I've really liked (the first was Jenova's fight song). Red XIII's real name is Nanaki and it turns out he's pretty cool...and only like 16 years old, relatively, which surprised me as much as it surprised Cloud. I liked Red's story a lot, and I loved the scene that ended with him howling at the moon beneath the watchful gaze of his father's petrified corpse. Also interesting was talking with his grandpa and the elders about what they think of the Ancients and such...if the elder is right, Sephiroth is under some very very major misconceptions about the Promised Land. This could be fairly disastrous if, in his extremely fragile state of mind, he finds out that actually, "reaching the Promised Land" was the Cetra's way of saying "we're glad to die." >_> On the bright side, at least if that's the case there's no land of power for the Shinra to find. They'll just ruin the world under their own power instead, much better.

Noteworthy conversations by the Cosmo Candle included Aeris' feelings of loneliness at being the last of her kind (aw come on, cheer up, babe, you've still got Sephiroth!...) and Tifa being on the cusp of saying something useful about that day five years ago but instead asking Cloud for reassurance that he's really him. Innnnteresting. Something to do with his memory blanks, I imagine...but what does Tifa know about that? Where had she been that day? Soooo curious.

Next stop, this little town over here...oh god it's Nibelheim. What?? I can't express to you how spine-chiling it was to walk around that town and have people say things like "What kind of sick person are you, suggesting that this town burnt down? I've been here all my life." Also? CREEP-ASS, these hunched black-robed guys with numbers saying things about the Great Sephiroth and some manner of Reunion. I'm flashing back to the guy we found in Sector 6 in Midgar who had the number 2 tattooed onto his hand and was babbling incoherently. (That guy were sick. *nod*) So...creepy...and then I find, where the letter had been on the desk in Tifa's room, a report from Hojo. About how they completely rebuilt Nibelheim as a perfect copy of itself and replaced the townspeople with Shinra staff, and how it was working just fine because nobody who ever came here knew about the events of five years ago. And something about experimental clones who babbled about Sephiroth. These black-caped numbered guys, of course, and I think they might have been implying that the clones were the creatures in the pods from the flashback. You know...between this and Tifa's comment earlier and Sephiroth's comment later, I'm beginning to think it's possible that Cloud did die in that fight with Sephiroth five years ago. Or something like it. If this Cloud were some kind of clone, it would explain why his memory is spotty, if they didn't do a perfect job. AND OH MAN! It would explain why Cloud wasn't affected by Jenova the first time he encountered it but was the second time! Whoa. Still not sure about the voice in his head--well, maybe the voice is "Cloud." Like, the original Cloud. Yaaaaagh what a weird thought. Anyway, enough speculation.

Mansion time. Oh god, so so freaky being here again, creepy music and all, knowing Sephiroth is here, what horrible thing is going to happen this time. I managed to solve the puzzle to open the safe on my own, a fun puzzle, though it took me three or four tries to actually input the combination in under 20 seconds. >_> Fought the boss, got the basement key and some other stuff out of it, went and talked to Vincent. How creepy is this, a Turk that Hojo experimented on and then put to sleep and stuck in the basement of a mansion in a town nobody ever came to. In a coffin, no less. D: Gahhh. His story about Lucrecia didn't make things any better. This was a much more interesting joining-the-party situation, a plot-related vendetta against Hojo, and I swapped Aeris out for Vincent here. I wanted Tifa around because I figured she'd be relevant to things going on with Nibelheim and Sephiroth, though it ended up not mattering.

Sephiroth, you are out of your damn mind. I got chills during his conversation with Cloud. Are you going to join the Reunion? No? ...I see. I don't think you're fit to come to the Reunion. And then he flew off in that really disturbing way of his--why can he fly??--after chucking a Destruct materia at my face. Why did he throw this at me? I have no idea. But now I have DeBarrier and DeSpell and Death. Neat.

Then on the way out I looked to see if any of the books in here were readable. Oh, they certainly were. They talked about Escapees A and B--pretty obviously Cloud and Sephiroth--and man, the more I hear the more I think Cloud died; apparently, according to the report, Escapee A (Cloud?) was SHOT in the process of resisting "arrest" and Escapee B (Sephiroth?) got away while that was going on, but they didn't see the need to hunt for him given his declining awareness. Good job, Hojo. Maaaannn I want more information! The only bad thing about all this is the utter lack of reaction from the characters, there's no conversation about all these things I'm finding. Ah well. It's still spine-tingly!

But no, no time for more information right now, I'm going to stay in suspense because it's time to start our Sephiroth scavenger hunt again. Crossing Mount Nibel netted me some sweet items, including a Counterattack materia wooooo! I love Counterattack. Cover + Counterattack = Cloud killing a lot of things. ^_^ Vincent is fun to use, lots of gun-twirling--especially when you use Deathblow with him, he's a regular Ocelot with that move--and okay, I don't understand his Limit Break at ALL but it's...neat, I guess. Why does he turn into a beast...? No explanation for that, but I have to assume there WILL be one. What was really irritating was that when I fought the huge boss that stands in your way at the exit of the cavern, I hadn't tried Vincent's Limit Break yet, so he got it right at the beginning and I went for it. Then he proceeded to keep doing Beast Flare, on a boss that ABSORBS FIRE. Ugggghhh. Good thing Cloud has Meteorain, otherwise I'm not sure I could have kept up with dealing more damage than Vincent was healing.

Anyway, time to leave Mount Nibel behind and check out Rocket Town. Despite already knowing who Cid was from Kingdom Hearts, I didn't realize that the "Captain" was going to be him until I actually saw his sprite up in the rocket. I actually really like his story, the pilot who got screwed out of his lifelong dream to be the first man in space. By a woman who apparently loved him so much she was perfectly willing to fry herself to a crisp in order to make sure there was no problem with his oxygen tanks. No wonder their "relationship" is so screwed up.

The tea scene was awesome despite having heard the best quote from it before. Also? What in the hell is wrong with Palmer. This is the weirdest freaking little man I have ever seen in my life. Who puts lard in tea, for one thing. For another, his "boss fight" was SO SURREAL. The spanking and the bizarre little dance he was doing was bad enough, but then before I could actually finish him off he tried to run away and GOT HIT BY A DAMN TRUCK. What?? What...what's going on. I don't know anymore.

So then we stole Cid's plane, the Tiny Bronco (why is it pink??) and he tagged along because it's his most prized possession, but the Shinra guards shot us out of the sky and now we're using the Bronco as a motorboat. That's where I stopped.

The one major thing that's bothering me here is that the plot feels really disjointed. I mean, yes, the overall arc makes sense and we're hunting down Sephiroth, but it has such a weird staggered feel to it. Kind of like it can't decide whether Sephiroth or Shinra is the focus, and most of our encounters with Shinra end up feeling almost like sidequests. I don't mind having two major threats at the same time, I just wish stuff like the Turks and running into Rufus didn't feel like side-plot. (By the way, Reno and Rude discussing the romantic desires of the Turks was hilarious.)

We're level 32 now, I think, which seems high for roughly 24 hours into the game; either I'm fighting more battles than I'm supposed to or this game levels you faster than most RPGs. If it's me, this could be why the game has been so easy. All I've done is not run away from battles, though, so who knows?

Addendum to Post 4
Oh, definitely--the fact that our quarry is so elusive is really making the few encounters with Sephiroth seem terrifying and dangerous, and my anticipation for actually catching up with him once and for all is huge. It's the Shinra characters that are kind of suffering here, for me; Shinra as an entity is clearly widely hated, a huge threat, and the thing that's wrong with the world that needs to be fixed, but currently Cloud is hellbent on finding and stopping this one guy who isn't even related to Shinra anymore, and so Rufus and Hojo and the Turks, despite continually showing up and being mentioned, get relegated to a status that almost feels "in the way" of the real plot. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just drawing the suspense out in a way that I'm not used to. I think the eventual showdowns are going to be better for all this, though, so I'm looking forward to them.

Character rankings, let's see...

Cloud = Sephiroth > Tifa > Reno > Cid > Barret > Aeris > Red XIII > Hojo > Rufus > Vincent > Cait Sith > Yuffie

To be fair, none of the ones at the bottom are there because I dislike them, they're only there because I don't know enough about them yet. Yuffie needs some...dialogue or something. >_> Or like...a motivation, would be nice. So far the only things I've heard her mention are looking for shiny materia and thinking she's just the coolest ever. Not...really relevant, currently. And I was surprised to like Cait Sith, but I do--the idea of living one's life on the whims of fortune is neat--but again, needs more screentime. And I just got Vincent, so not enough on him yet.