This is the second time I’ve tried to beat this game. I got completely distracted by Triple Triad and when I realized that I was pretty much only playing that, as opposed to the main game, I put it away around the end of disc 1. That was back in ’08 or ’09. Almost 10 years later, it’s time to give it another go. I’ll be playing the Greatest Hits release on my 500GB Super Slim PS3. I’ve read of the issues with playing it on a PS3, but I tried all 4 CDs and they all made it past the intro movie, so, from what I read, I’m guessing I won’t be having issues.
Ok, Mr. Manual, which is it? Page 2: “Make sure the power is off before inserting or removing a compact disc.” Page 3: “When changing DISCs, follow the instructions displayed on the screen without turning the power OFF.” After watching the pretty opening movie, the rather jagged graphics as Squall awakens in the hospital bed is rather jarring. Quistis is introduced and we head out. Now in the classroom, before talking to Quistis, I check out the monitor at the desk Squall is sitting at and, as the manual states, I get the Guardian Forces Quezacotl and Shiva, junctioning Quezacotl to Squall. Heading to the front of the class, Quistis mentions a Fire Cavern, so I’m guessing that’ll be my first stop after all the introductory stuff is done. Quistis confirms this and will accompany me there, leaving the classroom to meet up at the Garden’s entrance. After running into a new girl and offering to give her a tour of the Garden, we talk to a kid on the bridge and get our first 7 Triple Triad cards. That was nice of him to just give us them. Before meeting up with Quistis at the front gate, I explore the garden, finding a draw point in both the training grounds and library. Heading to the front gate, Quistis is waiting and joins up. Before leaving, Shiva gets junctioned to her.
We make the short trip east to the Fire Cavern. At the entrance, a couple faculty members are blocking the entrance. Because Quistis is here, they allow us to enter after choosing a time limit. Not knowing what’s inside, I pick the longest, going with 40 min. Other than a draw point, it’s a straight shot to the end and we face Ifrit. Thankfully, it has Cure that can be drawn and cast since we wouldn’t have survived otherwise. Defeating him, we acquire him as a GF and he gets junctioned to Squall (let him and Quezacotl have their catfight). Making our way back out, the faculty members are no longer at the entrance (I’m guessing we would have received an item if I’d chosen a shorter time) and we continue back to the Balamb Garden.
Oh, yeah, you can change what ability GFs can learn. Thanks, tutorial! Hmm, I thought she said meet in the 1st floor lobby… Searching around, the girls in the classroom give battle stats. Heading to rest up… That’s right, I needed to change into my uniform first. For the exam, I’m paired with a Zell, who didn’t get the memo from the future that face tattoos are stupid, as Mike Tyson showed us. We also get Seifer as our squad leader, who’s so badass that he makes the music stop upon his arrival. With some final words from Headmaster Cid, we hop in a car and head off to our final exam to hopefully become members of SeeD.
Drunkenly driving to the nearby port town, before boarding the ship/submarine, I wander around the town to find out it’s Zell’s hometown. Not much else is here so, I head back to the dock and board the ship. Getting a briefing, we’re on a liberation mission. Shortly thereafter landing, we’ll need to secure the central square of the town. After easily dispatching some Galbadian troops to secure the square, we then follow some more towards the facility, whatever that is. Just as we’re about to enter what turns out to be the communication tower, the new girl from the Garden, Selphie, stumbles into our midst and joins our party. Unfortunately, Seifer ran off ahead, taking his equipped GF with him, so she’ll be fighting without one. Oh, hey, it’s Biggs and Wedge again. After Biggs gets the tower functional again, we get into battle with him as he tries to leave. Midway through the battle Wedge joins. A bit later, both get blown out of the battle and a big wasp-like monster, Elvoret attacks. Nice, it has the GF Siren to draw. After a rather lengthy battle, with a few GF summons, we defeat Elvoret and watch as it blows up. Withdraw by 1900 hrs? Well, the clock said 1:15, so we should have several hours. What? 30 min? That battle didn’t take 5 hrs! What is with their love of stupid timed segments? After FF6 & 7, I’m really getting sick of them.
As we head down the lift, Biggs is somehow back on the platform and sends an X-ATM092 at us. Since it fully repairs itself (we might be able to take it down with nothing but lightning attacks and Quezacotl, but I’m not going to waste time trying), we escape the battle and head back to the ship. The former automated teller machine keeps repairing itself and chasing after us, initiating a few more battles, which just becomes annoying needing to repeatedly cripple it and then run away, we make it back to the ship and Quistis defeats it with a ship based gun. We then head back to the port. Once in port, Seifer takes off in the car, leaving us to walk the short distance back to the garden. Since we’re in Zell’s hometown, and he’s in our party this time, we head to his house. Still can’t go up to his room. I didn’t notice the other room. Checking it out, we find an issue of Timber Maniacs… NOT!! Dude! That’s, like, some major psychage! Makes me want to float an air biscuit, just to show them.
With an uneventful trip, we’re back in the Garden. Heading upstairs to find out if we passed -- hey, Zell, stop pacing through me! Unsurprisingly, Squall and Zell passed. At the unimpressive inauguration ceremony, some unnamed student and what kinda looks like Selphie also passed. Speaking to Cid after the other three leave, he gives Squall a Battle Meter. After a scene at the inauguration party, during which I believe Rinoa is introduced, Quistis orders Squall to meet in the training center. After another outfit change, Quistis is waiting for me in the hall to the training center. That’s great that junctioning sleep to my attack will make the T-Rexaur easy to defeat. If only I had a GF that had the Status-J ability so I could actually take advantage of that piece of advice. Making it to the “special area” (which was blocked by a curb when I came here before, as well as after exiting) we find out Quistis has been deemed to have failed as a teacher and is now a member of Seed. On our way back out, an unknown woman (who knows us) is about to be attacked by a Granaldo and three Raldos, so we step in to help. Easily dispatching them, a couple men drop down and escort her out. We then leave the center and Quistis leaves our 2-person party.
Now that Squall is a member of SeeD, he gets his own single-occupancy dorm. Resting, Selphie awakens Squall with news of our first mission as SeeD members. Finally a hidden item, as the desk holds the April edition of Weapons Monthly (so that’s what Weapons Mon Mar was (I never tried using it)). Heading to the front gate, Zell and Selphie round out our team that’ll go to Timber. “But the owls are still around.” Got it. Cid then gives us a cursed Magical Lamp. Now to get to Timber. There’s only one place we can reach, so we head to Balamb town. The train is going to Timber at a cost of 3000 Gil. Good thing we got 3000 Gil salary while we were wandering around.
Hopping on board the train, Zell seems overly excited about riding in a train. Heading into SeeD’s private cabin, Zell is wearing some shorts or capris and showing off his chicken legs. After receiving a copy of Pet Pals Vol. 1, Selphie enters, feeling a bit under the weather. Squall and Zell soon fall ill as well and we’re suddenly in control of Laguna, Ward, and Kiros, who seem to be members of some armed force, running through some forest. Wait, so Cursor Memory only applies to battle menus? That’s stupid. The one place I DON’T want it to apply to, it does, and the place I WANT it to apply to, it doesn’t. After a few screens of a single path, we hop in a vehicle and automatically drive to Deling City (as the game menu states we’re at), parking in the middle of the street and somehow blocking traffic. Taking what turns out to be our only available path (with an annoying 180 degree change in perspective upon screen change), and enter the Galbadia Hotel, which is our only option. Exiting not 5 seconds later, there’s a traffic jam on the street. Heading into the bar in the basement, we get treated to a very nice piano solo. After the sequence, our normal team wakes from their shared dream as we arrive in Timber.
Disembarking, the first guy we see happens to be our contact. We then automatically board a train car on another track. Rinoa, from the inauguration party, is part of the group we’ve been sent to help out, and introduces herself properly, along with her dog, Angelo. Having already looked at the issue of Pet Pals, Angelo has a new trick to learn. It seems we’re here to abduct Galbadia’s president. Just great, another timed segment. After a few tries (and reloads), we switched the cars and our rank went up 1. Now we get to interrogate the President. Before doing so, we find Vol. 2 of Pet Pals in Rinoa’s room. Heading into the president’s car, it seems they were duped and this is actually a body double, which we get to fight. Woohoo! After a few rounds of him biting our heads, he transforms into some undead creature called Gerogero. After drawing some new spells from it, as well as some esunas, after a couple rounds I remembered about undead, so changed from attacking it to casting cure on it and after a few more rounds, we defeat it.
Back in the Forest Owls’ car, we find out why the President is in Timber. Heh, HD broadcasts. In 1999, IIRC, HD was still several years away in the US. Off to the TV Tower to hijack a broadcast! The pet shop owner is back from vacation, so we buy Pet Pals Vols. 3 & 4. In the Timber Maniacs offices, we find the Girl Next Door naughty magazine (which we can’t read), as well as another old issue of Timber Maniacs -- still trying to figure out what reading them accomplishes. To get to the TV tower, we need to get through the pub, but a drunk is blocking the back door. Having defeated the soldiers in front of the pub, we picked up the card they stole from him. Showing him the card, not only does he let us keep it, but gives us a Tonberry card and gets the owner to pull him out of the way. Yay! I can save finally! Before heading into the TV tower, we explore the rest of the town, defeating a couple soldiers that Rinoa thought were going to kill some town guards over a comment made by one of the guards.
Heading back through the pub, we start climbing the tower and Squall gets real with Rinoa, causing her to run off in a huff and Zell joins us. President Deling’s broadcast begins, and as he’s about to introduce the ambassador who will try to negotiate for peace with the other nations, Seifer, and Quistis storm the broadcast. At Quistis’ request, we join the pair at the stage where they were broadcasting. Seifer drags the president to another room and the Sorceress makes her first appearance and pulls off a little mind control on Seifer, getting him to release Deling and come with her, disappearing into thin air. Leaving the tower, Rinoa tells us the Forest Owls’ base has been destroyed and then orders us to take her somewhere safe, away from Timber. We’re given refuge for a short time in the house next to the Timber Maniacs. After a bit, the Galbadian forces withdraw from Timber, so it looks like we’re off to our next destination, wherever that is. As I try to leave the house, it seems that Galbadia Garden is our next stop.
Conveniently, the last train leaving Timber before the trains are shut down just happens to be going to where we need to go. Getting off at the East Academy stop, which is just a boarding platform basically in the middle of nowhere, we walk along the tracks because we’re young and intrepid, cross the ravine and head west to the small forest (more like woods). Sweet! Shiva learned Str-J, so Quistis just got a bit stronger. Shortly after entering the forest, the same high pitched sound from the first train ride is heard and Squall, Quistis, and Selphie collapse. I guess we’ll be getting another Laguna sequence. Yep. This time, we’re on a path overlooking what looks like a factory. Entering the plant, we’re surrounded by some Esthar soldiers and enter battle. According to the menu, we’re in Centra - Excavation Site. After exploring the entire area and detonating some boulders to maybe create a navigable path for Squall’s party, we get cutoff at a cliff by some more soldiers. With one of the soldiers pulling off a finishing move that reduces Ward and Kiros to 1 HP each, Laguna throws his compatriots over the edge to some boats floating in the water below. What a guy! Starting to descend, then slipping and plummeting into the water, the dream sequence ends and after a small bit of dialogue, we automatically exit the opposite end of the forest.
A very short bit of walking later and we enter Galbadia Garden to a FMV showing several people with personal flying craft of some sort. Trying to talk to the couple that landed on the sidewalk leading to the entrance simply prompts them to fly off. Real friendly there. Quistis then heads off to explain our situation to the headmaster. Exploring what we can, other than hearing about a hockey team made up of monsters, there’s nothing of note. I guess they really don’t want you to miss the theater (or whatever it is) since just walking in front of it causes you to enter. Shortly after entering the reception room, Quistis enters and tells us that Balamb Garden isn’t being held responsible for the attack on the President. Seifer took the fall and there is no denial of him being executed for it. Being featured in the game’s manual, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say he is actually still alive. Squall gets all emotional and runs out of the room. Reentering, Quistis is the only person remaining and tells me to meet at the front gate after I hear an announcement. Oh, I can take the tests now. And you get as many tries as you want. That makes things easy (passes the first 16 tests by brute force). Heading back to the main lobby, the other two members of Balamb Garden’s Disciplinary Committee spot me and tell me of a new order from Cid. Assembling at the front gate, a Martine briefs us on the orders and introduces Irvine, a sharpshooter, who is to carry out the orders to assassinate the sorceress. We split into two parties and head to Deling City.
Passing up the train, we decide to head to Deling on foot. Instead of making it to our destination, we end up in the town of Dollet. Well, since we’re here, we might as well see if there’s anything useful. Except for the finding the dog, based on the location of the bone in the painting, a few times for some items, there’s nothing here. Since we’re receiving 15k Gil salary every so often, we might as well head back and take the train for 3k to make things easy. Hmm, after the sequence that happens when we board the train, I’m thinking this was our only option. After a short scene of exposition from Irvine, we arrive in Deling City.
So we have to go to the mansion of some Caraway person. Bus 08. Check. Well, it doesn’t seem to require taking the bus as we can just walk there. Staying the night at the hotel, we find and read another old issue of Timber Maniacs. Arriving at the mansion, even though we’re expected, the guard at the gate tells us that we need to prove ourselves by going to the Tomb of the Unknown King and bringing back the ID number of a student who went there and hasn’t come back. Ooooookay. It’s nice of him to give us a map of the place. After being escorted to the edge of town by the guard, we head northeast to the tip of the nearby peninsula and enter the tomb.
As we approach the tomb, a pair of people are seen running out of the tomb and one simply says “F-Float” as s/he runs by us. Hmm, a hint maybe? Spotting what looks like a sword on the floor in the second screen into the tomb, we search it and find “Student No. 28” written on it. Believing that’s what we need, we leave and head back to Deling City. It is the correct answer, so we’re allowed into the mansion. Once in the mansion, we find out that this is Rinoa’s house and General Caraway is her father. After a rather lengthy briefing from the General on how we’ll go about killing Sorceress Edea, we head back to his mansion to commence the mission. As we’re about to head out, Rinoa appears with a bracelet that’s supposed to be able to contain the sorceress’s powers. Brushing her aside, we leave to assume out positions. While waiting for the appointed time, Quistis mucks everything up to head back to apologize to Rinoa for being so mean to her. The gateway trio then gets locked inside the mansion, virtually assuring our mission will be a failure. We then get to see a couple scenes from the opening movie involving the sorceress, and Edea addresses the public, appearing to kill the President in the process. Yay for making statues come to life!
Back in the mansion, hunting around for a way to escape, we are able to use a wine glass from the cupboard to open a secret passageway. A short trip through the sewers (Yay! Life spell to draw!), control is back to Squall and Irvine. Unsurprisingly, Seifer is seen with the sorceress. After another excruciatingly slow climbing sequence, we make it to where Rinoa is knocked out by the two now-living lizard statues and get into battle with them. Woohoo! Another GF, this one Carbuncle. After drawing some Esunas, a couple attacks with GF Siren and they go down. With Rinoa now safe, she rejoins the party. After wandering back and forth, unable to climb down or proceed further into the building, I notice the hatch in the hallway that puts us next to the sniper rifle the General told us about. Wait… You can cast magic on characters not in the active party? Wow.
With Quistis’ party able to make it through the sewers in time and trapping the sorceress, Squall is able to calm down the poser Irvine enough to get him to make the shot on Edea. She throws up a shield and deflects the bullet, forcing Squall to race in to fight her himself. Rather than battling Edea, Squall gets to face off against Seifer. Easily defeating him with a Hell Fire from Ifrit and a couple normal attacks, Rinoa and Irvine join up for a battle against the sorceress. After several attacks from Ifrit and Quezacotl, Edea shoots Squall with some ice arrows, which is amazingly effective and he plummets to his possible death in FMV glory. And that’s the end of Disc 1. Disc 1 was a bit shorter than I was expecting, but there were quite a few FMVs.
Disc 2 opens with Laguna in a bullet-riddled house in Winhill Village. Heading to the pub, Kiros enters and it turns out that a year has passed since the last Laguna segment. We also find out Julia from the hotel bar married General Caraway. After catching up, Kiros joins. Since there seems to be a force field preventing us from climbing the stairs and entering the mansion, we head out of town. Stopping at the florist on the outskirts, the old woman suggests it’s time for Laguna to head back to Deling City. Making it to the edge of town, we complete our patrol and, since we can’t leave the town, we head back, give our report to Raine and Ellone, rest up, and end the dream sequence.
Rejoining the other group, Zell, Rinoa, Quistis, and Selphie are in some sort of prison. Since Zell channels Ward during the dream sequences, and Ward was a janitor at a jail in Galbadia, Rinoa thinks it’s possible that Zell is familiar with where they are. Before any progress is made in escaping, the scene switches to Squall in another cell, miraculously without a wound from the ice projectiles. After a short FMV showing Squall’s cell being transported somewhere, we’re back with the foursome. Mean Guy? Now that’s an awful name to be saddled with for life. Rinoa goes with the guards and it’s back to Squall. Seifer enters and what looks like Red XIII escorts Squall from the cell. A short torture scene later, we’re back to the now trio and the Red XIII looking thing stumbles in, drops some item, then gets escorted out by Mean Guy. Back to Squall and Seifer and now there’s missiles targeting Balamb Garden. Uh, oh! Back to the trio and Zell lures in Mean Guy, sucker punches him, then head out in search of our weapons. Yay! I get to do something!
Heading up a floor, a couple soldiers are seen with our weapons. Easily dispatching them, Zell collects the weapons and celebrates by having his facial features dance up and down. And we’re back to Squall with three Red XIII’s calling him Laguna. After they release Squall, we’re back to the trio, and Wedge and Biggs are back and we get to fight them again. A couple GF attacks and they go down easily. Now to find Squall. Ascending, we find a guy who upgrades our Battle Meter after defeating him in Triple Triad. Aw, he only does one upgrade. Making it to the top floor, we spot the Red XIIIs. Dangit, I went the correct direction. Heading all the way back down, we pick up a few interesting items, including Combat King 001. Yay! Zell learns to bl-- er, learns the Limit Break Dolphin Blow. Ascending all the way back to the top, the Red XIIIs move aside, opening the door to the torture chamber. After collecting Squall, the cell he originally in is mysteriously back in the center of the tower. Zell, having operated the mechanism while he was Ward, is able to send us down to the base of the tower. Unable to exit the tower, we hear gunfire from above and Squall runs up to help out Zell. Selphie and Quistis join shortly and as we’re getting overwhelmed by the soldiers and guards, Irvine and Rinoa reappear, apparently taking care of everyone who was shooting at us.
A couple party switches going in opposite directions later, Squall’s party is able to exit the top floor only to be attacked by an elite soldier and a couple GIM52As, which our GFs make quick work of. Zell operating the lift again, starts bringing the other half up. As we cross the bridge seemingly out of here, we find ourselves in the middle of a desert on a humongous triple auger. Another scene later, the whole team’s together, we commandeer a couple cars, and head out into the desert. Our next job is to prevent the missiles from launching at Travia and Balamb Gardens. As we’re hemming and hawing, we watch as a few missiles are launched from afar. Again we split up, with Squall, Rinoa, and Zell heading to Balamb Garden and the rest to the missile base. Arriving at a train station, Squall’s team hijacks a train. Switching to the other group, unable to spot the base, we quickly run out of fuel and have to hike there on foot.
Since we’re near Deling City again, we head back to the Tomb of the Unknown King to explore the place. Heading around the outside ring, we make it to a statue of Sacred, which attacks us. A few GF attacks and it’s defeated and runs off, raising the pedestal it was on. Time to hunt it down. I guess the platform raising caused the monolith in the northern path to lower, allowing us to drop a gate to flood something, probably the central chamber. Yep. Now to find some way to cross the water and inspect the brick object in the middle. The eastern path is also open and there’s a waterwheel here. Pulling what looks like a wooden rod out of its socket starts up some gears. A bridge, perhaps? Sure is. And waiting inside the brick structure is Sacred, standing on top of what I’m guessing is the unknown king’s coffin. Sacred then calls his big bro, the Minotaur, and they both attack us. I’m guessing they were expecting you to use Float to nullify their healing abilities, but the strength of our GFs makes that strategy pointless. Just like the first battle against just Sacred, they both go down after one round of GF attacks. We then get the GF Brothers, the coffin opens, and the king’s spirit commends us on defeating the brothers, and is now free from the coffin. We also get the Minotaur and Sacred Triple Triad cards. With that over, we trek back to the missile base.
Approaching the gate, the guards basically just say “You’re not authorized personnel! You’re not authorized personnel!” and we turn around and leave. But, hey, if we get up against the wall and rotate the camera, we’re inside the base! What? That doesn’t work? Oh, phooey. I guess we’ll go to nearby Deling City to see if there’s anything there that’ll help us out. Heading to Caraway’s mansion, other than offering to play Triple Triad for Rinoa’s card, in exchange for Ifrit’s card, we head back into the sewers since we missed an item that we could see but took the wrong path during the failed attack against the sorceress, which turns out to be the May issue of Weapons Monthly. Hmm, after a few games against Caraway, he never used Rinoa’s card, and it doesn’t give me the option to give him Ifrit’s. Do I have to lose to him first and have him take Ifrit’s card? I guess so, as losing it causes him to use the Rinoa card in the next game. He mentions losing his Ifrit card to Martine. Maybe I can get that card?
Thinking we need to enter the base in the military vehicle (did Selphie mention that?), we buy a bunch of fuel with our 250k+ Gil and head back. That did the trick, as we’re allowed through the gates. Ah, so there were some uniforms in the vehicle we changed into. Wow, talk about a graphics glitch. As we’re about to enter the lone building available, the yellow from the vehicles smears across the entire screen. Both doors in here are locked. I can’t find anything in here. Hmm… Ah, I thought I clicked on everything, but I guess I missed a spot between the doors. Using an ID Card found in the car, we’re able to gain access. Completing a few tasks, we head up to the control room, take out a few soldiers and set the base to self-destruct. As we’re fleeing the base, one of the soldiers we defeated is able to crawl to the control panel and launch the missiles. Of course, our exit won’t be so easy as a large piece of equipment, a BGH251F2, is blocking the exit, which we get to fight. That did take quite a bit of punishment, and dealt some good damage, but after a couple rounds of GF attacks, the behemoth goes down, followed by a short fight against the soldiers that were operating it. We get the June issue of Weapons Monthly for our trouble, and seem to be trapped inside the base. The base then blows up rather spectacularly, presumably killing the trio.
Squall’s team then arrives in Balamb Garden and heads in to talk to Cid. First thing, swap out Junctions. Well, the others still have HP, so it looks like they somehow survived. Entering, the Garden is in a panic with everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It also seems Garden Master Norg has taken over. Searching for Cid, each location has a faculty member, who has sided with Norg, that summons a monster. We also pick up some nice items, as well as find out that Nida is the unnamed student who also passed the final exam. Making it to Cid’s office, thanks to Xu, (oh, hey, this is where the graduation ceremony was held), after some conversation, Cid hands over a key so we can reach a control room below the Garden. Taking the elevator down, it jams and we have to finish the descent by ladder. No one’s been down here in a while, huh? Good thing all the lighting is still working just fine. Eventually, after a lot of ladder climbing, Squall activates something. Finally, we reach a boss fight against a couple Oilboyles. Wow, they hit hard. Hell Fire from Ifrit does wonders against them and just staying healed up is enough to win the fight.
One more ladder and we arrive at the control panel. Squall fumbles around and ends up activating… whatever it is just as the missiles arrive. Suddenly, the Garden is flying out of harm’s way. Almost crashing into Balamb Town, Squall manages to steer the Garden into the sea, where we come to rest safely. After exterminating all the monsters running wild in the Garden, there’s nothing to do, so Squall takes a nice rest, and is awoken by Rinoa who wants a tour of the Garden. After playing tour guide, a straggler faculty member tells us to meet the Garden Master in the basement. Taking the elevator down, Zell joins us and we find Cid in a confrontation with a faculty member. Cid heads up the elevator, and we’re again summoned to see the garden master, Norg. After a lengthy bit of dialog, where we find out that Cid and Edea are supposedly married, Norg gets rather enraged and attacks us. Carbunkle works really well reflecting his Water spell. Yay! Another GF to draw, this time Leviathan. I almost didn’t try drawing him since Norg starts with only Cure to draw before losing the hatch on whatever he’s sitting in. So if he hadn’t have done enough damage after reflect wore off to where I needed to draw-cast Cure, I would have missed that. Ignoring the two pods, which did absolutely nothing and took almost no damage, we easily defeat Norg. Ok, that Bio draw point is a bit deceptive in how to access it. With that over, it’s off to see Cid.
Finding Cid in the infirmary, among other things, he confirms that he’s married to Edea. Other than a little background info, nothing useful comes from our chat. With no idea what to do next, we head to the front gate, only to be spotted by Xu, who tells us of an approaching ship. Heading to the 2nd floor deck, it turns out to be Edea’s ship, and they’re here for Ellone, the little girl from the last Laguna segment. We now have to search the Garden for Ellone. We split up, but I’m gonna say that Squall will be the one to find her. Finding her in the library, after pretty much affirming that she’s responsible for sending us to the “Dream World,” Xu shows up, takes her to Cid, and then gets on the Sorceress’ boat. After a short sequence, Rinoa shows up in Squall’s room. Man, that felt like it would be the end of disc 2.
The Garden finally comes to a stop at Fishermans Horizon, with a bit of collateral damage. The guy operating the lift into Fishermans Horizon is identified as “Familiar Face.” Okay. Um, is everyone going to be called “Familiar Face #n”? Heading down to the center of what looks like a huge satellite dish, we enter mayor’s house. Wanting us to leave, we tell the mayor that that’s not possible since we don’t know how to move the Garden. The mayor tells us that their technicians can probably fix the Garden, but we would need the authority to let them enter. Oh, hey, there’s an Ultima draw point in here. Outside their house, we find Martine and proceed to win General Calaway’s Ifrit card. As we head back, Galbadian soldiers are seen and the mayor decides to talk to them using his love and peace to diffuse the situation. Following after the mayor, we stop in the inn/shop and find another old Timber Maniacs issues upstairs. Oh, don’t mind me, Rinoa, as I occupy the same space as you.
Catching up to the mayor, it seems the soldiers are after Ellone. The soldier is not having any of the mayor’s insistence that he’s never seen her and starts getting rough with the old man. Of course, we’re going to be stepping in to help. Announcing ourselves to be SeeDs, the soldier calls for the Iron Clad. Instead of fighting something called the Iron Clad as I was expecting, we fight the Elite Soldier that was threatening the mayor as well as a couple run of the mill G-Soldiers. That was just the prelude to the real battle against a BGH251F2, which I’m guessing is the Iron Clad. Oh, it’s the boss machine from the missile base, according to Scan. With a few rounds of GF attacks, we defeat the thing and it falls into the sea. Climbing up out of it are none other than Quistis, Selphie, and Irvine! Zell then escorts them to the Garden. Exploring around, the son one of the cafeteria ladies is here, so we tell him the he should go see her and he runs off. Another old issue of Timber Maniacs is in the building on the ramp where we fought the boss.
Back in the Garden, after a short scene with Selphie, Squall is called to see Cid. It seems Edea is searching for Ellone (but I thought Ellone got on her ship earlier), the Garden will become a mobile base fighting against Edea (quite the happy couple there), and Squall has been appointed the new leader of the Garden. The other five then choose instruments to play a musical number to celebrate Squall’s promotion. After the concert, Squall is called to the bridge. Heading to the bridge, the Fishermans Horizon technicians have fixed everything and we’re able to get the place moving. First stop is Balamb.
Picking a party of three, we set off. What? Everyone got unjunctioned except Squall? How annoying. Arriving at Balamb Town, it seems we’re not the only Garden that’s mobile. Entering Balamb Town, the Sorceress and Galbadia have occupied the town and no one’s allowed in or out. Well, unless you have info on Ellone. So we’re told to see the commander in the hotel. We head there and the guards in front of the door tell us to talk to the captain, who’s on patrol. *sigh* At least we can finally go in Zell’s room, which has nothing of note. Do we have to keep finding the Big Bad Rascal kid to eventually find the captain? Finally after enough running around and paying off a tabloid guy, we find the captain, who is Raijin from the Balamb Disciplinary Committee. Under orders from Seifer, he attacks, along with the two guards. Our GFs make quick work of them, and it’s into the hotel to deal with Fujin, the commander. Raijin was only stunned, so he joins Fujin, and we get to fight again. Nice! She has the GF Pandemona to draw. Thanks to Raijin being able to do 1000+ damage, this was easily the hardest battle yet. Defeating them and finding out that they were acting on their own, and not at the direction of the Sorceress, we’re instantly back on Balamb Garden’s bridge.
Selphie suggests we check on Trabia Garden, so we head northeast to it. Arriving, it seems the missiles hit their target this time. Selphie decides to head into the place, so climbs the wall. Squall and Irvine follow and are joined by the remaining trio once inside. Finding Selphie catching up with a friend, she tells us to meet her at the basketball court out back. Unfortunately, it’s extremely difficult to find paths, but we stumble across an old Timber Maniacs magazine in the graveyard, as well as an apropos Zombie draw point. Finding the destroyed court, Selphie joins up and we get a flashback where we find out Irvine, Quistis, Selphie, Zell, Squall, Seifer, and Ellone were all in the same orphanage as children. So pretty much every important character under the age of 20 that we’ve encountered just happened to grow up in the same orphanage. And, to top it off, the matron of the orphanage is Sorceress Edea. Huh. Interestingly, they did not use international basketball’s trapezoid lane on the basketball court -- I would have thought they followed FIBA rules. Everyone agrees to head to Edea’s house (I’m guessing that’s the orphanage).
We’ve been carrying around this Magical Lamp for a while. Let’s see what it does. *Saves* Ah, so it summons a monster called Diablos. Scanning it, it’s a GF. Hmm, is it that missing spot in our roster? With Gravija not affected by Carbuncle’s reflect, this is an annoying battle with a lot of Curaga draw-casts. His own Demi spell does to a nice bit of damage to him. Just staying healed and finishing him off with a couple GF attacks and he goes down (after a few tries). And he is the hole in our GF lineup. We also pick up the Diablos card. Now to find Edea’s house. Shumi Village is on our map, but we’ve never been there. Maybe it’s there. Entering the village, this doesn’t look like it’s where Edea’s house is. Descending to the actual village, entering the hotel, we can hear the piano piece played in the Galbadia hotel bar during Laguna’s sequence. With the doors of one building seemingly locked and a Red XIII somehow blocking our path to the remaining building (either we’re too considerate to walk on the high grass, or shin-high grass is too difficult to navigate), we leave and resume our search for Edea’s house. Seriously? You have to sit through the 30+ second elevator sequence every single time you ride it?!?
Maybe Dollet? Other than Timber Maniacs issues found by staying the night at the inn and on a poker table in the bar, as well as defeating the bar owner to be allowed into his private room where he gives us a bunch of cards and searching the stacks of magazines several times yields a couple phoenix downs, there’s nothing in this town. Let’s try Deling City. We’ll be a lot safer in a car, eh? Nah, I think we’re pretty safe in a flying small town. Nothing here except Calaway mentioning Esthar to the east. So, we head to the large landmass to the east and can’t find an access point to get on land. But we do run into a very long train bridge connecting the two landmasses. Following it, we find a train station in the middle of nowhere. Oh, it’s Timber. Because we hadn’t stayed the night here before, we do so in order to access the hotel room where another old Timber Maniacs issue is found. Nothing else here, so back to exploring. Since we can’t access the eastern continent, how about the southern one.
And we finally spot what looks like the lighthouse from the flashback on the western tip of the southern island. We can’t actually enter the place, but we’ve found Edea’s house. Nearby, the Galbadia Garden has parked. Back on board the Garden, it seems it’ll be a battle of flying Gardens! Galbadia’s forces board our Garden by jumping across on their motorcycles. Ooooooooooooookay. With a collision between the Gardens knocking a chunk of real estate off of ours, Rinoa almost falls to her death. Now we need to find a way to save her. Good thing everything in the classroom is completely unaffected by Hell Fire. After a pep talk from Squall, we ram them. I sure hope Rinoa has a good enough death grip on the side of the Garden. So, all of the sudden Squall gets into this situation of getting hit by a flyer from Galbadia with absolutely no explanation of what to do. Apparently, you can block him. Don’t know what button does what. This is just idiotic. After randomly pressing buttons, it ends up to where Squall uses the emergency exit and gets into a stupid fighting match with the attacker. So he can take about 20 barrages of Gatling gun bullets before getting KO’d, but can’t withstand about a dozen punches from this guy? After just kicking him (or more like kneeing him) a bunch of times, the soldier falls from the cord, the personal flying machine just happens to go by Rinoa, and Squall is able to rescue her. She gives him back the ring he let Zell have and it ends up having the GF Griever. Um… if Squall was wearing the ring up until the attack from Galbadia Garden, why exactly couldn’t we use that GF before??? At least, I think it's a GF since I could rename it, but it doesn't show up in the GF list. We enter the now grounded Galbadia Garden and the rest of the team is already inside waiting for us.
Doing the good old find a student holding key 1 to open lock 1 to find the student that holds key 2 to open lock 2, we encounter Cerberus just hanging out in the Garden’s central lobby. After one failed attempt, thanks to it starting out by casting Triple on itself and not knowing what we were in store for, we then junction everything we have to lightning defense and after a few rounds of GF attacks (it really likes dispelling Carbuncle), we defeat it to receive its card as well as it as a GF. With that out of the way, we find the student with the last key and take the elevator to find Seifer and Edea waiting for us.
Heading to the window to the right, we actually approach them and… wait. Is the sorceress doing the limbo or something? After a bit of dialogue, Seifer attacks. Cerberus is really useful for keeping healed up with its double and triple effect. Other than Seifer’s one special attack, he’s pretty easy (especially compared to Cerberus), and he goes down after a few rounds of GF attacks. Edea then stands upright, chides Seifer for being useless, and then sinks through the floor to the auditorium below. As we enter the auditorium and approach the draw point, Rinoa enters for some reason and Edea lands on the podium above. Seifer then enters behind her (there must have been some other path down here) and we get to fight him again. You’d think it would be 4-on-1 with Rinoa, but nope. After Seifer goes down again, the battle flows into being against Edea. Nice. She has the GF Alexander to draw. Ooh, cast your big bad reflect. We’ll just use Carbuncle and start reflecting Demi off of us. Oh, hey, she can be put to sleep. Well, she’s not very tough and goes down rather easily. Upon her defeat, a big cloud of pinkish smoke emanates from her head and we get a short dreamlike sequence where Seifer rises and walks off. Edea seems to have been released from some sort of spell, and that finally ends disc 2.
Disc 3 opens with Squall back in his dorm bed, wondering what happened to Rinoa, and then finding her in the infirmary. Quistis then tells Squall over the P.A. system to go to Edea’s house. Since trying to talk to Rinoa does nothing, I head up to the bridge. Conveniently, we’re right outside her house, so we land and enter. As we enter, who comes to greet us, but none other than Cid. After finding a Curaga draw point, we follow him out to the beach, and Edea is waiting for us. She says she’d been possessed by the Sorceress Ultimecia from the far future who is trying to find Ellone and gain her power. In order to protect Ellone, Edea became possessed. She then mentions the Sorceress Adel, so I’m guessing we’ll be searching for her next. Not quite next, as we are going in search of the White SeeD ship Ellone boarded first. Stopping by Rinoa again, Squall shows some true emotion and then I get to set a junction party with Laguna’s party. This is a bunch of crap! Everyone but Squall’s junctions were removed, so I have to set everything up. Again.
Once the junction party is chosen, we’re immediately back in the past with Laguna, Kiros, and Ward on the set of a movie taking place in medieval times. After another atrocious battle sequence against a dragon, Kiros and Ward join up and we fight the Ruby Dragon with the standard battle system. A bunch of GF attacks later and we defeat the dragon, only to seemingly have a string of them behind it. So we hightail it out of there and spot what looks like a floating castle in the distance. After a short scene with Laguna searching for Ellone at Edea’s house, the sequence ends and it’s back with Squall at Rinoa’s bedside in the infirmary.
Searching for the ship, which we get zero clues about, we stop by Shumi Village. Oh, there’s more to this place west of the Red XIII, and we find an old Timber Maniacs issue in the first house. In the next house we find a statue of Laguna and find out the Red XIIIs are moombas. We’re now able to enter the elder’s house that the moomba was preventing us from entering. So Laguna’s travails were 17 years prior to our time. To show his appreciation for our concern about Laguna, the elder will give us some gift if we help finish the statue. Heading back to the statue, we’re told we’ll need to collect five types of stones: shadow, wind, life, water, and blue. I sure hope these aren’t monster drops. Finding the blue stone right next to the statue, I’m guessing they’re going to all be within the village. Completing the fetch quest, we receive a phoenix pinion for our troubles. After a little conversation between the Elder and his assistant, the assistant has been ordered to help the sculptor finish the statue. But he never goes to help. Maybe if we stay the night at the hotel? Nope. Hmm… A lot of times, just leaving the town and reentering will do the trick. And it does. After some back and forth, now we need to get the artisan to help. After talking to everyone and leaving and reentering again, nothing happens. So maybe there’s something I need to do elsewhere. Anyway… I guess it’s time to get back to the main quest.
Since the ship Ellone boarded was supposedly Edea’s, maybe she has some info as to its whereabouts. Heading back to her house, we find an old issue of TM lying on the ground just inside the dilapidated building and win Seifer’s card from Cid as well as Edea’s card from Edea. Yay! Edea tells us the ship might be stationed on the Centra continent. I haven’t been paying attention to continent names, but Centra is a trailing L away from Central, so… She then gives us a Sorceress’ Letter, which should let us board their ship. Oh, we’re already on Centra, as the menu states. After hunting around the islands for quite a while, we finally spot the ship and board it.
After asking to see Ellone, we’re in turn asked to leave. Exploring the ship instead, we run into Watts and Zone. Talking to Watts, we find out Ellone left the ship when a ship with Esthar soldiers showed up at some point. We also win Angelo’s card from Watts. Another old TM is found on the deck of the bridge -- no, you can’t have the dirty magazine, Zone. Speaking to the leader, during a flashback, we find out Ellone actually jumped aboard the Esthar ship during a battle between the Esthar and Galbadian forces. When the flashback ends, we’re back on the Garden’s bridge. Destination: Esthar. I don’t know how we’ll get on the island, unless the train from Timber is running again.
So, let’s check out Timber. Well, no train goes to Esthar, but we did save a girl from getting run over by one. Since we can’t walk across the bridge, so let’s go to Fishermans Horizon and see if anything’s there. As soon as we arrive, it automatically switches to Squall in the infirmary where he decides to take her body and leave the Garden by way of the 2nd floor deck. We eventually arrive at a train station where Quistis and Zell are and they don’t even bat an eyelash at Squall having removed the comatose Rinoa from the infirmary. It turns out Quistis and Zell are escorting Edea to Esthar, who is going there to meet a Dr. Odine. After Edea explains that Dr. Odine might be able to save her, Irvine and Selphie appear on the scene, also completely unconcerned about Squall removing Rinoa from the infirmary. Edea can now be part of our party. Apparently, we walked across the train bridge.
Heading east from the train station, we’re at the edge of what looks like a frozen wasteland. Making our way along, we run into the undead boss, Abadon. Life didn’t work on it, but using Cerberus and triple casting Cura made quick work of it. Arriving at what looks like the source of that atmospheric disturbance we could see in the distance earlier, it gets all The Truman Show on us and we climb up a virtually invisible ladder to an opening in the scenery and enter the Mystery Building. We step on an automated moving platform and arrive in some futuristic looking city. When we finally stop, we collapse and get another Laguna sequence. This is a load of BS. Everything got unjunctioned… again! I guess I’ll reload it and note down how everything was junctioned.
Imprisoned in Esthar, we pull off a jail break (not sure why they would still have all their weapons). While escaping, we pass by Dr. Odine and others talking about their research, which is a bit reminiscent of Hojo’s. The Sorceress Adel resistance group wants Laguna to become their leader. We had come to this place searching for Ellone. Now we need to go confront Odine about Ellone. Heading back in, we find the 1st issue of Weapons Monthly lying on the floor of the room Dr. Odine was in earlier. After dispatching a few more guards, Odine somehow slips by us into the elevator. Chasing after him, just as he’s about to get into a car, he tells us Ellone is in Odine’s Lab. He then runs back into the building and we take the car to the lab. It’s a good thing people don’t have inertia so they don’t fall down whenever these platforms just abruptly start moving. Anyway… After fighting through some more guards, Laguna somehow is able to figure out how to unlock the door leading to where Ellone is from a computer console. We again get treated to “The Song of Alpen Rose” from Honoo no Alpen Rose (look it up) as Laguna goes to Ellone, ending that dream sequence.
Almost immediately after awakening, we’re taken by hover car to the Presidential Palace. After Edea explains why we’re here, Dr. Odine shows up wearing the same clown collar as in the Laguna sequence. We’re then granted permission to see Ellone and are told to meet at the Lunar Gate. Exploring the city, hitting up the shopping district, we buy Pet Pals Vols. 5 & 6, the August edition of Weapons Monthly, and Combat King 003. It’s nice that if you missed any, you can simply buy it here (well, except for Weapons Monthly Issue 1, which has several of the strongest weapons). Now to try to find the Lunar Gate. It’s not in the palace and we can’t enter Odine’s Lab. I guess it’s outside of town. I think we were told east. Nice, it’s marked on the map. But we can only travel along an elevated platform, which might make this area annoying to get around.
Checking out the Lunatic Pandora Laboratory, where the last Laguna segment took place in, we can’t get beyond the first room, so we leave. Avoiding the Lunar Gate and heading to Tear’s Point, the only thing we find here is a Solomon Ring. Is that the first instantaneous screen change? I can’t think of one that didn’t have load time before. We can’t enter the Esthar Sorceress Memorial, so we head to the Lunar Gate. Before entering, we try using the Solomon Ring, but it says “Can’t summon GF”. Ok.
As we enter, a car arrives… that we can walk right through. Are we the ones taking off? Taking off? Huh? Good thing Squall somehow knows what he’s talking about. Zell is left in charge as Squall and Selphie join Rinoa, who I guess is already aboard the spaceship. After they’re sent towards the moon, what looks like that floating castle that ended the Laguna segment is suddenly floating above us. Leaving Quistis and Angelo behind, we head back to Esthar City to talk to Dr. Odine.
Back in the city, Odine is no longer at the palace, so we check his lab. We’re allowed access and we find him in conversation with his assistant. So the floating building is Lunatic Pandora. Even though we have no clue what it’s doing, since it’s floating, it must be up to something sinister, so we need to stop it from… doing… whatever it is that it might be doing, because floating buildings are evil. Plus, the Galbadians are in control of it. And, oh, joy, it’ll be another timed sequence. Receiving Combat King 004 from a guard, we then have fun running through another car and then board the Pandora.
Now inside, we’re in a lobby with three doors. I hope we don’t get the macaroni car. Taking elevator 01, we end up getting whisked away to what seems like where we need to go, so… Reload to see what the other elevators reveal. We find Combat King 005 exploring the connected elevators 02 & 03. These extremely long corridors that are dead ends are annoying. Finding nothing else, we head back to where we reloaded. As the Pandora arrives over Tear’s Point, we’re switched back to Squall’s group arriving at the Lunar Base.
After leaving Rinoa in the Medical Bay, we find out Sorceress Adel has been sealed here in outer space. We also fine Ellone here and Squall wants her to take him back to when Rinoa fell unconscious. After a stop in the control room to see the monsters on the moon massing for the Lunar Cry, we start to take Ellone to see Rinoa, but, oh, no! Something is causing a Red Alert. Let me guess, Adel is going to break free of the seal and possess Rinoa. Ha, ha! I’ve got you trapped in a corner Miss Possessed Rinoa! You’ll never make it to the control room. Man, this is excruciatingly slow. Of course, Rinoa releases the seal, or at least the first of, I guess, two seals. Yay, now we get to go on a space walk to presumably unsuccessfully prevent Rinoa from releasing the final seal on Adel. After watching the monsters start their descent from the moon, I conveniently find an unused spacesuit and try to head into space after Rinoa. The airlock closes before Squall can make it out and after getting back to the control room, we watch as Rinoa releases Adel from her seal. The base is then evacuated.
The base goes boom and Ellone has sent Squall into Rinoa’s past when she was rendered unconscious. It turns out the future Sorceress Ultemecia transferred from Edea to Rinoa when we defeated Edea. After an extremely long sequence of watching Rinoa float in space, another sequence with absolutely zero direction on controls has Squall catching her and then miraculously finding a spaceship. Somehow he knows how to operate all these controls of these things and we’re now onboard the Ragnarok. Rinoa has also regained consciousness. Starting to explore the ship, we are unable to sneak by the Propagator and have to fight it. Each corridor accessible also has a Propagator we need to fight. Oh, and they don’t actually die. Lovely. I guess this would be a good place to have GFs learn abilities, albeit tediously. They’re pretty susceptible to Sleep, so the battles pretty much become a sleepwalk. Finding the report on their breeding, it seems we have to defeat them in colored pairs to actually kill them. With the four pairs eliminated, they all disappear and we can access the control room. Aah! Why is there a humongous high top shoe outside the cockpit?!? Ground Control gets in contact with us and will guide us home. Rinoa is also a sorceress. Once we arrive back on the planet, Rinoa gives herself up to Esthar and they will be going to the Esthar Sorceress Memorial.
Rather than following them, let’s see what’s in the ship first. Heading into the room where the breeding report was, after a short bit, Selphie enters, mentioning chocobos. Other than the Gesahl Greens we picked up somewhere along the line, this is the first reference to chocobos I’ve encountered. I was starting to wonder if they were in this game. The other three then enter and Zell fills Squall in on everything that happened. Of course, they all berate Squall into trying to get Rinoa back. As we try to leave the room, the Ragnarok starts flying. Well, Edea is no longer part of our party, but Rinoa still is. Somehow Selphie knows how to fly the thing, so it’s off to the memorial.
We’re allowed into the memorial this time, and Quistis and Zell threaten the engineers, which actually works for a change. Squall then releases Rinoa from the containment device she was in. As we try to leave, some sentries are between us and the exit, just rocking back and forth. A figure in green approaches and the sentries move aside, allowing us to leave. Huh. We’re instantly back in the Ragnarok’s cockpit. Next stop: Edea’s house. While we’re flying there, a small desert island has what appears to be cacti appearing and disappearing. What the…? Let’s check it out. *save just in case it’s something like a Tonberry* After about 10 min in a single battle against a cactaur, this is just turning into a waste of time (it would be nice to see how many HP it has instead of ????/????). Since we can’t escape… soft reset.
Arriving at Edea’s house, after a bit of dialogue between Squall and Rinoa, Zell interrupts and tells us that Esthar has a plan to defeat Ultimecia, and we’ve been hired for the job by Kiros. I guess it’s back to Esthar. Before leaving, speaking to Edea on the beach, she tells Rinoa to find herself a knight, as those sorceresses without knights turned to evil. On our way back to Esthar, since we’re by Fishermans Horizon, we stop in to see if anything changed. Not much, but we did pick up a moomba doll, which appears to be what we need for Shumi Village, so let’s go back there. While in Shumi, we become millionaires! The moomba doll is enough to convince the artisan to work on the statue and the elder rewards us with a Status Guard. Leaving the village and reentering, the statue is now completed. Oh, that’s Laguna’s gun above his head. It took me a minute to figure out what it's supposed to be. The village now has music, which does not fit the peaceful atmosphere. After watching a short flashback to when Laguna was here, we leave the village.
Once in Esthar, the lifters aren’t working, so we’ll need to walk around this rather labyrinthine city. Heading to Odine’s Lab, we find out he’s in the presidential palace. Speaking to what looks like a guard, but in black, it turns out to be Elnoyle, which has a LOT of HP. It turns out to be just a long battle with nothing special as a reward. Finally finding our way to the palace (those lifters made navigating around this city so much easier), we’re granted an audience with the president. Entering his chamber, we find Ward, Kiros, and probably Laguna there. Laguna, it turns out, is the president. Speaking to Laguna, we find out that he was responsible for sealing Adel. Wow, she looks quite mannish. We also learn Ellone is inside Lunatic Pandora. Listening to the briefing, our first task is to rescue Ellone, then kill Adel before she fully awakens. We’ll then need to have Ultimecia possess Rinoa so Ellone can send them to the past where the time compression will begin, at which point only Rinoa will be sent back to the current time. We’ll then continue into the future to defeat Ultimecia. Um, yeah. Accepting the mission, we’re immediately on board the Ragnarok. Ooh! The power of friendship will allow us to survive in the far future of Ultimecia!
Making the short trip to Tears’ Point where the Pandora is hovering over, we blow a hole in the side of the thing and enter. As we enter, we’re met by Fujin and Raijin, who demand we hand Rinoa over. Aaaand, we get to fight them again. Ok, Regen is ridiculous. Luckily, they’re both susceptible to Sleep, so with Zell and Rinoa both with 100% Sleep attack, we’re able to keep them asleep for the majority of the battle while using GF attacks which do not awaken them. Of course, they still aren’t defeated and just retreat again. Encountering more familiar faces, we next run into Biggs and Wedge. Biggs isn’t too happy about his subordinate status, to which Wedge suggests he quit… and he does, simply walking off with Biggs in tow. Making it back to where we were whisked away the last time we were in here, Fujin and Raijin are waiting for us, but instead of fighting them, we get to fight the contraption that blocked up last time, which is a Mobile Type 8, along with a couple probes. Demi works on it. So, other than when it separates and casts Corona to knock everyone down to 1 HP to which we just draw-cast Curaga and maybe cast a Life if a probe attacked before we could draw-cast, it’s just a handful of Demis and then finishing it off with draw-casting Flare when Demi got down to doing about 1000 damage.
With that eliminated, we follow the weeble-wobbles that are Fujin and Raijin, and find them with Ellone in a hostage position, along with Seifer behind them. As Raijin is about to attack on Seifer’s command, Fujin interrupts and decides she’s had enough of taking orders from Seifer, and releases Ellone to us. Seifer has no issues with the pair just walking off, and then attacks us. Him not having a curative spell to draw makes it a little annoying. But having Cerberus’ triple makes Seifer’s Bloodfest easy to recover from. GF attacks are good enough to defeat him. Of course that’s not the end of him as he promptly jumps up and grabs Rinoa after she walks by him, taking her to Adel so the two sorceresses can merge. And that ends disc 3.
Ok, the perspective was completely off. I though he ran with Rinoa towards where he was perched. That’s a dead end, so heading back, is it up the ladders to the diving platform-like thing? Other than a draw point, there’s nothing here. Oh, we can go up the inclined bit. At least there’s a plentitude of save points in here. We make it to Seifer, just as the manly, and extremely tall, Adel grabs Rinoa and wears her like a vest. We then have to fight Adel while, I’m guessing, keeping Rinoa alive, which is made tougher by Adel drawing HP from Rinoa to heal herself. Which means GFs won’t be much use for attacking here since I believe every attack of theirs is an all enemy attack. First thing is draw-casting Regen on everyone, plus Rinoa. Carbuncle’s Reflect doesn’t work against Ultima. Cerberus’ Triple is extremely helpful to throw up Haste and Shell on everyone in one turn, as well as for healing purposes. I basically cast Aura on Squall and then had him do a bunch of Renzokukens on Adel, triple healing Rinoa along the way. After about a half dozen tries, Adel goes down in a fiery explosion, which seemingly has zero effect on Rinoa.
Laguna and Ellone then run in. Ellone sends Rinoa back in time inside Adel and almost immediately brings Rinoa back, leaving Ultimecia inside the young Adel. I think. We’re then sent to the future. Thankfully, there’s a save point as soon as we land, which for some reason multiplies into about a dozen of them. As we were falling, Squall said we should head for Edea’s house. I sure hope it still exists. Going the only way available in this Commencement Room, we see what looks like Edea get up from a chair, split into four, and then we enter battle against a single “Sorceress”. Almost as soon as the battle starts, she splits into two. The good thing is that they’re very susceptible to Sleep. After each new “Sorceress” appears, the scene shifts. After about a half dozen scene changes, a different “Sorceress” appears that has Haste to draw from. Eventually, we get to an actually dangerous “Sorceress”. It’s own Flare does some good damage, and with Cerberus’ Triple again, we can quickly heal up after she gets off an Ultima.
With her out of the way, we’re suddenly in Edea’s house. Heading to the beach, a short cutscene shows a floating castle, which we need to climb the humongous chains that are tethering it to the ground. Entering it, the menu says it’s Ultimecia Castle. Starting up the stairs, the rest of the party shows up and we split into two groups. And it looks like every ability but Attack has been sealed while we’re inside the castle. Hmm. Exploring around, it seems like we’ve suddenly entered a puzzle game. Hmm, I would have thought throwing that switch would have allowed access to the hatch with the other party. So, there’s this random section of a wall in a hallway with absolutely no indication that it’s anything that requires a Treasure Vault Key. I guess you need to just drunkenly stumble around, hoping to activate things, to make it through here? Enough exploring for now. Heading back, we actually initiate a battle against the Sphinxaur this time (we were able to just walk past it before). Considering we can only Attack physically, this is an extremely boring battle. It’s nice of it to keep casing Thundaga on Rinoa, who absorbs it. After about a half-dozen rounds, we knock its mask off and its name becomes Sphinxara for some reason. Oh, hey, being zombified removed the Doom status. After defeating Shinxara, we get to unlock one ability. I guess this means we’ll be fighting *counts* eight bosses to unlock everything. Since we don’t know if there will be anything useful to draw-cast, we unlock magic.
Heading through the door, trying to cross the chandelier causes it to fall, with us on it, to the floor below and onto that hatch we came across before, breaking it. Now being able to open it, we head down the stairs into what looks like a wine cellar and find another boss, this one Tri-Point. Lovely. Every time you attack it, it retaliates against all characters with a really powerful lightning attack. For some reason, Life will not work on Zell, which means reload, junction enough Thundaga on everyone so we absorb it, and redo the annoying Sphinx battle. What exactly is the point of sealing off the Save ability when you can just exit the castle and use the save point right outside? For some reason, I didn’t think about that earlier, which would have saved having to redo the Sphinx battle. Anyway, we head back in, defeat Sphinx, head out, save, then fight the tedious battle against Tri-Point, have it fully heal us with its retaliation, and then unlock Draw. Oh, nice, there’s an Aura draw point down here.
After saving just outside the castle door, we head back in, and go to a room with a bunch of paintings that we stumble into being able to view. They seriously couldn’t get this room to not have about 5 screen transitions with loading time, not to mention loading every time we view a painting? After viewing every painting, the one with the title that can’t be read now has all of them as options. Channeling Roberta Williams, another boss shows up behind us. Approaching it, we enter battle against Trauma. The little Droma’s are annoying with their laser cannons, which we just stay healed up against. Withstanding Trauma’s one big cannon blast, we defeat it and unlock GF.
After heading out to save, we get back to where we fought Trauma and continue through and down into the dungeon. Entering the open room, we get locked in. Picking up the shiny prison key from a corpse inside the cell, this summons Red Giant. Well, aren’t you sneaky. We simply draw-cast Demi on him a bunch of times, and then finish him off with physical attacks. He only does about 400 points of damage, so surviving was no problem. I wonder if the Resurrection ability is why Zell couldn’t be revived earlier. Now able to get out of the cell, the other door needs the Armory Key. I chuckle every time we receive our salary.
Pulling the lever from earlier, it locks in the chandelier and we’re able to cross it and arrive on a balcony with the boss Krysta. Draw-casting Holy does some nice damage. Too bad it retaliates with a pretty heavy physical attack, and it retaliates even on a Draw. Withstanding its final Ultima cast, we defeat it and unlock Limit Break. Heading back to save, that’s an easy way to get the other party back to the start.
We hadn’t checked out what was beyond the door where the lever was, so going there, we end up in a church. Going to the organ, we can play something on it, but have found no clues about what to play. Heading upstairs and across a bridge, as we approach some item, it falls off the side. Hmm… Descending the nearby ladder, there’s nothing on this small ledge. I’m guessing whatever that item is floated down the water channel here. The only other place I’ve seen water in here is in the dungeon. Ignoring the spiral ramp through the door on this side of the bridge, we go in search of that item. Back in the dungeon, there’s a sparkly thing in the water, which turns out to be the Armory Key. Well, that’s convenient. Entering the armory right behind us, there’s an Ultima draw point and a boss. Approaching it, we enter battle against a Vysage, Lefty, and Righty. After defeating them, Gargantua rises from the ground. Evil Eye is pretty annoying in that it dispels Aura. A Meltdown and a couple Renzokukens and it goes down. Two left.
Ok, I started using a walkthrough at the Adel fight (which probably was apparent at the painting puzzle), but how exactly would anyone find the Treasure Vault Key without knowing it’s there? There is zero indication that it’s where it is. You would need to just be constantly pressing the search button as you’re walking around the castle. I could easily see someone spending days trying to find this key to no avail. Even knowing it was to the left of the fountain, I still had to repeatedly press X as I walked around the area to find it. I actually reloaded just to confirm that, yes, it is completely invisible. Making our way back to the treasure room, which is only visible when the lightning strikes so you can see the side of the red frame, we enter and randomly select boxes until all four are open. The boss Catoblepas then appears. Well, that was easy. We just draw-cast Meteor on it and did well over 1k damage each time, then survive its final Meteor cast before it explodes.
Taking the spiral ramp we ignored earlier, we use the bell to hop across to fight the final boss, Tiamat. Yay! It has the GF Eden to draw! It’s Dark Flare hits hard, but with a quick Haste and Shell put up on everyone thanks to Cerberus, we’re able to survive it. Just draw-casting Flare and a few Renzokukens and it goes down. Now we have all our abilities back and it’s on to Ultimecia. It’s a good thing the clock died at about 2:45.
Entering Ultimecia’s room, she gives a very short speech, then randomly chooses three characters to fight. Oh, well. I guess I’ll just let everyone die off until it’s down to Squall, Zell, and Rinoa, who have all the GFs junctioned. Demi works really well against her. As soon as she’s “defeated”, she summons the GF Griever. His attacks aren’t really dangerous until he pulls off his Shockwave Pulsar, which one-shot kills my party. We get back to Griever and Shell is enough to keep Squall alive. Angelo revives Rinoa, which was handy. What a load of BS. I inputted the cast Life with Squal and between the time I inputted it and he acted, he got hit with a Silence status effect, meaning a reset just to save some time since it immediately attacked Rinoa, KOing her again. This is what I really despise about how Square implemented the ATB. If you’re going to use this system, once you input a command, you shouldn’t be beaten to the punch by the enemy. It’s so nice being at the mercy of the RNG for what Magic he eliminates from a character. Ok, this is getting fruitless. I guess I need to grind up just to get enough HP. Wow, even without Boost, Eden is pretty much destroying everything. And I can eat an entire meal, play through all of Super Mario Bros., start and complete War and Peace, etc. during the animation. Multi-tasking! Why would anyone think an animation for a supposedly integral part of the game being almost one and a half minutes long is a good idea? Though it is much shorter than spending 10+ min chipping away at these high level monsters in here.
With Eden now with Boost, we try again. And we’re able to get by Griever thanks to a few full power Eden attacks, a handful of Renzokuken, keeping Shell, Haste, and Regen up, and draw-casting Tornadoes. And he hardly eliminated any stacks of spells (I actually don’t think he did a single one of those). Of course, that’s not the end of it all as Ultimacia joins herself to Griever. Well, Eden was useless as the combined form instantly did 9999 damage to it, killing it off. Just having Protect and Shell up, this form is pretty easy with some draw-casting Thundagas, Renzokukens, and a couple triple Ultimas. Yeah, you cast your Quake on our floating party. Aaaaand, we’re still not done. Just how many HP does this form have? After about 7 rounds of triple Ultimas, she gets off an Apocalypse immediately after a Hell’s Judgment, which wipes us out. There went about 30 min.
Ok, time to run around for a while learning the GF abilities Expendx3-1 and Auto-Haste, as well as HP+40% on Carbuncle. With that done, and gaining some needed HP to survive their big hitters, we trek back to hopefully finish this game off. I’m switching Rinoa to Quistis because Quistis’ Homing Laser did 9999 during the initial form when she was a throwaway character, so Aura on her might be an option, as opposed to what Rinoa has. We also refine those two Fury Fragments for an extra 10 Auras. To battle!
After Ultimecia decided to not finish off the useless party members, we’ll just KO them ourselves to get Zell, Squall, and Rinoa. Quistis’ 72 Speed is actually faster than the other two when hasted. Putting Eden on Quistis with a good stock of Ultimas, she’s doing over 10k damage every extremely fast round. Meltdown and Aura on Squall is another 15k or so damage. What? Griever blows away Ultima? Um, yeah. Reset. Trying again, we use the same strategy, hoping for better RNG results and Griever goes down easily. This strategy is working a LOT better. We just make sure to keep Shell, Haste, Protect, and Regen on at all times. Continuing to the spot we died at the last time to an Apocalypse, we’re able to do enough damage quickly enough to where Ultimecia only pulled of a couple Hell’s Judgments, in response to which we just triple cast Curaga a couple times (only needed to use one of our four Megalixirs this time) and resume putting a hurt on her. She starts saying something, but I’m too busy watching bars fill up to read it. Dang it! She blew away Quistis’ Ultima (which I had junctioned to her HP)! And I couldn’t revive her in time. I hope Zell and Squall can finish her off. I don’t want to spend another almost hour on this fight. Luckily, a few more Aura’d Renzokukens later and we finish her off, watching her explode spectacularly. Let the end sequence and credits roll! Watching the credits, I notice Chocobo Game. So I guess there are chocobos in this game.
Game time: 65:57 (plus probably 40+ attempts at Ultimecia, so probably closer to 70 hrs)
Final stats:
Levels and weapons:
Squall: 51, Cutting Trigger
Zell: 48, Maverick
Quistis: 40, Slaying Tail
Irvine: 24, Valiant
Rinoa: 28, Rising Sun
Selphie: 31, Flail
I give it a 4/10 -- which is slightly below average. It just wasn’t all that fun. I’m not a fan of the aspect of junctioning magic to stats. The leveling monsters just made random encounters a tedious slog after a while. I slapped on Enc-None as soon as I got it, which was nice being able to just run around. There were way too many long stretches where I didn’t even feel like I was playing a game, but rather was watching a movie or reading a book.
