Game - Final Fantasy 8, Day 58
Hours Played/Hours Total - 10 hrs / 42 hrs
Starting Point - Fisherman's Horizon.
Current Goal - Help out Fisherman's Horizon with the Galbadia problem.
What Happened - So...just a warning right now, I'm trying to meet my monthly goal of finishing off Final Fantasy 8. This means that the next couple of posts will probably be super long and not extremely detailed where I can manage. I'm getting close to the mark, and I'll probably have to play at least 6ish hours every time I have the time to do so. It's going to be rough, but I shall succeed! Let's get to it!
Starting where I left off, I had to run into town to help out the Mayor with the Galbadian forces. While running through town, I had to deal with a couple groups of soldiers. None of them were necessarily very challenging, and I managed to find the Mayor with little effort. As it turns out, his talking method of fixing things wasn't working at all. (WHAT A SURPRISE!) The soldier was demanding the location of Ellone (she took off earlier if you didn't remember), but of course, the Mayor had no idea who that even was. The soldier smacked him around a bit, and then stated that the Sorceress had ordered the town be burned down regardless. At this point, I decided to step in and deal with the soldier. When I ran over, a couple of soldiers came from behind me, and it was...regular battle time! It wasn't a boss battle because the battle was just two regular Galbadian soldiers and one officer. I easily defeated them, but I wasn't going to get off the easily. Just as the soldiers were defeated, we heard something coming from a ways off. Next thing I know, some vehicle is on the nearby road and moving towards us. It's the tank from the missile base! BOSS BATTLE TIME!
This battle wasn't too different from the first time I fought it, but on the plus side, I didn't have a time limit this time. I started off by casting Protect on everyone, and then I followed up with Thunder-based magic and Quetzalcoatl. The thing was completely messed up from the battle and the explosion of the base. It was falling apart and barely seemed able to attack. I stole a piece of Adamantine from it (guide suggested it would be useful later). It really didn't take a lot of time or effort to beat the machine. Once the battle was over, the machine slid backwards out of the area and fell into the ocean. After it fell off though, I was in for a delightful surprise. As we were watching it fall off, a group of people climbed out of it...the team from the Galbadia base mission! (Selphie, Irvine, and Quistis) They had used the tank of sorts to survive and escape the explosion at the base. Squall was actually fairly happy to see them, despite his normal attitude. The group talked briefly, and then everyone, except Squall, returned to the Garden. Rinoa was all excited that Squall actually seemed to care about his fellow comrades. (Seeing as he is generally pretty silent and unemotional about things.) She went ahead and ran off, and I briefly spoke with the Mayor.
He seemed remotely grateful for us helping him, but he said he wasn't going to thank us. As Squall, I was given a choice of responding to this. Squall admitted that he wished more things could be talked out as opposed to fighting, but he added on that sometimes things just come down to fighting. Talking can take too much time, and most of the time others won't even try to listen. Fighting ends up being the result. I leave the area for now and start exploring FH. There wasn't much to see, but I was able to finally upgrade a whole bunch of weapons for everyone. Talking to some of the people around there gave some general information about things. One guy mentioned NORG and asked if he had changed yet. I wondered what he meant, but all he responded with was NORG being a Shumi and that we were obviously clueless. Someone else asked us earlier if we were heading for the hi-tech country of Esther. Of course we weren't, but they said that many people walk through here trying to take the only path to Esther. As I returned to the Garden, I ran into Irvine. Irvine mentioned that the technicians were working on the Garden, and that he had a question. He wondered if it'd be okay to ask the techs to fix something else. Squall figured it'd be fine if it didn't restrict the Garden repair. I continued on towards the Garden.
Before getting too far, Irvine mentioned something about Selphie feeling pretty down currently. She was supposed to be near the Garden Festival stage. I went over and found out the reason for part of her depression. The stage had been ruined during all of the Garden's movement, and Irvine figured they could cheer her up by rebuilding the stage, aka the technician question earlier. (Of course, he also seemed interested in her in general.) I spoke with her a bit and told her that everything was going to be all right. Squall was called to the Headmaster's office, and Irvine let her in on his plan. They'd get the stage rebuilt by the FH Technicians so the festival could go on. Selphie was planning to organize a band for it. The two began to formulate a plan as Squall made his way to the Headmaster's office.
Once there, Cid was making an announcement to the entire Garden on their next goal. He and the rest of the staff would keep up with their jobs, but he appointed Squall as the overall leader of everybody. He wanted Squall to lead them in their fight against the Sorceress. However Squall wasn't completely okay with this. He wasn't sure why he was being appointed as the leader at all. Cid mentioned something about it being his destiny to lead the way in fighting the Sorceress. Squall had a bit of a breakdown after this. He didn't understand why it was being decided for him, and he even thought about walking away from it all. However, he ended up just giving in and going along with it all. Next thing I know, Squall's in his bed thinking about everything. Wondering how Cid truly feels about his wife, Sorceress Edea, being hunted down by SeeD. He sits there and thinks on it all as the game cuts to the rest of the group.
The rest of the crew are in FH trying to figure out the band for the festival. Selphie has a musical score from Trabia Garden, but it got mixed in with another one (Oh no?). Listening to a group of eight instruments, you are supposed to choose four for the group to play and hopefully sound decent together. Rinoa was given a different job during this though. After choosing the four instruments, the group begins to practice and sets their plan in motion. The game switches back to Squall. He gets up and heads out to find something to do. While leaving his room, he runs into Rinoa who invites him to the festival. It doesn't seem like she'll take no for an answer, so the two head off. The festival was moved into FH, and I find myself nearby the Mayor's house. Irvine says he's set up a nice spot by the stage for Squall and Rinoa to go, but for now, he has plans of his own. I make my way down to the stage, and the group begins to play. I enjoy the music for a bit, and the two go off to the spot Irvine marked off. He marked it off with a dirty magazine...Regardless, the two sit down and start to talk.
They talk for quite a bit, but the basic point of the conversation is as follows. Rinoa tells Squall that he can talk with and depend on the other members of the party. He doesn't have to do everything by himself like he seems to go with. Squall tries to go away, but Rinoa keeps him there for longer. Eventually, she tells him that they just want him to talk with them. Anything is better than nothing. Squall eventually tells her that he'll try to ask for help when needed, but the way he says it angers Rinoa. She claims that he doesn't really care and just wants to leave. She runs off, and the night ends. The next day, Squall is awakened by the intercom and is being called to the bridge. Once there, he's greeted by Xu, Quistis, and Nida (the other person who passed the SeeD exam in the beginning). The group has decided to refer to him as Commander, and each one has taken control over an aspect of Garden to help out. Before moving out, Quistis suggests giving Selphie a break after the base mission. The group also suggests Balamb as our next target. Figure we should go and check up on them. Using my flying fortress that is Balamb Garden, I make my way over there.
As I get closer to Balamb, I notice something funny nearby the outside of town. What looks like a giant red airship, I figure it is Galbadia Garden and turns out that it can also fly! However, now is not the time for giant flying fortress battles. I jump off the Garden and make my way into town. First thing I see is a Galbadian soldier blocking my way into town. A little talking and a bit of lying on my part gets my group into town (Quistis, Zell, and Squall). The Galbadians were in town looking for Ellone. They weren't going to find her though, but they didn't know that! Looking about town revealed that everyone was okay though. The commander of the forces there was staying at the hotel, but I couldn't get to them without talking with the "captain." However, the captain seemed to be fairly irresponsible and not doing his job. This lead to the most annoying walk about town ever. I had to run all over the place talking to specific people and then running to another place to talk to other people. This captain was a pretty big idiot apparently. Caught, cooked, and ate bad fish....great stuff. I finally cornered the captain back at the hotel, and it turns out that the captain is Raijin! He said something about the commander being angry (obviously Fuujin) and attacked us! BOSS BATTLE TIME!
Raijin charged at me with two Galbadian soldiers by his side. I smacked the soldiers, and they both went down immediately. All that was left at this point was Raijin. He really didn't have a variety of abilities though. All he did was strike physically ever so often. I cast Protect on everybody and slowly worked down his HP. This made the battle fairly quick. He ran off and inside to meet with Fuujin, and so I followed straight after him. Once inside, we came face to face with Fuujin. She was surprised to see us, but she wasn't about to let us ruin their plans. She wasn't alone though. It seems Raijin was ready for round two! BOSS BATTLE TIME PART TWO! Raijin and Fuujin made a pretty decent team, but they really weren't capable of high damage. Before doing anything, I drew a new GF off of Fuujin called Pandemona (wind-type GF). I then just did the same thing as last battle. I put Protect on everybody and started whittling their health away. They never did deal a huge amount of damage. Raijin had one super powered physical strike he did, but it never presented any form of a real problem. I beat Fuujin first who ran off and told Raijin to take care of us. That wasn't the case of course since Raijin went down shortly after. With the two beaten, the group wasn't quite sure of what to do next. The duo weren't really with Galbadia. As they had always said, they were on Seifer's side. However, seeing as Seifer was with the Sorceress, they would be against us and no longer with Garden. The duo agreed to this and left. The party was kind of sad to see them go, but it wasn't meant to be I guess...
Once I got back to the Garden, the group was trying to think of their next action. Selphie came by and asked if we could possibly go to Trabia Garden to check on it. She was probably worried since those missiles managed to launch without any trouble. And so...I set my sights on Trabia Garden, or at least I certainly was planning to. However, I finally had an opportunity to explore the world, so I took it! I began to look into a couple of different side quests that were available now. The first one I went for was a small little village called Shumi Village. It is home to a group of people called the Shumi. They're like small yellow people with long hands. (If you remember, NORG was a Shumi.) The people here lived in a peaceful village hundreds of meters underground. There they lived a quiet and peaceful life of hard work and innovation. While walking around, I stumbled upon a Shumi known as Sculptor. He was working on a statue of Laguna, and thus I was introduced to the side quest. Sculptor asked that I talk to the Elder there. I was informed at several occasions that not everybody is normally let inside the village, and that it was a great privilege to even be down here. The Elder offered me a gift, but he said that it must be earned. he asked that I help with the statue of Laguna. This was a fairly easy task. All I had to do was walk about town and retrieve specialized stones that were scattered in specific spots around town. (I'd describe it, but I'm trying to wrap the post up and not much to describe anyways.)
Upon completion of the task, the Elder gave us our gift...He showed us the palm of his hands. Apparently, I was supposed to be impressed by a "symbolic" gift. Before leaving, the Elder's attendant gave us a small souvenir for our visit. The item was a Phoenix Pinion. (If you use it in battle, it summons Phoenix. That does fire damage to the enemy and revives the entire team.) This was better than the symbolic gift, but it still wasn't much. However, as the group was leaving, Squall explained that the symbolism of what he did was supposed to be a great gesture to all of them. The game jumps over to the Elder and his Attendant who are wondering if the group actually got what they meant. Apparently, they didn't plan to give them anything, and the hand thing was to mean nothing other than giving them a chance to relax (something like that). As the two wrap up, the Elder tells the Attendant to go help finish the statue. The Attendant doesn't seem too happy about this but goes to help anyways. I head out for a bit and then come back for part two of this side quest. I'm to help recruit more Shumi's to help finish the statue. This goes fairly easily until I come to a Shumi known as the Artisan. Unfortunately, he's not overly psyched to help finish the statue either.
I go to the Elder, and he requests that I find a way to convince the Artisan. Honestly, I'd be completely clueless of what to do right here if not for my guide book. I leave the village and have to backtrack back to Fisherman's Horizon. Once there, I seek out a man known only as Grease Monkey. Apparently, he met with the Artisan at some point and was given a small Moomba figure. The Moomba figure responds to our group, and he hears us out. Upon hearing the story, he lets us take the Moomba figure to give to the Artisan. So...I make my way back to Shumi Village. Once there, I make my way to the Artisan and hand over the Moomba doll. The doll delivers a message to him from Grease Monkey. Basically, he says he should go and help finish the statue. Shortly after leaving the Artisan's house, the group watches as he heads over to the Sculptor's. I finally report back to the Elder. He's happy to say that the statue should be finished quite soon with the trio of Shumis working on it. He gives us a Status Guard item (teaches a GF a special ability), and the side quest is finally complete.
I didn't really explain everything out like I would have preferred to, but my schedule is getting tight. I'm ready to push through FF8, and descriptions are going to be thrown out of the door. Next up on the list is something known as the Centra Ruins. It's located on a continent to the south nearby an area known as the Centra Crater. I had to look around a bit, but I eventually spotted the tower. It's a pretty obvious structure once it comes into view. I enter inside and begin the perilous climb. There are several factors against you. The first thing that comes to mind is the lovely timer in the upper corner. You get twenty minutes to climb the tower and defeat Odin. Twenty minutes is more than enough, but it can also be a REALLY close call if you don't know what to do. (The guide is definitely helping here.) Next up on the "factors against me" are the enemies. I realize that enemies are always against you, but in this case, the game throws a fun and favorite specialty at you...the Tonberry!
The Tonberry is another memorable creature in the Final Fantasy lineup. It's like a lizard standing on its hind legs, and it is wearing a robe while holding a knife in one hand and a lantern in the other. It is a strange creature with strange tactics. Basically, it slowly walks towards you while only countering with a special ability. It's a pretty strong counter, and once it closes the distance, it starts stabbing you with the knife for fairly massive damage. I can't stick around to kill any Tonberries though because they had like 20,000 HP each, and it took nearly 2 minutes to kill the first one I ran into. After that, I just ran away from them. I quickly made my way up the tower. There were a couple of branching pathways and a few switches to hit, but it wasn't overly complicated. After the Tonberry time waste, I had to just run away from any and all battles coming my way. I finally entered a large room with a massive sitting monstrous man. It was Odin himself. He told me that we would do battle and that the strong would survive while the weak would perish. BOSS BATTLE TIME!
This wasn't too challenging of a battle, but by the time I got there, I had around 7 minutes to beat him. Thankfully, all he does is sit there and watch. This leaves it open for me to just pound away at him. While doing such, I did grab a handful of the new magic spell Triple. By casting Triple on a character, you're able to cast a selected spell three times. I used the Triple spell to cast Haste on the party and just go crazy. I kept away from GF and Magic since Odin has a strong magic resistance. Lucky for me, I recently gained some Ultima for Squall and junctioned it to his Strength. This resulted in a surprisingly strong physical attack (over 1000 per attack!). It took a bit of time, but I managed to defeat Odin...and with time to spare! (I think like 2 minutes?) With Odin's defeat, he offered us his power and joined the team. Odin works differently from other GFs in this game though. Instead of junctioning, Odin works on a random factor. I'm not sure about the factor, but ever so often, in a random non-boss battle, Odin will appear and kill off the enemies for you. I eagerly await his appearance. Now that Odin is gone...it's time for part two of the Centra Ruins.
Odin isn't the only Guardian Force available in this tower. Remember the Tonberries from like...2 paragraphs ago? Well, the second GF available here is the Tonberry GF. You can only obtain him by defeating a pile of Tonberries (at least 18) and then fighting off a King Tonberry. Let me just say...this turned into a doozy of a side quest. While there, I had to have fought off at least 30 Tonberries. I didn't ever keep count, but it had to be more than enough. This wasn't fun at all either. Each Tonberry takes anywhere from two to five minutes each to fight off. They don't have any particular weakness. They have a large amount of health. On top of all that, you get zero experience and only 1 GP from them upon defeat. This just makes this side bit suck even more. I almost gave up on completing the quest, but I had a small hunch. I briefly left the ruins and went back in. It seems the game had "locked out" the King Tonberry since I had just obtained Odin. Upon reentering, I immediately met up with King Tonberry for BOSS BATTLE TIME!
Now, I said that the Tonberries didn't have a weakness. This was a small lie. The spell Demi is useful for depleting their HP as is the Diablos summon (takes a % of their health based on his current level). Unfortunately, this isn't a viable option on King Tonberry. He's immune to the gravity-based spell and summon, so I had to deal with him the old fashioned and much longer way. I threw all I could at him whether it was spells, physical attacks, or summons. He wasn't necessarily very tough, but I did my best to keep up a layer of Haste and Protect to make the battle easier. (Looove the Triple spell.) The King Tonberry came with a fun amount of HP (I think it was over 60,000?) This made the battle take quite a bit since even my best attacks and spells weren't really breaking past 1500 damage. It was a slow battle, but he never really had the upper hand. The damage he dealt out was never immense, so I only had to heal a few times. Upon the final hit, the King Tonberry fell over and lost his crown. He shrunk back down to regular size and...apologized to the group (fairly funny actually). He joined my party, and I added a new GF to my roster! The Tonberry GF is a fairly unorthodox GF and comes with some fairly strange abilities like Haggle (lowers all shop prices) or Familiar (makes rare items appear in shops). With the Tonberry now apart of my group, I was finally done with the side quest. It was time to leave Centra Ruins and head for Trabia Garden.
Or that was the plan, but I had one more side quest in mind before continuing with the story. Next up was a visit to a new place that the current group had only visited in their dreams...Winhill. Winhill is the small village from the third Laguna dream sequence (when he was a monster hunter of sorts). The small town didn't offer much, but there was a small side quest of sorts to be done here. It's not a very large quest, and the rewards aren't great, but it does offer a little story of sorts. The large house in town is home to a richer family. Apparently, they're missing a very valuable vase that recently disappeared. To make a long story short, the vase hadn't disappeared on its own. It seems that some precarious baby chocobos (called chicibos) and "ghosts" had helped the vase move about. Two of the four pieces were in the hands of chicibos. They quickly relinquished their pieces and went about their way. The other two pieces were located in odd places. The first one was in the bar from the Laguna sequence. It was owned by Raine back then, but it was currently owned by a strange artist. She mentioned something about a mysterious flowery fragrance wafting from downstairs ever so often. Upon investigation, this revealed a ghost of Raine. When approached, it changed into a cat, and the cat had a piece of vase. The final vase piece was at the village's flower shop. The lady talked briefly about Raine and her love of the flowers. She also made mention of "that man" (Laguna) and how he was the reason for Raine's unfortunate end. The final piece of vase showed up in the flower shop among the flowers. With all the pieces in hand, I revisited the mansion and handed them over. The family was not happy to see it in pieces but was glad to have them nonetheless. The handed over a Holy stone, and I went along my way. (The Holy Stone is an item that acts as Holy when used. It can also be changed into a Holy spell with the appropriate GF ability.) With that done, it's finally time to return to the story and make way to Trabia!
Trabia Garden was aaaaall the way back up north, so I had a fun trip trying to make my way back up. Luckily, I didn't deal with any monsters while flying, and I didn't run into much resistance when I disembarked. Upon approaching the Trabia Garden, it was very clear that the missiles had hit their mark. The Garden wasn't in good shape, and Selphie went inside to get a closer look. I followed quickly after her and discovered the Garden was very much in ruins. However, it seemed that many of the Trabia students had managed to survive it all. Selphie went all about checking up on her friends and former fellow students. There was quite a bit of emotion at this point. Among those there, it seemed that many of them had died during the missile attack. There was a lot of insight into Selphie as a person while going about the place, but eventually it came to an end. We all met up at a basketball course, and the group began to really talk.
Rinoa brought up that she REALLY wished there was a way for the group to get out of having to fight. She wished someone could come up with an alternative to war and fighting. They all hoped for this, but they also knew that option wasn't going to be possible. However, they all agreed to fight on together regardless of that. During the next bit, things got really plot-y. The group began to talk about the past, and an amazing discovery was made. (A lot happened here so I'm going to try and summarize it.) Basically, Irvine helped the group rediscover their past. It seems that they had all already met long ago when they were kids. During a war that happened previous to the current time, they were all orphans in the same orphanage (minus Rinoa but add on Seifer). Their biggest concern during this time was trying to figure out how they forgot. The problem pointed towards an in-game problem about how GFs seemed to erase memories. It had something to do with the process of granting them powers in return for the space they take in their minds. Despite their memory lose, they agreed that they couldn't give away the power of the GFs. On top of all this, it seems that Ellone had lived with them at some point, and that they referred to her as Sis. On top of THAT, the woman who had run the orphanage was an Edea Kramer...That's right! Sorceress Edea (aka Cid's wife) had raised the group for a period of time. They had known her as Matron, and now the group was engrossed in more feelings and such. Quite a bit happened at this point, but I'm not going all out here. With all this in mind, the group felt like their next move was to find the old orphanage.
With the orphanage in mind, I made my way south to Centra in search of the old orphanage. It was supposed to be located near a beach with a lighthouse, so I had to search quite a bit for those two things. However, upon my arrival there, it seemed that we were not alone. The flying Galbadia Garden was there, and it was waiting for us. They figured that this was their time for the final showdown against Edea, and despite their love for Matron, they knew they had to deal with her. I got to make an announcement as Squall. It was just a basic speech with their plan of attack, but I figured I hit the right mark. Everyone got into position, and the group prepared for the Galbadia forces. Quite a bit happened during this next bit. There was a lot of cutscene and things going down. The front line leader of their group was Seifer, so it was made clear that we would have to face him eventually. The Galbadian troops came first though. As we got into position, the first round of forces launched off the Galbadia Garden on MOTORCYCLES and jumped onto our Garden. (Seemed like a bit of an extreme tactic if you ask me.) The group was split into two parties who were each covering different parts.
Zell, Quistis, and Rinoa were covering one area while the rest (namely Squall) had to go all over the place. He is the commander after all. As the fight started to break out, Rinoa had fallen down to a lower spot on the Garden. She was stuck there so Zell and Quistis had to go get help. This didn't go very well since they seemed to be unable to locate a damn rope. Things escalated quickly, and the Balamb Garden students and SeeD were quickly overwhelmed by all the Galbadian soldiers. They managed to hold their ground, but it was at a great cost. As the first couple of waves came to an end, the Garden was most definitely worse for wear. It was decided that they couldn't take another hit like that, so we needed to take the fight to Galbadia! The Balamb Garden rammed into the Galbadia Garden, and the group split up again. Everyone except for Squall ran off to infiltrate the Galbadia Garden while Squall made his way around to go rescue Rinoa. This wasn't going to be easy, and I started questioning how he could possibly pull it off. Luckily for him, Galbadia was using some strange and kinda funky looking flying suit things. I had to do a little fight scene between Squall and a single soldier (took me like FIVE tries because the game kept jipping me horribly). Once I finally succeeded, the soldier fell to his death as I gained control of the flight suit. Squall used this to go and rescue Rinoa. They took the suit upward and fell right into the middle of a giant battle. They ran along the side as Balamb SeeD and students faced off against Galbadian soldiers. It was a fairly epic looking battle.
We just ran around that of course. The two made it to the edge of the other Garden and briefly talked there. She was grateful for Squall's rescue of her, and she also had something of his on her. Earlier on, she had Zell obtain Squall's ring from him so that she had something of his. So...while all this chaos goes on behind them, the two start talking about this ring of sorts. It looks like a lion, and Squall named it Griever. The lion was supposed to symbolize things and stuff, and she said it really resembled Squall. (I'm sorry! I'm ready to wrap this post up. If you want more details, you should probably go play it instead!) Yeah, I don't get how this is either important nor why they are doing this mid-battle, but whatever! He said she could hold onto it for now, and the two of them entered Galbadia Garden. Once inside, the group was waiting for us, and they all agreed that we needed to find Edea and deal with her once and for all. They weren't quite sure how they wanted to deal with Matron, but they had to set aside their feelings and do it. And thus...I saved my game and ended it there.
I know that this post turned into a lot of summary, but I'm wanting to finish this before the month ends in...3 days. I've only got two more days where I'll be able to fully play it, so I'm going to be fast tracking it. I'll try to do more side quests before it is all said and done, but I don't think I really lack a whole lot else outside of ultimate weapons and a few extra GF. That is besides the point for this moment though. Hope you enjoyed this giant mess of a post, and you should stay tuned for another big post tomorrow! Yeah, that's right. I'm going to attempt another post tomorrow. It'll probably be pretty awful, but I'm hoping to cover a pretty good amount of in-game ground. Stay tuned for it!
Ending Point - Inside Galbadia Garden.
Current Party -
- Squall - Level 34
- Quistis - Level 20
- Irvine - Level 19
Next Goals - Infiltrate Galbadia Garden. Defeat the Sorceress!
~May the Crystals Guide Me~
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