Final Fantasy 8 - Final Thoughts

FINALLY! I've lost my goal of defeating before the month was up, but I've pushed on through and beat FF8 anyways. It's time for a final thoughts session on what is my overall review and opinion of FF8. This post does not reflect the opinions of anyone except for me and anyone I might mention in it. Recurring Fantasy reserves the right to disagree with all of you!

Final Fantasy 8 - Final Thoughts

Now with the title bit up, let's throw up the stats board, and then we can REALLY get started!
Final Fantasy 8 - Game Stats
Hours Played - 76 hours
Final Party Levels (Listed from highest to lowest)

• Squall - Level 100
• Zell - Level 61
• Selphie - Level 58
• Quistis - Level 57
• Irvine - Level 56
• Rinoa - Level 54

I'm actually fairly proud here. I managed to max out a character! Of course, Squall (from the beginning) was almost always several levels above the others. Before I started really getting levels, he was nearly TWENTY levels above the others. I'd put up the Guardian Force levels, but those are generally irrelevant. That...and it'd take up too much space typing it up. Let's just get to my review. 

For this round, I've got FOUR parts to mention! Yeah, that's right...I am upgrading again! However, the first one is simply to say "neener-neener" to the previous title more than anything. I doubt I keep it after this review although it will get mentions. The four parts (in order I'll be reviewing) are presentation, game play, story, and characters. Without further ado, let us start with PRESENTATION! *insert music and lights and shit*

I have made presentation for a point for a good reason. As far as Playstation graphics should be concerned, this game looks downright amazing. It easily blows away anything done previously in the FF series, and I'm mostly looking at you FF7. FF7 is a large graphical update to FF6 more than anything. FF8 has taken the idea of 3D Final Fantasy and given it the look it STILL uses today. What am I talking about? FF8 presents fully detailed and and full sized characters. After what FF8 did to it, the rest of the titles (namely FFX and after) started making people look like...well people. (FYI, I love FF9, so I'm not dogging on it.) I understand old game consoles and FF7 had limitations, but this is a great point nonetheless. Everything in FF8 looks and feels lived in. Towns look like real towns with lots of little details to accentuate things. It's a good touch on a really good looking game. The music is really great, but that's no surprise considering everybody's favorite Mr. Uematsu is behind it. I just wanted to get it out there that this title changed a lot and really upped the ante for Square Enix to constantly improve on the look and detail of their games. Even today, Final Fantasy is always a staple in the "this shit looks amazing" graphics. Even when compared to all else, Final Fantasy always steps above in their presentation. With that said and done, I'm going to move on to the larger portion of the review. Please bear with me as I go through a looong review.

Final Fantasy 8 takes your ATB (Active Time Battle) system and makes its changes. I wouldn't say anything is necessarily improved though, but nothing at this point is really in need of improving! Battles offer you the basic commands of Items, Magic, Draw, GF, and the special commands. The main commands are pretty easy and straight forward, but Special Commands bring something interesting to the table. Examples of these include the Recover, Revive, or Treatment command. Recover fully heals, Revive...revives, and Treatment heals any status effects. These are just a few of the fairly diverse list of special commands. Of course, these replace having any other commands outside of Attack. You always have that. After that, the only other thing truly worth mentioning is the Limit Break system. In FF6, you more or less always had it. In FF7, you got a bar that charged up as you lost health. In FF8, it sort of combines the two ideas. You only get your Limit Break in FF8 when your health is critical. After that point, it it possible to constantly use your Limit Break as long as you don't get out of it. This means that yes...you could just stay at low HP and constantly Limit Break, but it also leaves you up to dying easily. The game offers the Aura spell to allow for constantly Limit Breaks, but this feels like cheating to just rain down Limit Breaks on everybody. (Of course, that was my strategy for the final boss...) I'm more or less undecided on this, but I didn't really touch my Limit Breaks until the game was done with. Therefore, I'm not the best judge on them. They do have some super powerful ones though. That's about it for battle game play, but now we should look over the system for characters...

The biggest thing you should love OR hate about Final Fantasy 8 is the Junction System. It's actually a really clever yet incredibly customizing system. You are a bit out of luck early on, but once you have at least half of the Guardian Forces, you can basically make a super team suited to your needs. However, with the Junction System comes the Draw system of magic, and I can tell you that this is probably a big reason people don't like it. For me, I'm cool with drawing, but I spend more time than I should doing it. Before I got anywhere in FF8, I spent at least an hour drawing all the magic I could so I had a couple sets of 100. This gave me a stupidly large advantage early on. This is somewhat of a flaw in FF8. I'm not necessarily looking for a challenge at this point, but since I have no limit to what I can draw...Why not draw it all? I even doubled if not tripled the time of a boss battle by drawing all the magic I wanted. With a pile of 100 magics, you can easily boost your team to superhuman limits in categories and make the initial bosses zero challenge. Not a huge complaint, but it would be better to limit me somehow at some point.

The next part of the Junction System would be the summoning of GFs in battle. They have a lot of cool and even some fun summons in the game, but they made summons into...win buttons. Once you get the Boost ability of a GF, you can boost its power to 150% for most GFs and even 250% for Eden! GFs have zero cost and can be done as often as you want. Sure, there is a time you have to wait for them, but that speeds up as you use a specific GF over and over. At one point, I just stopped using magic entirely and relied on physical strikes or GF summons. You can modify attacks to have elements or statuses, and attacks, when junctioned properly, tend to be more powerful than any magic you can use. The game sticks to the same basic elements and statuses while adding in a few fun ones like Vit-0, which is probably the best one. (Quick explanation...it makes their defense ZERO.)

One of the best parts is also a really shitty part of FF8. That part is enemy levels. Basically, instead of enemies being level constricted all over the map, they all level up with you as you level up. Near the beginning, they will almost always remain behind you if you draw magic to the extreme like I did. Later on, there can be several enemies that do offer some challenge. Overall, this makes random battles more rewarding and more challenging. On the flip side of this, it can be downright annoying. FF8 uses an upgrade system to weapons as opposed to buying new ones. To perform any of these upgrades, you have to collect items off of enemies. The initial upgrades are easy and only need a few items of course. However, later on becomes a huge pain just to locate some enemies. On top of this, enemies have a different item drop rate based completely on their level. This means you have to either...

1. Really luck on enemy item drops (You won't.) 
2. Get Tonberry with Level Up/Level Down ability and even the odds slightly (Only helps.) 
3. Play insanely large amounts of the card game Triple Triad to get a dozen cards to make ONE of the items in question.

As fun as the card game can be, it relies a lot on chance and luck. This means your best alternative is to find rare enemies with rare items. A couple of these enemies can be HARDER than the regular bosses, like Ruby Dragon. You could possibly spend hours finding a SINGLE monster just to have it drop the wrong item. I realize I might have just been unlucky, but this downright pissed me off and made me want to quit all together. It's my biggest complaint of the entire game though. The only other thing I'd say is that it gets annoying when a regular enemy takes forever to fight because he has a pile of HP but isn't directly hard or powerful outside of that. This means an average random encounter has a slight chance (later on) of being a long battle for absolutely no reason. But...that's about it.

To quickly review before moving to the next point, the battle system is upgraded ATB but generally the same. The Junction System is an incredibly awesome and customizable system of stats, but you can easily take advantage of it and make yourself ridiculous. It's nice that battles level up with you so that you are always challenged. However, this can get tedious and annoying when looking for specific enemies and items in a pile of random. Overall, it's still fairly enjoyable and a nice different experience. I'm calling that wrapped up...I spent longer than I should on it. ONWARD TO STORY!

(If you didn't realize it, there is going to be spoilers here so...OMG LOOKOUT! SPOILERS!)
The story of FF8... sort of goes all over. It does well on the story progression overall. I'd say the story is basically composed of three big pieces. You have the Sorceresses, Squall, and the romance of sorts.  It does tell you that "Sorceress is evil!", but of course, we learn that there is more to it than that. We find out this whole thing about a Sorceress from the future wanting to compress time into one space. However, I don't think it ever really explains WHY she does it. I might have missed that somewhere, but the only thing you can figure is she has SOME reason. It might be evil, but it might just be a generic "I don't want to die" thing. Outside of Sorceress thing, there's the parts about SeeD, Garden, and Squall. Like a lot of FF titles, the game does focus on other characters, but the main character is king. Squall's story is growing out of his "lone wolf" mentality. He learns that he needs people, and he learns about love. That brings us to the romantic part of the story. It only gets a brief portion here and there, but it becomes the main focus of Disc 3 aside from Ultimecia. This is more character-stuff, so I'll go into it more later. As for any real downsides...

I will say that you can start learning about all kinds of things early on if you talk to people, but if you don't talk to everyone, you can miss out on a LOT of extra details that fills in spots. It's mostly of the backstory or history in-game, but it'd be nice if more of it was straightforward as opposed to random NPC babble. The dream sequences are interesting enough, but they just add a pile of questions to the game when you are barely starting. Once you learn more, it does resolve itself, but it can feel annoying at the same time. Personally, I liked Laguna better than Squall. That's all I'll say about that though. There's the whole thing of "turns out we were all orphans together" twist. I understand it, but it feels like it was used for big plot device and twist. Outside of explaining some of them, it basically meant nothing else as far as I'm concerned. Of course, it was a pretty good twist that you don't see coming, so it succeeds in that capacity. They managed to handle the situation of "time travel" fairly well, but the ending cutscene is somewhat confusing at best. I dunno whether to take it at face value or believe it has more meaning to it. (I prefer the face value version.) I don't get why things have to be overly confusing or deep like this. That'd be all of the "downside" to the game as far as story is concerned.

If I had to be straightforward about the story and put it simple...I like the story. I don't love it, but I like it. It's well done and more or less complete. There are plenty of details left out, but they were either never found by me or left out. It gives you the full satisfaction of a complete ending (UNLIKE YOU FF7!). Squall's bit is waaay better than Cloud ever was. (Of course, that isn't really that hard to top.) The romantic story is easily the best so far in the series. Starting with FF4, they all have some, but they don't ever truly focus on it or make it a big part of the story. With story said and covered, let's get down to the characters!

As you may recall (from playing or reading my reviews), the character aspect of Final Fantasy first got its start in Final Fantasy 4 with Cecil and company. Since then, the characters have been a bigger aspect of the series and so far have just constantly improved. FF6 still has some of the best characters of the series. FF7 gave it a good shot and gave us a handful of good. FF8 continues the tradition by giving us an all-star cast of good characters. Before I go on, I will say that I only have a couple favorites of the group, and that my opinion of the others isn't great. And so...let's do it!

The main cast of FF8 (play-wise) is a selection of six characters: Squall, Quistis, Zell, Selphie, Rinoa, and Irvine. Everybody doesn't get a huge amount of spotlight in the game, but they all have at least one moment of "character revealing." Technically, the spotlight would be on whoever you keep in your party the most. No matter the situation, they each have something different to say. FF7 did this as well, but they didn't always have something super relevant to add. In FF8's case, you could easily unlock entire sets of new and informing dialogue to hear/read. (I know this for sure thanks to the Game Script on GameFAQs located here.) Like I stated before, it is an interesting and somewhat unexpected twist when the group finds out about all being related through the orphanage (minus Rinoa of course), but I found that to be a bit touch and go.

As to not keep dragging this on, I'll try to get to the point. The characters don't all get a lot of spotlight, but they each tend to have their one big moment. They all feel better and more realistic characters than any possible one before this. Each one shows to be more than they appear. They have emotions, feelings, dreams, and so much more. Even many of the side-ish characters are better done. Seifer, Edea, Cid, Raijin, Fuujin, and hell even Biggs and Wedge are better done! They all evolve and change throughout the game. They prove to have feelings and dreams. The characters aren't my favorite cast in entirety, but they are a likable group nonetheless.

If I have to make a "bad comment" on all these characters, I'd have to point my finger at Ultimecia. Outside of the final area, you never directly meet her at any other point. She "possess" people in the current time and simply uses them for her own means. That's evil...but she doesn't really get much said or done outside of those acts. She wants to compress time but never really explains why. Upon meeting her, she basically just says something about banishing us to a place where we will slave for her forever. It's evil, but it doesn't feel as evil as past villains were aiming for. It's a weirdish kind of evil. I'd say...she doesn't really rank in the top villains like I previously said. Maybe I'm not the best judge of this. Maybe I read parts of the game wrong and didn't understand it right. Regardless, she's not the best villain. That's really all I got.

One last bit before I wrap it up (I PROMISE THIS TIME!) is talking about Squall. Squall is a strong male lead, but his attitude isn't the most drawing thing about him. Sure, it is incredibly honest and accurate, but how am I supposed to relate to a complete "don't care" attitude? I really can't myself. There are others out there who can and do, but I can't. It's interesting to see his dramatic change due to Rinoa though, so that helps to make him a better character and a better person overall. As a lead, I'd say he can be hard to like at first, but you grow to like him later on. Problem is...you have to stick around long enough to get to like him. Not my favorite lead, but who is? I'm not sure, but I will know before it it said and done. To sum up characters at this point, like any selection of characters, you are going to like some and hate others. There isn't much more to say. I enjoyed the cast as a whole, but the villain wasn't as strong evil-wise as I first thought. So....yeah!

Time to wrap this game up as a whole! The presentation is some of the best so far. It took Final Fantasy to a whole new level from where it was and set the standard for today. The game play, as per battle system and level system, is really good. Battles haven't changed much, but the Junction System is a lot of fun. Only problem is enemy leveling can easily get annoying. The story can seem confusing with the dream sequences and sometimes lack of details, but it's a decent story overall and told very well. The characters come about to be some of the most realistic in the series. I feel like the villain stops short of everyone else, but I've seen worse.

It's obvious what I'm say about it...Go play it! It's a great game for Final Fantasy beginners or Final Fantasy veterans. I would say for those who are unsure while first playing...stick it through. If you make it through the entirety of Disc 1 and don't like it, I say you have more than the right to stop then. This has been a fantastic Final Fantasy journey, and I look forward to Final Fantasy 9. In the past, it was my favorite, and it is now about to be retested in that capacity. Will it hold up? Will it lose its place in my heart? Find out in the next episode of RECURRING FANTASY...The Power of 9!

~May the Crystals Guide Me~

Day 60

Game - Final Fantasy 8, Day 60
Hours Played/Hours Total - 20 hrs / 76 hrs
Starting Point - Nearby the Deep Sea Research Center.
Current Goal - Rescue Rinoa. Find Ellone. Stop Ultimecia and save the world!

What Happened - As previously mentioned, I already missed my goal, but I won't be delaying by too much! This will be the last post for FF8...if it has to drag on for many more days than it should. It'll probably be fairly lengthy, so just warning you right now. However, I don't lack a whole lot outside of a few side quests, a lot of story, and the ending area. To start off, I'm going to work on a few side quests before moving towards the end. Let's get to it! (The twenty hours was done over like 3 days...so yeah.)
     First on my list of side quests...a two parter! I'm going to go into the Deep Sea Research Station (that I just recently found) and retrieve the final two Guardian Forces I am missing (Bahamut and Eden). This would be no easy task, but the benefits would be well worth the time I spend doing it. Along the way, I might obtain some extra items that I desperately need for Ultimate Weapons. Worst case, I won't get them all, but I would most certainly like to! Back to the task at hand, I landed on the station and went inside.
     The first thing that happens is a mysterious voice speaking to me. After that, I see a giant core in the middle of the room, and it starts to glow. I barely take a step and am thrusted into a battle. I easily and quickly deal with it, but the next step proves about the same. Basically, you have to time your movement through here based on the core's spinning. To put it simple, you stop when it glows and move when it isn't. This is fairly easily accomplished as I cross the room. I slip up a time or two, but none of these enemies seem to prove much of a challenge. Upon reaching the core, the voice speaks to me again and starts asking me questions. If I answer right, I battle a monster and proceed to the next question. If I answer wrong, I battle a monster, and then I get to try again. This would be simple enough...if the enemy wasn't ridiculously hard! The enemy is the Ruby Dragon. Seriously, it was a mini-boss of sorts a ways back in the game, but it seems that higher levels of the monster are insanely improved. One of its attacks is called Breath, and this is strong enough to wipe out weaker party members while bringing the rest to their knees. I got to fight 3 of these in a row before finally confronting the voice. I barely managed to survive, and then I am given the gift of BOSS BATTLE TIME!
     For this round, I'm fighting the ever popular and all-powerful Bahamut! It is also one of the two last GFs that I am hunting down. I was expecting a harsh and grueling battle with the gigantic dragon god!...But that didn't happen. It was easier than the Ruby Dragon. Yup...easier than the Ruby Dragon. To be fair, it never used it's ultimate attack Mega Flare, but even with that, I doubt it would have improved the challenge. I pumped up my people with all the regular buffs (Haste, Protect, Shell) and just starting wailing on the dragon. After not as much time as you'd think, it surrendered to me and joined the team. Wooo! Bahamut is MINE! With Bahamut obtained, the core in the room was destroyed, and it seemed that there was nothing left there for me. I knew better of course and left for just a few minutes. I got back in the ship, took off, found a place to save in the ship, and then landed back down. Upon reentering the research center, I found that something had changed about it. The hole left by the core destruction had randomly grown a spire of sorts. This allowed me to climb down and further explore this mysterious complex.
     Upon climbing down, I found myself under the ocean in the research complex. I examined a nearby computer, and it explained the situation to me. The Deep Sea Research Center had multiple layers that spiraled downward into the ocean, and at the very bottom, there is some sort of excavation site. There's obviously something down there, but I can't just waltz down to it. The station has a "steam power reserve" with only 20 units left. Using the 20 units, I have to climb downward through the floors and try to reach the excavation site. On top of this, I need at least 10 of those units to activate something down there. Lucky for me, I had a guide on hand, and this allowed me to easily work my way through this puzzle. None of the monsters along the way through the research center were any real trouble. Once I reached the excavation site, it did ramp up a bit. It was a strange cave with what looked like remnants of a civilization. I had to climb downward into the depths while dealing with more monsters. These proved slightly more challenging than those in the station. One of these enemies is the ever famous Behemoth. They've been a staple enemy since the beginning and always offer a great challenge, and FF8's version of it was true to that belief. This particular one liked to counter attacks with the Meteor spell. Meteor isn't the strongest spell, but it is most certainly an annoying one. After the long trek to the bottom, I found myself in front of a strange body of water with a crane going into it. With the last 10 units of steam power, I activated the crank. This caused the alarm to sound out with "EVERYBODY EVACUATE EXCEPT THE LEADER!" This was obviously a prerecorded message from the previous group, but it was definitely ominous...and for a reason! BOSS BATTLE TIME!
     For this round, I was using Selphie, Squall, and Irvine to fight the menacing side boss....Ultima Weapon! (Been a while since I posted a picture, so I looked up one for Ultima Weapon. Been terrible about spicing these posts up...)

Now THAT is a menacing and pretty cool looking boss! He only has a few attacks to throw out, but he is a definite challenge for the masses. Before getting anywhere, I drew the Eden GF off of him. (WOO! ALL GFs ACQUIRED!) With that said and done, it was time to take this big guy down. I tried to start off with my usual combo of Cerberus to Triple everyone. This would have worked well...if not for Light Pillar. Ultima Weapon has a one-hit kill move called Light Pillar. He aimed it immediately at the character summoning Cerberus, so that option was already out the window. No big deal since I can just cast Triple manually, but it certainly took longer. My initial strategy was to buff the team and attack him in between buffing. This would have worked well if not for Light Pillar. Aside from that attack, he didn't really lash out with too much. He had decent physical strikes, but those were easily nullified with Protect. GFs were also out since he seemed to always zap them before I could get them out there. Eventually, I just did my best to attack when I could. Inbetween the attacks, I was drawing Ultima off of him. (I had to! It's a rare spell damn it!) I managed to collect enough Ultima to satisfy myself and started just attacking however I could. I did use a couple Aura spells, and that certainly shortened the battle. Aura causes a character's limit break to activate easier. This is nice since you normally have to be on the brink of death to remotely have a chance of getting it. One use of Irvine's limit break made quite a bit of difference. (As a reminder...if I ever even mentioned it, Irvine's Limit Break allows him to shoot special bullets in a rapid-fire way. It's pretty powerful if you have a decent assortment of ammo, which I did.) After a bit, I landed the final blow on Ultima Weapon and was given a delightful victory with a great death animation. He disintegrated and fell apart in a pretty cool way. With his defeat, the side quest was finished! I climbed back up and out of the Deep Sea Research Center and began my next side quest...Ultimate Weapons.
     I'm not going to fully explain what all I did, but let's just say this ruined my finishing this on Tuesday. I spent 10 hours of playing, and around 7 of that was easily just for hunting down monsters for items. Could I have done it easier? Probably, but the way I went about it was supposed to be fairly easy. Let me tell you, it most definitely wasn't! I had to use multiple guides and constant flying to find all the different monsters. You see, FF8 runs on a different weapon systems than any of the previous titles. You use items that you buy/find/refine from cards/steal off enemies/hope drops off enemies to upgrade all of your weapons. This is fairly easy at first, but the rarity and difficulty of the items drastically increases as you try to create the bigger and better weapons. This was expected, but I was met with a harsh reality of bullshit. The majority of the items I was looking for were "drop only" items. I had to fight specific enemies at specific levels and HOPE they drop the correct item. Each enemy has a possibility of dropping anywhere from one type to four types of items based on their level. Majority of what I needed was incredibly rare and had a low drop percentage. This meant hundreds of frustrating battles with enemies. Most of the battles were not even the right damn enemy either! I spent a majority of my time just trying to run into the ONE enemy I needed to. I must have been doing something wrong because at one point, things got insanely frustrating and angry-fying. I just needed to find a Blue Dragon. All I needed from it was Dragon Fangs....three hours went into finding it. Out of that time, I managed to level Squall to 100 and fought hundreds of battles. I started running from the more frustrating enemies so to speed it up. I ONLY MET THREE BLUE DRAGONS DURING THIS ORDEAL! If that isn't bullshit, I don't know what is. Despite all my anger towards it all, I managed to complete this quest and get everybody's Ultimate Weapon! The most notable of all the weapons is Squall's ultimate weapon...the Lion Heart! It's a blue glowing blade of coolness, and on top of that, it unlocks Squall's final limit break ability...Lion Heart! (They didn't expand on names too much it seems...) I've rambled long enough, so I'm going to return to the story.
      The first thing on the list...go rescue Rinoa! This was a fairly easy task. All I had to do was go to the Sorceress Memorial. Once there, the guards let me immediately in since they thought I was just saying bye to Rinoa. However, the group immediately took control in the Memorial, and Squall went in to get Rinoa. She wasn't sure about doing it, but Squall promised to protect and stay by her regardless of anything that happened. After that, the group ran off and attempted to escape. It seemed that we weren't going to get too far, but a random big guy showed up and let us out. Squall thought he recognized him but didn't pay him much mind outside of that. The group took off and was flying away from the memorial. Rinoa wanted to see the orphanage, so I flew on over to the broken down orphanage. Once there, I went inside and her dog ran by into a different area. I followed after it into a large field of flowers. Once there, the third character (Zell at this time) left Rinoa and Squall to talk. Rinoa described a dream to Squall of not knowing where he was and looking all over for him. She didn't want that dream to become reality, so Squall told her to meet him there. He said that if she was to look for him that he would be waiting in that flower field. As they were wrapping up, Zell came back by and talked about a message from Esther. They wanted to hire us to deal with the Lunatic Pandora and the Sorceress. The person who sent the request was named Kiros. With that in mind, I returned to Esther to learn about their plan.
     Luckily for me, I found out a little something to avoid having to manually fly my spaceship everywhere. You can open the world map, go into the full view, select places, and autofly there. This saves lots of time, and it is nice to not have to always manually fly the ship. I flew into Esther and landed on their nice airship landing pad. I proceeded to the Presidential Palace and finally got to meet the President of Esther...Turns out it is Laguna Loire! Although mostly unimportant, I did ask how he became President. Basically, after rescuing Ellone, the group decided they owed the resistance in Esther. They worked together with the group and Odine to get Adel. They made a device capable of sealing the Sorceress. Next, they tricked Adel into going inside of the device by claiming that "Ellone" was there. She only somewhat fell for this, but Laguna managed to push her inside and seal her away. With that said and done, Esther was finally free of her rule. When deciding a new leader, Laguna was seen as a hero and thrust into the position. He wasn't necessarily okay with it, but in the end, he ended up sticking with it. Now...on to the plan!
     He and his crew had figured up a plan to stop Ultimecia and save the world and time itself. Well...Dr. Odine had a plan. Basically, we knew that Ultimecia wanted to cast the spell known as Time Compression. This spell would cause all of time to exist at one point. We weren't sure WHY she wanted this, but she did. Odine figured she was using a machine that he was planning to construct based on Ellone's ability. However, she could only come back in time to inhabit a Sorceress's body. She also couldn't go back as far as she needed to and was in search of Ellone to send her back further in time. The biggest problem was that Ultimecia was going to go for Adel as opposed to Rinoa. To compensate for this, our first goal was to go and eliminate the revived Sorceress Adel. After that, Ultimecia would inhabit Rinoa's body. During THIS instance, Ellone would be used to send her back to the past where she wanted to be. Once this was done, Ellone would separate Rinoa from Ultimecia and bring her back to the present. (Personally, this seems like we are LETTING her win...but I guess I'm out of the loop somehow.) At this point, Time Compression would happen, but this would allow us to go through time to the future and defeat Ultimecia. Hopefully with her defeat, everything should return to normal. Laguna warns them that they'll have to use "love and friendship" to return to the present. With these details in mind, everybody, including Laguna and co, jumped on the Ragnarok and set off for Lunatic Pandora.
     This resulted in one of the cooler cutscenes from the game. The group charged at the Lunatic Pandora with the Ragnarok. After forcing their way THROUGH the shield, we blasted a way in and began the plan. The first obstacle I ran into...BOSS BATTLE TIME! It was another round with our favorite duo Raijin and Fuujin. They were powered up and ready to give us a challenge! Unfortunately, all of my earlier level gaining threw me waaaay above them. I managed to beat them in only a few turns. Upon defeat, they retreated back further into the giant complex. I made chase and ran into Biggs and Wedge! I thought I had another battle on my hand, but then they both quit! Wedge was complaining about getting crappy jobs, and Biggs asked him why he didn't just quit. Wedge thought that was great! He went ahead and quit right there. The two of them walked out, and that was the end of that. I walked about the Pandora Lunatic for a little bit and finally worked my way around to Raijin and Fuujin. The two of them jumped back though and let me run into a giant flying robot for BOSS BATTLE TIME! This flying robot was an interesting battle, but he proved to be no real challenge either. He did have a powerful strike that shot everyone's health down to 1, but that was about it really. With his defeat, Rajin and Fuujin made another tactical retreat. I followed after them and finally came face to face with Seifer again. They had Ellone with them and were holding her captive. It looked like I was about to fight another big battle. Things went a bit differently though.
     Raijin and Fuujin turned over Ellone and planned to leave Seifer. They said that they were always on his side to help him fulfill his dream, but his current goal wasn't his own. He was being controlled by Ultimecia, and they had to depend on Squall rather than him! (They made this seem fairly sad.) They cleared out and Seifer came at me for BOSS BATTLE TIME! This wasn't much of a battle, but it did have an interesting twist occur during it. Right as the battle starts, Odin comes flying in to take out Seifer. However, he wasn't about to go down that easily! As Odin went by Seifer, he got cut in two, and his sword was flung into the sky and caught by a mysterious hand. The battle continues on as usual...I spent most of my turns drawing the Aura spell off of Seifer. (Aura allows a character to easily use their limit break, so I had to monopolize on the situation!) After a bit, I started using a few limits on Seifer. I mostly struck out with Squall's limit. Everything was going pretty well, and just as I finished him, a follow up event from earlier came in. A mysterious figure clad in a red cape came down. He said something about Seifer giving him the fourth sword, and then he struck out against Seifer and took him down. (To translate that event, Odin was destroyed and replaced by Gilgamesh. He's one of the big names from FF5 if you remember!) Seifer wasn't about to go down without a fight. He grabbed Rinoa and ran off. I quickly chased after him.
     Seifer had taken Rinoa to Adel to fulfill Ultimecia's plan somehow. As the group got there, Seifer tossed Rinoa to Adel. Adel came to life and junctioned Rinoa to herself somehow. Then...BOSS BATTLE TIME! This made for an interesting battle. Basically, Adel was one enemy, but Rinoa was in her chest and "junctioned" to her. I had to be careful who I attacked and had to keep healing Rinoa. Adel kept draining health from her. However, outside of managing this, Adel never dealt any real amount of damage. Even when she cast Ultima, I easily recovered from the minimal damage. I couldn't use any GFs in this battle because they would hit Rinoa. Otherwise, it was a real snap. With Adel's defeat, the plan was finally ready to go! /end Disc 3
     Ultimecia seemed to possess Rinoa. Laguna came in with Ellone, and Ellone sent Rinoa into the past. A few moments later, Rinoa was brought back into the current time. As soon as she got back, Laguna and company ran off. I was left to sit there as everything around me started to...melt!? It seems that Time Compression was a go, and the group was falling through what appeared to be a stretch of sky with bubbles of "time" (assuming). They eventually found themselves in a strange ocean and began swimming through it. They had agreed beforehand to meet at the orphanage of the future. Eventually, they found themselves in STRANGE AND WEIRD BOSS BATTLE TIME! As they were cruising through time compression, images of past Sorceresses began to attack me. Every time I killed one, another took its place and was attacking me. The initial group of them was fairly easy and offered little challenge. Eventually, a hideous and mutated Sorceress worked into the warp of sorts and started fighting. This one had more health than the rest and lasted quite a bit. Seemed that everything was going okay, but then she started to count down. I wasn't sure what was coming and did my best to heal up and strike at her. Turns out...she cast Ultima on the party! It was better than the rest of her attacks, but it still proved quite pointless. I healed up and attacked the mysterious Sorceress unto defeat. With her defeat, the warp around us finally gave in and thrust us into the future. The group arrived at the orphanage and made their way around and out. Once outside, time fully changed around them, and I found myself right outside of Ultimecia's Castle. All around me was the fallen bodies of this timeline's SeeD members. They had attempted to fight Ultimecia and failed. I was going to change that! I charged into the castle and began the final dungeon.
     Let me just say...Ultimecia's Castle is a pretty cool final dungeon. It's got a couple different puzzles and some interesting items. However, the biggest thing would be the seal on my abilities. As soon as I walked inside, I was robbed of all my abilities outside of Attack and the ability to Junction. This wouldn't have been much of a problem had it not taken away basically everything! I couldn't even save or heal while I was in the castle! However, this was easily rectified. For our final mission of sorts, we split into two teams to take on the challenges of the castle. For my main team, I had Squall, Zell, and Selphie. For the secondary team, I was left with Irvine, Quistis, and Rinoa. With my teams assembled, I was ready to take on this dungeon!
     I didn't have to go too far to run into the first boss. This would be the very first boss of many (8 not including Ultimecia). BOSS BATTLE TIME #1! The first boss was a giant sphinx creature. I call it a boss because it had the appearance and aura of a boss, but I managed to kill it in 2 full rounds of attacks. With its defeat, I reclaimed my Magic ability and explored the castle more. If nothing else, Ultimecia's Castle has some pretty cool music. Really enjoyed it as I walked about. My next target was located beneath the castle in a cellar of sorts. I charged at it for BOSS BATTLE TIME #2! This boss was a flying/floating beast with three points on it. The only strategy necessary for him was "junction thundaga to my elemenal defense." The only attack he got off was his counterattack Mega Spark. He used it after every physical attack, so that made the battle take three to four times longer than it should have. Upon his defeat, I reclaimed my GF ability (summoning). I left the cellar and looked around for the next target. Next on the list required two teams. I had to hold a switch down with my main group as the secondary group made their way to the target.
     I walked over a strange chandelier towards the third boss. I tried to walk over it with the first group, but they were dropped down into the bottom floor. With them now holding the switch, the second group was free to cross it though. I went outside and went to battle with BOSS BATTLE TIME #3! Round 3 of Boss Battle Time is against a giant crystal monster called Krysta. According to the guide, it's highly resistant to both physical and magical attacks. Any attempt to use either ends with a powerful counterattack. That leaves...GFs! I summoned all the powerful ones as well as anything it was weak against. As I landed the last summon, it threw a final Ultima spell my way, but that was pointless and did very little. Another boss down and another ability recovered...I chose Revive so that I could revive anybody if they died. (Yes, for some reason, they sealed the ability to REVIVE downed people. Bunch of bull crap there...) With this area clear, I regrouped both teams at the entrance and headed for the next area. Exploration of the right branch of the castle revealed a mysterious art room. Looking about the paintings revealed some strange pictures with even stranger names. Thanks to my guide book, it explained that the painting's names correlated to the clock on the floor with roman numerals. I didn't look into how you got the solution though. I just took the solution. I had to name a painting that was clouded and unnamed. The name came out to be "In the Garden Sleeps a Messenger." With the painting name revealed, it spawned another boss...so let's do this!
     BOSS BATTLE TIME #4! The boss this time was a giant golden robot named Trauma. It spit out little robots called Dramas and was not challenging at all. The funny thing about the suggestions in the guide...They all involve the GF Doomtrain. Doomtrain works a lot like Hades from FF7. He does a decent amount of damage summon-wise, but the real kicker is he can cause all the status effects possible! A single use of Doomtrain can easily hinder a boss for the rest of the battle, and this has helped me beat basically all of the bosses since I got him waaay back there. Anyways, after Doomtrain, all it took was a few physical attacks and a handful of GF summons. Trauma went dooown! After its defeat, I unlocked the Item ability and left the art gallery. From there, I made my way downstairs into the dungeon! I explored a cell in there and got locked in. I picked up the key inside the cell, but that summoned the fifth boss for BOSS BATTLE TIME #5! This round's boss wasn't so much original. It was a repainted monster called Red Giant (slightly upgraded model of the monster Iron Giant in-game). It proved pretty easy with a little Doomtrain magic. From there, it didn't take no time to fell this monstrous giant. With the Red Giant gone, I used the key and got out of the cell. I also unlocked the ability to Save my game.
     Next on the list...I had to go key hunting. The next boss was locked inside the Armory, but that room was locked. I switched to my secondary party and looked about. The armory key was hidden off behind the main part of the castle on a old rickety bridge. I had to slowly walk across it, or the key would fall down below. After grabbing the key, I made my way back to a swap point and switched to the main party. I opened the Armory and fought the monster inside. BOSS BATTLE TIME #6! At first, the enemy appeared to be a regular ol' monster. It looked like a Vysage plus a pair of hands called Lefty and Righty. However, upon their defeat, a much larger and more dangerous version appeared called Gargantua. Let's just say the same Doomtrain tactic came into play. After that, I simply had to avoid physical attacks and kept after him with GFs. Any physical attacks would be countered, and I prefer to avoid those when I can. WIth Gargantua's defeat, I reclaimed the Limit Break ability. Next up on my list was the Treasure Vault.
     To get into the Treasure Vault, I had to find another key. This key was easily found in the fountain by the Chapel. After that, I had to work my way back around to the Treasure Vault. (I kept forgetting I could switch parties and save time.) The Treasure Vault had a little box puzzle for me. I cheated yet again and solved it with ease. (Messing with a box caused others to open or close. You had to get them all open.) With all the boxes open, Catoblepas popped out, and I had another boss on my hands...BOSS BATTLE TIME #7! Catoblepas was a bigger and menacingly colored Behemoth. However, a little Doomtrain and a lot of Leviathan and Brothers put him in his place! (Yeah, I'm really speed tracking the end of this game. Gimme a break.) I regained the ability to do Commands and went on my way. Commands are any special commands that aren't Draw, Item, Magic, or GF. Moving right along, I was ready to climb the Clock Tower and make my way to Ultimecia. I'd fight the 8th boss and regain my final ability before getting to her though. However, I did complete one small task before leaving the main part of the castle.
     Working around the castle, I was on a hunt for a special GF Ability item called Rosetta Stone. It's kinda hard to explain what it does without going into details, but I will say it is definitely worth it. This required switching my parties up to use a special elevator. Like a giant twin-scale, I had to lift up all the girls in the group with all the boys on the other side. I messed this up twice and had to work my way around a couple of times. Eventually, they got up there, retrieved the key, and came back down. With that done, I just had to play the organ in the Church. This unlocked the gate and gave me access to the area with the Rosetta Stone (might as well have been a D&D quest). I immediately made use of the Rosetta Stone. With everything done except the climb, I ran back to the front to save one last time. I fully prepared my party for what was to come...and I climbed. The Clock Tower wasn't too tall though. On the way there, I had to jump from one side to the other using a bell. There, on the outside of the Clock Tower, I fought the final boss for unlocking my abilities...BOSS BATTLE TIME #8! For this round, I came face to face with an old friend...or at least, I thought it was an old friend. This boss was an "evil" version of Bahamut known as Tiamat. However, it was somehow even EASIER than Bahamut. It only has one attack, and it never got that attack off. It spends every turn spelling out the word "Dark Flare." The first couple of turns are just a single letter, but it eventually builds up to two letters around halfway. This would be a problem...if my group wasn't so fast and powerful. I led with Doomtrain and then unloaded everything I could. I summoned Eden, I physically attacked, and just went all out. My physical attacks were proving the most effective outside of Eden (who is capable of doing 20,000+ damage!!!). I managed to defeat this dark dragon before it could even get off its ONLY attack. With its defeat, I claimed my final sealed ability...Draw. Why save Draw for last? At this point, I had no need to Draw any magic off of enemies, so I figured I would leave it last compared to everything else. It was finally time to climb this tower...and defeat that sorceress!
     Before starting up the final boss battle paragraph, I figured I would go ahead and answer this question. IF there are any readers who played 8 and wonder why I'm forgetting something...I didn't. There's an extra boss in Ultimecia's Castle known as Omega Weapon. It looks just like Ultima Weapon, but it can have over one million HP and is insanely difficult. I looked up a few different strategies to defeat it as well as the attacks it has available. According to what I read, the only possible way to beat it is through the use of special items known as Hero and Holy War. These items make your characters invincible for a brief period of time. Without them, you would easily die to one if not most of his attacks. I only had a few Heroes (the work on one member where Holy War does the party), so I was in no position to try him. On top of this, I was really only curious about him. I didn't feel like wasting anymore time though, so I finally made the decision to skip him. Worst case, I can always go back and reload the game to give him a shot. I'm pretty sure I'd die though since he sounds ridiculous if you mess up the formula suggested by most guides. Anyways...on to Ultimecia!
     I made my way to the top and entered the Sorceress's room. She made a small speech about SeeD and how she was going to not only defeat us but use us as her slaves forever! I can't remember the specifics, but they aren't important in front of FINAL EPIC BOSS BATTLE TIME EXTRAVAGANA! This boss battle versus Ultimecia turned into one of the coolest boss battles I've done so far. The only other one that was remotely this cool...Kefka or MAYBE Exdeath. The music was fairly epic, and the game wasn't ready to let me just have the victory. I had to work for it! For this battle, I wasn't allowed to directly choose who went against Ultimecia. As characters died, they were "thrown out of time" as the game put it. I wanted my perfect and prepared party of Squall, Zell, and Selphie though, so I had to get the other three killed off to get my group in place. This made the initial battle take longer than it should have since I actually started with Zell and Selphie...was only missing Squall. Most of Ultimecia's attacks at this point were no real bother. The only problem came from her super-powered Maelstrom. This one attack easily drained the party of 6,000 HP across the board (pretty brutal even with everybody having 9999 across the board!). Maelstrom even screwed me over by killing a crappily planned GF summon. On top of that, it took out the ONE GF I was hoping to keep...Eden. I lost Eden and Doomtrain before I got anywhere. I wasn't super worried about this since I figured Doomtrain wouldn't do much good later on. Once the dream team stepped forward, it was only a matter of time to remove the first form from the field. (Despite the guide, I already figured that they'd have at LEAST two or three forms. Stay tuned for the actual number!)
     Once I defeated Ultimecia's initial form, she summoned a little surprise for us....She brought forth what she called the most powerful GF known as...GRIEVER! (DUN DUN DUUUUUN! This does suggest some serious implications, but I'm not going to get into it.) Griever was a giant evil lion-dragon man thing, and he looked badass. The music started to really pick up and get cool too! The worst thing about Griever is that he started drawing magic off the party. Thankfully, he didn't steal anything super powerful, so I just had to keep up the strategy...The strategy? Buff my people like crazy and follow it up with Aura. With Aura in place, I was free to let loose all the Limit Breaks I could handle. Selphie's Limit Break of Slots (you cast random magic and blah blah blah) proved to take too long and was overly complicated to manage in mid-battle, so I kept her on healing duty. Squall and Zell simply unleashed the gates of Limit Break hell! Zell's Duel ability proved to be the biggest dog in this fight after Squall's Renzokuken. The Duel ability allows you to attack multiple times while pressing in different inputs. As long as you type them in right, the time is briefly paused and gives you a chance to type in more. With this, I was easily able to pull of five or six attacks of decent strength. After Zell's Duel, it was up to Squall's Renzokuken. Squall basically ran up and strikes the enemy multiple times with his Gunblade. When he strikes, you are given an opportunity to boost the strikes with the gun shot. There's also a chance that he activates a secondary super-powered attack. (Doesn't matter if you make all the strikes or not though....) The best secondary attack is the Lion Heart. It resembles Omnislash from FF7, but it's much cooler and kick-assier! As long as I kept Aura on those two and healed up when I needed it, Griever didn't stand a chance.
     Upon Griever's defeat, Ultimecia came back into the picture and "junctioned" herself onto Griever. This revived Griever in super ultimate Griever dragon mode (not the real name). At this point, it was unleashed some fairly powerful attacks, but nothing was getting through my super defenses. As long as I kept healing, things weren't going to get me down. I did have to watch out for these Helix things she summoned though. If she got two on the field, it was supposed to bring some bad shit on the field. I tried to get a few GFs in, but UltiGriever started one-hit blasting them away. This made me lose two or three GFs, so I went back to just using Limit Breaks as I could. The only overwhelming part of all this was trying to keep up with everything while being thrown off by Limit Breaks. Thankfully, this didn't stop me from destroying Grievermecia and putting an end to her...OR SO I THOUGHT! That's right...fourth form baby!
     Ultimecia was most definitely not letting me get off easily. As the fourth form rised from nothingness, the battle started ramping up with even epic-er music. Ultimecia's super form claimed something about Time Compression and "existence denied." However, this didn't stop me from kicking her ass! She only had a few attacks, but they were pretty annoying. Hell's Judgement swoops in and knocks everybody down to 1 HP. This was easily rectified, but she did it enough that I had to keep re-healing people. I just stuck with the Aura strategy since my best GFs were gone at this point. She also drew Apocalypse magic off of herself to launch against us. This made me scared when I first saw it...but then it wasn't very effective. (Thank you Shell spell!) I just kept up with Duel and Renzokuken. They were dealing out all forms of damage against her. I imagine I could have beaten her without them, but this battle would have taken a lot longer and been quite a bit harder. When I landed the final blow...the joy spread to my face. As the battle was coming to a close, she started talking about places and memories to the group. I can't remember it all because I was kicking her ass!
     Anyways, with Ultimecia defeated, the Time Compression was coming to an end, and the group had to hurry back to their own time. I'm going to try and do the short version of this since a lot of it turns into a giant cutscene, but I'll hit the higher points. I'd suggest looking up a video if you truly want to see it without playing it (I'd say play it BUT WHATEVER). The group all began to run about so they could make it back to their time. However...it seemed that not everyone made it out. Squall was bringing up the rear and seemed to miss the point. He was running about in a blank space. While moving about, he jumped out and appeared in the wrong timeline. The kid version of himself ran by him, and he met younger Edea. She asked who he was, and this was followed up with the game's explanation for how Edea thought up SeeD and Garden. Basically, Squall told her everything (not EVERYTHING, he mentioned that Garden trains SeeDs to defeat the Sorceress) in the past and thus she made it in the future, even the SeeD salute! However, it seemed like things might not be finished yet. Ultimecia appeared and was still alive somehow. Squall was going to attack her, but Edea explained what was going on. A Sorceress has to pass on her power before she can truly die. Ultimecia was dying, so she had to pass on her Sorceress powers. Edea took in those powers, and thus was the end of Ultimecia. Edea figured out who Squall was and told him that he needed to get back to his time. Squall began to walk...CUE LONG AND CONFUSING CUTSCENE!
     To summarize it easily...Squall was lost in time, but he managed to get back to his time thanks to Rinoa and the promise they made to meet in the flower field. It's got more depth to it than what I plan to say in a sentence or paragraph, but that is the basic idea. With Ultimecia defeated, time was restored and the world could finally be at peace. The final video revealed what happened to everybody and Garden. Seifer and company set out to live life. Laguna, Ellone, and company were still doing okay and visiting Raine's grave. Balamb Garden was flying all over and having a nice big party aboard. The whole crew was there in celebration of...I'm assuming new SeeDs, but it might be something else. NOT IMPORTANT! It showed that everybody seemed happy and such, and it highly suggested at Irvine X Selphie. I'll leave that to your opinion of course. After the credits went by, the game ended with a small scene of Squall smiling for the first time in-game (supposed to be a big deal), and Rinoa and he kiss as the game comes to its final end...
     Hooooly crap! That was an experience. I'm sooo glad I managed to finish it, and despite earlier anger towards items, I still enjoyed the overall game. Just...damn man....nearly 80 hours in FF8 alone! I'm really looking forward to playing through FF9 again, but I can guarantee that I won't make the goal of finishing before September is done. I'll probably aim more for mid-October, but I digress. Look forward to my Final Thoughts for Final Fantasy 8 popping up in a few days. As for now though...thanks for reading my post, and I hope you enjoyed it!
   

Ending Point - End of Final Fantasy 8.
Current Party -

• Squall - Level 100
• Zell - Level 61
• Selphie - Level 58

Goals Accomplished - Obtained the Bahamut GF. Defeated Ultima Weapon. Obtained the Eden GF. Completed the Guardian Force set! Spent a lot of f***ing time getting items to make Ultimate Weapons. Made everyone's Ultimate Weapon. Rescued Rinoa from Esther. Met the President of Esther...Laguna Loire! Was filled in on background stuffs. Used the Ragnarok to infiltrate the Lunatic Pandora. Rescued Ellone. Fought off Raijin, Fuujin, a giant flying robot, Seifer and Adel! Defeated Adel and enacted Laguna's plan to enter the Time Compression. Made it through Disc 3. Entered Ultimecia's Castle and defeated Ultimecia. Beat FF8!!! Watched the strange yet incredible ending video.
Next Goals - Start Final Fantasy 9.

~May the Crystals Guide Me~

Day 59

Game - Final Fantasy 8, Day 59
Hours Played/Hours Total - 14 hrs / 56 hrs
Starting Point - Inside Galbadia Garden.
Current Goal - Infiltrate Galbadia Garden. Defeat the Sorceress!

What Happened - I'm certainly coming close to the finish line (or at least the one I want). I'm going to have to REALLY push it to make it through this game before Friday. Wish me luck as I quickly rush through the next 12+ hours of gameplay! Without further ado, let's get started! (Also prepare for a SUPER long post!)
     Now, I'm supposed to infiltrate Galbadia Garden, but technically, I'm already inside it. Does that mean I've already succeeded? I'd say technically yes, but I'm trying to get further inside so...No. Moving right along, my team selection is Squall (of course), Irvine, and Quistis. The team choice is based purely on that they are all kinda low leveled. I'm trying to get everybody at a higher and better level overall. It's fairly hard to do when Squall is always in there while everybody else has to crazy lag behind him. Anyways, moving further inside Galbadia Garden revealed that I was in for a fun run around. There were locked doors and exits that seemed to require card keys. I had to look around and find remaining students with key cards. There was only three to find, but I had to run all over the place and do backtracking. All the while, monsters were running about the garden. They weren't overly hard though, so that was the least of my worries. While looking for the Sorceress, I ran into a new friend!....By new friend, I mean a new Guardian Force for me to have, but he wasn't about to come with us without a fight. BOSS BATTLE TIME!
     The Guardian Force I was to fight was Cerberus (the three-headed dog who guards hell's gates for those who don't know). The first thing I noticed was Cerberus had a nice assortment of magic on him! I started leeching all of the Triple magic I could off of him. Cerberus did a fairly varied mix of spells and physical attacks, and they were decently powerful. Of course, I easily countered that with a round of buffs. With everybody Triple'd up, I was able to fully Protect, Haste, and Shell my team. After that, I just started wailing on him with whatever I could. I still took time to draw what Triple I wanted though. As long as I kept the buffs up, he never really stood a chance against me. He eventually admitted defeat and joined our group. Woo! Cerberus is one of the more unorthodox GFs (summon-wise). When summoned, he casts Double and Triple on everybody. It's actually a pretty nice GF and is insanely useful. Moving right along.
     After locating all the key cards, I was able to go up to the Headmaster's office and confront the Sorceress. Before I could reach her though, I had to go through Seifer for BOSS BATTLE TIME! Seifer was pretty cocky and was fully determined that we didn't stand a chance. I smacked him all forms of around and was able to quickly put him out of his misery. Upon his defeat, the Sorceress called him pathetic but then teleported through the floor. I ran out of the office and down into the room below it (the auditorium). When I got there, she was nowhere to be seen, but that was quickly remedied as she smashed through a screen and landed on the floor. It was time for the final showdown! BOSS BATTLE TIME PART TWO! The battle starts up, and as it turns out, Seifer is still standing. He plans to stand between us and the Sorceress as her knight. He doesn't have too much fire left though, so the first bit went by fairly fast. I made prominent use of the Cerberus GF to Triple up the party. I buffed everyone with the regular grouping (Protect, Shell, Haste) and started the onslaught. Seifer went down fairly fast, and it was time to face off against the Sorceress herself. She was back with more power and less loopholes. Last time, I just reflected the party to keep her busy, but this time she was armed with spells that weren't reflect-able. She didn't have a lot of power behind her, but she did have one fairly powerful spell that tore a large chunk out of the group (Maelstrom). I just kept up with the buff combo and attacked inbetween this. The Sorceress proved to be a weak challenge for me, and her defeat came quite quick and easy. /END DISC TWO
     With the Sorceress's defeat, it seemed like maybe things would come to an end, but then the unexpected happened! After the fight, everything was all lit up for some reason, and all that could be seen was Rinoa going over to Seifer. She did something to him, and he ran off. She passed out, but then more happened!  Sorceress Edea started talking differently and called out everyone's name. The screen went black as the group started gathering around Rinoa. When things finally came back around, Squall awakened in Balamb Garden, and it seemed that something had occurred. Rinoa was in some sort of strange coma, and Squall was actually starting to care about something (a real shocker...more understandable if you've been playing the game). The group's next goal was to talk with Edea and find out more. She had returned to her house, so that was our next destination! Now...quite a bit was said during this next bit, so I'm going to do my best to summarize it while delivering the basic message.
     The first thing that happened at Edea's house was running into Cid. He apologized for leaving the Garden, but he was faced with two things...the defeat and loss of everything or the victory and loss of his wife. Then we blew past that and finally got to talk with Edea. First and foremost, she apologized for her actions but also revealed that they were not her own. She was under the control of a future Sorceress named Ultimecia. This future Sorceress had somehow gained control of Edea and was using her to try and get Ellone. Edea figured that she was after Ellone for her ability to send people into the past. Of course, this just opened up MORE questions, but Squall was a bit preoccupied with something else. He was worried about Rinoa. He asked Edea if she knew what was wrong, but she had no idea what was wrong with Rinoa. The group continued to talk about Ultimecia while Squall was focused on Rinoa. In the background, Edea revealed that Ultimecia wanted to use Ellone's power to cast a spell known as Time Compression. Time Compression would compress all of time (past, present, and future) into one time. Basically, all of existence would exist at one point. She wasn't sure why Ultimecia wanted to do this, but she knew Ellone had to be kept away from her. Thus she had organized the group of SeeDs to complete this task, but that is just one part of the problem.
     Edea feared that her defeat at the Garden had simply loosened Ultimecia's control over her and was afraid it might come back. She did have another theory though...She thought that Ultimecia (a future sorceress) could only take control of a Sorceress. She had a bad feeling that Ultimecia would aim for a different Sorceress known as Adel. Adel was some evil sorceress that had been a part of some past event called the Sorceress War. Edea figured that Ultimecia's pure evil would fuel Adel and make her immensely powerful. So on top of Ellone, we needed to make sure Ultimecia didn't find Adel. Now that is just a pile of information that I can't do much with, so the group returned to the Garden and informed everyone of the newest information. Squall revisited Rinoa and was very distraught over her current condition. He just wanted to talk with her. And then...Squall passed out for yet another DREAM SEQUENCE!
     For this round of Laguna time, he was doing some sort of movie to earn money for the group. He was playing a knight saving a sorceress or something like that. Anyways, he was supposed to fight a dragon in the movie (a fake one), but somehow, a real dragon got on the set! Using only Laguna and Kiros, I had to fight off a large Ruby Dragon. SOMEWHAT BOSS BATTLE TIME! Nothing too hard really. It was a large red colored dragon. Of course, that means it is a fire dragon, so the strategy for this battle was ice magic all the way. I forgot to Junction Shiva (thanks to all the dream sequence confusion) and had to use Blizzaga instead. He wasn't capable of too much though, and the battle was mostly just a time waste. After finishing off the dragon, the group looks up at something, but then the screen fades to black. A voice starts talking about not being able to disconnect. Squall asks about the connect thing, and the voice chimes in that it is how she refers to her power (obviously Ellone). She realizes that she is asleep and can't control it. She asks Squall to be patient with her for a bit, but he just wants to leave. The next scene is between Laguna and Edea who is are talking about Ellone. She was at the Orphanage, but then she was kidnapped by Esther soldiers. Laguna is looking for a way inside of Esther. Edea mentions that Esther is looking for a successor to the sorceress Adel. The scene wraps up and Squall talks about wanting to hear Rinoa again. Ellone says that she found out her power won't let her change the past nor will it let her see through anyone that she has never met. She bids Squall farewell and says she will contact him like this again.
     Squall wakes up and demands that Ellone send him into the past to help Rinoa. He starts believing that Ellone might be able to help him save Rinoa. This places my next goal as the White SeeD ship (the people we left Ellone with last time we met). Of course, I have no idea where to look for it. I go back to Edea and ask her. She suggests looking around the Centra continent and gives us a letter that will help us get on the ship. With the letter in hand, I go looking around Centra. This took a bit since their location wasn't hinted towards extremely well, and the place had a lot of hiding spots for it. After going around for like 30 minutes, I finally happen upon the right spot! I board the ship and begin talking with the White SeeD members. Squall just wants to see Ellone and mentions that Edea told them about where the ship would be. They find it hard to believe, and they aren't ready to take a chance with Ellone. While looking around the ship, we ran into a couple old friends, Zone and Watts (the Forest Owl resistance people from waaaay back there). They had escaped to this ship after being chased by Galbadian soldiers. Zone got mad at Squall for being unable to protect Rinoa, but Squall said he was looking for Ellone because he believed she could help. He didn't love the answer, but he let it slide.
     I approached the leader of the ship again and handed over Edea's letter. He confirmed it as the Matron's handwriting, and the group began to talk with him. It seems the people of the ship were orphans raised on the ship by Matron. They said after getting Ellone that they had started heading east to get away from Galbadia, but then they ran into the Galbadian fleet. They had to start running to avoid being caught, but then their ship broke down. As they were preparing to battle, Esther ships came in and started fighting the Galbadian ships. While this was going down, an Esther ship approached them and asked them to get aboard their ship. Of course, the group didn't trust the Esther group anymore than the Galbadians. They set to leave, but Ellone yelled at them and jumped aboard their ship. After that, all the Esther ships withdrew. The White SeeDs plan to head for Esther once they can repair the ship. They apologized for losing Ellone, and the group left the White SeeD ship. As we got back on the Garden, the group revealed their next course to be Esther. Nida told us that we couldn't fly the Garden there due to the mountains surrounding the country, so we had to find an alternate path. Lucky for me, I do remember the alternate path to Esther.
     I flew the Garden back to Fisherman's Horizon, and Squall immediately takes Rinoa and heads onward. He starts walking the railroad from FH to Esther. He's wanting to go it alone and plans to walk the entire way while carrying her coma-fied body. He starts talking to her as he goes and basically oozes his feelings for her while he goes. At one point, he does reveal stuff about his personality, but he says that is just between the two of them. It takes about a day (or something like that) in-game time, but he finally arrives at the Esther end of the railroad tracks. When he arrives, it seems that he is in for a big surprise. The rest of the group was just getting there as well. They had agreed to escort Edea to Esther because she was wanting to figure out a way to keep Ultimecia out of her. So we regroup up and head for Esther. Also, Edea is technically a party member for a bit. (Not sure how long, but we shall find out!)
     The group had checked both North and South of the current position and found nothing, so our only way to Esther was due East through a strange land. That strange land...was the Great Salt Lake, but it looked like a giant frozen wasteland. As I passed through, I didn't meet a whole lot of resistance and got by pretty quickly. I only ran into a few monsters up until BOSS BATTLE TIME! This guy literally just jumped out of a giant chasm and right into our path. He was a giant skeletal bull demon thinger with wings. As soon as the battle started, Squall immediately yelled about it being an undead creature and to use curative magic on it. (Thanks game...I OBVIOUSLY could have never figured that out!) There wasn't a whole lot to this battle. I just threw what I had at him, and he went down fairly fast. I did make use of the Holy spell that I recently acquired, but there really isn't much else to add. With the giant undead skeleton thinger out of the way, I was ready to enter Esther...I think. All we could see was nothingness going on for miles. However, it seemed that things weren't as they appeared. The view in front of us kept "flickering." Upon closer inspection, it turned out that the area in front of us was a camouflaged entrance. I went inside and found myself heading straight for Esther!
     While zooming along, the first and most obvious thing to see is....Esther is INSANELY more advanced than any and all of the other nations put together. Their main city is huuuuuuge and bigger than all the other towns. There are what appear to be hovercars moving about, and the entire city seems to be surrounded by the camouflage panels. The platform we are riding along finally comes to a stop, and we end up at the end of some large road of sorts. A hovercar comes along right as the group is passing out again. That's one horribly placed Dream Sequence! We find Laguna is inside the city of Esther (guess he made it). However, he's being used as slave labor for the city. He's working in an area while Kiros and Ward are escorted to another area. Fast forward a bit, those two (off-screen) are causing a ruckus, and Laguna uses this moment to stage a breakout for him and a few others. After a couple of fights, the group is able to escape. One of the people rescued says that he's part of a liberation front to free the people from Sorceress Adel. He asks Laguna if he would be interested in leading the group. Laguna claims that he is just trying to find Ellone for now. One of the assistants of a scientist named Odine comes out and mentions something about Odine possibly knowing. I reenter the station and find Odine there. After a fight, we manage to corner him and get the information we need. He's holding Ellone at his laboratory, so we let the guy go and make our way to his lab. Once there, it just takes a few fights and a little hacking (Laguna mashed some random keys) to get Ellone's cell open. As the two are reunited, the game switches back to our regular crew.
     They awaken and find themselves in the presidential palace of Esther. The people ask what they are doing there. Squall starts to ask for Ellone, but Edea tells Squall to let her handle this. She wishes to speak with Doctor Odine and figure out a way to keep Ultimecia from getting her. Odine claims that there is an easy fix for this and plans to exorcise Ultimecia from Edea. A man walks up and asks why we want to see Ellone. Squall thinks Ellone can use her powers to help him save Rinoa. Squall is very straightforward about wanting to do this, and he somewhat threatens Odine. Odine gives in and gives them permission to see Ellone. His only request is that he is allowed to study Rinoa in her current state. He sends the rest of the group off towards a place called the Lunar Gate. I head out and do a bit of exploring. Esther is quite a big city, and it has a lot to offer. There's a large shopping mall with a grouping of stores. For some reason, they made this place extra fancy and specialized stores all accessible from one menu. I bought up all the magazines I could, replaced some of the GF items, and filled up on items. It's been a while since I last bought anything or filled up my inventory, so this was a good thing. After that, I left town and began...a large side quest.
     With my current location, I was finally able to began a long quest for the powerful GF named Doomtrain. The game hints about Doomtrain in a in-game magazine called Occult Fan. Basically, you have to get 6 apiece of three specialized items: Malboro Tentacles, Remedy+, and Steel Pipes. Steel Pipes have been available to me since the very beginning with Cards. The other two are a bit harder to get though...You can only get Malboro Tentacles off of Malboros (OBVIOUSLY) or their cards. You have to have FIVE cards to get one tentacle though, so I tried the other method. The Malboros roam the Esther plains, but their encounter rate is insanely low. I walked around for an hour before I finally met my first one, and that almost killed me! It's Bad Breath ability is a real pain that causes nearly all of the status effects at once. I had to rearrange my magic junctions to help me out here. I figured out a grouping that worked, and this helped the battles considerably. They still had a super low rate, so I was running around for quite a bit. However, this helped me with the last requirement...Remedy+. Remedy+ is only obtainable by upgrading the Remedy item with the Med LVL Up ability. It's available ONLY on Alexander, and you can only get it after getting the previous ability Med Data. Each one requires more than 200 GP each! Luckily, I was getting into a huge number of random battles, but of course, most of these battles weren't Malboros. I spent like 3-4 hours of my time just doing this. It did help get me some extra levels, but it went reaaaally slow. The final necessity for the Doomtrain GF is the Soloman's Ring. This was easy to get since all you have to do is go to the location Tear's Point and pick it up off the ground. I did this before gaining all the items, so once I had them all, I summoned Doomtrain and added him to the team! With Doomtrain obtained, I had waste enough time and went back to the story.
     I easily made my way to the Lunar Gate. A woman greeted me there and took our group inside. In order to see Ellone, we were going to have to take a little trip...into space. (Yeaaaah, love how Esther is advanced enough not only send people into space but have a damn space base.) Along with Rinoa, I had to pick one other person to accompany me. I chose Quistis, and they proceed to launch us into space. You might think they'd use a space shuttle of sorts, but apparently that is too easy or too much work. The fastest and easiest way to put this...we were loaded into space bullets and SHOT to the space base. As that group is shot up, the rest of the group decides to make their way back to Esther. Just as we get outside, some crazy shit starts to go down. Up in the sky, a massive block of floating ridiculousness is hovering towards Esther. The group has no idea what it is, but they plan to find out. Taking a team of Zell, Selphie, and Edea (forced to), we make our way to Esther. I locate Odine and brings me up to speed on it. The massive floating block is a giant artifact excavated from the ocean. It is called Lunatic Pandora, and it means bad news for everyone. A signal coming from the giant thing attracts monsters. This signal is amplified when it is over the Tear's Point (where I got the Soloman's Ring). What are we going to do?
     The only thing we can do is try to jump aboard. However, Odine figures there are only three points in town in which we can possibly jump on the thing. I have a total of 20 minutes before it passes over. In that time, I have to hit one of three locations during their calculated time of passing to jump aboard the thing. The town lifts stop working as soon as this all starts (of course), so I'm having to hoof it across this giant town WHILE fighting off Galbadian troops. On top of this, I have five minutes to reach the first location to jump on the damn thing. This would have been easy...had I not taken the wrong path. I also didn't save for a bit, so I was not up for reloading. I barely make it all around town and back to the first spot. I've got 30 seconds to go when...soldiers pop out of the Lunatic Pandora. I barely finish them off with a mere couple of seconds to jump on board. Things got even worse once I was inside. As I began to look around...I quickly got lost. There were all forms of branching passageways and places to explore, but I was quickly cut off. When I reached one area, a giant creature of sorts got in my way. As the group charged at it, it flung them out of the ship and into the Sorceress's Memorial. In simple words, we failed...horribly. The Lunatic Pandora hovers over the Tear's Point, and the entire thing begins to light up with an eerie red glow. Edea mentions something about "Lunar Cry", and the game switches over to our other group.
     The other group is arriving at the Esther Space Station. They were shot up there like bullets and caught by the station. It might be a fast way up there, but it seems kinda over the top. As the group arrives, we're directed to place Rinoa in a special room. After that, I begin exploring the space station a bit. One of the scientists, named Piet, shows us something interesting and kinda scary. We take a close look at the moon and discover that...the moon is covered with monsters. It seems that monsters actually come from the moon. (The characters mention that we should have known that from classes.) On top of this, they all seem to be gathering in one spot for an even known as the Lunar Cry. Apparently, this is a major catastrophe, and it happened at some point in the past. Another big deal with the space station is the entire point of it all. The entire reason for the station's existence is to keep Sorceress Adel sealed away. Apparently, she was sealed and locked away in a floating prison nearby the moon. It seems that Laguna was entirely responsible for her downfall and current imprisonment. Interesting stuff... Eventually, I'm pointed towards finding Ellone. As I find her, Squall makes the plea with her to try and help him cure Rinoa. Ellone explains that she wanted to change Laguna's past to make him stay with Raine in her final hours, but she found out a few things while attempting this. First and foremost, you can't change the past. Secondly, she was okay with how things turned out because she learned that Laguna loved her quite dearly. Despite what Ellone tells him, Squall still wants to give it a shot. Ellone needs to see Rinoa before being able to send someone to her past, but as we go investigate...tragedy strikes!
     A giant red alert goes up, and the crew is called to the Med Lab (where Rinoa was taken). As I get over there, Rinoa is walking all creepy-like and strange. Every time I approach her, some mysterious force flings me away from her. She creeps towards the control room and hits a switch. Piet informs us that the switch she activated deactivated the Level 1 Seal on Adel! Luckily, there is a second switch that is located on Adel's prison though, but Rinoa quickly makes her way out of the room and in a different direction. Squall chases after her and finds her leaving the station in a space suit. I throw one on and chase after her, but she makes it out of the airlock before Squall can. Even worse, as things are already going bad, the monsters on the moon are fully collecting for the Lunar Cry and begin to flow rapidly down from the moon to the planet. Rinoa is seen in the distance turning off the Level 2 Seal on Adel's prison. As the prison deactivates, it slowly drifts towards the monster's that are flowing towards the planet. Adel is carried off into the midst of it all, and Rinoa is left to float out there. The rest of the group (in the spacestation) are forced to abandon the base as the monsters are rapidly flowing down towards Tear's Point in Esther. (A lot of these are cutscenes showing off the action, but I didn't feel like describing every single part where it jumps.) As the monster's come crashing down onto the planet, Adel's prison is seen falling into Lunatic Pandora.
     The group is getting into a nearby escape pod and fleeing the station. As this happens, Squall is incredibly distraught about Rinoa and feels that he has to save her right now. He asks Ellone to send him into the past to try and help. She gives it a couple different tries and a few things are revealed. The first scene is Rinoa beating on Irvine to go rescue the group from D-District Prison. The next part is Rinoa asking Zell to help her get Squall's ring. As Squall comes to, he asks Ellone to send him to sometime sooner. This next bit reveals the truth behind the incident at Galbadia Garden. We see Rinoa creepily walking towards and picking up the unconscious Seifer. As she starts talking to him, it seems that someone else is behind Seifer's revival of sorts. Ultimecia seems to have been possessing Rinoa! She tells Seifer to go and get Lunatic Pandora from underneath the ocean. She promises to help him fulfill his dream, and he gets up and walks off. Ultimecia forces Squall's hold off of Rinoa and returns to the present.
     Ellone sends Squall in one last time to help him by sending him to the most recent memory. (Kinda depressing one too...just warning ya) Next thing up...we see Rinoa drifting through space. It cuts in ever so often with a mini-cutscene showing Rinoa slowly running out of air and beginning to fall asleep. However, it seems that before drifting off, she seems to hear Squall and sees his ring currently around her neck. Squall wakes up and leaps into action. He jumps out of the ship and catches Rinoa in space. The two of them are drifting there, and it seems that things just got hopeless. However, something floating in the distance comes closer...Turns out, there's a giant red dragon-looking spaceship floating about. Squall and Rinoa manage to climb aboard! After getting in, it seems there is life support on board, so the two of them take their suits off and begin to explore. There's a moment where Rinoa thanks Squall for rescuing her and asks that he give her a hug, but Squall manages to avoid this for the moment. He says they need to figure out a way home as to not becoming memories.
     As I explore the ship, I quickly find out that I am not alone here. All around the ship are giant, strange-looking aliens. Thanks to the guide tips, I know that killing these things isn't as straightforward as it may seem. There were four pairs of colored aliens (red, yellow, orange, and purple). You had to kill them off in pairs, or the second one would revive the first one. This was easy enough in most cases since getting from the first to the second one was generally pretty easy. They weren't very tough enemies either, so I was able to push on through them without much effort. Once I defeated the group of aliens, I made my way to the cockpit, and good news began to flow in. I was able to contact Esther station and get this ship pointed back to the planet. I also find out that the ship is called the Ragnarok. Lemme jut say...this is the coolest looking ship ever! Giant red dragon spaceship! HELLS YEAH! (moving on) With a little talking through it, we manage to get the ship heading back down to the planet. During this time, Squall and Rinoa have a moment. I won't go into details, but Squall finally comes out and admits some of his feelings. He's been distant from everyone in hopes that he doesn't lose a loved one like he lost Ellone in the past (when she disappeared). Rinoa talks about how they won't be able to stay together when this is all up. Squall responds by saying that no one can predict the future (says Rinoa told him that long ago). She obviously didn't mean it like this, but the two are sitting there and get a call in from the planet.
     The Esther group figure they know what has happened, but they ask who all is on board. Squall identifies himself and then Rinoa. They exclaim that the Sorceress is on board!?! Squall doesn't act overly surprised (although I really was...apparently I didn't catch the hints), but things take another downward turn. Rinoa admits to becoming a Sorceress and says that she won't be able to stay with him anymore. She wishes that time would simply stop at that moment so the two of them could be together forever. When they land, a couple of Esther representatives are there to escort the Sorceress Rinoa away. They say that they must seal her powers for the good of the world. Squall doesn't want to let her go, but he doesn't really seem to know what to do. Rinoa is scared that the world will hate and fear her for being a Sorceress, and thus she goes with them willingly. She tries to give Squall back his ring, but he tells her to keep it. After she leaves, Squall gets back on the ship and wonders what the hell he is supposed to do. Quistis came in a short time later and starts filling me in on details. Apparently, after they crash landed, the group of them all passed out and woke up much later. Only Piet and she were on board, and Ellone was nowhere to be found. As she is talking, Zell and company run in to tell Squall what happened. (Fast forward through this since we technically already know.) He also mentions that Edea (not present) was unable to do what she wanted because she passed on her Sorceress status. Squall confirms it by saying she gave it to Rinoa. He also talks about them hauling Rinoa off and how she was afraid of what she had become. Obviously, they think she needs to be rescued, and Selphie and Irvine run out of the room. Quistis and Zell start talking with Squall and tell him that they need to go after her. After a little convincing, Squall decides that their only possible option at this time...is to rescue Rinoa. As they say this, the Ragnarok begins to move, and the group assumes that Selphie is flying the ship. (She is.) With the Ragnarok in hand, it's time to find Rinoa!
     Finally! I have a REAL damn airship! Although it's actually a spaceship, it is the coolest ship I've ever gotten to fly! I zoom about the planet as I try to figure out some things to do. I'm rapidly approaching the end of the game and the end of Disc 3, so I'm trying to go ahead and do a few side quests before finishing up. First on the list...a new GF! (That's also the rest of the list really...) I make my way to a small desert island where a green cactus keeps popping up and disappearing. I run up to the cactus for BOSS BATTLE TIME! For this round, I've got Squall, Zell, and Quistis attempting to defeat the massive and impressive Jumbo Cactuar! Jumbo Cactuar offered me a true FF8 challenge! All I had to work with to fight him was the Water spell and the Leviathan summon (For confused readers, his weakness is WATER!) I never saw his full health, but from what I did see, he had at LEAST 60,000+! Aside from his high HP, he had a pretty decent round of attacks. One was some sort of ground slam that threw everybody up in the air and brought them down for decent damage. The worst of his attacks was the 10,000 Needles. He used it as a counter of sorts (randomly mostly) to deal out 10,000 damage to a single character. This couldn't be reduced by anything, so whoever got hit by it, I had to waste time reviving them. The biggest concern I had for this battle came up when he was getting low. When he gets critical on health, a special message displays, and you have to hurry up and defeat him. Otherwise, he runs away, and you get to restart the entire process! Lucky for me, I was able to round up the battle right on time. With the Jumbo Cactuar defeated, I added the Cactuar GF to my lineup of summons! I only lacked two more GFs to have the entire collection, and thus began the search...
     I had to fly all over the planet in search of a small research station. This spot was unmarked on the map and supposed to be very small. I flew around for quite a bit before finally finding it. As soon as I found it, I landed down and entered inside. Inside was a giant glowing core....but then I ran back out and saved my game. I've gotten more than enough typed up for this post, and I've already failed my goal of August. Figured I would stop there and get this up. The next post WILL be the last one though! All I lack are two GFs and a few ultimate weapons. Once I get those, it's just a small matter of time before I reach the end of the game. The fourth disc is supposed to be the final area only, so I need to get all I can done before I move on. I apologize for the long post and thank you for reading it regardless! Stay tuned for the season finale of FINAL FANTASY 8! I figure I should have the post up by late Tuesday...

Ending Point - Nearby the Deep Sea Research Station.
Current Party -

• Squall - Level 58
• Zell - Level 33
• Quistis - Level 32

Goals Accomplished - Obtained the Cerberus GF. Defeated the Sorceress. Obtained the Alexander GF. Finished Disc 2! Learned more plot element stuffs! Completed another Laguna dream sequence. Found the White SeeD ship and learned of Ellone's whereabouts. Made it to the country of Esther. Obtained the Doomtrain GF. Launched from the Lunar Gate up into space! Got aboard the Lunatic Pandora but was quickly thrown off. Made it to the Esther Lunar Base but bad things happened. Rescued Rinoa. Gained the spaceship Ragnarok. Obtained the Cactuar GF. Located the Deep Sea Research Station.
Next Goals - Rescue Rinoa. Find Ellone. Stop Ultimecia and save the world!

~May the Crystals Guide Me~