The results of the group stage determined the quarter-final match-ups, which look like this:

1 – Cloud vs Celes
2 – Kain vs Vivi
3 – Aerith vs Lightning
4 – Tifa vs Fang

The winners of quarter-finals 1 and 2 will meet in a semi-final, as will their counterparts from quarter-finals 3 and 4. There will then be a final and a third/fourth place play-off. The competition runs until the end of May. Who are you supporting?

Continuing our theme of making Final Fantasy VII a more multi-player experience here on The Lifestream, we’ve just re-started a Community Playthrough of the game, in which our forum members play along at the same time and all discuss it together. If that sounds like your kind of thing, read on…

Back in August of last year, TLS members began playing Final Fantasy VII collectively and posting their thoughts on it as they went along. Unfortunately, it fizzled out after a couple of months, with the players in Junon. As it was such a popular feature, though, we’ve decided to cast Life2 on it and carry on.

Over the last few weeks, we ran a “Prelude” section to allow new players to catch up with those who were playing last time. With that finished, we’re back to all playing together again. We’ve split the game up into 27 chapters, each of which should take no more than an hour for an experienced player, and something like an hour and a half for new players. There are only two chapters per week, so it doesn’t require a large time commitment. Of course, if you want to learn all the characters’ limit breaks on disc one, you’re welcome to do so, and then tell us all about it! Some people are even streaming their progress on the Lifestream’s Twitch.tv page for others to view and discuss.

If you took part last year, now is the time to dust off your memory card, find out exactly where you left off, and join in with us again. If you want to join in for the first time, on the other hand, it’s not too late! There’s no time limit for playing any of the chapters. You can go through the first six chapters in the Prelude thread, and everything from Junon onwards in the Community Playthrough thread itself.

See you there!

Here we take a look back at how it all unfolded and get the thoughts of the players.

At 14:00 (UK time) on Friday, both players pressed NEW GAME in Final Fantasy VII at exactly the same time. Viewers of the streams remarked on how closely synchronised the two opening FMVs were. Of course, it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Flintlock took the first lead of the race, gaining a little time in the first reactor and more on the train to the second.

My first game over was Midgar Zolom. He was at a really unfortunate position in the marshes, and caught me at the last possible moment before I pressed triangle. Had to reset because he killed Tifa before I could escape. Luckily I had just saved.

Prince Lex

A slow Air Buster fight for Flintlock allowed Prince Lex to catch up, and he pulled ahead with a different strategy at Wall Market, getting the best items to make Cloud be chosen as Don Corneo’s date. Lex was able to keep his lead throughout the rest of Midgar, reaching Kalm just a couple of minutes ahead. When he accidentally got into a battle with Midgar Zolom and had to reset, Flintlock was able to close the gap. Lex could only manage 33% in the Junon marching task, giving him six potions, while Flintlock got the much better prize of 5000 gil after scoring 51%, which made things very interestingly poised as the two players headed for the second continent.

Both players then had the same strategy in Corel, which was to steal at least five Right Arms from Bomb enemies, to use in later boss fights. Lex, although unlucky with the number of battles he got overall, managed to steal quite a few of the items straight away, while Flintlock needed many more attempts. That put Lex into a lead he wouldn’t relinquish for the rest of the race. His game nearly sabotaged him in the desert prison, as he got into a second battle with Dyne after already killing him once. The players had agreed before the race started to allow players to replay any parts of the game which they lost due to glitches, so Flintlock waited for him to beat Dyne again. He had his own trouble in the Desert Prison, as he tried to learn Laser but forgot to equip anybody with the Enemy Skill materia, meaning he had to do it a second time.

Materia Keeper was a brick wall for me. Although I got unlucky, Lex had a much better strategy which I hadn’t thought of. The lead he built there allowed him to level up later on, making the remaining challenges of the game much more straightforward.

Flintlock

Speaking of Enemy Skills, Lex got a Game Over when trying to learn Aqualung after leaving the prison, while Flintlock needed an unusually high number of battles to find a Touch Me enemy for the Frog Song ability. Despite that, there was still only a ten or fifteen minute gap between the players as they reached Mt. Nibel. Lex was ambushed by Sonic Speeds, who were able to kill his party in one hit per character, resulting in another visit to the title screen. Flintlock had no such bad luck, but he ran into a lot of trouble with Materia Keeper. Mostly through bad luck such as consecutive uses of Trine, it took six attempts before the boss was finally defeated. Lex had a much safer method, which was to use Bio and then wait for poison to take care of things. The gap stretched to about half an hour.

The players knew that the Temple of the Ancients would be a make-or-break part of the game. Although the maze, the rolling rocks and the clock room can sometimes prove difficult, they each knew how to make it through as quickly as possible. The bosses, on the other hand, were a different story. Both players had a tough time with Red Dragon but still managed to take him down on the first attempt. Demon’s Gate was another horrible part of the game for Flintlock, though. After three attempts, in which most had begun with either a one-hit KO or two consecutive attacks on the same character, he decided to level up in the Mural Room. Laser and Frog Song came in handy for dealing with the powerful enemies there. More attempts at the boss were followed by more levelling up until the battle was finally won at the twelfth attempt. Lex, on the other hand, had had a huge slice of fortune, winning the battle on the first attempt with Tifa left on 5 HP. That extended his lead to a whole hour.

Jenova-LIFE was an absolute nightmare and cost me loads of time. Luckily Cid had the water ring, but she killed Cloud and Tifa with Aqualung and other attacks – I think I used 7 Phoenix Downs – so ending the battle was difficult because Deathblow kept missing.

Prince Lex

Lex struggled against Jenova LIFE, costing a lot of time, though it only took him one attempt. Flintlock managed to cast Death Sentence on Tifa, allowing her to do much more damage with the Powersoul and Deathblow, before Jenova killed the other two characters with Aqualung, but Tifa then missed five times in a row and the 60-second timer on her life expired. That meant having to go through the whole series of events preceding the battle again, which take a number of minutes.

A couple of pincer attacks gave Lex a close call on the way to Icicle Inn, but otherwise things went smoothly for the two players until the Great Glacier, when they took the same path, via the important Added Cut materia. They both needed to steal a Circlet from a Snow enemy and they both wasted a fair amount of time doing so. In fact, Lex had to go through the snowstorm three times as he accidentally made his way to Holzoff’s cabin before stealing one.

Schizo could have been a difficult fight, but it didn’t turn out to be. With enough ice- and fire-absorbing equipment, it is only really Quake and the final attack that can cause a problem. In Flintlock’s case, the ice head kept attacking the fire-absorbing character while the fire head went for the ice-absorbing character. That made him waste time healing and reviving, whereas Lex was able to just plough ahead with Deathblow. The extra levels he had picked up while ahead in the race helped there. Jenova DEATH was as easy as ever for both players.

When the timer disappeared for the FMV of the train stopping, it showed just 00:53, by far the worst time I have ever got there. The whole train sequence was my worst and most embarrassing moment of the whole race.

Flintlock

Once the Highwind was acquired, it was time to get some Huge Materia. The train battles at Corel were slower than they should have been for both players, but particularly for Flintlock. He only had the Magic Breath ability on one Enemy Skill materia, which proved important when its caster was silenced in the second battle. He came close to dying twice, while Lex’s only problem was a longer-than-usual battle against the Eagle Gun. Next up was Fort Condor. Both players had the same strategy of putting fighters as low as possible to kill the first enemy that appears on the screen, but neither managed to get it right. Lex ended up having to face five enemies, while Flintlock reset and tried again.

One item that gained extra importance in this race, compared to a normal playthrough, was the Cursed Ring. In case you’re not familiar with it, it gives +35 to strength and magic, +15 to vitality, spirit, and dexterity, and +10 to luck, but inflicts its wearer with Death Sentence. When combined with Tifa’s Powersoul weapon, it makes her an unstoppable fighting force. It’s a pretty rare item, though, as there are only two in the game. One is held by Ultima Weapon during the forced battle against him in Mideel. He flees after three turns, though, so that’s all the time available to try and steal it. It’s quite a difficult steal, but Lex got it in his first battle, which he had only a 26% chance of doing. Flintlock could not get it inside his first eight battles, even though he had a 79% chance of doing so. If the outcome of the race wasn’t decided already, it was after that. He had to resort to levelling up outside Mideel before eventually stealing it.

Amazingly, I won first time against Carry Armour. He was down within around 1 minute or so, if memory serves. Most definitely the biggest stroke of luck I had in the entire run, and I was grateful because I was totally dreading it.

Prince Lex

With Cloud back in the party, it was time to head for the Underwater Reactor, home to one of the most dangerous bosses in the whole game, Carry Armour. Whether it was through luck or his extra levels, Lex managed it first time, while it took Flintlock about four tries. In fact, it was while Flintlock fought Carry Armour that Lex managed to complete the game – a complete thrashing. Still, he carried on to the end of the game. Things didn’t get any better, though: the submarine mini-game took him two attempts and a fair bit of time, despite it being possible to win in a matter of seconds. Lex had got it first time. The same also applied to Diamond Weapon some time later, after all the scenes at Cosmo Canyon and the Forgotten Capital. The return to Midgar went smoothly all around, with both players using a glitch in the game to avoid facing the Turks in the railway tunnel. The three-stage fight with Hojo was one of the only ones in the race which went better for Flintlock than Lex, but neither player died.

Onto the North Crater. Lex got into a bit of trouble with a pair of consecutive Ahriman pincer attacks, but was able to survive. Flintlock had no such trouble, instead finding a set of Movers in the same area, which were easily defeated for their AP and Turbo Ethers. One particularly luck-dependent part of the game is the area with rocks leading down to the final string of bosses. There is a 25% chance of getting into a battle after each jump, and there are thirteen jumps. Lex got through the whole first screen of five jumps without a single battle, incredibly, and then had only a few in the next screen. Flintlock, meanwhile, got into battles more often than not, including about six in eight jumps in the second screen.

It was quite unlikely that Tifa would get confusion again on my second try, but she did, along with Cloud. The battle seemed lost, but the only things that happened during the confusion were an attempted physical attack from Cloud and a Phoenix Down on Sephiroth!

Flintlock

Jenova SYNTHESIS and Bizarro Sephiroth are very easy with the combinations of Deathblow+Added Cut and W-Magic+Ultima, but both players’ parties were reduced to 1 HP right before Bizarro hit the bucket. Lex than had a long fight with Safer Sephiroth, as he had forgotten to equip Destruct materia and thus had to put up with the boss’s Wall. Flintlock had a shorter fight, but not for a good reason: Tifa got confused by Supernova and ended up killing herself when she was the last character standing. That meant going back through all the pre-Jenova fights, Jenova herself, and the two Sephiroths. When it came to Supernova the second time, both Cloud and Tifa got confused, but luckily his follow-up attack of Heartless Angel brought them out of it before they could hurt themselves. One Megalixir and a couple of attacks later, Sephiroth’s second form was finally dead.

The game doesn’t quite end there, though, as anyone who has completed it once will know. The last player input comes in the third and final fight against Sephiroth. It is impossible to lose the battle, but there are two choices of action: use Omnislash, or wait and use a counter-attack. Either way, a single move is enough. Only when the last damage number appears on the screen can the game be considered complete, so that was the point at which we took our final times. Lex used Omnislash, knowing he had won, while Flintlock used the faster counter-attack.

It’s been so much fun. Incredibly stressful at some points and frustrating at others. When I completed the game I was genuinely sad that it was over. I’d definitely do it again, but far far far away into the future.

Prince Lex

I’m glad I did it. It would have been nice to have had a closer race, but it wasn’t to be. It was a great community event, and there has already been talk of other races, which I think I will really enjoy – as a spectator!

Flintlock

It wasn’t a close race at all, as the margin of victory was some two and a half hours. In truth, it was always going to be difficult for Flintlock to catch up after being half an hour behind on the first day, but it just got worse after that as luck really went against him. That’s not to say Lex didn’t have his fair share of bad luck either, but it seemed to come at less critical moments.

Here are the official times, taken at the moment when the third form of Sephiroth was defeated. Prince Lex completed the game in 10:25:34 of real time, with an in-game time of 10:18:06. Flintlock’s in-game time was 10:48:41, only half an hour behind, but it took him 12:55:06 in real time, which shows how much more time he lost to resetting and reloading.

Both players commented on how exhausting and stressful it had been, but also how much fun it all was. It was pleasing to see the viewers enjoying it as well. All that’s left to say now is congratulations to Prince Lex, commiserations to Flintlock, and just as importantly, thanks to everyone who contributed by chatting in our IRC channel. See you at the next race! If you’re not already a member of our forums, why not sign up to find out exactly when that is going to be?

If you thought Final Fantasy VII was only a single-player game, think again. This weekend on The Lifestream, two of our members will play the game head to head as they race from “New Game” to “The End”.

There is a dedicated page for this race, which contains both players’ streams, so you can watch their progress, and a chat room for discussion. Both players will be in the chat room and will be able to field questions during their breaks.

The playing sessions will take place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, from 14:00 to 21:00 UTC each day. You can check what that is in your timezone here. Those seven hours include five and a half hours of playing, a few breaks, and around half an hour at the end to discuss it and answer any questions you might have.

Read on for the rules and the players.

The rules are straightforward: both players must start a new Final Fantasy VII game at the same time, after which they will race in real time to reach the end. Real time means that if one player gets a Game Over, for example, the other player can keep playing and pull ahead (or catch up). The first player can’t do anything except reload their game and try again. In that way, it’s not the in-game clock that matters, but the real-life one. That brings up all sorts of strategical decisions which have to be made. Is it worth taking thirty seconds to save the game ahead of a boss, or is it a small enough risk to not save? Is it worth fighting random battles to gain EXP, AP, items and Gil, to make the game easier, or should they just be escaped?

In this case, neither player has done any speed running before, but they both know the game of Final Fantasy VII inside and out. They are:

Flintlock (that’s me!)
24 years old, from Finland
TLS member since January 2012
Day 2 progress: finished*

Prince Lex
22 years old, from Scotland
TLS member since June 2009
Day 2 progress: finished

* Flintlock continued playing after the day’s scheduled play had finished to reach the end of the game.

There will be a bot in the IRC channel, known as Sephibot, who will be responsible for timekeeping. He will tell us when to start, when to take breaks, and when to stop. At the end of each day, we will keep playing until we reach the next save point which would normally come up in the game. If we’re in a town, for example, we don’t have to run outside to save on the world map immediately; instead we can continue until we have done everything we want to do in the town. It’s inevitable that one player will have to make their final save for the day slightly before the other, so the following morning they will be given a head-start of equal length to compensate for it.

One final note: we may not need all the available time on Sunday, depending on how long it takes us to complete the game.

We hope you’ll be able to join us!

Across the first three months of 2012, The Lifestream ran a series of polls, one for every game in the main Final Fantasy series (XI and XIV excluded), to determine the most popular character from each one. The 12 victors, alongside 12 of the best runners-up, have now been drawn into four groups of six, where they will once again compete in polls of their popularity among our members. A live draw on the #TLS IRC channel last night determined the groups, which look like this:

1 – Auron, Cloud, Ingus, Cecil, Squall and Lightning.
2 – Kain, Sazh, Garland, Lulu, Fang and Kefka.
3 – Vivi, Laguna, Firion, Yuna, Zidane and Aerith.
4 – Balthier, Faris, Celes, Tifa, Rikku and Freya.

We need your participation to make this battle as exciting as possible. Who would you like to win in each of those groups? Cast your votes on the forum throughout April in group 1, group 2, group 3 and group 4.

The second part of this article contains a preview of the favourite for each group.

The favourites

Auron (Final Fantasy X)
As well as providing the party with unmatched brute force, Auron gave the first Final Fantasy game to feature voice acting many of its most memorable lines. Those two factors combined to give the legendary guardian an overwhelming victory in the Final Fantasy X poll; his tally of 21 votes was the most in the whole series and nearly double that of his nearest challenger in X, Yuna. It will take some effort to stop Auron from winning the whole tournament.

Vivi (Final Fantasy IX)
Veterans of Final Fantasy IX will know that the shy, unassuming and undeniably cute Vivi is a force to be reckoned with. That turned out to be the case in the IX poll as well as the party’s black mage strolled to victory, picking up the second most votes of any character in the whole series after Auron. I’m sure he will make it out of group 3, and he could go all the way to the final.

Kain (Final Fantasy IV)
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes Kain so popular, because there are so many things to choose from. Perhaps it’s because straddles the line between hero and villain for much of his game, giving him the best of both worlds, or perhaps it’s the way he pushes his own feelings to one side for the sake of Rosa and Cecil. In fact, Kain only narrowly managed to beat Cecil in their poll, as the two adoptive brothers fought it for Final Fantasy IV supremacy. A quarter-final rematch is a distinct possibility.

Balthier (Final Fantasy XII)
Rounding off the group of top seeds is Balthier, the self-proclaimed leading man of Final Fantasy XII. The smooth, suave and sophisticated sky pirate picked up eleven votes, leaving the rest of the game’s cast in the dust; his nearest challenger was Larsa, who could manage only three votes. He is XII’s only representative in the tournament, but will his popularity extend beyond the confines of a game which many Final Fantasy fans were very disappointed with?

Final Fantasy Unlimited is an animated Final Fantasy, like Legend of the Crystals or Episode Denzel. Unlike those, it’s not related to any particular Final Fantasy. Rather, it’s blending common elements of all of them. It’s also schizophrenic and insane at times as a result. What starts as a story of two twelve year olds, Ai and Yu Hayakawa, trying to find their parents very quickly turns into an adventure as they board a train leaving for the world outside their reality, into a strange world that more than earns the moniker wonderland. On the way, they meet a Martial Artist named Lisa, a mysterious cloaked Vincent clone gunman named Kaze, and a Chocobo that enjoys the taste of human hair.

For these first two episodes, we’ve gone and gotten myself and two people who’ve never seen the show before, Tennyo and Gym Leader Devil, to do the first two of several commentaries for this show.

So sit back, relax, and get your copy of Unlimited Ready, because we’ve got commentaries for the first and second episodes. So right click, save the commentaries, get your copy of Final Fantasy Unlimited ready to go and join us on the train ride through the strange and unusual world of Wonderland.

The sector seven plate was dropped as a desperate act to crush a dissenting voice ShinRa could not control. While it was an act of retribution, it was also an act of censorship and of control by intimidation- it was to serve as a warning so that no one else would attempt the act again.

SOPA and PIPA, the proposed Internet Security acts currently in the US congress, also seek the ability to control the flow of information, to be able to control and censor the information online, and this could be extremely problematic for website reliant on information that originates from other sources, including and especially this one.

Even in the reduced forms, these bills are dangerous and set a terrible precedent as far as free speech rights are concerned.

There is, however, a shiny golden wire of hope. Many sites, including Wikipedia, Google, Boingboing, and countless blogs, are going dark today as a form of protest against these bills, to demonstrate the terrible repercussions the ability to censor the internet would have. Many sites are urging their readers to contact their own congress members and urge them to vote against the bill.

We urge you to do the same. This bill would not just affect this site, it would affect us all, both here in the US and with possible aftereffects abroad as well.

So, The Lifestream stands with the Blackout and Against SOPA and PIPA, for a free and uncensored internet.

We just hope you stand with us all too.

We have experienced some downtime on the forums some time ago, in part due to peaked activity, in part due to shitty vB plugins, in part due to a restrictive webhost that blocks databases at times of peak activity. With that in mind, we decided to go forth and move to a new, better host – again.

This time around, we will be moving from a shared hosting account on Hostgator to a ‘virtual private server’ hosted by Leaseweb. The benefits of the latter are pretty big: A ‘dedicated’ machine, so no database blocks anymore, full control over the system (SSH / commandline control, w00t), and a lot more flexibility in what kind of software we can use.

The plan is:

* Close the forums for new replies at 3 PM my time – that’s 2 PM GMT and about… 9 AM eastern time? Something like that.
* Request a full backup from the host. This may take a few hours, depending on Hostgator support.
* Move the backup to the new server. This’ll take about as long as it takes to transfer a ~5 GB backup file – probably about an hour and a half to two hours, but it depends.
* Unpack and setup the backup. This should only take a few minutes
* Change some settings
* Test stuff
* Switch the domain name over to the new server. I set it so it should only take a few minutes for the DNS change to take effect, but results may vary.
* With luck, the whole move will take about three hours. But that’s with luck, so no guarantees, might take longer.

While we’re moving, feel free to head over to awesome sites like FFOF, SO, or goatse.cx.

Alternatively, join the TLS IRC at irc.ipocalypse.net, channel #tls.

Overall, thanks for bearing with us during the downtime, and we’re working hard to keep things running smoothly for all of our loyal fans.

HypochondriacPiano has put together a fan tribute album, “Final Fantasy VII: Pulse of Life.” This music has been featured on the TheLifestream’s On the Way to a Smile Audiobooks, and if you’ve wanted to get your hands on it, and listen to it on your portable mp3 player of choice, now’s your chance! Click Here to Download the Album in .RAR and here as a .ZIP and be sure to let us know what you think in the comments!

It seems that our domain name expired and was replaced with a generic advertising site for a while today. As it turned out, our domain name had expired, and due to administrative fail we were not notified of our impending doom.

I was able to contact the host and fix things before it became unrecoverable – I believe there’s a grace period after it expires to fix things. Here’s to hoping this doesn’t happen again. We apologise for the inconvenience.

On the upside, this reminded me that we registered the thelifestream.net domain three years ago, September 25th, 2008. We celebrated our three years anniversary with a few hours downtime. Woo!

One of their favorite fansites? D’awwww, tanks Square. :3

Thanks to Arianna for the heads up.