use the infinite Elnoyle area in Esthar for Energy Crystals and either play cards for the safe option for Malboro Tentacles OR do the difficult thing, equip your characters wth GF status defx4 abilities and equip 100 pains, confuse, Beserk and Zombie, that's what I normally do to prevent the worst from happening as soon as that Bad Breath hits, equip Initiative, Mug and then run
I wonder what the programming is on that. Do they just go back and forth on their line?
Awesome city and very fun to explore, quite possibly my favourite city in the game because there's a lot to do in it and it's easy to get lost, it's so bright and clean looking too, yet at the same time it feels so out of place compared to every other town and city in FFVIII because it's so futuristic, even the way the people dress is so different.
Similar to Force, I have the ring but haven't got Doomtrain just yet, I suppose I could have gone and got it as soon as I had control over Ragnarok, but I decided not to, I'll leave it for the sidequest chapter, I plan to do a lot in the chapter.
She's ok, also you never realise it until she's close to your characters but she's quite a short lady isn't she? She's got great magic potential in battle...being a sorceress and all but I'd rather keep my normal team members. Actually while Rinoa was down and out I stuck to a party of Squall, Irvine and Selphie and I took Selphie with me to the Lunar Base.
Did you have any troubles with the "Gravity"-esque sequence?[q/quote]
Nope but it's just very long and annoying, the best thing to do is center her to the screen but it's just playing the waiting game with it.
Nah, once you know the sequence first time they're easy but the Propgators are some of the scariest monsters in this game, there's always that moment where I go OH SHIT!! when one of them starts chasing me.
It's going quite well now, I've gotten quite a few more including Laguna and Seifer but that random rule is a fecking pain in the arse, getting Laguna did indeed take me quite a few retries and a lot of swearing was involved.
Poor Rinoa, that girl just can't catch a break can she? I always wanted to know why the powers went to Rinoa and I wish it had been explored better. There has to be a reason Rinoa was chosen and I’m sure Ultimecia had some influence on who those powers went to considering she possessed Rinoa right from the off, it’s a pity it’s never fully explained. As much as I dislike her character and her behaviour, the scenes between her and Squall from space to this part of the playthrough are really lovely, Sorceress memorial is home to one of my favourite FMVs, I guess this is the part where I begin to take Rinoa more seriously and feel she matures as a character, it’s pretty brave of her after all to choose to seal herself away from the world, especially so soon after coming out of her coma and reuniting with Squall.
You know, I like Squall at this point too because although he loves Rinoa, you can tell he’s never really carried emotions like this before for anyone, I mean he drops everything to go and save her without telling everyone which is crazy and then does the crazy thing of going out into space after her knowing they could both die. The when he gets her back he willingly allows her to go get frozen and needs a royal kick up the arse from Quistis (god bless that woman) and company to realise what an idiot he’s being. It kind of shows that Squall is only human, he’s still new to being in love and it’ll take time for him to understand all these new feelings he has, it’s sort of nice he doesn’t become one dimensional.
The sad thing is all the other characters once you hit disc 3 all take a backseat in favour of the love story which doesn’t sit well with me. There should have been more of a focus on the friendship between the orphans and their relationship with Edea now that they’re all back together but it becomes a let’s go save Rinoa mission. There’s not nearly as much dialogue as there should be for these 5 people and their matron after finding out such a big thing towards the end of disc 2, it would have been much better to have more scenes with them as a group in Esthar and on the way to there instead of these disjointed bits here and there.
I really wasn’t surprised about our elected leader, it’s really quite spoiled by Kiros and Ward being mentioned, so when the party is getting ready to go there you know who you’re going to meet, I would have loved it on that first initial playthrough if you could have one of those moments where you could just go OMG REALLY!!!???. Also I do like his choice of clothes, let’s face it Kiros and Ward look completely ridiculous in that Esthar crap.
Onto the sidequest stuff and I have a nice lot of quests to complete
I don't normally, but did for this playthrough. Used it as a precaution and it got me through this particular part a lot quicker than I usually would.
Yep.
First of all, can I just say how hilarious his introductory scene is? Got his BIG ONE, eh?
You mean about Cid and NORG, right? Well, I was originally. The NORG thing was a nice twist. What's an even better twist is Edea being MARRIED to Cid. MIND FUCK.
For the sake of the playthrough, I honestly was. But when I originally played, I had an inkling they'd be fine because they were still showing in the party menu.
Have I fuck.
Yes. I never knew you could do this, so it was lovely to do it this time around.
Pretty well. I chose Zell for Bass Guitar, Irvine with Sax, Selphie with Electric Guitar and Quistis for Piano. It was a nice slow melody. Anyone like how Rinoa just pushes Squall off the spot?
Coming along great now. I defeated the majority of the CC Club and acquired a few rare cards. I'd list them all, but do you really want to see them all?
Seeing Squall question everything is a brilliant progression in the story i.e. the true meaning of SeeD and thinking for himself for once. The whole Ellone thing is a big surprise too, as well as the Garden actually turning out to be an ancient ship and the revelations coming from NORG.
Rinoa. Her and Zell are my favourite pairing with Squall in the party.
I found him at the train after doing some digging around. I was surprised and found it hilarious. The fact that Raijin can be called a captain is a joke, right?
Yep, from Fujin.
I've done the Shumi Village and Odin ones so far. With Odin, I literally had a minute and a half left on the clock, so that wasn't FUN as you'd think. As for Shumi - fun, really? Are you brain dead?
I did! I like hearing Selphie's thoughts and those of everyone else who are writing in the diary (Irvine, Quistis and Zell so far). Makes the game a bit more personal, otherwise we wouldn't really get to know them more as characters outside the plot.
Not particularly, but there's an area in the Trabia continent where the gauge of the Garden is going craycray.
Well, the fact that Irvine knowingly grew up with the gang (except Rinoa) is always going to be a huge mindfuck because he never mentioned it before. Of course, the whole GF thing comes to mind, but I can't help feeling putting that in there cheapens how they can't remember their childhood. Nevertheless, it's a brilliant twist and just brings the group even closer together. It even loosens Squall up a bit, who actually remembers and has been remembering stuff about being alone as a kid.
It took three attempts. No, I didn't enjoy it. I only did whenI kicked that sorry soldier's arse.
Done and dusted.
See above.
Seifer: "Rinoa, what are you doing here? You're gonna fight me, too? Come on, remember a year ago we ..."
Just Laguna and Kiros.
Ultima and all the Aga's. I suppose they have.
I gave it to him and he gave me the Shiva Card and Rename Card.
Curaga over and over again. Might have used it about 5-6 times?
Oh God, Rinoa's hitting on Squall harder than ever. And aww, bless Squall. It's so obvious everyone's trying to get them together and even HE notices it of all people.
It's like the TARDIS - bigger on the inside! I kid. But it's an impressive city. It's the one city that I love from the game, but forget about the most just because of how grand it is.
Working on it.
I've opted out of using her for this playthrough, just to see what it's like. So generally, I do like using her.
No.
No, got rid of them easily. The thing about pairs and colours came back to me pretty quickly.
It's more or less the same, with Shiva and a few more additions. Still aiming to catch 'em all.
I like that the past and present are now moving towards the same place, things are starting to click. And aww, Angelo at Lunatic Gate. That was so cute.
I like it though, 'tis a good one.
Closest I got was an attempt where two of my characters kept dying leaving Rinoa to solo and eventually getting heal locked into Bahamut spamming Mega Flares, and Stops, me spamming X Potions, frantically trying to refresh Shell when it wore off, then eventually Bahamut getting lucky with his Stop timing w/th Stop + physical attack combo finishing Rinoa off before I got to heal. This max ATB speed is a thing.
I completed Obel Lake for the first time, it’s a bit annoying having to run back and forth everywhere during it looking for all the stones and stuff but I completed it for the first time, I feels it's one of those more bizarre sidequests, it and Pupu.
I finally got Quistis and Irvine’s Ultimate weapons, I believe I mentioned it before but I’d stopped playing cards because the Elnoyle rate was becoming very slim and I got fed up trying to play to get Energy Crystals, a few trips to the unlimited Elnoyle spot after the Lunar Cry with a few, Meltdown+Renzokuken/AP Shot limits combo and the thing goes down oh so quickly, oh and it’s pretty susceptible to Death, that works quite nicely too, I also equipped the Rare Item Ability to help push the rate up of it dropping Energy Crystals
Not so much that I don’t have time just holding off on them until disc 4. I mentioned it before but I’m saving the Odin Sidequest, getting Tonberry and defeating Ultima Weapon until disc 4.
I guess I love how detailed the Info section is by the time you’re ready to go to the final section and how you wouldn’t know about it if you didn’t take the time to look at it, there’s no major hints in FF8 about what the Info section does or is there for unless you choose to go in there but it has some really nice information about places and people in the FF8 world. There are only short paragraphs but you can piece together a lot of stuff from it in terms of things not fully being explained from the game if you take the time to look at it.
Nope nothing out of the ordinary. Seifer’s appearance has certainly got a bit rugged hasn’t it, I actually feel sorry for him because he seems to have completely lost sight of himself and even his dream. Fujin sums it up really well actually about how Seifer is so different now, it’s like he doesn’t know who he is anymore.
Hmmm I did indeed get some very nice little items, (Hello Power generator) there’s some areas of familiarity in this place BUT if you’ve been through it before with Zell, it’s quite easy to find your way around.
I did find Ragnarok, I still had the Odin, Tonberry and Deep Sea research centre sidequests to complete, so getting Ragnarok was paramount to that, but I didn’t play any more Cards, think I’ve done more than enough of that now.
I like the interior and the puzzles to get through it but I very much dislike the music, it suits the gothic, refined interior but it doesn’t get you all pumped up for the final battle like most other FF final dungeon music does, I usually end up turning the sound off altogether it gets on my nerves. I wish they’d used Compression of Time instead, it’s really haunting and beautiful and I think it fits in much better with the final area.
I unsealed all my abilities and the first one was Magic, because a lot of the bosses have an elemental weakness so if you have a nice high magic stat and throw a few triples on the party and you can do a lot of damage quite easily.
I normally draw Eden from Tiamat but I actually managed to beat for the first time Ultima Weapon, I’ve never done it before. It did take a couple of restarts though as he did kill me a couple of times before I managed to get rid of him, it was about the timing of my attacks against his mostly.
I really like the sequences of final bosses, they’re really simple to beat though if you have LionHeart with Squall, as up until the final form of Ultimecia, You can normally wipe out the first 3 battles with a Renzokuken+Lionheart combo.
First of all I love how it all loops back to Squall meeting Edea and her realising who he is, it bugs me though that Squall only seems to really value his other friends apart form Rinoa at this minute, he should have realised that the moment he found out they had been together once upon a time. The FMV sequence with Squall alone if a bit scary and there’s this moment where you’re left wondering what has actually happened to him?
Overall I really enjoyed doing this, I’ve been wanting an FFVIII playthrough for quite some time but I guess I’m a bit more disappointed that not as many people got involved and we couldn’t all get around to doing the chapters at the same time, I know I’m guilty of being one of those people as I fell behind a few times too and I did the same in our previous FF playthroughs but it’s a bit sad I guess that we’re all up for it in the beginning and then the numbers start dwindling further to the end. I think a few more skype or IRC chats would have been lovely too.
