The race is over. It wasn't much of a race by the end, as Lex was so far ahead. He was winning the final battles while I was still losing against Carry Armour.
Before I get into my write-up, I'd like to repeat my congratulations to Lex, who I think played fantastically and more than deserved to win. There aren't many nicer guys to lose to
Now, let's mosey.
I started the day off between Red Dragon and Demon's Gate. I had already tried fighting the latter three times the previous day without success. In fact, I hadn't even been close. So I decided to level up in the room with the murals. I had specifically acquired the enemy skill Laser in anticipation of this, as it can kill gravity-weak Ark Dragons in one hit. I ran away from the less profitable Doorbulls, but got caught in a side attack by them once, at which point I was glad I had learned Frog Song, even though it had cost me a lot of time on day one.
After gaining a couple of levels I tried Demon's Gate again, four times. No luck. In the very first one, he wiped me out before I even made a move. If he had started any of those battles by waving his arms, I could have won, but he always managed to kill someone in either one or two hits, making it an impossible task. I went back for one more level up and tried a few more times, still without success. One more level and then I got it on either the first or second attempt. I just know it was the twelfth attempt in total. He opened the battle by dropping a rock on Aeris, but thanks to her extra levels and HP, she survived it this time, and from there I could win the battle. I still needed Big Guard, which you shouldn't really need.
So, after already being half an hour down at the end of the first day, I was now a further half an hour down thanks to one boss, who Lex had managed to beat by the skin of his teeth on the first attempt. Of my eleven unsuccessful attempts, I would say two were down to me overlooking or forgetting something, but the others were completely down to bad luck. I couldn't even take much encouragement from my extra levels, as I knew Lex had levelled up in Corral Valley already.
I ploughed on, though, through Bone Village and the Sleeping Forest into the Forgotten Capital. I knew I could survive Jenova LIFE's Aqualung if I managed to get Big Guard up in time, but on my first attempt, she used it straight away. That would still not have been a problem if Tifa's Deathblow had found its target with any decent level of accuracy, but out of the six (ish) times I used it on the boss, it only hit once, so she died from her Death Sentence and I had to go through the whole gloves-on-gloves-off sequence again (you know what I'm talking about). The second time was still quite slow, but I learnt Aqualung and everyone survived.
Things then went fine until the snowboarding, which I am terrible at. It took me about four and a half minutes; it can be done in two and a half. I know very few people who say they are good at that game, actually. I like the idea of it but it's very poorly executed. Turning is pretty much impossible.
At the Great Glacier, I had to run around getting into about five random battles before I met a Snow, from whom I could steal a Circlet. Of course, it took many stealing attempts before I actually got one. Otherwise that area was fine. Gaea's Cliff went pretty smoothly as well, except that, stupidly, I had taken OFF the second Enemy Skill materia and forgotten to put it back on again. That meant I only learnt Magic Breath on one materia. The Stilva I encountered didn't use Trine, but had it done, I would have liked to have had that on the second materia as well. I realised my mistake at the time but I was already so far behind that I didn't want to stick around looking for another Stilva. I only needed one attempt to defeat Schizo, whom I had feared facing, but it started off very badly. Continuing my vein of bad luck, the ice head always attacked Tifa, who was set up to nullify fire, while the fire head always attacked Cait Sith, who was set up to nullify ice. That meant that Tifa died before I could start dealing damage with her Deathblow, and I lost a lot of time reviving her, casting Death Sentence again, and healing Cait. At least I didn't get any Game Overs though.
Jenova DEATH was as easy as it always is, thanks to fireproof equipment. Once again it seemed to take longer than it should have done, though, because too many Deathblows missed.
After all the FMVs and whatnot at the Northern Crater, it was back to Junon. My only mistake there was forgetting which path to take to the airport with Barret and Cait; I guessed randomly and got it wrong twice before finally getting it right.
Once I had the Highwind I headed to Mideel, then Corel, where I got into a couple of side attack battles on the railtracks, which can't be easily escaped. The train sequence was horrible, though. After the first Gas Ducter went down easily, one of the next pair gave Cait silence, which meant he couldn't use Magic Breath. He also died shortly afterwards, and in fact I came pretty close to losing the whole battle. That was the time I could have done with a second copy of Magic Breath. I needed Aqualung, the one and only ability on my other Enemy Skill materia, and lots of Molotovs and physical attacks to deal with them, losing time. Wolfmeister should have been easy with Laser, but I only remembered it after a couple of Magic Breaths and an Aqualung, wasting MP. Red and Cait both died in that battle and I was left with a very low HP Cid attacking to end the battle. Eagle Gun went down easily but slowly. I should have used a T/S bomb alongside Laser, but I forgot. I was starting to worry about the time I had left - only two minutes. When the timer disappeared for the train stopping FMV, it showed only 00:53, by far the worst time I have ever got there. The whole train sequence was my worst and most embarrassing moment over the whole race, and at one point I tried to soft reset but couldn't because I was in a battle.
After that I went to Fort Condor, which required three or four attempts to get right using the cheap method of putting fighters as near to the bottom of the screen as possible to defeat the first enemy that appears there. I had to soft reset each time. That wasn't bad luck, just poor playing by me.
Back at Mideel, however, I had some terrible luck. I needed to steal a Cursed Ring from Ultimate Weapon, and in each battle with him, I had time for three attempts. I was at level 28, which means I had a 6.25% chance of getting it with any single attempt. I had
eight battles without getting it, and of course I had to soft reset after each one. Mathematically, I had a four-in-five chance of getting it within those 24 steals, which is just another example of how luck was not on my side today. After getting fed up, I decided to level up in the Mideel forest to see if I could make it any easier for myself. I could have got the other Cursed Ring by doing a little side quest in the town, but by that point I knew the race was lost and I thought I'd rather have an extra level. At 29, with a chance of 7.81% per attempt, I went in for another battle and got it on my second steal. It felt like salt in my wounds.
The lifestream sequence was all fine, but the Underwater Reactor gave me an expected stumbling block: Carry Armour. I believe it took me four tries. I believe that in the first two, Tifa was at high HP, but he didn't attack her. In the third, she was at low HP, but she died, while the other characters were grabbed by the boss' arms. For the fourth try, I got her HP low in one of the earlier battles, then went back and saved just to save myself the time in case I needed to reset again. I didn't.
It was while fighting Carry Armour that I heard that Lex had beaten the game. I was so far behind it was embarrassing. I decided to keep going, though, to finish it that day. Things didn't pick up, though. I forgot the submarine controls and had to soft reset there. On the second try it took me about a minute. On a normal playthrough I can do it in ten seconds, but I guess I was trying to rush it too much or something.
Rocket Town and the space events went fine. I may have wasted some time getting the Huge Materia from the rocket, which I think is optional, but Cid told me "not this way" when I headed for the exit so I went to get it anyway. Luckily I remembered the password.
What was next? Cosmo Canyon, Forgotten Capital, then Diamond Weapon. As Lex was finished and watching my stream, I asked for his advice, as I didn't really have a strategy in my mind for this fight. I died on my first attempt but got it on the second after one Diamond Flash. I should have used the Wait trick, which I use all the time on a normal game (I usually stick with the Wait mode, because I like time to plan - that's why FFX has my favourite battle system), but I forgot to. That's just what happens when I try to rush.
Midgar went very well, for a change. Not too many random battles, and I managed to use the glitch to avoid the Turks battle (which didn't save me any time, as Lex used it too). Proud Clod went down easily on the first attempt, and triple-Hojo was probably the best battle overall in the whole race for me.
I took a little break before going into the Northern Crater. Again, I didn't have any particular strategy for beating the final bosses, but I figured that as I had done it with no materia before, it shouldn't be too hard. Lex told me about the W-Magic+Ultima method, though, to go with the Deathblow+Added Cut+Cursed Ring+Mystile combination I had already been using. I escaped all the battles in the crater and didn't get caught in any side attacks or anything, which was nice. I even found some Movers, who I decided to fight. I'm not sure if the AP gave me anything new, but at least I got three Turbo Ethers.
I plopped my save crystal down at the last possible point, before the Jenova sequence. I seemed to get pretty unlucky with battles, which only have a 25% chance of happening on each rock. In the second screen I got a battle on something like all but one of the rocks. Jenova SYNTHESIS went down easily, as did Bizarro Sephiroth, but as I had accidentally Deathblow'ed (Deathblown?) his torso rather than his core, he managed to get in the archetypal I'm-a-big-bad-guy-I'm-going-to-bring-you-all-down-to-1-HP attack. I just had to use a Megalixir, which I had picked up in Corral Valley, at the start of Safer Sephy. That was going just about perfectly until he killed Cait Sith with Shadow Flare and then confused Tifa with Supernova. She killed herself and it was Game Over once again. Back to the save point... this time I got far fewer battles, Jenova was just as easy and Bizarro was even easier as I remembered to attack the Core. Safer proceeded in a nearly identical fashion to before (as it often does, because his attacks are just a sequence), with Cait Sith getting knocked out by Shadow Flare. It then went even worse than before: a critical physical attack killed Cloud, after which Pale Horse killed Cait again (who had been revived). Cloud and Tifa took the hit from Supernova again, and I thought "surely Tifa won't be confused this time". But she was. And so was Cloud, who also got silence (he was my main magic caster). I thought the battle was lost, but Heartless Angel got rid of their confusion on the next turn. Luckily, the only things that had happened during the confusion were: Phoenix Down on Sephiroth (lol), physical attack from Cloud (couldn't reach) and a counter-attack from Tifa (which, strangely, did reach). Another Phoenix Down, this time for Cait Sith, followed by a Megalixir and I was up and running once again. His next attack was Deen; Tifa countered it and that was the final blow. Phew. I chose to let Cloud counter Sephiroth's attack in the one-on-one battle because it's faster than Omnislash - as if it mattered at this point.
The in-game time of my final save was 10:27, after which it took me about 18 minutes to beat the third Sephiroth form, so I'm calling it 10:45. That's by far the quickest I've ever completed the game - my previous best was about 24 hours - but I've never really tried to be quick about it before. That showed, too. I made a lot of mistakes, on top of my bad luck. I had tried to think about my own strategies and largely play it safe, but I still got stuck against a few bosses: Materia Keeper, Demon's Gate, Ultima Weapon (stealing, I mean - surviving the battle is easy) and, to a lesser extent, Carry Armour. After Materia Keeper I kept telling myself "maybe Lex will have a hard time against one of those", but from what I could make out in the chat room, he didn't have too much trouble. Mind you, he had time to level up to make them less luck-reliant, which I should not have given him. My actual, real life time was
12:55:06, which meant I lost well over two hours to Game Overs and soft resets. Two and a half hours was my deficit to Lex, which just goes to show... something.
That was exhausting (and I don't just mean the write-up), but also great fun, and I'm really glad I did it. It would have been nice to have had more players and/or a closer race, but it wasn't to be. There has already been talk in the IRC channel about other races, including FFVIII and SMB3, which I think I will really enjoy - as a spectator! Thanks to everyone who joined in
No I am, really. It's just that I didn't get much sleep last night because I was thinking about the game so much. I had to put some talk radio on just to distract myself, and even then I kept waking up. It may have had something to do with over-exposure to a computer screen during the day as well.
