FFVIII - End Disc 1

After the mysterious appearance of Edea the Sorceress and following disappearance with Seifer, the party escaped the city and headed to the closest Garden in Galbadia. Now you would think that since Cysra had tried to kidnap the president of Galbadia, that we'd be fugitives or something. Nope.

They let us into the new Garden and we were called up to meet with the headmaster of this Garden. He gave my crew a new assignment, signed by himself and Headmaster Cid of Balamb Garden as well. New mission: Assassinate the Sorceress. Confused... While we're there we hear from Garden officials that Seifer was captured, tried, and executed for his little stunt with the president of Galbadia. Cysra is pretty broken up and claims that she loved him. Right.

To aid in our new mission, we pick up another character Irvine Kaneas, a sniper. We head out to the city of Deling to plan the assassination. Yeah, this is never gonna work.

Anyway, along the way we get yet another side quest with Laguna in some weird tunnel system. It ends with him and his party almost getting wiped out then throwing themselves off a cliff into the ocean below where Galbadia ships can be seen. Still don't remember this, don't know the significance of Laguna yet, but Quistis was one of the dreamers this time as well.

After our snooze in the jungle we enter Deling and make our way to the rendezvous point, Caraway Mansion. But before we can get in, we have to prove ourselves by going to some old tomb and finding the ID number of some fallen soldier. We head on out, find the ID number and pick up another summon I've never seen before, The Brothers.

Before heading back though I spent about an hour just drawing different spells up to 100 on three characters. I don't like the Draw system at all, but attaching 50 Life's to HP-Junction and seeing it go from 700 to 2200 is nice... More tinkering and a lot more Draw grinding in my future I guess. Once we get back with the ID, the guard lets us inside. Cysra is acting funny and we soon find out why.

The master of Caraway mansion is none other than her father, General Caraway, of the Galbadian army. So... Caraway is in league with the Gardens to assassinate his president's new ambassador. His daughter, in the mean time, is the leader of a rebel faction who's fighting against the empire of Galbadia. These people are all over the place!

Anyway we get our plan all setup, split into two parties and are getting ready to head out. Cysra is told by Quistis to stay out of it, that this is not just a game, and the party leaves.

The plan is for Quistis, Zell and Selphie to wait on top of an archway in the city. The sorceress is going to have a parade in her honor and her float will pass under the archway. At which point that party on the roof is supposed to hit a switch to slam the gates down on either side, and lock her in. In the mean time, Rhek and Irvine are to get into position and shoot the Sorceress from afar like fish in a barrel. Sounds easy enough.

Well after the party leaves, Caraway sets a timer to lock the doors after he's left, to keep Cysra in the house, out of harm's way. In the mean time, Quistis, who's already in position at the gate decides now is a good time to go apologize to Cysra and leaves for the mansion in the middle of the mission....

Cysra gets out of the house as Quistis, Zell and Selphie enter. They find no Cysra but the lock springs, and now they're trapped inside. Awesome. So Cysra leaves to confront the Sorceress on her own. Apparently she found some bracelet which will null the Sorceress's power, so she's going to go try to give it to her as a gift before the parade. Upon reaching the Sorceress, she's tossed about like a rag doll and manipulated to walk with her onto the platform. We get some cool cuts of the Sorceress giving a speech in which she called everyone a piece of shit and tells them that she's going to be their tyrannical ruler once more. She kills the president of Galbadia on stage and the crowd is simply entranced. They cheer. As the sorceress leaves the stage she brings two stone iguanas to life, who attack Cysra.

At the same time, Rhek and Irvine are headed to the sniper's post, but see Cysra on the way and instead go to help her. I fight off the two Iguanas and Draw the summon Carbuncle from them before killing them. Cysra was pretty scared and latches onto Rhek for safety. We head on up to the sniper's perch together. From here we see the Sorceress start her parade route on a float with none other than Seifer at her side. Rhek and Cysra have some conversation about maybe having to kill Seifer to get to the Sorceress. Cysra understands, guess she didn't love him that much...

Meanwhile, Quistis' party is trying to figure out how to get out of the room. After some looking around, I found a secret passage to the sewers and after getting lost for a bit down there, I got Quistis to the archway. They hit the switch just in time and lock the Sorceress in.

Rhek has to do some convincing but eventually Irvine takes the shot. Of course, Edea just deflects the bullet as she would a fly. Saw that coming. Rhek has no choice but to go down and try to finish her off in person. He jumps down, gets in a car and rams the gate in another little cut. Then it's time to face off with Seifer. I know it's a boss battle of sorts but they always feel a bit anti-climactic. It's like the system is giving you time to Draw and set up shit, because it takes so long just for your party to be ready to fight a boss. Not only that but many of them have new spells or summons you have to get before you can even start the fight.

Anyway, I slowly chipped away at Seifer, he's only weak to water and I didn't have any (stupid Draw system). After he went down, Cysra and Irvine join Rhek to face off with the Sorceress. I figured it would be a faux battle and that she'd kill us all in one hit or something. But I wasn't taking any chances. I cast Shell on everyone immediately (she IS a sorceress), and she answered with a shit ton of -Ga spells which hit for like 200 with shell up. Cysra only had like 700 HP so I had to cure and shell and cure and shell. She wasn't just one shotting us, we had to actually kill this bitch. After a few minutes I thought, this is taking too long. What's the most recent thing I got. Oh yea, Carbuncle. I summoned him and he cast reflect on the whole party. Well that should help...

The Sorceress isn't stupid though like FF bosses of the past. She immediately stopped casting anything except an Astral punch for physical damage and Dispel to remove the reflect status. So the battle went, I cast Thunder five trillion times, I cast Carbuncle when two members had reflect down, and I chipped away at her for 15 minutes until she died.

Well she didn't really die exactly. She turned blue, some sparkles surrounded her and she shot Rhek through the chest with a huge spike of Ice. Rhek then fell off some bridge, watching Cysra reach out for him and screaming as he plummeted down. Yeah, stupid plan. Let's try to attack her when we're not level 13 next time guys.

End Disc 1, please insert Disc 2.

FFVIII - The Sorceress shows herself

So after a quick little mission with Quistis, my instructor, into the local fire caves I recieved my next summon, Ifrit. Once I got back and teamed up with Seifer and Zell, we headed out to our SeeD final exam. The destination was an attack by the Galbadia army on a local town. The town's people hired SeeD to help them throw back the agressors. Seifer was put in charge of the party as squad leader, ancy, impatient and ill tempered. I set up my Guardian Forces (GFs, Summons) and set out. Of course the rebellious Seifer got tired of standing guard and broke orders to pursue the enemy eventually. We fought our way up to a communication tower where the enemy seemed to be focused.

Upon arrival we found two soldiers named Biggs and Wedge (their third FF appearance) at the tower trying to repair it. Apparently it was an old radio comm tower that's been down for 17 years. Everything has gone cable and nothing is broadcast over airwaves anymore. The Galbadian army finally pulls out under the stipulation that the town leaves the tower in their control and broadcasting. Ooookay. We beat up a monster at the top of the tower and obtain the summon Siren, then head back to Garden (the home base of SeeD).

After some time, they announce that Rhek, Zell and a new character Selphie have passed the exam. Seifer failed for disobeying orders and is locked up. At the celebration that night, Rhek is pulled into a cut scene dance by a new brunette character without name. After this he's pulled aside by Quistis to go to a secret area with her. We fight through the training grounds to a secret cove type place. She tells Rhek that she's no longer an instructor but a regular member of SeeD just like him. I guess she expects him to be interested but he's the usual cold main character. After that we head back and encounter another nameless brunette being attacked by monsters. We save her, and she's wisked away by Garden officials. This nameless brunette was the one who he saw momentarily when he woke in the ER at the beginning of the game. She knows Rhek and calls Quistis by a short name Quisty. She acts like she knows us, but we definitely don't know her.

The next day we recieve our first assignment. We're to go to Timber and aid a rebel faction there against the empire of Galbadia. Before we go we recieved the Magic Lamp. I go outside, save my game and use the item which summons Diabolos. After a long fight, I kill him and recieve the summon, next it's off to the train station. But as we board the train, we're knocked out by sleeping gas and.. we dream. The dream is about three other characters who I'm given control of, Laguna is the main character. We're obviously Galbadian soldiers and we're in a city off duty. Laguna is obsessed with a piano player named Julia. There's some dialogue between the two and the start of something like a relationship. We flash back to the real party who wakes up and finds out they all had the same dream.

When we arrive at Timber, the client is none other than the nameless brunette who pulled Rhek into a dance. Her name is Riona (Cysra). She's the only other character I've gotten to name aside from Squall (Rhek). Cool, another main character. From the game intro's she's obviously Rhek's love interest in the story. She doesn't like Rhek at all though to start but Rhek, Zell and Selphie are under an unusual contract; we three have to do whatever she wants until Timber gains it's independence. So basically she owns my team for the long haul.

We get a little back story from her about how there are several factions in Timber trying to rebel against Galbadia and that Seifer was actually her contact with Garden and the person who was able to get her a meeting with Cid (headmaster of SeeD). Seems like she has something of a crush on Seifer. For the time being.

Anyway, our first act with them is to try to abduct the president of Galbadia as he comes into Timber. It's a pretty cool mission with train hopping, fighting, decoding and deception. After we finally get the president, we find it's a body double. It turns into a viscous monster and we have to dispatch of it. We go back to Timber and find out that the president is going to air a message at the local TV station over the new comm tower they took over in that other town. We race to the TV station to get another crack at him but we're too late.

The president begins his broadcast. He announces that he's going to try to get nations together to resolve their conflicts (sounds good so far) and then he begins to talk about his new ambassador. The Sorceress... Before she can come on camer we see Seifer cut down some guards and snag the president, then Quistis pops on the screen and tells Rhek to hurry and come help. We race up and find out that apparently Seifer broke out and came to handle things himself when he found out that SeeD only sent three people to help Cysra. Quistis followed to try to stop him but was unsuccessful. With his sword at the president's throat, Seifer isn't really listening to any kind of reasoning. Enter deep ominous music, and the ticking of a clock. The Sorceress materializes out of thin air. She blocks Quistis and my party from interupting or speaking then begins to weave a spell on Seifer, convincing him to release the president and come with her. Seifer and the Sorceress both dematerialize and my party is released from her bonds.



After a chat my party has more questions than answers, but the Galbadian army is still after us. We fight our way out of town and start our trek to the closest local Garden.

Playing the game for several hours, I got a better feel for the battle system. It's a bit unweildy but fresh. Sometimes it's annoying sitting there and trying to stock up on magic by drawing over and over though. The GFs are cool, they don't actually come out to fight, just cast once like FF7 in a little cinematic. But they don't cast right away, they count down. And as they count down, you HP is replaced by theirs, and any damage that would be inflicted on you, is inflicted on them instead, so they can die. Interesting.

I still don't remember ANY of this at all. I have a pretty good memory usually but all of this is so foreign to me right now. It's nice to have something new but I keep waiting to run into something I remember. There are certain things I remember for sure. Like the back story of the Sorceress. I know that's late game, so I know I played that far, but all this game intro stuff is a total blank. This game also has a lot of little side things to do which don't necessarily do anything. Like there's info that has no bearing on story, there are magazines and mini games which yeild nothing. There's no magic, no weapons, no armor. You can upgrade your weapons, but you need to collect parts for the upgrades. Also, the summons can take items you find and turn them into things. So far I can make magic, items, and tools. I'll have to tinker with it some more. Lots of cool stuff but some seems unnecessary. Onward!

I ordered FFIX, hope it comes before I finish this one...

FFX-2 & FFXI

Even though I have over forty days left, I still pretty much have four complete games of 40-50 hours in length to go. Adding up the hours played so far, the first seven games add up to the same amount of time as the last four games. So I'm starting to feel the strain, especially since I'm finding it hard to put aside play time lately. I'm still hopeful to hit my goal but I'm adjusting some parameters for myself. Minor adjustments.

I'm not going to be playing X-2 at all. It's not part of the main series anyway, so I don't feel guilty taking it off my to do list. It's an acceptable loss at this point I think. Removed.

I've added XI to the to do list already crossed off. Since it's part of the series from the view point of Square, I feel like it's an experience I would have needed to take part in to count myself a true fanatic of the main series.

While playing the game religiously for three years I achieved:

75 WHM
73 SMN
Decent level in a plethora of other jobs
Acquired all summons through Aht Urgan XP
Got my complete WHM artifact set
Raided end game content

With all this done, I feel like the game was completed, there wasn't really any content that I never got to see with the exception of some of the end game bosses of expansion packs. I explored every nook and cranny of that world. I lived in it for three years. More importantly I got every last summon - the hard way.

So I'm putting it up there, and marking it done with confidence.

Final Fantasy VIII, Keeping it Innovative

Final Fantasy VIII was developed at Square in 1999 for the PlayStation console. The title which followed the hugely successful FFVII had much success on it's own. This title also was very innovative in their battle system, like it's predecessor. Square was always one to change things up, keep things fresh, and try new things. This title was no different as it was the first to use realistic human models and did away with the conventional magic system. In it's place was a blend of new mechanics and old things reinvented. Similar to FFV, summons learn and grow with the party, giving the party new abilities as they grow, but it's not in the form of new spells but rather stats and command abilities. The "Junction" system created an affinity or bond with one character and one summon. The summon gets exp with the character as well as AP which give it new abilities. Some abilities grant more power to characters, more defense, or the ability to link obtained magic to attacks, defense or stat categories. It's a bit overwhelming at first, but not too difficult once you get the hang of things. Also new is the draw system, where instead of having magic spells you draw magic from enemies then use it against them. For example you can use the draw command against an enemy and pull X number of Fire points from it. Then you can use "Magic" to cast the Fire ability as many times as you have points acquired. You can also link that Fire point that you drew to a stat point to raise it.

The system takes some getting used to, I don't really remember that much of it except the Draw part. To be honest, so far I don't really remember anything of the game. I do recall that I started in an academy called SeeD which trains soldiers. Currently, the main character Squall (Rhek) is on his way to take his graduation test. An international situation which needs some military resolution. I've picked up two other characters in my party, Zell and Seifer. Though Seifer acts like a future bad guy (asshole), I think I remember him and Zell in the party the whole game. The only other thing I remember about the game is that the main bad guy is a really hot Sorceress. One NPC has made mention of an old empire run by a sorceress. The empire fell and the sorceress disappeared, but that's all the info I have so far. Should graduate soon and enter the main world.

Final Fantasy VII, Sad to see it end...

Around fourteen years ago I woke up one Saturday morning after playing a long night of FF7 with my brother and friend who’d spent the night to play with us. We’d fought through the long game, mastered almost all the materia, gotten all our limit breaks, and completed most of the game with the exception of defeating Ruby and Emerald weapon. I was the first to wake that morning and I turned on my old 30” TV and started the PS. It wasn’t long before I reached Jenova, we’d been right there and just didn’t know it. I don’t really recall fighting Jenova, but I do remember Bizzaro Sephiroth and splitting my group, playing with both parties to slowly chip down his many parts to get to the core. I remember my brother and friend waking during that battle, seeing me fighting Sephiroth and not saying anything, just waking and watching. Sephiroth transformed again into Safer Sephiroth with his one wing and celestial body. I remember it being a very hard fight. He cast meteor like five times, he reduced my entire party’s HP to 1 many times, he killed members of my party over and over. And FINALLY he went down, I was so relieved. Then as the party is leaving, Cloud is sucked in, without a save point, to fight him one on one again. I was so stressed about losing after all that effort, but he hit my limit break immediately and Omnislash one shotted him (as it was designed to play out, you can’t lose). Sephiroth was finally dead, and we were victorious. It was gratifying and sad at the same time. We had completed an amazing journey but the fun was over...

Tonight I completed that journey once more.

Prior to facing off with the evil menace I did a little more clean up and finished some my limit breaks, and duplicated a few materia I knew I’d want for my second party, like revive, barrier, time, restore, full cure, etc. Even mastered a few summons and got a few stars on Knights of the Round. I also got Typoon in the Ancient Forest so I’m still on track with all summons in all games so far.

After a good bit of play, Rhek was about level 70. It was time.

I made my way to the northern crater, grabbed Cysra built as a white mage striker, and Lifnok built as a pure black mage. I went down a long spiral, got about half way and hit a random encounter with a Dark Dragon. He cast Ultima which one shotted Cysra and LIfnok and brought Rhek to 2k HP, then he hit Rhek for 2k... My party got wiped out by the second mob in the Northern Crater. At that point I was very worried. Could I not be ready for Sephiroth at level 70???

I reloaded my game and went down the spiral again, and met the same random mob. This time I treated him like a boss. I put up Wall, cast Haste and Regen and threw Neo Bahamut at him and my own Ultima. He tossed Ultima back and killed Cysra and Lifnok again, guess Wall doesn’t stop that magic. I cast Phoenix in response with Rhek and they both rez’d with full health. I cast Bahamut once more and he went down... Fucker was hard. I continued hoping I wouldn’t run into anymore of those on the way.

After a bit more of navigating I came to Jenova without further incident. I approached her a bit worried, but it was un-warranted. Rhek had only a couple materia on him, enough to make him counter, heal a little, cast Phoenix if others went down and 4x cut -that’s it. I wanted his other stats as high as possible w/o materia penalties. Jenova went down to two hits from Rhek, two rounds of 4 x 9,999 damage. What a beast.

Next I had to split up my party, decide who got what equipment, what materia, even out health and MP bars a little, etc. It took me a while, maybe fifteen minutes to get it all where I wanted it. I entered the fight with Bizzaro Sephiroth, ready to hit his 7 different parts with my two parties, and ready for some really nasty status effects. Un-warranted worry. I cast Wall with Cysra, Regen with Rhek, then I cast Knights of the Round once with Lifnok and he died... All of him... He didn’t get off one attack, and my other party never even saw battle. It lasted as long as the Knight’s animation took, that was the whole fight. Wow... Not what I remember.

Next was Safer Sephiroth, a real test, Meteors and instant death galore. Here was the real fight. Right? Nope.



Two casts of Knights of the Round. Dead. I think he got one hit off on Lifnok for about 3k and maybe one AoE swipe for like 300HP. I was shocked when he began to disintegrate. My party started their departure and Cloud was sucked into a worm hole to face off with the final version of Sephiroth one on one.



I didn’t even attack, he cut me and Cloud countered, he died. Didn’t even get to use my Omnislash because I hesitated a second. Almost reset the game right there lol. Anyway, I watched the final cut as Meteor came crashing down and Holy combated it with the Lifestream’s help. After a very long cut, we flash to five hundred years in the future and Red XIII is running with his cubs to finally overlook a cliff and see the overrun Midgar below implying to me at least that the humans are gone. The screen goes black and we get our FFVII title screen splash. Well played sir... well played...

Some end game stats, time played: ~48hrs.



Loved it then, still love it, always will. Fucking great game.

FFVII - Golden

The better part of last night playing was spent for the purposes of my own entertainment. I wasted about two hours resetting my game trying to breed two Great Chocobo's while trying to get a Green Female. I finally gave up, and spent the 5 minutes it took to win four races to gaurantee a green or blue chocobo... Stupid of me. Some three hours and 250k gil later, I had my female Gold Chocobo, named her Sexy. And that she was.

While I was chocobo breeding I also spent some time in random battles to do things like get great and wonderful chocobos, get the carob and zeio nuts, and sometimes I just had to go and battle for a while before the chocobos were ready to breed. Since I was out anyway, I spent a lot of those battles making very certain that only certain people got kills and only certain people got hit to force my limit breaks to go higher. At the end of the night I had gotten Ichorid to his final limit, so he's the first to officially hit 9999 damage on my team. Surprising, Ichorid the highest DD..? I also got Cysra and Nazomi up a couple levels. And I mastered several materia while doing all this, pretty much everything except the summons are less than a half star from mastered if they're not mastered already. I'm going to work on copies of barrier, time and revive for my secondary party that fights Sephiroth. And secondary copies of counter attack and HP and MP+.

While doing all this I took time out on occasion to hunt down Ultimate Weapon and knock a few more points off. I had Ultima in Rhek's hands by the end of the night. Woot!

After finally getting my Golden Chocobo, I made the rounds to the four caves that were inaccessible beforehand to pick up HP<->MP, Mime, Quadra Magic, and of course - Knights of the Round. It was really late but I had to go take him out for a spin just once before I crashed. I found a few insects by Mideel and let him loose. Thirteen bouts of about 6300 damage on four mobs added up to somewhere in the vicinity of 330k damage to the board in one shot. Broken. I really want to master this summon but I'm not sure I have the time. I'd have to REALLY push hard on the later games. I still have four to go and they're all really long. I'm already behind schedule. We'll see though.

With Ultimate Weapon down and the Golden Chocobo in my hands, the Ancient forest is also open now. So I'll go grab Typoon, the last summon as well as Slash All tonight. Then I'll finish up my final limits on everyone. Rhek is already like level 62, so my party should be about 70 when they hit Sephiroth, which is where I think they were on my first play through. Oh, for kicks I equiped 15 of the 16 summons on Nazomi (no Typoon yet). She had a total of 541 HP left, lol (normally she has 4,500). Those -HP%'s sure add up fast.

FFVII - A Masterpiece

Normally with the other games in this series, I’m not really going for any type of game completion, except for the summons. However, this game is special to me, the characters are special to me, so I’m going to spend a bit more time getting final weapons and final limit breaks for the final six to fight Sephiroth. They deserve it.

I started my clean up phase by going to Wutai to find out what was behind that wall of flames in the caves. I quenched the flames with the Leviathan Scales I got just before the submarine, and I got a Steal as Well materia. Interesting, don’t think I got that on my original play through.

The next thing I did was head into that waterfall I couldn’t get to before. Now here I got some real interesting info. With Vincent in my party, I passed under the waterfall to find Lucrecia. Vincent had mentioned her as the mother of Sephiroth when I first got him but I had forgotten about it. Here we get a cool little flash back. Apparently Vincent was a Turk back in the day and when Hojo, Gast and Lucrecia were working together, Vincent had a thing with Lucrecia. Well that all ended when Gast and Hojo decided to do experiments on humans with Jenova cells. Lucrecia volunteered and was injected with the cells. She became pregnant and gave birth to a child named Sephiroth. Vincent believed she died shortly after birth and blamed Hojo. When he went to attack Hojo, he was knocked out and Hojo did experiments on Vincent as well, turning him into this undead werewolf type beast. Until this point Vincent had always thought Lucrecia was dead. But she’s really only been hiding from her sin of abandoning her child. She asks Vincent if Sephiroth still lives, and he tells her he’s dead... I’ll return later for Vincent’s final limit break.

There were a few more things to do, but first I needed to get onto Disc 3, so I decided to finish up the Midgar portion. But not before I knocked about 15k off of Ultimate Weapon on our first encounter. I had picked up the key to sector 5 from the dig site in Bone Village and when I entered Midgar I was right next to Aerith’s old Church place where she grew flowers. As I entered, there was Aerith among her flowers for a second before she flickered out... Very cool.

Before heading to the top of Shinra Inc., I went below into the city to pick up Cysra’s ultimate weapon, Premium Heart. Afterward I went back outside and took the airship in. The party parachuted in and we used some tunnels to make our way deeper. Along the way we ran into Rude, Reno and Elena of the Turks and handed them a quick defeat. Man those guys never stop, never die... After that we were confronted with Heidger and Scarlet in some huge robot anti-weapon monstrosity. That went down easily enough though, glad they’re finally dead. Next up, Hojo.

When we finally reached the top, we found Hojo still at work to gather mako energy for Sephiroth. When asked why he was doing that he finally admitted the truth. He is the one that impregnated Lucrecia, then injected the fetus with Jenova cells. Hojo. Is Sephiroth’s father... Why did I not remember this little tidbit of info. Kind of significant. Well after I was thoroughly shocked, I proceeded to kick his Jenova infused ass. With Midgar safe for the time, we headed off toward Northern Crater, but first Cloud gave a nice speech about everyone seeing their loved ones one last time. Also he said he’d understand if they didn’t return, but of course everyone did. Prior to that Cloud got to spend some quality time alone with Cysra for the first time. With Aerith dead, she’s a nice rebound. =P Shortly after this I ran into Ultimate weapon again and got him to roughly 33k damage, 67k to go!

I headed next to Nibelheim for more final clean up and picked up Cysra’s final limit break. Of course she’s still only at level 2 so I have to grind a little bit. While in Nibelheim, I also visited Shinra mansion and Gast’s laboratory once more. When I arrived I got an interesting cut scene I’d never seen before of Cloud and Zack in Gast’s laboratory after the Nibelheim incident. They were in stasis chambers together and broke out. Who knows how long they’d been there like guinea pigs but my guess is.. five years. Zack drags the groggy Rhek around for a bit and they hitch a ride out of town on a little beat up pickup truck. Zack talks to Rhek about the future and becoming a mercenary in Midgar, but before they get there they are run down by Shinra military. Zack is gunned down on a cliff overlooking Midgar city. They leave Rhek for dead. Afterward Rhek awakens and crawls up to Zack’s corpse. Upset, he relieves Zack of the Buster sword and looks down upon his next destination, Midgar city, where he’s first seen by Cysra, groggy, slumped over at the train station. That’s pretty much it for story line. All the gaps have been filled now and the story is complete. A masterpiece...

Next I headed to Cosmo Canyon for a final time and picked up a very good materia, Full Cure. I also watched Nanaki’s grandfather pass on, parting Ichorid with Limited Moon, his ultimate weapon. After that I made a quick stop over in Rocket town to get Cid’s ultimate weapon Venus’ Gospel. Then I went back to the waterfall where I met Lucrecia and she was gone but left behind were Vincent’s ultimate weapon Death Penalty and his final limit break Chaos. I already had gotten Yuffie’s weapon, Conformer from the downed airplane earlier. So now I had the best weapons and the final limit breaks for my 5 main party characters. All that was left was Rhek’s, gotta find Ultimate Weapon, he has my weapon and the key to opening the Ancient forest. Omnislash will just have to wait until Sephiroth unlocks it because I’m not going to go get 32,000 battle point at gold saucer...

Still a bit of grinding to go, I want to unlock all the limit breaks, which means killing a whole lot of enemies.

FFVII - Nearing the end

Once we arrived at Mideel, Tifa immediately overhears some people talking about a poor spiky haired kid who washed ashore. She goes running into the clinic to find Rhek in some sort of vegetable state which the doctor explains is due to the most severe case of mako poisoning he’s ever seen. After trying and failing to get through to Rhek, Cysra tells the team that she’s going to stay with him, to be by his side. They understand and Cid (Yorick) is elected as the new party leader.

Aboard the Highwind airship once more, the team is a little lost as to what to do next until Caitsith tells them of a new Shinra plan. Rufus is planning to gather the huge materia in the world and launch it at Meteor to blow it out of the sky. Somehow the team thinks this is terrible and must stop Shinra from trying to save the world... Never quite understood that logic. So off we go to get the huge materia pieces before Shinra can. Our first stop is Mount Corel. We arrive at the reactor too late and have to chase down a train to steal the huge materia. Next it was off to Fort Condor, named because of the gigantic condor sitting on top of the reactor. Once there we have to fend off a Shinra attack in a little army battle mini game. I opted to just let them reach the base and fight a boss in normal fashion instead. I picked up the second huge materia and the Phoenix summon.

With two of the huge materia in hand Ichorid suggests we go check back in with Rhek and Cysra, which we do. Nothing has really changed but while we’re there, Ultimate weapon attacks Mideel. We have to fend him off for a bit until he retreats. However, once he bails, the earth erupts and the party hastily bails as the life stream gushes up to the surface and swallows the entire town. However, Rhek and Cysra don’t make it out in time and are engulfed in the life stream.

Inside the life stream, Cysra enters the mind of Rhek who has separated into multiple versions of himself, as he tries to find himself, who he really is. We go through several memory sequences and scenes until we finally piece things together. It turns out he really did exist, they prove it to themselves by Rhek remembering things that Cysra didn’t know about in their youth or she’d forgotten about. It also turns out that while Rhek was not the first class SOLDIER Zack, he WAS there. He actually failed the test to join SOLDIER after he was injected with Jenova cells. he was a simple infantry man then, but was ashamed that he didn’t make SOLDIER, so when they enter Nibelheim, he’s one of the guards and keeps his mask on to hide his identity from Cysra and the rest of the town. So he WAS actually there during all those events, that’s why he remembers them, but not as the first class SOLDIER accompanying Sephiroth.

However, when Sephiroth cuts down Cysra, and Zack runs up to stop him, Zack is cut down too. Rhek is the one who arrives and finds Cysra hurt, pulls her aside then runs up to find Sephiroth for revenge. Along the way he picks up Zack’s Buster sword and comes upon Sephiroth with Jenova. As Sephiroth turns around, Rhek puts his Buster sword through Sephiroths belly, go RHEK! Afterward, Rhek goes back out to check on Cysra. Sephiroth comes out hobbling, carrying Jenova’s head and Zack tells Rhek to go kill Sephiroth. Rhek follows Sephiroth out onto a high landing but Sephiroth’s had enough. This time it is cloud who gets a stomach full of steel as Sephiroth turns to face him. But instead of going down, Rhek grabs onto the sword and, with it still through him, he lifts Sephiroth into the air and throws him over the side to plummet to his death. Rhek killed Sephiroth! Don’t remember that at ALL...

So now that Rhek is whole again in his mind, he and Cysra awaken in the life stream and swim to the surface, they wash ashore with the rest of the party. Once everyone is recovered, it’s time to go after the next piece of huge materia, in Junon’s underwater reactor. Shinra put the huge materia in a sub, so we grabbed other sub to pursue, and in a sub mini game, sank their sub. So we got the third huge materia, and now have a sub. Cool. With the sub now in hand we went back down to a crash site and got the Hades summon and some final weapons/limits for Yuffie and Cid.

Next stop was Rocket town, where Shinra somehow had one more piece of huge materia left and was ready to lauch Cid’s rocket to space to stop Meteor. So Cid jumps in the party and we head in. Once we go through the trouble of fighting our way to the control room, it’s put into auto pilot, locked down and we lift off toward Meteor to blow up with it... Doh! But of course there’s an escape pod. We grab the huge materia and eject before impact. Without the huge materia the impact does nothing to Meteor.

Back on the planet surface, we don’t really know what to do next so we go to Cosmo canyon for advise from Nanaki’s grandfather. The party spoke about Aerith for a bit and about how she said she’d handle Sephiroth. We finally decide to go to where she died to try and figure out if there was something there she was trying to use. Grandpa went with us to City of Ancients, and we find out about the Holy materia. This materia (white materia in contrast to the Meteor black materia) is what the planet uses to rid itself of threats. If called upon it should immediately vanquish any threat to the planet. Be it Meteor, Weapon, Sephiroth, or even the humans. After some snooping around we activate some ancient projector system and there we got a cut showing us Aerith’s hairpin, which had the Holy materia in it. Apparently she already prayed to Holy on behalf of mankind. Holy should respond by removing all threats to the planet, but something is blocking Holy’s power, Sephiroth... So basically now, kill Sephiroth and Holy will go off, killing all threats, I win the game.

In the mean time, Rufus has moved the cannon in Junon to Midgar to fire upon Sephiroth in the Northern crater. But weapon is on its way to destroy it, so the group must face off against Diamond weapon to save Midgar. After beating on it for a while, it gives up and retreats. However, Rufus will not let it wander off so easily, he powers his new super gun with all the energy of Midgar and fires in a very cool cut scene. As the cannon fires, weapon returns a volley of its own, the energy beams cross paths. Midgar’s cannon is the first to strike, it passes right through weapon, one-shotting it, on it’s path to it’s main goal, Sephiroth’s barrier in the Northern crater. It shatters the barrier, go Shinra. However, the Weapon’s final volley also hits Midgar, and in the process it strikes the presidents office, supposedly killing Rufus. But we know from Advent Children he survived that blast.

Anyway, Reeve, one of the Turks, is revealed to be StupidCat and tries to take over but fails. And now it seems that the cannon is still charging, even though it’s fired. Hojo is trying to overload the systems and destroy Midgar to give Sephiroth a huge supply of mako energy to achieve his goals. Stupid Hojo. But apparently no one there can stop him. It’s up to the party to go in and save the day once more.

Game is nearing its end, time for some last minute clean up, including final limits, leveling, mastering, gold chocobo to get Knights, the Ancient Forest, etc... Should be able to wrap things up in a day or two. I believe all that's left of the story is Midgar for Hojo and the Northern Crater which is just Sephiroth.

FFVII - The End of the World

Post Aerith death, the group had to find the Promised Land and stop Sephiroth before he could use all the power of the land to summon Meteor. We headed toward the great crater in the north and entered the small snow covered town. After a little scene with the Turks, we were knocked out and tossed into a room to be held. The room was some kind of research lab and there were video tapes inside so I took a peak.

The tapes were taken by Professor Gast some twenty years ago. They document interviews with an Ancient named Ilfana who tells Gast a tale of the planet. Apparently some two thousand years ago the planet had to heal a wound from another attack. Back then an alien being crashed into the planet, they called it the enemy from the sky or something. It called itself Jenova. Jenova was not of the Cetra but an alien race bent on power and destruction. The Cetra who were on the planet battled against Jenova and many died in an effort to stop her and seal her in the northern glaciers.

During this time, while the Cetra battled Jenova, the planet itself also strove to fight back. In that time the planet created four entities to help safe guard itself. These entities were called 'Weapon'. They haven't been named but from past play through I know that there are four: Emerald, Ruby, Ultimate, and one other that they simply call Weapon. However, when the Cetra defeated Jenova, the Weapons became useless and went dormant in the northern glacier.

During the video tapings it is obvious that a relationship develops between Gast and Iflana, and eventually it shows her pregnant. They decide to name the baby Aerith if it's a girl...

Eventually during one of the tapings Hojo shows up with the military and tries to take Ilfana away. Professor Gast dies trying to stop them. Hojo takes Ilfana and eagerly anticipates Aerith as a new experiment to work on. Evil little bastard. After we finish watching the videos, we head outside, grab a snowboard from some kid and snowboard down the mountain in a mini game. Not sure what the prizes are for getting balloons or finishing in X amount of time but I was never good at that mini game so I won't be getting that.

At the bottom of the mountain, we're in a vast area of snow, mountains, caves and trees. This is an annoying part of the game because it's so big and hard to navigate. Eventually though I find what I'm looking for, the summon Alexander, and I eventually fall to the ground from hypothermic shock. I awaken in a small cabin, rescued by a local who lives at the base of Gaea Cliffs. He gives us a few pointers on traveling up the mountain and we head out.

After a bit of a trek up the mountain and a few puzzles we get to the top and see the spirit and materia plenty 'Promised Land'. We head on down and approach some high wind cliff areas. At this point Cysra (Tifa) forces herself into the party and we continue. At the edge we are finally met by Sephiroth and the team gathers to go on ahead. Cloud decides he can't trust himself and leaves the Black Materia we got from Jenova Death with Red XIII.

The party continues on and we enter an illusion setup by Sephiroth. Rhek, Cysra and Nazomi set foot into Nibelheim of five years ago. We walk into town and have to step aside for the entrance of Sephiroth's team that came to investigate the monsters five years ago. Except it's not Rhek (Cloud) who's with him, but rather some dark haired guy we don't know. Rhek keeps reminding himself that none of this matters, that Sephiroth is showing lies to confuse them. We watch as this other character does all the actions that Rhek remembers doing five years ago, we even see the picture of Cysra, Sephiroth and this new guy. Cloud is not shaken because Cysra remembers him from five years ago, but she hesitates. He confronts her and she finally admits that it wasn't him five years ago.

The first time Cysra had ever seen Cloud was a few days before his first mission with Avalanche. She was at the train station in Midgar and happen upon an unconscious boy slumped over in the street. When he awoke, he recognized her from the memory imprints that Jenova was actively stealing from Cysra in real time. His own Jenova cells took her memories and created his past, a boy that Cysra knew long ago named Zack, the boy she grew up with who left to join SOLDIER, who came back to Nibelheim those five years ago. At the time Cysra didn't recognize him but he knew so much and so much time had passed that she just wasn't sure. She took him in and hooked him up with Avalanche to give herself time to be certain, but that was when all hell broke loose at the beginning of the game.

This shakes Cloud to the core. In the mean time, Sephiroth appears to Red XIII as Cysra and tells him to come help Rhek who's in trouble. Also, in the mean time, we see Hojo and President Rufus enter a cavern below and have some discussion about all the materia and the Promised Land. Cloud and his party suddenly appear in the same room with Hojo and Rufus out of no where and Ichorid (Red XIII) shows up to 'help'.

We get some further information from a discussion between Cloud and Hojo. Apparently Sephiroth died at Nibelheim five years ago Maybe killed by Zack, I don't know. Anyway, Hojo has been using Jenova cells to create Sephiroth clones. He knew that eventually they would all come together to find the Promised Land and awaken Jenova. Why he wants that to happen is anyone's guess. Rhek however was a failed clone and cast out, but he's the only one that actually succeeds in what he was designed to do. So this whole time Cloud has not been chasing Sephiroth but doing his bidding, following him to the Reunion.

After this little back and forth, everyone is frozen in time but Rhek and Ichorid. Rhek approaches Ichorid and kindly asks for the Black Materia back, Ichorid complies. Tifa screams in silence in the background for Cloud to stop. Afterward Cloud floats up above the party. Here we see the true form of Sephiroth, suspended in animation in some sort of materia or energy cell, asleep. Cloud floats up to him and puts his hand through the field, to place the Black Materia in the cocoon with Sephiroth. A great earthquake starts and the party all runs out. In the background we see a great big eye open in the ice against the wall.

We are treated to a cut now where the interior chamber collapses with Sephiroth as the party escapes to the Highwind Airship with Hojo and Rufus. As the airship pulls away from the crater, the land below collapses inward and the Weapon entities rise up from the ground, now awakened with the threat to the planet upon them once more. The airship barely escapes, and through some rough evasive maneuvers Tifa is knocked unconscious.

As Cloud has gone AWOL, Tifa is now the party leader. She awakens in the Junon infirmary with Barret. No one else is around, they escaped. Tifa asks what happen to Cloud but no one knows. She asks what happen with Sephiroth and in response Barret opens the window to reveal Meteor in the sky, on its way to destroy the planet. Everyone is doomed, there's no way to stop it, the planet is as good as dead.

Enter some nice logical thinking on the part of the bad guys...

Scarlet (Rufus' lacky) comes in and announces that even though the world is ending, the public needs some calm, they need someone to blame. So Cysra and Morpheus (Barret) will be publicly executed. Awesome. Cysra is dragged to the gas chamber, strapped in and locked in. Scarlet turns the gas on. This can't be good. Man I've forgotten so much of this game.

Only a miracle could save her now. Luckily, Weapon decides now is a great time to attack Junon. We get another cut of Weapon facing off with all the military might of Shinra. The large cannon that's bigger than anything else in the entire game fires at Weapon and misses. Weapon gets in closer, fending off artillery and rocket fire and fires a shot of it's own at the city. At this point everyone evacuates the execution and leaves Cysra to her fate. Unfortunately Barret still can't get the door open. StupidCat is there though and suggest Barret follow him to find another way in. Another way in, to a room with one door... Ok stupid cat...

Anyway, now I get the fun adventure of fighting through an area with the two characters I don't want to play, who are low level, who I never bought any weapons for. Knew that was going to bite me in the ass eventually. Oh well, it took a while and was painful but blessedly short. After a bit of running around we find Nazomi outside and make our way to the airship Highwind which Yorick (Cid) has reclaimed with the help of Vincent. Not sure how this is helping Cysra who's been sucking poison gas for twenty minutes but ok.

We cut back to Cysra now and lucky for us, Scarlet happened to drop the key on her way out. We scoot our legs over and pick it up with our feet then transfer them to our mouth. Man that girl is flexible! o.O

She then opens her locks with her teeth, gets up and turns the gas off. Right on cue, Weapon batters Junon again ripping holes into the fortress. The Cannon fortress responds with another shot, this one directly into Weapon's face, the headless corpse falls into the ocean. Luckily it's rip was right at Cysra's cell, she climbs out with Shinra troops in hot pursuit. She climbs up and out onto the cannon, runs to the end and gets rescued by the party on the airship.

We make out get away, but it's with a bit of a somber feeling, knowing the world is ending anyway. We continue on for a bit and I make the rounds with Tifa on the rest of the party to get some advise. Ichorid mentions that if the crater collapsed that Rhek might have been sucked into the Lifestream of the planet. And that it's POSSIBLE that he was spit out deep in planets ocean, specifically in one spot, an island to the south. Tifa decides it's a slim chance but what else is there to do, they go after Rhek. Oh, somewhere along the way I picked up Neo-Bahamut. Sweet.

FFVII - End Disc 1

Been playing a bit sporadically so I'll try to recall events as accurately as I can over the past few days. After Yuffie jacked all my materia, I finally tracked her down, but only because she'd been captured along with the Turk Elena by the pervert Cornelo. I teamed up with the Turks for a bit to find where he was hiding the girls and finally found them up on the mountain top of Wutai village. After retrieving Yuffie back, she apologized and we headed back into town. At this point I chose to complete her tower trial even though I wasn't really a high enough level. I defeated the first four floors easily enough but the final floor with her father defeated me again and again. I don't have Reflect yet so he just kept healing himself for 1200ish, the amount my limit break did. After a few tries and different strategies he finally went down to a pure offensive approach. I collected a few levels for her and the summon Leviathan. Glad to have him back. =)

After leaving Wutai it was time to find this Temple of the ancients but first I had to get the Keystone so I could get inside. I was told that Dio at the Golden Saucer had it so I went back there and retrieved the item. After getting it, we spent the night at the Ghost Hotel and Aerith chose the time to get that date out of Cloud. We did the little play event and the ferris wheel, then while we were on our way back we saw Cait Sith flag down a Shinra helecopter and toss up to them the Keystone item we had just gotten. Of course the little bastard is a traitor, I remembered that much, but he convinces Cloud to let him stay in the party by kidnapping Marlene and threatening her life. Didn't remember that part, what an asshole. Now I know why I called him StupidCat and never played him.

Anyway, I'm told by StupidCat to go to the temple of the ancients, I don't really have much choice now. I do as I'm told and head over. When I arrive I find Tseng of the Turks outside, dying of a wound by Sephiroth. He mumbles something about the Promise Land not being what they thought it was. We grab the Keystone and enter.

Once inside we follow a series of mazes on the trail of Sephiroth and a few elusive Ancients. Whenever I catch one though I'm given full HP/MP and a save point, which was nice. Aerith and I finally track down a room with murals on the walls and Aerith speaks to the voices in her head. They show her a scene which has occurred earlier where Sephiroth tells Tseng of his plan to become one with the life force of the planet, then cuts him down. However during the vision, it is obvious that Sephiroth can see the party as well and he mocks them.

After the scene we track down the location of the vision and find Sephiroth there. Now we finally get a real idea of what Sephiroth is up to. He lays out his plan, it's pretty simple. He will call upon the Ultimate Destructive Materia, Meteor. It will bring the planet to the brink of destruction. In an effort to save itself, the planet will gather all of it's spirit energy to heal itself. Sephiroth will be at the center of that focus and absorb all that energy instead. He will become something else, transcend his existence and become a god. After spelling out his plan, he says the Black Materia will be his and with it he will summon Meteor, then he bails. After this sequence of events, we get our most clear scene of insanity within Rhek to date. He begins talking to himself and about himself to the wall, to Sephiroth, to Jenova. After he shakes off his bout of insanity he asks Aerith what happen and she tells him everything is just fine.

We delve deeper into the temple and fight Bahamut, get his summon, then we arrive at a little model of the temple floating on a pedestal. When we touch it, the temple shakes. It turns out that it's not a model but the temple itself in some weird super dimensional way. There are a series of puzzles that one must solve to shrink the life size temple down to a consolidated form. The temple itself, in that form IS the Black Materia. But anyone who's inside the temple solving the puzzles will die when it becomes the materia. So enter Cait Sith to the rescue, since he's only a robot anyway, and his controller is at Shinra headquarters. How noble of him to sacrifice some metal for the good of the cause.

Anyway, after we do Sephiroth's dirty work for him, he comes to claim the Black Materia. He does this by taking control of Cloud's will and Cloud knocks Aerith to the floor and hands Sephiroth the materia gladly. WTF! After Sephiroth leaves and Cloud is in control again, he's very upset to say the least, he ends up going a little comatose after another break down. In his dream state he sees Aerith, she tells him it's ok. That she will handle Sephiroth, he need not worry about it anymore.

When he awakens Aerith is gone from the party. He thinks he's a risk to the party and doesn't want to continue but he has to help Aerith, if Sephiroth finds her first, "she'll be in trouble". So we head out to the City of the Ancients and upon arrival, Cloud can sense the presence of both Aerith and Sephiroth somewhere. After a futile search though, I finally give up and take a rest at an abandoned house. This triggers a midnight event where Cloud hears Aerith in his head. The party heads to the center of the city, and there she stands in the middle in prayer position. Cloud approaches alone and as he draws near, something takes control again. He pulls out his swords and almost strikes Aerith, but stops at the last second. Whew! That was close!

Enter Sephiroth from above, falling from the sky with sword in hand he falls upon Aerith and impales her on the spot. She falls forward, dead. I know it's coming but a part of me still can't believe they killed her. I was so mad when I experienced it the first time some fourteen years ago. Sephiroth morphs into a new Jenova beast form and we dispatch of it quickly. As it goes it tells Cloud that he is but a puppet in their schemes...

After the beautiful kill CG scene, and the ensuing battle, we're treated to the saddest cut scene in FF history, Cloud laying Aerith's dead body to rest in the pool at the center of the City of the Ancients. Sad but awesome at the same time. Suffice it to say that at this point the whole party is PRETTY PISSED at Sephiroth. It's personal now, Cloud wants blood. Bad.

End Disc 1, please insert Disc 2...

FFVII - The Complete Cast

Picking up from the desert prison, I had some Barret story line to complete before I could progress. It ended in a nice little suicide by the tragic villain and Barret got some closure. We decided we'd had enough of the prison and Barret convinced the man in charge to give us a shot out. Except the only way out is to win a Chocobo race in the Golden Saucer. Noooo problem, I was born with the reins in my hands. Well sorta, I did fail once...

Now out of the saucer, I was gifted with Ramuh materia and a Dune Buggy to travel over quicksand and shallow rivers. This opened up more of the map to me but first I wanted to back track a bit. I traveled back to the first continent and roamed forests for like thirty minutes before Yuffie FINALLY showed up. I beat her up and made her join my crew, then ventured back to the new continent. Not sure if I mentioned it but I had already picked up Cait Sith at the Golden Saucer, named him StupidCat. Don't wanna play him at all.

With my dune buggy I continued on and happened upon an old town with a destroyed reactor and some run down beaten people. They kept asking about a young boy named Zack they knew who left town maybe five years ago, about the same age as Cloud. Tifa acted really strange, like she knew who they were talking about... I picked up the Titan summon in the old reactor and continued on in search for Sephiroth.

I came upon Cosmo Canyon in the desert, home of Red XIII (Ichorid) or Nanaki as his family calls him. I did a bit of research and spoke to the elder. My party learned a bit more about the life stream and how the mako reactors are sucking the life out of the planet and it will one day die if it's not stopped. Nanaki tells us of his cowardly father who left the town when it was attacked and never returned. Through a bit of story progression, and some fighting we come to find out that his father Seto actually single handedly held off an enemy invasion through a secret back entrance into the canyon. We find his body turned to stone still on guard looking over a cliff under the moon. Very cool scene, some conflict resolution for Red XIII. He decides to join the party permanently to make his father proud and help save the planet.

Our next stop was a small town nestled up against a mountain. When we entered we realize it's Nibelheim. The same town that Cloud and Tifa grew up in, the same town that BURNED to the ground when Sephiroth went berserk. Somehow no one in the town recalls this and it leaves Cloud and Tifa VERY confused as to what events really took place five years ago. Not only that but there are men in black capes all over town with tattoos on their shoulders numbered 1 through 12. They mumble of the reunion and joining Sephiroth and Jenova once more.

I make my way into the old Shinra mansion and find Sephiroth once again in the basement among the books. He asks me if I plan to join him and mother at the reunion. Cloud is a bit confused and Sephiroth realizes Cloud isn't going to join or doesn't understand so he takes off. I head back upstairs and snag the Odin summon and the basement key from the vault, then head back downstairs. I opened the coffin behind the locked door to find Vincent Valentine who slumbers to atone for past sins. After a bit of conversation and explaining what's going on in the world with Shinra and Sephiroth, he joins the party.

Vincent Valentine (Lifnok) also explains a couple other interesting things. He asks about Lucercia, a woman who he loved. A woman who was married to Professor Gahst and who gave birth to Sephiroth. This is confusing to Cloud who thought that Sephiroth was grown by Jenova cells. Vincent doesn't really go into further explanation but expresses some regret in some deed he did which resulted in Lucercia's demise and he wants revenge against Hojo for some reason. I guess we'll get filled in more later. While this is definitely familiar, it's surprising me a bit as I go; I have forgotten most of this story from here on out.

We went up Mount Nibel and entered into a new zone where we approached a new town with a huge rocket at it's center. Here we find Cid Highwind (Yorick) trying to fix the rocket before Rufus arrives whom he believes will refund his space program so he can go to the moon. When Rufus arrives only to steal his plane and not give him any funding, Cid is devastated and joins the party without much else to do. We high jack the plane but are shot down in the process. Instead of a plane we're left with a glorified motor boat which can navigate shallow waters. This opens up more of the map though.

We're now on a path to find the Temple of the Ancients where Sephiroth is headed to next. However, on the way Yuffie jacks all our materia and bails. So... being without materia... sucks....

I had to adjust my state of mind a play style a bit to adapt to having no materia. I got creamed after about two fights by a few birds casting AoE lightning. I had to reload and make sure Aerith was in the party for her limit break Healing Wind. After fighting my way through some valleys painfully, I arrived at Wutai, a ninja clan town. I've seen Yuffie but I haven't had a chance to confront her about my materia. Still trying to figure out what I need to do, but I do recall Leviathan coming very soon. Will be nice to see the old god back in the game after his odd absence in FFVI.

Anyway, I've got my whole crew now and I've got QUITE a bit of materia. Rhek has some of his main ones to make him a killing machine, like HP+, Counter, and Cover. Later when he gets double cut or X cut or whatever it's called, he'll be unstoppable. I'll try to post a little more often but Dragon Age has been cutting into my time a little. Pretty good game. Both of 'em. =)

FFVII - On the trail of a killer

Been very busy with a multitude of things; one of which has been Dragon Age: Origins. I've played a bit here and there though, hoping I can really eat into it this weekend.

Once the party was outside they decided to name Rhek leader of a new band on a mission to end Sephiroth before Shinra can get to him. The first place we visit is Kalm and here is where we really get a good look at what's going on.

Cloud tells a lengthy story to his band of misfits about his past. He recalls being in SOLDIER with Sephiroth five years ago and running his first mission with him at a little town called Nibelheim. This is of course where Cloud is actually from as well as Tifa, but there have been reports of strange monsters about the Mako Reactor there lately. Cloud arrives with Sephiroth and it turns out that Tifa is to be their guide up the mountain. Along the way we find out that Sephiroth's mother was called Jenova and First Class SOLDIER's have been heavily infused with Mako energy.

Once we reach the reactor, we're quick to notice the huge sign that reads "JENOVA" on the top of the reactor. Inside cell about it are humans who have been given extreme doses of mako energy from Dr. Hojo and turned into monsters. Hojo has been trying to carry on the work of the brilliant Prof. Gahst but he's not as bright by a long shot. Sephiroth recalls being raised by Gahst and ponders the coincidence of the mutilated alien creature at the center of the reactor called Jenova.

The local mansion used to be occupied by Gahst and all his research is actually down there. Sephiroth goes into a hiatus and reads night and day for weeks. Cloud finally goes down there to find out what he's doing. What he finds is a crazed Sephiroth who tells him about the origins of their world.

Long ago a race called the Cetra inhabited this planet for a short time but then left. Some few of the Cetra stayed though and rebelled against the ways of the Cetra, cutting off their ties with the planet. They forgot about their origins and few true Cetra remained on the planet. Thousands of years later Prof. Gahst found a frozen preserved body of an Ancient (Cetra) and called it Jenova. From her he learned much about mako energy, materia, magic and the like. She was the source of all new technology which Shinra used to enslave Midgar.

It turns out that Sephiroth is not human at all but was actually grown from Jenova cells in a test tube. This drives him mad and he realizes that he is a true Cetra, Jenova is his mother and that Shinra and the human population is killing the Life force of the planet. Not only that, but Shinra is trying to use Sephiroth and Jenova to find paradise where they believe they will have a vast untapped source of mako energy to harvest for profits.

Cloud leaves the disturbed Sephiroth, there's nothing he can do. He awakes one morning to find Nibelheim burning and everyone dead outside. He rushes out to find survivors and it's here we see Sephiroth in the flames (the most infamous scene in the series and perhaps my favorite still of any villian of all time).



Sephiroth heads to the mountains, toward the Mako Reactor and Jenova. Cloud runs after him and is met by Tifa holding her dead father in her arms. Tifa runs in to try to kill Sephiroth herself and he cuts her down. Sephiroth then goes into the Jenova stasis chamber, opens it up and pulls her body out in another famous cut from the game. Cloud finally reaches him and they square off to fight, Cloud is obviously far weaker than Sephiroth at that point though and will most certainly die. But the story ends there, he can't remember anything else and neither he nor Tifa quite know how she survived his cut. What they do know is that Sephiroth intends to take back the world and rule it with his mother Jenova, and enter Paradise.



After the story the party continues hot on the trail of Sephiroth. Every town we visit we hear tales of a man in a Black Cape who's just passed through. We swung by the Chocobo farm, picked up our first summon materia Choco/Mog and some greens to attract chocobos. We got a chocobo and crossed the marsh toward the Mithril Mines. There before the entrance we see the handy work of Sephiroth. A 200 ft Cave Worm impaled standing up on a wooden stake, blood streaming down.

We go through the mines and make our way to Junon. Cloud goes through his little soldier charade to get on the ship and we stow away with Rufus and his general on board. Half way across we hear an alarm and find a trail of dead bodies on board leading to a store room. We get our first encounter with Sephiroth infused with the cells of Jenova as a hybrid being called Jenova: Birth. After the fight, we see the remains of a Jenova arm on the floor which disappears. We pick up another summon. I don't recall which it was but I have Shiva and Ifrit now as well.

We finally make port at Cssa Sol (or w/e it's called) and we see Hojo on the beach for a short conversation. We leave town after stocking up and re-equiping and try to make our way to the Golden Saucer, but to get there we have to take a high wire transport over the quicksand that surrounds it. Up the mountains we went to finally arrive at a dead town where we find Barret in trouble with some locals. There's some story there which I won't go into, not really important, no offense to Barret but I know the game plot and I don't need him. I already know which six characters I'm going to use to fight Sephiroth at the end so he's gonna fall to the wayside quickly.

Anyway, I've been roaming the Golden Saucer trying to recall what to do, visiting every zone. I took Aerith on the ferris wheel thing, I've decided to go with her; part of my masachism I suppose. I finally decided to visit everyone once more and finally triggered a scene where I happen upon Battle Staduim and everyone's dead. Not Sephiroth though, it's Duane or w/e his name is. Of course they assume my party did it and toss us in a desert jail. Time to regroup and break out. All good stuff but I'm missing some things. I need to find out how to get Yufi, I should have her by now cuz I got a weapon for her in a chest. I know I have to go into a forest but I don't know which one.

I'm really enjoying the game but it hasn't sucked me in yet. I've played through Gold Saucer like four times before so maybe it's just too routine. Hopefully I'll get to some fresh stuff I haven't seen in fourteen years in a couple more hours played.

Final Fantasy VII

So we arrive where the real fun begins. The game that won over the NA market's heart, mind and soul for the RPG, made the genre competitive for the first time and put Square in the history books. I will not do a background for this game, since IGN did such a nice job in their article A History of Final Fantasy VII. Check it out, it's a very good read. With that done, let's dive right in...

We open with a nice little cut scene that put anything done before to shame, focusing on the flower girl Aerith (Aeris in NA) and the city of Midgar. A gorgeous cut for the time, and it still brings a flood of memories as the start to a great journey.



The game begins with Cloud jumping off the train with the rest of the crew from Avalanche and getting his new name, Rhekwyhem. After that the team heads in and blows up one of the eight Midgar reactors which the evil corporation Shinra is using to suck the life out of the planet and use for power. As the game progresses we get introduced to our memorable cast. Barret (Morpheus), who surprised me back in the day with his cussing on the train and his attitude. Tifa (Cysra), who is Cloud's childhood friend and obviously has a crush on him. And the flower girl Aeris (Aerith), who is the last remaining Ancient, being hunted by Shinra for technological research.

Here now, Square decided to go with a three man party for the first time and stuck with it in later games. It's worked well I think. Something I also like about this one is the constant flux of characters that it forces you to play at least for a little bit. Where as in VI, even though I had fourteen characters I only really had to play with 4. So many great things in the game, I can't even begin to touch upon all of them. But it wasn't long into the game that I really felt like I had missed it and was coming home for a bit. I say it's my favorite game, but sometimes you forget why; I'm starting to remember quickly.

As the story went on we got to see the demise of Biggs and Wedge and Jessie as Shinra took out an entire section of the city just to kill the renegade gang Avalanche to the tune of classical music as President Shinra watched from his suite. Love that scene.

With Aerith introduced we get a little peak into what's really going on. She is the last of a dead race called the ancients who are one with the planet's life force. When Shinra kidnaps Aerith, it's time to head in and rescue her. Climbing the 70 odd floors to the top we get a lot more information. We learn about Sephiroth from SOLDIER and his quest to stop Shinra from reaching the Promised Land of the Ancients. We also see the headless body of Jenova in Hojo's research laboratory and we pick up our fifth character Red XIII (Ichorid). After getting toyed with for a bit, the party is captured and tossed in cells. Time to take a nap.

We awaken to the door open and things are eerily quite outside. Rhek breaks the rest of the party out and we find everyone in the building has been massacred. Of course it could have only been one person. The Jenova body is missing and a trail of blood leads us to the office of the president of Shinra. His body is impaled upon his desk with the sword of Sephiroth...

A helicopter approaches outside and we rush out to see Rufus (the president's son) make claim to the company and plan his own evil plots for his new empire. Rhek decides to end Rufus before he can begin while the rest of the team leaves the building.

Of course Rufus escapes before we can kill him, and the building is totally surrounded with no where to run to. Now we enter into another beautiful cut for the time of Cloud on his motercycle and the rest of the gang in a light blue van as we bust through the glass and make our escape. The mini game loads up to defend the van while riding on the motercycle and I make quick work of any who approach. As we reach the end of the road we decide it's time to band together and put an end to Sephiroth and Rufus both; we leave Midgar behind to enter into the main world map for the first time, several hours into the game...

Final Fantasy VI, Ikorid gets in the last hit, Again!

Well, I spent a good part of yesterday finishing up the summons. One of the dragons in particular in the Fanatic Tower gave me trouble but only because I had to climb like 50 stories and the higher you went the higher the level of mob. I got near the top and they were throwing LvL90.Magic mobs at me. So getting slapped with things like back to back Meteor when you have 2500 HP doesn't work out too well. After wasting about an hour and a half in the tower only to die I had to put it down for a bit.

Eventually I came back and went to town grinding for a good hour in my favorite spot. Got my four main characters above 50, mastered Life 3 and Ultima, and then cheated. =D

I put the Mog in my party and equiped Mog Charm which avoids random enemy encounters. Walked right up to the dragon, beat him easily, walked right up to the top of the tower, beat down the master magician and got the Gem Box item. What's the Gem Box you ask? Oh well it equips X-Magic. So... Gold Hairpin + Gem Box + Cysra (Terra) + Ultima + Haste2 = 'Cysra kills everything'; for half the MP. So yeah, Cysra pretty much started dropping 20k bombs on every mob for the rest of the game while the others hasted or healed the party. Lifnok got some X-Fight, mixed with the Genji Glove gave him 8 attacks per round but he's still weak in comparison. All his attacks combined on all mobs for around 12k usually; SOMETIMES 24k if the mob was weak to one of his claws. But Cysra is hitting EACH mob for 20k guaranteed, so at times she's throwing up 120-140k in total damage on the board. She's the first in six games that I've become really attached to, as far as characters. Gonna miss my little havoc wrecking Esper chick. It's really a shame that they limit damage to 9999. I mean if she's throwing quad nines on enemies in human form, what's she capable of in her Esper form??

Anyway, I proceeded to pick up Odin and convert him to Raiden. I tracked down the random encounter Doom Gaze in the sky and beat him up to get Bahamut and within Kefka's castle I beat the final two dragons to give me the final summon Crusader. All summons... CHECK! That's every summons so far in every game, let's keep it going! It was interesting though that this is the first game in the series where Leviathan was NO WHERE to be found.

So.... I get to Kefka's castle and it tells me to make three groups. FUCK. I decided to cheat a little again. =D I built a group of my second best guys and power leveled them to around level 38. They had like NO SPELLS, shitty armor, and shitty weapons but I had to get them to at least 2k just to survive some hits in the castle. For a while they were just impossible to play with, but after a bit I got in the groove. Got a dual wielding thief, a ninja star throwing ninja (loved that I could buy ninja stars at Item shops in this game btw), a weak ass impromptu healer, and my guy that learns Lore from mobs. My third party consisted of my level 20 dregs and my Mog, with Moogle Charm equipped. I went back to the castle and made my three parties. My main party would kill all bosses, my second party would just navigate the castle and hit switches but still be able to survive regular mob encounters and my third party could navigate and hit buttons w/o any mob encounters. It was a bit of a pain and probably took twice as long as the dungeon should have taken but it beat trying to get 4 guys to learn 20 Esper spells to become somewhat useful. My second crew even surprised me a little bit. I saved my game at one point and let them have a go at one of the Magic Statues right before the final battle and they actually beat her down nicely. Of course a good bit of it was luck, luck that she was casting her 4k dmg bolt on my 3k HP party member who just happen to absorb lightning damage lol.

Anyway I made my way to the top of Kefka's Tower and VERY nervously engaged. My heart dropped a little bit when it asked me to rank my party 1 thru 12. Oh god, please don't tell my they have to fight the final boss. That would be. Not good. I selected my best four warriors as the top four slots on a whim and threw the rest in randomly. If I couldn't fight with my four it wasn't going to really matter. The fight started with my top four luckily though. Cysra did her thing and the first part of the boss dropped in about two or three rounds. Cysra continued to do her thing for the second and third part. This was going to be easy! Then as the third part of Kefka died, his final action was a 9999 hit on Cysra. And I forgot to cast Life3 on her... Uh oh... The boss fell as my party rose up to face Kefka in his final God form and ... huh? What? Where's Cysra??? Why is Ikorid in her slot??? FUCK ME. I was SO tempted to just toss the reset switch right then and there but instead I snapped my end boss pic and gave it a go. Ikorid with his 2k HP and 1k swings for damage was a far cry from my little godly Esper girl, but I managed. I just kept chipping away with Lifnok's X-Fight attack and got a little Chain Saw help from Yorick and even a Fire3 here and there from Nazomi.

Eventually the boss went down but in retrospect I find it a little, well more than a little... I find it VERY ironic that I would go through the whole game without using Ikorid because I didn't like the character class and then at the very fucking last second of the game, SOMEHOW he manages to sneak into the party and out of fourteen characters I end up with Yorick, Ikorid, Nazomi, and Lifnok in the end and Ikorid gets to kill the fucking boss! Just crazy.



Casey, are you hacking my PS3 console somehow???

Overall, I absolutely loved this one. Great, great game. Right about now it ranks just below FFVII for me in the series, followed by IV, III, I, V, and II. I think at the end I'll rank them properly with a few comments on each a la IGN's article that I've linked to on the right. Pic of my crew stats at the end.



Next up... the mother of all RPGs, my favorite game of all time. It needs no further introduction, you know it, you love it... VII.

FFVI - Spartans don't die, they're just MIA...

When last I posted Nazomi was about to begin wandering the new ruined world. Ever so slowly she has discovered that not everyone died. In fact over the course of many hours she has discovered that NO ONE actually died. In true FF fashion our heros are invulnerable.

The evil Kafka has obtained something like god status in the past year, and obliterates any town that opposes him with an enveloping Judgement Light. The people of the land are barely surviving and everyone wants Kafka dead. Some characters required some pretty extensive convincing or in depth saving, but eventually I got everyone back and along the way I've picked up many new Espers and a new airship.

I've picked out my four warriors and the others have fallen by the wayside. I'm hoping the story doesn't kill anyone off or force me to use two parties near the end cuz.. that would be difficult. My main party is of a level of about 44 right now and the rest of my guys range from 26 to 32. I went with Yorick, a true knight; Lifnok, a true monk; Nazomi, who I've fashioned as a pure white mage who wears heavy armor; and Cysra who is the most powerful character. She can transform into a Morphed Esper form and even Fire 2 is hitting for 9999 in that form already. She's my ace in the hole for sure. Not surprising, as usual the Summoner type class is godly. Love it, I hope they do Summoner right in XIV.

Speaking of Espers, I've collected like 20 odd summons so far. All that remain are the most powerful; Odin, Bahamut, and Crusader. Odin should be an easy pick up in a castle. Bahamut requires I kill a roaming boss mob in the overworld in FFVII weapon fashion. And Crusader requires I kill eight world dragons in specific places around the world. I think I've killed three or four so far. Collecting all the summons has become something I feel like I must do for every game now and it's within reach.

Other than the summons I think I'm pretty close to going for Kefka, we'll see. Might go down later tonight.