After this, I get control of the party left behind and no time is wasted before they get some of their own action. Right as Rhek and his party take off, a monstrosity emerges from the sea and heads toward Tear's Point (where I got the Solomon Key) which are some old artifact ruins. The Doctor tells us that if it reaches the ruins it will amplify it's own power and trigger a Lunar Cry event which almost destroyed the planet 100 years ago. Zell and his crew hop onto the thing to try to stop it but are tossed out. The Lunatic Pandora (as the Doctor names it) settles over Tear's point, drawing power to fire.
Meanwhile, our rocket with Rhek and Cysra arrives at a Lunar Base in orbit in some really nice cut scenes.
We arrive to find out that Ellone is on board, Rhek puts Cysra down in the medical bay and goes to get Ellone. She once again explains that she can't really change the past but agrees to try to help Rhek anyway. While there we learn that the moon is actually the world where all monsters come from and that the Lunar Cry amasses the monsters for a migration to earth. They can already see activity stirring on the moon, but there's not really anything anyone can do from here. We head on to Cysra but a red alert goes off in med bay. Rhek rushes over to find Cysra floating about as if a puppet once more. He is throw back hard when he attempts any kind of contact. The lifeless Cysra floats to the control room and releases an interlock. The crew explains that she's just released the first seal on the Sorceress Adel's prison. Cysra then gets into a space suit, and heads out to release the second seal, no one can stop her. She releases Adel's second seal, and the frozen sorceress drifts into space just as the Lunatic Pandora executes the Lunar Cry over Tear's Point.
The event creates a link which passes through the Lunar Base and begins to break the ship up. As we make our escape, we see the 'President' in a space suit get dragged into a pod and bail, but not before asking Rhek to watch over Ellone (gotta be Laguna).
We hop into our own escape pod and get away just before the entire base is annihilated. With the more powerful Sorceress Adel free and plummeting to earth in the migration, Ultimecia from the future has no more use for Cysra and lets her drift into space to die. Rhek has other plans though. He talks Ellone into linking him to Cysra, to change her past and while he can't change it, he sees how she sees him and it makes him love her more. He also sees the moment when they defeated Edea and Cysra was controlled for the first time. He hears what she whispered into Seifer's ear before going limp and cold. She told him that he was her knight, and that she wanted him to go to the bottom of the ocean to activate the Lunatic Pandora. So Seifer was behind the Lunar Cry event, idiot! Unable to change the past, Rhek must change the present. He makes a suicide jump from the escape pod knowing it's a one way trip and intercepts Cysra to save her. Though he doesn't know how. Luckily they just happen to drift to an old abandoned space shift floating in space.
They get aboard, Cysra now fully conscious and in control of herself for the first time since defeating Edea at the end of Disc 2. I dispatch of a few monsters and gain full control of the spaceship Ragnarok. Woohoo! Esthar air control talks us into the atmosphere but once they find out that the 'Sorceress' Cysra is on board, they demand her immediate arrest upon landing. The new couple have only a few moments alone on Ragnarok before they're to be separated again. But Cysra has inherited the powers of Edea who had to give them to someone when she was defeated. Cysra is afraid but understands that she's a danger to everyone, as Ultimecia can obviously manipulate her at any time. When we land, she goes into custody; arrested for being a Sorceress and descendant of Hyne (why does that sound familiar).
After like five seconds of Cysra being gone, the entire gang shows up and asks where she is. When Rhek tells them, they all say he's an idiot for letting her get locked up. He takes another 5 seconds to agree and decide to go after her, who they just took like 10 seconds ago...
We head on over to the Sorceress Memorial and retrieve her with little effort. As we're going they even let us leave without a fight. A massive guardian letting them pass, Rhek thinks he looks familiar... Ward...? After some explaining of whats going on since the parties have been separated, we get a call from Esthar Palace to come see the President, it's Kiros who's calling us in.
But first! Well I have an airship now, so I ventured out on my own for a bit. I took this opportunity to work on getting the last five summons I could obtain as well as Rhek's final weapon. I've resigned myself to the fact that Rhek is the damage for the entire party and everyone else is just there to keep him alive now. At least for boss fights. But I still wanted to keep my track record of obtaining all summons in all games. I had picked up an item called Solomon's Key at Tear's Point earlier. Now when used, the key gives the summon Doom Train to you. But you can only use the item if you have several other key items in your inventory. The first were 6 steel pipes, easy enough, took all of 5 minutes. The next up I saw was Marboro Tentacles... ehhh man those things are never fun to fight in FFs. I headed out to where they were supposed to be and walked around quite a bit waiting for one to spawn on me. Eventually one did. It immediately cast Bad Breath, putting my party into Sleep, Silence, Berzerk, Slow, Confuse and Petrify. After sitting there helpless for about 5 minutes my party finally killed itself. Ugh. Reset, junction some ensuna and berserk into my status defense, try again. Irvine got off one shot with Mug attached and stole one Tentacle then Bad Breath, game over. Fuck! How many do I need? Six??!?! Anyway, after a bit of thinking and about two hours later I had my six tentacles. Many Resets, many Mugs, many Escapes later...
Well that was annoying, thank god that's over. What's next, six Remedies? Oh that's easy. Huh, why doesn't this work... Oh Remedy+. Uhh where's that, oh I need to use Alexander's Med LVL Up ability to refine 10 Remedies into 1 Remedy+. Sounds easy enough, but I don't see it. Well that's because I need to first obtain his ability Med Data. Well that's only like 500 AP (4 hours of grinding or something)... Disheartened I checked online for good AP grinding spots and saw Cactuar Island. Alrighty, head there, kill a couple Cactuar, 40AP!!!! Well! One hour later all summons mastered, lol. Good times. Solomon's Key used, Doom Train obtained. Only like six hours later, 4 summons to go and one final weapon (/cringe).
But things picked up a bit from there. I tracked down all the parts for Rhek's final gun, took a little grinding but not nearly as bad as Doom Train. With the final weapon Lion Heart, I went after the king Cactuar. He was a bit of a bitch to defeat but I got him eventually. Next up I headed to Tonberry land. Before I could mess with the Tons though I had to solve a puzzle which resulted in obtaining a secondary summon element, Odin. While he's not really a summon, he is helpful. What he does is randomly appears in fights and one shots the enemy. Pretty cool but no control, not a summon. Anway, after getting Odin, I knew I had to defeat 20 Tonberries to get the king to pop. And Tonberries are a bit of a bitch with 22k health each and a move that will bring any single member to his knees, not to mention a counter attack for a good 4k damage. I set up my tried and true method for boss killing. Zell casts Protect on Rhek to buffer counter attacks, Selphie casts Haste on Rhek to make him hit way fast, Rhek casts Berserk on himself to almost double his damage. With this setup I was popping Tons for 4k like once every two seconds. Was a good method but took some setup time. Every six Tons I'd go outside and save in case I died. About an hour and a half later, and 22 Tons down, no king. Online I go to find out that if I leave the zone I have to start over. GRRR!!! I head back in quite frustrated and change my method. While efficient it was just taking too long. Instead I just let Rhek die then rez him. He always is in the yellow when rez'd and can execute his Renzokuken limit break ability which pretty much one or two shots the Tons. FINALLY the king pops and he takes three limit breaks from Rhek before he goes down.
Next I headed to an old research lab in the sea and worked my way through some puzzles to one shot Bahamut with Renzokuken luckily popping Lion Heart final attack. After this I headed further down to obtain the last summon in the game Eden. However when I reach the bottom I have to face Ultima Weapon to receive it. I engage, he whips my ass. Reset, engage, dead, reset, engage, dead... My guys at this time were about 4k in health each and this fucker was spamming Light Pillar for 9,999. WTF am I supposed to do against that? I gave up, knowing I'd get another shot at the summon in Ultimecia's castle with Tiamat.
Enough about my frustrations with the game. About ten hours later, I finally headed back to Esthar to meet none other than Laguna, the President. We get a long explanation about how he tricked Adel into a cryo sleep a long time ago then launched her ass into space. He also explains his plan to defeat Ultimecia, and it just might be crazy enough to work. Basically we have to kill Adel, and Cysra has to obtain her power. The crazy Ultimecia is trying to achieve time compression right? Well if she has no choice but to inhabit Cysra, then Ellone can send them both into the past when she does, then retrieve only Cysra. Once time compression is complete, then Ultimecia will have brought my party to her time as well. When we get there, we kill her, in her time. Easy enough.
We head on out on the Ragnarok to Lunatic Pandora where Adel and Seifer await in a pretty cool cut. Our Ragnarok ship must penetrate the shields, blast a hole in the wall and latch on for our party to board. Oh, did I mention that Ragnarok is actually none other than Voltron in disguise?
We grind on up and beat Seifer one last time. But before he goes down, he kills my Odin. However, at the end of the battle, Odin is reborn as Gilgamesh and beats the fuck out of Seifer for me. Finally that guy is defeated for the last time. But he's not done being a nuisance. On the way out he snags Cysra and heads for Adel, throws Cysra to Adel, who straps Cysra onto herself and engages my party in a fight.
My party now has to delicately kill Adel while not hurting Cysra while Adel hurts her. After the battle is over Cysra absorbs Adel's power and Ultimecia enters Cysra. Right on cue, Ellone sends both of them into the past and then retrieves Cysra. Time compression begins, and we're treated to one of the craziest acid trip cut scenes of any FF game to date. Rhek and Cysra fall through the melting floor into open air. With them are falling globules of mercury surface with images of places and people in them. Birds surround us en masse, and turn into fish. We're under water, still falling when we break the surface, upside down and fall INTO the air above us. After some more trippy shit we finally land in Edea's palace with 20 copies of save points
Next, we fight about twenty incarnations of Edea/Adel/Ultimecia as the Sorceress. By this time Rhek on Berserk and Haste was one or two shotting everything at about 5k damage a pop. My killer was developing nicely... After they all go down, we find our way outside to see our final destination floating in the sky, held down by chains. Ultimecia's Castle.
When we arrive though, Ultimecia has her shit on lock down, she's no dummy. There are wards all over the place and as soon as you set foot inside, you lose all abilities. Can't heal, resurrect, use GFs, items, Draw, Magic, or even Save. Nothing. All you get is Attack. And the only way to release these abilities is to get them back one by one by defeating twelve or so bosses unlocked inside puzzles in the castle. After some tricky fights without certain abilities (like eight bosses) we FINALLY get a fucking save point. Can't tell you how much I was relieved to see it. And after a few more bosses, we faced off against Tiamat. He whipped my ass the first time though. He spells out Dark Flare one letter at a time then slaps you for about 8k damage party wide. Can't Protect/Shell/Reflect it so basically it was a damage race. I had taken the time to draw about 200 Meteors out of another boss before Tiamat though and this is only bested by Ultima when it comes to Junctioning. I put those bad boys on Rhek along with a pure Str bonus ability set and watched his STR hit about 220.
I went back and stomped him. After that fine tuning Rhek was slapping him for 7-9k a pop with Berserk up. But before he went down I Drew my final summon Eden. Yay!
I approached Ultimecia's chamber, saved and went in for the kill. Now at this point I had Rhek at about 6,300HP, Cysra at about 6,500HP and Selphie at like 4,400HP. Normally in any other FF, those numbers wouldn't be too bad. I thought I could take the bitch. Nope.
In her second of four stages, just before she goes to stage three, she casts some Apocalypse spell for like 9,300 on the whole party. Suffice it to say, it was Reset time. And time to sit back and think really hard for a while. Could I beat her? What could I possibly do to survive that. Hero drink maybe if I timed it right... (Hero drink makes your character invincible temporarily) But the HP on the mob is ???? and since HP scales with level, there's no way I could know when he'd be near death. Grr...
I picked up my crew and removed all Junctions, time to reassess how to approach this. I very carefully went through every GF and Junctioned Cysra for maxed out HP and healing, Selphie for maxed out HP and support, and Rhek for maxed out STR and as high an HP as I could get. After using some special items in my inventory to teach my GFs new abilities and some very delicate manipulation (like for over an hour) I finally got my party to where I wanted it. Cysra and Selphie each Junctioned HP+20%, HP+40%, and HP+80% and even though they were like level 30 (weak), I had JUST enough Meteors between the two of them Junctioned to HP to get both of their healths BARELY BARELY BARELY to 9,999. Rhek stacked 20, 40, 60 on STR and Junctioned it to Meteor, capping it at 255, and his health was about 8,800HP. Not bad for one level 60 and a couple of level 30 characters. While the levels definitely help, this game is really all about how you finesse your Junctions and GFs.
I saved, and headed back at the bitch. This time though, she picked Zell, Irvine and Quistis to fight against her........ At about 1,500HP a pop they didn't last long. And actually she helped me out because as each died they were sent to the abyss and replaced with one of my more powerful characters. Slowly my party came together, and by the time they were all in, I had haste on everyone, Rhek was in the yellow popping Renzokukens and Selphie had Shell up. She was swinging pretty hard though and Cysra had a hard time keeping health up. By the time Apocalypse went off, Rhek and Cysra died and Selphie went to 1,000 health. I quickly popped a Full-Life on Cysra, and had her rez Rhek, then gave Selphie an X-Potion, we were back exactly where we wanted to be. I downed the second form and the third appeared. Her third form was laying down some nice damage and killed Rhek several times but eventually went down to about three or four Renzokukens.
In her fourth and final form, she got her full FF boss power and started quad casting magic and hitting us with Hellfire which brought everyone's HP to 1. LUCKILY I had randomly picked Selphie to come with Rhek and Cysra. And what's her limit break? A randomly generate ability which the user can change as many times as they want until you get what you desire. What do I desire? Full-cure on the entire party.
Even with this awesome ability though, she still put up quite a fight. I had to use several Auras (trigger limit break even when health not yellow), Hero Drinks, Mega-Elixirs, Elixirs, X-Potions, etc. I really had to pull out all the stops. She made Sephiroth look like a little bitch and to be honest I think the last FF boss this hard was the only other girl FF boss in FF3, Chandra. She was a true final boss. Very good fight. Eventually though one of my Renzokukens triggered Rhek's final attack Lion's Heart. This is like a random occurring Omni-slash for those that don't know. He hit her for his normal 4-7 attacks of 7-9k then slapped that bitch for 12 or 15 hits of 9,999 damage. That finally did her in, I figure she took 150-200k damage in that one attack. Awesome... A VERY satisfying victory.
After Ultimecia went down, I was treated to a very long end scene where the party is wandering space and time, trying to come together again. Specifically Rhek gets lost and Cysra eventually finds him in another super psychedelic trip of an end scene where Rhek sees like every cut scene at once and her image blurring and distorting and coming in and out of all of them. In the end though, they escape, but not before Rhek visits Edea in the time when she was running the orphanage with Rhek as a child. While there with Edea, we see Ultimecia one last time, stumbling about. Rhek is poised to attack to protect Matron, but Edea tells him, it's just a dying Sorceress looking for someone to give her power to. Since Edea doesn't want the power to go into one of her children she takes it unto herself and becomes a Sorceress. When she asks who Rhek is, he explains that he's a SeeD from Garden. She's never heard of it, he tells her their purpose is to kill Sorceresses. So he plants the idea in her head back then. That's why she made Garden then. Interesting.
Anyway, we get to see Rhek and Cysra finally together as the game ends and we get to watch a cool, corny but good home video of the celebration after winning while the credits roll. Even though I bitched about the Draw and Leveling system a lot, this really was a great game which I really enjoyed, especially at the end when I was getting super powerful with all my end game Junctions with end game Magic. It's not FF7 but it's up there. Just can't beat that FF7 materia system and story though. But I like FF8, it stands alone and it's a very solid follow up to the best of the best. My end game stats, clocking in at just about 44 hours for this one.
After FF6, 7, and 8 all in this steam punk techno world, I'm kinda looking forward to the old school FFIX coming my way with the classic jobs and medival time setting. While I guess I only played this one till the end of Disc 2, I know I played FFIX even less, really don't remember much of it at all except that a Black Mage Puppet or something was the main character.
Up next, Sakaguchi's favorite title in the series to present: FFIX.
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