Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Three

Part Two

Masterpost

 Day Two: Control Issues

 So back to the Dollet communications tower.

 Zog and co. went up it after fighting a couple of dudes. While they were doing this, on top of the tower a pair of Galbadian soldiers converse.

Yeah, same thing happened when I went to Jodrell Bank

 Or rather, one makes incredibly vague descriptions and the other one barely pays attention as he makes repairs. Seriously Wedge, do you actually think that's a useful description? I've seen monsters of varying sizes and shapes already and I've barely left the starting area.

 Is it fly shaped? Contorting caterpillar shape? The shape of that one monster in the fire cavern that was just a head and two rotating circles of wings? Which is it?

 Be more specific, man!

 So we see Wedge leave Biggs to his work only for him to be immediately set upon by three pretty teenagers.

He does, however, manage to achieve what he was attempting and the control tower works for the first time in god only knows how long.

 Zog demands to know what Biggs is doing there and the man comes back with the single best comeback I think I've ever seen written down.

Pure genius

 So we start a fight with Biggs, only for him to immediately call for back up like the coward he is and there's some banter between him and Wedge that makes the relationship between Edgeworth and Gumshoe in Turnabout Sisters look healthy and functional.

 The fight is, however, cut short when a mysterious whirlwind sweeps the two of them out of the way and a large monster-shaped flying monster descends to the battlefield.

Whatever you do, don't ask Wedge. He's useless

 I jest of course, I know what it is. I scanned it.

And no one knows where it will go. Where did it come from, Cotton Eyed Joe?

It turned out not to be weak to anything, so I just kept throwing GFs and Selphie's amazing magic stat at it until it died. I'd messed around with her junctions so she had Fire junctioned to magic, which boosted the stat, and had the passive ability of her magic attacks being boosted by twenty percent. She's my dedicated magic user, and it's resulted in my love for her.

 Thanks Seifer, my contempt for you led to a great character set up!

 I still had some fun drawing spells from Elvoret, I managed to get the Double spell that allows a character to cast two spells next turn. Honestly, I'm not really seeing how that's particularly useful right now. It still takes two turns to cast two offensive or healing spells, so why not just cast them one a turn? I don't know, maybe I'll figure something out for it later.

 I also drew the GF Siren from Elvoret. Don't ask me what this thing was doing with her, I'd rather not think about it.

 I called her Kylie, after Miss Minogue, because Siren isn't a name it's the title used to describe the daughters of Achelous the river god. Opinion is divided on their mother's identity. Interestingly enough, in Greek mythology they're not all that heavily associated with the sea, more with fields, it's the Romans that pushed that interpretation. The Greeks possibly used them as a metaphor for the lure of the land, regardless of the danger of the shoreline. Possibly.

 But I digress.

 Zog, Selphie and Zell destroy Elvoret and it dies in an amusingly overblown manner.

It's just like Beauty and the Beast, only the monster transforms into an explosion

 After this Seifer shows up following us even though he entered the tower before we did, so kind of like a reverse Aerith. Although that's another story for another time.

 Selphie delivers her message and it's the order for all SeeD personnel to retreat, the boats are due to leave at 1900 hours.

 And what do you know? That's half an hour from now! Zog and co. better hurry!

 It's interesting to note that Seifer runs off ahead again. Tell me Seifer, how do you think it would look if the two guys you were put in charge of got left behind or even killed because you ran off without them?

 This might be contributing to why you keep failing at these exams.

 So there's a half an hour time limit, and lo and behold, part of it is taken up with a cut scene of someone else doing something. It's a few seconds, but it hardly seems fair. Breath of Fire II never pulled this crap in the Sky Tower.

 Biggs commands someone, or something to attack the intrepid trio.

 Zog and co. get to the bottom and this happens:

Wait, wasn't it a full moon only a few hours earlier?

 Boom! Giant mechanical spider!

 This is where I had controller problems.

 I managed to beat the thing into submission, and the game told me to escape pressing B9 and B10.

 I bought this game during a steam sale and as it's got partial controller support, I used the XBox 360 controller I bought for playing Alice: Madness Returns. I hadn't a single clue what the B numbers actually meant in relation to the actual buttons on the controller.

 So as I was desperately trying to work it out, the damn spider regenerated itself and I had to beat it into submission again. Luckily I managed to figure out that I needed to press in both the left and right analogue sticks in order to run from the battle.

 Which was handy knowledge to have as I had to fight the thing a few more times.

 What was frustrating the first couple of times is that Selphie was rapidly running out of Thunder spells to use and if the spider was actively chasing Zog, I couldn't swap the Thunder spells he and Zell had over to her.

Just like it's equivilent in Marvel, it too used to date DareDevil

 Thankfully I managed to escape the spider's clutches, no thanks to Zog, Selphie and Zell. The stupid idiots kept stopping, turning around and looking at the blasted thing.

 "Run you idiots!" is a thing I regularly said.

 To my delight, Squad C managed to get out of the way of the spider too. Those scamps.


 This post is getting a bit long, so we'll continue this with Part Four - Day Two: I'd Rather Be In Seifer Hands