Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Sixty Eight

 Part Sixty Seven

 Masterpost

 Day Twenty Six: It Sounds Like A Lost Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc

 Visiting Trabia Garden got me thinking about how Zog just abandoned his responsibilities to a bunch of kids and teenagers to save his not-girlfriend.

 So, just so we're clear, they've been trapped in an internal dispute between the guy who funds their school and their Headmaster, both of whom were happy to send their students to die, they've been abandoned by their Headmaster to the custody of a seventeen year old boy who doesn't want the position, driven away by a group of adults more interested in their own safety than that of children, and now they've been abandoned by the seventeen year old boy to just float around next to the place full of the adults that wanted them gone.

 Oh, and Galbadia still wants them dead and they're in the middle of the goddamn ocean!

 Did Seifer just not notice them on his way to Esthar or something? Because this makes little to no sense.

 Another thing that makes no sense is that when I went back to see them, they weren't at all angry with Zog.

 Xu just says they haven't seen each other for a while.

Priorities, Xu! Get it together!

 Who's in charge Xu? He didn't assign anyone before he left, so tell me, who is in charge?!

 Is it you?

 Then why are you leaving the Garden here like a sitting duck?!

 I feel like the Doctor, yelling like that. It's oddly satisfying.

 (Not Moffat era Doctor, god no. I don't insult every black person I meet.)

  After this, it's time to head to our actual destination for the day. Battleship Island.

 At least, that's what Zell says it's called.

It looks like a post-apocalyptic Sealand.

 It's a mobile research station that was used for the purpose of recreating the Draw system used by SeeDs. They even did experiments with GFs in pursuit of that goal.

 So there's our goal, GFs.

 Awesome, I have two empty spaces to fill on my roster.

 By the way, Zell only tells you all this if you let him. You can tell him to forget it, but we'll get to that later.

 "But Reecey! How can we get to that later? You're not going to see this cutscene again!"

 Ahahahahaha...

 Uh.

 Look! What in the world could that be?

 Once inside the lab proper, you're presented with a mysterious glowing blue pillar that threatens you with death.

...

 It's very Etrian Odyssey Untold, and I like that about it. It reminds me of MIKE's consoles and of the geomagnetic field thingies, and I like both of those things!

 What I don't like is the absurdly high encounter rate. At times, you will literally be incapable of moving because you'll be immediately attacked if you try.

 What you're supposed to do is wait until the light has dimmed and then move, do that and you won't be attacked for every two millimetres you move.

Be warned though, sometimes it lies. It will dim down almost enough to be safe,and then brighten back up so you'll get attacked. Which is what I call poor sportsmanship.

 So, once you've got to the console (it's on the right side of the front of the glowing blue pillar) you're met with a mysterious voice that asks you a number of questions. After each question, it sets a Ruby Dragon on you, which isn't the funnest thing in the world.

 See, these things use an attack called Breath, and it will hit for over five thousand damage, which was a real problem for me because Quistis, and a bunch of my GFs, have HP of under five thousand, so it kept one shotting them.

 So, unsurprisingly, I died.

 ... Ehehehehe...

 Okay, so, we are going to see the entry cutscene one more time.

 At least one more time.

 If you tell Zell to not tell you about the island, he says this:

Knowing more than Zog is like knowing more than an amoeba, Zell.

 Elect to ignore him and Zog runs off like a massive tantrum throwing child.

 I headed back into the pillar room and did do better this time.

 However.

 In order to fight the minimum nnumber of Ruby Dragons, you need to answer all the questions correctly.

 But, of course, the third question has no obvious answer. It's actually invisible.

See? Or not, I suppose.

 How on Earth are you supposed to work that out for yourself?!

 How?!

 I didn't know this at the time, so I died of Ruby Dragon exposure.

 So, again with the entry cutscene.

 This time I equipped everyone to be resistant to Fire and Aero attacks and let the Ruby Dragons knock Quistis out. This made the whole thing a lot easier because they don't use the Breath attack when you've got a character knocked out.

 I know what you're thinking. Why Quistis?

 Because she's got the magic set up and these things have a high Spirit stat, thus making all magic attacks virtually pointless.

 It's definitely not revenge for her disrespecting Nina. No siree, Bob!

 Since the two boys have better Attack, I equipped them with Blizzaga junctioned to their attack stat and they punched the dragons in the face until they died with some help from Him.

 Without the Breath attack, Ruby Dragons are much easier to deal with and present less of threat to GFs.

 This time I managed to do everything correctly and was rewarded by taking on Bahamut.

I'd go into more detail about the last question, but the pretention.

 I attepted to use Thomas in order to give this guy some convenient status effects, but Bahamut killed him in one swipe.

 I did use Blind and Meltdown on him in order to make the fight easier, and it was, but it took a while. Just keep on keeping on, using GFs and hitting him with Zell and things will work out fine.

 When I finally won I wanted to call him Dick Face, but I decided against it, instead calling him George because naming a dragon after a mythical figure that killed one seemed suitably cruel.

 After this I headed back to Balamb to lick my wounds in the hotel, and much to my amazement, once Zog and Quistis woke up from their power nap, Zell was gone.

 It turned out he was downstairs talking to the Library Commitee member that we'd heard wanted to talk to him.

 The conversation was too far away to really make out, but it looked sweet enough, and it's nice to see the only decent male memeber of the team get a love interest.

  He also gets his hands on Combat King 003. Which is nice.

 Join us next time, because we've got a mystery to solve and these guys will make some excellent meddling kids in Part Sixty Nine.