Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Eighty

 Part Seventy Nine

 Masterpost

 Day Thirty Four: The Persistence of Memory (or Not, Since This is FFVIII)

 So, from trippy beginnings we continue, and it gets so much worse.

 From multiplying save points we head further into the commencment room to where the image of an Ultimecia possesed Edea waits sitting in a chair facing away from us

 Upon approach, she stands like she's in that one Moloko video  mentioned back in Part Sixty One.

 (Or Kool and the Gang, if disco is more your thing.)

 She then multiplies.

Three times the irresponsible parenting.

  Really, this is just where the madness begins, because a battle begins and it is the trippiest thing I've seen in a looong time.

 This enemy shows up, and I'm pretty sure she's a sorceress, although the game seems unsure on this front.

 Also, the scenery starts to warp.

This is what you get for hiring Salvador Dali as an architect

 The sorceress that shows up to fight looks pretty cool and also starts to multiply.

It's like someone saw breeches and didn't understand them.

  They tend to laugh manically and disappear in a spin upon being hit. Also, when hit, the scenery changes, that's why the battle scene is randomly in Winhill (aka, the town with no reason to be.

 Hmm, laughter, disappearing and changing the scene of battle?

 That reminds me of something...

 Oh yeah! Zant.

 They're both blue, too.

 Eiher this is a massive coincidence, or someone played FFVIII at some point and semi remembered this one bit.

 After hitting this woman repeatedly, another woman appears. I'm not sure why another sorceress sticks her oar in, but she does.

 Maybe they were friends in life, who knows.

Besties.

 The new one doesn't half remind me of Queen Amidala.

 Star Wars Episode One came out in the same year, so this one's probably just a coincidence.

 After a few round lik this, Sorceress Amidala there turns into a half woman-half some kind of snake thing-all vision of hell monstrosity.

  I love it!

 Interestingly enough, this sorceress appears to only counter attack. Which is a kind of monster I like to fight, it's a different kind of strategy to the usual back and forth.

 Once she dies, she doesn't so much explode as twists out of existence with flashing lights.

 So, once we've murdered this lady, where does that leave us?

 I leaves us in the orphanage of course.

 Travelling to the beach causes another trippy section where time is messed up and corpses happen.

Also, chains.

 "... Future SeeDs... We're fighting across generations."

 Yes, Zog, because you people are absolutely terrible at your job. You didn't even attempt to put a stop to her before she did all this, even though you know she does this all in your future.

  You're culpable for every death here.

 I hope you're proud of yourselves.

 After this there's a cool series of shots of Ultimecia's castle.

 They did well there.

I heard she bought it off a guy named Alucard

 How do we get up there? Walking up a massive chain of course!

Also, magical doors!

 I'm not sure how you'd even walk on a massive chain, surely someone would get their foot caught between the links and crushed, or someone would slip off or something. It wouldn't be this easy, I'm certain.

 I'm not even sure what you'd make it out of. I'm assuming she took everyone's pans like they did in WWII to get all the metal required for these giant chains.

 As you can see, you can use the chain to access magical doors. These are like the ones near the end of Final Fantasy XIII in order to reach other parts of the game.

 Taking the middle one dumps you near where the Ragnarok ended up, although I'm not sure how it ended up there.

 Unfortunately you need to grab a chocobo from the nearby Chocobo Sanctuary.

 I spent ages trying to find this thing because it was hidden behind a small mountain range.

This is where it is.

 While there, I learned that I could have bought a chocobo for the Chocobo World minigame and GF which really annoyed me because I could have had Chocobo World running in the background while doing other things for months.

 (I named mine Killer and she's at Level 35 right now.)

 Chocobos can run on water, so you can ue the one you cach to escape the island and get back to your ship.

 Flying around reveals that you can't enter most places in the game anymore.

I love the admission that most of this is just set dressing.

 So I really don't know how you're supposed to get items if you don't have Doom Train.

 Part Eighty One will be coming sometime next week, as I've got a lot of grinding to do and I'm finally going to redesign Seifer. Woo!

 See you then!