Ultimecia Graphic Without Text

The Final Battle

 Open Canvas Event Here.

After Eight: My Final Thoughts

Punny sweets and magic themed beer, what else would it be?

 Masterpost

So, after finishing the game, what else is there to say about Final Fantasy VIII?

 Mostly that it's a game with some serious potential to be one of the greatest fantasy RPGs ever made, but just isn't.

 The premise of child mercenaries working for and with the daughter of a general from an imperialistic superpower against said imperialistic superpower which reveals itself to actually be a fight against powerful sorceresses who are somehow both an ancient and future evil is awesome.

 Yet the execution is just awful.

 The tonal problems that Doug mentioned in one of his rework posts really work against the potential of this premise and turn it into an incoherent mess.

 The premise is dark, much darker than the premise of the immediate predecessor, or even of later games in the series, but they were so keen for the characters to be liked that they stripped them all of the character traits that would make them make sense in this setting.

 Let's take Rinoa (AKA Nina) for example.

 She has been robbed of every trait that she'd need to be a convincing resistence leader, or a convincing rebellious daughter.

 She's far too nice, far too soft, has no concrete reason to care about Timber and its independence and if rebellion is meant to be the motive then it's a terrible one because why is she rebellious?

 There's virtually no time dedicated to why she doesn't get on with her father, her mother's death seems to be somewhat the motive but so what?

 Did he drive her mother to her death? Was he too busy when she was sick? Was he an absentee husband and father?

 What did he do?

 The best the game seems to give us is that Julia didn't really love General Caraway, but why is that his fault?

 If it's anyone's fault, it's Laguna's.

 If she had known he was alive, she wouldn't have ended up in a loveless marraige in the first place. Yet the game wants us to be really pro Laguna/Raine.

 A woman lost the best years of her life in a loveless marraige because of this, yet we're meant to be really keen on it? What the living hell, Square?

 I'm spending so much time on  Rinoa's plot becuase it's the driving force of the story. WIthout Rinoa and her resistance movement, there is no story. Yet it's the part of the story that has had the least amount of effort put into it.

 Not that most of it feels like it's had much effort put into it, but this is really the vital part.

 Early on in the Let's Play I did bring up the fact that Rinoa would make a much better protagonist, but it's not just because I don't find Squall all that engaging, it's more because she's the protagonist that the story demands.

 The thing about this game which makes me want to take about it as much as I have, and as much as I'm bound to do so in the future, is that because the story is related to time travel, it's entirely possible that every problem I've had with the game could be solved with a sequel.

 If Ultimecia is being possessed by some timeless and immortal entity, then the interference of that entity could explain the odd actions of the characters and the way that the world feels so small and relatively underdeveloped.

 It would also provide some real conflict in the romance between Rinoa and Squall (aka Zog), because if he's relatively unaffected he'd be dealing with a much harsher and volatile Rinoa and they'd have to make a choice between their relationship carrying on as normal, or the fate of the world.

 A sequel could also answer a lot of the questions that the original game left alone in favour of a strange obsession with romance.

 Like where the Sorceresses came from, why they are so powerful, who Ultimecia is and what happens to Rinoa as the last Sorceress in the world.

 Because she is.

 If SeeDs started when Squall told Edea about the future, then that means that all the SeeDs after the end of this game have stood against Sorceresses in Rinoa's line.

 This more than anything else needs to be explained in a sequel.

 Well, I say it needs to be explained in a sequel.

 But it could be explained, and the whole game made retroactively far better, in three little words.

 Ultimecia is Rinoa.

Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Eighty Seven

 Part Eighty Six

 Masterpost

 Day Thirty Eight: Time Waits For No Angsty Teenage Boy

 There’s no more side quests, no more technically optional bosses to beat, no more treasure to find, and I haven’t prepared well enough to take on the Omega Weapon, so all that’s left to do is to take on the source of all the trouble in Zog’s life.

 Apart from Cid.

 And Edea.

 And Ellone.

 And Laguna.

 And Nina.

 And Irvine.

 And Seifer.

 And Adel.

 And Deling.

 …

 Oh! And Zell!

 Basically, Nida and Selphie are the only two reliable figures of support in Zog’s life.

 Remember, Quistis did want to bang him when she was still his teacher and then conveniently decided that she would rather be his older sister.

 So… ew.

 This guy has more enemies than just Ultimecia if you think about it.

 But she’s the focus of the story, at this point anyway, so let’s finally confront the sorceress to end all sorceresses.

How does she get her hair like that?

  Wait, why is she talking like that?

 I’ve heard this referred to as a speech impediment, but there’s no way you’d be able to hear this. It’s all hard ‘c’s being replaced. Krusty the Klown sounds identical to ‘Crusty the Clown’, the whole hard ‘c’/’k’ thing only works when written down.

 It’s usually used to misspell a word in such a way that it’s still recognisable, but not so generic that it can’t be successfully copyrighted. (See Krispy Kreme.)

 I’m guessing that they did this to make her seem more… German, maybe? It is a thing in German that they tend to use the letter ‘k’ instead of the hard ‘c’ as seen in English.

 Or possible to make her more Greek? Ancient Greek had no time for your soft ‘c’. In Greek words adopted into English, we either technically mispronounce them (e.g. ‘cancer’) or have changed how they’re spelled (e.g. ‘chaos’). I have seen a theory that she's supposed to be Artemisia rather than Ultimecia, but that raises its own questions, mostly why they'd reflect that in her speech but not give her the proper name.

 This may be why she’s not in Kingdom Hearts. How would you ever voice this without giving her a comically strong German accent? Well, no, because then we’d also have the ‘w’/’v’ thing to deal with, which isn’t a feature that shows up in her dialogue.

The brink? If we didn't do it, how did we end up here?

  I checked out how she speaks in the original Japanese and there is nothing there that could explain this. All there is in the Japanese version is that she speaks more like a man than like a woman. (Unlike English there are speech modifiers that change depend on the gender of the speaker, like using boku, atashi or ore.)

 Although I joke about her not showing up in Kingdom Hearts, she has been fully voiced in Dissidia and there's nothing there to reflect this. Even in the text of her dialogue they do not do this.

Unlike pretty much every other boss, Ultimecia appears to be aware that there are six people in the party, and that only half of them can be in battle, because she randomly chooses who will be fighting her.

 Yes, this is the main reason why you ned to make sure each of your characters has been set up to be able to fight. If you take the Spoony route, like I did through most of my playthrough, it's going to screw you over really badly.

 Or at least make things take longer than they strictly need to.

 If a character gets knocked out and you don't revive them quickly enough, this happens:

Zell's preferred afterlife is Valhalla

 Nah, don't worry, he hasn't died, he's just been absorbed into time.

 That sounds like it might be serious, but it really isn't.

 It'll be like nothing happened to him once the battle is over.

 He got knocked out because in the first phase of the battle, Ultimecia has this awful attack called Maelstrom which does 66% damage to the whole party and curses them. It's a total pain in the neck.

 He also got knocked out because I forgot to give him any abilities back, so all he could do was hit her.

 I don't know why I kept screwing that up.

 I found the rest of the fight a lot less anoying than this part, even when she decided to summon a GF to do her dirty work for her.

I'm getting Devil May Cry 4 flashbacks. "I am Berial!"

 This is where the random naming of the ring from all the way back in the Garden on Garden battle comes into play.

 I named the ring that you never see, and yet is so important, Galahad, so that's what this is called.

 Why?

 I don't know. There's a theory floating about, and it covers more than just this, but that's something that I'd rather talk about another time. So we'll just leave this in the category of baffling design choices that this game has a whole bunch of.

 With the introduction of Galahad here comes the mechanic where certain things, like limit breaks, GFs and magic can be taken away from you.

 But I didn't find it to be much of a problem, just hit this thing and keep the party healed up.

 It's got a particularly cool looking attack called Shockwave Pulsar which does a lot of damage.

 But even with this, it wasn't a particularly tough fight.

 Neither was the stage afterwards where Ultimecia gets desperate enough to fuse together with Galahad and has what is possibly the coolest attack ever.

Great Attractor

 Yes, she's throwing planets at them.

 That's so cool.

 It also makes them look like they're giants, and I think that's funny.

 Apart from this, the Ultimecia/Galahad combo isn't much of a threat, the use of powerful spells is what she does, but with good defences and high health, it's not a problem.

 There's two interesting things about it apart from the Great Attractor attack.

 The first is that the form kind of looks like Giratina.

The Renegade Pokemon

 The second is that the back end falls off after you've hit it enough.

"I can't stand this manicure!"

 I don't know why, I really don't.

 I saw my party attack, they were hitting the front part.

 So, after this excercise in desperation the next stage it...

 Well, it's hard to be sure what's exactly happened.

 She turns into this, but I get the distinct feeling that she really didn't want to.

 She doesn't go, "you fools, this isn't even my final form!" She just kind of gurgles and explodes, then this thing shows up.

 Just look at it.

 She's bound, the top half has her upper arms bound behind her back, forcing her into this uncomfortable and kind of sexual position, and the bottom half has what looks like the actual Ultimecia hanging upside down and bound with blood vessels.

 It's almost Silent Hill-esque in its design.

 She also makes this speech, and by 'her' I do mean the faceless top half, about how she's Ultimecia and that time will compress and existence will be denied.

 ... We know you're Ultimecia, love, why are you telling us this now?

 This is one of the best parts of the whole end sequence, heck, one of the best parts of the game.

 In this form Ultimecia is really tough.

 She has an attack called 'Hell's Judgement' which takes the entire party down to one HP, and she can and will knock them out with other attacks.

 One of which is Apocalypse, a spell that both she and you can draw from her lower half. Further suggesting that the top half... isn't the same person as the lower half.

 Just as Edea was seperate from Ultimecia, the top half of Ultimecia and the bottom half in this form are seperate entities.

 So maybe she's just a woman who is being possessed by some immortal and timeless entity. Which would be kind of cool, and more fulfilling than just some random woman from the futuuuure.

 Near the end of this battle, she gives another short speech, this time telling them to reflect on their lives and that time marches on and escapes you, no matter how hard you try to hold on.

 That's... odd.

 As far as we know for certain, Ultimecia is just some random woman from the futuuure, so why this speech? This is the kind of speech that someone who knows the heroes all along would make.

 But she hasn't. She's possessed people, sure, but she hasn't really interacted with these losers.

 I don't get it.

 Upon dying, she doesn't explode. Everything goes staticy and she dissolves from the top down, leaving the true Ultimecia's head as the last thing to disappear.

This is increasingly Silent Hill-ish

 This leaves the party in a white void, running around with that Moloko video effect I keep referencing and seeking each other out.

 Well, except Zog, who for some reason gets special treatment.

 We cut from Nina shouting for him to him standing in a black void. He barely has time to wander where the hell he is before his younger self runs by and he finds himself in the orphanage.

  He runs into Edea, who isn't at all worried by the sudden appearance of a leather clad man who talks about one of her charges like he knows something about him. This orphanage is in the middle of nowhere, any normal adult would be a bit concerned by the sudden appearance of a stranger.

 Well, unless they thought he may have appeared to attempt to adopt somebody.

 Which might be the case here, although Ultimecia shows up before we have the opportunity to find out why Edea is so chill.

 Although she's still really chill when Ultimecia shows up, so maybe Edea just has a really broken sense of potential danger.

 Zog tells her that he's fought this woman, and that he thought he'd 'defeated' her (although I usually read 'defeated' as 'killed' in these situations).

 Yet in the face of this, Edea tells him not to worry and that all Ultimecia wants is to hand her powers over to someone else because:

I'm a bit weirded out that she's so open with this.

  Wait, so what does this mean exactly?

 That they're doomed to some kind of tortured afterlife if they don't hand their powers over, or that they cannot die unless they hand their powers over?

 Are Sorceresses functionally immortal?

 I'm actually inclined to believe the latter, as it would explain a couple of things.

 Mostly how Edea and Adel both look so young.

 But also how Adel being trapped in the satellite would work as a long term solution. If she can't hand her powers over, she can't die, and if she can't die then they can just keep her trapped until the end of time and the problem of her Sorceress line is sorted out.

 Because, by the sounds of things, this isn't an automatic process. When Ultimecia had Edea hand her powers over to Nina, we learned that this process is not dependent on a Sorceress dying.

 So, in order to prevent one of the girls from ending up with Ultimecia's powers, Edea chooses to recieve Ultimecia's powers instead.

 Although Ultimecia doesn't seem keen on the idea, although if she is being possessed by some immortal and timeless entity, it would explain why it happens anyway. Just as Edea handing her powers over to Nina was Ultimecia's doing.

 After this is done, we find out that we will never discover what SeeD stands for.

 Because Edea didn't actually come up with the mind numbingly stupid and cruel idea of training children to fight Sorceresses (or which there were a grand total of two at the time, including her), Zog gave her the idea.

 So SeeD doesn't actually stand for anything.

 Although, this exchange does clear up how to pronounce it, because there is no way in hell that Edea worked out how to spell it by a teenage boy telling her that gardens train seeds. He has to have told her that they train 'seedys'.

 Which is hilarious.

 She isn't impressed when she finds out who he is and demands that he return to his own time, which he does.

 Or at least tries to.

 He returns to the black void being all 'don't worry about me, I'm not alone' and then he shouts for the others and gets no response.

 So, yeah, he is alone.

 I'm really not sure how to describe the next cutscene. It's a combination of Nina and Zog wandering around vaguely looking for each other and then Zog finds a feather and has some kind of weird fever dream comprising of a bunch of CGI cutscenes from elsewhere in the game and this one cutscene where Nina's space helmet smashes open for some reason...

Damn, that looks cool.

  And it's blurry and staticy and it's hard to make out what the point of it is, and by god, they clearly want to make some kind of connection between Nina and Ultimecia.

 Once it's all settled down, Nina finds Zog passed out in a wasteland, and she gets all sad and stuff and then... I don't even know, brings the world back to life?

Praise be to Amaterasu

 After this we see a cutscene with Seifer, Fuujin and Raijin, which is cute.

 Then Laguna reminiscing about the second woman he started a romantic relationship with and then left to worry and die after giving birth. (Why is Julia even in this game?)

 Ellone joins him too, which... eh. It's not like I care.

 With this, we get to the credits and a cutscene of the party using a video camera which is probably supposed to be cute, but isn't really.

 And we end on Nina and Zog kissing.

 D'awww, she lied.

 I feel so confused by this whole segment, I don't feel like anything important has been explained. It's just things I don't really care about that got 'wrapped up'. Like, I don't really care if Edea and Cid got back together.

 I don't care about Laguna and Raine's relationship. I was never given an adequate reason to.

 I understand the idea of intrigue and mystery, but this feels more like they started a plot that they didn't know how to deal with, so they thought that if they concentrated on a romance then they could get away with not developing things properly.

 I can feel this devolving into a massive rant, which I'll post up tomorrow.

 Grrr.

One last delay

 Due to severe insomnia I didn't have the energy to write a post yesterday, and I barely had the energy for that quick Eurovision post on Sunday.

 Because of this, the finale is being delayed until Thursday and I am going to have it done by then if it kills me.

 My final thoughts on the game will follow on Friday.

 The new let's play will be announced on Tuesday and begin the Tuesday afterwards.

Omega Weapon Art

 My head hurts and I'd like to make the finale as special as possible, so I'm going to be posting it on Tuesday.

 For now, here's a plain version of the Omega Weapon and a quick study I did to nail down how I wanted to deal with drawing the head.

Study.

 This one has the event file up on the PGN community network here.

 (I cannot wait until they enable oe6 files).

Omega Weapon

 I'd better get started on that finale then!

Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Eighty Six

 Part Eighty Five

 Masterpost

 Day Thirty Seven: Megido Flame On!

 Today is a special edition of the Final Fantasy VIII Let's Play Log, because the goal is to take on the Omega Weapon.

 I thought you may be more entertained watching me actually doing it, so I've created a video log of the event.

 I hope you enjoy.

 Next time we finally go to confront Ultimecia.

 See you in Part Eighty Seven!

Let's Rework... Final Fantasy VIII - Part Nine

 Before I get started on the post proper, I thought I'd quickly let you know that I have an editorial about folk heroes up on Fission Mailure.

 Let's Fix the Menu System

 Since I've had to wrestle with the menus so much in preperation for the fight with Ultimecia, I've ended up with a few ideas on how to streamline the process of junctioning.

 Yes, if you take my advice and start your proper junctioning regimen from the beginning of the game you probably won't have this problem, but there are still times when you get new characters in your party and you need to assign them junctions. Like when Rinoa joins you, or you end up having to tow Irvine around.

 On top of that, there will also be times when you'll need to do overhauls of magic and junctions because you've gained access to better spells.

 When you get the mid level magic refine ability, for example, or access to Wizard stones.

 Not to mention that you may just want to change how you have your characters set up because you don't like how you did it before.

 Suggestion number one:

 The Magic Pool

 I mentioned this in the first Let's Rework post, there needs to be a repository for spare magic, because you're not always going to have space for all of th spells you want on your varying party members.

 In addition to this, it could functionally work as an MP restoring item if the player is allowed to draw directly into it.

 I maintain that this would make the junctioning and magic system more enjoyable to use because you could swap out a full century of spells for another without playing musical SeeDs.

 However, there is a potential alernative that could work fine by itself.

 The Ability to Discard Magic

 I searched for a way to do this, but I couldn't find one.

  Sure, you can refine it away, but what about if you have a number of a spell not divisible by the number you need to refine it up to the next level? You have to refine items into that round nummber and then refine up, and that's a waste of items and if you're maxed out, then it's pointless.

 Just have a discard option, or if you want it to be difficult to do, have it be a GF ability. Maybe have a side quest to get the GF in question, or an item so it can be learned like the Devour ability.

 Heck, have a shop run by a little old lady that's the only way to discard magic. Call it 'Gytha's Magic Emporium' or something. I don't care how it's framed, I just want the ability to discard magic.

And just in case I missed how to do this, I'd like it to be made clear to the player because I've been playing this for ninety goddamn hours and I didn't notive a way to do it.

 The Ability to Refine from the Junction and Magic Menus

  I keep referring to sorting all my characters out as 'wrestling with menus' because you basically have to go back and forth constantly between the Magic menu and the Ability menu to refine magic from items or refine magic from other magic.

 Adding a basic option at the top of the magic menu of 'refine' which lets you pick a spell and refine it into other spells or other spells into it would be fantastic.

 It would save a lot of time.

 It would save even more time if you could also do this in the Junction menu, since you do need to have a good amount of any spell junctioned to one of your stats pretty much all the time.

 I've seen other people complain about the micromanagement in this game, and there is a fair amount, but what makes it a more frustrating than what you do in Final Fantasy: Tactics Advance 2 is that there's about five different menu options that you need to dive into to customise characters. In FF: TA2 you could do it from the varying menu options, but you can do most of what you need to in one fell swoop at a shop and the other menu that you need covers multiple things too.

 Micromanagement isn't necessarily bad, as long as it's streamlined and allow big changes to be made quickly in an intuitive fashion.

 Speaking of, one of the other changes to make the micromanagement more intuitive would be...

 The Ability to Assign GFs from the GF Menu (and Use Abilities)

 Or, to have a look at GF skills and stats from the Junction menu.

 I have had to write down the things that I needed to make sure all my characters were well rounded out with abilities because I needed to look at their abilities in the Junction menu, go through the abilities that the GFs had in the GF menu and then go to the Item menu to teach any abilities that were needed and then go back to the Junction menu to junction the GF to the character. Oh, and if I didn't have the item, I needed to go the Ability option to call shop, get whatever it is I need and then use another ability to refine it into something else if that's what has to be done. I was forgetting what I needed to do because the method is so convoluted.

 So allowing the player to assign GFs from the GF menu would cut out several steps, folding the Ability menu into the GF menu would also make this a lot easier and a heck of a lot faster.

 Heck, it would also be great if they gave us...

 The Ability to teach Abilities from the GF Menu

 Same principle, really.

 Hmm, that's all I can think of on that front for the moment.

 The next FF8 post will be about fighting the Omega Weapon, and it will have a special twist!

Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Eighty Five

 Part Eighty Four

 Masterpost

 Day Thirty Six: I'd Make a Terrible Art Historian

Omnomnomnom

 Okay, we've finished the pancakes, so it's time to get that key and beat those boss monsters again.

 ... After I make sure that I actually junctioned everyone correctly so that they don't get punked out by some random Torama again.

 Which takes about five minutes because I've got to wrestle with the menus again.

 Look, I like the idea of Death Lvl 5, but there really should be some kind of algorithm to deal with when you've maxed out a party, because a maxd out party should not be killed in one go so damn easily by a regular monster.

 After finishing up fixing what the developers should have already dealt with, I headed back to the storage room in order to get the key again.

 This is where I continue talking about the lift puzzle some more.

 Last time I had Irvine, Zog and Nina on the right hand side, but this time I happened to have Quistis, Zell and Selphie on the right. It didn't work this time and it took me a moment to figure out why.

 It's not a case of stepping on a button or pressure plate, this is basically a massive set of scales and two young women and a teenage boy aren't heavy enough to counteract the weight of Zog's angst and Irvine's massive coat.

 So, we head back into the storage room, feeling more confused than ever as to why Ultimecia would make her storeroom a team effort to get to, and grab the key.

 Head back to the armoury and dungeon to take down Gargantua and Red Giant again.

 This time however, I chose to break the seal on using GFs so I could use Him on Red Giant, because if you do, he says this.

It was last time, I just didn't summon the devil on you.

 Eh, it was interesting, so I went for it.

 Now we've played catch up, it's time to move onto pastures new and beat up some other bosses.

 In order to get to one of them, you need to go to the fountain in the courtyard-y place and grab the treasure vault key.

There's a sparkle to let you know that it's there.

 I explored the waterway, and there's a Three Stars there if you really want one, but apart from that, there's really nothing of interest there, you just end up in the dungeon again.

 Before heading to the vault, I went to the art gallery and solved the puzzle there in order to face another boss.

The puzzle basically consists of looking at this one big painting and working out what the title of that painting is by looking at other paintings in the gallery and working out what the title of the painting is.

 This would have been much easier for me to work out if the painting didn't look like this.

What the hell even is that?

 I know what it is now, and I still can't see what the hell that is. Doug could see it, I couldn't.

 Long story short, the names you need to pick out from the list are as follows.

Viator, Intervigilium, Vividarium

 Picking the name makes the painting change and a boss monster pop out.

Purdy.

 This thing is called Trauma and it is weak to wind based attacks, so guess what I spammed it with.

 Apparently, if you Mug the little sidekicks it spawns, you can get Meteor stones, but I didn't know this when I fought it, I just Tornado-ed and Aero-ed it to death.

 Incidentally, there's a painting of a lady wearing red in this gallery. Maybe this is what Ultimecia used to be like.

That, or Ib in Medieval cosplay

  The last boss (for my play through anyway) can be found in the treasure vault, which is on the left side of one of the long corridors.

 There are a bunch of empty chests that you need to all open in the style of one of those 'you turn this thing, the things adjacent turn too' puzzles that Zelda games love so much, once you do, this guy shows up.

He looks like a recoloured Behemoth.

 This guy was really funny to fight.

 I have my characters junctioned so that they get healed when they get hit by most elemental attacks, including Thunder. Which this guy just kept using.

 I think he used a regular attack maybe... once or twice, but he just kept using Thunder based magic on me, which just healed me up, so he was incredibly stupid during this whole fight.

 "It's healing you? Maybe it won't this time."

 Oddly, considering he had a unique spiel at the beginning of th fight, he doesn't say anything at the end of it.

 Huh.

 With his death, we break the last annoying seal and can go on to fight Ultimecia.

 Or the Omega Weapon.

 Which... Well, I'll give it a shot, but I'm not going to win. So, find out how badly I lose next time, in Part Eighty Six!

Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Eighty Four

 Part Eighty Three

 Masterpost

 Day Thirty Six: It Was Published as 'The Red Man' in the UK

 We're back!

 Let the boss amble continue.

 Well, after I've finished junctioning everyone.

 Ugh, it's not fun, let me tell you. You need to junction everyone with a view to being their best from practically the beginning of the game. Basically, once Seifer has left your party, you need to be in 'we can rebuild them' mode through the entire game. Switching junctions about is all well and good, but there are a handful of times (such as this and the Laguna and Co. sections) where only having three viable junction profiles is a massive detriment to gameplay.

 Once done, I could get back to the job of finding bosses and killing them.

 Fun times.

 There's a puzzle in the castle that I really like, but I'll have to cover why that is later on.

 For the moment, here's a picture of the part I'm talking about.

Woo, puzzle.

 So, all you have to do is have one party on the left and the other on the right to lift them up to the blacony on the left there.

 Much to my surprise, there wasn't a boss battle in the next room. Just a key for the floodgate.

Well, this is disappointing.

  Why on earth would you make your storeroom this awkward to get to? Does Ultimecia hate her servants? Or, considering that she doesn't appar to have anything, do she like making her own life awkward for no reason whatsoever?

 In order to get to the lift on the right, one party has to go all the way around to the gallery and then over a bridge thing to get to it.

It's a nice view.

 Yes, that is a save point, which is why, combined with the fact that getting there was awkward, I thought there was a boss in there. Not that this would have done me any good, I can't save.

 The awkwardness isn't even for protecting something valuable, there's nothing valuable in there.

 The key sure isn't, but we'll get to that in a minute.

 The next place I went was the dungeons. Which isn't as dramatic or as exciting as it sounds.

Eh, I've seen worse.

 To the left is the dungeon, to the right is the armoury.

 The dungeon is a single room and it's not very large. It also has two doors and a single dessicated corpse.

Who is this person, how did the die, why are they here?

 This is a lame dungeon. A couple more corpses would have been great.

 You may have noticed the key hanging from a skeletal arm.

 One wonders how that works, was their arm propped up in that position until rigor mortis set in and then the prop removed?

 Also, I see this alot on tv and in movies (particularly anything pirate related) and I wonder if this ever actually happens in real life. And if it does happen in real life, what are the sorts of time frames we're talking about? How long is the window between them being dessicated and being skeletons and falling apart?

 Anyway, I digress, taking the key causes another boss to appear.

 He's basically a recoloured Iron Giant. Which means he has the duckface mouth that makes me feel mildly uncomfortable.

He's imaginatively called 'Red Giant'

 He's resistant to most things, an will happily scoff at you when you try.

 However, use Meltdown on him successfully and the guy will stop scoffing and you can hit him really hard.

 Hit him enough and he drops his sword. Which... isn't a smart move, if we're being totally honest here.

 Once he dies, he bucks the trend of the other bosses and doesn't explode. He just loses his colour and drifts away into sparkly dust.

 Considering he's a machine, exploding would make sense for this one yet he's pretty much the only one who doesn't.

 Defeating him allows us to use the key to get out of the dungeon. Yes, the key to the dungeon was in the dungeon.

 Not only is this nonsensical in world, it's mildly baffling from a design standpoint. It's like there should be a challenge or puzzle in here, but there isn't.

 At the very least I would expect that I could leave through the other door, but the key only opens the door I came through. So, all in all, it's been something of a massive disappointment.

 From here I headed to the armoury on the right.

I wasn't expecting it to be this literal.

 Is that a Vysage?

 I think I've brought these up before, they're just a head and hands sticking out of the ground.

 Once the battle starts, we'll have a better idea.

 Yes! It is!

 Not too hard to kill, but once you do...

 Are all the Vysages like this? Do they have bodies under th ground? I like to think they do, and the ones that are the hands with something else between them are just really shy.

 I like the design of this. I think it's actually kind of a shame that the Hollows in Bleach don't look more like this.

I'm gonna call Gargantua a 'he', because look at those shoulders.

 This would be a massive shame with Grimmjow, but these are sacrifices one has to make, unfortunately.

 This guy's not super hard, as there is a trick to defeating him.

 Cast Zombie on him and then Full-Life and he goes down super easily. He's probably the only boss in the game this works on, he's definitely

 After this I started running around trying to find the lock for the floodgate key I found in the store room.

 It took me five minutes before I realised that the lock is actually in the dungeon foyer area.

 I felt a fool.

 Although not as much as when I ran into a Torama with Zell, Quistis and Selphie that cast Death Lvl5 on them and killed them all in one go because I forgot to junction Death to their status defence.

 It makes me so mad I need to eat pancakes.

Sugar and lemon juice. Classic.

We'll be back once I've eaten these in Part Eighty Five.

Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Eighty Three

 Part Eighty Two

 Masterpost

 Day Thirty Five: Boss Amble

 Beating Tiamat was pretty easy. The way I had Irvine and Zog set up meant that whenever she used her overly dramatic attack (seriously, it's telegraphed by being spelled out), she actually ended up healing them for me.

 Unfortunately, Nina got knocked out, but it wasn't any great loss.

 Apart from having to go all the way back to the entrance of the castle.

 The seals don't work once you leave.

 Speaking of the entrance of the castle, check out how amazingly observant I am by looking at this picture of the foyer.

I joked in the last part, but this place really does remind me
of Beast's castle.

 How did I miss that?

 Okay, I know how I missed that, I went to the left instead of up the stairs, but I'm still somehow amazed that I didn't see this thing.

 Look at it, it's so...

 Garish.

 It's also really easy.

 I hit it a bunch and it revealed a stage two, even though it went down so fast that it was barely worth mentioning.

I do like the design of the second stage more though.

 It's a real shame it wasn't more difficult, though that's probably a. on purpose since it's the first boss in the castle and b. not true for everyone since I spent so long grinding everyone up to level one hundred.

 Through the door the flamboyant sphinx was guarding is a chandelier. Thankfully not a crystal chandelier because it falls to the floor once you step on it.

 Which you actually need to do, because otherwise you can't get into the wine cellar to defeat the boss down there.

 The crashing chandelier breaks open a trapdoor, but not anything else in the room.

Before he crouches, Irvine flips his coat out of the way.
Awww.

 I personally find this odd.

 The boss in the wine cellar seems totally unphased considering a chandelier and three teenagers crashed into the ground about its head.

Too drunk to care, one assumes.

 It's one of those bosses that tells you how to defeat it.

 No, it doesn't telegraph how to defeat it, it actually tells you.

How helpful!

 I didn't even use elemental attacks on it. I couldn't, my magic and GFs were still sealed.

 Not that it made any difference, I just smacked it to death with very little difficulty.

 The next boss was harder.

 To get to this one you need to have one party stand in the green circle in the room with the trapdoor depressing a lever which somehow prevents the chandelier from falling, allowing the other party to use it to get to the door on the other side.

 Through that is a balcony, and this bastard.

This always looks silly.

 It was definitely the toughest boss I've faced in this castle.

 It counters hits with a powerful magic attack and it takes very little damage.

 However, with healing magic and Shell, I persevered and managed to defeat it. Go me.

 I did some more exploring, but while doing this I realised that I really should get around to optimising everyone's junctions because having two workable teams was going to make getting around the castle much easier than having to swap junctions or make sure I have the right party in the right place all the time.

 I... kind of regret my decision.

 See how I manage next time, in part Eighty Four.

Let's Play: Final Fantasy VIII - Part Eighty Two

 Part Eighty One

 Masterpost

 Day Thirty Five: Straight Back on the Complain Train

 Look, look at my glorious accomplishment.

It is a thing of beauty.

 It's the greatest thing that I have ever achieved in all of my days. Choirs of angels will sing praise to my name for all eternity.

 There's no achievement for this, even though it took literally forever. Remember, Nina was at level twenty six, Irvine at level forty six and Selphie at level forty nine and they all had to be levelled up separately so they could get the stat boosts.

 Boo, I'm glad I did it though, all that's left to do before the final battle with Ultimecia is to make sure everyone is junctioned to be as strong as I can get them to be.

 For now, though, it's time to head into Ultimecia's awesome looking castle. Oh yeah, I've been looking forward to this.

 Wait, were they all even in the trippy falling through the sky, landing in water and ending up being saved by birds only to get into a fight with a sorceress bit?

 Nope!

 I changed my party up in the over world a couple of times, but I'm still not entirely sure A. how Selphie and Irvine got through time compression like everyone else did or B, where the rest of the party even is when you're not using them.

 Irvine and Selphie were nowhere to be seen the entire time during the time compression scene, so I genuinely have no idea how they ended up in the future.

 The confusion about the location of non-battle party members is highlighted not only by this section, but by what happens in Ultimecia's castle.

 We'll get to that in a second, first there's something else that needs to be addressed.

 There's this one part of Chrono Trigger where the party is captured and stripped of their items and weapons and need to get them back.

 This is a little bit like that, only to the point of being totally excessive.

 What this basically means is that you are more or less crippled for the final battle against Ultimecia unless you go around the castle, find every boss in the place and beat them up. A task also made harder by the fact you can't use magic, items, GFs, Command Abilities (like calling shop), your Limit Breaks or revive KOed characters if you do have access to magic or items.

 Not being able to use Draw is also a problem, but I will get to that in a minute.

 For now we're going to go back to the problem of where the non-battle party members go.

 You're probably thinking I'm being pedantic on this front, and you may be right, but the thing is, I've played Breath of Fire II, and that game actually explains where your non-battle party members go.

 Breath of Fire just had them with you but only had a battle party of four, which doesn't make all the sense in the world, but is functional enough to ignore. Breath of Fire II had the party members who were not in battle with you hanging out in a big house and were teleported to and from your current location by dragon god statues.

 I can cope with either no proper explanation, like Breath of Fire, or a good explanation like Breath of Fire II or Chrono Trigger (which did something similar, only it wasn't just a house).

 Final Fantasy VIII doesn't bother to explain it until almost at the end of the game (they're in Ragnarok) and doesn't actually bother to explain how the save points work to change party members.

 Then you can change party members freely in the field, then there's this bit where they get back together, which seems ridiculous considering the plot of the game that makes it look like they've been seperated by the time compression yet puts them into two groups of three instead of one of four and one of two which would make more sense.

 Then there's this!

 When you use these, your current party is left on the glowing green circle you selected to switch on. They're necessary for puzzles.

 I'd say it was clever, but there's reasons it really isn't.

 The first of which is that it just adds more confusion to the non-battle party members location thing.

 I wouldn't mind if they hadn't bothered explaining it at all! But they've explained it just enough that it's become an incoherent mess of a mechanic in terms of in world explanations.

 Players can forgive a lot for the sake of game play, but when you half explain a thing like this, you've suddenly brought attention to it and then disbelief starts wading back in.

 Maybe I care too much about this, but I've spent a lot of my time playing RPG. It's my favourite genre of video games and I don't like it when something so simple, yet so visible, is done so badly.

 Especially by a company that's done it so well before!

 -sigh-

 Okay, time to get back to why not being able to Draw is a big problem.

 From the foyer, I went to the left down a corridor.

You know what I always say; if it's not Baroque, don't fix it!

 Then in the next room I went through the door at the back, and kept going straight.

 From here there's a bridge and you end up in a clock tower, keep making your way up and this is how you get to Ultimecia. You absolutely do not have to get the ability to do anything other than hit her with things. Or shoot her, if you're Nina or Irvine.

Why would you want to do this? Are you some kind of masochist?
Did you have a bad childhood?

Since this is a monumentally bad idea, I decided to investigate this swinging thing in the tower.

I see the pendulum, but that's not really a pit, is it?

 What you need to do is jump on it and then jump off on the other side because through that door is this:

 This is Tiamat, you can draw Eden from her if you can't get it from the Ultima Weapon (because he's a cheatey, cheatey bastard).

 Except you can't if you haven't got your draw ability back, which at this point I haven't.

 I don't need to, but it's the principle of the thing!

 Also, there's no warning about this, which has been a problem for a lot of the side quests and GFs in this game.

 -sigh-

 I don't expect to be led around by the nose, but some warning would be nice.

 Maybe things will be better in Part Eighty Three, see you then.