We're only just starting this game, and
already, I'm starting to seriously dislike some of these characters
again.
Seifer, especially. Turns out, he's
got groupies, too, and they're more obnoxious than the ones that like
Quistis. At least Quistis's fans give her room to do what she needs
to do. Seifer's groupies follow him damn near everywhere, and seem
like the sorts who would do just about anything for him, which would
be bad enough if he didn't come across as a complete asshole. But
Seifer seems like one of those mass-murdering pricks who would go on
a killing spree because nobody was willing to just hand him
everything he thought he deserved. And his groupies, named Fujin and
Raijin, would go right along with him.
I feel bad about seeming to make jokes
about that, in light of what pretty much just happened in Isla Vista,
California, I believe, and a couple other places recently as well,
but we've been letting dickheads like that run around almost
unchecked until after they act for so long that we based a somewhat
major character in a well-known video game series fifteen years ago
on that personality type. Every time something like this happens, I
have to wonder if we really and truly don't see crap like this
coming, and if not, why we don't, or if we do, why there's not a
better system in place for at least trying to stop them beforehand.
But enough of the social commentary for now. I'll save it for a
later blog post and get back to the game.
Once Squall gets his school uniform on
and heads to the main lobby, Quistis tells him that he's going to be
part of B-Squad for the test. His squad mates will be a bouncy
martial artist named Zell Dinct and his gunblade-weilding rival
Seifer, who shows up with his entourage, Fujin and Raijin. Quistis
says that the higher-ups have decided that Seifer gets command of the
squad. God only knows why, because, well, see above.
We're then introduced to Headmaster
Cid, who explains that Balam Garden's branch of SeeD, the elite
mercenary force our heroes have thus far been training to join, has
been contracted by the government of someplace called the Dukedom of
Dollet to help them defend against an invading army from the nation
of Galbadia, and this is their final field exam to be inducted into
SeeD as full-fledged members. And no, that's not a typo, that's how
it's actually spelled in the game. I'll get into that closer to the
end of the post.
This bit here is what inspired the most
recent episode of my Observation Time vlog, because I have to
wonder what the hell the folks at Balam Garden had to say and/or do
to sell the Dollet government on letting them send in a dozen cadets
to take care of this. Was there like a half-price deal or something?
I'm not sure how else they could have sold something like that,
because there's a ton of things that could go wrong with this idea.
So, the mission we're on here is to go
into Dollet and take out as many Galbadian soldiers as we can. It's
Squall's team and three other units of students that will be heading
in for this, backed up by nine regular SeeD members backing them up.
Essentially 21 mercenaries against a nation's army. Does SeeD like
killing off its staff, or something?
Squall's unit specifically is ordered
to take the Central Square and then hold position until the order to
pull out is given. Yeah, I know, a boring mission, but there we go.
Or at least one would think, because one of the things that could go
wrong actually does. Seifer gets bored almost instantly and decides
to break orders when he sees a unit of Galbadian soldiers sneak
through the square and head for a broadcast tower of some sort.
Seifer decides that they should go and check it out because
everybody's bored with just following orders. Zell complains, but
Seifer pretty much blows his objection off without even really
acknowledging it. Squall agrees with Seifer, because Seifer's the
unit commander. Both are correct, I suppose, and as somebody who's
never been in a situation like that, it's easy for me to say that I'd
at least try to go a middle route here.
With that, it's off to the broadcast
tower. Along the way, we start having to fight actual monsters as
well as Galbadian soldiers. There's a snake moster called Anacondaur
and what looks like one of the slug things that were crawling on
Spock's coffin on the Genesis Planet in Star Trek III
called a Gezard. This is where we start running into the issue of
enemies that drop tons of seemingly useless junk on the party in the
form of items. This happened last issue, too, but I've already been
able to make use of some of it. One of the monsters on the way to
the Fire Cavern dropped a spider web, which taught Quistis a move for
her limit break, which is blue magic. And I've already taught some
of my Guardian Forces abilities that let me turn some items into
various forms of elemental, at least for now, magic. Some of these
things can also be used as actual items, should somebody have the
item command equipped, I believe. But the Gezards have a bad way of
mostly screws after almost every fight with them, and about the only
real use I've found for them is to upgrade weapons. And yes, I mean
screws as in those things used to fasten various structures together.
Seifer
abandons his post as unit commander instantly when he sees that the
tower is filled with Galbadian soldiers because he wants to have
himself a good old fashioned killing spree. And he's gone for good
now, because his GF is now listed as unattached, and when Selphie,
the girl Squall helped back at Balam Garden, shows up to join the
party, she's got all his magic. Turns out, she's with A-Squad and
has come to tell us that the order to pull out has been given and
we've only got a half hour to get back to the boat.
Before
she can say anything, though, we see Seifer ranting about having a
romantic dream as he goes scurrying off into the tower, in full
kill-frenzy mode. As the rest of the party enters, we see a lift
coming down, which seems to say that Seifer's gone all the way to the
top. Before we take the lift, though, we have a chance to get some
Blind magic from a draw point. I'll give that to Squall and put it
on his sword, since the GF I've got on him has the ability to bind
status magic to his attacks. It's only got a three percent chance of
working right now, but that's better than none, I guess. I do
believe Ifrit came with the ability to bind elemental magic to
attacks, and since Ifrit is on Zell, I've got his attack bound to
lightning magic, which will come in handy in a bit.
At the
top of the tower, we find Biggs and Wedge making repairs to the
tower. Things are in the final stages there, and they're about to
turn the thing on. Wasn't Biggs called Vicks? Or am I thinking of
the other
Text Play I've got going right now. I guess we know what
happened to them after Tritoch zapped them.
Anyway,
after Biggs flips the switch, he sees us and decides to fight. He
wants Wedge to help, but fights us alone for a bit because Wedge is
gone. After a couple rounds, Wedge does show back up. I just
decided to start using my GFs on them, because I've already been at
this for awhile, and the next part's going to take some time, too.
We don't have a chance to beat Biggs and Wedge here because a giant
bee monster, sans Linkara's famous bee
joke, called Elvoret shows up and knocks them aside. At least
Elvoret has a new summon for us, in the form of Siren, and some magic
called Double. Not entirely sure what it's used for, but at least
Siren has a use, because it silences magic-using foes and has some
more abilities for us.
Now,
luckily, the 30-minute timer doesn't start running until after
Elvoret is defeated, because Biggs is still doing well enough to sic
a giant mechanical spider on us. This is one of a few monsters I
don't think they managed to program a proper name in for, because
we're fighting X-ATMO30 or some such thing. The real pisser of this
is that when Spoony talked about having to fight this damed thing
four times in his review, that was a minimum. I must have had to
deal with the damned thing a half dozen times, minimum. I never was
much good at getting this thing off me, and while I know it's the
sort of thing that if done right, only needs to be dealt with once,
I've never been able to get away from it until I got into the city
streets.
And
where is Seifer in all of this? Well, he was too busy murdering
Galbadian solders in the broadcast tower while we were dealing with
Biggs, Wedge, and Elvoret, and then he just buggered right on off to
the boat once the withdraw order was given. Worse yet, once we get
back to Balam, he, Fujin and Raijin abscond with the company car the
Garden had waiting for us when we got back, so the party has to hoof
it back to headquarters. Not an entirely bad thing, mind you,
because it does give us a chance to look around the city of Balam.
It's a nice place. Turns out, Zell's mom lives here, so we can go
say hi. I know my own mom likes it when I do that, so why not,
right? It's worth knowing where a few things are, since we'll be
coming back here soon.
Back
at Balam Garden, we're a couple hours from hearing who passed the
test. There's only four who did: Selphie, Zell, Squall, and a random
NPC. Headmaster Cid has a special comment for all of them. He tells
Selphie that he's looking forward to something called the Garden
Festival. He tells the random guy that being important isn't
important as long as you're good at what you do. Zell needs to check
his emotions, and Cid is happy that Squall is SeeD's first-ever
gunblade user to pass the test. Makes sense, though. Those
gunblades are the video-game-weapon equivalent of me trying to walk:
awkward as hell and far too easy to mess up, so it's no surprise that
hardly anybody else even bothers with them.
Seifer,
meanwhile, has failed the test again, for the umpteent time, and says
he blames Squall and the others for his failure. Yeah, right.
Squall's the one at fault for Seifer's failure, not Seifer's own
kill-crazy mentality, defiant attitude, and refusal to follow orders.
And if I understand what else is going on here, Seifer's pretty much
flunked out of the program at this point. It's only a shame we don't
get to see him going on a killing spree. End Sarcasm. Also, end of
this chapter of the story.
But
before I go, a few other things I need to talk about here. First of
all, the organization Squall's a part of now. It's called SeeD.
Maybe the original kanji, or whatever the Japanese character used in
place of “SeeD”, has some meaning that's lost in translation, but
it seems like SeeD is supposed to stand for something, and we're
never told exactly what, far as I know. All we're ever really told
is that this is a mercenary organization whose members are supposed
to scare the hell out of whoever they go up against.
And
then there's the matter of what we've been doing thus far in the
game. So far, it's all been one big final test for Squall and his
compatriots to join the ranks of SeeD. Now that it's actually
happened, I need to explain what I consider one of the worst features
in this game. See, we're not given money after fighting enemies in
this game, as we have been in previous games, as well as at least the
next in the series. Instead, the various things we were being tested
on, like judgment, courage, fighting style, and the like, were used
to determine Squall's salary level. This is where we get the vast
majority of the in-game money we need for the game. This is going to
suck for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that Squall is
essentially paying for the whole party's weapons upgrades, as well as
expendables, transportation, and lodging when we need it.
And
while I'm at it, I suppose I'd better mention leveling. In virtually
every other Final Fantasy game I've played, the amount of experience
needed to go from one level to the next goes up with each level. In
this game, it's fixed to 1000 experience points between level. That
would be great, except for the fact that the monsters go up in level
with Squall, so the stronger he is, the stronger the monsters are, so
if his levels get too high, some of the monsters can be obscenely
hard, and might even drop different items than what might be expected
or needed.
There
are ways to manipulate that, through the Junction system and the GF
abilities, but I could never get the hang of that.
I hope
I'm beginning to give a sense of why I, and I suspect a lot of Final
Fantasy fans like me, find this sequel in particular so frustrating.
The only other sequel that comes close is the original Final Fantasy
II that came out for the original Famicom in Japan. Having played
that myself as part of the Origins re-release, I can say I understand
that system a little better. There, you get more health by getting
the crap kicked out of you, and you can use more and stronger magic
by using it, and your battle power goes up the more you fight, as
examples.
But
anyway, it's late and I've gone long, as I'm known to do when I get
on a roll, so I'd better wrap this up and at least pretend to get
some sleep. Next issue of Final Fantasy VIII, we'll finally get
started with the first story of two that I wish had been the whole
damned game.
See
you soon, folks. I may be coming with something other than a video
game related post next time, but even if I don't, stay safe, have
fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA.
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