I think I may be getting my Star Trek
movies mixed up here...
But Trek movies aside, where we left
off last time, Squall, Quistis and Rinoa had just gotten back to
Balam Garden and were relieved to see that the place hadn't been
nuked yet. The missiles are on their way, of course, but there are
slightly more immediate issues to be revealed shortly.
As luck would have it, just beyond the
main gate, it seems that all hell has broken loose due to some weird
thing that happened while Squall and the others were away.
Everybody's broken into factions supporting either Headmaster Cid or
some guy called Garden Master NORG. It's all in caps like that, too.
The Garden Faculty are all on NORG's side, while it seems like a lot
of the members of SeeD are on Cid's side. The students seem about
50/50 between the two groups. All anybody seems willing to tell us
about what's going on here is that there are indeed factions and that
Cid's the only one who really knows what's going on for sure.
The trick here is that the only person
who knows for sure where Cid is is his assistant Xu, and the only way
we're going to find her is to go around the Garden and make sure all
Cid's other supporters are
safe first. Since this NORG dude's people let the monsters out of
the Training Center to use them against Cid's guys, there's a fair
bit of fighting that needs to be done. Wouldn't be so bad, were it
not for the T-Rex monsters in there, and even those aren't so bad
now. At least they've got something called Dino Bones to steal and
can be turned into halfway decent cards.
One thing that does
still kinda bug me about this game is how bad the mercenaries from
this company in the soldiers-for-hire business seem to be at actual
fighting. Squall and team seem to be the only ones who are even
halfway decent at there jobs right now, it seems, and these are
people who were claiming to be unable to fight without their weapons
when they were breaking out of the D-DISTRICT prison a few in-game
hours ago. Why does it seem like nobody else there has the good
sense to carry a sword or a gun or a whip or something? At least
they are doing something in that they're trying to get NORG's forces
to spread themselves thin looking for where Cid really is.
Raijin and Fujin
have made it back from Galbadia and are waiting for Squall and the
others in the main lobby at Balam. They're pretty much just like
everybody else in that they don't know shit about what's going on.
When Squall explains to them about the missiles, Raijin and Fujin say
they'll tell everybody the can and then go looking for their buddy
Seifer because their efforts as the Discipline Committee have gone to
hell on them. Raijin says they're doing it out of loyalty to their
friend. Squall wonders, at least to himself, if they know that
Seifer's sworn himself to the Sorceress, and if so, if they're OK
with that. A legitimate concern, of course, but with the kind of
loyalty they show, one would think they would be.
Since this is a
long, tedious process, I'll be taking it slowly, over the course of
two or three play sessions, stopping at each save point to rest.
It's something I wish I'd had the foresight to do with the prison
chapter, but I've learned my lesson about it this time. Plus,
there's what I had to be reminded of in the last FF6 chapter, in that
I learned in college it's best to write with a clear mind.
Continuing on, the
Garden Faculty guarding the parking lot actually has a decent monster
with him for a change. He's got a dragon-type beast called a
Grendel. Kinda makes me wonder if I'll run into Sir Gawain the Green
Knight at some point. At any rate, the Grendel has the Double spell.
I think I might have mentioned having a couple other shots at this
spell. It's a good one to have for putting on stats, now that I've
got the party's magic stat high enough to actually draw it. Even
though I'm generally a heavy magic user when I play games like this
and would ordinarily like spells like Double, or Triple, which we get
later, in this case, it's not such a nifty thing. It's mostly
because we use spell charges in this game, and the more charges of a
given spell are junctioned to stats, the better, which would make it
kind of dumb to go casting two or three spells per turn.
The SeeDs hiding
out in the parking lot have a hologram machine that puts out a good
enough facsimile of Cid that Squall thinks it's the real thing until
the guy running it shuts it off. Unless the one they've got going in
the parking lot is the only one they've got working, I have to wonder
why SeeD isn't using more of these things to keep the NORG guys off
guard. Hell, unless Squall's really as dumb as parts of the Final
Fantasy community give him credit for being, that holographic Cid
sounds like it's a voice upgrade away from being the
EMH from Voyager (especially
this).
Of course, the guy
guarding the dorms has a comparatively weak monster, one that makes
it seem like the dorms were meant as th halfway point of this quest.
The only thing of any real note I found in Squall's room was the save
point, where I thought I'd take a quick break and fix myself some
dinner, since I was doing that segment at a more reasonable hour than
usual.
After the dorms,
the three remaining areas, the Quad, the dining hall, and student
health, are all quite a bit emptier than one might expect, simply
because they'd be places to hide, at the very least. With all the
fighting going on, the only wounded person we see here is right
outside the infirmary, and he doesn't get hurt until after the fight
with the NORG guys. Given that there don't seem to have been any
other injuries or worse, deaths, up to that point, I'm surprised
there weren't more people hiding in the Quad, which is where Selphie
was setting up her Garden Festival. Stranger still, the parts that
had already been set up before Selphie got sent on assignment with
Squall and Zell were still in relatively good shape, all things
considered.
There are also only
four people in the dining hall, which seems strange to me. I know
this military school is supposed to be vastly different from the
land-grant
agricultural school I graduated from, but my memories of the food
service locations were that the places were almost always busy, even
at the most seemingly improbable hours. It oftentimes seemed as
though the two places I most often visited were almost always either
busy or closed, especially the University Student Union, so I have to
wonder how it is that there are only four people there, and none of
them seem to be taking advantage of the opportunity to load up on
free hot dogs, since hot dogs are the game's equivalent of the ramen
that was so popular when I was in school.
After we help the
wounded guy at the student health center and talk with the head
medic, Dr. Kadowaki, who strangely seems to have time to play cards
with us in spite of the fact that she should be busier than a
one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest, we see Cid's assistant Xu
run off to the elevator at the center of the Garden. She gets on and
goes up to the second floor just ahead of Squall and party. When
they catch her on the second floor, Xu asks which side they're on,
Squall tells her the truth, that they're not on any side and have
more pressing things to deal with, as those missiles Selphie and the
others had been trying to stop may very well be on their way, and
they need to go see Cid right the hell now so they can get the word
out. Since Quistis and Rinoa seem just as convinced of this as
Squall does, Xu goes to tell Cid and wants Squall's team to meet her
at Cid's office one floor up.
By the time
Squall's bunch gets there, Xu has convinced Cid of the urgency of
Squall's message and is off to help Fujin and Raijin spread the word
and get everybody out in hopes of keeping them safe just in case the
missiles are really on their way and actually do hit.
Cid's first order
to Squall and the others is to abandon base just like everybody else
is supposed to do. When Squall and Quisits ask where they should
meet him, Cid says he's staying behind because there's some sort of
secret to the Garden that he's going to check out. I may just be
making random, false connections here, but it seems like this secret
may be the thing the fighting's about.
Of course, because
Cid's old (read roughly the equivalent of my age as I write this
[37]), he gets chest pains or something and says that he's getting
too old for that shit. Squall says he'll stay and go in Cid's place,
since it's important enough for Cid to risk his life for. Quistis
and Rinoa say they'll go, too, just to have a full party. Cid asks
Squall why, but Squall won't say, in spite of having lots of good
reasons. What, “This place is my home, too!” is too embarrassing
a thing for Squall to say? So, Cid tosses Squall an elevator key and
says to take the elevator all the way down to a secret level, where
they'll find some sort of machinery that was just there when Cid had
the place remodeled into the Garden.
On the way down,
the power in the elevator goes out, causing it to jam just before it
gets where Squall and team are headed. There's an escape hatch in
the floor that can just be opened, but Squall has to hit the control
panel to see if it'll work all the same before he can open the hatch.
There's a ladder that leads to a secret passage below the hatch, and
the party gets there just before the elevator falls on them.
The passage is
actually part of an old oil storage system beneath the Garden
facility. Squall explains the system for adding elemental aspects to
attacks and defense and suggests adding the fire element to people's
attacks if possible, because that's what the monsters are weak to. I
know it's been awhile since I've griped about the tutorials in this
game, and I feel kind of weird about doing it now. It's just that I
could swear they explained this sort of thing at the start of the
game, and yet here we are, measurably into the second disk and
they're explaining it again.
There are a few
button mashing and switch puzzles in this part of the game. I really
hate button mashing puzzles, in part because I've always been crap at
them, even when I was young. I've just never had the reflexes for
it. So, when we get to the part where there's a door to be opened by
turning a big valve handle, I wind up failing until all three party
members are turning it. Then again, I'm not sure why that wouldn't
need to be the case anyway, since we're talking about a handle that
hasn't been moved in a good twenty years and is under quite a lot of
pressure.
Not long after,
there's a “But Thou Must” sort of thing, where the other members
of Squall's party ask him for orders regarding a ladder they find at
the far side of an apparent dead end. We're given three options: go
as a group, have just Squall go, or send somebody else. I went for
the go as a party because I thought it was a viable option, but the
other party members have none of it, so it falls to Squall to just go
himself. The ladder falls as he goes up it, conveniently landing him
in a control room that grants access to the bottom of the tank the
part's going down in.
At the bottom of
the well, there's one more lever to flip before going on to an
obvious boss fight, as foretold by the convenient save point right
there. Good thing it was there, too, because I died in this boss
fight. I don't recall having died yet in this run. This time, it's
two more slug monsters that are weak against fire. I'm not entirely
sure how I screwed up the first time, but it happens.
Beyond the door the
monsters were guarding is another big chunk of machinery and a
control room. Quisits and Rinoa just stand there looking at the
control panel in front of them, apparently plenty happy to just let
Squall be the one to start fucking with it in hopes that something
happens.
Naturally, it does,
of course. Whatever combination of controls Squall pushed made the
equipment start up and send the control platform shooting up four
stories, straight into Cid's office. At the same time, Balam Garden
turns into one of the goofy vehicles that Final Fantasy is, let's
face it, kind of known for. In the context of the games I've played
in this series, having a Monty Python type flying building is really
nothing unusual, considering all the ships, blimps, birds, and even
perhaps a dragon or two, I've seen over the years.
Cid sends the party
to look around and see if everybody's OK. No serious injuries, but
there's a lot of confusion. A lot of environmental damage, too,
considering the dust storm this thing caused when it took off. Oh,
and there's a lot of wrecked nerves because the Galbadian missiles
did come and almost hit the place. Between what Selphie and gang did
and the giant dust cloud, there was surprisingly little damage from
that. But otherwise, everything's cool.
Back
up on the command deck, Cid needs the party to come back to help him
get the newly-released building, which kind of looks like Farpoint
Station from the series premier of Star Trek: The Next Generation
now, under control. Once again, it falls to Squall to figure this
shit out because apparently everybody else is just too damn dumb to
push buttons and hope for the best.
Just for a moment,
I think I understand my parents a little better as a result of having
seen this part of the game again. See, my whole life, my folks have
been the sorts to save the instruction manuals for every appliance
they ever bought, be it a blender or a new car. In fact, in the case
of the cars, they'd read the things cover to cover, just so they knew
what all these fancy new vehicles do these days. For the longest
time, that seemed a little bit silly to me, but for just a moment
here, I think I understand why that is now. I mean, really, there's
not so much a shred of information on what's even in this building or
whatever the Garden used to be? Nothing that says how the controls
are supposed to work when they are working? Not even a tiny
little instruction manual in Cid's desk or something?
So, when Squall and
party get back to the command deck, it's up to Squall to keep the
Garden from hitting the town of Balam. He pulls it off, somehow, and
manages to set the thing down in the harbor just past the town
without sinking it as well. Not long after, we find Squall trying to
take it easy in his quarters, thinking about how bored he is now that
things have calmed down for a bit. He's also worried about Selphie
and her team, though he'll not admit it for awhile.
Eventually, he does
fall asleep, only to be woken up some time later by Rinoa, who wants
a tour of the Garden. But since this has already gone on for awhile,
we'll get to that next time, when I mess up another Star Trek movie
title, in Balam Garden III: The Wrath of NORG. Until then, stay
safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA!
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