It's not quite as concise as the answer
the God entity gave
in Star Trek V. Too bad this
game's story can't stay quite as focused as that movie's did. It's
like I was saying in that last video I did. It seems like every time
we change disks in this game, we start what could very well be a
whole new story, and that says nothing about all the Laguna
interludes we get along the way, which could have been their
own game, too.
The
story we're getting for Disk Three is that now Edea's pretty much
free of her Sorceress powers now, because she was possessed by the
spirit of this whackjob Sorceress from the future and having us slap
her around was enough to knock her free. This means that we now have
to go looking around for whoever's got the powers instead now. The
only real clue we've got at present is that Rinoa's essentially dead
in the Garden's infirmary.
The
only other almost worthwhile bit of information we've got is that
there's this other person called Adel, in that Eshtar place Laguna
and friends were at war with awhile ago, who had the Sorceress powers
for awhile. Something else happened along the way that made them
jump to Edea when she was just a wee lass of five. Thing is, though,
that was apparently a while before that business Laguna and his guys
were doing 17 years ago, game time, because it seems by then, Edea
had grown up enough to get confused with Adel. Either that, or Adel
was only a kid then, too. Either way, we're probably going to have
to go look for her at some point. And that Ellone kid that's been
showing up from time to time, because she's got the ability to send
people's minds to the past for some reason. Turns out, the future
Sorceress, named Ultimecia, wants that so she can compress time
for... reasons, I guess.
But
before we can even get to the point where Edea explains any of that,
Cid does show back up to explain just where the hell he's been all
this damn time. He says he ran away and hid because he couldn't face
the no-win situation he'd gotten himself into. The fact that he knew
victory meant the death of his wife and that defeat meant the end of
everything was just more than he could take. He says he understands
if we're mad at him for pussing out on us when we kinda needed him
the most. The way I look at it is it's something we can call even,
because I suspect that most men I know would probably be just as, if
not more, pissed if I beat the hell out of their wives or
girlfriends, even if I had good reason to. At least we got her back
alive and sane, at least for now, and she told us what the story is
now and even gave us a few clues to work with.
With
all that in mind, Squall finally starts cluing the others in to the
fact that yeah, he's got a boner for Rinoa. The others, including
Cid and Edea, are understandably annoyed with him as a result,
because there's a somewhat more important conversation going on.
After all, there's the soul of some time witch going around now, and
it wants to mess up the universe or something, and we don't even have
any ideas where to start looking for it.
Back
on the command deck a short while later, Squall finishes telling the
rest of Balam Garden about it, and that we're going to leave Edea
alone for awhile while we go looking for other clues. Kinda wish I'd
had the sense to talk to the other folks in the room before I had
Squall go cry over Rinoa's seemingly dead body some more. That way,
I might have known there was another Laguna scene that I needed to
have a party all junctioned up for.
There
would be another Laguna scene here, too. What sucks about this one
is that it's where whatever semblance of story this game might have
had before really does start going down the shitter. At least with
the Squall stuff I was talking about before, it can be said that the
writers were, at worst, just pulling things out of their asses at
this point. With this little visit with Laguna and Kiros, it seems
like they didn't even have enough left up there for a fart. The
setup we're given is that Laguna and Kiros are going to be in a movie
because our slightly less obnoxious duo is out of money. Why? Well,
Laguna spent a big chunk of the money they got from protecting
Winhill on staying at a hotel, and now they don't even have anything
left to sell.
So,
Laguna gets all dressed up as a knight, with a gunblade like
Seifer's, no less, to be a stand-in for the male lead in a
fictionalized version of their war with the Sorceress. They're at
one of the final scenes, where the Sorceress is about to get beaten
by a red dragon. Turns out the guy who was supposed to be working
the animatronics for the dragon was sick that day, so Kiros gets that
part. Of course, things have to go FUBAR when a real red dragon
comes along after having done who knows what to Kiros. I'd say it
ate him, but I've seen things that lead me to believe even that's
worse than it sounds.
Of
note here: Kiros and Laguna are the only characters there to have
names, adding to my comment about the authors being out of ideas.
Were there no analogs to, say, George Lucas or Sigourney Weaver they
could have come up with for the director and female co-star in this?
Because,
of course, again, if Squall does something, we have to see a scene
where Laguna does it first. It kind of explains the gunblade thing,
I guess. And I suspect we'll go to Eshtar later, too. For now,
though, both Laguna and the dragon have health bars, and we've got a
button-mashing event on the map screen. I'm not sure if it's the way
the game's coded or if it's because my equipment's getting old and
has been through a lot, but there seems to be a hell of a lot of
latency here. I'd try blaming it on the fact that I suck at
button-mashing events, but there's even a bit much lag for that, and
after a good half-dozen attempts, I just got tired of losing. I'd
figured that choosing the “I'm done for...” option would give
Laguna some sort of boost or something, like it did with Squall when
he fought that Galbadian paratrooper on the flying mech, but in this
case, it just leads to a game over, at which point, I decided it was
just time to call it a play session and file my report.
I
begin to see why there's so much frustration with this game nowadays.
My guess is that it has mostly to do with the story, and I'd be
surprised if I wasn't pretty close with that. See, before this game,
it was easy to say that the folks at Squaresoft knew how to tell a
good story. The first seven Final Fantasy games were evidence of
that. Hell, the fourth an sixth entries in the series are two of my
all-time favorite games for just that reason, as I've said in my Text
Plays of those, and the other ones I've either played myself or seen
Let's Plays of are pretty damned good in that regard, too.
Or
there's the Mana series, or the Seiken Densetsu series, as some call
it. Secret of Mana is a great game, story-wise, and so is Legend of
Mana, which came out at around the same time. I've heard equally
good things about other games in the series.
Hell,
I think a lot of folks in the particular school of thought I'm in on
this might even have been willing to call Final Fantasy 8 a fluke if
the series had ended at 9, but that's not the case. I'll just leave
the
explanation of why that is to Spoony.
This
is not to say that there aren't things to like about this game. I
think I may have mentioned the soundtrack before. But the story
kills it for me.
Anyway,
this is where I end up for now. Next time, I'll do it all again and
hopefully get Laguna's duel right. Until then, stay safe, have fun,
keep gaming, and DFTBA!
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