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I'll probably make an effortpost about the mechanics of rule manipulation (including the game's lovely random number generator and how to make it work for you instead of against you) when the LP gets to the point of being able to walk back and forth between more than one region of card-playing rules. Which is to say, when we get out of the next new town we'll be visiting.
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Dec 19, 2014 21:08
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Vil posted:Find Your Way (the music played in the Fire Cavern and a few other places, often remote dungeon-like) is really an amazing track. But of course, Force Your Way is also great. Getting places makes for good music no matter how you do it, apparently.
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Dec 19, 2014 21:11
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Force Your Way is the best boss theme in the series.  (it is also a gigantic bitch and a half on ultimate difficulty in theatrhythm ff: curtain call)
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Dec 19, 2014 21:19
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Cool Ghost posted:I might explain the basics, but I've never been really into things like rule spreading, so I'll probably not be getting into deep, deep detail. If you had something in mind to post, go ahead. Oh no, it's more like the opposite. I think I'm one of the few people here that's never touched the game (though I am spoiled on the basics of how things turn out.)
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Dec 19, 2014 22:22
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Wild Knight posted:Force Your Way is the best boss theme in the series. It's basically unaltered from its time as DLC in the first Theatrhythm, where it held the proud distinction of "hardest song in the DLC". It's now straight up the hardest song in the game, with only FFIX's Battle 2 really coming close.
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Dec 19, 2014 22:52
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Bonus Update: SeeD Exam Outtakes Since I didn't want to break up the pacing, I didn't show it during the updates proper, but there are some things that branch and some things that knock your score down in the SeeD exam.  Headmaster Cid: That is why I am hoping you and Seifer will join us in SeeD. First up, of course, is dialogue. Since part of your score is based on not talking to anyone, a lot of people around the exam areas have a couple lines.   Cid here technically has two, and Quistis has one (in this location). A lot of the lines are just telling Squall to move his rear end, so you don't miss out on too much, but I want to be thorough, dammit!  When you're at the boat, this guy gives Squall hell for trying to leave.  Quistis is all business.  But over here is some SeeD giving Quistis poo poo while she's, like, three feet away. Someone's conduct is unbecoming.  On the SeeD boat, you get a chance to talk to people. For full marks, you can't talk to Seifer or Zell.  I think you can talk to Quistis without penalty, but you shouldn't anyway, since all she does is give you a rundown of the Dollet mission. This is about 20 seconds after Xu explains it, so I'm just going to leave that out.  If you tell her it's nothing, you get this.   : Our goal for this mission is to mop up all the Galbadian soldiers still left in Dollet. All you boys have to do is take orders from me, the captain.Should you talk to Seifer, he delivers this "inspirational" speech. Quistis should, uh, probably say something about his attitude.  : Better not piss your pants. : Hah!? You talkin' to me?: Heh heh...: ...Bastard.Talking to Zell actually gives you a little skit, but it's mostly just rehashing the Seifer-Zell dynamic. It's several lines, but nothing special, so it doesn't matter if you need to avoid it for top marks.  If you talk to someone, Quistis's line changes.  Obviously, it's points off to ignore Seifer ordering Squall to look outside.  : ......No.: This is an order from your captain, Squall. Now go outside.: ......Ok.Other than points off, nothing changes. This doesn't even let you skip the cutscene, it's just Squall being a shithead for no reason.   On the beach, you can chat with the members of the other squads. The girl here is, of course, Selphie. The average player won't notice/know it's her, but it's good that she doesn't just appear out of nowhere later on. It's also very like her to be wondering where the action is.  Again, Squall being a shithead for no reason. Even the answerer gets in trouble.  Squad A Promoter: We gotta do what we can without the use of radio waves. So basically, unlike you guys, we use our heads! Hey, Squall uses his head! If it hadn't been there, what would have stopped Seifer's attack?  Talking to him again, he just tells you to gently caress off.  Coming over to talk to this guy just results in Squall insulting him for no reason. : We're gonna be the heroes on the front line!Of course Zell wants to be a big hero. He just doesn't want to get in trouble for it.  Good luck, chief.  There's a fight at the entrance to town, if you'd forgotten. This is Selphie again, nothing else to say on this one.  Outside the pub, you can catch up with Squad C. Squad C Leader(?): ...Is what I really wanna say, but we're not that strong. Go for it, guys!  Squad C Member: Uh... It's not like we're sick 'cause we had a bite to eat here. Well, you do you, Squad C.  Once the party sets up in the town square, you can hassle Seifer and Zell to lose some more points. Talking to anyone once isn't a huge deduction, but there's not much to recommend it, either.  : It's against orders for us to leave our post, isn't it?Trying to jump the gun and go directly to the tower is points off, and nothing else interesting happens.  : Man... Now this is what I call boring. This ain't right, man!You can see in the main update that Seifer alludes to Zell's complaint here even if you don't talk to him. If you do talk to him, Seifer's line makes more sense...and you get marks off.  Hearing this guy's last words? Deduction.  Dollet Soldier: ...It was already closed down then, and... Ugh...I was careless... Reminiscing on childhood with a dying man? Dollet didn't pay SeeD for that, points off.  A larger thing is after we meet Selphie. If you'll remember, we get this choice after not jumping off the cliff. Today, we will be rude about it.  Squall takes a page from Seifer's book here.  Zell does not take being made fun of well.  I like Selphie because she's very chill.  : What the...!! WHY IS EVERYONE...? I am not a CHICKEN!!! : Well, if you don't like CHICKEN, how 'bout...a PIG!I dunno, pig-wuss just doesn't have the same cachet. : Oh, but you look more like a CHICKEN, anyway. : Call me what you want!!! I don't care anymore!!! But if he doesn't take things personally, he wouldn't have a character. Stop trying to make the game bad, Squall. : Tch... Selphie is a fun character because she's very laid-back.  There's also another branch to this path, because you don't actually have to follow the path around.  I don't think Zell is on board with the plan of jumping off this cliff.  I don't think Squall cares if Zell is on board or not.  Zell, he already jumped off the cliff. It's too late to ask that.  If everybody else jumped off a cliff, Zell would too.  There's no conversation with Selphie if you jump off the cliff, plus you get a huge penalty to your Attitude score, so it's inadvisable to jump off the cliff.  Having this conversation with Biggs after the Elvoret fight, while existentially very fulfilling, gives you two points off your Attitude score.  The next thing that changes is what you can do with X-ATM092. In the update, I blew him up after he jumped over me on the bridge.   You can avoid fighting on the bridge by doubling back, which makes X-ATM jump over you again, and then running across the bridge towards town.  If you do this, X-ATM chases you into town.  In the square, you have to "talk" to the dog to shoo it to safety, or else you get a huge penalty to your Attitude score. A score of 100 would drop to 70 if you don't save the dog.  Running from X-ATM092 in the town is very simple, since it has no special tricks like making the screen shake or jumping. You just have to be constantly in motion.  The party stops every now and then to be scared of the robot, though.  Not blowing X-ATM up means this car gets wrecked, so you should feel bad.    Once squad C is gone, you can duck into the pub to hide, but doing so is the single biggest deduction to Attitude you can get, and would send a perfect score down to 30.  If you do hop into the pub, X-ATM092 loses track of the party.  And you end up siccing it on Squad C. Whoops!  It doesn't come back, by the way. Hiding in the pub gets rid of the machine permanently.  It's not much use, though, since once you're on this screen, you're pretty much home free.  As you can see, the timer is gone now.  And it's time for an FMV!   X-ATM092 has no respect for architecture.  Also, Squall is not doing so well at running away.  X-ATM is still coming. This is pretty intense the first time you play.  Selphie stands on the beach for a second to wait for Squall, and you can barely see Zell in the background rushing to the boat.  The robot's still got a lock on Squall, though.  Here's Squall, diving for the boat.   Then Quistis starts unloading on X-ATM092 with a machine gun.  Since the game emphasises Quistis's role as instructor, it can be kind of easy to forget she's a SeeD as well.   Unlike hits from swords and fists, X-ATM092 can't easily repair bullet damage.  Even after it goes down, Quistis keeps shooting it.  It's dead now. Nice save, Instructor.   Through the closing hatch, Squall even gets to see it blow up.  And then it's off to Balamb!  If you hide in the pub, X-ATM makes a cameo on the beach. It's not destroyed here, it's just on break.   : You can buy some souvenirs... Have a review meeting... It's up to you. I recommend you go back and rest, though.For whatever reason, Quistis's line if you talk to her by choice is longer than her mandatory one.  On the way out of town, there's also an opportunity to hobnob with the locals a little. Gas Pump Fanboy: Me and my girl are definitely gonna be there with our band, all right? I'll see you guys then.  Gas Pump Fangirl: Hey I got an idea. Let's wear something like that for our performance! Naturally, this dialogue is only available right after the exam, when everyone's in uniform.  The last thing to show off is the different responses to Cid's question when you get back to Garden.  Headmaster Cid: Well, that's what it's like at first.   : To actually fight... It was a good feeling.Headmaster Cid: That's the spirit! But don't let it go to your head. Like I said in the main update, I think all the responses to this question are appropriate for Squall. I don't get any sense of the kind of bravado Seifer has from him saying that the fighting felt good, and when he says he was scared, he stills seems pretty matter-of-fact. He didn't wet his pants like the other guy.  Even on this run, where I jumped off the cliff and didn't spend time grinding as Seifer, I got a rank 7 out of the exam (including the penalty for flashing my weapon in the halls).  If you were curious, though, this is the worst SeeD rank you can get. The 10 points for Attitude are totally unavoidable, since the game displays both the worst and second-worst grades as 10 points for that one only. It's probably so Squall doesn't get an actual zero-out-of-five-hundred. Unfortunately, there's no non-standard game over for doing this, even though you have to work for it. You're almost guaranteed to put points on the card just by playing normally. To get this score, I had to: talk to random people something like 21 times, escape from random battles over 10 times, not fight any random encounters in Dollet, and run out the clock for about 17 minutes after escaping X-ATM. Even amateur play would probably get you a rank closer to 5.  And that's all there is for the SeeD exam! Cool Ghost fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Nov 18, 2017 |
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Dec 20, 2014 00:07
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Cool Ghost posted:
Fun fact: the car still manages to get wrecked by X-ATM even if you blow it up before you get to town. There is one and only one difference in town when you later revisit Dollet, and that's whether or not there's a pile of rubble on the beach (there if Quistis blows it up, not there if you blow it up). All the NPCs act like it chased you through town either way. For a game that's usually pretty good about being consistent based on the handful of forking choices it offers you, it's a little odd that it doesn't handle this one as well.
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Dec 20, 2014 00:58
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The scene escaping from the robot was slightly different in the demo, wasn't it?
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Dec 20, 2014 01:15
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Vil posted:Fun fact: the car still manages to get wrecked by X-ATM even if you blow it up before you get to town. There is one and only one difference in town when you later revisit Dollet, and that's whether or not there's a pile of rubble on the beach (there if Quistis blows it up, not there if you blow it up). All the NPCs act like it chased you through town either way. I forget, do you have to revisit Dollet down the line or is it just an optional area now that we're done with the exam? (Speaking of which, would answering my question be counted as spoilers? If so, do not answer.)
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Dec 20, 2014 01:19
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The plot never again sends you to Dollet. The plot stuff there was already wrapped up: Galbadian army wanted the tower up and running, Dollet agreed to that, army went away. It's still a perfectly visitable town on the world map, however.
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Dec 20, 2014 01:23
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Boardroom Jimmy posted:The scene escaping from the robot was slightly different in the demo, wasn't it? I believe so because I believe the demo also gave you a different party.
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Dec 20, 2014 01:25
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curiousCat posted:I believe so because I believe the demo also gave you a different party. Different party, and everyone's wearing their regular clothes instead of uniforms. They rerendered the FMV between the demo and the finished game. In fact, looking at a video of it, the dialogue is pretty substantially different because Seifer's an NPC and not part of your party.
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Dec 20, 2014 02:15
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geri_khan posted:Different party, and everyone's wearing their regular clothes instead of uniforms. They rerendered the FMV between the demo and the finished game. I know I'm the one who asked about it but wasn't the music really different too? I remember the rumor was that the track was scrapped because it sounded similar to a piece of the soundtrack from The Rock.
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Dec 20, 2014 02:28
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As I recall, it's Rinoa instead of Selphie who looks back at Squall as he runs toward the beach at the end. And I don't remember Quistis being in the demo at all. Was it a generic SeeD operating the machine gun, or is my memory screwing with me?Boardroom Jimmy posted:I know I'm the one who asked about it but wasn't the music really different too? I remember the rumor was that the track was scrapped because it sounded similar to a piece of the soundtrack from The Rock.
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Dec 20, 2014 02:39
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Keromaru5 posted:As I recall, it's Rinoa instead of Selphie who looks back at Squall as he runs toward the beach at the end. And I don't remember Quistis being in the demo at all. Was it a generic SeeD operating the machine gun, or is my memory screwing with me? Yup http://youtu.be/d4Htw3YRTkU
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Dec 20, 2014 02:57
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Man, Squeenix is cutting the price of their games! The Steam version of FFVIII is $4.80 on Squeenix's website.
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Dec 20, 2014 03:02
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Kheldarn posted:Man, Squeenix is cutting the price of their games! The Steam version of FFVIII is $4.80 on Squeenix's website. Thanks for the heads up! Picked it up and enjoying the game again.
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Dec 20, 2014 07:57
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If Cool Ghost doesn't mind, I'll put together a post explaining Triple Triad sometime in the next few days. It'll take some time because I'll have to dig out my copy and actually take screenshots to explain it, though.
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Dec 20, 2014 12:18
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The most important rule is the one you can only implement by challenging a certain lady, though.
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Dec 20, 2014 15:59
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Does anything special happen if you hide in the cafe while X-ATM is coming? I've never actually done it, so not sure how things play out. Does it just basically act as though you'd killed X-ATM (e.g., can now encounter regular enemies, no badass Quistis FMV)?
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Dec 20, 2014 16:25
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Pretty much, yeah. You don't even switch screens - your party runs inside, X-ATM runs past down the street, your party runs back out, and after that it acts like you'd blown it up so you don't get the escape sequence. Of course, when rankings come around, you don't get the bonus for blowing it up and you do get the penalty for hiding.
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Dec 20, 2014 18:20
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Vil posted:Pretty much, yeah. You don't even switch screens - your party runs inside, X-ATM runs past down the street, your party runs back out, and after that it acts like you'd blown it up so you don't get the escape sequence. Of course, when rankings come around, you don't get the bonus for blowing it up and you do get the penalty for hiding. Sure, penalize the rookies for avoiding a fight with a superior foe and withdrawing in a timely manner without bringing an angry doomtank right to the exfil point.
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Dec 20, 2014 19:53
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I'm sure SeeD expects their students to uphold the line of duty and trash everything in sight.
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Dec 20, 2014 21:29
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Back when I was playing this game, I didn't actually realize that the path wrapped around. I thought jumping off the cliff was the only way to go. No wonder I never did that well.
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Dec 20, 2014 21:33
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Pvt.Scott posted:Sure, penalize the rookies for avoiding a fight with a superior foe and withdrawing in a timely manner without bringing an angry doomtank right to the exfil point. "avoiding a fight by just hiding and letting it wreck havoc all over the city, murdering dog and human alike, destroying property and ensuring they never hire SeeD again" vs. "avoiding a fight by leading it toward our well-armed submarines".
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Dec 20, 2014 21:40
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Decus posted:"avoiding a fight by just hiding and letting it wreck havoc all over the city, murdering dog and human alike, destroying property and ensuring they never hire SeeD again" vs. "avoiding a fight by leading it toward our well-armed submarines". Actually it was just chasing you, not going on a murderous rampage, so you're kinda assuming a lot. Second, you running away in terror wasn't stopping it from doing anything, nor was it showing how great SeeD are. And don't act like fleeing from it in a panic was part of some grand plan to lead it into a trap; there was no way to know there'd be a deus ex machina solution to the problem on the beach. For all you know, you were leading an unstoppable war machine to destroy the SeeD ships, strand you there, and get your comrades killed. So really, it is more like "run away in a panic and let the enemy back you up into the corner at the beach" = good, and "cleverly evade pursuit and throw your enemy off the trail, allowing you to make a safe withdrawal" = bad.
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Dec 20, 2014 21:50
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Schwartzcough posted:there was no way to know there'd be a deus ex machina solution to the problem on the beach. For all you know, you were leading an unstoppable war machine to destroy the SeeD ships, strand you there, and get your comrades killed. You mean SeeD candidates wouldn't know how their own ships are outfitted? And it's not so much an assumption that it would wreck poo poo if it wasn't focused on targeting the soldiers running from it as it is a given. It was chasing soldiers and already wrecking poo poo in the process, with no regard for civilians or animals or infrastructure. What would happen if the soldiers it was locked onto and determined to chase, for whatever reason, disappeared? It seemed to have some sort of 'searching for combatants' system in place and was wrecking poo poo to get at them. Even though SeeDs were withdrawing, the initial Dollet citizen army would still have been present and potential targets. After all, the robot was not withdrawing with the Galbadian army and was in point of fact chasing combatants, and, again, carelessly wrecking poo poo in the process, so there's absolutely no reason to believe it would have just sort of hosed off and done nothing after losing Squall and the gang.
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Dec 20, 2014 23:40
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Decus posted:It seemed to have some sort of 'searching for combatants' system in place and was wrecking poo poo to get at them. Even though SeeDs were withdrawing, the initial Dollet citizen army would still have been present and potential targets. After all, the robot was not withdrawing with the Galbadian army and was in point of fact chasing combatants, and, again, carelessly wrecking poo poo in the process, so there's absolutely no reason to believe it would have just sort of hosed off and done nothing after losing Squall and the gang. Yeah, I don't think it was specifically set to "Kill Squall or do nothing", it's just that Squall and company happened to be RIGHT THERE when it was searching for targets. If you'd disappeared, it would probably have started rampaging around town looking for targets. Remember, the Galbadians already had achieved their objective, the X-ATM was basically just a final "eff you" to SeeD and Dollet.
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Dec 20, 2014 23:56
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Well, we do see Biggs fiddling with the controls to set the X-ATM loose, and he does say that the party are the targets, so it was specifically chasing them. I don't think that the Galbadians would have turned it loose on Dollet if Seifer hadn't sent the party to the comm tower, to be honest. With that in mind, if you duck into the pub, it would be reasonable to consider that to be leading the tank robot into a place full of innocent people, and that would definitely be marks off. Leading it to the beach is the best course of action because SeeDs are there and their job is to handle poo poo exactly like that.
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Dec 21, 2014 00:09
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This is fine and makes sense as long as we assume that off screen Seifer, Squall and co are all informed that this form of heavy backup will be provided on the beach. This is never presented to the player at all. The glory of FFVIII's plot is that you can either assume it was provided off screen and it all makes sense or that it further represents how FMV driven the writers were when making the game... The decision is up to you. You're an idiot if you agree with the former Weavered fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Dec 21, 2014 |
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Dec 21, 2014 02:02
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Part Twelve: Quistis's Bad Day So, here we are, on our way to go meet Quistis at the secret make out area that people go to after dark. I wonder what she wants.  First, though, let's go visit the gatekeeper.  He doesn't have anything new to tell us right now. It must suck to be this guy if he has to be here 24 hours a day.   If you try to leave, he tells you off. What about the students who commute? Can they just not leave if they're here until lights out?  Try to leave three times, and he gets really mad at you. The idea of him telling our instructor about this is kind of funny, since she's the one who ordered us to bunk off curfew.  Doing this lowers our SeeD rank. Dang.  Thankfully, there's an easy way to get that rank back up.  In the menu, you can find written tests. Each written test bumps your SeeD rank up by one, and you can take all the tests up to Squall's current level. Theoretically, that means I could bump my SeeD rank up to 17 right now, but I'm not doing that because it would be boring and I'm not that hard-up for gil.  The tests consist of 10 yes/no questions like this one, dealing with general knowledge about the world of Final Fantasy VIII.  Most of the questions on the level one test are pretty simple.  I think this is the hardest question on this test, and that's mainly because I don't meticulously keep count of how many elements are in games. The answer is yes, by the way. Some of the questions on later tests can have confusing wording or be annoying bullshit, but I think you get the gist of it here, so I won't bore you with all ten questions.  The important thing is that I passed. Only 100% is considered a pass in the game. Also, I originally did this before I got the rank off for trying to leave, and just rearranged it for the update. My current SeeD rank is 9.  Oh, and if you're really bored, you can review the written tests.  This means you do the test all over again, after you got 100% the first time.  This gets you nothing but this screen. Whoopee.  Before I go to meet Quisits, I rename Siren to Kate Bush.    I also use this handy feature to remove Zell and Selphie's junctions. They're not here, so they don't need GFs.  Garden Faculty: Return to your room. So the Garden keeps students out of facilities after-hours by just having people stand there all night. Seems like a great job to have. Also, since it's late at night, there's no background music playing in Garden right now. I think it's a nice touch.  There's not much going on right now, so let's talk to Quistis.  : I'm not sure...I'll tell you right now, if you've fought T-Rexaur, you'll be sure.  : You can defeat it quite easily by using Status-J. Let's go over status changes in the Tutorial. You can junction status spells to your attack just like elemental spells. It's a good way to put status effects on enemies. Tutorial over. : Well? Use a Sleep attack against T-Rexaur. Just junction 'Sleep' onto your ST Atk-J and attack.Sleep is a pretty terrible status effect, and this is terrible advice. The main problem is that a sleeping enemy will wake up if you hit it with a physical attack, and physical attacks are usually better than magic.   Before we head in, it's important to junction Quistis some GFs. There are random encounters in the training centre, and you don't really want to be stuck with nothing but weak attacks.  At this point, Quistis has no magic.  So I give her Selphie's. It's very easy to rearrange your party in this game, which I really like. Later on, there's even an option to just move junctions over from one party member to another without having to do any of the other menu work. It's great.  Also, even though I still I have them, I won't be using Tornado or Thundaga as junctions here. Water is good enough for now.  Let's get a move on.  The training centre is a pretty nice-looking area. It's very lush.  This walkway looks janky as hell, though.  Look, I just like taking pictures in here, okay?  This is the first of two enemy types in the training centre, the Grat. Grats are not really a threat.  Quistis is very close to gaining a level.   We're already mostly at the point where I can move past first-level spells, since I have QuesoCola's Mid-Mag RF ability or however the game abbreviates it. It lets you take 5 first-level spells, like Blizzard and make them into 1 second-level spell, like Blizzara.  That glowing door there leads to the secret area.  Let's check it out.  Well, here we are. Make-out point.  Just so you know this scene is important, it has its own theme:   Quistis and Squall find a nice place for themselves with a view of the Garden.   Like their earlier chat on the balcony near the ballroom, this conversation is full of pauses when Squall should be talking. : It's after midnight. Quistis is unhappy about something here. : I, Quistis Trepe, am no longer an instructor as of now!Oh. That's probably what she's so bummed out about.   Quistis is speaking to him, but Squall doesn't answer straight away.  The pause here is actually really long. It's uncomfortable if you're playing.  And all for this.  Quistis brought Squall out here for a reason. If she hadn't wanted to speak to him specifically, she could just as easily have come with someone else she knows, like Xu.  When somebody tells you about their problems, this isn't a good answer.  Part of Quistis's firing probably had to do with Seifer's stunt in Dollet.   This kind of gives me the feeling that Quistis was under examination as much as the students were, to see if she could hack it as an instructor, and she just didn't pass.  Faced with someone pouring their heart out to him, Squall literally looks away.  : I did my best...Quistis wasn't a very good instructor, and she does lack leadership qualities.   I really like this conversation because it develops both characters well.   These two lines are just insanely cold, and the way Squall turns away from Quistis, then leans back to tell her to shut up shows how distant and blunt he can be.  To him, though, he's just being pragmatic. Squall's not being a dick to Quistis here on purpose, he's just not considering at all that he might be being a dick.  : I just want you to listen.Remember all the times Quistis finished Squall's sentences, and when she called him her best student? Yeah, I don't think this is what she expected here.   Quistis's question gets right at Squall's core.  And, in case I haven't harped on this enough, he literally looks away from something he doesn't want to face. Squall completely wants to be able to share his feelings with someone else.   This is the base of Squall's worldview. He's distanced himself from others because he thinks that everybody just leaves eventually.  And so, when someone who cares about him needs him, he leaves.   The end, no moral.  Well, let's go back to our room, I guess.  On the way out, I run into a literal tyrannosaurus.  Squall can't see it, so he's not too out-of-sorts, but Quistis freaks out. : Squall, be careful! Sometimes it's better to run! We are not going to run.  T-Rexaur is pretty tough, but he's not unbeatable. It actually wasn't until my second run of the game that I realised you're supposed to be afraid of it.  Its attack is pretty ugly, though. Squall's almost down here.   An important thing to know if you're going to fight T-Rexaur is that it's weak to ice, so IcyNips can really clean up.  Since I don't want EXP, I turned it into a card, and managed to even get a rare one (6.3% chance)!   Dino Bones turn into a pretty good spell, but we don't have the ability to refine them quite yet.  T-Rexaur is also worth a ton of AP.    Naturally, I find out after the fact that three of my GFs are learning pretty lame abilities. Also, as you can see here and as Vil pointed out in the thread, Kate Bush only needs 400 EXP to gain a level, rather than the 500 that's standard for GFs. There are two other GFs that follow that pattern, and one that takes more than 500 EXP to level up, which we'll see later on.  At this point, I also remember the Power Wrist I have languishing in my inventory.  I gave it to IcyNips.  It boosts Quistis's Strength quite a bit.  On our way out of the training centre, we hear a cry for help.  We'd be remiss if we ignored it.  Hey, isn't that the girl from the infirmary?  Yup, there he is.  "Quisty"? That's awfully familiar. Who are you?   Well, I suppose it'll have to wait.  Here's our newest boss. The big bug is called Granaldo, and the three little guys are Raldos.  Hey bug-face.  Granaldo has two mystery spells. The top one is Sleep, and the bottom one is Shell. Sleep just puts something to sleep; as discussed earlier, this isn't a great option. Shell halves magic damage on a character, which is pretty nice if you're fighting something that puts out a lot of magic damage and can't be killed in one round.  The Raldos don't have anything special.  Having overestimated the boss's strength, I released a Renzokuken on it.  I just checked, and Granaldo at my level has around 1,500 HP.   This was not a hard fight. Wizard Stones, by the way, are just refinement trash. They refine into five third-level spells each. 16 Wizard Stones is a lot of third-level spells.   For example, they let me make the 80 Curagas that gave Squall this boost to his HP.  14 AP isn't bad, either.  Now maybe we'll have a chance to talk to this girl.  Wait, who's that?  Who are these guys? What's going on?   I guess we're not going to have a chance to talk to her.  Even Quistis doesn't know who she is.  Not much we can do about it now, I guess.  On the way out, we stop.  Quistis hasn't quite given up on Squall.  She leaves anyway, though.  Well, Squall, I believe that was Socrates.  Let's just go to sleep.  Zell, I swear to god, if you are here to order me to go somewhere else, I will throw you out the window. : Where the hell were you? I was lookin' all over the place.Well, here we are. What do you want? : We're both members of SeeD now, right? Well, guess what!? We got our own rooms, baby!Great, I'll move tomorrow. : Your new room's right across the hall from your old one.Wait, does that mean somebody else already moved my stuff? : That's what I was asked to tell you. Man, it took me forever!Well, thanks.  Now, let's get back to our room. (If you talk to Zell, he just repeats the line about your room being across the hall from your old one.)  And Squall finally gets his nap. Cool Ghost fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Feb 20, 2016 |
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Dec 21, 2014 02:12
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You know, I've always wondered where exactly the secret area is supposed to be. It has a view of Garden but you get there from a place within Garden. I never could quite wrap my head around it.
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Dec 21, 2014 03:00
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Quistis gets a lot of crap for being a bad instructor, but it's never made very clear why in the game. Some people say she flirts with Squall, but nothing she does is really that bad. Perhaps she's just too friendly with the students, treating them more like peers than underlings? It doesn't seem like firing her because Seifer is an insubordinate student is very fair.
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Dec 21, 2014 03:14
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You can never, ever go back to the Secret Area because presumably they didn't want to redo it in daylight. This always bugged me.
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Dec 21, 2014 03:33
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I've found junctioning sleep to attack be useful on occasion.
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Dec 21, 2014 03:55
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T-Rexaurs are really simple to beat with status effects. Junctioning Sleep to Attack works. Blinding them also works very well, as they only know physical attacks. The Raldos are also the first source of Protect if you don't count X-ATM092. I really do like Quistis as a character; she doesn't do a lot ultimately (a curse of just about every side character in this game) but there's just something about her.
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Dec 21, 2014 04:00
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I really feel this game has some great characterization that gets criminally underrated. It's mostly subtle and I think that's really cool. Most of the characters behave as actual people and don't just flat out embody the themes that other characters in this series do. I really dig it. Quistis's crush on Squall is a great example of that. Granted I was pretty young when I first played this game, but she doesn't hit Squall or the player over the head with it, and I love it. This game also utilizes body language in the characters really well considering the hardware they were working with. That whole Secret Area scene is chock full of it.
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Dec 21, 2014 04:37
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ApplesandOranges posted:Junctioning Sleep to Attack works. This. You're already having Quistis summon Shiva, which doesn't wake up sleeping enemies, so just slap 100 sleep on Squall and the T-Rex will sleep through the whole fight, maybe getting off one attack. Once you get better statuses, they replace sleep in this strategy, but for now, sleep attacks are great. You can even make your sleep attacker hit someone, and then delay all of your turns into a big chain of attacks and end with the sleep attacker, to greatly reduce the amount of turns the enemy gets. It's really all about how well you can use it, it'll just never be as powerful as Death or Break attacks, clearly, but you don't have those yet.
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Dec 21, 2014 04:38
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Ah, yes, the Granaldo Fight...I usually spend an hour or so in this fight stocking up on magic. Mostly Blind and Shell.
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Dec 21, 2014 05:02
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Gim52a posted:This. You're already having Quistis summon Shiva, which doesn't wake up sleeping enemies, so just slap 100 sleep on Squall and the T-Rex will sleep through the whole fight, maybe getting off one attack. Once you get better statuses, they replace sleep in this strategy, but for now, sleep attacks are great. You can even make your sleep attacker hit someone, and then delay all of your turns into a big chain of attacks and end with the sleep attacker, to greatly reduce the amount of turns the enemy gets. It's really all about how well you can use it, it'll just never be as powerful as Death or Break attacks, clearly, but you don't have those yet. I don't have anything near 100 Sleep spells, and I'm not sitting around to draw them from Grats, so that's out, and once you're able to refine status magic, you can get Break with no effort because you can buy Softs. Boardroom Jimmy posted:You know, I've always wondered where exactly the secret area is supposed to be. It has a view of Garden but you get there from a place within Garden. I never could quite wrap my head around it. I think the idea of having a view of Garden is that you go fairly far down the hallway, and then the secret area wraps back around to face the main structure. That's the only thing that makes sense to me.
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Dec 21, 2014 05:08
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