Part 46: Unfinished Business
Chapter 46 - Unfinished Business
Last chapter we concluded the main part of our side-quest in Wutai. Technically we're done with the "story" part, but there's still another side-quest to be done here. But first, let's get our stuff.
At long last...
We've got our materia back.
Yuffie places the materia at random, so it's a mess, really.
The best thing you can do is strip everyone from their materia and equip back again.
Which you'd have to do anyway since we've just got new equipment.
ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE
At the end, Yuffie wasn't the Shinra spy.
So who was it?
We still have someone infiltrated in the group, and it's not like our party is composed of gentlemen and scholars.
Can it be the Barmaid who has absolutely zero reason to be with us and is clearly hiding things of the past?
Can it be the stuffed robot toy we still know nothing about?
I'm glad we have so many people of trust.
Now that we're done with that, let's check the Weapons Store. Now that it's open to us, we can buy some good weapons.
The [Diamond Knuckle] is not really an upgrade though, since we have the Powersoul and I'm willing to use it to its fullest. There are only two weapons in the game better than the Powersoul.
The other weapons are an upgrade, though we don't really have any Gil left now.
Screw you
Before we go ahead and finish our business in Wutai, let's explore some of the Wutai continent.
These giant turtles are the Adamantai. They are a staple enemy of the series, and you can find them in the beaches around Wutai. They are notable for three reasons.
The first interesting thing about them is their skill [Death Force]. Death Force protects you from abilities that would otherwise kill you instantly.
We're not really gonna use it a lot, but it's always good to fill our Enemy Skill materia for absolutely no reason!
The second reason is that you can steal the [Adaman Bangle] from them.
The Adaman Bangle is a VERY tough armlet with 93 Defense. It also goes hand-to-hand with our current minimalist philosophy, with only two materia slots. It's the best armor (defense-wise) which we're gonna have for a long while.
From the grasslands we can also learn [Magic Hammer]. Magic Hammer is a VERY useful skill in the Gold Saucer Battle Square. Basically, it steals MP from the enemies and works as an Ether on-demand, supposed the enemy has any MP left.
BOOOOM.
The creatures in this area are tough. Really, really tough. They offer a lot of challenge to a group who's just been stripped naked. One of the readers mentioned he stopped playing in this place because he couldn't get past the random encounters to Wutai without materia.
Edgeheads drop [Hourglass]es, which stops the enemy (like Aeris' Seal Evil limit). A very useful item.
So, on to the last part of our journey in Wutai. Remember the giant Pagoda? We still have to get inside it after Yuffie's sidequest got done.
Sounds like five bosses!
They suck at their job.
Without Yuffie, you can't climb the Pagoda. You're >required< to have her to do this side-quest too.
The Five Gods are naturally Five encounters. In truth, only the last encounter is actually a boss. The others are fairly mediocre (and don't play the boss music either).
Geiger would be proud.
I find late 80's J-Pop to be interesting.
Mostly because 80's J-Pop female singers were also J-Rock singers. And it sounded a lot like 80's American Rock.
So it's kinda confusing - were they Pop divas or Rock stars?
Let's get back a bit.
The first of the five Gods (that flying blue gargoyle) is the Power God.
He enjoys putting up Barriers, so we take [Destruct].
At this point there's really no need for a lot of materias. We have a good set of very strong, materialess weapons for each character. Remember, each Magic Materia reduces your Strength.
We also link Elemental to Gravity, because Gorkii enjoys casting Demi 2. See, we're just covering our bare necessities with materia.
And voilà. On to the second floor.
Each time you fight, the opponent from the next floor comes down to watch.
The kid on the second floor is the Speed God. Contrary to what the name implies, he's not very fast.
In fact, he'd be the slowest of all the bosses if he didn't have an attack that triggered a double turn.
Anyway, point is - he deals a lot more damage than the Power God does. We fill in some HP Pluses to deal with his burst, as well as an Enemy Skill for Big Guard.
His Rage Bomber + Normal Attack combo can deal 750-800 Damage in a single turn.
On top of it, the Rage Bomber makes justice to its namesake, as it applies [Fury] on you, so the second time he casts you'll take the full combo damage as you won't have [Sadness] anymore.
Penguins are not particularly fast creatures, I don't know why they always represent speed.
I'm looking at you, Super Mario 64.
Right, Chekhov. Chekhov is the Magic God.
He's one of those annoying creatures from the Nibelheim Mountains.
He shares their Paralysis spell, but he's so slow that he can't attack you until the Paralysis is over, so all his magic does is make the two of you waste a turn. Truly the Master of Magic.
Screw you, Chekhov.
On to the next floor!
We all know how this is gonna end.
Staniv is the easiest of the four and requires absolutely no strategy. All he does is sit and attack you.
Since we don't really need anything special and Staniv is all about attacking you like there's no tomorrow, we equip the Adaman Bangle for maximum defense and all we need is [Enemy Skill] and [Counter Attack] to make life easier.
The only thing Staniv has going for him is a counter-attack when his HP gets under 750, that deals a base damage of 770.
Unfortunately it only triggers if you attack him while his HP is under 770, and since we're hitting for 660 I don't even get to see his counter-attack.
Oh no, not HIM.
So
Let's talk about the logistics of this.
We obviously would have seen her dad climbing up the Pagoda, so that means he was already there.
So that means he sits in that place the whole day. Every day. What do they do? Play Poker? Mahjong?
Darwin must be very proud of you, Mr. Godo.
What exactly is the ...... . !! doing there? Did he pause for a while... then unpause and pause again and then made a very frightened expression?
But really, at some point Yuffie must have wondered what her dad does all day. He sure as hell wasn't leading armies to victory.
He casts Bio, so we do a wonderful Poison-Elemental on Armor. I'm 100% sure you can figure out what the Yellow and the Magenta Materia are.
Anyways, boss fight!
Defeating Godo yields [All Creation], Yuffie's final Limit.
All Creation sucks.
It deals 8x Base Damage to all enemies, while Doom of the Living deals 9.375x split amongst everyone. Most of the time where a limit is worth being used, Doom of the Living is better.
Right, 80's pop. Starting in the late 80's, a series of movies called Shuto Kousoku Trial started.
These are officially released in US as Freeway Speedway, and translated as Megalopolis Expressway Trial. They are a series of six movies from 88 to 96.
Their theme is illegal highway racing. Think of it as an oldschool Fast and Furious.
Notably, these movies are banned in Japan because they don't really want illegal racers having any more incentive.
A common theme between these movies is that they like to feature 80's J-Pop singers at some point.
Two remarkable singers are Saori Saito and Akira Sudou. The later was famous for singing in some crappy anime called Bubblegum Crisis.
What I find amusing is that a lot of these 80's pop singers had a lot of influence from 80's (American) rock. In Akira's case, she had a band (As Sekiria) in the 00's that released a full Hard Rock CD. And it was considerably less cheesy than, say, Crush 40. Not that that would be hard.
On the other hand, 00's pop singers have a much stronger electronica influence both here and there. And at some point everything mixed and I couldn't keep track of what was influencing what.
The only constant is David Bowie.
I think every single character in these Final Fantasy games has been influenced by David Bowie somehow.
Can you imagine Final Fantasy if David Bowie never existed? It's like the Butterfly effect, only much more twisted and bizarre.
[Leviathan] follows the damage progression from our other Summon materia. Which means it sucks.
It can potentially deal less damage than Odin, but on the other hand it's much more reliable. Still, as a Summon Materia, it costs a lot of MP and has a huge animation.
So all in all, we got two disappointing rewards. Nevertheless, we have to collect all Summon materias. It'll be important later on.
I like this sequence.
It does feel very up-close and personal. Makes you wonder what the writers were thinking.
Though it is fairly hard not to view the entire event as a bitter self-criticism.
The curious thing is that, with the Wutai sidequests complete...
We now have Yuffie, Barret and Red XIII as the characters who've been fully developed.
While Cloud, the protagonist, and the two closest persons to him (Aeris and Tifa) are still pretty much a complete mystery. We know more about a stranger who tried to rob us than any member from the game's bizarre love triangle. It's like they're living a life that they can't leave behind.
But such is life.
"I am the same now as I was before when I wanted the war."
"But, after I lost the war, I began to think..."
"Might begets might. "
"Is Strength, only for defeating the enemy?"
And that's, Yuffie, why we sit in this Pagoda all day. Not to show-off to others.
See Yuffie, we lost, but actually we won morally and that's what counts.
"Strength without determination means nothing. And determination without strength is equally useless...!"
It's like, all these people keep throwing their
What
Ok, just shut up already.
I said shut up.
WHY CAN'T HE STOP TALKING.
Ok good we're leaving.
OH CMON.
THIS UPDATE IS ALREADY 100 IMAGES LONG wait, what?
Oh, for fuck's sake.
And with that, we conclude this update.
Chapter 46 - Bugs & Bytes
Chekov's Gun
Honestly, I don't even know. Yes, I recorded the bosses' videos, but I think this is the only one that deserves a mention. You can clearly see my confusion.
By the way, the game spells his name both as Chekov (in battle) and Chekhov (outside). Don't hate the player.
I like turtles
Here's an amusing error. You know those big turtles we were fighting, the Adamantaimai?
Did you spend the entire update being tortured by the fact I said there are three notable things about them, and only mentioned two? That's because the third is a bug, and a quite notable one, indeed.
Adamantaimai's battle script starts like this:
code:
If(!Barrier) x = Barrier;
Else If(!MBarrier) x = MBarrier;
Cast x;
Oh yes, the game flips out because Adamantaimai tries to cast a spell that doesn't exist. There's no x.
The game freezes and you have to restart it. By the way, "Scenes" are files which group up to three different encounters in the same file. They're stored in an eight bit address, which means there can be (2^8)*3 = 768 encounters in the game. And that's some useless trivia for you!
