Part 31: It's Funday Sunday!
First of all, sorry for the huge delay. I've been working hard on my game and that doesn't leave me with much free time.Chapter 31 - It's Funday Sunday!
Last time we've got a whole new character. Cait Sith.
You may not have understood why or how he joined our party but that's okay, because it doesn't make sense.
Anyway let's discuss Cait Sith a bit. First thing you should know is the name's origin - Cat Sith is a fairy cat from Celtic mythology. Curiously, our member is also a cat, so there you go!
Cait Sith is an odd duck. Most players hate him, and that's understandable. It's fairly hard relating to... it. Whatever it is.
Nevertheless, I must point that Cait Sith as a battle character is... well, also fucking weird. Cait Sith has great Magic second only to Cloud and Aeris, but fairly mediocre Strength. Cait Sith on the other hand has a huge Health Pool, making him the most resilient Magic user in the game.
Last but definitely not least, Cait's Limits. Cait only has two limits, and since he's a Fortune Teller living in a giant Casino, they're both based on Luck.
His first limit, Dice, consists of throwing, well, dice, and doing damage based on the result. The amount of dice goes up with level (it starts 2 dice up to level 30, then goes up one dice for every level up to 6 dice).
It's worth mentioning that Dice has, if you're not breaking the game, the highest damage potential out of any limit, maybe except for Tifa, in the first CD. That also includes Cloud's Omnislash (his 4-1 Limit). However, since Dice's damage is random, that means the damage could also be very low. At any rate his damage until level 30 varies between 300 and 2400 if I remember correctly.
His second limit is batshit crazy. It's a slot reel (like Tifa) with some different symbols, and you get a wildly different effect depending on the combination.
NEVERTHELESS I'm gonna do my best to show it to you when the time comes.
Also, Cait Sith comes with two interesting things. The first is that his weapon is a fucking Megaphone.
The second is that he comes with a [Manipulate] Materia. That's a very unique Materia indeed - it allows us to manipulate the enemies and use their attacks against themselves or on us. I wonder if that's how he convinced Cloud to let him join the party.
Back to the normal schedule:
The first thing we need is GP, and this is where we get it.
What. No, not that.
This, now we're talking.
Here's how it works. You hold the button and the longer you hold it, the stronger Cloud is gonna throw the ball. You have a very small window of opportunity to release. Whenever you hit you gain 1 GP.
If you hit 10 times in a row you get the option to play DOUBLE CHANCE. If you hit, your GP doubles, but if you lose you don't get anything.
Until you get 300 GP. Then the machine says "fuck you" and prevents you from keep playing. Anyways...
300 GP is enough to buy a [Gold Ticket], which is the lifetime ticket that costs 30,000 Gil. Fuck you Gold Ticket.
That is one weird looking face.
Notice the Bike on the left? You can replay the Bike minigame from when we escape from Shinra Tower. There's also a snowboard and submarine to the bottom left, but they're occupied. For now.
Winning the Bike game gets us some mediocre 10 GP, but also a one-time [Speed Source].
Dat fucken Moogle Mini-game.
The moogle mini-game is like... an Arcade mini-story RPG. Something very bizarre.
Oh God we're caught in a terrible fanfic.
How do we get away from it HOW DO I STOP THIS
Up until, say, Doom 3, the majority of the real-time graphic technologies were invented/theorized in the 80s or 90s, but there wasn't technology good enough to do it.
Still, it's incredible how many ground-breaking stuff we make today is old as hell. For example, Crysis 2's Terrain engine is a mix of Height Maps with Voxels.
You need to feed him 5 Kupo Nuts, he makes a happy squeak sound when you reach that.
While neither Height Maps nor Voxels are anything new, Voxels are very hard to implement right.
This time you feed him with 3 nuts.
Minecraft is, in a way, a Voxel-based game, if you wanted an example. Although its application in terrain is different than Crysis 2's.
John Carmack says he writes a voxel tracer "every five years or so".
Look, I'm sorry, but I can't talk about Moogles dating.
It is creepy as hell. It also makes me wonder what were the developers smoking. I suppose no one can say FF7 is a game without a sense of humor.
Oh God, no.
NOOOO WHY WOULD YOU GUYS DO THAT TO ME
OH GOD STOP
JESUS CHRIST
This is why we don't talk about Moogles.
Yes, so are we. At any rate, the shady guy gives us 30 GP for showing him how to make Moogles reproduce like rabbits. By feeding them. There's also a fighting game here based on Rock, Paper and Scissors that is impossible to beat and also nets you 300 GP if you're lucky enough to get to the last fighter which is an invisible man. This one deserves a Bugs & Bytes for itself, I'll post it in another update.
We can now finally pay for the ride at the Speed Square.
Wanna take you for a riiiiide tanatanam, tanananam
The Speed Square mini-game is an on-rails shooter. It's actually good looking.
IT'S ALSO SO FUCKING HARD AND FAST that I forgot to take screenshots of it in mid-action. Please don't blame me. You have to make over 5000 points to get the special reward AND YOU HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO DO IT.
I'll show it more on a Bugs & Bytes.
Regardless, the prize for it is different on the second CD. The prize we get right now is...
The [Umbrella].
The [Umbrella] is a very unique weapon. First, the Umbrella has 58 Att, which is MUCH higher than anything we have right now. We don't have anything close to it. It also adds to the character's defense and has a very good Accuracy.
Second, it has zero Materia slots. That's right, nada.
Third, it has a +5% Critical Hit Rate bonus. Which is huge, right?
And last but not least... it's a weapon for Aeris. The spellcaster with low strength. That's right. It's an umbrella which Aeris can use to deal Cloud-like melee damage by using it to beat on the enemy's head.
That means we're gonna use it.
Next is the Ghost Square. Woooo, spooky!
The Ghost Square is actually just a horror movie themed Inn.
It does have, however, the third of the Turtle's Paradise flyers. Remember, we saw the first one in the slums house and the second one in the Shinra HQ.
OF COURSE JUST TELL ME WHERE THE DAMN THING IS ALREADY.
Man I seriously want to visit a store like that.
Look at dem ghosts so happy playing chess. They'd be the embodiment of
if, you know, they had bodies.
I cannot stress how much I love this halloweenish color scheme. Purple, Black and Yellow/Orange/Red.
Ahh, the Chocobo Square. It is one of the top two reasons to come to the Gold Saucer.
There are two things you can do at the Chocobo Square. The first is betting on Chocobo Races. The second is racing yourself. Unfortunately, we can't do the later right now. We can bet, though we're limited to the lowest ranks.
The higher the rank, the better the rewards, of course. Here's how Chocobo betting works - You can bet on three combinations of the six Chocobos. So, for example, if you bet on 6-4, you're gonna win if either 4 is first and 6 is second, or if 6 is first and 4 is second. It's fairly straightforward.
While it's utterly pointless to bet on C races, the B races do offer us something very, very interesting - [Hero Drinks].
[Hero Drinks] are very special items indeed. There are only a few that you can find during the normal course of the game - the rest needs to be acquired via Chocobo Racing.
So what does it do? Each Hero Drink increases your Attack, Magic Attack, Defense and Magic Defense by 30%.
What is even better though - They stack. Four times, up to a 100% bonus.
I'm absolutely sure I don't need to mention how game-breaking that is, do I?
That's right, I don't!
That means we get 4 Hero Drinks, of course.
Last but not least, the Battle Square. We're skipping the Round Square because there's nothing in it right now.
Creepy music cues in.
You know, I've been thinking. Did that guy just take a lethal wound and stay there, motionless?
What was his thought process, exactly? "I better use my last remnant of strength to guard this place so no one else passes."
More importantly, why the fuck are there so many Shinra soldiers here?
THE PLOT THICKENS.
It's all Aeris' fault. She shouldn't have told Barret to go out and "play", try to "have some fun". Dude's a psycho.
At this point, Cloud should look to his left and think "what am I doing here?"
I mean, he's walking around with a "Fortune Teller" giant toy and a girl who tried to kill him the second she saw him. She also has zero reason for going out with his gang.
Some fingers should be pointed.
What a magnificent suggestion! I cannot think of a better idea.
Yes, let's run to the opposite way from where the exit is. Brilliant, I say! This is true genius.
Cloud loses the ability to defeat giant robots at will.
Gateway to Heaven.
I AM JUDGE
Yes, I'm actually used to falling 50 meters, but thanks for asking.
And with that and the Corel Prison theme, we conclude the update.
NEXT TIME:
The man with the machine gun! Desert! Prison! Thugs! Strange trivia about the game!
Awesome music we've listened to in this chapter
Corel Prison's Theme - Well, I just linked that, didn't I? Here I link again.
String Machine - A fast-paced electronica remix of the Corel Prison theme. It's awesome. Reminds me of dancing to the sound of late 90s Houses. Ah, youth. You can download it here, for great justice.
Chapter 31 - Bugs & Bytes
More on the Speed Square
While I showed you the lovely Umbrella, the ultimate reward of the Speed Square for CD 1, I did not show the other rewards. Well, guess what, they're all utterly useless! You can get a Masamune Blade replica (Sephiroth's sword), a Super Sweeper or a 1/35 Soldier. And you can get as many as you want of any of these three if you score more than 3000 points. And they don't do anything, they just sit in your inventory. Ain't that wonderful?
If you want to see someone doing a really good job at the Speed Square, check it here.
The Crystal Fortune
The Crystal Fortune machine at the Wonder Square actually gives you a different fortune depending on which part of the game you're at, kinda like the Fort Condor minigame. Making the current warning about relationships extra weird.
Speed Square Changes
Apparently, they added a propellor to the Zeppelin in the PC version that gives you 4960+ points if you shoot it, making the whole thing very easy if you know about it beforehand.
Unfortunately I can't confirm it. The one video showing it looks horrible. Does anyone else know about this?
Chocobo Betting and Random Numbers
Because of the way the game RNG works (Random Number Generator), the matches are pre-defined before the betting starts. That also means that there's really only one possible reward since there's no way to manipulate the luck once you get to the betting screen.
That also makes very, very easy to get the 4 Hero Drinks if you're playing in an emulator.
