Part 41: Rocket Town, Part I

Chapter 41 - Rocket Town, Part I




They say an image is worth more than a thousand words.



I wonder how many words is this LP worth right now.



Anyway, we move towards the next city, which is very peculiar for a very single reason.



Welcome to Rocket Town. The city's main feature is a gigantic fucking rocket. Their very own Pisa tower!



The only real answer is "The Naked Gun jokes".



Let's get this out of the way.



Yea, seems like we're off the trail for the first time. Let's enjoy the town for what it is.



I think it's amusing to mention that the town's background music is the same as Wall Market. There's this strange, comedic charm to it.





This is what happens when you have no competition.



Let's not forget that the Shinra's Space division is controlled by Palmer, who shares the throne with Elena for the two most incompetent henchmen in the game.



Rocket town is the "chill down" moment after all the tension built from the previous dungeons.



You can see this pattern all over the game. Shinra's escape -> Kalm town. Boat Event -> Costa Del Sol. Corel inane shit -> Gold Saucer. I mean, there's literally a town called calm.



There's nothing special to buy at the weapon's dealer, by the way.



The only place in Disc 1 where I feel like it's really disconnected is the Corel Prison.



I find interesting that you're "caught by surprise", but desert + annoying random encounters + Barret's boring substory feels to me like the lowest point of the disc, and it comes just right after Gold Saucer which is the best place in the game.



There's a secret with this old guy.











What an incredibly shitty hobby, considering there's absolutely no way you can't look at the rocket all the time.



It's like living in Rio and saying looking at the Christ statue is a hobby.



Nevertheless, we get the Yoshiyuki, a very strong weapon for Cloud:



It not only is much stronger than our current weapon...



It's also a gimmicky weapon, like Tifa's Power Soul. Its damage is multiplied by two if one of our allies is KO'd, and by three if only Cloud is alive.



We're at about 50% the game in terms of updates (meaning this thread will most likely go up to Chapter 80 if I'm not terribly wrong). The second disc is shorter than disc 1 (mostly because Midgar is so big), but has a MUCH more dense plot development.



[Barrier] does what Big Guard does. You get Barrier, Magic Barrier, Reflect (reflects enemy spells, as the name imply) and Wall.

[Exit] allows you to automatically escape the battle. It evolves to Remove, which does the opposite. You don't gain EXP for enemies you remove, obviously.

We're not gonna use either much.



It's interesting to mention that with the sole exception of Costa Del Sol so far (which is reserved as the "sanctuary" for the wealthy people), every other town is fucked up in some way. Rocket Town is the same.



Rocket Town lacks a reactor, so it's - gasp - surrounded with flora.
Unfortunately, it also features a huge abandoned rocket and the town seems stagnant.



I find interesting how every single place in this game is very characteristic and peculiar. There's not a single "generic town". The closest thing to it is Corel, I suppose, but even Corel is representative of the fucked-upness of the world.



You're doing a great job so far.



I wish we had stuff like this in the real world. And no, whey protein doesn't count.



There's not much to tell about the houses here. They're all fairly homogeneous.



Last house we check. [Drill Arm] is a melee weapon for Barret. Yes, it's a drill, fucking, arm. Here, let me illustrate:



In retrospective, I should have saved my Tetsuo The Iron Man reference to this very moment.



Oh yes, cars. You can also see there's a garage door outside the house. Details!

Anyway, enough exploration. Let's get the game going:





Hell yes.





"We just invaded your house and explored it without permission, hope you don't mind."



Talk about being nice. Rocket Town is, indeed, the last town in this continent, and it sure as hell doesn't have any boats going anywhere. There's still 3 continents left for us to go and a shitload of islands!



And Sephiroth I suppose.



Oh Vincent, you're so punchable in the face.





I was gonna make a privatization joke, but Shinra is both the government and the only company so it's kinda pointless.





NOOOO. Not again.



Let's talk to this captain, see what this whole affair is about.





There we go!







And last but not least, we've found our last character.



His theme music starts playing right here, and it's bloody amazing, good sir.



Before I finish this update, I want to leave the best dialogue in the game right here.







That does explain a lot. Ish.









Keep in mind...



That that music is still playing.



And with that, I conclude the update.




No, seriously. I know Rating 13+ does include "use of strong language", but I don't think I remember a game that old calling people "anal". I didn't even remember that sentence was in the game.


Next Time:

Twice the cursing! Ineffectual boss battles!



Awesome music we've listened to in this update:

Cid's Theme - A fantastic song, not much to say.

The Crossroads - From the FF7 ocremix album, made by Jovette Rivera. It's a remix of Cid's theme, and fairly good on its own.

Oppressed People - Not the first time we hear it, but still good.




Bugs and Bytes:

Cid

Just a bit of useless trivia - Cid (the name) is the one character name that's been reused between all Final Fantasies, ever since Final Fantasy II (the original, Japanese Final Fantasy II, not FFIV), though he was retconned to be mentioned in FFI too.

It's worth mentioning that both Final Fantasy III's and IV's Cid were Airship makers, and Cid in FFX also works as the Airship commander/caretaker.

In FF8, Cid is Robin Williams.