Part 13: Shit Gets Real

Chapter 13 - Shit gets real



And now back to the show. But first, something must be done - something more evil than the terrible secrets that we humans cannot delve our minds into.

We must...



Change our UI to Rainbow Puke.



And it's ~glorious~



We're doing pretty good.



The yellow thing on the ground here is a [Steal] Materia.



(I'm just showing off our new UI)

Steal is pretty straightforward - You equip it in a character and try to steal shit from the enemies. The chance is based entirely on the difference between your level and the enemies' level.



You don't need to use Steal in FF7 at all if you don't want to. FF9 did Steal pretty good, as it was guaranteed that every boss would have something neat for you to steal.

Son, if you try to steal from every boss in FF7 you will be disappointed.

In fact, if you try to play your game normally, steamrolling through everything, you'll be frustrated. There's ONE moment in the game that items are extremely useful but no one in their normal playthrough can predict that.

And even if you can, stealing can still be a chore...



...unless you know what you're doing. With foreknowledge you'll find out two things:

A) Until a certain point, items can be much powerful than Materia. You've seen this with Grenades - they do as much damage as Limits and cost 80 gil. However, money is limited.

B) There are effects that can only be obtained through certain items.







Moreover, good items can be acquired from many different places, but like I said, some are only good if you know what to do with them, and some can only be properly acquired if you know what to look for.

In fact, earlier in the game an enemy dropped a very good item - Spider Webs, which function as casting Slow. The drop rate, however, is abysmally low, so even doing Luck Manipulation I would still be wasting a lot of time.

The other item that can be acquired early on is Deadly Waste. Again, the drop rate wasn't good enough for me to farm it, but they'll be back again. Deadly Wastes deal Poison damage and effect (damage inflicted every turn).

Unfortunately, Poison is useless early on. The damage is low (1/32th of the maximum HP per turn). Deadly Waste is very good for No Materia challenges, though.



Now that we have Steal, we have access to some more items as soon as we get to the graveyard.



These are Ghosts. They drop Ghost Hand very rarely, but Ghost Hand can be stolen with relative ease.

Ghost Hands steal 32 MP. A mostly useless item. Of course, we'll play with it.

Also, Ghost Hand is special in which is a Lost Forever item. People whose OCD surpasses all of ours combined like to farm 99 of them here.

Also, Ghosts are insufferable pieces of shit and I hope they die.



These flying jerks are Deenglow. You can steal Ethers from them, but more importantly - they drop Graviballs.

Graviballs is your first source of Gravity-based damage in the game. What do they do? I'm so glad you asked. They actually deal 1/4 of the HP the enemy has.



The drawbacks are - they deal 1/4 of the current HP, not maximum, and most bosses are either immune to them, or halve their damage, which sucks. But don't worry. We're gonna use them.

Oh yes, we're gonna, in due time.



The Train Graveyard is a pretty depressing place, but it has a lot of items spread around. It is divided in two screens and is more or less like a maze. Encounter Rate is very, very low. I actually like this about FF7 though.



There's a puzzle in the upper area (the one we can get in earlier in the game) which is just turning on some trains to make them move and nothing special, really.

However...



This enemy, Eligor, only appears in this screen during this moment in the game (remember that early on a flag was set so that we would only fight enemies from the first reactor). It's an uncommon encounter too, but for some reason I always fight him when I play.



Eligor has 300 HP which is much more than a normal enemy has around this place and is the hardest enemy we've fought so far (I'll go ahead and say he's harder than bosses). The reason is because he can inflict both Silence and Sleep status ailments. The former prevents you from casting spells and the later makes your character useless for some turns.

These two attributes greatly reduce your damage output against him.



However, Eligor has a very, very, very good item - the Striking Staff.



That is a staff with 32 Attack (which mind that, is twice what we have right now and much more than Cloud's weapon) and, more importantly, 4 Materia Slots, for Aeris. It's by far the best weapon we have.



In fact, it's SO good, that Aeris now has more Attack and Hit Chance than Cloud, even though her Str is so much lower. Unfortunately, Aeris doesn't have offensive limits, so we can't exploit that appropriately.

The Striking Staff also sells for good money, so it's not a bad idea to steal more than one.





If only the Empire had such loyal defenders the Death Star would still be intact.



That's fairly obvious, or we'd all be dead.







SHIT JUST GOT REAL.

In case you can't make up, these tiny pixels are the AVALANCHE in a massive gunfire atop the pillar. During the event, Wedge falls off to his doom.



Sure man I just fell off 50 meters, we've all established this is nothing.







In this moment you get the option to say "no he never paid me, screw you guys", leave, and marry either Tifa, Aeris, Don Corneo or the three of them.

Just kidding, this only happens in Suikoden 2.



You're damn right, Wedge.

Cloud: "I'm going up! Aeris! You look after Wedge."





Tifa: "There's a little girl named Marlene there..."



Aeris of course is not whiny and will find her way to both try to help Wedge and save the girl, like the 90's and 80's action heroes walking away from carrying the girl in their arms while the place goes boom, not looking back.

Or so we hope.



Of course no one really moves out.



I try to run away and say screw this, but Tifa won't allow me. This is no Suikoden 2



The guard is trying to get laid. Makes sense, you want to make good use of your last minutes, right?



Although if you think about it, Nature must be facepalming at this.
This is some pretty bad Instinct of Survival going on.



We go to the dude selling stuff, and what do you think Cloud needs? Grenades, of course. We're still nowhere near outdamaging them.



I mean, look at how well-prepared we are. 8 Graviballs, 15 Ghost Hands, we're full of the best useless crap in the game. But anyway, we got 5 Hypers and 8 Grenades, should be good.



Bye-Potion.



Don't worry Ashton, we shall save your barrels.





"Oh, forget it" are some pretty sad last words.



Noooo Jessie



No Cloud don't be such a jerk







This place features Aero-Combatants, extremely annoying little pitas. I'd also like to point that this is more or less when trash mobs officially become more dangerous than bosses. Some of the trash mobs in this game pose a real threat to the unprepared party.



Barret: Be careful, they're attacking from the Helicopter.



Always level up [All], because like I said, when these 5 stars fill up you'll be RICH.





It seems Reno isn't very happy about us messing with him last time.



Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.





Screw you.


BOSS FIGHT - Reno



Unfortunately although Reno is a cool character, nothing fun comes out of this fight. Reno has just three attacks - a normal attack - pyramid, and electro-mag rod. Pyramid imprisons one of the characters and he will always open the fight with that.



So we don't do nothing fancy this time, just beat him. When you beat Reno he just looks at his watch, says it's time and leaves.



You know, at least FF is consistent with people jumping off high places like it's no big deal.







Well if it isn't... I don't know. Who are you, again?



That's what she said.



You have no chance to survive, make your time.





Tseng: "I wouldn't try that... you might just make me injure our special guest."





Well shit is getting real at an alarming rate. AVALANCHE is gone, Aeris has been captured, apparently she is an "Ancient" and we have no idea about what that is... and apparently that's as important (or more) than capturing our group.





Tseng gives her a massive slap on the face. Although he has a Bond villain plot exposition syndrome, Tseng does seem to be pretty serious about his job.



Crap.





We're gonna die







Seriously.



SHIT



JUST



GOT



REAL










PLEASE INSERT CD 2





Next Time:

Flashbacks! Plot! HOLY SHIT THE CITY JUST FELL DOWN WE'RE GONNA DIE




Awesome Music we've Listened to in this Update:

BB King - Keep It Coming - Good music to chillax while writing an LP.