Part 24: In which we do more side-quests
Chapter 24 - In which we do more side-questsHello, my lovelies.
Last chapter we had just finished meeting the Turks in the Mithril Mines. We heard they're going to Junon.
First, we learn [Flame Thrower] from the Dragons at the Mines. Flame Thrower is a crappy one-target attack but we learn it anyway.
We follow them out of the mines. Now we have a whole new world/side of the continent to explore!
In the map, these are the places we've been through, in order: 1 - Midgar, 2 - Kalm, 3 - Chocobo Farm, 4 - Mithril Mines and we're now heading to 5 - A blue dildo with a bird sitting on top of it.
The charms of the PSX Low-Poly Graphics. It was so easy to be a good 3D Artist back then.
Today you have to do the same model 10 times, and at least one of the versions has to have approximately 10 zillion billion polygons.
You then have to bake these 40 quadrillion polygons into Normal Maps, Displacement Maps all over one of the other 20 lower poly-count versions of the same model you did.
Each model has to have at least 30 different texture maps, each doing something entirely different. It's glorious.
This is Fort Condor, a place that's, for the most part, entirely optional. Apparently Shinra is trying to invade it and our brave group acts as investors and strategic planners to the people living here.
No Tifa, by "Shinra", he means "She-ra". She's gonna invade Fort Greyskull any moment now.
Wait, this is not axiomatic. For all intents and purposes we're just people walking around and passing by.
A radio station - the only one in the planet. And we need to turn it on so the Sorceress can broadcast Korean Pop 24/7 to the whole world.
You know I'm right. There IS Korea in FF7 and the script gives us empyric proof with the Korean BBQ back in the slums.
There's no Japan though.
That sounds like the name of a children story the parents in Nibelheim would read to their kids before bed, about the evil of Shinra.
He really wants to cross the ts and dot the is today.
My point.
Anyway you got the idea. Condor comes in, Shinra wants the materia, and random people decide to throw their lives away for no good reason.
If you're into CGI, Pixar publishes some very good papers on the subject.
Keep in mind they're very math-intensive. You need some good foundation in calculus.
Which you should have, either way. Math is fun.
So, Fort Condor is essentially a Tower Defense mini-game. Every now and then, Shinra will try to attack it and you can help them defend it.
If you defend it successfully, you get a reward. Some rewards are shitty, others are awesome. The problem with Fort Condor is that there's a lot of battles in it that are really easy to miss, and it's also mind-numbingly boring to come back to it every time there's a battle because it's not exactly a place located in a privilleged spot.
So yeah, you put up the very friggin expensive units in the field, and wait until the enemy reaches them.
The game makes sure to stop everything every time combat occurs, which is as annoying as you can imagine.
Eventually you get to fight the commander which is much more powerful than any other unit. If you lose the TD fight, you get to fight the commander with your party instead as a normal battle.
We win and get the first reward, which is the best reward we're getting in this hole for a long time - the [Magic Comb]. That weapon is fucking amazing. Not only it has 37 Att which makes it our best weapon so far, it also has Double Materia growth.
I mean, just look at this beauty. Now we can leave this place.
By the way, this is what the reactor and the condor looks like.
Like I said, there's a lot of Fort Condor battles. I'll do them offscreen because you really don't want to see it. Whenever I get an interesting reward I'll drop a note.
We now move north. These are the first forests we have access to since everything the other side of the mines has been devastated by the reactors. So let's fight some enemies in it.
These blue birds are NASTY. They deal a lot of damage. In fact, they can deal over 900 damage total in one turn (100 to everyone, 3 times).
Because of that, they're great to train Limits. But they also allow you to steal [Boomerang], which is yet another weapon we can't use
Occasionally, however... you're gonna encounter this girl in the forest. Her name appears as [Mysterious Ninja], so nevermind me about Japan not existing in this game.
She's harder than the average mob, but nothing Choco/Mog can't deal with.
When you win, instead of she disappearing, something else happens -
You're taken to this screen with a Save Point and the girl on the floor.
That's right, lady.
"Spikey-headed jerk" is the most accurate description. I'm liking you, lady.
This chick is actually Yuffie, and she's an optional character that's somewhat easy to miss if you're playing blind.
The reason is that she only appears in Forests as a random encounter, and once you beat her... well, you have to deal with this. The whole screen is actually a huge trap.
If you at any time enter your menu, she'll run away and steal your gil. The Save Point is also a trap - using it will make her seize the opportunity to run away.
And then there's the fact that if at any moment you choose the wrong option, she'll just leave.
The correct answers are the ones that massage her ego, basically.
Even in this screen, if you ask her name, she leaves. The developers really wanted to piss you off here.
And now we have a new addition to our team. Hooray!
Yuffie is a Love or Hate character.
Most people either really like her, or really hate her. Personally, I really like Yuffie, because her comments tend to be very down-to-earth.
I commented early on in spoilers that having Yuffie in your party is almost like having a LPer following you. She tends to offer an outsider's view of the situation which can lead to some very funny and amusing dialogue.
Anyway, she starts with this unique materia, [Throw]. It allows you to pick up a weapon you have unequipped and throw at the enemy, dealing more damage than a normal attack command normally would.
And look how convenient, we can even equip her [Boomerang] weapon.
Yuffie as a Combat character is also very interesting. She's easily dismissed and often counted as weak, but she does bring some interesting stuff to the table:
First, all Yuffie weapons are Long Range. Barret, on the other hand, has a lot of weapons that are melee. One of her weapons also has very unique characteristics, which makes it deal full damage using a skill that would otherwise greatly reduce damage output.
Her limits are also good. Yuffie is the only character with a controllable healing limit other than Aeris. In fact, her limit 1-2 is EXACTLY like Aeris' 1-1. Other than that, her limits are mostly a rehash of other characters' limits, usually Barret.
Her Limit 3-2, however, is VERY good. VERY, VERY good. I'm gonna make use of her so you can see what I mean.
Anywayzz
I think this is the real Team FFX-2. Paine, Yuna and Rikku. Since Yuffie is a Ninja, I'm changing color scheme to black.
We go to Junon and...
... what the hell?
This looks like something brought to you straight from Tetsuo the Iron Man. 
Shinra did something.
Here's what I don't get - what is it that Shinra intentionally builds suspended/vertical cities on top of existing cities? Just to fuck them up?
We obviously must ask the barman to continue the storyline.
Isn't that heater an accident waiting to happen?
Oh great, another kid, portrayed as annoyingly as you can. For all the awesome characterization FF7 gives to its main characters, the kids are absolutely boring stereotypes that just annoy you.
Ah, I've been missing the smell of the absolutely meaningless increadibly easy generic boss.
Of course, unlike in the real world where kids are by design easy to frighten so they'll stay away from danger, J-RPG kids have absolutely no instinct of survival whatsoever and instead of crying and running away, they just run straight into a giant sea monster that is 10 times their size.
Bottomswell has the same gimmick Reno had - from time to time he will cast a bubble that will prevent that character from acting. Additionally, the bubble will drain your HP constantly so if you don't break it, the character will die.
I've decided to take this opportunity to show off some of the stuff we've got in the past few updates, including the Materias I leveled up while crossing the Mithril Mines (Fire, Lightning, All and Ice are now Level 2).
To make it fun, we kill it with JUST skills we've never used in Boss battles before.
And of course, the obligatory video of us exploiting the fuck out of this game to completely obliterate the poor thing.
Yuffie has one of the fastest Limit learning curves in the game. We killed some enemies in the forest that come in groups of 5 and in no time we opened her Sets 2 and 3. It takes almost as many kills for Yuffie to open her Set 3 as it takes to Cloud open his set 2. Meteorain is Cloud's 3-1.
[Fury Brand] is the most overpowered offensive limit in the game. Anyway, another Boss that bites the dust.
We get a Power Wrist, which adds Str to a character.
Now with Priscilla rescued, turns out that she, too, is about to bite the dust.
And with that, I'll finish the update.
NEXT TIME:
Mini-games! Rewards! Awesome Music! Stuff!
