Part 83: Capitulo de Chocobo

Chapter 82 - Capitulo de Chocobo





So we had acquired a Blue Chocobo last time. Now we're playing with him a bit.



Besides not being slowed down by the water part of the Chocobo Racing, the Blue Chocobo has a materia-related cave too, in this archipelago. It's possible to glitch the Highwind at the intersection of this cliff to get to the cave, but we're nice.







So we basically go back way down south and cross this river maze...



And voila. [Quadra Magic].

[Quadra Magic] is a very, very powerful support materia. As the name implies, it casts the linked magic four times in the same turn, while reducing its damage by half. This usually means twice the damage but you can deal up to four times the damage if you're over the cap of 9999. Hooray!



Farewell my friend. You were too greato for this world.



Now we race our new friends some more. We'll be breeding them soon.



Sometimes we get lucky. I can never say no to a [Counter Attack] materia.



The parents had 96km/h speed while Greena has 99, but her Stamina is much larger (643 vs 446).



This increase of 200 in Stamina is enough for us to beat Teioh in Class A instead of getting beaten horribly.







S Rank is the last rank. It's considerably harder.



It's where we can get the best rewards. Sometimes you get a crappy Fire Veil but for the most part they're really good.



It's also where we can't progress any further. Notice how the Chocobo Speeds were 150km/h? Our 99 is nothing compared to that. And since Teioh scales with our own stats that means that even his improved stats are not enough to do jack shit here.

Unfortunately this is as far as Greena can go, and no amount of training arcs can save her.



Insert Tifa-is-friendzoned joke here.



I might have mentioned it, but sometimes Tifa and Cid will ask to play minigames instead of you if they are in the party. The reason they can play minigames is probably a sanity check in case you try to access a minigame without Cloud in the party (since there are times where Tifa and Cid get to be Party leaders) so this is a clever way to add an otherwise useless feature into the game.



It's worth mentioning that even though there's another blue-ish Chocobo (although with a different hue) he doesn't get any speed bonus in the water area. All enemy Chocobos with the exception of Teioh count as normal yellow Chocobos.



I really like these environments. Granted, they're outdated as hell but it's amusing to see what they were trying to do with real-time polygons back then.



I have mentioned it in the past but for the most part, FF7 real-time models don't have any textures. This is especially true of background models (except for the World Map). As you can see here everything is vertex-colored, they're color gradients based on the color of each triangle vertex.



Die.



Alright, now's the time. We give them the [Carob Nut] we got from the freaky Icicle Inn monsters as the Chocobo Sage told us to, and...



Hoozah! We get the black-furred version of our favorite mascot.



Oh.



Real mature, Cloud.



Aeris is not amused.



And on to the materia cave that was previously inaccessible. Prepare yourself for the fantaaaastic -



Oh cmon.



I'm sure there's a clever use to reducing our HP by a factor of 10 but you won't see any in this chapter.



Anyway, we're trying to get the last Chocobo hinted by the Chocobo Sage.



To sum it up - we need a Chocobo from the icy continent and we have to find an island with crazy Goblins.





Sweet Lord this is one miserable creature. He needs some therapy ASAP.



Let's try this again.



Wonderful. Now we need some Goblin nuts. But first let's race our Chocobos, see how well they'll fare.



Holy shit.



Look at the map. In case you don't know that swirly area is the beginning. On to waiting two minutes for these bozos. Zack is fast.



It's easy to find the island where the Goblins live. It's called Goblin Island when you open the menu.



They also hit you with an Enemy Skill called Goblin Punch, which is pretty worthless. It deals big-ish damage if the enemy has the same level as the caster, otherwise it's fairly mediocre.



It's time!



And there you go, we've got ourselves a Gold Chocobo!



Hooray!






But, this is not enough.




For the most extreme levels of autism-inducing nerdiness we can't just have a Chocobo. We need to have a well-bred, min-maxed Chocobo. Because their stats can keep going up each generation, we'll keep breeding until we have a perfect Chocobo.



Let's start with a pair.



Feed their offspring with a load of extremely expensive crap.

You see, the thing with Chocobos is...



What you see here really is the sprint speed you get when you boost the Chocobo during the race, not the normal run speed.

So you can have a poorly-bred Chocobo showing 150km/h that in reality is slow as hell. Normally the run speed is much lower than the boosted speed, but you can't see it in game.



All you can do is filter which Chocobo sucks less by asking Chole, so you can keep breeding the Chocobos with the best stats and building up their normal speed.



I actually had one of those during the process. A Chocobo with very high sprint speed (like 130 or so) that was sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. We're talking snail pace here. Anyway, on to our last breeding:




Hell yeah.




They see me rollin'



They hatin'



So yeah. The thing with speed is that it just makes you finish it faster. Joe can never keep up with you, as the proper stat to deal with him is Stamina (because of his AI you can outrun him by sprinting in the right times) and that's easy to max. Once you have enough stamina Teioh can't catch you, and once you have enough speed no one else can either.



[Sneak Attack] is a support materia that casts the linked materia automatically as soon as the battle starts.



By the way, the reason you see the Chocobo in a weird color during these screenshots is because the Gold Chocobo is so flashy its color blinks constantly.



Once you win some matches you get some nice accessories and a [Counter Attack].



There's this thing plus [Sprint Shoes] which puts you on auto-haste and [Choco Feather] which increases dexterity by 10.



More importantly, this is a random S Rank reward. [Magic Counter] is a support materia that counters with the linked magic or summon. We're done here!



And finally, the purpose of this entire crazy sidetrack.



Knights of the Round.

Oh man.

Knights of the Round is, to put it in the most blunt way possible, something that shouldn't be in the game. I'm pretty sure the only reason it is in, as well as the very convoluted process to get it, is to make help lines have a reason to exist, plus a way to get everyone to beat the game.

Essentially, KOTR is the ultimate Summon materia. It takes some 2 minutes to watch and it's a multiple hit, high damage summon that will deal a shitload of damage, guaranteed, no questions asked. We're talking at least 50k here, all the way up to 130k since it deals 13 hits. Each hit deals damage to every enemy. It's almost a guaranteed one shot to the rest of the storyline bosses, possibly including the final boss depending on your stats.

Naturally you won't get all that power for nothing. While cool at first, it gets boring as hell to watch by the tenth or so time, and it is the only summon that cannot be paired with Quadra Magic. It also takes a (rightfully so) shitload of time to level up.

It's incredibly infamous for all the multitude of guides that recommended you to solve your problems by "casting Knights of the Round" or making KOTR Materia combos. No shit, Sherlock!

We'll see it eventually. I don't want to spoil the next bosses of the game by using KOTR, especially since right now we can kill every single one of them with Sneak Attack + KOTR before they even have the slightest chance to breathe.


Next time:

Suspense! Mystery! Sidequests that are relevant to the plot!