Part 69: Part Sixty-Nine: Assault on Galbadia Garden

Part Sixty-Nine: Assault on Galbadia Garden


Here we are, alive and successfully inside of Galbadia Garden.




Everyone's fawning over Rinoa, no respect for Squall. Coincidentally, Garden was over budget last quarter and there need to be pay cuts.


Sensing an event, Irvine wanders in from off-screen.

: The sorceress should be here somewhere.

Yeah, she should.



It's time for Squall to address his comrades.

: There's no way we can fight her like that. I, for one, can't. She chose to fight and become our enemy. We have to fight back. We have no choice. At least I'd like to think so.


This isn't a great speech, because Squall is still pretty confused. He's trying to pass the buck on fighting Edea to a higher authority (i.e., fate) at the same time that he's trying to accept his new leadership role, but he's not quite carrying it off.

: We've come this far. I guess there's no need for me to say anything.


Rinoa is very expressively supportive of him, which is an important part of his development.

: Squall, we want to know how you feel.


But he can't quite sort it out right now, closing up with the classic crossed arms/turned head pose.



: Let's go.

We will handle feelings later.


The first order of business is forming a party, and there it is.


Nobody else has lines here, which is kind of weird.


They also vanish if you leave the screen and come back.


Anyway, let's head out.


Hallways like this are Galbadia Garden's bread and butter as a dungeon. It makes good design sense, but it's also a bit underwhelming.



This particular hallway, though, has a staircase in it.


Up the stairs, we find Fujin and Raijin.


Raijin is spoiling for a fight.


But Fujin has something to say.



Raijin: ...We just want the old Seifer back, ya know?

These guys are in a tough spot. They've always supported Seifer, but he's made some real changes in his life recently and they can't deal with it.


Squall here also has a point: Seifer's in deep now. He can't walk back fucking up Garden as bad as the Galbadians did.

: All right.

Squall just tells Raijin he'll deal with Seifer.


Raijin just says the same "let's go" line, but Fujin gives a bow and admits how tired she is when you talk to her. These two weren't interested in helping Edea, but you'll also notice that they weren't with Seifer when he was giving orders earlier.


But there's no point standing around, so let's move on to this random encounter. There are a bunch of monsters are around the place, as suits an evil witch's house.


While we're here, there are a couple GFs to look at.


The first is Nigel.




Summoning causes him to climb out of the ground.



In typical Tonberry style, he toddles over to the enemy.


Seeing the approach, the enemy gets the classic anime sweat drop. This works a bit better if they're not flat.



Doink.


Our other GF to see is Mega Maid.




It makes a bit more of a dramatic entrance.





Then it sucks up all the enemies (and some of the ground).




Before blasting them back out.


GFs really need some levels and the ability Boost to get their legs in battle.


Those enemies, Creeps, drop Coral Fragments, which teach Quistis Electrocute, a Lightning-elemental attack.


I also got some Missiles off of enemies in Balamb Garden, which teach Micro Missiles, which is a Gravity-elemental percentage-damage attack. A high crisis level Micro Missiles is useful if you want to, say, Card enemies to avoid EXP.


I also noticed that I had a bunch of Chef's Knives.


Items like this just raise GF compatibility, so they're basically fodder for refining.



On the third floor is a single door.


Before I can check it out, though, I'm attacked by this fucked up dinosaur, Tri-Face.


Tri-Face uses status attacks, including an attack called Poison Breath, which inflicts Confuse as well as Poison. It doesn't go well for the party here.


Though I did manage to kill it. Tri-Face is worth a decent amount of AP.


Also, the door is locked. These locks are the major difficulty in getting around Galbadia Garden. In fact, if you have Enc-None on, they're the only difficulty in getting around. Equipping Enc-None really changes the feel of this place, since it's almost entirely devoid of people.


Really just a lot of empty hallways. I guess all the Galbadians with field models are outside.


In one of the rooms off of the hallway pictured, though, we find this guy.


He is terrified of Squall.

Male Student: Those bastards stormed in during class and just took over this place. Most of the students were kicked out then.

We sort of knew this, but Edea doesn't have much interest in training a new army when Galbadia already has a functional one.



More importantly, though, this dude gives Squall a key card. The door upstairs was locked with card 2, so we still need to find that, but this is a help.



Male Student: They also have card keys to open restricted areas. Be careful, guys.

So, we have to find the rest of Galbadia's student population to open the other doors. Good to know.


One last note, this guy plays cards but there's no reason to play him. Just FYI.




Other rooms in the vicinity contain jack shit. I really feel like Galbadia Garden is mishandled here by being empty, especially after Balamb Garden was full of people running around and fighting.


If you go up to the second floor, you can find empty classrooms replacing the first floor's dorms. Exciting!


This is Jelleye, and I wanted to show it off because it's one of the most pathetic monsters in the place. It's not, like, Geezard-tier, but it sucks all the same. Creeps (the shadow from earlier) is shitty, too. I honestly like how they handle enemies in this game. Humans aren't too threatening, robots are a little better, and actual monsters range from trash to actually threatening. Things like T-Rexaur are fairly rare, but they'll ruin your day if they get the chance.


Oh, and if you were wondering, of course there are G-Soldiers around the place. No Paratroopers, though, they're all in Balamb Garden.


Odin showed up to slice these dudes.



And yes, Odin brings the storm inside with him.


Anyway, moving on, with the first card, this door opens.


It leads to...the ice rink! We could see it the last time we came through Galbadia Garden, but we couldn't go in. The door's open this time.


And, this area has a unique enemy!



We are now fighting Slappers, members of Galbadia Garden's demi-human ice hockey team! As far as I can remember, the Slapper's scan data is the only thing in the game that refers to demi-humans. As for the actual battle, Slappers have three moves: Formation G (a physical attack where they high stick you and get a penalty); Formation M (they cast Blizzara and get a penalty); and "We have heart! Go Galbadia!" which drops a target's Vit to 0 (definite penalty, and one of the most useful status effects in the game).


Appropriately, Slappers have Ice magic. At higher levels, they also pick up Water, but they don't diversify much.


In the end, I beat the shit out of them and everyone in the party got five for fighting.



The Bears (that's the actual team's name) pulled their goalie, so now we have access to this Protect draw point. I'll take it.


Go Bears!



Past the rink, there's...a locked door. That's no good.


Ah, there we go.



The last guy was obviously just hiding in his room. How do you think this guy ended up here?


Well, whatever. That's two out of three - not bad.


I vaguely remember that one of these people uses boss cards a lot. It doesn't matter at all, but there you go.


With Card 2, we can unlock half the doors at the ends of these hallways.


Because those hallways all link up, it provides a shortcut back to the entrance/save point.


We're on our way to open the door upstairs. Fujin and Raijin are still hangin' out, but they don't do anything. Game kinda blew its load on that one.



Why does an attack called "Poison Gas" inflict Blind?



It didn't stop my Mug.

Curse Spike is a useful item for two reasons: number one, it can be refined into the Pain spell, which inflicts several status effects, making it a good Status Attack/Defence junction; second, if you have 100 and the GF Siren (a.k.a. Kate Bush) is level 100, you can make Dark Matter, which teaches Quistis her ultimate Blue Magic.


Moving on.


We're up at the top of the place now.




It doesn't last, though.

The door behind Squall here leads right back to where we came in, but it's inaccessible at the moment. Basically, in classic dungeon design style, we did all that to go ten feet.







By now, we're back in territory that's definitely familiar from the first visit to G-Garden. You can get to the second building then if you want, but there's no reason to.


Let's check out upstairs.


To the left, this elevator. It was also locked the last time we were here - the only door with a numbered lock you can access when you first come 'round.


There's nobody to receive you in the reception room, but by god you can go inside.


Nothing on the mezzanine, either.


Let's just go out the front door. Why did we come here?


In the entrance hall, there's a new feature.


It's not this random encounter with a Death Claw.


You can just see it in the beam of light, here.


Yo.



How did this get here?



I think every GF fight starts with a bit of dialogue. At least, I can't think of one off the top of my head that doesn't. Odin talks before you fight, and you can't junction him, anyway.


Cerberus here has some pretty strong magic, and acts fairly often (I believe that the heads and tail each act semi-independently).


Quake is one of the few non-summons in the game that makes the caster('s party) disappear.


The animation wouldn't make much sense otherwise.


Like I said, Cerberus has some nasty spells.


You can draw Quake off him, or Triple if you didn't get it from Odin.


He's got a good steal, so I took the time to try and try again.


While I was doing that, he did this.


Triple lets you cast three spells in a turn, for the cost of three spells.



It can be effective - Silencing the party isn't huge, but if he dropped three Quakes, it might make trouble.


Finally.


How about you show me what you got?


Punk.


Being something of a sore loser, Cerberus puts his ass in the camera as he delivers his last words.


Another one for the collection.


The real prize here was the AP. A bunch of GFs learned abilities.


This one's alright.


This one's shit.


This one's useful.


And this one owns bones!


We also got a new GF.


Who can also learn Spd-J!


...Or Alert, but why would you?



Then I went to use the Spd-J scroll I just nabbed and was reminded I have some good GF items just sitting around.


And this Curse Spike.


This works like the Level X Death spells in other games, killing enemies whose level is a multiple of X. At the highest Crisis Level, X=1. At lower Crisis Levels, X=4, 3, or 2.


I taught Spd-J to Booyakaga because he has Mug, which uses Spd as a variable.


And, with the power of Triple, Rinoa became the fastest person in the world.


...Until I do Squall's.


And he's just gonna get faster.


Haste is another good spell to put on Spd. Triple is better, but it's technically best on Hit% - if you're the kind of person who wants to max everything, you'll probably end up doing that. Except on Squall, of course, who has 255% anyway. There's one other person who matches, but I won't say who just yet.


Past the atrium, the front gate is accessible, but you can't actually use it. Makes sense.


Hm. Well.


(This is just the other side of the atrium.)


And, we've managed to find the last student.



Thanks muchly.


Now we can get to Edea.


...Or play cards, but why bother. I just think it's funny that every person in this place, hiding for fear of their lives, will stop to play a hand of TT.




The various hallway doors are also now open, so you can access the save point at the entrance if the one in the atrium isn't good enough for you.


Really, the third key only has one use.


Let's go kill a sorceress.