LET'S REVISIT FINAL FANTASY VII - PART TWO

WARING: Spoilers follow 
For part one, click here

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Well, things just got weird. Basically, we learn that Tifa was last seen in the mansion of mafia man Don Corneo, who I think is looking for a bride. Unfortnuately for our heroes, no males (except those who work for Corneo) are allowed in the mansion, which leads Aeris to come up with a plan to dress Cloud up as a girl to get in. What follows is a very, um, strange series of events. After finding a dressmaker at a bar and getting him out of a funk, he makes a very beautiful dress for Cloud. However, that's not enough, so Cloud goes around town looking for accessories (wig, makeup, etc.) to pretty himself up some more. This brings us to the Honeybee Inn, which is pretty much a brothel. Cloud enters one of the rooms, but passes out after seeing a vision of himself? He's woken up by a man, who I'm pretty sure raped Cloud, and this game is suddenly a whole lot different than I remembered.

But we must press on, I guess, and Cloud & Aeris pretty themselves up to enter the mansion. They find Tifa, where we learn that she's here to get information from Don, as he may be involved with Shinra. They eventually confront him, and after threatening his geintalia, he admits he's been working with Shinra; not only that, he also reveals that Shinra plans on destroying Sector 7 (where our heroes reside), as that's where they believe the AVALANCHE headquarters is. Well, that's just not good at all, is it? But before our heroes have a chance to react, Don opens up a trapdoor, sending our heroes into the sewers. They make their way through the sewers, but not before defeating a giant pig monster.

When the group finally reaches Sector 7, it's already under attack, though the AVALANCHE crew is trying is best to defend it. Tifa and Cloud go to help Barret, while Aeris goes off on her own to look for Marlene. Honestly, that doesn't sound like a very good idea. Since all Materia leaves your possession as soon as you leave the party, all the girl's got to defend herself with is a giant stick. But no one seems to think about that, as they all go on their separate ways. Unfortunately, they're too late, to save the sector with Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie among the casualties. We hardly knew ye (literally). To add salt to the wound, they find out Shinra captured Aeris and is taking her to their headquarters. Guess that stick didn't do you much good, did it?

Tifa and Barret take this pretty hard, Barret especially so since he doesn't know where his daughter is. Coupled with the fact that 50% of AVALANCHE is now gone, things aren't looking good for our heroes. But none of that matters to Cloud, of course! No, he is more concerned with what all this "ancient" crap has to do with Aeris. Obviously the best place to start is with her mother, so they go back to Aeris' house, where, SURPRISE; Aeris took Marlene before she was kidnapped.  After a lot of climbing, our group finally makes it to Shinra HQ, and face their next challenge.

I guess I should talk a little more about the game itself, no? Well, after spending more time with the Materia system, I'm starting to warm up to it more, though I'm still not completely sold on it. Call me old fashioned, but I personally like when characters have defined classes and abilities, and you have to work your strategy around how they best fit in your party, a la Final Fantasy IV and IX. Don't ask me why, as I can't really put it into words, but I just find it more fascinating from a character and gameplay perspective. On the other hand, I really did end up loving the Sphere Grid of Final Fantasy X, but that's also a fair bit different than this. While the characters in X can theoretically learn any ability, they each start on a certain section of the grid, with abilities related to that character. So in a sense, the characters are somewhat divided into classes. The characters in VII are similar in that each character has different stats and different ways of attacking, but unless I'm mistaken any character can learn any ability. So while some characters may be better suited to learn magical rather than physical abilities, all characters can learn magic spells. Only three characters can be in your active party, and only X allowed you to switch characters mid-battle, so I'm not really sure what are the real advantages of the Materia system.

I may not be on board with this system quite yet, but I do know it's fairly popular, so I'm wondering if it becomes more complex the further into this adventure we get. But, that's for another time, because for now, our journey is on pause.

LET'S REVISIT FINAL FANTASY VII - PART ONE

There's a little game coming out this year called Final Fantasy XV, maybe you've heard of it? While that game may actually never come out (kidding), there's still an entire backlog's worth of Final Fantasy games to experience. I've been in a Final Fantasy mood lately, so I've been playing quite a few of them actually. However, none happen to be quite as ~ridiculous~ as Final Fantasy VII, probably the most famous and popular game in the series. It's a game I haven't played in the longest time, when I was a child and couldn't comprehend what was going on, so it's pretty much going to be like playing it for the first time. While obviously I remember the big events that everyone knows, since I was so young the first time, it'll be interesting to see how different it really is and how much I really remember. I'm going to give a summary of what's happened as well some general commentary for every few hours I play. Without further ado, let's get started.

Warning: spoilers follow

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Final Fantasy VII casts you as Cloud, who is kind of a douchebag; he's the kind of douchebag that knows this quite well, and doesn't mind telling people so. He's the kind of guy that will tell you to your face that he doesn't care about what you're talking about right to your face. He used to be a member of a group called SOLDIER, which from what I can tell is a group of super soldiers (for lack of a better term) working for Shinra, a giant energy company that pretty much rules the world. Apparently they became so powerful by using the planet's lifeforce(?!) as energy. Let me just say, that seems like a pretty short-sighted and terrible plan. But anyway, Cloud also seems to have some sort of PTSD, since he has regular flashbacks. I'm sure this will be elaborated upon later, as well as the assumed "growth arc" turning Cloud from doucebag into slightly less douchey hero.

Cloud quit SOLDIER a while ago, and has now teamed up with AVALANCHE, a group of eco-terrorists created to oppose Shinra. Their grand plan is to destroy Shinra's many reactors, which are the things killing the planet. These reactors are in the city of Midgar, which seems like an awful place all around. There's smog, it's grimy, and the buildings (which seem to be made of trash to begin with) are falling apart. It also looks like Shinra is pretty much controlling the city as a police state, so that's fun.

Looks inviting

Cloud is joined on his mission by Barret, who seems kind of cliche at this point. He's a tough guy who has one thing in his life that gives him a heart of gold; in this case, it's his daughter, Marlene, who is his main motivation for wanting to destroy Schinra. He's also pretty similar to Mr. T, but one of his arms is also a machine gun, so I guess he's cool. AVALANCHE's plan is to destroy Shinra reactors that are what's draining the planet. Again, these plans don't seem all that great; I mean, innoncent people are going to die here, right? They're blowing these giant reactors up. People will get caught in the blast radius. Also, if Shirna is the one source of power for Midgar, wouldn't destorying the reactors lead to Midgar losing all electricity, therefore leading to chaos? AND if Midgar is essentially the government, destroying it would result in anarchy. To be fair I'm not one to hypothesize the implications of destroying the life of the planet, so maybe it balances out. Plus, AVANALCHE is a terrorist organization, so I guess it's not much of a concern. Cloud and Barret are also joined on this mission with fellow members Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, but they aren't much of a factor here, except Jessie gets stuck during the escape while the detonation countdown is going off, as one does.

So, Cloud and Barret complete their mission, but not before facing off against a robot scorpion thing. I'm fairly certain Cloud is trying to get himself killed during this fight; he tells you to attack the robo scorpion when it's tail is up, but then immediately after tells you that when this happens, scorpiobot will counter with its laster tail. Despite that, they manage to defeat the thing, and destroy the reactor.

Here we meet the third member of our group, Tifa, who's quite..."busty". Not Lara Croft triangle boob level, but her model is a clear indication that this was someone's first time creating a 3D character. She's a bartender at a place that also doubles as AVALANCHE's headquarters. Tifa's apparently Cloud's childhood friend, and I can't for the life of me figure out their relationship. Are they together? Not? Were they? I really have no idea what's going on between them. Tifa's also got some issues of her own, since one of Cloud's flashbacks showed that her father was killed by a (former?) SOLDIER named Sepiroth (I remember him!). She joins the group on their next mission to destroy another reactor. Cloud at first refuses to join, because apparently he doesn't care about the fate of the planet he lives on. Only after getting an offer of even more than before, he joins once again. (Side note: the money for cloud is coming out Marlene's COLLEGE FUND?!? WHAT?!?!).

This is obviously not my first Final Fantasy game, so I'm quite used to the Active Time Battle System, so I won't go into too much detail here. Cliffnotes version, it's still turn based, but instead of going in a sequence, each character has a bar that gradually fills up before you can perform a command, giving the battles a faster pace. I happen like the ATB system a lot. The characters don't have defined classes (you'll see why below), but they each have their own weapon sets and abilities. Cloud uses his big-ass Buster Sword, and is the strongest attacker of the group. Barret uses his gun arm (as he should), and is pretty strong defensively. Tifa...punches things. Gotta give the girl credit for her moxie, but punching doesn't seem all that effective when fighting robots and such, but apparently she must have a super punch or something, because she can kill robots and such with her fists, so what do I know? She' not quite as strong as Barret, but she's pretty damn close, so once again, props to you, girl. Her Limit Break also something has to do with slot machines, so there's that.

So, while I like the basic battle system, I'm not sure how I feel about the materia system just yet. Basically, materia are these objects that you can equip to your weapons and armor, not only giving you special abilities associated with that materia (like magic commands such as Fire and Cure), but also changing your stats as well. This is totally a personal thing, but I like when each character has a specific class and abilties, instead of you molding the character into whatever you want, as is the case here. There's also "special" materia, I guess, that changes the affect of the materia, but I haven't gotten any of those yet. I'm still trying to wrap my head about how materia functionally works in the world of this game, but that's probably overthinking things. (I can't help it! Do they just jam it into their weapons? And how does jamming an orb into the Buster Sword give you the ability to cast magic??)  I also later found out that whenever a member leaves the party, the materia they had equipped reverts back to you? Weird, but nice.

You apparently get magic but shoving *this thing* into the Buster Sword

So, it turns out that our trio has been caught in a trap set up by Shinra. Which, honestly, should have been seen ahead of time. Give yourself a few days before you try to blow up a reactor for a company you attacked very very recenly. Long story short, Cloud gets separated from the group, and falls.

But don't worry! He managed to fall through a roof onto a flower bed! Said flower bed is growing in a church for some reason involving the grass I think? There's a girl tending to the flowers, who you actually met earlier in the story. This girl's name is Aeris, which means she's going to die. Aeris is also the nicest person in the world, so screw you Square. Cloud is his normal arrogant self, which leads Aeris to request Cloud be her bodyguard and escort her home. Turns out there's a reason she needs to be guarded; Shinra's after her, for reasons I don't think have been explained yet, other then those after her calling her an "ancient".

I hope nothing bad happens to her

Aeris fights in battle using a giant staff, which I'm convinced re-uses a sound effect from Super Mario RPG. She's not a very good physical attacker, but an excellent spellcaster. After Cloud returns her home, she decides to attach herself to Cloud, and join him on whatever quest he's on at the moment. The pair catch a glimpse of Tifa, who I think became a prostitue?? But that doesn't seem like Tifa at all, so they decide to investigate.

And that's it for now!

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What are your opinions on FFVII? Love it? Hate it? Utterly confused by it (like me!)? Let me know! Also don't forget to follow me on Twitter if you want! And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, which I'm currently working on a few videos for!