Summary:
Not a terribly exciting session to read about, but a fun one to play
and an important one. I try processing some of the onslaught of
tutorials the game provides. (I probably get some of this wrong, but
that's okay. Muddling through this stuff is half the fun of a new game!
SOLDIER Building
-Zack’s doing squats with some new dude in a mask.
-“Mass desertion at SOLDIER.” Wow. For Wutai, or just to get away from it all?
-The dude is Kunsel. Says an unnamed “first” deserted and took a bunch of lower ranks with him. I don’t think it’s Sephiroth.
-Zack is kind of a nice change from Cloud. We go from Grumpus McGee to WOOHOO YES!
-Zack meets SOLDIER’s director, Lazard. Dude’s got a style I think of as “corporate Beethoven.”
-The missing First is named Genesis, who disappeared in Wutai.
-LOLOL – Angeal says that he’s recommended Zack for First, and ZACK. GOES. WILD. Mussing Angeal’s hair and shit.
---
Tutorial Time!
-Outside that room, it seems like Kunsel’s gonna tutorial me. Buckle up.
-The main menu is just as confusing, but I’ll take my time. No rush. There’s a whole MESS of tutorial letters. Some of it will be intuitive from the prior game, but I’ll try to comment and write out the stuff that is new to me or about which I’m uncertain.
-The language suggests guarding and evading expend “AP” (attack power?). Gotta be careful of that.
-SP = “SOLDIER points.” They make the “OMW” (?) spin. That must be the thing with Sephiroth and Angeal’s faces. “When SP reaches zero, the OMW stops spinning, therefore halting Zack’s growth as well.” Not sure what the OMW does or what “growth” is in this context yet.
-I can use SP for stuff beyond the OMW later in the game. I wonder if the OMW spins on its own or if it’s something I have to activate.
-SP can be gained in two ways: OMW results (again, not sure) and by defeating monsters. Maybe similar to ability points in Final Fantasy V.
-Most of the status ailments are the same as previous games, but unfortunately they’ve decided to bring back persistent statuses. Poison, Silence, and Curse (which “prevents OMW rotation” – again, dunno) all last even after the end of a battle. That pisses me off, but whatever. I’ll deal.
-I wonder if there’s a way to cure the Stop effect. There never really has been beyond killing and reviving the Stopped character, but we’ll see.
-Most of the positive status changes are self-evident, but there are some new ones. “Endure” prevents falling from damage received. I take this to mean that if Zack has “Endure” up and take a billion points of damage, he’ll just go to 1 HP instead of dying.
-“Critical” makes all attacks critical. I expect this applies to magic attacks as well as physical attacks, but it’s not a given. I’ll have to test that out. And “No MP/AP Cost” is a new status in the series also, which is pretty neat and seems to make all abilities free to use.
-“Null Physical/Magic” is like the uber version of “Barrier/MBarrier.” The barriers halve damage from their respective types, and the null statuses negate that type completely.
SOLDIER Building
-Zack’s doing squats with some new dude in a mask.
-“Mass desertion at SOLDIER.” Wow. For Wutai, or just to get away from it all?
-The dude is Kunsel. Says an unnamed “first” deserted and took a bunch of lower ranks with him. I don’t think it’s Sephiroth.
-Zack is kind of a nice change from Cloud. We go from Grumpus McGee to WOOHOO YES!
-Zack meets SOLDIER’s director, Lazard. Dude’s got a style I think of as “corporate Beethoven.”
-The missing First is named Genesis, who disappeared in Wutai.
-LOLOL – Angeal says that he’s recommended Zack for First, and ZACK. GOES. WILD. Mussing Angeal’s hair and shit.
---
Tutorial Time!
-Outside that room, it seems like Kunsel’s gonna tutorial me. Buckle up.
-The main menu is just as confusing, but I’ll take my time. No rush. There’s a whole MESS of tutorial letters. Some of it will be intuitive from the prior game, but I’ll try to comment and write out the stuff that is new to me or about which I’m uncertain.
-The language suggests guarding and evading expend “AP” (attack power?). Gotta be careful of that.
-SP = “SOLDIER points.” They make the “OMW” (?) spin. That must be the thing with Sephiroth and Angeal’s faces. “When SP reaches zero, the OMW stops spinning, therefore halting Zack’s growth as well.” Not sure what the OMW does or what “growth” is in this context yet.
-I can use SP for stuff beyond the OMW later in the game. I wonder if the OMW spins on its own or if it’s something I have to activate.
-SP can be gained in two ways: OMW results (again, not sure) and by defeating monsters. Maybe similar to ability points in Final Fantasy V.
-Most of the status ailments are the same as previous games, but unfortunately they’ve decided to bring back persistent statuses. Poison, Silence, and Curse (which “prevents OMW rotation” – again, dunno) all last even after the end of a battle. That pisses me off, but whatever. I’ll deal.
-I wonder if there’s a way to cure the Stop effect. There never really has been beyond killing and reviving the Stopped character, but we’ll see.
-Most of the positive status changes are self-evident, but there are some new ones. “Endure” prevents falling from damage received. I take this to mean that if Zack has “Endure” up and take a billion points of damage, he’ll just go to 1 HP instead of dying.
-“Critical” makes all attacks critical. I expect this applies to magic attacks as well as physical attacks, but it’s not a given. I’ll have to test that out. And “No MP/AP Cost” is a new status in the series also, which is pretty neat and seems to make all abilities free to use.
-“Null Physical/Magic” is like the uber version of “Barrier/MBarrier.” The barriers halve damage from their respective types, and the null statuses negate that type completely.
-Aha! Here we are. The “OMW” tutorials. This was by far the
least-self-evident mechanic I’ve come across in this game, so let’s see
what’s up.
-Ok. So. It’s a slot machine thing in the top left of my screen in combat that keeps rolling different numbers. Most of the time it seems to do jackshit, but when one of the numbers is a “7,” it gives me a bonus.
-I wonder if I’ll have to literally memorize these or if something happens on screen to alert me. Like, if the OMW rolls 757, will I get a message saying “NULL PHYSICAL DAMAGE!”? And how long does it last? How often does it reroll?
-In addition to 7s always granting positive status effects, triple numbers of any kind grant positive statuses.
This is a pretty fascinating system, and actually reminds me a lot of the lunar cycle in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.” It adds an external environmental element that I have to adjust my playstyle to make the most out of things. I can’t just bullheadedly attack or cast one super spell.
My initial fear is that it may be just too complex, but I got both a pause button, an ability to learn, and time.
-The OMW is also tied to “limit breaks.” This is where the pictures come into play.
“When the left and right image reels match… during battle, you enter the limit verge screen.” So when I didn’t just see the OMW in the top left, but rather across the entirety of my screen, that was the limit verge screen. When the center image here matches the limit verge, a limit break is activated.
An example of what I think this means: if a silhouette of Sephiroth appears in combat on the left and right of the OMW during combat, the limit verge screen appears and spins the middle picture. If the middle picture also is Sephiroth, it lets Zack use the limit break.
[It just occurred to me – the tutorial here says “enabling Zac to unleash special skills.” What if this isn’t a party-based game at all, but where I only get one character at a time? WEIRD, BUT POSSIBLE.]
-“The chances of entering a limit verge increase as the color of the limit gauge above the reel becomes more red.” I can’t remember what the “limit gauge” was. I’ll have to watch for this.
-“Also, the chances of achieving a limit break increase as images from Zack’s heart appear.” No clue what this means. Like, at all. “Zack’s heart” could be a technical thing, a gauge or meter, or it could just mean that if the images are people Zack cares about he’ll have a higher chance at a limit break whereas if the images are people Zack hates then it’s a lower chance.
-I collect images throughout the game. Cool! Like the password system in FFII, access grows from story.
-Some of those images are items. The others are… automatically collected I guess.
---
Next time: Wrapping up the intro tutorial stuff.
-Ok. So. It’s a slot machine thing in the top left of my screen in combat that keeps rolling different numbers. Most of the time it seems to do jackshit, but when one of the numbers is a “7,” it gives me a bonus.
-I wonder if I’ll have to literally memorize these or if something happens on screen to alert me. Like, if the OMW rolls 757, will I get a message saying “NULL PHYSICAL DAMAGE!”? And how long does it last? How often does it reroll?
-In addition to 7s always granting positive status effects, triple numbers of any kind grant positive statuses.
This is a pretty fascinating system, and actually reminds me a lot of the lunar cycle in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.” It adds an external environmental element that I have to adjust my playstyle to make the most out of things. I can’t just bullheadedly attack or cast one super spell.
My initial fear is that it may be just too complex, but I got both a pause button, an ability to learn, and time.
-The OMW is also tied to “limit breaks.” This is where the pictures come into play.
“When the left and right image reels match… during battle, you enter the limit verge screen.” So when I didn’t just see the OMW in the top left, but rather across the entirety of my screen, that was the limit verge screen. When the center image here matches the limit verge, a limit break is activated.
An example of what I think this means: if a silhouette of Sephiroth appears in combat on the left and right of the OMW during combat, the limit verge screen appears and spins the middle picture. If the middle picture also is Sephiroth, it lets Zack use the limit break.
[It just occurred to me – the tutorial here says “enabling Zac to unleash special skills.” What if this isn’t a party-based game at all, but where I only get one character at a time? WEIRD, BUT POSSIBLE.]
-“The chances of entering a limit verge increase as the color of the limit gauge above the reel becomes more red.” I can’t remember what the “limit gauge” was. I’ll have to watch for this.
-“Also, the chances of achieving a limit break increase as images from Zack’s heart appear.” No clue what this means. Like, at all. “Zack’s heart” could be a technical thing, a gauge or meter, or it could just mean that if the images are people Zack cares about he’ll have a higher chance at a limit break whereas if the images are people Zack hates then it’s a lower chance.
-I collect images throughout the game. Cool! Like the password system in FFII, access grows from story.
-Some of those images are items. The others are… automatically collected I guess.
---
Next time: Wrapping up the intro tutorial stuff.
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