Summary:
We conquer the Fire Cavern, learn about elemental junctioning, and
spend a lot of time drinking enemies’ milkshakes to stock up on spells.
(Sorry, that’s the image that’s 100% locked into my head whenever I use
“Draw.”)
Fire Cavern
-Two faculty members guard the Cavern. They give me an option to choose a time limit for this cavern: 10, 20, 30, or 40 minutes. I don’t really know what the benefit of choosing a shorter time is, but it’s reasonable to think that I’d get better rewards. I’ll go with 30 minutes.
Off the bat, I really don’t love that they give me a time limit for the starting dungeon. I’m biased in that I hate time limits pretty much across the board, but especially in the first dungeon. What’s the point?
-The art design inside the cavern is BEAUTIFUL. Just… so beautiful.
-LOLOL – Quistis basically knows that everyone is Team Trepe.
-Interesting change here. I actually see Quistis running behind Squall. Usually they just stack all the characters onto one of them and that’s the only sprite we see [question: are they still called sprites at this point, or did that end at FFVI?]. I like this change a lot.
-Some bats in the cave, a Bomb (hi, bomb!), and some weird spinny stone guy.
-I used scan, and the animation for it is INCREDIBLE!
Not only that, but it’s massively useful. It gives me full stats, a floaty animation of the enemy, AND A FUCKING NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION OF THE MONSTER. It’s probably weird how such a relatively small quality of life change makes me so happy, but what can I say? I’m easy to please.
-I’m amazed at not just the graphics for this place in general, but for each specific part. Each scene looks like it was built from the ground up rather than simply being the same template with paths in different spots.
This final area (or what I imagine to be the final area) looks awesome too.
-The goal here is to find a GF, so this is probably Ifrit.
-Yup! It’s Ifrit. He emerges from the ground. I don’t have any ice magic stocked up, so in anticipation of this fight I gave Quistis the GF command to bring out Shiva.
I’ve mentioned before how lovely I find the art for this game, right?
-Ifrit specifically reacts with dialogue when I use Shiva. He’s impressed that humans are using GFs.
-Scanning him tells me that he’s possibly weak against ice, but I’m not 100% sure what that icon means. Probably ice. Will check later.
-Still not sure what the GF HP is about, but I have a new theory. The HP bar shows up while Quistis is casting Shiva. Maybe this means that if she gets attacked while casting, it’s Shiva that takes the damage rather than her.
-The Cure spell that I drew from Ifrit is notably weak, only healing up 30 HP while the potion item healed up 200.
-My theory gets confirmed. Quezacotl took the damage intended for Squall. Though I didn’t notice if Squall also took the damage – I’ll have to watch for that.
-Woohoo! Victory.
Fire Cavern
-Two faculty members guard the Cavern. They give me an option to choose a time limit for this cavern: 10, 20, 30, or 40 minutes. I don’t really know what the benefit of choosing a shorter time is, but it’s reasonable to think that I’d get better rewards. I’ll go with 30 minutes.
Off the bat, I really don’t love that they give me a time limit for the starting dungeon. I’m biased in that I hate time limits pretty much across the board, but especially in the first dungeon. What’s the point?
-The art design inside the cavern is BEAUTIFUL. Just… so beautiful.
-LOLOL – Quistis basically knows that everyone is Team Trepe.
-Interesting change here. I actually see Quistis running behind Squall. Usually they just stack all the characters onto one of them and that’s the only sprite we see [question: are they still called sprites at this point, or did that end at FFVI?]. I like this change a lot.
-Some bats in the cave, a Bomb (hi, bomb!), and some weird spinny stone guy.
-I used scan, and the animation for it is INCREDIBLE!
Not only that, but it’s massively useful. It gives me full stats, a floaty animation of the enemy, AND A FUCKING NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION OF THE MONSTER. It’s probably weird how such a relatively small quality of life change makes me so happy, but what can I say? I’m easy to please.
-I’m amazed at not just the graphics for this place in general, but for each specific part. Each scene looks like it was built from the ground up rather than simply being the same template with paths in different spots.
This final area (or what I imagine to be the final area) looks awesome too.
-The goal here is to find a GF, so this is probably Ifrit.
-Yup! It’s Ifrit. He emerges from the ground. I don’t have any ice magic stocked up, so in anticipation of this fight I gave Quistis the GF command to bring out Shiva.
I’ve mentioned before how lovely I find the art for this game, right?
-Ifrit specifically reacts with dialogue when I use Shiva. He’s impressed that humans are using GFs.
-Scanning him tells me that he’s possibly weak against ice, but I’m not 100% sure what that icon means. Probably ice. Will check later.
-Still not sure what the GF HP is about, but I have a new theory. The HP bar shows up while Quistis is casting Shiva. Maybe this means that if she gets attacked while casting, it’s Shiva that takes the damage rather than her.
-The Cure spell that I drew from Ifrit is notably weak, only healing up 30 HP while the potion item healed up 200.
-My theory gets confirmed. Quezacotl took the damage intended for Squall. Though I didn’t notice if Squall also took the damage – I’ll have to watch for that.
-Woohoo! Victory.
-Quistis starts to go into more junctioning stuff, about junctioning an
elemental GF. Seems that I can junction elemental magic to attack or
defense – like, junction Ice to an attack. Does this mean that having
it junctioned this way just increases the attack neutrally, or that it
turns it (partially/fully) into an ice attack?
Looks like it does, both improving my strength with that element or my defense against that element. This is really useful.
-Thank goodness. The timer is gone now. I can experiment a bit with the elemental junctions on my way out.
-Huh. Doesn’t seem to work. All the things are greyed out. I don’t have Blizzard to junction to elemental attack, but want to junction Fire to elemental defense. Why is the game not letting me do that?
Yeah. Been sitting here for about ten minutes trying to make it work. Adding Ifrit to Squall must’ve added new options.
-EUREKA!!!! Yes. I get it now.
Just saw that EL-A Junction is an actual ability that Ifrit has learned, while EL-D Junction is one he hasn’t’ learned. It makes sense now. Took me a while to make that connection (and what’s another word for connection but “junction?” har har har), but I got there.
I was getting frustrated but then it clicked and now I’m no longer frustrated.
-Another thing I’m picking up: the quantity of magic you have in stock seems to impact its usefulness when junctioned. Like, I have 6 Blizzards stocked. When I junctioned them to Squall’s elemental attack, it increased it by 3%. When I gave most to Quistis, that number went down to 1%. So I might end up farming drawn magic.
-Shiva finished off her SumMag +10%. I could do +20% next for SumMag, but instead going to go with Vit-J to junction magic to vitality.
-Just saw Quistis’s limit break. It’s “Blue Magic,” one called “Laser Eye.” Straight-up laser blast.
BA-ZAP!!
-I wonder if she will learn blue magic specifically from other enemies, or if it's just a name.
-Got into a fight with a Bomb, and I’m spending a while spamming Draw to stock up on Fire. I may try to do the same with a Buel for Blizzard and Thunder magic.
-Yeah. I’m doing it. Got into a fight with a Red Bat and am taking forever because I’m just drawing and drawing and drawing. Really surprised the game doesn’t cap the number of times you can draw magic in a fight. The stock limit is 100, so I maxed both Squall and Quistis out on Thunder.
-I was wrong about the Cure spell. Seems that when I use it drawn straight from the enemy it’s weak, but when I use it from my stock it’s strong.
-Fully stocked on Fire now. And Blizzard too.
-It works wonders. Squall’s attacks now slice through Bombs like butter. Time to leave the cave.
-Oh wow, I’m already starting to think about how to build my characters with these stats in a way I haven’t since FFII. (FFV had similar customizability, but it was job-based while FFII was stat-based.)
Like, Squall is on a path that could lead him towards being an elementally-charged attacked with boosts to strength and elementally-junctioned attacks, while Quistis (if she sticks around – still holding back expectations on that) could become a GF-summoner extraordinaire, pumping up her GFs’ HP and magic power.
And this is just the beginning. How exciting is this?
---
Next time: back to the school from the cave.
Looks like it does, both improving my strength with that element or my defense against that element. This is really useful.
-Thank goodness. The timer is gone now. I can experiment a bit with the elemental junctions on my way out.
-Huh. Doesn’t seem to work. All the things are greyed out. I don’t have Blizzard to junction to elemental attack, but want to junction Fire to elemental defense. Why is the game not letting me do that?
Yeah. Been sitting here for about ten minutes trying to make it work. Adding Ifrit to Squall must’ve added new options.
-EUREKA!!!! Yes. I get it now.
Just saw that EL-A Junction is an actual ability that Ifrit has learned, while EL-D Junction is one he hasn’t’ learned. It makes sense now. Took me a while to make that connection (and what’s another word for connection but “junction?” har har har), but I got there.
I was getting frustrated but then it clicked and now I’m no longer frustrated.
-Another thing I’m picking up: the quantity of magic you have in stock seems to impact its usefulness when junctioned. Like, I have 6 Blizzards stocked. When I junctioned them to Squall’s elemental attack, it increased it by 3%. When I gave most to Quistis, that number went down to 1%. So I might end up farming drawn magic.
-Shiva finished off her SumMag +10%. I could do +20% next for SumMag, but instead going to go with Vit-J to junction magic to vitality.
-Just saw Quistis’s limit break. It’s “Blue Magic,” one called “Laser Eye.” Straight-up laser blast.
BA-ZAP!!
-I wonder if she will learn blue magic specifically from other enemies, or if it's just a name.
-Got into a fight with a Bomb, and I’m spending a while spamming Draw to stock up on Fire. I may try to do the same with a Buel for Blizzard and Thunder magic.
-Yeah. I’m doing it. Got into a fight with a Red Bat and am taking forever because I’m just drawing and drawing and drawing. Really surprised the game doesn’t cap the number of times you can draw magic in a fight. The stock limit is 100, so I maxed both Squall and Quistis out on Thunder.
-I was wrong about the Cure spell. Seems that when I use it drawn straight from the enemy it’s weak, but when I use it from my stock it’s strong.
-Fully stocked on Fire now. And Blizzard too.
-It works wonders. Squall’s attacks now slice through Bombs like butter. Time to leave the cave.
-Oh wow, I’m already starting to think about how to build my characters with these stats in a way I haven’t since FFII. (FFV had similar customizability, but it was job-based while FFII was stat-based.)
Like, Squall is on a path that could lead him towards being an elementally-charged attacked with boosts to strength and elementally-junctioned attacks, while Quistis (if she sticks around – still holding back expectations on that) could become a GF-summoner extraordinaire, pumping up her GFs’ HP and magic power.
And this is just the beginning. How exciting is this?
---
Next time: back to the school from the cave.
Technically no, they're character models, not sprites. Sprites are flat 2d images that you animate by replacing the entire sprite with another image. Character models are 3d skeletons with textures mapped onto them, which you animate by moving the skeleton. That's why characters suddenly started gesticulating wildly in FF7, because that was the first FF game where their arms could move independently of their bodies.
ReplyDeleteBut that said, old-school gamers will often refer to them as sprites anyway, so it's really just a technical distinction.
BTW, this post doesn't have the Final Fantasy VIII tag.
-Two faculty members guard the Cavern. They give me an option to choose a time limit for this cavern: 10, 20, 30, or 40 minutes. I don’t really know what the benefit of choosing a shorter time is, but it’s reasonable to think that I’d get better rewards. I’ll go with 30 minutes. Fire Guards
ReplyDeleteHi, I've just stumbled across your blog as a fan of FF8. It has already been fun to read your thoughts about the game, especially the joys. Not everyone has expressed appreciation for 'minor' world-builing elements and also, the humor (which is tough thing, sure). I know it's already 2019 but you just got yourself a new reader!
ReplyDeleteAlso, just noticed your new weight lost program, I wish you the very best luck and strenght to carry on! You've done well in the past too, I noticed. I have lost about 60 kilograms so I know something about the battle too. Ganbarou!
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