Galbadia Garden
-From the outside, the Galbadia Garden looks similar to the Balamb Garden. Each have this large halo thing atop them. But the Galbadia Garden looks less like a crystalline tower and more like a red donut volcano thing.
-Got a cinematic upon entering the city. What look to be soldiers (or maybe they’re still called SeeDs here?) flying in individual armored mech suits.
I want one. Badly.
-The music is jazzy, with what I can best describe as a dangerous edge.
-The sorceress is in the capitol. Makes sense.
-There’s a symbol on one of the buildings that looks like that black and white image I vaguely associate with Taoism.
(I freely admit I know extremely little about Taoism, so if this comparison is inappropriate, please report this post – in that case, I apologize.)
-Quistis takes the lead, having been here before. She heads inside to talk to the headmaster. She leaves the party and I swap Rinoa in. The level gap is huge at this point – Squall is 27, and Rinoa (my lowest) is 14.
-Selphie name drops another location, saying this place is way different from Balamb or Trabia. Pretty sure this is the first I’m hearing of Trabia.
-LOL – I went to save and just noticed the save point of my prior file – “Galbadia – Lallapalooza Canyon” Lallapalooza?
-An announcement tells us to wait in the 2f waiting room. Lol. Yeah, I’m sure I’ll head right there… AFTER WANDERING THE ENTIRE FRIGGING SCHOOL! Let’s get started.
-A classroom here seems to have stadium seating that Balamb’s did not.
-The Galbadia Garden guards are in tight tee shirts and baseball caps.
-!!!A dude in a wheelchair, awesome!
Badass looking wheelchair too. Is this the first wheelchair in an FF game? Probably.
-A student tells me the sorceress can brainwash others. Also not surprised.
-“Character cards” are the most powerful in the world. This guy must mean like the Quistis card. Boss monster cards are second most powerful, and GF cards are the third most. I don’t think I have a boss one yet.
-OH GOD WHY DID I DO THAT. In a brief and heedless moment of hubris, I just bet Quistis and Ifrit in a “Diff” trade game. I could lose them both. Focus… whew. Won 7-3 and got two new cards. But still!
Hee! it me:
STUDENT: “We’re too old to play cards.”
SAME STUDENT TWO SECONDS LATER: “Want to play cards?”
-GALBADIA GARDEN HAS AN ICE HOCKEY TEAM?
HAHAHA YESSS this game’s world building is really awesome. There’s even a draw point in the net, but I can’t reach it since a practice is going on.
Much of the Garden is off-limits to me. Everyone is telling me to go to the 2f waiting room.
-Went to the locker room and a dude is there bopping along to music in his headphones. He tells me that there’s a monster hockey team they play next week.
By “monster hockey team,” I mean a hockey team made up of literal monsters.
”The Mighty Ducks 4: Space Jam”
Weirder and weirder.
-The Galbadia Garden (or “G-Garden” as my map calls it) is much more athletic than the B-Garden. Out back there what look like soccer pitches. The school’s layout also reminds me vaguely of the panopticon.
-Explored everywhere I can. Time to start heading towards the reception room on the second floor.
-Another guy in a wheelchair up here. I love this. He gives me some Galbadia backstory, telling me some old stuff and adding that it’s the main power in the west. “Timber and Winhill are also affiliated.” Heh. “Affiliated.” Conquered, I assume this means.
-He confirms what I kind of guessed. The Garden is technically within Galbadia, but is sort of neutral.
-Found another huge stadium-seating lecture hall. This Garden is HUGE!
If only it had some dinosaurs, it’d be complete. (For all I know, it does.)
-OK FINE GAME. I’ll go on with the story. Onto the reception room.
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Little “behind the scenes” side note for anyone interested!
I don’t think I’ve talked about how I decide what constitutes “a session,” so here goes. Usually I’ll play until I have 2-3 pages worth of notes and find a reasonable stopping point or save point, then I’ll stop. This averages around 30 minutes per session. Sometimes it’s story-heavy, but sometimes those 30 minutes are just me wandering around finding stuff that looks cool to me.
Other sessions might be much longer, usually ones that involve a ton of random battles. Last session
was one of those.]
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Next time: the G-Garden reception room.
