Tuesday, January 26, 2016

FFVIII – Part 42: Prison Break

Summary: The team escapes from the confines of Figa… ahem, D-District Prison.


D-District Prison

-One negative I’m finding about this game is that the GFs are so powerful that it feels useless to bother with regular attacks. Same goes for most regular magic.

-The team walks out of the cell… and the alarms start blaring.



Well. That sucks.

-Starting to encounter lots of mechs. (No save point in a while btw.)

-The search for Squall commences. No Squall on Floor 7. Found a vendor on floor 8. Floor 9 is pretty empty too except for a draw point. The prisoner on Floor 10 is silent and doesn’t really do anything.

-Not my favorite dungeon. Feels weirdly spaced, and kind of repetitive with a lot of emptiness.

-Switching up my GFs a bit to give Diabolos to Zell. He’s my main auto-attacker, and so he’ll make best use of Mug.

-Heh – a prisoner on floor 11 is bored and wants to play cards. He promises something special if we win… Victory! Took his Wedge/Biggs card (lol that that’s a card).



The special reward is a potion. Jerk.

-Lost a second game. I feel like living dangerously, so I play one more and bet ALL my big cards. Ifrit, Diabolos, Quistis, Minotaur, and Sacred. Won, though not big.

-Nothing on Floor 12. No open doors, nothing. The next floor has an unlocked door that Snarf opens up.

-Squall is here. We wake him up.



Time to go.

SNARF: “Laguna! Laguna!” ?????? This isn’t followed up right now.

-We can get out of here, but we’re at the top and there are tons of mechs and guards between us and the exit. A shortcut would be nice, so Zell uses his Ward knowledge to help us operate that crane-turbolift thing.

Wait. Zell is operating the crane and the other three are in the moveable cell-evator thing, how does Zell get out?

-We got to the bottom, opened the door, and sand came pouring out.

-Shit. We’re buried.

-The group hears gunfire behind them and decides to backtrack to help Zell.

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Up Top

-Zell is being chased by guards. Each time one reaches him, he gets into a fight. I probably should run away… but I wonder what happens if I run after the main prison guard?

-Doesn’t work. Whenever I get close to the main guard, I get into a fight and it resets my position. I’ll run out.

-DAMN! Got around the corner and Zell was knocked down. The warden draws is gun. Please don’t kill Zell.

-WOOHOO!!!! Squall jumps from the floor below and slices the warden in half.



Eat it, you torturing fuck.

-hahahaha Zell gets on his knees and grabs Squall’s shirt, shaking it, unable to convey his thanks. Squall is super uncomfortable and eventually has to bop Zell on his head with the butt of his gunblade to get him to stop. XD

-The team reunites. They’re pinned down by a hail of gunfire. Not sure how they get out.

-YES! Rinoa come in with Irvine. General Caraway pulled strings to get Rinoa free, and Irvine came to help her escape. Without intentions of freeing anyone else – just Rinoa.

-The best part of this section is that Irvine keeps trying to justify not having tried to save the SeeDs, and Rinoa keeps interrupting him and facepalming and saying “Man, this guy is a real dick for not caring about you,” etc. It’s wonderful.

IRVINE: “I said I’m sorry! That’s why I’m here to help.”
RINOA: “After I nearly scratched you to death!”

-More gunfire commences. Irvine holds them off, while Squall and two party members have to head up to the roof. I’ll go with Rinoa and Selphie. They’re my two lowest levels.

-Ugh. More running up floors, the same ones we already ran up. Yawn. They eventually get to the top.

-The scene switches back to Quistis, Irvine, and Zell. They decide to try to get to the top the long way – go back downstairs and take the elevator crane up. …am I really going to have to go down seven of these same circular floors?

-It appears I am.

-Down a few floors I encounter another card player and NOOO!!! I drew, and lost the chance to win a Fujin/Raijin card. Going to try a few more times. Not going to fuck around – playing my best cards. This guy gives a TON of good cards. It’s 500gil to play each time, but it’s like I’m buying the cards so that’s ok.

-Continuing to play. Got a Mega Phoenix eventually as a reward, an item that restores everyone in party from KO. This is rewarding.

-Like 8 games later, I finally see the Fujin/Raijin card again. Come on, Coldrun, don’t fuck this up…



YES!!!!

-Another 4-5 games, and I think I got all I need. If I die before reaching another save point, I’m going to rage irl. Just saying.

-This session kind of makes me wish I had played more against the card guy upstairs, but not enough to run back up.

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Rinoa’s Team

-We swap back up top. I’ve decided to just do full junction swaps when I switch parties and keep three members fully GF’d up at all times rather than spreading myself too thin.

-Reached the top of the prison. Selphie starts doing a happy dance of joy.

-…albeit too early. Boss fight.



-Not too tough. Just a standard group of mechs that some Renzokuken and Shiva obliterate.

-After the fight, we hear Quistis’s team calling on some communication device, asking us to raise the elevator. We do so and keep moving on.

-Wow. When they say this is a prison isolated in the desert, they’re not kidding!




Even more interesting is that Rinoa says when she entered, it wasn’t like this. Does it move, Figaro-style?

-Rinoa and Selphie cross the bridge from one tower to the other, but Squall is still on the bridge when it starts to retract. The towers themselves begin to drill into the ground.

-This is so cool. Though if I had vertigo, I’d probably have issues here.

-Yup. Squall is hanging for dear life on the bridge while the prison does its submarine thing.



He’s really not having a good day.

-WAIT, GAME OVER? WTF WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO? THAT WAS A CINEMATIC!!

-Let’s try that again. Got to Squall hanging from the bridge, and apparently I can shift him so that he slowly sidles towards Rinoa’s side of the bridge.

-Relaxing music instead of Game Over screen… yes!

-The team is fully reunited at a garage above ground while most of the prison is submerged.



They get into two cars and roll out.

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Next time: Um?? Hopefully avoid death at the hands of the Sorceress.