We got right into it tonight, no side missions, no grinding, no procrastination. We flew the Highwind over Midgar and let the FMV cutscene take me away.
With Midgar under martial law, and the party unable to enter via land, Cid states the only way in is by air. Everyone straps on a parachute and skydives into sector five. I have no idea how Red pulled his string, but I have complete trust in my Purple Mage. I still don’t care about Cait Sith. We land in the streets of the plate and quickly duck into the sewers/underplate. It’s an area that looks like the section before Reactor Five blew up. As another callback to the earlier portion of the game, Bombing Mission, the first song we heard from the OST, plays as we travel. We find a few good treasures, including a good weapon for Barrett, and enter into the same train tracks we once ran on before the aforementioned reactor mission. It is here we find the Turks, one last time. I had the option to not fight this boss, but, look. Reno is entirely responsible for the death of everyone in the Sector Seven Slums. Rude was elsewhere, and Elena was still in training, so I’ll give them plausible deniability in the act, but Reno was there. We fought him after he planted the bomb and before he flew off with a kidnapped Aerith. Reno is not a good guy.
I steal their treasures and beat up on Elena for a while because she was in the front row. Sadly, you only need to defeat one before they all run away and, “call it a day". The most deserving death in the game just casually walks away, and we let him. Really disappointing. Barrett doesn't even have extra dialogue towards the guy who destroyed his home and fellow AVALANCHE members.
In the train tunnels, I go the wrong way and find several stat boosts and the W-Item Materia. With Cait no longer being a mine, since I'm not doing the Chocobo sidequests, I make him a Chemist and gift it to him. I continue the correct way until I come to another wrong way and wind-up in front of the Shinra HQ. Despite it recently being bombed by Weapon, people are still working. You can’t talk to most of them, and you’re only here to collect stuff, though. We find Cait’s Ultimate Weapon, good back-ups for Red and Cid, and a few more stat ups.
Returning to the correct path, we’re ambushed by the remaining Shinra Big-Wigs, Scarlet and Heidegger, riding their Anti-Weapon...weapon, Proud Clod. It’s not a strong enemy, and once it’s shut down, the two are gone for good. The only thing left to do is defeat the last Shinra Executive, Palmer. No, wait. Hojo. Yeah, Hojo. What happens to Palmer?
We climb the scaffolding in sector eight, the same sector we first met Aerith in. With Barrett in our party, we find his Ultimate Weapon, Missing Score. With that in hand; I run back down to replace my parry with Vincent and Red. Vincent has some unique dialogue with Hojo, and Red is OP AF. He’s so OP that he makes this three staged battle easy. Hojo’s status effect moves don’t affect my guys, his adds die quickly to magic breath, and his HP is insignificant. The only thing of note is is that he reveals that HE is the true biological father of Sephiroth. It upsets Vincent, who says Hojo should have slept for all those decades and not Vincent. Vince got the final kill in his Limit Break form, so there's some justice for him.
I don’t know if I believe Hojo is the father of ultimate evil, though. Everything I’ve read online indicates I’m wrong and misread Vincent’s backstory, but I’m sticking to my conspiracy theory. I know, during development, Sephiroth and Aerith were going to be siblings, so I’m basing my theory on that and inability to read. Hojo is also pure evil and, therefore, an unreliable narrator type character.
Regardless of my literacy, after Hojo dies, Shinra is left without any Board of Directors, besides Palmer. With it’s power structure nonexistent, it crumbles, and the world is now free of its tyranny. Capitalism is again able to create the next Shinra as there is still no governing force to control the markets. We never see just how that affects the world, as there are more pressing matters to attend to about the longevity of Gaea.
The night before heading to the North Cave, Cloud decides that everyone needs to find their reason to fight. Not just for the planet, but in their personal life. Red wants to see Cosmo Canyon again, despite us just being there, and Barrett wants to see his daughter, Marlene. Barrett also shows signs of remorse about the bombs and admits he went about it all wrong. It was just to get back at Shinra and not for the planet. Cid, I hope, treats Shera like a person, Reeve moves in with a random couple. Cloud and Tifa, with nowhere to go, just hang out and get close. I didn’t get the scene where they made love, but at least they’re still friends. In the morning, Cloud and Tifa, prepared to face Sephiroth alone, is surprised when all of their friends show-up ready to fight. It's even more surprising because no one landed the Highwind; it was airborne all night, and the whole party was scattered across the world. How did five people sneak past the two and into a floating airship? I have no idea where Vincent went, by the way. I am looking forward to this scene in the remake. Lastly, Cid pulls the new levers he’s been wondering about since we got the ship, and the propellers drop and turn into jet engines. This affects nothing, but the FMV does look nice, as the party jets off to the North Cave. Finally. We are then asked to insert disk 3!
But not yet. Now is the last time to side quest, and, while I’m not doing the tedious stuff, I will do some. I plan to get the Ultimate Weapons and do some Limit Break grinding, but I’ll do that tomorrow. Except for Cloud. I beat Ultima Weapon tonight getting Shadow Flare for Red, as well AND then called it a night (45 minutes to kill that cowardly douche). I’m looking to finish this Job Class Challenge tomorrow. Sad to see it go, but happy to have played. Sorry I haven’t been exploring more characters and describing the challenge better. Gotta figure out how to use Cid for awhile. Maybe I will do the Ancient Forest...
No comments:
Post a Comment