Final Fantasy 7....by a non gamer

Let us continue.....

So we left at the point of trawling through the caves with Sephiroth which we already classified as tedious. But fair play to her, she picked it all up and blasted her way through it all before I got home. A little disappointed I wasn't around for that, especially to talk through some of the themes. For example, out of nowhere in one of the battles she was in, she asked ".....hey, is Cloud an Ancient too?". But she seemed a bit happier with the storyline once it got to the parts where you were just watching what happened instead of controlling Cloud through a memory which she classed as "lazy and unnecessary".

So I caught up with her at the Chocobo farm, where she told me she'd just been in a fight with a giant chicken with two monsters protecting it.....before she had bought the lure?! I'd never seen this happen before and made it hard to convince her to spend 2000 gil on the materia from Billy. She also missed the choco/mog materia, again, a struggle not to say anything but have to be fair in this.

On a rather comical note, while trying to find a chocobo to catch, she decided to attack the "giant snake" with gusto. "I'm just gonna kill the damn snake" was the quote after getting pissed off trying to find chocobo's. In her defence, she fought valiantly, and then Tifa got knocked out of the fray, and within seconds, so had Red XIII, leaving her with Cloud who took Beta full force to the face. She pretty much accepted she needed the chocobo then.

I think what annoyed her the most about catch them was the fact she was buying the most expensive greens to keep the chocobo occupied and from what I can see, the more expensive ones don't last anywhere near as long as the cheaper ones. After a furious amount of time on it, she finally pulled it off with 2 characters throwing greens and one fighting to get her chocobo, hurrah!

After getting the chocobo, she runs towards the cave and in a style that I'm sure MitchKoobski above will appreciate, she went ":eek:.......fuuuuuuuuck" upon seeing the impaled zolem.

She got through the mythril mines without much incident, again, i felt bad for not sharing acquired knowledge such as getting enemy skills or stealing one of the best weapons in the game here but she found all the materia etc so I was happy enough to leave her with it. However, upon leaving the caves, the forest as you exit is where I always get Yuffie and without a doubt, this has been the hardest thing to keep quiet about. On one hand, I've never beaten the game without her so I'd like to see how it affects the story, but on the other, I want herself to experience as much as possible. very torn, but as I said at the start, I'll keep this all to myself.

She has completely skipped fort condor and gone toward Junon where she fought Bottomswell with ease. At this point, its worth nothing she's around level 20 and has ice2/fire2/bolt2 from the amount of fights she's been in. She is definitely starting to look overpowered here. Although she does still seem to favour an all out attack, she has been trying out materia as she gets it. She was using Heal materia for ages without realising what its doing just to find out. Again she recognised the bubble attack in this boss as something to attempt to fix herself but didn't catch it in time (it disappears when , just for anyone who didn't know)

Jesus she hates the mini games though. The CPR thing she thought was boring, "why can't I just cast cure?!" and the dolphin jump mini game was greeted with such disgust that she gave up after 2 mins. She has got her first summon though, Shiva is now in her possession!

She hasn't progressed any further, once again suffering from gamers thumb and gamers neck apparently, but mainly because she doesn't like the dolphin mini game. She's starting to get a bit more into the story, Sephiroth is starting to get the awe factor and she's curious about the ancients as well. At the moment she reckoned she could see herself potentially replaying a game like this and i think, considering she's put in at least 3 hours a day for the last 3 days, that we may have a convert on our hands gentlemen!

Hopefully the dolphin mini-game won't hamper her too much so I can see her get annoyed with the marching mini games coming

till next time!

OK so we're in agreement, Tell her about Yuffie.

I assume telling her that you get her in those woods is enough, I can let her make the mistakes in dialog herself?

So we had a hiccup yesterday. As she's been playing on the PSP, she's become comfortable with setting it to standby. However, our 1yr old daughter is quite fond of anything with buttons or switches and turned off the game on herself sending her back to the mythril mines. A blow to her progress no doubt but in hindsight, this has quite possibly become a blessing in disguise. While going through the mines, this time she stole the grand glove, a great weapon for Tifa, she got her first enemy skill and she's been playing with materia enough to say that her biggest problem is her lack of "All" materia.

She also went to Fort Condor to participate in the battle which she did 99% completely unaided, a worthy achievement in my eyes. She had no issues with the battle, mainly because she had enough money to max out her troops. While she thought the mini game was slow, this has been the one she's hated the least. Not a fan of the mini games yet but progress has been made.

On Yuffie, I told her she could get her in the woods near junon and lo and behold she told me she's already fought her once! She was giving out about her as she stole 700gil from Tifa and assumed that you'd just see her at another stage. I told her if you got the conversation choices correct you got Yuffie on your team and she told me to say no more. Incredibly the next time she fought Yuffie, she got all the conversation choices bar the last one correct through guesswork. She was not happy after she named her and then she disappeared, but thankfully, 2 fights later she showed up again and Yuffie was added to the party.

She flew through the Junon section again and finally got the dolphin jump to work, leading her up to Junon's upper city. Here she found the beginners hall and spent quite a bit of time in here catching up and confirming stuff she's been guessing until now in the battles and with her materia. She also ran through most of the houses and picked up all the new materia and weapons she could handle. And then we got to the marching mini game and by god she hated that. We were there for about 10 minutes just trying to get into the parade where the ratings are on screen and as expected, we received the grenade from the TV station. We've just hit the training room to get ready for the imperial send off, when gamers thumb set in.

She's starting to realise just how much could be hidden in the game due to the Yuffie side quest. She's curious now to go back and check out the first half of the game to see what she has missed so I told her we could try it again and use the official guide I have as well as all the tips and tricks I've picked up over the years but on a lighter note, we're also talking about what other games she might like in the series.

She does seem to be taking a shine to the JRPG genre but when I mentioned that the other games in the series don't have materia or the same characters she was a little disappointed/surprised. I've been thinking ahead to what to let her try next. She has said that the random battles are kinda irritating and what she's enjoying the most in this game is the story. I'm tempted to go with FF9 as I think it's a very beginner friendly one, coupled with the fact that I used to play it with our 7yr old (who lovingly dubbed it "The pirate game"). I don't know if the graphics would be a stumbling block or not to her enjoying the incarnations previous to 7 so I'm thinking either 9 or 10 will be next on the list. Any thoughts?

Retr0gamer wrote: »

If you've a 'naughty' PSP then there are other ways

My PSP is not naughty

My Playstation phone on the other hand is one hell of a dirty bitch.

FF6 on the phone ftw!