Final Fantasy 7....by a non gamer

Andy!!

noodler wrote: »

Andy!! wrote: »

Mods should show some responsibility. They represent the website.

How many posts have you made in this thread calling said moderator a troll for his opinions? I see at least three.

Without offering any of your own I might add?

Read my last post. I only add things when I have helpful things to add. Getting Retro to stop ruining this thread is as valid as suggestions to the OP. I have posted other opinions too, regarding how I found boss difficulties.

Also Retro HAHA WOW. Keep your threats to yourself, or act on them. It is plain as day that you are trolling in this thread. Whoever is above you will see that and when they find out you banned someone for calling you out on that, well let's see what happens. Do it. This thread is about a guy documenting a non-gamers first experience with one of the most highly regarded videogames in the world. If you want to bitch about the samples they used for the music and asinine stuff like that, MAKE ANOTHE THREAD. AS A MEMBER, YOU HAVE POSTED OT AT LEAST 50 TIMES IN THIS THREAD. At least two pages are filled with your nonsense.

God, the worst thing about these boards is there are some people who should just not be mods. That's just plain to see, call it whatever you want if you can find something in the charter that says that something is a banable offence. You just couldn't be an adult and say fair enough, my rants belong in another thread, could you.

Retr0gamer

Andy!! wrote: »

Keep your threats to yourself, or act on them.

Well if you insist. See you in 3 weeks

RedXIV

OK guys, update time!

When we last picked up the game, we were after arriving in Coral after getting the buggy due to herself not fully exploring as she should be and being under the belief that driving the buggy into a town should trigger an entrance into it as if you were walking. After getting out of Coral again, she drove back towards gongaga where she walked in to get in a fight with Reno and Rude.

The fight itself wasn't remarkable in most ways, other than her seeing Rude cast cure on Reno which was a surprise for her. She wasn't expecting her enemies to have the same capabilities as her and when that occurred she had a nervous laugh and upgraded her magic casting from her 1st level spells to their 2nd level equivalent. It didn't take her long to finish them off but its good that she's seen this, it should reinforce the idea of prioritised targets.

After that she was getting ready to enter Gongaga, and on the way she's picked up the controversial Deathblow materia. This is the materia that's started the wheels in her head turning about materia being useless. I thought the "Cover" materia would have been the one but she's used this one almost continuously since she's had it. But after 5 or 6 fights with attempts to get Deathblow to land a hit with no success, she's relegated it to the "if I have space" pile of materia that Manipulate and Sense have been relegated to.

As she was about to enter Gongaga I told her that if she had two specific characters in her party, she'd get more story and if she wanted, I'd tell her who to bring with her. With a look that conveyed volumes of "Do you think I'm a noob" she said of COURSE its Aeris and Tifa. Slightly surprised I asked her how she knew and her logic followed on from the chat Reno and Rude had before she entered the village. For those who haven't played in a while, the turks here talk about which of the women they fancy and in my girlfriend's mind, this signifies that something is going to happen to them. Rather interesting in that I completely wrote it off as guy talk (which I'm still convinced it is) rather than her taking (surprisingly accurate) hints about what to do next.

Regardless, we went into Gongaga and she saw the interactions with Zack's parents. She hasn't commented too much on this, instead being somewhat suspicious about a town thats only purpose seems to be a chat with someone about their lost son and the to obtain Titan materia. After spending another half an hour here searching everywhere for a "town quest", she gave up and decided to give finding cosmo canyon another bash.

Just as an unintentional incentive, the save file on the psp is actually accompanied by 2 others, both from me from ages ago. One is about 2 hours into the game and the other is in Cosmo Canyon. She's been wondering when she'd get to the area denoted in my save for a while as the time elapsed in my file is 11 hours to get to Cosmo Canyon and she finally reached it at 22. Similarly, I'm at level 21 and she's at level 30 at this stage, showing the rather significant differences in experienced and first time playthroughs.

Having tried to get to Cosmo Canyon previously before entering Gongaga but getting lost in the actual canyon iteself, she was slightly vexed entering this area again. However, she managed to find the turnoff to get to the "lighthouse" in the distance after only a few minutes. She actually stopped before the buggy breaks down meaning she didn't see how the game is forcing you to enter here but its still been one of the most interesting (for her to play and me to observe her play) places we have visited. She spent a good bit of time in the room you get Full Cure materia in at a later stage due to a rope covering the entrance on this disk, as I'm sure alot of us did and was actually quite excited by "Time" materia, fully realising its potential almost immediately. Gravity still has her somewhat perplexed, with her arriving at the logical, yet incorrect, conclusion that it will be effective against flying enemies.

The observatory scene where Bugenhagen walks through the process of the lifestream was simply fantastic. I really appreciate its simplistic and informative nature now, as it really drove home all the information we'd been drip-fed throughout the game about mako and shinra's greed. Ms. RedXIV has a tendency to argue or talk to games, movies and books which can be annoying at times but during this playthrough its been simply remarkable. Her first reaction was "Why would Shinra want to kill the planet?!" followed by the train of thought that led her towards, "whats the promised land got to do with this? Do they want the promised land so they can take mako and not kill the planet?". Really good chat we had here while discussing that and how the concept of eco-terrorism has been actually permeating throughout the game. After this scene as the group are around the eternal flame, she once again goes through her comrades, judging them more on their current contributions more than anything else. The main difference here was the overwhelming hatred she has for Cait Sith. She's asked more than once if you can get rid of characters or commented on how she wished she had skipped him. Yuffie no longer has the bottom spot in our playthrough.

So after this chat where RedXIII talks about her father, we head towards the Gi Cave. Here she encounters the Death Sentence enemy move where the character gets a countdown over her head. Regardless of how well she's done in the game, she lets panic set in as she see's this and blasts through hordes of enemies with ridiculously strong magic throughout the cave. She slipped (twice) into the spikes that knock your hp down to 1 and by pure fluke, checked her menu after the first time to see that it had actually affected her health. She managed to pick up everything that I could see in the Caves before heading into the ones with the spiders. I remembered that the spiders were powerful but I forgot just how powerful they were, knocking approx 1000hp off with their stronger moves, they gave us cause to worry. Throughout the spider fights, we became more familiar with summon materia, which was great that she's experimenting but leaving her with dangerously little MP. What did bring back a wave of nostalgia was her, completely independent I may add, idea of saving limit breaks for upcoming boss fights. Considering she has Cloud's level 3 limit breaks and almost every one elses's level 2 (except of course Yuffie and Cait Sith who we hate), this is a powerful enough start for her.

And as she reached the back of the cave, where Gi Nattack awaits, we reach, by and far the most challenging fight she's done throughout the game. I have a confession to make here, I've only beaten Gi Nattack once through HP depletion. Normally I just toss a phoenix down at him and lol at how easy he is. I'd forgotten just how badass this fucker is. Twice in the game had he killed 2 of her characters and she had to fight panic to calmly bring her characters back to life without losing the plot. This fight took her the guts of 35 mins to beat and this was the kind of battle where she changed her seating position twice to show she meant business. She didn't quite grasp that fire magic was healing the flames and she used to swear like crazy every time he cast drain magic on her. The take over manoeuvre that the flames do also confused her as she wasn't sure if she should be attacking the character who had been taken over to fight the flames or not. After about half an hour of this hardship, she paused the fight to stop and we had a little laugh at just how challenging this was for her. I didn't offer any advice, just compassion at how I too, many years ago on my first playthrough, died at this bugger's hands on several occasions. She psyched herself up to turn it on again and within 2 mins of returning to the battle, he finally did the red glow of death.

She's been practically unbearable since, rubbing it in my face that I died on him several times and she beat him first time. Doesn't matter that I fought him at a much lower level or that I was 11 at the time, she has now crowned herself the better gamer. Jesus christ she's a poor winner. She'll get no more compassion from me! (secretly hope Lost Number in Shinra Mansion destroys her).

After the battle she watched the scene with Seto and seemed to enjoy it, although, again a common mistake, thought materia was falling from the sky rather than tears. We did have a moment of panic as she though RedXIII was no longer coming with us. But as we left and he joined us, all was well in the world again. So we left the canyon and once again, she's not 100% on where she should be going so has gone back to the gold saucer prison, followed by Costa Del Sol and then through the mountain pass of Coral. I'd have given her a pointer but she annoyed me with the Victory dances after Gi Nattack :pac:

She left it at that, in her own words "need to take a break from a game that gets me that worked up". Hopefully we'll get some more gaming in tonight and I'll have another update for you then. Really hoping for some humility soon so lets keep our fingers crossed gents!

SteelyDanJalapeno

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Well if you insist. See you in 3 weeks

I've stopped reading your posts pages back, I love this game, and this thread, and your posts bring me down

MitchKoobski

I hit Disc 3 last night, and aside from Junon on Disc2 I haven't used Cait Sith at all.

Retr0gamer

I never copped the use of cure magic or pheonix down on Gi Nattack on my first play through. I just used ice magic on him. I remember being surprised when I opened the fight up with Ifrit and healed him. Was a nice introduction to how elemental magic works in a RPG!

RedXIV

Ok so last night we went through the Cosmo Canyon to get towards Nibelheim. Upon entering the town, it took her a few seconds but she copped it fairly quickly, "wtf? This is Cloud's hometown?! Its all rebuilt? Is his mother still alive?". As a mother, you can understand why she is concerned that the mother is being left out of the spotlight. She is definitely a tad wary about the town and what has really made her suspicious is the like guys in Black with the number tattoos. Remember back in Midgar where she found a guy with a "2" tattooed on his hand, well ever since she's been convinced she is going to be made go find all these guys again so she's been taking note of them all and with so many of them in Nibelheim, she has her suspicions.

After a brief runaround the town, she heads into the Shinra mansion and begins searching through the rooms. Before she entered I told her that another optional character could be found here and she knew the safe had something to do with it. She found the 4th number quite easily and while trying to figure out the first 3 we were talking about my first time playing the game. Now when I first played through the game, I looked this up (in POWERSTATION, for those who remember ) so I said I totally understand the frustration she was experiencing trying to figure the clues out. She eventually decided after about half an hour that she wasn't arsed doing this and just wanted the numbers to crack the safe. Feeling like a hypocrite, I said fine and told her the safe combination. It was practically a task in itself for her to get the 4 numbers in before the timer hit 0 and she really REALLY didn't like the little "Fail" that came up everytime she tried. After about 10 goes, she got it and straight into her fight with Lost Number, as a rubbed my hands together in glee, time for that humility as I remember the pain in the hole this boss is.

Which she obviously is never going to experience with a boss as she flew through him. Some of it may have been lucky choice in limit breaks, She used Seal Evil on him about 3 times meaning for more than half of the fight he was frozen. At this stage also, everyone is on over 1000HP with Cloud on about 1500HP, so she pretty much cake walked him. For those interested, she killed his physical side first and was left with the magic caster but again, she wasn't really given any issue with him. Slightly disappointed, she picked up the Basement key and moved on.

She knew as soon as she hit the library that something wasn't right and I think she was rather surprised by the fact that Sephiroth just throws some free materia at you and flies off. Took her a little while to find the entrance to Vincent's room and she was very upset after all her work to have him finish with "Let me sleep" instead of immediately jumping down Cloud's pants like everyone else. She didn't want to leave until she had him until she fought Ying/Yang who took a surprising amount of health off her. She decided to head to the inn and heal and come back when Vincent finally decided to join.

She went back to the inn and healed everyone (realised here as well that sleeping in the inn cures everyone not just the three in her party) and she headed towards the mountains. Or at least she did but realised she hadn't got her buggy so went back and spent 10 mins trying to find a way around the town before conceding that she had to abandon it. She is not happy about this. She has just entered the Nibel Mountains but as she was tired, thats as far as she's gotten to date.

She's going to the cinema tonight so I imagine the next update will be tuesday, but she's been dreaming about strategies (seriously! I kid you not!), so I wouldn't be surprised to see her after progressing some more by the time I get home from work.

Mindkiller

Who's Cloud's father anyway? What's up with that?

RedXIV

Don't think its ever actually spoken of, can't find it in the Ultimania or anything.

There was an incredible set of fan fiction stories that had a great storyline with Cloud's father, all written by this guy Frank Verdosa here

Would recommend them as a great read.

Retr0gamer

Doing a lot better than I expected. Lost number was the second death dealt out to me when playing the game. Most people have trouble with him since he is an optional boss and should be tackled at higher levels I find. Has she copped to the strategy that keeping your party alive and healed up is more important than damage dealing?

RedXIV

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Doing a lot better than I expected. Lost number was the second death dealt out to me when playing the game. Most people have trouble with him since he is an optional boss and should be tackled at higher levels I find. Has she copped to the strategy that keeping your party alive and healed up is more important than damage dealing?

To an extent. Perhaps its just my opinion but I tended to drop everything and heal once anyone dropped under say 50% max HP, whereas unless she gets the prompt of the yellow HP or staggered character on screen, she just throws everything she has. For example, I don't think I've ever seen her link an All Materia with a Restore, its pretty much full on aggression. Her saving grace is that at her current levels, she is able to experiment still different things to try and make herself more effective.

As I recall, Materia Keeper is next who can knock 500HP off everyone at once with Trine magic so perhaps that may lead her to focus more on defence

Draupnir

noodler wrote: »

What difference does it make who is dragging it off-thread?

Well you see, the coast guard are not available to police the police right now.

Draupnir

Retr0gamer wrote: »

How about stop posting like this so the thread can actually remain on topic. As far as I can see it the thread remains on topic until a post like this comes up to take it off topic. Off topic posting is covered in the charter, if the posts go off topic as long as the discussion remains civil it's fine. This thread doesn't seem to have a problem going back on topic anyway.

Most of your posts are about your own experience and crap about the music or how easy the game is, there are a tonne of posts about other games that you like too. That is not on topic in any circumstance.

Draupnir

RedXIV wrote: »

To an extent. Perhaps its just my opinion but I tended to drop everything and heal once anyone dropped under say 50% max HP, whereas unless she gets the prompt of the yellow HP or staggered character on screen, she just throws everything she has. For example, I don't think I've ever seen her link an All Materia with a Restore, its pretty much full on aggression. Her saving grace is that at her current levels, she is able to experiment still different things to try and make herself more effective.

As I recall, Materia Keeper is next who can knock 500HP off everyone at once with Trine magic so perhaps that may lead her to focus more on defence

This thread is brilliant, I saw the word Trine and got a massive flashback.

I might have to dig the Playstation out of the attic and fire this up again.

Retr0gamer

RedXIV wrote: »

As I recall, Materia Keeper is next who can knock 500HP off everyone at once with Trine magic so perhaps that may lead her to focus more on defence

If she's got Cure all set she'll be fine. If she has enemy magic materia she can throw that crap back in his face

RedXIV

Retr0gamer wrote: »

If she's got Cure all set she'll be fine. If she has enemy magic materia she can throw that crap back in his face

That reminds me! She was looking at enemy skill, extremely annoyed at the fact she still only has two (Flamethrower and Frog Song) and has been trying to figure out how to get more. And then she came out with the startlingly astute deduction of using manipulate materia.

Now she hasn't quite mastered it yet, she attacks them after manipulating them (going back to the idea that enemies with their back to you take more damage) but she's on the right track with this!

I do think I'd like her to lose, just once or twice more in the game, a game over here and there really makes you reassess your strategy (and knocks confidence back towards human levels)

Retr0gamer

You don't want to put her off the game either though :P

Wait until she gets to Wutai. I had trouble there with the normal enemies when Yuffie took my materia. It's more of a high level optional area for later on but if you take it on right after getting the plane/ship then it can be difficult. Saying that she's probably well able to deal with it at her levels. Maybe you could be sneaky and berate her when she inevitably accidently collides with Emerald Weapon and tell her he's a cake walk :P

I honestly don't see her having any trouble for a while now unless she decides to do the pagoda challenge. Those enemies are more puzzles than battles and since she is unfamiliar with the FF system the later ones might have her stumped. Maybe Demon Wall? Although the only people that have trouble with him are the ones that run away from most battles before him. If she keeps her levels that way and doesn't panic she should destroy him as well.

Draupnir

Retr0gamer wrote:

It's more of a high level optional area for later on but if you take it on right after getting the plane/ship then it can be difficult

True that, I gave up FF7 for about two months when Yuffie nicked my materia and everyone was killing me in simple random battle. I hadn't in any way realized that players could be developed by battling at that point of my life so my chars were at the bare minimum levels for the different areas.

Aurongroove

Yuffie isn't going to be a popular chicken once that chapter is over...

I had simply the most epic battle in the word against that bird thing yer man sets on you in a recent play through.
I think I killed him after cloud alone (other teams mates dead) had ran out of ways of healing 1300+ Hp in one go and I literally used my last attacking item (an S-mine I believe) and it just killed him.

the fight lasted about 25 minutes too. I was so under levelled every attack the bird thing dealt killed one team mate per turn except cloud who had about 1500hp (hp plus) and thus could survive one hit.

Pure Loonamus

If you want to give her a bit of a challenge, I would tell her to go into the battle arena in the golden saucer(if it is available yet), it can be tough and a good way to get to know the different things that can be thrown at you, and will teach you how to defend against them(frog, small, slow etc). She might also die(but not really )

Thread is awesome btw, brings back some great memories

RedXIV

Really short update here guys

We got into the cave with the pipes and the materia keeper and unfortunately she went straight into the first pipe, meaning she didn't get a chance to knock the ladder down to get back up afterwards. The first pipe also drops you in front of materia keeper himself but she was wise enough to take a few steps back and go to the nearby save point. After a few attempts to get back up to the pipes she resigned herself to the inevitable and walked into the Materia Keeper.

Another great boss battle here, almost immediately she received the Trine enemy skill. By the time I'd looked over to see her fighting Materia Keeper, she had already cast Bio and Seal Evil on it rendering it almost useless. She was doing fantastic until I realised she wasn't getting the implication of the colour of the numbers on screen. She cast Fire2 about 8 or 9 times on him, curing him each time, as well as accidentally casting cure2 on him. She also cast Quake which I believe also cures him but I couldn't see it properly. On more than one occasion in the battle was she reduced to one character, usually Aeris. Aeris appears to be her rock, as long as she's alive she seems perfectly capable of bringing people back, she'll wait until she gets a limit break (which at level 1, is quite fast) and then cast seal evil, freezing her opponent giving her time to revive and cure her comrades.

It was close a few times but she did eventually beat him first time. BUT, on a brighter note, after her battle (and a save and tent) she went into a random battle with a Dragon who wiped her out! The dose of humility has been successfully administered! I can't really knock her attempts at strategy as shes using everything, she tries sleep, mini, toad and bio on all bosses, she hasn't been using haste as much as she should but she's using it and she's throwing in the occasional Deathblow and steal/sense.

So at the moment she's just finished in the mountains and is soon to be heading towards rocket town where she'll get some joke boss fights but then its on to Wutai where the materia stealing episode may cause alot more trouble than expected

Retr0gamer

Might be worth telling her what the colour of the numbers means, she should have got it by now, unless you still want her to keep going through it with no help?

RedXIV

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Might be worth telling her what the colour of the numbers means, she should have got it by now, unless you still want her to keep going through it with no help?

Yeah I probably should. Thing is, she's gone woefully cocky and to be fair, it says all this in the manual which I've told her to read about 15 times so I'll let her crack on.

Yes I am that kind of a jerk :cool:

Retr0gamer

The two headed dragon will teach her a lesson I'd say

noodler

Tell her to steal gold armlets from those dragons. Best you can get at that stage of the game.

Or don't tell her as the case may be!

ride-the-spiral

RedXIV wrote: »

Really short update here guys

Another great boss battle here, almost immediately she received the Trine enemy skill. By the time I'd looked over to see her fighting Materia Keeper, she had already cast Bio and Seal Evil on it rendering it almost useless. She was doing fantastic until I realised she wasn't getting the implication of the colour of the numbers on screen. She cast Fire2 about 8 or 9 times on him, curing him each time, as well as accidentally casting cure2 on him. She also cast Quake which I believe also cures him but I couldn't see it properly. On more than one occasion in the battle was she reduced to one character, usually Aeris. Aeris appears to be her rock, as long as she's alive she seems perfectly capable of bringing people back, she'll wait until she gets a limit break (which at level 1, is quite fast) and then cast seal evil, freezing her opponent giving her time to revive and cure her comrades.

End of disc one's gonna go down well

RedXIV

Ok so when I got home last night she was already in Rocket town after leaving Mt. Nibel. We'd been speaking over email about her getting there and I told her how much I like the character of Cid in this game, probably because I spent so much time stuck before getting to him and I think he's probably one of the most likable characters in the game.

We obviously have completely different tastes as Ms RedXIV is very unimpressed with the sexist pig that is Cid and how he treats his wife (as she has perceived Shera already). I had also jokingly put Cid into the ring as a name to give our son born last year (along with Ryu, Zack and Dante) and the look of disgust she gave me with "You wanted to name our son after HIM!?" after Cid's outbursts at Shera. Obviously we have a long way to go before we begin to enjoy his rascally nature. The fight with Palmer went as expected, the guy is not really a challenge and the end of the fight is probably the most random thing that happens in the entire game. So with relative ease, she finished off Palmer and the FMV where the crew get the Tiny Bronco is played.

This was the moment that we all knew would tell a lot about how she played the game. She obviously is craving some sense of direction as she flat out told me that I had to tell her where to go with the Tiny Bronco so I pointed out the western continent and told her to go there. She landed on the beach in Wutai, with Yuffie in her party and proceeded up the cliff where you see Yuffie's ambush. The roar of frustration and accusation after the fight with just Cloud and Aeris to fend off two soldiers and she checked her materia to see it all gone. Now remember, she's not a gamer so her first reaction was "30 hours of fighting to waste?! for this?! what a load of BALLS!!" followed by "This is all YOUR fault!! You told me to get Yuffie and look what she did!" with a finger pointed right at me and then "You've been waiting for this haven't you!?". We have one seriously unhappy camper here. Even more so when the very next fight she got in resulted in a game over and she realised she hadn't saved since her fight with Materia Keeper.

While an unfortunate way to find out, at least she now knows the benefit of saving often and after any big event. In Mt. Nibel she half considered not bothering looking around to get the materia again ("Whats the point, its all going to be taken again!") but in the end decided to do it anyway on the hope that she would get it all returned to her at some stage.

At this point I should point out, no, I didn't tell her you get all the materia back. In hindsight as I write this maybe I should, it seemed obvious to me back then that the game was hardly going to confiscate all the materia permanently but she may not be aware of this.

Once again she flew through Rocket town, this time however stocking up on high potions, phoneix downs and nearly ethers until she realised there is no point in getting them Got slightly annoyed at the fact you can't skip much of the story but suffered through and beat Palmer. She had Yuffie in her team again and I'm not sure if it was deliberate or not but after the fight with Palmer, Yuffie was the only team member dead.

She since went with Barret as a team member to replace Yuffie and this time was well prepared for the hike to Wutai. In Wutai, she saw Yuffie and chased after her, but she still is bearing a grudge and quite annoyed throughout the process, rather than enjoying basically a game of hide and seek. She has left it here in disgust after Yuffie drops out of the ceiling to steal your newly acquired MP Absorb materia. It may be tough to get her back into this game. But yeah, Yuffie vs Cait Sith vs Cid for the bottom spot has been white washed by the hatred for Yuffie at the moment Ah the memories this game brings is awesome

Mindkiller

The Yuffie section should really be skipped the first time through imo, at least until disc 2. If you're not overlevelled you're going to have a tough time of it getting to Wutai and beating Raps or Aps or whatever he's called. Those birds with the lightning attack are a pain.

noodler

..........I think you can at least remind her to save man!

I think all the challenge and benefits of Wutai are goen by disc 2 so would urge her to go on.

Draupnir

I played this game in early 1998, at which time it was very hard to get information on games if you were stuck. I got massively stuck at one point in Wutai in the Yuffie side quest, there is a bell or something that you need to strike if I remember correctly?

I basically couldn't find any doors, ladders, exits or how to strike the bell that it was talking about. That's my memory of the scenario it presented.

I think I basically walked around the town pressing action at every single place that looked remotely like a bell! Probably a week of my life was wasted looking for that bell.

A copy of GamesMaster magazine at the time came out at EXACTLY the same time, about a week after I got stuck. Imagine my amazement that it contained a walkthrough for the Wutai mission! That magazine saved my FF7 discs from going out the window.