Let's Play the French version of Final Fantasy VIII ! FINALE

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 41: Secret weapon

4 bosses down, 4 more to go. Let's do this! With the exception of Flotix, last time, finding the bosses was pretty straightforward, with fairly simple puzzle elements. And while finding the rest of them isn't going to be super complicated, there's going to be a bit more to it than before.

For starters, let's go back to the main hall, go up the stairs, then to the left. This takes us to another small circular room and past that is a long hallway where we can see light cast by thunder outside. On the left side, we can make out a door and interacting with it has the characters use the vault key we picked up last time.




There are four boxes (coffins?) here, two are open and two are closed. When we interact with them... some close and some open. You probably know where this is going: it's one of those puzzles where we have to find a way to have them all open at the same time. Once that happens, cloud comes out, forming the next boss:




This is Fabryce (Catoblepas). A name I find hilarious just because of how mundane it is to a French person as Fabrice is a very common name here. It's kind of like if the English version called him Stieve or something. As you can see, it's basically a giant recolour of a Behemoth, making me think it must be an oversized Chinese bootleg. I shouldn't take the piss out of him too much though as he's pretty tough, having lots of HP (although thankfully low defence) and packing a nasty punch. It uses powerful lightning magic (HA! still immune!) and absorbs lightning. You can draw Alexander from him.

A good way to fight him is to use Earth magic as he is weak to it and you can try casting darkness on him as he is susceptible to it (but not other status effect). And oh yeah, it casts freaking Météore upon death so even after you've defeated him, he can still get back at you. I actually got very lucky that it didn't kill my team as I kind of forgot about that before starting the fight but thankfully, although Squall got KO'd, Quistis and Linoa made it. Fabryce dropped Assaut Mtl (Status Atk), which teaches a G-Force ana bility that allows the user to junction mental magic to physical attacks.

So that went well and I chose to regain commands from it, meaning I can use various abilities other than draw and magic in battle again. While we're here, let's continue down the hallway. We arrive in a small room with two elevators with both of them containing a green circle. When a team walks on whichever elevator is at the top, it goes down and the other goes up, so this is another puzzle that requires switching between the two.




So I make the current party enter the elevator and switch to the other one and climb the stairs in the main hall again. This is where we start seeing the puzzle elements that require more thought and work because as counter-intuitive as it may be, we now have to go right so we can go past the room where we fought Flotix. This takes us to a small room with a path going down and the other going up and to the left.

Let's ignore the downwards path for no and take the upper one. It takes us to a dilapidated corridor from which we can see the dungeon. There is a draw point and a save point which according to the FF wiki is supposed to be hidden but I saw it even without activating Clairvoyance so I don't know if they changed that in the French localization or what.

It takes us to the upper part of the room where Squall's team was waiting. I'd like to point out how cleverly designed this dungeon is, by the way. There have been hiccups before in the game in various locations where some paths would take you to places where they logically wouldn't but here, we have this huge labyrinthine structure and it actually makes sense if you map it out and it really helps build the otherworldly atmosphere.

Going left, there is a small library and inside are a draw point and a shiny item, which turns out to be a key to a floodgate. As you probably guessed, this is gonna be important in a moment. Man, between the creepy atmosphere, the run-down ancient building, the puzzles and the key collecting, this is turning into a better Resident Evil game than most of the recent Resident Evil games.

Next, we go back to the courtyard with the fountain, where we found the vault key. The path to the right leads to a waterway but we can't access it for now. We continue onward and find a very strange room with a large organ (tee hee) and a purple cloud, neither of which appears to do anything... for now. There is also a draw point and a stairway to the right. Taking the stairway takes us atop a tower where we find a bridge. There is an item there and running towards it makes it fall as it causes the bridge to shake... which I did because I forgot that was what makes it fall and you're supposed to walk.

But fear not, good citizens! We can still get the item. For this, we need to backtrack (man, this really IS Resident Evil!). It's as good a time as any to tell you what the organ does: it opens a gate in the area that you find by following the path to the right near the fountain, which allows you to access a waterway. The trick being that you have to press ALL keys at the same time.

And I mean the exact same time. If so much as one button press is even slightly delayed, not all spikes that form the gate will lower, making it impossible to pass, even if it looks like you could. Unfortunately, I can't seem to pull it off (probably not helped by the fact that I'm using a knockoff XBOX 360 controller rather than an actual PSX controller) so let's just move on.

We have to go back to the room we saw earlier with a path going downwards, after the paintings room. In there, you will see this:




Notice the small white thing in the water at the bottom of the screenshot? In the game, that glows and is the item that dropped from the bridge, which we can now pick up. It's an arsenal key. Now, to the left is a brownish contraption, which turns out to be a lever. It has a lock on it, which we can remove using the floodgate key and using it drains the water.

Draining the water and opening the gate to the waterway allows you to find an item called Roc Rosette (Rosetta Stone) which teaches a G-Force CapacitéX4, an ability that allows the user to activate 4 passive abilities at the same time! A very useful item indeed but unfrotunately, I just can't do the organ thing so I'll have to Frozen it up and let it go.

So instead, let's go through the doorway to the left, which takes us to a creepy old cell. Entering it closes a door behind us. there is another door inside the cell but both it and the one we went through are locked. And inside the cell is what appears to be... a decaying corpse. Lovely. But it does have a key hanging from its hand. We take it, which summons the next boss.




This is Attila (Red Giant), a recolour of Ekarissor. Needless to say, it has a lot of HP (although not as much as several of the bosses in this castle, oddly enough) and ridiculously high defence, making physical against it almost useless. Even with my characters boosted as they are, they barely do about 250 HP of damage per attack. So the trick is to use magic, right? Nope! Almost all magic does very little damage against it. G-Forces? Same.

There are only a few spells and two G-Forces that are of use against him. The spells are Meltdown (which reduces defence to 0), Quartz (which drains 1/4 of his health no matter what) and Cécité (which blinds him, which handicaps it a lot since it mostly uses physical attacks). As for G-Forces, Nosferatu does massive damage and Pampa Sr, doing fixed damage, is also useful. Quistis' Micro Missiles is also useful for the same reason as Quartz. Oh and before I forget, you can draw Zéphyr from him. When he drops below a certain amount of HP, his sword will be removed and he will use alternate but still very powerful attacks.

After defeating him, I get an item that increases a G-Force's HP by 40% (technically it's an ability they learn) and I choose to recover magic. Before I continue, I'd like to take a moment to point out an interesting difference between the French and English versions here. In both, text boxes appear during the fight to tell the player whether an attack is effective or not. However, in the English version, it's made to look like Attila himself is the one saying it whereas in the French version, it's just generic text.

The next boss isn't difficult to find and you probably guessed where it is from looking at the screenshot before the boss battle. We have to leave the cell using the key we just found and check the other door, which we can unlock thanks to the arsenal key we found earlier. Inside, as the name of the key implied, we find an arsenal, full of armours and weapons. At the end of it is what looks like a Cariatide.

Fun fact: behind it is a green smudge but in the Japanese version, it's red. I really don't know why the localized versions of this game are so squimish about showing blood when the intro had Squall bleeding profusely and there are lots of deaths in the game. Anyway, let's check this boss:




Oh... it really is just Cariatide, Datima and Gangrène, not even a recolour. Well, that should be easy then? I mean, it's just plain old vanilla monsters and yeah, I defeat them in just one tuuuuuuuuUUUU-




HOLY SHIT!! Yeah, it turns out those were really just part of the real boss: Agamemnon (Gargantua). Also, it doesn't really come across in a screenshot, but the centre part of his body is hollow, which just looks creepy. Anyway, despite its dramatic entrance, it's really not that tough. It's got a powerful counter-attack to physical attacks and a less powerful attack that hits the whole party and causes Slow and Curse (which prevents Limit Break usage) but that's about it. It's got little HP compared to most bosses and it still goes down in a couple turns. Just don't forget to draw Cerberus if you have to. It drops Lacan (Magic Armlet) an item that teaches a G-Forces an ability that increases the user's magic power by 60%.

Alright then, just one more to go and I will have recovered all of my abilities. But before I go, I'm going to save and I recommand you do so as well as that one is VERY challenging. To find the last of Ultimecia's minions, we have to go back to the bridge and this time, go left. We enter a massive clock tower with a spiral ramp. Fun fact: this area was included in Dissidia as the map representing FF8. We keep climbing until we reach a massive pendulum.




It can be climbed on when it reaches the left side, allowing us to cross and find a balcony where we meet our last trial before Ultimecia:




This is Acarnan (Tiamat), Bahamut's dark counterpart. I do believe they actually modified the model a bit here and didn't just recolour it and he seems a little bit smaller than Bahamut to me. He actually has an attack very similar to Bahamut's Ouroboros called Hypocauste (Dark Flare) which is what makes him so dangerous. In fact, it's the only attack he'll use, activating it once he's spelled the complete name of the attack, revealing one more syllable each turn, because apparently he stutters. Well, I say it's dangerous, but... it's a fire-elemental spell, so that means... yep, my characters absorb it, meaning its one attack can't do anything against my team.

Without that, he would have been a major threat as not only does his attack do massive damage, he has a ton of HP, even by the other bosses' standard. It does have a chance of being affected by Slow though, so that can help delay his attack. You might also want to use some of those Invulnérables. He has Orbital, so don't forget to draw that if you don't already have it. Interestingly, if you scan him, the description mentions that he was once a G-Force but Ultimecia's power corrupted him. This may imply that it is indeed Bahamut from an alternate timeline.

Shock of shocks, considering I am immune to his only attack, I beat him. I get an Antichoc Mtl (Status Guard) from it, yet another item that teaches a G-Force an ability, this time to junction 4 spells to mental defence (increasing your chance of avoiding status effects) and I recover the last missing ability: save. And so the time has come, my friends. All other enemies are defeated, only one remains: Ultimecia. Let us jump back across the pendulum and keep climbing. This takes us to an area full of gears and a Stop draw point.

Moving on, we exit to find the hands of the clock outside being inert in spite of the gears rotating, showing just what a stranglehold Ultimecia has on time itself. Se run across the hand, reaching a ladder that we climb down, then another and finally, we arrive at a bridge and at the end of it, Ultimecia's chamber. This it, guys, join me for part 42, where we...

... actually, there is one last thing to do before we take on Ultimecia... one last challenge, and a very big one, arguably even harder than Ultimecia herself. I am going to give it ONE try, because it is near impossible and I don't want to spend the rest of the month trying this. First, we need to take the party to the ring at the fountain and switch to the other one.

Next, we have to take that team to the room with the rope and if you haven't yet, take the opportunity now to switch back and make sure your party at the fountain is fully healed and has all the junctions you want. Without spoiling too much, I recommand junctionning Ankou and/or Zombie to mental defence. I also recommand having at least one character have the "Défense" command available and at least one having "ranimer" "revive". Once you're ready, switch back to the team near the rope and have them pull it. This will ring a bell and start a one minute countdown. Switch back to the fountain team and make them rush forward to get to the organ room. There, a monster will appear in the purple cloud...




Behold! OMEGA WEAPON!! a.k.a. Minotaure in French. THIS is the ultimate challenge in Final Fantasy VIII. At level 100 (at which it is locked in the PSX version), it boasts a ludicrous 1,161,000 HP, Ultima is one of its least powerful attacks, it absorbs all elemental magic and even with high defence, its physical attacks can deal massive damage. It has an attack that inflicts 9998HP of damage to your entire party. No, I'm not saying it reduces their HP to 1, I'm saying unless at least one of your members starts the fight with 9999HP, it will wipe you out in one turn. Oh and it frequently starts the fight with that.

It also has an attack that causes 9999HP of damage to a single member of your party, just for shits and giggles. It ALSO has one called Terra Break (both in French and English) which causes at minimum 4000 damage to a random member of your team... 12 times in a row. In case you failed maths, that's way more than necessary to destroy your entire party in on attack. And just for fun at this point, it also has classic abilities like Graija, Trépas 5 (Lv 5 death, instantly kills any haracter with a level divisible by 5) and Météore.

You might survive and lower damage if you did the junctions I mentioned above (although only if you have 100 of the spells can you be fully immune). The Défense command can help against some attacks (and in fact nullify Terra Break entirely for a character under tha effect). Since Minotaure's attacks always follow the same pattern, you can also anticipate to an extent. Other than that? ... f*** me, just use Invulnérables and be lucky with limit breaks? Oh and using Orbital is almost indispensable.

I actually did better than I expected in this fight, as in I survived more than one round. I almost got wiped out immediately due to Trépas 5 but thankfully Linoa was immune and after using an Invulnérable on her, I had her use Ranimer on the other teammates as it fully heals their HP too. After that, I used G-Force (stupidly, I forgot to give the character who has Orbital the G-Force command) and managed to throw in some Limit Breaks but alas, I was eventually felled.

Well, I'm at least glad that I gave it a try and didn't suffer an embarassing defeat. Next time, in part 42, it's the big one, the final battle... against Ultimecia.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 42: Life, the Universe and Everything

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the final part of this Let's Play! There is only one thing to do, what this entire journey has been leading towards: the final battle against Ultimecia. We are currently in front of her chamber, so let's enter it and challenge her. I should point out that during my last playthrough, I actually managed to beat Ultimecia on my first try so I'm hoping I can pull it off again here.




The entire team is here and she was expecting us. She starts giving her pre-fight speech as Premonition, the theme played when fighting Edea, starts playing:

Ultimecia: Seee... Seeeeed... Seed... Seed... Seed... SeED... SEED! A curse on you! Your repulsive kindness and the strength of your naiveté disgust me! The world was finally going to crumble into this unique space-time rift! Pitiful creatures... Can you even comprehend the extent of my power? The penalty for your vain crusade shall be worse than death. You will know Hell! You will be my flesh and blood puppets for eternity!

Your presumptuousness is laughable! Even with several of you, you don't have the shadow of a chance!

Gotta say, her speech is a bit cheesy but I kind of love it for it. There are a few things I'd like to mention. First, in the English translation, for some reason they gave her a tic where every hard C is replaced with a K like she's in Mortal Kombat. I'm not sure why they did this as there wouldn't be a difference when you hear it and as far as I'm aware, no other version gives her any kind of accent and even in the English version, she drops it in the later stages of the battle.

What I do like about the English translation is that rather than having her go on about how she is grossed out by the SeeD's kindness, which is a really cheesy line, she insults them for "swarming like lokusts akross generations" which is a much better line and even seems to hint at Squall's team appearing at other times due to the effects of the Time Compression. And here's another fun fact for ya: Ultimecia is the first explicitly female villain in Final Fantasy. Cloud of Darkness LOOKS female but is officially genderless.

Also, while the French and English versions refer to her as Ultimecia, the Spanish, Italian and German versions call her some variation of Artemisia and her Japanese name is romanised as Arutimishia, which does seem closer to Artemisia. Finally, it seems the original Japanese version actually gives her a longer speech which provides more details about her motives, explaining that making herself the centre of the Time Compression will allow her to restart the universe from scratch, allowing her to remould it to her will, all of existence being her plaything. Oh yeah and she also threatens to turn all of humanity into mindless slaves unable to do anything but worship her for all eternity. So that's nice.

But on to the battle itself!




Ultimecia will summon three of your characters, presumably using her powers to prevent the other ones from joining in. I guess the idea is that you're supposed to prepare for the fight by giving all of the characters G-Forces and junctions but realistically, it's much simpler to stick to your team and just wait for the other guys to be knocked down as after a few turns, they will be removed and replaced with someone else. Sorry guys but I didn't spend so much time tailoring Squall, Quistis and Linoa to my exact liking to give up on my perfect team now.

If you are familiar with Final Fantasy, it probably won't be a shock that this fight is in multiple stages and this is her first form. She's not too bad for now as this is basically just a warm up. She's got some nasty spells like Maelström and Quake but she's manageable. If you want to end this stage quick, a cheap trick is to junction Pampa Sr to one of your characters to have them use Kamikaze. It can easily do about 65 000 HP of damage, making her skip to the next part immediately.

If you don't want to do that, using G-Forces (such as Orbital) will also work nicely. You can also draw-cast Quart from her which is also a handy way to end this part quickly. Either way, this part isn't too hard anyway so don't sweat it.

As you can see from the screenshot above, in my game, Ultimecia summoned Selphie, Zell and Linoa first. Unsurprisingly, Selphie and Zell go down quickly and Selphie is replaced with Irvine. You will notice she tends to summon your weaker characters first. Irvine goes down after a couple powerful Glacier X, before Zell is replaced with Squall! Wow, I'm actually surprised she called him first. I want to wait a few more turns so Quistis can be with us before the next stage so I have Linoa draw-cast Booster on Squall. Quistis makes her entrance and so I just go to town on ultimecia (that came out wrong).

Ultimecia then starts levitating and announces:

Ultimecia: I can create the supreme monster. The creature of your nightmares... be the victims of your own imagination! Ha ha ha!

And so Ultimecia digs inside our heroes' psyche to create this:




This is Cronos (Griever). That name sounds familiar? It's the one Squall gave to the creature on his ring! Indeed, it comes straight from Squall's imagination (this is made more explicit in the Japanese version). This is where shit really gets real. Cronos is a lot more powerful, using spells such as Gravija or Châtiment (Doom, kills the victim after 8 turns), has almost twice as much HP as Ultimecia and is immune to poison (not just the status, he won't even take damage from the spell). He can also outright block a character from using a spell. And not only that but he can also draw magic from you, which he will then cast.

This is where all your Invulnérables you doubtless have from the Laguna card (or Linoa's Sélénium) come into play. From now on, use them as often as you have to, especially if your characters can use their Limit Break. You can also take advantage of his weakness to ice, wind and holy magic. Of course, G-Forces are still highly advised, although be aware that for whatever reason, he is immune to Nosfératu's attack. After a few turns, the screen takes a red hue and the music changes to this amazing piece called The Legendary Beast as Ultimecia warns us that she too has a G-Force and orders Cronos to use his special attack, Outerspace (Shockwave Pulsar).

This is an extremely powerful attack which can easily take out your entire party in one fell swoop if you're not careful. You can mitigate the effect by casting Blindage on your characters but obviously the best thing to do is to have them invincible (aren't you glad I'm here to tell you that being invincible is a good way to win?). By the way, Quistis can learn that attack as well from an H-Espace (Dark Matter), which is very difficult to obtain as the only way to get it is to refine it from 100 Weirdos (Curse Spike). Apparently, you can also get it from Chocobo World but, you know... European PS1 version.

Following the techniques I just described, I soldier through this stage and see Cronos writhe and eventually curl up into a weird... fleshy... ball. Ew. We can hear Ultimecia say "You haven't seen anything yet... you are about to discover my true nature". The ball then uncurls, revealing Ultimecia's next form:




Oh yeah... she just fused with Griever. How's that for a junction? Once again, this form has a lot of HP and this time it absorbs Holy magic, but is weak to lightning and water. Also, the music playing during this part is one of my favourite tunes in the whole game, and I'm not the only one with that opinion if its popularity is anything to go by: Maybe I'm a Lion (it also got a sweet Black Mages remix).

And guess what? Kiss your G-Forces bye-bye because from now on, if you try summoning them, Ultimecia will instantly kill them. So yeah, magic and most importantly Limit Breaks are your best bet now. She will also summon an object called Helix which gives her access to Météore and Ultima. And if she manages to summon two of them (and considering how high their HP is, even with very strong characters, it's very likely), she will be able to use her ultimate attack: Gravitation (Great Attractor), an extremely powerful physical attack which ignores defence and, needless to say, can easily take down your team in one hit because it consist of having multiple planets crash on the team. Oh Final Fantasy, you and your downright lunatic attacks.

Sêaking of ultimate attacks though, Linoa finally decided to use Phantasm (Wishing Star) which, if properly boosted, can be the most powerful attack in the game. Linoa rides Angel and together, they crash into the enemy about 15 times, both of them causing massive damage each time. Just look at how f'n crazy this thing is!




I actually managed to beat this part of the fight without getting hit with Gravitation (so this video will have to suffice) and now... everything goes quiet. The background goes black. There are a few seconds of silence... but then... this haunting music starts playing... and Ultimecia's final, grotesque, disfigured form appears:

Ultimecia: I am Ultimecia. I will compress time and destroy all forms of life

Ultimecia is starting to absorb all of space and time. It's now or never to defeat her. She has all of the most powerful spells in the game: Fournaise, Sidéral, Météore, Ultima. SHe also has a few extra tricks: Jugement Dernier (Hell's Judgement), which reduces the entire party's HP to 1, and Apocalypse (same thing in English! Finally an attack that has the same name in both versions), an extremely powerful magical attack, which might as well be a death penalty if cast after Jugement Dernier.

In case I didn't make it clear yet, USE YOUR BLOODY INVULNERABLES! And spam Limit Breaks! At this point, Lion heart and Phantasm or at least Sélénium are your best hope. Maybe have one of your characters heal the team but frankly, if your characters are hit while not invulnérable, they're probably going to die either way. You will notice that below the grotesque, faceless, blue-nippled (seriously) version of Ultimecia is an upside-down more humanoid version of her. It eventually becomes targettable and Ultimecia draw-casts Apocalypse from it, and the good news is so can you!

You can also try and kill it to prevent Ultimecia from casting Apocalypse but in my opinion, it just makes you waste turns that you could and should spen on beating her instead.

There are some clever bits of design to mention about this form of Ultimecia. I already brought up her easy-to-miss copy of herself as well as the game slipping nudity past the censors, but one less noticeable one except under some attacks is that some of the starry background in this battle is actually part of Ultimecia's model! This symbolises her fusing with existence itself. They even made the underside of it red to show it is part of her dress.

The copy of herself may also be a reference to her possessing other sorceresses, showing that this form is a fusion of Ultimecia, Edea, Adel and Linoa. Her being upside-down and coming out of her own body also make me think of birth, which may show that Ultimecia is being reborn as the god-like entity she wishes to become.

After you have sufficiently beaten the shit out of her, she will begin one final speech. At this point, any attack will make her continue, but be careful as she can also still attack you.

Ultimecia: Remember your childhood.

Ultimecia: This intense sensation, the way you spoke... those raw emotions.

Ultimecia: When you grew up, you forgot half of yourself.

Ultimecia: But time does not wait. Whatever your desire, time flows like sand.

Ultimecia: And...

Ultimecia is defeated and she disintegrates in an orgy of light and explosions. The darkness eventually fades away, giving way to a blinding light. The characters rise and try to understand what happened to them.

Irvine: Is it over? Then let's hurry and go home! Back to our time!

Zell: Wait! Let's think about it. Where are we supposed to go?

Selphie: Careful boys! Don't go to the wrong time!

Quistis: We can't fall through a rift!

Linoa: A time... a place... with who? *spreads her arms expectantly while running* I want to go where we promised to meet each-other. *stops, grabs her necklace and Squall's ring* Squall!

*fade to a black void where Squall is running alone.*

Linoa: I want to go home... where are you, Squall?

Squall: (Where am I?)

: Squall! Where are you going?

*the child version of Squall appears running.*

Child!Squall: I am going to find Lellone!

Edea: Squall!

*Adult Squall turns around to face her.*

Squall: The matron...

The darkness fades away, revealing the orphanage. From now on, I will give you the short version, partly because it's a really long cutscene and partly because I want you to experience it for yourself. Not knowing she is talking to the adult version of him, Edea asks Squall if he's seen where the child has gone, with Squall telling her not to worry and that everything is going to be fine for him. Suddenly, a purple cloud appears and out of it comes... Ultimecia.



"Calm down. There is no reason to fight."


Edea clearly knows Ultimecia but does not appear to fear her and indeed, Ultimecia does not look like she's able to cause any harm. Edea explains that Ultimecia merely wishes to pass her powers onto someone else so that she may die, as a sorceress cannot die while she still has her powers. Edea accepts them so she does not transfer them to one of the children. Edea notices Squall calling her "Matron" and asks who he is. Squall sees no point in hiding the truth from her and gives her the story of the SeeD, the BGU and their fight against the sorceress, allowing Edea to piece together that he is Squall from the future.

Edea asks Squall how he's going to back to his time and as he fades away, he answers that all he has to do is call his friends and they'll be here, for he is not alone. Unfortunately... it's not that easy. He calls out to his friends and yet, he remains alone. He runs around, trying in vain to find them and starts to despair. He ends up roaming a desert area in a scene oddly reminiscent of Linoa's nightmare, walking and walking and walking but still finding no-one, until he turns around and sees he is stuck on a small floating rock.

Meanwhile, Linoa is also desperately searching for him, running in a grassy place and not being able to find him. She stops and once again grabs her necklace with Squall's ring attached to it. A feather drops from the sky in Squall's area. He grabs it, allowing him to see Linoa from the back. He calls out to her, but...




Squall keeps seeing Linoa during the ball, the night they first met, but he can never quite remember her face. He tries harder and harder to remember but it doesn't happen. It turns into a nightmare as he tries to dig deep into his memories of everything he and the rest of the team have been through, never being able to remember her face. He even remembers her as Ultimecia at some point and his memories turn into horrific distortions of the real events, until he sees himself as an empty husk, then sees Linoa in space, her helmet cracking open, dooming her to die, causing him to finally break down and collapse.


But then...


... Linoa arrives in a cloudy place as Eyes on Me starts playing. Unlike where she was before, the place is dry, like a desert. She walks some more and finds Squall, lying motionless on the ground. She holds him, horrified that he may have died. She caresses his face and, seeing no sign of life from him, starts crying as she embraces him. But then, a column of light pierces the heavens, the skies turn blue and bright and the desert becomes a lush prairie full of grass and flowers. She looks down at Squall and while she keeps crying, it is now tears of joy as she starts smiling.

We fade to a different scene and we find... Seifer, Raijin and Fujin. It looks like they too have recovered their nakama and have moved on from serving Galbadia and are now fishing. Raijin catches something, which enrages Seifer due to his own lack of luck. Fujin, ever the mischievous one, shoves Raijin in the water, which lifts Seifer's spirits right up. They then see the BGU float over them, Seifer having a proud smile as it goes.

Okay, as much as I hate Seifer, I've got to admit I find it sweet that even he managed to get a happy ending and seemingly find inner peace. Also, from the BGU moving around, we can deduce this is taking place much later after the rifts causes by the time compression have closed.

We then move on to another scene. We see Laguna walk in a prairie, looking at his wedding ring. We fade to the younger version of himself on that same place, meeting Raine. He obviously has something to tell her but gets cold feet and tries to leave, she holds him back and he slips a ring on her finger, proposing to her and she couldn't be happier. Fading back to current day, Laguna arrives at Raine's tombstone and pays her homage, before Ellone, Kiros and Ward join him. They then also see the BGU float over them and Laguna has a pensive yet peaceful look as we fade out.

BUT WAIT!! It's not quite over yet as the credits start rolling and we see from a handheld camera's POV at the BGU as everyone is having their happy ending. Selphie got to organize her big party, Irvine gets to be a doofus, Quistis gets wasted ( seriously, I didn't notice at the time but now her expression and body language have all the makings of a normally proper and ladylike girl trying and failing to hide that she's had a few too many), Cid and Edea get to see the BGU again, Zell gets to have his pretzels/hot dogs/bread while the ponytail girl lovingly watches.

But what about Linoa and Squall, you ask, Well, we find them on a balcony, watching shooting stars, finally fulfilling their promise. As Linoa turns to Squall, he gives her the biggest smile he's ever had and they share a passionate kiss.






Oh man... I still love this game very, very much. So many emotions. And I am so very happy that I was able to share it with you. I really hope you had as much fun following this Let's Play as I had writing it, and I hope you found the comparisons with the English version informative or at least interesting. I also kind of hope at least one of you doesn't like the game but was at least able to see what other people find in it.

When you think about it, it's appropriate that this game is about teenagehood as it is a lot like a teenager: yeah it's overdramatic, self-indulgent at times, it can come across like it's up its own ass and it even has weird fashion senses but if you take a moment to sit down and actually give it a fair shot, you'll find that it's a lot smarter and more thought-provoking than you first assumed, full of hidden depths and valuable lessons we can all benefit from. And you might even find that the weird fashion... kind of works for them.

I'm considering following this up with discussions on the game, the fan theories, the analyses, etc... possibly in the off-topic forum since it's no longer really part of the LP and we could get more people engaged. Also, I would really, really appreciate it if you guys could tell me a bit about what you thought of the LP, if it was good, what you liked, didn't like, what advice you would give me to improve in the future, etc.

Either way, there is nothing left for me to do but to wish you a good time, thank you very much for following this LP, you have no idea how much it means to me to share something like that with people and I'll be seeing you next time fort Part 43: the one that doesn't exist.