Journal #6009

Well, I noticed there are default FF8 avatars, so why not have an entry about FF8???

I started playing this weird game from disc four, right after the heroine wearing blue gets abducted by a man with a ridiculously large ego, who proceeds to hand her over to a 13 foot tall woman with an evil smile on her face. This is where I come in.

I am in command of 5 people: an emo-looking young man, blond dude with a provocative tattoo on his face, a cowboy using outdated guns, a blond lady wearing pink, and a girl in yellow dress. This odd group I have here then proceeded to fight the 13 foot tall lady, who has somehow superglued the heroine on to her chest. She then proceeds to suck the life out of
the heroine and blast me with stolen magical powers.

Dude with the tattoo on his face proved to be the most important. He went up and pummeled the giantess for around 5 minutes. After maybe 5 rounds the really tall lady collapsed and lost her face (literally). The heroine was saved, but then reality was lost.

The party of six people now fell through the floor and into the sky. That sure made alot of sense in written text. They fell into a flock of seagulls which then faded away sort of. I end up in a room with too much curtains. At the end of the hall is a sorceress, but then there were five of them. They fight me without hesitation.

This is a weirdest battle I've seen yet. Tall women constantly teleport in from nowhere. But then they only have about 1000HP each, and our friend with the tattoo on his face easily punches them to their untimely demise. The emo youngster sports a blade with a pistol handle, but I pretty much use the punching maniac for all my battles. Looking back now, this was
probably a bad idea.

At this point I should discuss what sort of stats I have on all my characters, as all RPG games should involve stats. This is disc 4, the final disc, mind you, yet all my characters are around level 11-13. That's right, I totally ignored the aspect of leveling up, and my
characters are hence ridiculously weak. How did I ever make it to disc 4?

Easy. Because in this game the enemies match your levels, so if I am ridiculously weak, chances are they are also pretty pathetic. At least I'd like to think so.

So then I battle an endless amount of tall women who don't speak but it is inferred that they don't find my presence enjoyable. The battlefield is also constantly changing from a forest to a city, to a beach, to an underground desert prison facility, and so on. Eventually the tall
women are replaced by tall women with more sophisticated clothing. After fighting about 5 of those, they all disappear and out comes a giant evil naga. She then proceeded to start a 5-turn countdown to who knows what. I waited to see what happens. At 0, the evil snake lady pulled
out the strongest magic spell in the book: Ultima. All my characters are fully healed so I wasn't too worried. At level 8, this evil spell did over 1000 to each character. This is the first time any boss ever did over 800 damage to any one of my characters with magic, and I guess I was surprised. But in the end the evil naga was no match for the knuckle sandwiches
served to her by tattoo boy with some side dishes in the form of magic from the other characters.

The naga dies and shatters while my people get teleported to a house near the beach. I go out to the beach which causes the entire scenery to screw up. Dead people pop up everywhere, and where the sea should be, in the distance, looms a gloomy castle filled with dangers and traps.
I foolish enter this evil place. Once inside, I find that all my powers have been "sealed" by various creatures lurking in this evil fortress of danger.

After walking around for five minutes, finding nothing, and finally returning to the entrance, I saw a pink sphinx creature at the top of the stairs that I didn't notice before. Dang, what a waste of time. I proceeded
to challenge this Egyptian Abomination. In the beginning this thing did an ice attack stupidly on the one person that I happen to have ice resistance with. After that it didn't move for
around 3 turns. Maybe because two of my characters get turns about every 3 seconds. After physically attacking this thing for a while, its face mask exploded and a woman's face is revealed behind it. However it is still evil and now summons helpers at will. The first time it summoned a kite looking thing with eyeballs which died in two hits. The second time it
summoned a skeleton that took 4 or 5 hits to kill. after that it gave up on summoning helpers and actually gave up altogether, and eventually it jumped off the mortal coil.

Defeating this thing gave me the ability to use magic. But alot of other stuff are still sealed, such as the punch barrages I've been using up to this point (called "limit break"), using items, saving the game (that's right, I can't save), and one thing called "resurrection". Now that
magic is opened up, I can now cure my wounds. Next I walk across a big room and up into a balcony. There is a crystalline-looking bird or something there. I challenge it without hesitation.

Quick scan reveals it to have around 6500 HP. That's piece of cake, but wait, it counterattacks everytime I attack it for about 300 each time. Physical attacks on this thing do not go over 100. Thus I had to use magic.
After around 10 Thundagas and other spells this thing casted a devastating ultima on everyone,which kill both my magic users (heroine in blue and the girl in yellow). It then shattered like the crystalline creature that it is and died in ear-shattering agony.
I chose to unseal the "limit break" so tattoo boy here can do major damage.

I find that I was unable to revive my dead people, because apparently the "resurrection" is sealed. Thus I stuck tattoo boy in a trio with cowboy and emo-dude. They went into the basement, which is stashed with gigantic wine barrels. At the bottom of the stairs is a dragon. The dragon apparently doesn't want me to steal his beer, and attacked me at once.

Dragon proved to be a pushover. Quick scan revealed it's "very weakness" to fire(prolly because it's drunk.) One strong fire spell knocked off 2/3 of its HP. After another weak fire spell, it countered with a
"mega spark" that did decent damage. However, it was tattoo boy's turn, and his barrage of punches quickly finished off this dragon. Like his friends before him, dragon shattered into pieces and allowed me to unseal something. I chose "resurrection".

I looked around a long time until I ended up in a room with paintings. I spent unnecessary time trying to figure out the "name of this painting" but gave up after a while. In the next room the door closed behind me and a key dangled from a statue in front of me. This suspicously seems like a trap.

I casually walk over to retrieve the key. That is when behind me teleported an obese armored red man even taller than that lady in the beginning of this passage. He sports a huge blade that seems red also. And he attacks.

Quick scan reveals this sucker to be at 30000HP, alot more than either of the last two nemeses. He taunts me saying that my spells won't work on him, as they tend to do less than 30 damage each. Again, tattoo boy pwns. He does a sort of slam move that does upwards to 7000 damage.
This should also be a cakewalk.

somewhere down the line red giant lost his sword. All he ever does pretty much is punch me. The punches are pretty pathetic. Cowboy has Demi listed as his first spell, so I randomly try it out. It does astounding damage, and plus the red fatboy begs me not to use it, please.
I ignore his pleas because he won't remove that annoyingly high defense he has, so he has no choice but to suffer an agonizingly slow and painful death. And that he did.

I exit this prison and go directly across, where at the end of the room a weak-looking face sticking out of the ground is there. I recognize this as a weak enemy from before, and proceed to challenge it without much forethought.

And I was right. I fight this weak enemy and wasted it in about 5 minutes. But then, the battle, end, it did not. The face sticks out of the ground and appeared torso and arms... a gigantic mummy I was looking at. And it is pissed.

First it does an evil staring move that prevents tattoo boy from using his trademark punchfest. Then it does some punching. AND THEN it casts Berserk on emo-boy, which forces emo-boy to only use his default physical attack. I have emo-boy as a magic user with no weapon upgrades, so he became useless. Even worse, the gigantic mummy counterattacks by twisting my man like a wet
towel, and that does upwards of 600 damage. That's bad. Then, unexpectedly, The giant prick invokes an earthquake on my sorry men. The cowboy and tattoo man didn't quite make it out of this quake alive. I am left with emo-boy, berserk. Eventually after wringing emo-boy about 6
or 7 times, he died, and Game Over appeared. I fail.

Now, if only I got to save first....

ENDNOTE: I definitely had this coming, you know. I was really just asking for trouble. Any sane person would have unlocked the save function right after getting magic, so to speak. I got a bit cocky with my level 11-13 characters, and in the end my arrogance paid off. I was humiliated by an opponent 10 times my size who used strategy. Now that boss, he was all brawn
and all brains. Not to mention I was boasting over how weak was that dragon guarding the beer barrels. However, do not lose faith. Now I know what to expect. Next time I'm going to get Berserk and silence guards for emo-man. I have done that in the past to deal with certain enemies who had totally neglected their dental hygiene. So, next time, I shall be ready...?

Prolly not.