Tag: Rinoa

Read the earlier sections of my FF8 replay:
From Balamb to Timber
From Galbadia to the Assassination
From Prison to a Floating Garden
From Fisherman’s Horizon to the Battle of the Gardens
Rinoa is a Sorceress

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Collecting GFs

For the first time ever, I tried to acquire all the GFs during this break before the finale, and I mostly succeeded! I leveled up on the Island Closest to Hell (Squall to 100, Rinoa and Quistis to upper 80s), then crashed through finding and acquiring Tonberry, Odin, Doomtrain, Bahamut, and Cactuar. The one that I didn’t manage to get (until drawing it from a boss in Ultimecia’s Castle) was Eden. I spent over an hour making my way through the descending levels of the Underwater Research Lab to fight Ultima Weapon. I drew Eden…and then died. It was so infuriating that I refused to try again.

Lunatic Pandora

• It had been awhile since I had interacted with the plot by the time I rammed into Lunatic Pandora, so I was SO HAPPY to see Raijin and Fujin, even though they were demanding that I hand over Rinoa.
• When Squall refuses to do so, Rinoa does a little happy dance in the back, and it is so cute.
• Biggs and Wedge are canonically gay (say I!) They quit their jobs and say, “Let’s go home and have a drink.” I love this for them.
• When we finally find Seifer, he’s holding Ellone hostage with the help of Raijin and Fujin. But his buddies have had enough! Their storyline is really fulfilling; watching them grow from mindless cronies to doubting his path to rejecting it. Fujin even speaks in full sentences for the first time, which opens up SO MANY questions about why she was screaming single words for most of her life.

“You’re being manipulated. You’ve lost yourself and your dream. You’re just eating out of someone’s hand. We want the old you back.”

• Seifer is the most teenager-y of everyone, insisting he’s a revolutionary. It’s sad to see him at this point as he desperately insists, “I don’t wanna stop. I’m gonna keep running!”

The boss fight with Seifer was incredibly confusing to me. Odin appeared, but Seifer cut the GF in half. This was alarming! But Odin’s sword flew into the sky and was caught by another being, who later appeared and said, “You gave me the fourth one. Dodge this,” and attacked Seifer. I looked this up later and found out it was Gilgamesh, apparently popping over from FFV. All of that is very cool, but SO RANDOM and mostly unexplained.

• After being defeated, Seifer leaps to his feet very strangely, and yells, “It’s not over yet, Squall!!!” Yes, with three exclamation points. The boy is dramatic. He kidnaps Rinoa, which causes me stress because all of my other characters are horrifically under-leveled.
• Seifer takes Rinoa to Adel, and this whole scene broke my heart. She insists this isn’t like him, and when he continues, she says, “Seifer. No more….please?” OUCH. They used to date!
• Seifer almost gives in to Rinoa’s plea, but Squall shows up, and Seifer can’t not perform for Squall. Adel takes Rinoa and…grafts her onto her torso?? It’s incredibly creepy looking.
• After defeating Adel, Laguna and Ellone appear. She magicks Rinoa back to her non-sorceress-controlled self, and at this point I just don’t understand the scope of Ellone’s powers at all.

“Time compression is about to begin. ‘Love, friendship and courage.’ Show em what you got!”

Time Compression

This whole series of scenes is done VERY well. The group falls through a sky of memory bubbles into an ocean into a sunset into a space tunnel. It is all very cool and vaguely creepy. They wind up in the Commencement Room where Rinoa once confronted Edea (remember the good old days when the plot made sense!?), and when you try to save your game, the Save Point multiples. This more than anything gave me the willies. There was something about a game mechanic being brought into the plot of the game and twisted that hit me hardest in the “ooo, this is all wrong!” feels.

The group is thrown into a series of fights against generic “Sorceresses.” The fight itself isn’t important. What is cool is that with each defeated sorceress, the scenery changes. We get to relive old locations in a nice sign off as we head into the finale.

At the end of the battle montage, the group winds up at the orphanage. It seemed very much like Rinoa was not with them, which makes sense because she was scared of being left behind, but she reappears in a later scene with no explanation. Okay.

I don’t know what’s going on. But since we’re still here, I think we still have some time to finish our job.”

Ultimecia’s Castle

• Full disclosure: I did not even attempt to figure out how to get through Ultimecia’s Castle on my own. I used a walkthrough; I hate wandering through places like this and having to backtrack a million times!
• Being so leveled up meant that most of the boss fights at the end were not a problem. Getting Squall’s best sword with the Lion Heart limit break was also a game changer – it’s SO powerful.
• The castle itself is really cool looking, and I can’t help wondering why Ultimecia went to so much trouble to design/take over such a cool space only to want to collapse all of time and space. You clearly have an appreciation for the finer things – go out and experience more of them!
• Ultimecia herself speaks with Ks instead of Cs, like, “Kurse all SeeDs!” Is it to imply a vaguely Russian accent?

It took me three times to defeat Ultimecia/Griever, and when it was done, time went wonky and Squall is thrown back into his past. It’s a nice moment to acknowledge his character arc, with Baby Squall thinking he’s alone and Adult Squall insisting he isn’t.

BUT it seems as though he IS alone, wandering through a space desert until he collapses on a space island. A feather appears, and it’s Rinoa! But he can’t hold on to her memory in one of the most genuinely emotional and distressing cut scenes of the whole game. Of course, Rinoa does end up finding Squall, and she cries over him while the song that her mom wrote about his dad is playing. This is kind of weird, but I chose to see it as a hopeful message about generational experiences.

Where did everyone end up?

Seifer is fishing, which is very weird! But he’s with Raijin and Fujin, and he’s still an asshole, so I guess it checks out.

Laguna visits Raine’s tombstone and flashes back to the moment when he gave her an engagement ring before revealing his own. It is HELLA romantic and sad. This game is the most romantic Final Fantasy game, prove me wrong!

Over the credits, we get a home video recording of Selphie filming Irvine and Quistis at a school dance/celebration. Cid is there with Edea, wearing her clothes from 15 years ago for some reason. Selphie takes Irvine’s hat in the cutest teenager move of the game. Zell is eating hot dogs like an absolute maniac, shoving them in this mouth to the point of choking…c’mon dude. Get a new gimmick!

Angelo runs by, and we see Rinoa on the balcony, pointing at the sky in the same pose as the dance where she first meets Squall. But he doesn’t seem to be here as the credits take over, and I literally yelled, “WHERE THE HELL IS SQUALL?” fearful of his having been lost to time. But no, this actually is a romantic game, and we get one last cut scene of Squall on the balcony with Rinoa as she once again points toward the sky.

GAME OVER

Read the earlier sections of my FF8 replay:
From Balamb to Timber
From Galbadia to the Assassination
From Prison to a Floating Garden
From Fisherman’s Horizon to the Battle of the Gardens

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The Orphanage

• When confronted at the orphanage, Cid says he ran away because it was a no-win situation for him, which is…pretty fair. I can’t imagine what it would have been like for him to see his wife possessed, taking over the world, and know that she wants you to send some teenagers to murder her.
• Edea lays out a lot of plot exposition: She was possessed by Sorceress Ultimecia, who lives in the future. This sorceress wants Ellone and her power to transport people through time (how Ellone has this power is not explained). Edea fears that Ultimecia has abandoned her body to jump into Sorceress Adel, former evil ruler of Esthar. Ultimecia wants to compress time, seemingly for shits and giggles as far as I can tell.
• Cid lectures Squall on how to be a good leader, and c’mon man. I was empathizing with you earlier, but this is a bit rich. Also, maybe Garden should consider choosing a leader who isn’t emotionally compromised by a sorceress.

I’m very annoyed at everyone in this scene. They’re all like, “We care about Rinoa, but everyone else matters too!” As if they weren’t JUST giving Squall such shit about prioritizing the lives of other students over immediately running off to save Rinoa when she was hanging from a cliff, like, a couple hours ago.

• We get another FLASHBACK to Laguna’s stint as an actor (sure, whatever!). He is a very bad actor, but hot people are allowed to be talentless. However, everyone is incredibly dumb. I cannot believe that anyone thought that huge ass dragon was Kiros.
• Laguna sees a flying ship! Then Ellone tells Squall that she will use him a little longer, and suddenly Laguna is at the orphanage looking for Ellone, who was kidnapped by Esthar soldiers.
• Things get very sad when Ellone reveals that she has been trying to change the past in these little flashback jaunts, but has now realized it’s impossible. She can’t change the past, which means that Ellone will always be kidnapped, Laguna will always go after her, and Raine will always die alone while he is away. Presumably after giving birth to Squall, who will always be an orphan. Depressing!

White SeeD Ship

• I always have to cheat to find this thing.
• Zone and Watts are on the White SeeD ship! However, Ellone is not. She went willingly with Esthar soldiers who came to get her. Seems weird, since we just learned that she was kidnapped by them as a child!

Great Salt Lake

• Squall takes Rinoa from the infirmary and carries her from Fisherman’s Horizon across the bridge to the continent that was impossible to explore until now. This is a really great map expansion technique!
• The party somehow meets Squall on the other side, and Edea is with them. I had totally forgotten that you can play with Edea as a party member!!
• This is such a fun little place to explore – snow and undead monsters! I remember the first time I played through this, not knowing that you can use healing spells and potions to cut through undead easily. It used to be a lot scarier!
• At the edge of a cliff, a glitching techno door reveals itself! The entrance to Esthar is a perfect sequence. It is utterly different from anything else we’ve seen.

Esthar

• We start with another flashback. I assume Ellone is just now providing Squall with helpful information? We get to see Laguna imprisoned in the Lunatic Pandora Laboratory. He helps a moogle, and a guy is like, “You’re nice. You should be the next leader when we rebel against Sorceress Adel!” Talk about white guys falling upward!

Laguna saves Ellone and it is super sweet. I feel like something is missing though…how did Squall know Ellone/sis? Was he born before Ellone was kidnapped, which means Laguna left his son and never went back? Was he born after (which I assumed) and Ellone was sent to an orphanage AFTER Laguna rescued her? What is the timeline here??

• Esthar is…fine. For being high tech, it’s pretty underwhelming.
• At the Lunar Gate, Angelo says goodbye, which hurts my heart!
• A party of three has to go to the moon for some reason (the plot is getting REALLY weird by this point), and Edea stays behind with Zell, who is the newest wannabe sorceress’s knight. The Galbadians have salvaged Lunatic Pandora, which appears at the city. Zell won’t let Dr. Odine tell us where it came from or what it is, which is very frustrating! We do learn that monsters just sometimes fall from the moon…all of this new plot information is dropped here at the end of the game without buildup, and it is very weird.
• The gang races across the city to get aboard the Lunatic Pandora, but they’re magically expelled. The thing/place hovers over Tear’s Point, and Zell gives up for some reason.

Space!

• There are a few scenes where you get to play with gravity, and recovering the pods is a fun introduction to a new space (hah!).
• Seem like Sorceress Adel is being kept in space. So is Ellone, who tells everyone that sending them into Laguna’s past was helpful because she saw how much she was loved. I mean, several of the first flashbacks had nothing to do with her, but okay! Then she gives us some pretty good advice: “The past doesn’t change. You do.”
• They have somehow decided to take Rinoa, a woman possessed by a sorceress, to the place where another sorceress is held captive, and SURPRISE! A sorceress uses a sorceress to free a sorceress! Too bad no one anticipated this.

Panicky Gentleman: Why is everything happening at once?

• We get to see President Laguna doing his motions while in an astronaut suit! This slow reveal is done really well.
• As they escape, Ellone sends Squall into Rinoa’s past. We get to see her demand that Irvine return to the prison for the others, ask Zell for Squall’s ring, and be possessed by Ultimecia and order Seifer to find and raise the Lunatic Pandora.
• In one of the best sequences of the entire game, Rinoa runs out of air in her spacesuit, drifting in inky blackness. Squall tries to reach out to her, first telepathically, then physically. It makes her remember to push a button to get more oxygen (?), and Squall thanks Ellone and goes to find her. Navigating your way into her path is so simple but so moving. And then they spoon in space!!
• Deus ex Ragnorak.

“The space suit was in our way before. Give me a hug. A real tight one!”

• It’s very annoying that Rinoa can’t get EXP fighting all of these propogators.
• I will handwave away the miracle of Ragnorak successfully making contact with Esthar after 17 years because ROMANCE SCENE. Rinoa sits on Squall’s lap, and he opens up about feeling alone and pushing people away. She assures him, “Squall, you’re the one who gives me the most comfort. Comfort and happiness. And disappointment, too!” It’s so freaking adorable.
• Rinoa knows she is a sorceress, so she thinks they can’t be together. Squall comforts her when she says she’s scared! She knows that Ultimecia wants to achieve time compression (still…why?) because Ultimecia is the only one capable of existing in such a world. I guess she just really wants to be a loner?

Let’s Wrap Things Up

• When Ragnorak lands, Rinoa is taken away to be imprisoned, and the rest of the gang shows up. Quistis reveals that Ellone has been kidnapped…again!! Gah.
• Quistis reveals that she has had no character growth, because she’s still hung up on Squall and being passive aggressive about it. “You weren’t thinking about anything but Rinoa when you jumped into space, huh? I wonder if anyone would do that for me? So where’s the princess who changed you?” C’MON QUISTIS, you’re a hot teacher! You can do better than lusting after your student-brother!
• Squall decides to save Rinoa again, and they get a dramatic CGI embrace.

“Even if you end up as the world’s enemy, I’ll. I’ll be your knight.”

• Back in Esthar, we finally learn that Laguna is the President and Dr. Odine explains the plan to take down Ultimecia. It’s very timely wimey and weird, but Laguna sums it up as “It’s about love, friendship, and courage.” I…don’t think it is, man.

This whole final plot is so tacked on and ridiculous. I’m glad for the romance stuff, but these final discs are not necessary. Ending with a battle between the Gardens and against Edea would have been way more emotionally satisfying.

Oh well, we’ve still more to go! Next up: All the weird side plots and the final confrontation!