dankempster (Level 28)

Hey guys, dankempster here. I would write up a fancy preamble to this blog post, but I'm too busy Enduring Final Fantasy VII right now. Sorry.

Episode Twenty-Seven - Tying Up Some Loose Ends

In the last episode, we witnessed Cloud and the gang infiltrate the Underwater Reactor near Junon, recovering another piece of Huge Materia and pilfering a Shinra submarine in the process. Rather than press on with the main task at hand in this episode, though, I figured it'd make for a nice change of pace to get lost in some of the side-quests that make up Final Fantasy VII's optional content. Most of what I tackle in this episode will be story exposition, so be prepared for a pretty plot-heavy episode. Let's crack on, shall we?

Having both the Highwind airship and the Shinra sub in my possession, there are very few places on the world map that are out of my reach at this point. I figure it's therefore as good a time as any to revisit a few familiar locations and wrap up some unfinished business. My first port of call is Wutai, home of Yuffie and one of my favourite optional sections of Final Fantasy VII. Astute followers will recall that in the last episode, I picked up an item called Leviathan's Scales while exploring the Underwater Reactor. Well, those scales are about to come in handy! Up on Da Chao (Wutai's answer to Mount Rushmore), these items can be used to put out the fires blocking access to some super-secret items - the Oritsuru weapon for Yuffie, and a piece of 'Steal As Well' Materia. As a side note, I'm not sure why the party had to track down a box of Leviathan's scales, considering he is, y'know, at the party's beck and call by means of his Summon Materia. I know it's nit-picky, but I can't help but feel like the flame-dowsing key item should probably have been given a different name. As it stands, it's just weirdly illogical.

Next on my list of places to visit is Cloud and Tifa's hometown, Nibelheim. Now that Cloud's memory is almost fully restored, there's one last loose thread of his history left dangling, and a visit to the Shinra Mansion is exactly what's needed to tie it up. Returning to the basement where Sephiroth locked himself away brings the memories flooding back - after the incident five years ago, Zack and Cloud were held beneath the mansion and experimented on. Zack broke himself and Cloud out of confinement and the pair hitched a ride back to Midgar. Just before they reach the city, though, they're ambushed by Shinra troops. Zack dies in the ensuing fracas, leaving Cloud alone on the edge of Midgar. This short series of vignettes serves to plug up a lot of holes. It sums up what happened to Cloud and Zack between the start of Final Fantasy VII and the incident five years previously, it hints even further at the romantic links between Zack and Aerith, and justifies Cloud's schizophrenic behaviour throughout most of the game - he was just trying to fulfil Zack's wish of becoming a mercenary. What's most impressive is that it does most of this without ever really explicitly stating any of it. This sequence is much more about what's implied than what's actually said. I'm with Sparky_Buzzsaw on this matter in thinking that Crisis Core tells this part of the story with much greater clarity, but in the context of Final Fantasy VII, these flashback-y bits of exposition are a much better fit.

For the next leg of my distracted journey, I'm going to have to make a temporary alteration to my mainstay party of Cloud, Cid and Barret, and sub in Vincent Valentine for a bit. My destination is pretty out-of-the-way - after swapping the Highwind for the submarine, I have to follow a small, hidden underwater tunnel to reach an enclosed waterfall cave not too far from NIbelheim. Enter this cave without Vincent in your party and nothing will happen. Bring the mysterious gunslinger along, though, and you'll be treated to a tasty morsel of plot exposition for your trouble. Again, we're treated to a series of vignettes from Nibelheim's past - Vincent was once a Turk, and fell for a Shinra scientist named Lucrecia. She spurned his advances, though, ending up in the arms of Professor Hojo. She carried his child, a child that was also one of his experiments - a child named Sephiroth. When Vincent protested about the prospect of experimenting on humans, Hojo shot him, held him captivee and used him as a guinea pig for even further tests. As soon as Vincent awoke and realised what he'd become, he locked himself away in the Shinra mansion's basement. Like Cloud's flashback before it, very little of this is explicitly stated (even more so in the case of Vincent's flashbacks, where very little text appears on-screen), but the scenes play out in a way that invites the player to draw those inferences and lets them work things out for themselves. While I do admire the clarity with which Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus present Zack's and Vincent's back-stories respectively, seeing those moments play out in Final Fantasy VII almost makes the other games in the Compilation seem patronising in their need to state and justify every minute detail. As they say, sometimes less is more.

I've harped on a lot in this blog series about Final Fantasy VII's approach of rewarding exploration with story exposition, and how a lot of the game's loose plot threads are often tied up completely optional encounters. These two sequences are great examples of this, although they're also much more tucked-away than all the other optional exposition we've encountered so far. Up to this point, the game does a great job of guiding you into the general vicinity of it - you have to pass Gongaga to reach Cosmo Canyon; the Tiny Bronco starts off pointing toward Wutai; if you fail the primitive quick-time-event at Icicle Inn, the game puts you inside the same building as Professor Gast's computer terminals. By contrast, there's nothing actively encouraging the player to revisit Nibelheim or track down Lucrecia's cave. This point is further compounded by the latter encounter, which requires you to have a specific character in your battle party and is located inside a cave that isn't an obviously accessible location (for all intents and purposes, it just looks like a waterfall). I guess what I'm trying to say is that, while I love Final Fantasy VII's approach to fleshing out the story's skeleton, I do think that these two bits of exposition (Vincent's in particular) are tucked a bit too far out of the way. Heck, I only found the Cloud-and-Zack stuff by chance on my last playthrough, and I'd never have known about Lucrecia's cave were it not for a friend in school who'd "found it" (I suspect with a bit of help from the internet). It's great what you're doing, developers, but please at least try to give everybody a fair chance of stumbling upon this stuff.

My final destination on today's tour of the Planet is the Gelnika. It's essentially Final Fantasy VII's answer to an optional dungeon - a location completely removed from the main story, filled to the brim with useful items, and crawling with uncomfortably strong monsters to keep the player on their toes. Except in Final Fantasy VII, rather than go the traditional JRPG route and stick this location in a cavern on a remote island, the developers chose to put their optional dungeon at the bottom of the ocean in a crashed plane. It's a refreshing twist, and one that's nicely in keeping with Final Fantasy VII's overall quasi-modern aesthetic. It's a shame the 'dungeon' is so small, only covering a few screens, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

The first thing that strikes me about the Gelnika is the difficulty of the random encounters. The freakish beasts that patrol the waterlogged corridors of the Gelnika (presumably more of Hojo's twisted experiments) are a lot stronger than anything I've encountered up to this point, dealing deadly amounts of damage that would make the last few bosses I've faced look on in awestruck admiration. Couple that with their ability to afflict the party with status ailments like Stop and Confuse and you have some pretty deadly foes on your hands. I'll admit that at this point, thirty-seven-and-a-half hours into my sixth run through the game, I saw a Game Over screen. It was my own fault for severely underestimating the strength of the enemies lurking on the Gelnika, and it's something I rapidly took steps to remedy - equipping accessories and Materia combinations to guard against Confuse and launching party-wide Wall spells at the start of every battle proved to be enough to keep me safe from the monstrosities during the remainder of my stay on the Gelnika.

A little way into the belly of the crashed plane, the party encounters Rude and Reno of the Turks. Naturally, they're not happy about our band of adventurers being on Shinra's sunken aircraft, which was apparently carrying biological weapons prepped to eliminate Sephiroth when it was brought down by one of the Weapons. A battle ensues, one which feels comfortably simple after the tough random encounters I've been dealing with on the Gelnika up to now. As with previous battles against this pair, it's simply a case of chipping away at one until he runs away, leaving the other open to all attacks. They don't hit too hard, and go down pretty easily. With that meddlesome pair dealt with, it's simply a case of exploring every nook and cranny for goodies. I pick up some incredibly useful items during my stay on the Gelnika - new weapons for Cloud and Cid, an item named Highwind which teaches Cid his final Limit Break, Double Cut Materia (which instantly replaces the unreliable Deathblow Materia I've been using for most of the game), and another piece of Materia which summons a monster dubbed Hades. My pack now firmly weighed down with all these goodies, I retrace my steps to the exit and ride the sub back to Junon, where my trusty airship is waiting.

With those trials faced, I figure here's as good a place as any to bring this episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII to a close. I save, turn off the PSP, and sit down to write this here blog.

So at the close of Episode Twenty-Seven, my vital statistics are:

• Current Party - Cloud (Lv 54), Cid (Lv 56), Barret (Lv 51)
• Current Location - Junon Area, World Map
• Time on the Clock - 38:00

The Story So Far...

I guess I should begin my closing message with an apology for not writing this last weekend. I had hoped to put it together last Sunday evening, after my game of cricket. Then I got hit in the face with the ball, and my plans changed slightly. So, sorry it's a week late. I'll post another episode next week, and from then on resume the fortnightly schedule that I've unofficially established. Also an apology to anybody who was expecting this episode to cover the chocobo breeding aspect of the game. I started delving into it, and quickly came to the recollection that particular side-quest is a huge time-sink, one that would probably benefit from its own dedicated episode. So that's what I plan to do for the next instalment - a choco-focused Enduring Final Fantasy VII extravaganza! So keep an eye out for that. In the meantime, thanks for reading as always, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Final Fantasy VII (PSP)

I really enjoyed playing through Halo...

...and its sequel at the end of 2011

Right at the end of last year, I played through the first two Halo games back-to-back. It was an impulse decision, encouraged by the atmosphere surrounding the time - I was halfway through Persona 3, eager to start Skyrim, but wanted something straight-forward to tide me over without distracting me from the commitment of writing my usual string of year's-end blogs. I settled on Halo 2, a game I've had as long as I've owned an original Xbox (which is to say, about seven years) but never actually played. In order to better prepare myself for the experience, I decided to precede it by quickly running through Halo: Combat Evolved. I'd already played and beaten the first Halo way back in 2006 or so, so I figured it would serve as a nice refresher.

I didn't blog about the two games after beating them, mainly because I was so wrapped up with the end-of-year blogging proceedings (although both games did get a brief mention in my End of 2011 Awards blogs). So, to clarify my opinions on both of these Bungie-developed titles - they're both great first-person shooters. The original Halo in particular is even better than I remembered it being, boasting a brilliantly-paced, meticulously-crafted campaign that I'd happily rank alongside the likes of Half-Life. The surprisingly open exterior environments seemed to invite tactical experimentation, leading to a more emergent feel to the gunfights - something that I really admire in an FPS, as my love for Far Cry 2 will testify. Halo 2 is great as well, ramping up the graphical sheen and the intensity of the set-pieces, but it was the first game that really grabbed me when I played them back in December.

Halo 3 is definitely "more Halo", but I don't see how that's a bad thing

So why am I recapping my thoughts on a pair of games I played just over four months ago? Simple - because I've just finished playing the third instalment in the Halo franchise, the somewhat predictably-titled Halo 3. I bought a copy of the game back in February, using a GAME gift card I'd been given for Christmas. After recently finding myself hankering for more time with the Master Chief, I picked the game up just over a week ago and began working my way slowly through it. I finished the campaign this morning, coming away from the game feeling pretty darn satisfied. Much like its predecessors, Halo 3 is a great first-person shooter, and a fitting end to Bungie's three-part story of space marines and super-weapons.

These days, when a new Halo game is revealed or released, it's typically met with snarky internet users remarking, "Oh look, more Halo". This frustrates me a little, because although those words carry strong connotations of disinterest, they're also the best, most concise description of Halo 3 I can muster. It ticks all the same boxes as the first two games. A well-paced campaign? Check. Exhilarating, challenging combat both on-foot and in-vehicle? Check. A varied and interesting arsenal of weaponry that encourages experimentation? Check. The god-damned Flood? Check. Halo 3 IS more Halo, and I don't say that in a condescending way - rather, I mean that Halo 3 is a great sequel to two great games, and one that maintains the high level of quality those two previous titles established.

While my primary reason for playing Halo 3 was rooted in the series' great gameplay, I'd be lying if I didn't also admit that I was a little intrigued to see how Master Chief's story arc would end. This was a curiosity born more out of the second Halo than the first - while Combat Evolved's story came across as kind of bare-bones and merely there to justify the shooting, Halo 2 delivered a pretty interesting plot, providing much greater insight into the workings of the Covenant and the mythos of the Halo universe as a whole. Halo 3 picks up exactly at the point where the previous game left off, and for the most part I enjoyed its story in the same way one might enjoy an action-movie. Some of the big reveals don't quite hit the mark - after the other two games doing exactly the same thing, the "surprise" reveal of the Flood half-way through wasn't really a surprise at all. But on the whole it's good innocent fun, serving to drive the action forward and keep the player just intrigued enough to wonder how it's all going to end. Sure, it's fairly generic sci-fi, but it's also pretty entertaining sci-fi.

Halo 3 serves as a satisfying end to the series' story arc

One thing that differentiated my Halo 3 playthrough from my other Halo experiences was my decision to play it through on a higher difficulty level, stepping up from Normal to Heroic. This was something I attempted with both the previous Halo games, but quickly reverted to the default when I hit an impassable wall in around the third level of both games. Both Halo and Halo 2 seemed to take immense delight in fucking me over at every available opportunity, even when from my perspective I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. In Halo 3, on the other hand, I never felt like the Heroic difficulty was deliberately out to get me. Every time I died, I recognised it not as the game being unfair, but as me having done something stupid, and I'd try to correct that after the game had resumed. I only hit a couple of small walls with Halo 3, one early on and one about two-thirds through, and even those didn't feel too nightmarish to push through. Maybe it's just me, but Halo 3's campaign certainly felt like a fairer, better-tailored experience to me. Although with that being said, I'd still never dare to push the difficulty up to Legendary - I like a challenge, but I'm not a masochist.

I think that's all I've got to say on the subject of Halo 3. With an absence of Xbox LIVE and a lack of experience in playing competitive shooters, I'm not really in any position to pass judgement on the game's multiplayer component. Similarly, I'll spare you all the gameplay particulars of the campaign because I'm willing to bet pretty much everybody has played this already. I'm now deciding whether or not to pick up both ODST and Reach, just in case the Halo bug chooses to rear its head and bite me once again. In the meantime, I'm keeping myself busy with Vagrant Story, which is living up to my exceedingly fond memories of it. I also picked up the PC version of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver following its recent release on GOG.com. After playing and loving so much of that game on PlayStation last month, it would be great to finally see Raziel's adventure through to the end. All that remains to be said is thanks very much for reading, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Vagrant Story (PS1)

Last weekend saw me reach the end of Final Fantasy XIII-2, the latest semi-canonical instalment in Square-Enix's flagship RPG franchise. From start to finish, I sank about thirty-five hours into the game over the course of five weeks, and overall I really enjoyed the experience. Coming from somebody who went into this game tentatively, and whose opinion of Final Fantasy XIII was often divided and ultimately indifferent, that statement hopefully conveys that if nothing else, the continuation of Lightning's story is an improvement on its predecessor. Final Fantasy XIII-2 probably won't go down in history as one of the greatest titles to bear the franchise's name - its appended number and questionable characters and story will probably see to that - but for me personally, it marks a step in the right direction.

In order to better paint a picture of my attitude going into FFXIII-2, it might be wise to begin by recapping my time with Final Fantasy XIII. Prior to that game's release, I was still a pretty avid follower of Square-Enix's output, especially anything bearing the Final Fantasy name. Needless to say, I was pretty hyped for FFXIII. Then the game came out, and... well... it wasn't quite what I'd expected. Aspects of it were great - the pacy, Paradigm-focused combat system, the impressive aesthetics, and the excellent world-building that drew me into the series in the first place were all present and accounted for. But alongside those great parts were glaring problems. The writing was uninspired, the characters were uninteresting, the story was built on promising foundations but arranged into an almost irredeemable cluster-fuck, and the fascinating worlds of Cocoon and Pulse were rendered unexplorable by the game's highly linear focus. I won't go into any more detail - those looking for a comprehensive account of my feelings towards FFXIII can find them here. I'll simply say that Final Fantasy XIII was a bit of a wake-up call, reminding me that this mighty franchise wasn't quite as infallible as I'd once believed it to be.

Which brings us nicely back to Final Fantasy XIII-2. I initially steered clear of everything to do with it, but as the months went by more information about the game surfaced, most of it seeming to promise things that I'd wanted from FFXIII - bigger, more explorable environments (and incentives to explore them); a script that focused more on story and less on interpersonal melodrama; a wider variety of side-quests to keep the player occupied. By the time FFXIII-2 released at the start of February, I'd warmed to the idea of returning to that universe just enough to put the game on my birthday wishlist. Based on the amount of enjoyment I got out of my time with FFXIII-2, I'd say that was the right choice.

The easiest thing to cite as an improvement in Final Fantasy XIII-2 is its environment design. As I said in the blog linked above, I found myself really interested in the worlds of Cocoon and Pulse as they were portrayed in Final Fantasy XIII, but also frustrated by the fact I couldn't explore those worlds at greater length. FFXIII-2 addresses that by making its environments feel more open with branching paths, wide expanses and dead ends. Fundamentally, you're still running from point A to point B, but at least there are multiple ways to make the journey now. There's also more incentives to explore these bigger environments, ranging from hidden treasure spheres to experience rewards for 100% map completion. The fact you can jump between different locations pretty painlessly is also a welcome addition, especially after FFXIII refused to let players return to the game's early environments. All these changes are minor and largely cosmetic, but they combine to make FFXIII-2 feel like a more open, less guided experience than its predecessor.

Another area in which Final Fantasy XIII-2 delivers (at least partially) is in its side-quests. Final Fantasy XIII (and Final Fantasy XII before it, to be fair) really failed to serve up anything interesting in terms of side-quests, eschewing substance in favour of lots and lots of monster-hunting. FFXIII-2's side-quests may not be enough to add tens of dedicated hours to your playtime, but they at least acknowledge that an RPG needs something more than a few high-level marks to keep the player distracted from saving the world. The monster-hunting is still there, but it's not as prevalent as it was in the last couple of games, and it's supplemented by other stuff as varied as fetch-quests, lore quizzes and grid-based puzzle-solving. The monster-raising side of things is pretty involved, and there's even a Gold Saucer-style area where you can cash your Gil in for casino coins, fritter them away on slot machines or chocobo races, and exchange your winnings for prize items. There's nothing going on here that will eat up a player's time in the same way as chocobo breeding in FFVII, the card games in FFVIII and FFIX, or the blitzball in FFX, but it's good to see developers moving away from the thinly-spread additional content of more recent Final Fantasies and trying to offer up a wider variety of distractions.

But as well as Final Fantasy XIII-2 makes up for some of its predecessor's shortcomings, there are other flaws that it either fails to address, or happily brings along for a second run round the track. The greatest offenders in this respect are the game's characters and story, two aspects of Final Fantasy XIII which left me underwhelmed and continued to do so through the sequel. In terms of its cast, Final Fantasy XIII-2 was pre-destined to struggle due to FFXIII's original crew being largely uninteresting. Characters like Hope and Snow, who bored the first time round, feature fairly heavily through FFXIII-2's main story, while the first game's more interesting characters like Lightning and Sazh only make fleeting appearances. The issue is compounded by the decision to cast Serah Farron as the game's leading protagonist. Pretty much a blank slate after spending most of FFXIII trapped in crystal, this game doesn't really do much to establish her personality either. Her companion and battle partner, Noel Kreiss, has a slightly more interesting back-story, but not much more. For what it's worth, I did like the lead villain - Caius Ballad's situation and motives may not have been original, but the way they're revealed over the course of the story leading up to the final pay-off was pretty impressive, I thought.

The story was arguably the biggest disappointment for me, though. To be fair, the script isn't quite as melodramatic as Final Fantasy XIII's was, so the game at least has that going for it. My biggest gripe with Final Fantasy XIII-2's plot was that it wasn't so much tied to the end of FFXIII, but loosely and cheaply soldered to it. FFXIII established a rich world with a detailed history and some pretty complex systems working within it. FFXIII-2 largely abandons those existing options to craft a whole new story about a magical goddess of chaos sitting outside of time and space and pulling all the strings. The story is told in a fairly messy way, skirting over important information in cut-scenes and then forcing the player to read explanations in its datalog. I'm also not a fan of its forced 'To Be Continued...' ending, which has since been confirmed by the developers to signal some future Epilogue DLC:

There are a couple of other minor design choices that bothered me over the course of my time with Final Fantasy XIII-2. The decision to make staggering less important in combat, thereby making battles feel less strategic, had me scratching my head a little. The monster-taming stuff was interesting for a while, but I ultimately found myself relying on just a handful of monsters for most of the game and probably would have been happier with a standard third party member. The Synergist and Saboteur roles also felt slightly less important than I remembered them being in FFXIII, but that could well just be me. Ultimately, what really matters is that Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a lot of fun to actually play. The interactive aspects of the game feel like a significant step forward, and it's hopefully a sign that come the next instalment in what remains one of my favourite series of video games, Final Fantasy might just stand half a chance of returning to the personal pedestal it once occupied. Thanks very much for reading, guys. I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Halo 3 (X360)

Another fortnight has passed, and that means it's time for another episode of Enduring Final Fantasy VII to grace the Giant Bomb blogosphere. If you don't know the drill by now then you probably never will, but allow me to entertain your curiosity with a quick explanation anyway. As a long-time Final Fantasy fan who's become somewhat disillusioned with JRPGs, I've been revisiting my favourite game in the franchise and analysing it from the perspective of a twenty-first century gamer. As cynical and critical as it is nostalgic, Enduring Final Fantasy VII is my attempt to determine once and for all whether Final Fantasy VII deserves to be revered as one of the greatest games ever - is it a game that's endured these past fifteen years? Or has the passage of time rendered it an experience that must be endured? I aim to find out, one interminably-delayed episode at a time.

Episode Twenty-Six - Under The Sea

Last episode saw the return of Cloud (in more ways than one), and I pick the action back up in the operations room of the Highwind airship. The first item on my agenda is to re-jig my placeholder party into something that more closely resembles a battle team. I opt to build that team using Cloud, Cid and Barret. Cloud, up until now my go-to guy for the 'tank' role, now becomes a dedicated mage - loaded up with spells and summons, the ability to Sense, and a couple of MP Plus Materia, it'll be Cloud's job to identify and exploit enemy weaknesses. Cid takes on the role of a support character - his Materia slots are filled with healing spells, buffs and debuffs, but he's also a pretty sturdy melee option. Finally, Barret takes over Cloud's usual role as the team damage-sponge - his augmented HP ensures he'll be able to withstand all the hits that my favourite Cover/Counter Attack Materia will bring his way, and a Deathblow/HP Absorb Materia pairing will hopefully go some way towards keeping his health topped up.

With my team now ready and raring to go, I leave the operations room and head for the airship's deck. A quick word with the pilot puts the Highwind in my control, letting me fly from Mideel over to Junon. Talking to the Highwind's crew, my attention is drawn to the fact the pilot apparently has a 'level'. This is one (admittedly very minor) aspect of Final Fantasy VII that has always confused me, and this latest playthrough is no different - I have absolutely no idea what the number beside the pilot's name actually means. Last time I checked, he was level 4. Now he's level 8, and I have no idea why. It doesn't have any impact on gameplay that I'm aware of - a higher level doesn't make the Highwind faster or easier to control. Nor have I been able to securely pin its improvement to anything happening in-game - it doesn't seem to be a reflection of the player's Highwind mileage, and I don't think it's directly tied to story progression either. I'm not entirely sure why, but the existence of this arbitrary number bothers me a little. Maybe it's because levels in games are typically tied to the concept of progress (especially in the case of an RPG like Final Fantasy VII), but in the case of this pilot, that progress is neither measurable nor rewarded. It's just... sort of... there.

Leaving my hang-ups about the pilot's level on the deck of the Highwind, I disembark the airship and head into Junon. I'm not sure if it's the different choice of music, but this visit to the coastal city feels much more sombre than my pass through on the first disc. The fact the place seems almost empty probably contributes to the foreboding atmosphere as well. At the far end of town, a Shinra guard blocks the entrance to the elevator, and refuses to let Cloud pass unless he forks over 10 Gil. This exchange is one of the best subtly effective examples of world-building I've encountered in a video game. At this point in the game, 10 Gil is inconsequential. Heck, 10 Gil is an inconsequential amount of cash right off the bat in Final Fantasy VII - a humble potion will set you back five times that. The fact this guard is willing to take that pittance as a bribe really emphasises just how awful it must be to work in the employ of the Shinra Electric Power Company. Juxtapose it with the estimate of 10 billion Gil to rebuild Midgar's Sector 7 (an expense the President believes is justified to wipe out AVALANCHE), and you get an idea of the level of financial disparity in the world of Final Fantasy VII. All that, inferred through a simple bribe request. That's pretty cool.

I pay the bribe and ride the elevator up to city level. The guards here reveal that the Shinra soldiers are already down at the Underwater Reactor, preparing to extract the Huge Materia. Passing through the city, Cloud notices that the Junon skyline seems a little emptier than usual - the recognisable cannon is nowhere to be seen. The journey from here to the Underwater Reactor is an unremarkable route through several similar grey corridors, punctuated by random encounters with Shinra grunts. It's not until you're actually underwater that things begin to take on a more interesting aesthetic - glass tunnels revealing the sea-life on Junon's coast, and the scale of the Reactor. Inside the complex itself, the visuals (and music) take on a grimy industrial feel that's more in keeping with the established vibe of Junon and Midgar.

The party reach the core of the Reactor just in time to see the Huge Materia carried out by a mechanical arm and loaded onto a nearby submarine. Reno of the Turks is waiting nearby, and he sets a Shinra robot known as the Carry Armor on the team to stall them. This encounter demands some strategic planning - the boss has a powerful laser attack which cuts my party's HP almost in half, and it also has the ability to pick up party members with its arms, rendering them unable to contribute to the fight. To get around this, I get Cid to throw up a party-wide Wall spell to negate some of the laser damage, followed by a party-wide Haste spell to ensure I deal with Carry Armor's arms as quickly as possible. Thankfully, Carry Armor is a robot, and therefore has an obvious flaw - a devastating weakness against electrical magic. This little fact makes Cloud invaluable throughout the battle, his Bolt 3 spells doing around 4000 damage a turn and quickly obliterating the boss's troublesome arms. After that, it's simply a case of chipping away at the body while occasionally topping up the Wall spell. It doesn't take long to reduce Carry Armor to nothing but shorted circuits and blown fuses.

By the time the battle's over Reno has vanished, and so has the submarine carrying the Huge Materia. Cid suggests hijacking the remaining sub and using it to chase down the escapees. I run over to the other docked sub, picking up some items along the way (including a set of Leviathan's Scales that are sure to come in handy some time in the future). The takeover is quick and painless (at least for my party), and within minutes the team have full control of a Shinra submarine.

The submarine pursuit pans out as yet another of Final Fantasy VII's infamous mini-games. Set in a fully-3D grid-based environment, the player must pilot their submarine through the ocean in order to locate, attack and sink the red submarine within a ten minute time limit. As you'd expect, it's not quite as straightforward as that - there are other subs in the ocean that won't hesitate to attack you, and the ocean floor is littered with mines that will damage your sub if you collide with them. If your sub's armour bar empties, or you fail to stop the red sub within the time limit, the mini-game is failed. It's a fairly simple game to get the hang of, and doesn't really pose much of a challenge (despite not playing this sequence for several years, and forgetting there was a sonar button, I was able to sink the red sub in just over two minutes). Much like the motorbiking and snowboarding mini-games that precede it, it looks pretty rough and suffers from some questionable collision detection, but that doesn't detract too much from the fact it's a nice distraction from the more traditional aspects of Final Fantasy VII's gameplay.

Beating the submarine mini-game grants the party free use of the Shinra sub from here on out. With that comes the ability to scour the ocean floor, allowing the player to explore the world map below sea level. Admittedly, it's not as spectacular as that sentence makes it sound. The only part of the ocean you can really explore is the central ocean between the eastern and western continents, and there's not a lot to see save for a couple of side-quests and a bit of story exposition (some of which I'll probably cover in the next episode). The submarine controls almost identically to the Highwind, but interestingly, differently to how it controls in the submarine mini-game. Not sure who decided that was a good idea. All in all, it's a neat way of adding a bit more depth (no pun intended) to world map exploration, but with the roster of vehicles already standing at a buggy, a decommissioned plane and an airship, I'm not sure it was entirely necessary.

As the party haul up the retrieved piece of Huge Materia, they receive a radio transmission telling them that another piece of Huge Materia is about to be flown out of Junon airport. Seeing a perfect opportunity to complete their set, Cloud and the gang surface their shiny new tin can and emerge just outside Junon on the world map. Thinking this a pretty good place to call time on our aquatic adventures for now, I open the menu, save the game, and turn off the PSP.

So at the close of Episode Twenty-Six, my vital statistics are:

• Current Party - Cloud (Lv 53), Cid (Lv 55), Barret (Lv 49)
• Current Location - Junon Area, World Map
• Time on the Clock - 36:54

The Story So Far...

So there you have it, another episode in the bank. I hope readers are still enjoying this fortnightly forays into Final Fantasy VII as much as I'm enjoying writing them. I think the next episode (due on Sunday May 13th) will probably just end up covering a couple of the game's side quests and optional story segments - I'll revisit Wutai to explore the rest of Da Chao, raid the sunken Gelnika airship, witness some pieces of story exposition involving Vincent and Cloud, and maybe even try my luck at some chocobo breeding. Until then, take it easy, thanks for reading, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Final Fantasy VII (PSP)

What I was able to play of Soul Reaver was great

About a week into April, shortly after my war of attrition with Grand Theft Auto was finally won, I started playing Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. It's a game I've been wanting to play for quite a while now, ever since I experienced the sequel all the way back at the start of 2009. Its environment-based puzzles, brilliant voice acting and complex narrative all kept me hooked from beginning to end. Last year I was able to get my hands on the original, spotting a copy of it on the shelf in my local Gamestation. I snapped it up without hesitation, paid the meagre £1.99 asking price and took it home, placing it on the pile of games marked 'to play sooner rather than later'. This month I finally started playing it, and was really enjoying the experience.

Until disaster struck.

I'd been working my way through Soul Reaver slowly, clocking up about ten hours' worth of play time across the last two weeks, and up until yesterday everything I'd seen really impressed me. Unsurprisingly, the game boasts a number of similarities to its sequel. A heavy focus is placed on solving environmental puzzles in order to progress, something I've come to recognise as developer Crystal Dynamics' action-adventure trademark through playing not only Soul Reaver and Soul Reaver 2, but also their trilogy of Tomb Raider games. The combat mechanics are fairly simplistic, but are spiced up by the invulnerable nature of the foes - their vampiric status means you have to make creative use of the environment to burn, impale and drown them into oblivion. The boss battles I fought were well-structured and rewarding without ever being frustrating. It even looks pretty great for an original PlayStation game, the gorgeous, decadent gothic art style and detailed character models belying the lack of graphical horsepower in Sony's first console. Sure, the game suffers from some of the characteristic problems of first-generation 3D games (awkward camera control and imprecise platforming being the big ones that spring to mind), but these barely detract from the overall experience.

If you've been clamouring for a dark Zelda, play Soul Reaver

Arguably the most impressive thing about Soul Reaver, though, is just how far ahead of its time it must have been way back when it was first released in 1999. The first 'blown away' moment came when I realised that the game was streaming the huge, seamless, 3D world of Nosgoth from the disc with no load times. And I'm not saying that in a fancy, spin-marketing kind of way - in the ten hours I played, right up until the aforementioned disaster, I don't think I saw a single loading screen during gameplay. To a modern gamer this fact might seem like a moot point, what with all the open-world games on the market that do the same thing, but I'll say it again - this game came out in 1999, on the original PlayStation. Take that into consideration and the fact the game provides a genuine seamless environment while still looking pretty damned great seems a fitting testament to how ahead-of-its-time Soul Reaver was.

There are other ways in which Soul Reaver seems to pre-empt the coming generation, some of which I've already mentioned - like the completely voice-acted script, recorded not by barely-competent voice actors but genuine big-hitters like Simon Templeman and the late, great Tony Jay. Their excellent performances really help to step the story up a notch, adding further gravitas and weight to a wonderfully-woven gothic tale of vengeance. Arguably the biggest moment of realisation that I had was about five hours into my playthrough, after trawling through the second 'dungeon' and beating the boss at its end. It was as the boss fell and I earned the ability to scale walls that I noticed the similarities between Soul Reaver and one of its contemporaries - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Mechanically, the two games have a lot in common - puzzle-based dungeon-crawling, strategic boss battles, earning new items and abilities which open up new areas of the map for exploration, two distinct versions of the same world that the player must traverse between to solve puzzles and move on... The list is almost endless. The big difference is that while the Zelda series is steeped in twee, innocent fantasy, Soul Reaver cloaks itself in the macabre. Putting it simply, Soul Reaver strikes me as a successful attempt at a dark Zelda game - one developed long before the gaming community started demanding one.

My time as Raziel has sadly been brought to an early end

I'm sure the back end of the game is just as satisfying, if not more so, but I can't say for certain. My time with Soul Reaver was brought to a premature end yesterday, as I started experiencing disc read errors. They came consistently, always hitting right at the end of the boss battle in the Drowned Abbey. Cleaning the disc has also proven fruitless, which leaves me with just one conclusion - that one of the scuffs on the under-side of the disc runs a little deeper than a simple surface mark. It's incredibly frustrating, because I was really enjoying the game and was hoping to use my long weekend to see it through to the end. Now, thanks to those pesky disc read errors, I won't be seeing the end for a while yet, if at all. I've blogged in the past on the drawbacks of buying older games second-hand, specifically the unfortunate situation that arose when I purchased a used copy of the PS2 adventure game Primal way back in May 2009. These days I'm pretty meticulous when it comes to checking the condition of game discs before I buy pre-owned software. This pedantry extended to the purchase of Soul Reaver - the store I bought it from had two copies of the game, and I made a point of asking to see both before walking away with the better-faring of the two discs. Unfortunately I think this is just a hazard that comes with the territory of regularly buying and playing old games, and one I'm probably going to experience a few more times as I attempt to whittle down my Pile of Shame.

So for now, Soul Reaver returns to that pile unfinished. I am desperate to see the journey through to its conclusion, though, and I'm already thinking about ways of doing it for when I get paid at the end of the month. One option is to shell out for another used copy of the game on a site like Amazon or eBay - that would cost me around a fiver and would mean I'd be able to continue my game from my last save, but it would also mean running the risk of receiving another defective copy of the game. On the flip-side, for a similar price I could buy the game through the PlayStation Store and play it on my PSP - that would eliminate the possibility of any more disc read errors, but the sacrifice for that security would be having to start from scratch. In the meantime, while I think about how to approach the situation, I've moved on to try and tackle another original PlayStation title - Vagrant Story. Here's hoping my disc read error woes don't carry over to that title as well. Thanks for reading guys, I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Vagrant Story (PS1)