LogFAQs > #976350933

Today's session was mostly gameplay, but there was some story in there too.

Cloud, Tifa, and Barret headed to Wall Market. I checked around for any new things, such as the Honeybee Inn banning Cloud because apparently he was a bad customer (meanwhile Cloud is doing his best to suppress the memories of what happened in there). I also searched Corneo's mansion and saved a guy strapped to some sort of torture table. Then it was time to climb a cable to the upper level, which was a neat little transitional area with some simple battery and jumping puzzles.

Outside Shinra HQ, I had the choice of busting in or sneaking in. After the nonsense of infiltrating Corneo's mansion, this time I opted to just kick in the front door and start blasting. There was a company store on the second floor with some chests I couldn't figure out how to open. The big thing there was a CGI video of some Shinra-brand cars, which I'm sure looked very impressive back in 1997. All I got out of it was... man, Shinra makes some cool steampunk cars.

There was a lot of climbing after that. Most floors had a few NPCs or a little puzzle to snag some items, but it was all relatively straightforward until I got to the executive floor. At first I was going to laugh at the stupidity of the Shinra executives for setting up their vents such that air from the bathroom goes directly into their boardroom. Then I realized... these guys are all too high up to waste time thinking about the vents. Some lowly worker building this place was the one responsible for the shitty air, likely because he hates his evil bosses. Whoever that worker was, he's a hero in my book!

After spying on the executive meeting, Cloud and the others followed the scientist Hojo up to the next floor. There, he seemed to be trying to... I think he wanted to breed Aeris with Red XIII? Would that even work? Regardless, Red XIII isn't into humans, so he opted to attack Hojo instead. The talking dog/cat chimera creature joined the party. This was where I ran into an annoying little problem with managing more than three party members. During the next few sections, it kept making me swap who was in my party. Sometimes it would let me remove Materia and equipment, and sometimes it wouldn't. Even if it did, I still had to reequip everyone, sometimes only for one battle before the party composition switched and then I had to do it all over again. Ugh, that was annoying.

Having rescued Aeris, the party tried to escape. Then they got cornered by the Turks in an elevator and taken to see President Shinra instead. His evil plan was revealed. He wants to find a fabled promised land and build a paradise on top of it. Everyone was tossed into jail cells, and there was some nice character interaction between them all. Aeris even found time to flirt with Cloud a bit by reminding him about her promise for a date. She didn't realize Tifa was in the next cell too, though, and she heard about it too. Awkward!

Everyone went to sleep next. When Cloud woke up later, the cell door was open and everyone outside was dead. It appeared that Sephiroth went on a rampage through the building, and it was awfully nice of him to take the time to open Cloud's cell while he was at it. He also smashed up a container that'd once held some... thing called Jenova. I've heard that name before over the years so I know it's important, but I dunno what it is.

More importantly, the evil President Shinra is dead, stabbed in the back by Sephiroth! Yay! Now his son Rufus is in charge, and he's even more evil than his dad. Boo! I mean, that speech he gave was almost laughably over the top. "My dad was too nice wasting money protecting the people. I'm going to rule through fear instead!" Yeah... your dad was a real saint, what with crushing all those innocent people. Cloud, understandably angered by this, stayed behind to fight Rufus while the others went on ahead (forcing me to juggle my party members, AGAIN). Aeris, Barret, and Red fought a neat battle against some robots while riding the elevator down. It wasn't too bad, Aeris kept up the healing and both her and Red are excellent magic casters. Then Cloud easily beat up Shinra, and his little dog too.

Once everyone regrouped on the main floor (and I had to set up my party AGAIN), they stole a truck and a motorcycle and made their escape. This was the cutscene burned into my memory from my childhood, the one that was glitched, played upside down, and crashed whenever my brother and I tried to get past it. I am officially further into FFVII than I've ever been, not that I remembered much else from so long ago. The little motorcycle minigame where Cloud had to swing at pursuers was neat. The problem here, though, was that not all of the buttons are available on my controller. I could swing right but not left. I could've used the keyboard, but it would've been X and Insert, which is hella awkward. Also, Insert is on the right side of the keyboard and swings left while X is on the left side but swings right? To hell with that! I just used my controller, only ever swung right, and did my best with that handicap. My people got a little beat up, but Aeris healed everyone once the boss fight started and it was smooth sailing from there.

Once they were outside of Midgar, it was time to form a new party (AGAIN). I chose Aeris and Tifa to go with Cloud. I need Aeris for the healing, and I would've felt bad not taking Tifa along too because I bet she'd get all sad and jealous. Sorry Barret and Red, I gotta go the harem route. I laughed when Barret's only reaction was "I expected you to do that". The big problem here was that Barret then walked off with half my Materia attached to him, which is super lame. I quit for the night right after saving on the overworld for the first time. I'm a bit annoyed at the constant party swaps. Still, in my experience, there eventually comes a point in FF games where that sort of thing settles down. Eventually I hope I'll be able to just pick my three favorites, gear them up, and then never need to switch again.