Game Talk (I'm putting this extra little bit here because the original title was too short)

I'm only ahead by a short dungeon, some walking over the world map, and recruiting a certain ninja so that she can be a nuisance to me later. It's an hour, at most, if you even remotely know what you're doing. So unless you haven't a clue how to get her, and you want to do that, you'll be caught up easily.

I'm honestly not sure if I want to get her. I've heard she is by far the most useless character in a Final Fantasy game, and considering the Cid from IV is steep competition in my eyes? Well... Anyway, my point is that, honestly, I'm wondering how useful she is in the grand scheme of things, if there's anything I'd miss by not getting her, and if she's that hard to get. Since you're not that far ahead of me, feel free to spoil.

It's pretty easy. Go into the forests, and you can encounter a "Mystery Ninja" in battles. Defeat her, and you'll be in a little field area with her. Don't try to leave or use the Save Point, by the way. Talk to Yuffie and play to her ego, try to get her on the team, then be a d*ck and not stick around to hear her name.

You don't have to use her, but she DOES have some advantages, like her Conformer weapon ignoring the damage modifier on the Morph command, letting you get tons of Source items at the sunken Gelnika plane much later... and her sidequest. If you recruit her and don't want to do it, stay the HELL away from Wutai. And hope you're not underleveled, as no Materia setup will help you. It's not that hard, it's just that, uh, you kinda lose all of it. Temporarily.

There's also a minigame you can play after the dungeon, at Fort Condor. It's a little war minigame where you hire troops and command them to fight enemy troops. If an enemy reaches your base, you have to go through a boss fight, which determines the whole battle. You are required to do this minigame once, much later, when you can just wait for the enemies to catch up and rip their boss to shreds. And you kind of have to pay for the soldiers out of your own pocket. But you can get some neat stuff, and come back at various points in the game to play again. I never bothered.

Well neat. I'm having some steam issues and a small crisis with it right now, so I'll get back to you with that later.

Well, I'm not die-hard serious about our little competition, but I'll have mercy on you. Though I WILL give you a piece of nifty advice that happens to be useless now. Remember the Train Graveyard? When you got dropped in the sewers after THE INCIDENT? One of the enemies there holds Ethers. Steal them from them and sell them, 700 Gil apiece. Have 20 of them running spare to sell? Enjoy the 14000 Gil! It certainly helps out in the early-game.

And more relevant to the now and going forwards: a lot of enemies are weak to Bolt/Lightning/Thunder spells. Like, every robot, and there's a lot of 'em. And did you get the Enemy Skill Materia? There's an enemy hanging out around Midgar that uses Matra Magic on you, and Enemy Skill is basically Blue Magic, and Matra Magic is a skill that costs 8 MP to deal about 200 damage to all enemies, non-elemental. It's cheap and kills EVERYTHING for a while. I'd double back for it if I were you, but that's because I love absolutely crushing my enemies. And it handles those annoying enemies right after the dungeon so handily, since they like to gang up and spam Grand Spark...

Also! Try and get the White Wind skill, and preferably Might Guard. You can get those soon, though the exact details are fuzzy for me.

Well, if everything fails after this reinstall, you'll have about eight hours minus dicking around for me to catch up on. Which, honestly, I don't TERRIBLY mind doing, but I'm going to slightly hate it.

In any case, thanks for evening up the playing field.

Ugh. I hate memory/save crises. They just... It's like all your accomplishments have amounted to nothing, the joys you once had, lost... It's like having something become undone in every way, a failure of existence.

Thank you, Steam's Cloud Saved Games! Fuck yeah!

I know what you mean. My computer installed an update while I was playing, and decided to reboot just outside the Shinra building, before I could get toe the Save Point, so I had to listen to Elmyra talk about Aeris and the Turks and stuff AGAIN. And then climb up the Shinra HQ. AGAIN.

Hm? *Grin* I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just being too lazy to continue... and even if I started it up, I'd probably just hang out at Fort Condor for a while instead of advancing the plot.

...*Sigh*... yeah. I hate losing save data. For some reason, though, that made me think about how I managed to steal a Hardedge, an upgraded sword for Cloud, from SOLDIER 3rd enemies in Shinra HQ. It's stronger than the upgrade they sell in Kalm, so it puts him ahead of the game for a while. Do well at a certain event in Junon, and you get a free Force Stealer, another ahead-of-time upgrade.

...Also, should I be PROUD that Cloud was chosen by Corneo, or just disgusted...? Eh, I'll settle for laughing at poor Cloud. I think FFVII has a leg up on awesome plot developments for one thing much later that most games don't do, but I'll shut up about it.

EDIT: Oh, good. I had a feeling it would do that... Cloud technology is actually useful, huh?

Say, what's your Steam handle? If you'd rather, you can PM it to me. I think being able to tell when we're both on might add something to this competition.

emobarbarian. Yeah, I know. I think I missed Yuffie for the moment, though... I uh. Kinda got off my chocobo before getting her because I didn't want ANOTHER error telling me to GTFO just because. Fauck.

...uh, what? You can't take your Chocobo with you through the Mythril Mines... And you don't need a Chocobo to find Yuffie. It wouldn't help, really. You need it to cross the marsh without encountering the Midgar Zolom, who will kill your ass if you're not meticulously prepared. And even then, fighting your way over is too costly.

I'm at the mines, and I saved after I ditched the Chocobo. I need it to cross back over and get Yuffie. So I guess she's just going to have to sit and wait a little bit.

...uh, Yuffie's on the forests on the OTHER side of the cave. No backtracking required, unless you ran off to Junon already and didn't get lost at all.

This conversation makes me kind of wish my computer could actually play the games Steams selling, but no, XP's been dropped like a sack of hammers. Eh, at least I can still use Steam as an IM.

GUYS, I FOUND OUT SOMETHING EPIC!!!!

KH HD 2.5 ReMix, on PS3, in 2014.

Thoughts? Mine is "I'M BUYING A PS3."

My thoughts are "well there goes THAT set of grant money refunds."

My thoughts are "there's another game to add to the LIST for once I get my sexy God of War PS3 off layaway"

My thoughts are "eeehhhh not too shocked".

Mine? "We'd have blamed them if they hadn't."

In other news, I'm really behind on the Mighty No.9 info. I only just found out some of the details of the Kickstarter, and apparently, it's breached four million, and among the features were releases on PS4 and Xbox One, 3DS, Co-op with Call, multiplayer, an extra stage and final boss, an intro stage, a stage made for Call, and a Challenge Mode. And apparently, Inafune may actually get CAPCOM to license the game, or something like that.

I can actually respect the guy for not holding any grudge against CAPCOM. They've been doing stupid stuff and all, but they ARE getting desperate at this point, I'm sure. While seeing Mighty No.9 take off and surpass Mega Man would be great, it'd be even BETTER to see it bring about the revival of CAPCOM. It wouldn't be fair to all the fans of Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Phoenix Wright, and all the other stuff they make, for the company to fall.

Actually, I've heard that Capcom said they might actually make it a Megaman game if they publish it. Might. Keyword.

Well, I heard that Inafune might be alright with that, but if somebody else offers better terms, he'll go with the better choice. I personally would prefer it to keep Beck as the main character, since I'd like to see what develops with him. He doesn't appear to function quite like Mega Man. Trying to cut-and-paste the original cast in there... would not end well.

soooo....many......pokemon......gotta.....catch em.....ALL

So, yeah! Slender Man and Irisu have been chatting about stalking me and generally haunting and stuff. They mentioned a schedule, and only one of them getting to stalk me at a time. Something about both of them at once destroying the effect...? I wonder what'll happen if even MORE such nightmarish figures end up in my head! Haha, what fun!

Funny you should mention Slender Man, because, to try and get into the Halloween spirit, I've started watching Marble Hornets. Someone please slap me until I stop watching Marble Hornets! I'm paranoid enough as it is.

-engages in noble slapicuffs with KH-

*grabs Zeldaman's hands after ten minutes* I don't think it's working, bro! The show's too well-written!