Oh how I love a good predicament. Last time I managed to get myself into the mother of all precidaments - a predicamum, if you will - because I was given the option of either:
a) Fighting a pretty hard boss which you can only take down with magic, or…b) Fighting the boss which you can only take down with magic, but before going into the fight, giving all your magic away.
And guess which option I chose.
This, of course, wasn't intentional. Normally you've got to get up pretty early in the afternoon to get one past ol' Zeke, but somehow the game managed to trick me by posing the question in the form of double-negatives, false positives and crappy Japanese translation.
Jesus wept. Why is there even the option to hand all the materia to Tifa anyway? She isn't even involved in the next two fights! Gaaaah.
So now I'm standing in front of this beefy mofo, and my offensive powers are roughly as effective and numerous as Switzerland's armed forces. In fact, theirs are even better - I haven't even got a special knife which can open wine bottles on the fly.
Boss #6: Hundred Gunner, 1600 hp
The only guy who can attack him is Barret since he's armed with not only a gun, but the good sense to bring it along to a gun fight. EmilyKing can attack, but only when her limit bar is up and that's not a great deal of help. Aeris is generally 'not a great deal of help' regardless of who we're fighting, what distance we're fighting across or how full her limit bar is, so she'll probably spend most of the battle playing with her hair and thinking about dresses.
At least Aeris and EmilyKing can dedicate their time to keeping everyone's health up using some tried-and-tested, old fashioned remedies: penicillin. Well, magic potions. If we've only got one person attacking this is going to be one helluva long fight and I know the boss has some killer dance moves, so it's a good job… nope, scratch all that. Turns out we've got hardly any health potions either.
GO TEAM.
YES STOP REMINDING ME.
The battle is really, really touch and go. To start with, Aeris and EmilyKing try throwing everything we have in our inventory across the gap - some grenades which take off so little health I'd might as well hurl insults, a gravball which also has zero effect and finally some Loco Weed to try and confuse the robotic machine (I did say I was desperate). None of those feeble gestures serve any good whatsoever save for making Aeris feel like she's contributing, which I suppose is nice.
Barret fires as often as he's able and his attacks do well (about 40hp per strike), but with only one useful person on our side it feels like we're treading water. I also have to time my healing - with so few potions, it's prudent to wait until someone gets their ass kicked enough that they'll get the most benefit out of it, but not too much that they'll risk dying.
My heart is in my mouth and in my panic, I fumble with the keys more than a couple of times which causes an inexcusable loss of time. Focus, man. Focus.
It also doesn't help that this boss keeps surprising me with… er, surprise attacks. How the jenkins does one 'hide' artillery, anyway? Pretty sure I should have noticed these:
On the side of the boss is a sticker which reads 'THIS PRODUCT IS FOR NOVELTY PURPOSES ONLY. Never shine a laser pointer at anyone, especially their face." Damn you, Shinra!
Aeris comes in kinda handy with her own limit break which gives everyone a heal-up, but to all intents and purposes it's like putting a Mr. Bump band-aid on an artillery wound.
We're down to a couple of potions left. After that, each character will take about three or four hits before we begin dying like the n00bs that we are.
I won't be able to revive them in any meaningful way.
He's won. We're pretty much done here.
Sorry guys.
OH WOW! It turns out my guesstimates as to how much HP this armoured bastard had were way off mark - to my complete and unexpected surprise, one of our futile, last-ditch attacks ends up reducing it to robot scrap (or flashing red polygons, whatever.)
I rise up, punch the air, then slump down with a massive sigh of relief...
... followed quickly a cry of despair.
WHERE DID THIS JERK COME FROM?
Apparenty the boss comes in two interest-free, easy-to-pay instalments. Hmmm, I totally forgot about that. Thankfully we're about evenly matched and we destroy the remaining bits right as the potions run out. Shiiiiit. That was a very close one, but those guys are now safe, thank goodness. From this moment on I'll never let myself get in a position whereby I'm confused by who's equipped with what and walk into a battle pretty much unarmed. That was way too stressful and the whole adventure nearly ended thanks to that simple mistake.
One boss down, one to go. Let's rejoin Cloud, who has insisted on fighting his adversary alone (recklessly, I feel). I guess it's time to switch all the materia back to him!
So guys, remind me: When you're playing on a keyboard, where abouts are the square and triangle keys?
No, seriously. Not cool at all. Because I don't know which one is 'start' either, so there is a very real danger I press the wrong thing and start the battle without any materia. Again.
Let's see. I use the right control key for running. That means shift is cancel… I think. Or is that the run key? Oh god, I just don't know! I've never had the fate of a blog rest entirely on me remembering what a single key is before! And I set these keys up as custom, so I can't just look it up online.
A-HA! Got it! I'll just go into the game menu and look up the key configuration!
Oh. I don't know what the menu key is.
I hover my fingers over space, enter, shift and right control, close my eyes, and get ready to jam them all at once in a mad game of keyboard roulette. Except I don't do that, because I'm a coward. Instead, I… oh I've just remembered. I set the backslash key to square. We're all good.
I give myself some Restore materia because I know this battle gets incredibly close given it's one-on-one, and also a bit of Lightning as an elemental affect on my sword to increase damage potential. Glad I'm not fighting with one hand behind my back this time, I give myself a mental pat on the back and GET THIS SMACKDOWN STARTED!
It takes me fifteen minutes to work out that 'W' is the 'start button'. How random.
Rufus Shinra is a tough cookie, mainly because it's just my one guy against him and his pet panther-thing, but also because he sets up barriers straight away which halve my physical and magical attacks (and I haven't got the right materia to negate them at this point). I launch fleeting blows at him and have to heal at every second turn, but the battle is over without nearly the same level as cardiac arrest as the last one.
Rufus runs away like the whiny-faced girl bitch he is right before I can kill him. Yeah, and take your stupid panther with you, chump. With all of our business concluded here, it's time to depart not only the Shinra Headquarters, but also from the city which has been our home for a number of meandering and exposition-filled blog posts.
So join me next time as we hop on a sweet motorcycle, play a dumb minigame, fight another mech-based boss and ride away…
…. to more meandering and exposition-filled adventure!
