It seems that each mission I choose will give me a set of cutscenes that are obviously not going to be one after the other in the real game, but at the same time it disappoints me a little. I don't know why. I don't even understand anything that they're saying, so I don't see why it matters to me. Here's the cutscene for Mission 1, Operation Empire Escape.
I lol'd at the part where King returns insults to the soldier. Time to move on. I am on my own from here on out, because the guide on Siliconera sucks and only covers basic information. I especially love the last cutscene, though; the part where the Cid of this game just says that somebody left. Who the hell is he talking about? I assume it's that emperor guy who's mysteriously vanished, but I doubt that a person with the title of High Commander wouldn't notice when his ruler is missing.
Okay, so let's begin. My party of Rem, Sice and King started off at some junction with a save point. Taking a look around, I can see that this city is actually kind of modern with a futuristic feel. There are steel buildings and skyscrapers here and there. The soldiers run around with guns. They even come in military vehicles. This place has everything it needs to be a warzone. So anyway, as I started heading through the first area, I found that my party was automatically being switched out by a bunch of silhouettes. I wouldn't have had a problem with them, since they were level ten, but they weren't balancing out my party correctly. I was trying to make my party consist of a favorite lead (Rem), a heavy hitter (Sice), and a ranged attacker (King). When the silhouettes would come in, they would come in when everyone was at full health when their purpose is to come in when my party was dying. It was annoying because I would then find myself in a party with shadow figures of Nine and Machina, and I didn't need those characters at the time.
So in the midst of this confusion, I got killed. Rem died and I couldn't bring her back unless I had Phoenix Downs, but I doubt that they are in the demo. This really pissed me off. I had to resort to using Queen as my interchangeable lead for Rem. Tons of experience potential for Rem was completely thrown out the window. As I pushed through the Imperial forces, I began to notice that there were some stronger enemies with more health than others. A couple of these were apparently leaders. What would happen with them would be that if I killed one of them, the rest of my foes would surrender. I killed them before I killed the leaders, though, so I have no idea if this actually works in the demo. I saw a yellow circle around those enemies instead of a red one, and I assume that means that only does a ton of damage rather than instantly kill them, because that is all I've seen happen.
Another thing of interest was some of the enemies I fought. There was one enemy that reminded me of these guys, but it looked a little more robotic. After running through sprawling streets and all, I came across a giant spider robot thing. It was apparently being controlled by someone, so I assume it was one of the many forms of Magitek Armor in the game. What I found cool about running around the city was that I could hear all these people on the radio, which I presume to have been enemy broadcasting. It was a nice touch. What bothered me was that I was getting all these on screen notifications by a moogle and by the game about different things, and since I can't read a lick of Japanese I will never know what or how important that information could've been. There were also these things that kept popping up called S.O's. They are apparently little challenges, like survive a set of enemies without taking damage; however, I would never be able to know what the challenges were since I can't read Japanese, so I had to ignore them.
Getting back to the Magitek Armor boss, it was a pretty vicious battle that seemed impossible. The thing had a ton of health, each attack it did cost me almost two hundred points in damage, and the highest health I have as a character is four hundred. Queen had around three hundred, and as my last valuable lead, I had been worried sick about how things will go for her. After a while, the Magitek Armor would run off and stand on the side of a building, and from there it would just spam rockets. It took me a while to figure out that I was supposed to hide behind several trucks, which would be shot by the rockets and blown out of the way, creating a path forward. However, at the end of this, there were just a bunch of barricades. The mecha would then hang from a skyline ahead of the barricades and continue to spam rockets. There was no way across, and again it took me a while to notice an entrance to one of the buildings. Once inside, that annoying mecha would come at me again. I had to attack it through the doorway, which felt a little awkward. Then, it would climb up to one of the windows and spam more rockets (like, jeez, enough with the rockets!). Finally, after completing my hundred-thousandth dodge roll, the Magitek Armor gave up and ran away. I continued further into the building to be greeted by a save crystal and some circle on the floor that restores all stats. Unfortunately, it didn't revive poor Rem. Sorry Rem, I will be sure that I will know what I am doing the next time we embark on a mission.
After saving, I started heading up the stairs. The interior of this building was very... how do I put it? It was like any other modern steel building facility you could think of, I guess. Nothing was fancy about the building, it had a warehouse feel to it. Again, it gave me a sense of futurism that felt very different from the setting of the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy. As I traversed the hallway, I noticed a fork in the road that lead to some stairwell with a force field in the middle of it, preventing me from going further. I think I needed to accept an S.O challenge, but the risk of failing them would be death, so I didn't want to take any chances. I kept moving forward until all of a sudden, this big yeti looking thing comes out of nowhere and attacks my party. It wasn't really all that bad, though. It kept tripping all over the place and giving me the yellow circle around it. It took me a few tries, but I managed to hit it a couple of times while it was yellow and I managed to knock out a lot of its health. Also, even though I was getting hit a little hard, it wasn't as bad as that Magitek Armor. Besides that, someone was healing me. I believe it was Sice.
So after I killed that random as hell yeti, I kept moving forward and noticed a shiny thing behind a crate. I picked it up and I was notified that I found something, but I have no idea what the hell it was since the name was in Japanese. As I kept going, I found myself in a battle with these three bat things that were from the practice battles in The Forbidden Forest. These guys are so easy, and for some reason the game rewarded me with a Victory Fanfare for killing them (I guess it was just there to let fans know that YES, THERE WILL BE VICTORY FANFARE AGAIN!). That area definitely looked like a warehouse with all these crates and barrels and whatnot, but I couldn't go down to that place. I was rather on some balcony which lead to another hall. Along the way I found another shiny thing, but this time I wasn't even notified that I had found something. Da hell?
At the end of this hallway was none other than a Behemoth, once again on all its fours! Yes, another iconic Behemoth and not a stupid-looking FFXII Wolfman. Those things looked so stupid. This guy was definitely vicious looking, but the fight against him was even scarier than the way he looked. As I tried to take him down, his quick attacks were leaving my entire party at dangerously low health. Also, the fact that this was located in a small room in the building contributed to the difficulty of the fight, given that the monster was about the size of a dragon. After several desperate attempts to heal, Sice and King died and I was left with just seventy health. One more blow from that Behemoth would've ended Queen for me, and then I would've been stuck with Machina or Nine as my lead. I was already facing the inevitable option of placing Ace and Machina in my party as backup, but I couldn't do so because adding party members requires you to do that in real time during the game, and given that the Behemoth was relentless, I had no time to stop and bring those guys out. So I took a last stand as Queen against the Behemoth, mano a mano, and I managed to hit the guy during the incredibly brief period of time that a yellow cirlce showed up on his giant ass. I hit him while that happened, and not only did I bring him down to almost little health (well, I had already knocked down a couple bars of his health, so if you are doing this I wouldn't expect the same thing to happen with full health), I also sort of knocked him out! He was on the floor struggling to get up, and I didn't take any chances then; I mashed the hell out of the melee button and killed that beast for good!
After he died, I healed myself by standing (you can do that in the game. It works better by "sheathing" your weapons with L and R). Then, I brought out Ace and Machina for further assignment, since I figured this was only the beginning. I walked out to the roof of the building, and I guess I could've gotten a good view of this Milites city, but I paid no mind to it. I went down some fire escape, and about halfway down, the mission ended. While it was a sigh of relief for me, I wished I could keep going. The mission then concludes with that last cutscene of Cid saying that somebody left, whoever the hell that person is. Also, at the end of the mission I was taken to a screen that shows my results. I got a D on one thing and a C on everything else. Damn. Also, I think I was rewarded something, but once again I have no idea what it is.
Stay tuned as I figure out which moogle leads me to Mission 2! Will it be Moogle Number 1, the pimp, Moogle Number 2, that blue guy by the door, or Moogle Number 3, the moogle that is constantly whining throughout the game! Find out next time!
Edit: Oh, I have an idea as to who Cid could be talking about! During my short stay in this Milites city, I searched for No. 10 and came back to Hogwarts without him or her. I couldn't find the guy anywhere. However, maybe Cid knows where he is! Maybe that's who he was referring to when he said, "So he's left." That's gotta be No. 10, I just know it!
Edit 2: I found out that those crystal things are apparently the "summer costumes." I don't know which belongs to whom, nor do I see a way to equip them. I'll have it all figured out in the next post.
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