Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Playing: Final Fantasy Tactics] Let's Play (2024)

Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game where when I was a young boy, my father took me into the city to see the marching band. He said son, when you grow up, would you be the savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned?

Okay, before we start on the 'plot' part of the update, we're just going to be doing some house cleaning.

First off:

I reload the Cave of Gi and go through it all over again, only better this time. You can see in this picture that everyone is in critical MP; this is because, with a better handle on the length of the dungeon and the type of threat, I was able to go pace myself so as to go through it all using just the right spells to blow through all the encounters without facing much risk to myself, consuming only two Ethers before hitting the boss at almost no MP left and killing him instantly with an X-Potion ('low MP' being important because it means I got through as many encounters as possible and got the maximum amount of XP and gil I could get without having to use more Ethers; it's all about efficiency). The end result is I came out of this with a lot more Gil and Ethers than in my previous outing.

Forearmed is forewarned: A good RPG combat system is one where advance knowledge of the threat you're facing allows you to significantly reduce its strain on your resources by making more correct choices.

(Also taking on Aerith instead of Barret helped, sorry Barret, Healing Wind is just really good.)

In the process, we grab a couple of Enemy Skills like Death Sentence, a spell with a cool animation where a demonic skull appears over the enemy and they get a 60 second timer until they die. It's basically identical to the old Doom status effect, and seeing as few non-boss battles take more than 60 seconds to resolve, I'm dubious as to its utility.

Also, I made an off-handed comment recently that went unremarked on but which I should clarify, in which I said Cait Sith was riding a "giant Moogle plushie." The exact nature of the weird thing Cait Sith has been riding is ambiguous… Until you hit battle with him in your party, at which point it becomes clear:

That enemy is called 'Golem,' and is straight up a robot, which I love.

Look at that zipper in the back of the Moogle. It could mean it's a suit with a person on it, theoretically, but no - I think the much more reasonable assumption is that it's a stuffed toy. A giant stuffed toy, to be sure, brought to life somehow, but a stuffed toy at its core. Or, more precisely, an animatronic/stuffed toy combo - a kind of real size Furby. Notably, when Cait Sith attack, he's not doing it with the Megaphone; instead, Cait Sith gives it orders with said megaphone, and the Moogle charges forward and hits the opponent with its giant paws. The Megaphone weapons merely increase the effectiveness, the enthusiasm with which the Moogle attacks.

…

So what I'm saying is that Cait Sith is riding Moogle Freddie Fazbear.

Also, FF7 has one of the coolest griffon design of all times, because in addition to "eagle" and "lion" it goes "fuck it, let's give that fucker a peacock tail."

Anyway, we go on a loooong Buggy trip all the way back to the Gold Saucer so I can try and find that Death Claw enemy with the Laser move to learn as an Enemy Skill. This, it turns out, was pointless; the Death Claw is not merely native to the Corel Desert, but to two specific screens of Corel Prison. We do run into this game's version of the Dhorne Chimera and the Sandworm, though, so that's neat (the Chimera knows another Enemy Skill, but I didn't know that when I fought it, so I missed that too). The trip back is so long that I just end up reloading and doing a shorter trip, back to Gongaga. It turns out when Scarlet was rambling about 'junky reactors giving junky Materia,' she wasn't making a general-purpose comment, she was specifically commenting on a Materia she'd picked out of the broken ruins of the Reactor. This wasn't visible on the screen, we were meant to treat the dialogue as hints and investigate ourselves. Actually finding the damned thing takes some pixel-hunting, but eventually, we get it, and…

It's the Titan Materia.

Titan is, as usual, a human-looking very buff dude, but they really went creative with his animation in this game: when you summon him, Titan delivers a table flip. He literally crouches to grasp the ground underneath the opponent, then turns it upside down in a way that both flips the opponent onto their back and crushes them with the weight of the earth.

That's really cool and I dig it. As often, Titan is a tier of power above the Elemental Trio with the caveat that flying enemies are immune to Earth Damage, making him more conditional than a straightforward upgrade in power.

We've gotten a bunch of stuff and a lot of Gil to spend, so I buy our first MP Plus Materia to help out whoever is assigned Beta duty, and off we go to our next destination. It takes a little doing to find; Cosmo Canyon is a maze of mountain corridors… Which are largely irrelevant, it's actually really easy to leave the area if you don't get it in your head that you have to explore the back-alleys for some reason. Cross a river, and…

…

Well I don't like that.

True story: I played a game and reversed the order of the pictures, because what happens is that I first approached this place, saw this screen, and went "a'ight I'm heading back" and left to do other stuff instead.

In case you're not getting what I mean from the weirdly-shaped mountains and the location of the town alone, the Save screen helpfully indicates that this is the "Nibel Region."

So.

Alright.

Let's head in.

…okay what the fuck.

This town is perfectly fine. In fact - and this is one of the first signs that something is even more wrong than the fact that it's fine - it looks better than it did in Cloud's flashback. The streets and plaza have been swept of dirt, the houses are cleaner. It's almost… Brand new.

This, of course, prompts an immediate reaction from the party I gathered. A party which, hm.

Yuffie: "I thought someone said this town burnt down!"
Cloud: "...Yeah."
Cait Sith: "Cloud, did you make up that story to get our support?"
Cloud: "I'm not lying!"
Cloud: "I remember… The intense heat of the flames…"

Holy shit. Holy shit I am dying. I didn't think to change my party members before heading in and Cait Sith literally turned to Cloud and went 'wow I guess your tragic backstory was a bunch of fucking lies huh?'. Of all the people he wandered into town with, he did it with the two people least invested in his personal drama and the Shinra struggle and they immediately just called him out on his backstory. This is so fucking funny. And because Cloud has major memory issues that have only become more prominent over time, for all we know, it could be true, the destruction of Nibelheim could be a fake memory.

Flawless.

Anyway, for the more serious take on this, I reload and walk into town with Tifa and Aerith, which leads to different results.

Tifa: "What!?" [She turns to Cloud with an agitated expression.] "This was all burned down, wasn't it?"
Cloud: "...I thought so."
Tifa: "Then why… My house is still here too…"
Aerith: "...Something's strange?"
Cloud: "I'm not lying!"
Cloud: "I remember… The intense heat of the flames…"

Cloud's dialogue not changing aside, having Tifa on board instantly changes the context because she was also there when Nibelheim burned down - she's just as shocked and confused as Cloud, and in being shocked and confused, she brings corroboration to the fact that Cloud did see the town burn, whatever is going on here is something else. Aerith, as well, doesn't outright go "wow I guess your backstory was a lie huh," she's just worried about whatever might be going on here that causes he town to not match her friends' memories.

Well, only one way to find out what this is about, so we're heading in.

Asking about the innkeeper's story has Cloud ask what the hell is up with this town that was supposed to have burned down, only for the innkeeper to brush him off, say he was born and raised here and none of that happened; Tifa accuses him of lying and the guy tells us that if we're going to insult him like that, we should leave.

Taking Tifa on in this part is really interesting because she's more openly confrontational and emotional than Cloud is. At this point it's a pretty well-worn observation that Cloud does a lot of avoidance regarding his past, but here it's interesting because it's Tifa who takes on the more proactive role of going 'what the hell is happening,' and accusing people of lying. It's a confrontational role that is noteworthy precisely because it's a departure from Tifa's usual character.

Also, huh.

There's this goddamned thing in the inn's kitchen, just hanging in there being completely unremarked upon. It is described as a 'man in a black cape,' and it has a tattoo labeled with the Number '6.'

So.

This is such a wild thing to just throw at us here and now.

For a while now, we've been treating 'the man in the black cape' as synonymous with Sephiroth. There was always the possibility of it being a red herring, of course, but if that was the case I expected one singular character to be said red herring, one dude in a black cape we could catch up to.

But no.

These things are all over Nibelheim.

They are in every house, hanging around all the denizens of the town, and all sport sequential numbered tattoos. Most of them also give highly valuable items when interacted with, like Elixirs or Sources (a consumable which permanently increases character stats). And because of their weird models, it's totally unclear what the person or 'person' underneath looks like - it has to look at least mostly human or Cloud wouldn't describe it as 'a man,' right? But the bigger question is not 'what are they,' it's - Are they the ones we've been chasing after this whole time? Are all the sightings of Sephiroth just sightings of those things? Someone did say they met a 'man in a black cape' with a numbered tattoo in the Gold Saucer, but - was that all of the 'Sephiroth' sightings, or just some, or none?

This is going to leave me with a headache even after we learn more. As we are about to.

If we visit the item store, the saleswoman has no particular dialogue, but another person in the back talks about how they've been in business here for a long time, and when Cloud calls them out on it and says he lived there until he was 14 (which incidentally means there is a 2-year time gap between him leaving and coming back), they call him a liar back. It doesn't lead anywhere.

Of course, the choicest gut punch is in Cloud's own house.

There's an older woman there, working in the kitchen - the game took care to animate her movements to convey the sense that she's tending to normal domestic tasks, most likely cooking, just like Cloud's mom was last time we were here. Only, when he approaches her and says this was his house, he lived there until he was 14, she tells him he's sick, and to get out of her house.

And then, of course, Tifa's house. Which is where we meet the first of the black-robed figures to start talking.

In a halting voice, they speak of bringing 'something' to Sephiroth, and of 'becoming one' with him, and of going to a 'Reunion', whatever that is. There's another one, in Tifa's parents' bedroom, with the number 4, asking aloud where is the 'great Sephiroth', and dropping the Platinum Fists, a weapon for Tifa.

Then, we find Tifa's bedroom, and…

…

So, in Cosmo Canyon, there was something that mildly bothered me that I ended up not mentioning mostly because something always fell through, but one of my readers actually said much the same: The Nanaki/Seto plotline is in too much of a hurry. It introduces a conflict - 'Nanaki is bitter towards his late father because he thinks he was a coward' - then has a single scene of separation that's about the main plot ('here's the deal with Mako and spirit energy'), then immediately has Bugenhagen say 'so you have these feelings towards your father, come with me' and then we do the dungeon and it resolves that emotional conflict. It's way, way too quick; we're not allowed to sit with it, to have the initial conflict inform Nanaki's character and actions except in retrospect, it's introduced and immediately resolved. Less a character arc, and more a character pitch.

So. Nibelheim.

The game had a really cool set-up with 'why is Cloud and Tifa's hometown that was burned down five years ago seemingly intact and populated by people who claim to have lived there all their lives and don't recognize Cloud or Tifa? And who are these mysterious figures in black robes muttering about Sephiroth?' You get to visit three houses that set up this mystery, then you walk into Tifa's house and you find A LETTER, ON HER DESK, IN THE OPEN, which says "btw all the dudes in black are clones, we rebuilt the town to look identical to what it was five years ago and everyone in it is a Shinra employee who took special acting lessons.'

Seriously. This entire thing lasted less than ten minutes, start to end. Granted, the actual answer to the mind-bending 'what the fuck is going on here' being the most predictable answer, 'Shinra rebuilt the town as a decoy and everyone you meet is just lying' would have been a kind of limp resolution if the mystery had been dragged out overlong, but like… You could have kept it up a little.

One of my readers mentioned that back in the day they completely missed the letter from the shop owner's son on Tifa's desk during the flashback, and I'm wondering if missing the letter entirely here might not actually improve this sequence. Sometimes FF7 is in way too much of a hurry to resolve a cool plot thread.

With that said.

…

The phrase, 'Unfortunately, no 'CLONES' have left this town this quarter' is not a mistranslation from any version I can check. They do say unfortunately. The black-robed things, the Clones, are intended to leave town, to go out into the world, to do… something. But for whatever reason, they have to do it of their own will, they can't just be kicked out. They were created for a purpose, and that purpose requires allowing them to just hang around Nibelheim until they feel called by… something, and leave. But instead of doing that, they've taken to just rambling about 'Sephiroth' and 'Reunion.'

Were they designed as a kind of tracker? Made by Hojo to sense something, then left to follow it on their own, with a Shinra team close behind to retrieve whatever it is they're called to once they find it?

…it's Jenova, isn't it? The missing parts of Jenova that weren't in the tank in the Shinra Building. They are clones made out of Sephiroth or Jenova's cells, in hope that they would sense the lost Jenova pieces across the world, and seek to be reunited with them, allowing Shinra to find and reclaimed the piece once they do. But Sephiroth derailed the system by seizing Jenova's corpse and then doing… whatever he's currently doing with it.

I think that's the best theory I can come up with at this time and I think it holds up fairly well to the fact we currently have, even if they end up invalidated later. Let's keep an eye on that 'Reunion' thing, though.

As for the piano in Tifa's room, I do my best to remember what I played during the flashback, and it opens up to reveal Young Tifa's personal savings… of 1 gil. I don't think it was related to the specific sequence of keys I entered, though.

So, now that we've covered the town (there are yet more creepy Clones hanging around, one of them helpfully telling us Sephiroth is inside the Mansion), it's time for our Return To Spencer Mansion.

One of the interesting things about revisiting a place you only saw in a flashback, which by nature of what a flashback is was non-interactible at the time, is all the stuff you spotted that seemed like it would eventually be something we can interact with. Doors that we couldn't pass through, chests we couldn't open, and yes, THE SAFE. I fucking called it.

It's not all a pleasure cruise, though, because the Shinra Mansion has been left in disuse (except by Sephiroth) for so long that various kinds of gribblies are now running around, making the whole place a dungeon full of random encounters, which, herm…

…floating pumpkin heads? Flying hand-mirrors? Scales? Am I fighting the furniture from Beauty and the Beast? And what's with the dude riding a blade chandelier or whatever that is!

Shinra Mansion has the game really going in on enemies with unique mechanics, which… I would appreciate a lot more in a game with curated encounters that are one-and-done where each one is its own problem to solve and then solved for good, instead of random encounter spam. For instance, the mirrors have auto-Reflect on; this causes me to hit myself in the face with a Fira-All, massively hitting my party, at which point I figuratively hit my forehead going "oooh, of course, they're mirrors, that's clever!" and proceeded to crush them with summons and never think about it again.

Those floating scales inexplicably called 'Jerseys' (what the heck?) are way, way more annoying, because their mechanic is that if their hands lean to one side, they are immune to magical damage, and if they lean to the other, they are immune to physical damage. The hands change upon receiving attacks, and each scale changes individually, causing serious problems for group attacks or 'flow over' attacks when a previous Jersey dies with an attack logged in.

If you gave these things four times the HP and twice the attacking power and then made them a miniboss I encountered once, they might actually be a fun puzzle. As it stands, they keep coming up and getting in my way and, past the first time and the moment where what I'm supposed to do clicks, they're a chore.

As for the guy swinging on a giant blade, his name is Ghirofelgo, and he's… Weird. Basically, he's a more resilient and dangerous opponent than the other mobs on paper, only he has a limiting mechanic - when you hit him, it sometimes knocks him down from his pendulum and leaves him sprawled on the ground, and he needs a few turns before climbing back up and being able to attack again. The first time this happens, I end up knocking him on his ass over and over, so he gets up, gets knocked down, gets up, gets knocked down… Which at least has entertainment value.

I appreciate the game making an effort for mechanical complexity and engagement, I just think in the context of the random encounter system it ends up more annoying than anything. Still! Points for trying.

Anyway, let's head to the upper floor.

SEE? KNEW IT.

Okay, so, the safe is going to be a pain. As any good safe would, it requires a code to open. Specifically, it requires entering four separate numbers, with directional input mattering (that is to say, "Right 12" would mean you need to move the dial to the right until you reach 12, if you go over to 14 and backtrack to 12 it doesn't count) within a 20 second window. This makes "brute forcing" the safe essentially impossible, so we'll need to find clues.

It's not a pressing concern though, so first, let's tackle… Drum roll please… The basement!

Same old, same old.

This time, we can actually investigate some of what's in the old laboratory, with… disturbing results.

The place has barely been touched at all in all these years. In fact, as far as I can tell, the same books Sephiroth left in piles are still just there, unsorted. There are scratches left from inside glass containers, written notes by what I think were creatures trapped within planning their escape.

But of course, our main goal is the same book-strewn corridor in which Cloud first confronted Sephiroth all those years ago.

Cloud: "Sephiroth!"
Sephiroth: "Being here brings back memories. Are you going to participate in the Reunion?"
Cloud: "I don't even know what a Reunion is!"
Sephiroth: "Jenova will be at the Reunion. Jenova will join the Reunion, becoming a calamity from the skies."
Cloud: "Jenova, a calamity from the skies? You mean she wasn't an Ancient!?"
Sephiroth: "...I see. I don't think you have the right to participate."
Sephiroth: "I will go North past Mt. Nibel. If you wish to know… then follow…"
Cloud: "...Reunion? Calamity from the skies?"

Then the funniest thing in the world happens: Sephiroth CHUCKS A MATERIA AT CLOUD'S FACE.

There's no 'this makes sense in context,' he literally pulls his arm back to grab something, then throws it, and a Materia sails across the room and hits Cloud straight into his goddamned forehead, knocking him back and bouncing off onto the ground while Sephiroth starts rising into the air and levitating. Then Sephiroth does a fucking backflip in mid-air, then flies head-first above Cloud and out of the room.

Head down. Elbows in. Shoulders out.

It is, genuinely, incredibly funny, in no small part because of how out of left field it is, following the build-up of mystery and spooky ominous pronouncement and new story concepts being thrown at us with Sephiroth suddenly engaging goofball mode.

God.

It helps distract from the fact that we learned basically jack shit from this exchange, our second-ever with present-day Sephiroth.

I'm starting to see how this guy got the vibe of a cryptic asshole who says shit that doesn't make sense to anyone. The dialogue here is mostly utilitarian when you strip away the cryptic layer - he tells us where he's going to be and that Jenova will become something terrible, but, hmm.

Okay, let's look at the Retranslated mod's version of this exchange.

Sephiroth: "Being here brings back memories. Won't you be participating in the Reunion?"
Cloud: "What the hell is this all about?"
Sephiroth: "Jenova is holding a Reunion. With the Reunion, she will become a Calamity from the Sky."
Cloud: "Calamity from the Sky? I thought Jenova was an Ancient?"
Sephiroth: "I see. It would appear that you're unable to join us."
Sephiroth: "I shall proceed North, over Mt. Nibel. If you should awaken, then follow."
Cloud: "Reunion? Calamity from the Sky?"

Setting aside the Metal Gear Solid-style 'repeating the exposition' dialogue which feels unusually stilted here, and the fact that "I don't even know what a Reunion is!" is an objectively superior line to the generic "What the hell is this all about," because you should call out villains for cryptically throwing around Capitalized Nouns that they refuse to explain… This dialogue is still cryptic, but actually contains crumbs that, if they don't sate, at least whet the appetite, instead of being just fluff. The active voice of "Jenova is holding a Reunion," as opposed to the passive voice of "Jenova will be at the Reunion," makes it clear that Jenova is the one with agency here. Sephiroth is either Jenova's agent, fulfilling her will, or believes that he is doing so, deluding himself into acting the will of a dead/dormant monster - either way, for him, this is Jenova who is setting things into motion.

Which ties into the possibility that Sephiroth is being mind-controlled, or possessed, or otherwise under Jenova's eldritch influence; that rather than just a psychological break which had him instantly go off the deep end, his fraying sanity instead opened him up to influence and manipulation by an ancient, alien being which he initially mistook for one of the Ancients, his own race(?). When Cloud throws a question about thinking Jenova was an Ancient, Sephiroth takes it in stride and acts dismissive, as if Cloud just didn't know what he needed to know or didn't see the broader picture - when Sephiroth first snapped five years ago, he believed Jenova to be one of the Ancients, and justified his genocidal intent accordingly; in the meantime, he has come to a new position, where the idea that Jenova (and by extension, him?) might not be one of the Ancients doesn't faze him. Either he's learned the truth and it failed to deter him, or he has come under such influence that it no longer matters, for he is fully in Jenova's thrall.

As for "If you should awaken, then follow," that is way, way more ladden with implications than "If you wish to know more."

Let's put a pin in that and come back to all of this, along with the Clones, towards the end of this post.

For now, Sephiroth has given us new directions, along with a new Materia. By way of chucking it at Cloud's face. Which I genuinely can't get over. I hope they do that in Rebirth in full, glorious AAA 3D.

Incidentally, that Materia is the 'Destruct' Materia; it teaches Breach, which ends Barrier/Shell/Reflect, Dispel, which ends basically all beneficial status effects, and Death, which is Instant Death. A case where the mid-level unlock may actually be more valuable than the final spell on the Materia, then; I haven't actually gotten much use out of Dispel in previous games, so I guess we'll see if this one is worth it.

We can actually read some of the reports in the 'office' section of the library while we're here, and they're… interesting.

These are a series of "Escapee Reports," referring to 'escapees' located near Midgar. It's unclear if these are the same as the Clones being monitored in Nibelheim, though. Escapee "A" was an "Ex-SOLDIER," number redacted, and Escapee "B" was a regular soldier. Both were captured after being located, and subjected to both "Mako Radiation Therapy" and "Jenova;" A showed no reaction, B showed a considerable reaction to Jenova. Both escapees attempted to escape - A was shot while resisting, and B managed to escape during the struggle. B's whereabouts are "currently unknown," but "pursuit is unnecessary due to his diminishing consciousness."

Well.

I'm sure that doesn't have any plot relevance whatsoever. There's one massive thing I feel I can say here but, let's put another pin for the end of the post on that.

For now, with the plot out of the way, let's deal with that pesky safe. Turns out, if we look around a little better, one of the rooms off the side of the Mansion's entrance hall has a letter lying around with valuable information in it!

Letter: I must get rid of all those that stand in the way of my research. Even that one from the Turks. I scientifically altered him and put him to sleep in the basement. If you want to find him, search the area. But… This is merely a game I thought of. It is not necessary for you to participate if you don't want to.

This is followed by instructions on how to open the safe, including a hint for each of the four numbers to input in the dial. The first dial isn't too bad; it says "The lid of the box with the most oxygen." Weird, but you can figure out to just press OK next to everyone of the plants in the greenhouse room above until you find it.

The second, though, says "Behind the Ivory's short of tea and ray." And… Like… What? I've seen two explanations online for this; one is that "short of tea and ray" is meant to allude to a place between a 'tea room' and the 'rays' of the sun coming out of the windows of the mansion, and another one is that we're supposed to treat this phonetically as 'Ti' and 'Re' which are music notes. Maybe. I think that's bullshit and I hate riddles. The only word you actually need is 'ivory', which refers to 'ivory keys,' because we have to look behind the piano.

The third hint mentions a "creek (sic)" in the floor on the second floor near a chair and then a whole series of steps to take. Any hint for a riddle, a genre which commonly uses puns and deliberate misspellings, which includes an accidental, uncorrected after 25 years creak/creek typo does not deserve your respect, and neither does any puzzle which measures step count on a PC port of a game originally meant for a pre-analog stick PSX game played with a d-pad. Just look it up online or press OK on every tile of the second floor until you find it. Then, finally, there is no hint for the 4th dial, which is its own hint, because there is an empty space on our list of hints we can actually move the cursor over to and select, which reveals the final number in invisible ink.

Now we have all the dial numbers, all we need to do is enter them in 20 seconds, which is actually harder than it sounds because the buttons are very sensitive and it is incredibly easy to go over the intended number, which invalidates the whole sequence.

Once we do that, the safe opens, and a Materia rolls out of it - unfortunately we are immediately under attack before we can grab it.

This thing is "Lost Number." A forgotten or forsaken experiment by Hojo, left behind to guard the safe? My assumption at this stage is that this is the Turk that Hojo modified and then sealed and left a letter giving instructions on finding (I forgot that it specified 'in the basement', which will have consequences very soon). It's tougher than previous bosses, with 7k HP and powerful spells and attacks. Specifically, its red half casts spells, and its purple half will perform physical attacks. Once it reaches half HP, it undergoes a phase change based on how it was damaged; if the triggering damage was magic, it turns fully into its red half, if the trigger damage was physical, it turns fully into its purple half. To give you an idea how I approached the first leg of the fight…

…I hit that thing with relentless Summon abuse, for about 500 damage a pop, predictably (not to me, I had no idea how its mechanics work at the time) turning it into its red form, which is magic-resistant. From then on, it takes significantly reduced (like barely over 100 damage out of 3k remaining HP) from spells, and I already burned out all my Summons for this fight, while the Lost Number continues to pressure us with every 2nd tier spell in the book, including Quara (the Quake upgrade!) and Biora (Guess). Unfortunately for him…

This is actually a recast, I've had this up since the start of the fight.

…we still have Big Guard, which buffs everyone with Barrier, Shell and Haste, massively increasing party speed while reducing its spell damage. With Aerith's Healing Wind Limit Break and Big Guard, we're essentially unbreakable, and can tear down the Lost Number's remaining health with physical attacks without much trouble.

The damned thing dies just as I was about to unleash Tifa's new level 3 Limit Break, asshole.

On top of the considerable gil and XP for this fight, we gain an item called 'Cosmo Memory,' which teaches the Limit Skill: Cosmo Memory to Red XIII. Sounds good! He's not in our party though, so we'll leave it in the backpack for now, and go over to pick up our true reward, the red Materia which rolled out of the safe when we opened it.

…Odin!

Damn, that's cool. Although, Odin has generally kind of gradually lowered in power/significance over its appearance in the series, with FFVI even making him the base form of a more valuable 'evolved' summon, Raiden; still, finding it in Disc 1 is a lot more middle-of-the-road than I had anticipated. Let's check out what he's capable of!

…

Dark clouds engulf the battlefield. The rain begins to fall. Odin, in his antlered armor, appears wielding a crimson spear; he faces his opponent briefly, then his horse kicks, Odin hurls the spear into the storm-wracked sky, and the impact of Gungnir clears the cloud in a single blast, casting sunlight down upon the foe moments before Gungnir falls in a devastating impact, hitting the enemy for massive damage.

Yeah, okay, this is just the coolest spell animation in the entire series, nothing has come even close so far. And this isn't even an endgame summon, goddamn. Excited for the true endgame summons.

It looks like Odin has two modes, which he triggers based on whether the opponents are vulnerable to Instant Death, using Zantetsuken if it can trigger death and Gungnir for non-elemental damage if it can't, ensuring Odin is always useful, if MP-expensive? This is so cool.

Alright, with our prize seized from the safe, we're done with the Mansion. Let's head for Mt. Nibel.

[VETERAN DISCLAIMER: Yes. I know. You are getting the Undiluted Omicron Experience, and this is how it played out. Please contain your screaming until end of update.]

And now, we're heading to Mt. Nibel. Cutting the post here for image count!