My FFIX Challenges journal

[Ergroilnin]

Hey guys, next part is ready!

Today's playing was kind of surprising. Read on to see what I mean by that.

Level 1 Challenge:

Okay last time I saved at the start of Gargan Roo without doing anything here. I thought that this area would only need two or three times to get through without an encounter, since I don't have Zidane with flee and running with R1+L1 is becoming totally impossible.

That assumption was totally wrong. Even though there are only about 4 medium sized screens, the encounter rate here is kind of retarded. It took me many tries (about 25 I guess) in which at least 15 didn't even make it through second screen.

Next ahead was ascending Cleyra which wasn't really hard to do, since I have Zidane back and could easily run from random encounters. After saving midway I engaged two carrior worms and devoured one for Quina to acquire Auto-Life and moved on.

I did the necessary stuff in Cleyra and saved after boss battle. I was kind of worried about the eight or so forced battles here but they proved to be very easy with proper set up and non restricted time on my disposal. I simply made every alexandrian soldier to run by striking them with about 500 damage and stopped each black mage.

I saved after all the battles and went to second encounter with Beatrix.

poorbeatrix2.png

Damn. Still not enough and she beat me with her plot proof win. After that I watched the destruction of Cleyra which is imo one of the prettiest and saddest FMVs in the game.

After I listened to the queen on the ship, I saved. Now the first part of alexandria escape was waiting. It is entirely possible to make it through without a battle with any alexandrian soldier but it requires quite tricky footwork after the stupid minigame with cage. This took me about five retries only to get catched because I somehow missed the gigantic ladder. smurf me. Took about another ten tries to finally get through.

I ran through the castle and destroyed Zorn and Thorn easily, they can't even attack you if you attack them after they start jumping. Made save afterwards and mentally prepared for the second, harder, part of the escape. To my surprise tho, I made it out after only two or three tries and the failed ones were because I underestimated Beatrix at the start. The whole area is actually pretty easy IF you are not under time pressure. I can totally see how this area is maddening with so many encounters where you have to be lucky and stop all enemies fast enough for good time for perfect game.

Did I mention Beatrix in my party is awesome? Seriously I love her. She's brokenly strong. Also she is required to be the one to kill the enemies she battles with, meaning in all battles with Freya and Steiner, they have to be knocked out first so they don't gain level.

I saved at the bottom of the castle and moved to the other challenge.


Excalibur II Challenge:

The start here was the same as in first challenge, meaning I had to run through the area without encounters, I was little luckier this time around taking "only" about twenty tries. I also had to reequip my characters for the boss battle. Did you know that even such trivial thing as perfectly and swiftly equipping your characters is kind of exciting when you gotta do it as fast as you can?

After the boss battle the story returned to the "main" party and I saved halfway from Burmecia to Cleyra.

Now I honestly thought that ascending Cleyra sucessfully without single encounter was going to be insane hard, but either I was lucky or I was simply wrong. I made it to the moogle in the middle of the three after about only about ten tries I think, considering the amount of screen and many of them not being so little I was pretty happy.

Still there was the other half left and one area where I wanted to pick up two quite far placed treasures. I didn't plan on getting auto-life here but I mentally prepared to accept one battle shall it acquire me the skill, which while not needed, would definitely be useful. After all the tries I actually got through without any encounter at all, stepping into two quicksands, since I simply couldn't find the trick to avoid the first one in timely manner.

I picked up some stuff in Cleyra, made my shopping, prepared for antlion's appearance (you have to talk to the sanctuary priest at the top, the first time I actually got through without an encounter I forgot about it and because I didn't want to lose more time, I had to retry the ascending again) and saved at the inn.

The battle with Antlion went perfectly on the second try. He opened the battle with sandstorm putting quina to 1 Hp and I killed him instantly with Limit Glove. Afterwards I had to deal with the forced encounters again. But since I am not watching levels on this challenge, they were even easier. I simply killed them all for exp, money and AP. In last battle I killed quina to prepare for Beatrix and saved at the top.

Once again, Beatrix took me down after limit glove and there was Alexandria escape one more time around. The first area took me again about fifteen tries to avoid the soldiers (I always wonder when I see them... Just how sexist the Alexandria is? All female soldier have ass in the open all the time damn!) and I really started to hate this swinging minigame (well I never really loved to begin with, when I first played the game, I was only about 10 years old and I basically didn't understood a word in English, so I totally didn't get what they want me to do. I was stuck swinging for like thirty minutes ._.).

I did the boss battle the same way as on level one challenge without them getting a turn and saved. I must say I quite like the running sprite of Zidane carrying unconscious Garnet. Dunno really why, too bad it doesn't last longer ;D.

Even after the quite easy descend of level 1 challenge I was worried about doing this with time slipping through my fingers each second. But these were also unnecessary worries. Since I could kill them, the battles went really fast and I didn't get a random encounter afterwards while running to the moogle on the first try.

Gamefaqs perfect FF9 file with skipping FMVs by Atomos199 time: 04:24:34
Youtube FF9 perfect game without skipping FMVs by rlouisw: 04:26:19 (estimated PAL time 05:11:02)
My time:
ff6-2.png

As you can see I am still 9 minutes off the rlouisw time even with not picking all the missable stuff in the Cleyra, but I guess I am happy I kept the gap the same, not extending it so as for today's progress I am happy enough.

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I will confess that I prepared a bottle of wine to battle the frustration of the Cleyra and Alexandria escape. It wasn't needed but it wasn't wasted no worries . After all it seems that as long as one doesn't go for both challenges at once aiming for perfect save game, these areas aren't nearly as frustrating as they are when you do.

That's all for today. Please continue to follow my adventure!