Final Fantasy VIII [10] – Meanwhile, at Balamb Garden…

While Selphie, Rinoa and Quistis were doing their thing at the military base, the guys were just arriving at Balamb Garden.

Something was up, though. The students were all fighting each other and those strangely dressed staff members were giving half of them orders to hunt down the other half. Apparently, some guy named Norg decided to try and take over and the staff members are working for him. The students have divided between Cid and Norg supporters, so there was a full on war.

I explored a bunch of the side areas, trying to find Cid, but he wasn’t in any of them. I did, however, get a few goodies and took the opportunity to do some training. I’m still not getting EXP willingly, but Ifrit started to learn the Strength Bonus ability, so I’m getting to the point where this will be an option. For now, I was “carding” monsters and converting the cards to useful items. Slowly, but steadily, I was getting a nice supply of higher level spells.

Final Fantasy VIII, Headmaster Cid

It’s getting hard to find screenshots. I should set up the screenshot plugin for my PSP.

After taking plenty of stairs and doing plenty of walking, I finally got down to the bottom of it, where I got attacked by a couple of boss monsters. On my first attempt, I forgot to bind my abilities properly, so I got my butt kicked, but the second time around, I managed to beat them, thanks to Ifrit and some fire spells junctioned to Irvine’s attack.I did a full circle around the Garden and finally saw Xu heading for the central elevator. I followed and met her at the second floor, where she told me Cid was in his office, hiding. He just wanted the enemy to think he was somewhere else. I got up there and spoke to him. He gave me a special key which allowed the elevator to go down to the MD floor.

I got to the controls at the bottom and then one of my favorite parts of this game happened. The Garden flew!