My preparation for the final push to the game’s ending began, and the first thing I decided to do was to gather up all of the GFs.
For some reason, I went for Cactuar first. To get it, I needed to defeat Jumbo Cactuar on an adjacent to the Esthar continent. I entered the battle unprepared and forgot to remove my Card command or to add an Item command to any of my characters. What happened was inevitable. Squall was the only character with the ability to resurrect in any way and he got killed first. Since Jumbo Cactuar has an attack that outright kills you, doing 10000 damage, it was game over pretty soon.
10,0000 Needles kills anyone, for obvious reasons.
Next up was Odin. Odin isn’t a true GF, meaning he doesn’t exist in the GF menu and can’t be junctioned to a character. Instead, he just appears at the start of random battles and gives you an instant victory. I’m not sure if it can happen in boss battles, but it definitely happens quite often against regular enemies. In order to get him, I had to solve a timed puzzle at an optional area of the Centra continent and then defeat him in battle.On my next attempt, I was ready. The difficulty of Jumbo Cactuar is that his health goes up insanely fast compared to your level. Since none of my characters were above 20 at that point, though, I really didn’t have that problem. It still took me a while to empty his 64 000 health pool, but I eventually did it.
Odin never attacks, so this fight is just a time race.
At the same area, there was another GF to get, this one extremely useful. After I got Odin, I’ve spent some time fighting the only enemy that appears in the area – the Tonberry. Killing about twenty of them causes their king to appear. Winning that battle causes him to join the party as a GF. Tonberry has the useful “Call Shop” ability, which allows me to shop from anywhere. He also has the ability to reduce prices and add rare items to various shops.
Next up was Bahamut, which can be acquired at the start of an optional area in the southwest corner of the map. It takes getting through two battles against Ruby dragons and then defeating Bahamut himself to get him, but it’s worth it. This one, like Cactuar, is also much harder to get at a higher level, but again, I didn’t have this issue.
Bahamut was way easier than Cactuar
Since I was already at the ruins, I decided to try and get the strongest GF of the game – Eden. Eden can be drawn from Ultima Weapon, which is an optional boss at the bottom of the ruins. This is definitely the toughest boss I’ve fought up to this point, but after a few attempts, I managed to beat it. It hits much harder than Cactuar, but its health is slightly lower. Eden is a GF with no 9999HP damage limit, reaching over 20 000 damage easily at higher levels, which makes getting it very worth it.
Ultima weapon uses Cloud’s ultimate weapon from Final Fantasy VII
The last one I was missing is Doomtrain. In order to get this one, I needed the Solomon’s Ring, which can be found at tears point, bellow Lunatic Pandora. Once I got the ring, 6 Remedies+, 6 Steel Pipes and 6 Marlboro Tentacles, using the ring caused the GF to appear and be added to my party. Probably the hardest part was getting the Tentacles, since the only place to fight Marlboros was at the Islands closest to Hell and Heaven, where they were at level 100.
What I tried was to use Initiative and Mug on one of my characters to steal the tentacles and then run away from combat, but it simply wasn’t working. Eventually, I got lucky and Odin got triggered in a Marlboro battle. Since it was level 100, I got 8 tentacles from that single battle. As for the other two items, Remedy+ is made from 6 regular Remedies with the MedLVLUp ability, while the pipes can be stolen from Wendigos.
In any case, I had all the GFs I could get without having the PocketStation mini game.
