After a bunch of puzzles I enjoyed actually solving with my brain, instead of with pure luck as I did when I played this game as a kid, Cloud and the gang managed to get to floor 65 of the Shinra headquarters. This is where they met the creepy professor Hojo. He was performing experiments involving Aeris and a strange four legged animal. Cloud decided to put a stop to this and engaged. The animal escaped, but instead of attacking the gang, it went for Hojo. Aeris fell back to safety, but it wasn’t over yet. A specimen escaped its holding cell and Cloud, Barret and the animal had to fight it.

The animal wasn’t really an animal, though. It could talk and it did so fairly intelligently to. The gang asked him for his name, but he said he doesn’t really care about names. Hojo designated him Red XIII, so that’s what we will call him from now on.

With Aeris free and safe, it was time to escape the building. The mistake was, the gang went directly for the elevators and promptly got ambushed by Shinra personnel. They were put in holding cells and, after reflection, decided to get some rest before attempting to escape.

Cloud woke up in the middle of the night with the door to his cell open and a trail of blood leading through the corridor to a dead guard. He took the guards key and opened the rest of the cells. The gang followed the blood trail all the way up to the top floor, where they found president Shinra dead in his office chair, with a huge katana in his back.

Rufus is far too smug for my liking.

When I played this game as a kid, I was stuck at this part for weeks. As I said, I owned the German version. I barely spoke the language, so I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t understand how materia works, had no idea that I was able to unequip everyone before the following two battles and was low on any sort of supplies, what with not buying anything throughout the game. Let’s just say the following part was tough and leave it at that.It was Sephiroth. Sephiroth killed everyone. Before they could even talk about it, a helicopter landed on the roof of the building. The gang went up and met up with Rufus, president Shinra’s son, the former vice-president of the company and the new president. He was not willing to let them get away, so Cloud decided to hold him back while the rest of the gang escapes. Tifa couldn’t leave him, though, so she remained on the floor below as support, while Aeris, Red XII and Barret took the elevator.

Barret, Red and Aeris got ambushed by a war machine during the elevator ride. Since the machine attacked from a distance, from the other elevator, only Barret could reach it with his arm gun. Luckily, I was prepared so both Red XII and Aeries were equipped with a Bolt materia, which is the element most machines are weak to. The enemy and his backup were dealt with soon enough.

In the meantime, Cloud was battling Rufus. Rufus had a dog like beast throwing physical protection spells on both of them, so Cloud hat to use Fire magic to damage him. The beast was dealt with soon enough and after a few more casts, Rufus gave up as well and escaped with his helicopter. Cloud met up with Tifa and they continued to the lobby. Barret and the rest of the gang were waiting there, with the building surrounded. As a last desperate move, the gang took a truck from a back room exhibit, while Cloud opted for the motorcycle. They crashed through the front of the building and soon a chase on a newly built highway was in progress.

Cloud did all he could to keep the Shinra away from the truck, but eventually, they reached a dead end and had to fight one final battle against another war machine. This one was dealt with easily and they were finally free. They climbed down the unfinished road and reached the edge of Midgar. Barret decided they should split up and regroup in Kalm, a town relatively nearby.

There was an announced power outage throughout most of the day today, so I had to fall by to my trusty PSP and my slightly lest trusty DS Lite for my gaming needs.

The thing is, my whole “no more piracy” thing kind off makes me not want to play most of the pirated games I have on my PSP, simply because I know I could fall back to one of the PSX games I actually own and be “legit” like that, at least in my mind. I’m still technically pirating the game, since I haven’t bought it on the PSN, but owning the old physical copy makes it OK in my book, and I don’t care what anyone has to say about it.

Anyway, I’ve been playing the game a couple of months ago, but didn’t write anything here back then, so I didn’t go all the way from the beginning today. I started out in Midgard, quite early, at the point where Shinra destroys a sector and blames it on the Avalanche. Aeris (NOT Aerith) gets taken by the Turks the rest of the team is stuck not knowing where to go next.

The Shinra building is the central point of the early game.

The Turks have also shown interest in Aeris ever since they tracked her down. She managed to avoid them until today, though. Today, she had Marlene with her, so she was forced to go with the Turks in exchange for Marlene’s safety. Upon hearing this, the gang decides to rescue Aeris, but not before Barret asks Elmyra to take care of Marlene for a while longer.Since Aeris was taking care of Marlene, Cloud, Barret and Tifa decide to visit Aeris’ mother, Elmyra. Things aren’t the way they seem though. Elmyra tells them she’s not really Aeris’ mother. She found her as a little girl next to the dead body of her real mother on a train station and took her as her own. It was obvious from the start that Aeris wasn’t normal. She would hear voices and talk about how the planet whispers to her. She even knew Elmyra’s husband died in Wutai before the official news arrived.

Since there’s no official route to the top plate and the Shinra headquarters, the gang decides to go to the Wall Market and see if they can find an alternative route. Sure enough, the collapse of the sector set a huge power cable loose, creating a possibility to climb to the top plate. A set of batteries was required to make the route completely passable, but the local weapons shop owner provided those.

Poor Barret. Always the comedic relief.

In any case, the gang reached floor 59 and now needed to get access to the rest of the floors. The problem was, the leadership was located on floors 60 to 65, making it extremely difficult to navigate through the security. Barret wanted to barge in through the lobby of the Shinra building directly, but Cloud and Tifa were smarter than that and decided they should take the stairs through the maintenance wing of the building. It’s an extremely tall building, though, so Barret had issues with climbing it to the top, but they eventually managed to get there. This part of the game was extremely memorable to me as a kid, even though, what with playing the game in German back then, I couldn’t understand most of it.