Since I remembered where Edea’s house was from the last time I played Final Fantasy VIII, I decided to go there directly. Before I could reach it, though, Balamb Garden got attacked by Galbadia Garden. They figured out how to fly it soon enough.
I absolutely loved the Garden battle as a kid. Everything about it was just bad-ass. Massive battles, with your characters moving through it, motorcycle assault squadrons, mech troopers; everything was just completely, absolutely cool. Sure, I had to do a lot of backtracking and sometimes, it wasn’t very clear where I had to go, but the watching the scenes was worth it.
Awesome! Awesome! Awesome!
Once all the fighting was starting to get wrapped up, it became clear that Balamb was losing. Galbadia’s troops had far more experience, while Balamb contained mostly lower year students. This is why Squall decides to crash his Garden into the other one, to gain access to it and attack it from the inside. During all this, he manages to punch a mech soldier to death, comandeer his flying mech, rescue Rinoa and get to the back entrance of the Galbadia Garden. Sure, everything else was bad-ass, but he was the most bad-ass of it all.
Now, the next part, I didn’t like back when I was a kid. It involved several difficult boss fights, a lot of walking back and forth with random battles and a puzzle involving key cards with multiple clearance levels. The area was just hard, as the final area of the second disc should be.
This time around, though, I was prepared. I understood the mechanics, knew which abilities to teach my GFs first and understood how the puzzle worked. First of all, I used Diabolos’ Enc-None ability, which eliminates random battles. Walking back and forth was easy now. Secondly, I did some junctioning and I already acquired plenty of high level spells thanks to all of the carding I did, as well as all of the card games I played. Suffice to say, GF item refining abilities should be top priority to get, followed by junction abilities and then everything else.
The key card puzzle required me to find three different Galbadia students, each containing a key card of a different level. The first one would open first level doors, which would get me access to the second one and so on. It took me a while to track them all, but eventually, I got it and I could get to Edea’s room, where she and Seifer were waiting.
First, I had to fight just Seifer, which was very easy, thanks to all of my junctioning. Once he was beaten, Edea disappeared through the floor, so I had to go find her at the auditorium. In this second battle, I had to fight both her and Seifer, but one at a time. Seifer was again easily beaten, but it took me a while because he loved using his desperation moves this time around.
Seifer was easy, as usual.
Once I destroyed him, Edea started the fight with a special move which halved everyone’s health from the start. After that, though, she was easy. All it took was a couple of rounds of physical attacking and she was done. I made sure to Draw a new GF, Alexander, before I killed her, though.
Alexander was the third GF I got in a short amount of time. The first one was Pandemona, which I got from Fujin back in Balamb. The second one was Cerberus, which I got here, in Galbadia garden. To get him, you actually have to fight him in a similar fashion to Ifrit back at the start of the game. Cerberus is probably the hardest fight in Galbadia Garden, so I especially hated him as a kid. He’s skipable, but it’s definitely worth it to get him now, since the next opportunity for that is at the end of the game.
Edea wasn’t that hard either.
Anyway, Edea was beaten now, but not dead. The fight snaps her out of her “evil ways”. Not all is good, though. For some reason, Rinoa blacks out and falls in some sort of coma.
