With Brothers in the bag, I got back to Deling and spoke to Caraway. I somehow forgot about this, but it turns out, Caraway is Rinoa’s father. They have the typical “rebelling child, overprotecting father” relationship which was, honestly, sort of annoying. As expected, he keeps her there, so she goes out of the party for a while.
His plan is to give us access to a high spot on a carousel near the large gate in the middle of the city. The party would split in two groups. The first gets to the carousel with the sniper and waits, while the other gets to the get to close both sides of it at the right moment, trapping the sorceress in there for the sniper to have an easier shot.
I have to be honest here, I always hated this part. The plan is extremely simple, but stuff keeps happening that messes with it. That’s not the part I hate, though. I hate the fact that the game keeps switching you between the two groups, so it all feels like one long cut scene instead of actual game play.
Basically, Quistis, Zell and Selphie get to the gate but decide to go back fast to talk to Rinoa. Meanwhile, Squall and Irvine wait in the middle of the audience. At the same time, Rinoa has a plan to give the sorceress some sort of jewelry which is supposed to block her powers. She leaves the Caraway mansion and gets Quistis and the others locked in there so now they can’t get to the gate.
Rinoa gets to the sorceress, tries to trick there and fails as expected, so she gets attacked by some lizard-like statues that the sorceress brings to life. Squall and Irvine see this, so they rush to help her. They get rid of the lizards, but not before I remember to draw another GF from them – Carbuncle. Carbuncle is the first GF that doesn’t do damage. Instead, it casts Reflect on the entire party, which is extremely useful in the boss battle soon to come.
Carbuncle’s Ruby Light is extremely useful, especially against Edea.
As the battle is over, you switch again to Quistis and the rest. They find a secret passage through the sewers and navigate through it to get to the gate, pulling the switch just in time. Irvine freaks out at first, but manages to get a perfect shot anyway. Of course, he’s shooting at a sorceress, so she blocks it. Squall charges in and beats Seifer easily thanks to the 1000 Curaga i refined from 10 Tents and junctioned to his HP. Then the fight against the sorceress starts.
Rinoa and Irvine join in. As I said, Carbuncle is extremely useful here. I summoned it to Rinoa every second turn, which caused the sorceress to just constantly cast dispel on my group, instead of doing any attacks. Soon enough, I won with almost no damage done to me. In the cut scene that follows, the sorceress summons a shard of ice and hits Squall with it, piercing him straight through. Everything goes to black and disc one ends.
