Final Fantasy VII/Gongaga

The Desert Prison
The desert prison is a rough place, but mostly because there's enemies that either try to steal stuff from you or explode on your face. You start here with whoever you picked to be with you in Gold Saucer, and Cait Sith.

Head to the larger area below. A lot of people here seem to suggest that you can get back up if you win a Chocobo Race. Also, this Boss person seems to be in charge. You meet Mr. Coates in the bottom of the area, but it turns out he's just an underling. There's a savepoint here, as well as a bar on the bottom right corner where you can buy some supplies.

Barret, whom you misplaced temporarily, is in the bigger house on right side. Barret kills an eavesdropper behind a couch and then the rest of the folk come to hear about Barret and Dyne's story. In the end, you need to pick one character besides Barret to your group.

Head up. You can either wander around in the desert like a loon, where you can fight the sandworm (or is it the land worm?) enemy in the desert, but there isn't much point (you can get much better experience and AP else where later on), and there is nothing you can really do here, so just follow the story.

When you reach an area with lots of broken down cars, walk around them a few times until you get into a battle with Death Claw. You can learn the enemy skill Laser from him. This is the only point in the game where you can learn it until disc 3, so use this opportunity while you have it. Now that you have the Manipulate materia, it should be a piece of cake. Just manipulate the Death Claw and have him cast it on whoever has enemy skill equipped. Also, you can learn Matra Magic (if you haven't already) from Death Machine in the general Corel Prison area.

At this point, you should equip Barret pretty well, because the Boss person - yep, Dyne, whom you heard about just a moment ago - is here. He seems to be quite bitter and wants to kill Barret. Barret will fight Dyne alone.

Then Dyne tosses Barret a piece of jewelry and then, sadly enough, commits suicide.

Chocobo race
Now, Coates seem to be more eager to sign you up for a chocobo race, and a woman called Ester shows up and becomes your manager.

Ester gets you to the jockey room by elevator and explains how to control the chocobos. In the jockey room, there's Ramuh materia which you definitely should pick up.


 * Todo: PC equivalent?

As for the actual race, you may want to refer to the Chocobo section. A simple hint would be to hold down L1+L2+R1+R2 buttons, which makes chocobo racing a bit easier. Actually, there's very few things that can be messed up here; If you lose, you get to try again, and again, and again...

Once you win, Dio sends you a letter of congratulations, gives you a "buggy" that is your first "vehicle" in this "game", and hints that Sephiroth went to Gongaga.

Gongaga
Now that you have the "buggy" and the Manipulate materia, you can start learning some good enemy skills. Start by getting Aqualung from the Harpy monster. Harpy can be found by driving around in the desert area around the Gold Saucer. Just manipulate Harpy and make it cast Aqualung on your party to learn. Next, drive around the beach close to Gongaga until you run into the Beach Plugs to learn Big Guard. This is one of the most useful enemy skills in the game!

At this point, it's theoretically (and practically, if you're patient) possible to drive back to Costa del Sol, take a ship back to Junon, and then find a green-and-white bird called Zemzelett from the Junon area. You can Manipulate it to learn White Wind enemy skill, which is very useful. It's a long journey though, and it's not strictly necessary (I've finished the game twice without it...), you may want to wait until later for this.

After getting White Wind, you can head back inside Mythril Mine to get Flame Thrower from the Arkdragon if you missed it the first time or if you need it for your second Enemy Skill materia.

Then, you can battle Midgar Zolom and learn Beta, if you're really daring. He's still a very tough monster at this stage in the game, but Beta is a great skill to have as it causes heavy fire damage to all opponents. Make sure you have Big Guard before going into this battle (see the insert to the right for details).

To continue the game, head back to Gongaga--the big blown-up mako reactor to south, in middle of the woods. When you get in Gongaga, you hear Reno and Rude talking about... the ladies? Elena shows up, alerts the others, and there we go again - fighting Reno and Rude!

After the fight, head up to the reactor. When you get close, Scarlet and Tseng will show up in a helicopter, look into the reactor, babble something about Huge Materias, and leave. If you're guessing "Shin-Ra must be up to something", you're correct. Now, look into the hole where Scarlet looked into, and reach for the thing in the bottom to get the Titan materia. Two new summons in such a short while!

Now head down and follow the path to left - you should find a Deathblow command materia somewhere here too. Now to north, to the Gongaga Village.

People here will sell you stuff you've not seen before (for example, Mystify and Time materias, which are probably useful at some phase), and talk about an explosion years ago. You also run into a few old people who want to know about some SOLDIER called Zack. Tifa and Aeris, if either or both of them are in your party, will react to this for some reason. Hmm... something is obviously afoot...

After you've stocked up and all that, it's time to head down and left, to the world map, and head west. Where else would Sephiroth have gone?