After months of hiatus, I am back to playing this game. Still in chapter 12, and now doing all the stuff at gold saucer.
Chocobo Race was the one that I cleared out first, and I am glad to have done so. It was a slog to play through all of them. And either my mb/k are broken or there's something going on with the input, because sometimes sharp turns didn't trigger or Cloud would run in a wrong direction. However, it was nice to see Billy get his closure regarding his parents.
And I thought it was really mature and amazing decision for Billy to be a self-made person. He knows he won't make much and there will be hardships, but he doesn't care about any of that, and wants to focus on Chocobos that he loves so much. Not many people can do that. I thought Chocobo Sam was kind of an asshole in the first game, but he has proven to be a pretty cool guy.
After that it was doing every possible minigames before the skywheel date. And this is when I found out how skywheel date works. I really wanted Tifa to show up, but it was Aerith. Nothing against her, but I just think Cloud was meant to be with Tifa.
Which was weird, because I thought I had the highest level of relationship level with Tifa. So then I reloaded the last save, did some minigames all over again, and this time I got Red XIII..... what? Granted he was the last character whom I had an interaction with, but I didn't think the relationship level was that high?
I have heard you can pick your date post-game, but idk, I kinda wanted the first time to be with Tifa (inuendo intended), and now it's just not gonna be the same.
So I decided to do some other side quests, mainly finishing the shadowblood queen questline. I knew that girl was the host! However it's been about 5 attempts, and I still can't beat her. Gonna keep trying, though.