What Members Do You Choose to go to Balamb/ The Missile Base on Disc 2?

[Vivi-Gamer]

After you escape the Desert Prison, the party divides into 2 teams. Team 1, who go back to try warn Balamb Garden of the potential missile strike & Team 2 who go to the Galbadia Missile Base. I'm curious to see if people choose differently from me.

Team 1 - Balamb Garden:
Squall
Rinoa
Zell

Team 2 - Galbadia Missile base:
Selphie
Irvine
Quistis

The decision mainly falls with team 1, I think it's important to have Squall & Rinoa together to make their relationship later seem more feasible. I also like to have Zell around, I'd choose him as I like having him around for the Balamb Town story point - though looking back, I see that is set after the party reforms... so maybe I'll try someone else next time instead!

 

[Ilyena]

I feel like if you have to manipulate your parties in order to later make part of the story seem more feasible, that's a sign of poor storytelling. Iirc, I sent Selphie, Rinoa and Zell (or maybe it was Irvine) to the missile base and Squall, Quistis and Zell or Irvine to Balamb. There was no particular reasoning behind it but Squall, Quistis and Irvine were my preferred party. I remember Rinoa whining about Squall not liking her or something after the missile base party gets trapped.

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[Dionysos]

This is trickier than it seems.

I haven't done it in ages so I had forgotten you had to split the team for so long.

I can understand wanting Rinoa to be in Squall's party, and also it would be lovely to have Irvine in Selphie's party. However, if you have Irvine in Squall's party then he is more entertaining when you hijack the train, tipping his hat at the clumsy Galbadian soldier frantically chasing after them on foot. Since he is the closest Final Fantasy gets to an Old West gunslinger, I find putting him in this context to be rather awesome.

But that must seem like a very minor reason to keep him in Squall's party and away from Selphie. I only noticed it when researching Wild Western tropes for Timber Maniacs issue 3 (pages 15-22).

I dislike having to make decisions like this at times as I struggle to make the 'right' choice and I always wonder how different the dialogue could have been. On the other hand, this is also a good thing as it means that the game has replay value. So long as you remember what you did last time, you might enjoy an altered experience mixing the party members differently next time.

 

[Starships]

Team 1 - Balamb Garden:
Squall
Rinoa
Quistis

Team 2 - Galbadia Missile base:
Selphie
Irvine
Zell


I feel like Rinoa going with team Squall is canon, so I always put her in with his squad. Selphie and Irvine also have a connection, so that's team Selphie. So that leaves Zell and Quistis. I feel like it makes more canon sense for Quistis to go Balamb as she knows a lot of the staff and can calmy tell them about the missiles.

Either way, Squall had an extremely tough choice here. I've always wondered what the canon choice was and I've always tried to go by that.

 

[blakstang98]

My general was to always have Squall with a guy and girl, sort of a gender balance thing and my OCD, I guess. With that said, it was always about levels with me. Because I would go the stealth route about the missile base mission, the highest level guy and girl would go with Selphie. Usually I would try to not get into so many encounters in the prison, so Irvine would usually be higher leveled than Zell. Though I think I did opposite in my last playthrough. I think the last time I played, I had Rinoa stick with the missile base team. But I think in the past I went Quistis, but I wanted to change it up this time around. Going back to levels though, I always try to increase levels together, so there's always a lot of member swapping in my game. Because Selphie is forced into the missile base team, then she's too tired to participate in post-missile base events, she ends up wildly underdeveloped for a little while, which bugs me.

So in conclusion:
Missile Base Team from my last play:
Selphie, Zell, Rinoa

Balamb Team:
Squall, Quistis, Irvine

 

[ElAirPlaza]

My general was to always have Squall with a guy and girl, sort of a gender balance thing and my OCD, I guess. With that said, it was always about levels with me. Because I would go the stealth route about the missile base mission, the highest level guy and girl would go with Selphie. Usually I would try to not get into so many encounters in the prison, so Irvine would usually be higher leveled than Zell. Though I think I did opposite in my last playthrough. I think the last time I played, I had Rinoa stick with the missile base team. But I think in the past I went Quistis, but I wanted to change it up this time around. Going back to levels though, I always try to increase levels together, so there's always a lot of member swapping in my game. Because Selphie is forced into the missile base team, then she's too tired to participate in post-missile base events, she ends up wildly underdeveloped for a little while, which bugs me.

So in conclusion:
Missile Base Team from my last play:
Selphie, Zell, Rinoa

Balamb Team:
Squall, Quistis, Irvine

I usually go with
Missile base: Quistis, Rinoa, Selphie
and Garden: Squall, Zell, Irvine

but this last playthrough i split the teams the same way you did.

Why?
Not a fan of the SelphiexIrvine romance, always felt like it was a bad fit :'D Irvine kinda hits on all of the girls in the party, i never felt like he deserved a proper steady relationship of any sort.
And as for Rinoa being part of Squall's team, idk, i don't think he really had warmed up to her at the time, so i felt it logical for him not to care whether she was on his team or not.
Also, Quistis, Squall and Irvine act alot more mature than the other 3, found it appropriate for them to go take care of business while the rest go on a goddamn suicide mission