Omicron said:
Squall: "Forget about the past! She's our enemy now! Don't think twice for a second. There's no way we can fight her like that. I, for one, can't. She chose to fight and became our enemy. We choose to fight back. We have no choice. At least I'd like to think so."
For a bit more clarity, in Japanese Squall is saying that the person they will be confronting is now the Enemy. As in the word "enemy" is put in quotation marks for emphasis, and this emphasis is repeated every time the word "enemy" (敵) is used. He says more or less the same sort of thing, but the Japanese script makes it clearer that Squall is firmly trying to re-categorize Sorceress Edea as "the Enemy", and think of her as only that. The opponent to defeat, the mission objective, the enemy leader, that sort of thing. Any prior history or relationship should be discarded; Sorceress Edea is now simply The Enemy.
It's a reiteration of SeeD being mission-oriented mercenaries who never question orders, as Squall had been taught. And Squall seems to be trying to get back into that mindset, after the prior events revealing what SeeD was supposed to be in Cid's original vision, and the whole failed assassination attempt being an example of when SeeD should question orders.
Omicron said:
Now, it would be easy to naively assume that this is an extra. You have 80% Wind Damage, so your attack gets an extra 80% of its base damage in the form of wind damage. Right? Well, no. Because that would be helpful. Instead, what Elem-Atk-J does is turn your attacks into Dark Souls style split damage. In the above picture, Quistis is set up so that out of her normal damage, 80% of it is wind damage (maybe? The math doesn't quite work out that way, as we'll see, but close enough), leaving the remaining 20% as physical damage, but the overall total damage does not change.
I'm actually kind of curious about the design philosophies between games that do the "80% Wind Damage means added wind damage, making 180% of base damage total", and games that do the "80% Wind Damage means 80% of the current damage is converted to Wind element".
I know Monster Hunter does the former, while a lot of various RPGs I've played (Rune Factory comes to mind) is the latter. I think part of it is how important elemental affinities are, and how much the game wants players to pay attention to elements. Final Fantasy (apart from FFXIV) really likes elemental matchups, while in Monster Hunter it's essentially just a nice bonus. (It could be a very nice bonus, but it's never required.)
I could be completely mistaken, though. Maybe it's all just arbitrary.
Omicron said:
Seifer: "Oh, you guys shouldn't have… I was gonna come visit you at my old home."
A very tiny and minor point: in Japanese, Seifer says he was going to visit his 母校. Which translates to "alma mater", rather than "home".
It really doesn't make any difference, since Seifer probably did live in Balamb Garden's dorms and considered it his home (or at least living area) for the past several years, and both "home" and "alma mater" mean the same thing here. I was just mildly curious if the translator decided not to use "alma mater" because it's a more advanced vocabulary compared to "home".
Omicron said:
Seifer: "You're comparing ME to them?" [He laughs.] "I ain't no monster. I'm the sorceress' knight." [He starts pacing, doing theatrical flourishes with his gunblade.] "And look at you. Attacking like a swarm. You guys are the monsters."
Not sure if this is significant, but in the Japanese text, Seifer specifically says he's Sorceress Edea's knight. The translation could just be taking it as given, so it could be nothing.
It's just that later, presumably when he gets defeated again in the Seifer-and-Edea battle, he says "Sorceress's Knight" like it's a proper title. (The context is just him going "I, the Sorceress's Knight, am defeated?") So the impression I have is Seifer is assuming the title of the Sorceress's Knight, but specifically for Sorceress Edea, rather than sorceresses in general.
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