Final Fantasy 8

[dicknixon]

FF8 Sucks for various reasons.

The control is HORRIBLE. I must have re-entered the same screens 1000 times. If you move the Analog or D-Pad a hair to the left or right or up or down the wrong way you went back to the previous screen.

The load times SUCK.

The monsters levelling up way too HIGH sucks, just because I wanted to level up my characters.

That is BullSHIT.

And then you have to KILL Adel without killing RINOA is HORSEshit.

This is NOT challenge.

This is tedious CRAP.

I will not restart and restart and restart and restart and restart any game to get beyond a certain point or to accomplish an ASININE goal that some RETARDED aHOLE programmer built into the game.

Video Games should be FUN, not frustration and bullshit.

I SPENT my money to have FUN.

Life is a BITCH.

Gaming should be FUN, not a BITCHing experience.

I own over 2000 games in my collection and am seriously considering donating them to someone who likes to suffer.

[wingzrow]

"The load times SUCK."

Double the disc speed on your PS2, there, load times are now cut by half. Don't want to do that, speed it up an emulator.

"The monsters levelling up way too HIGH sucks, just because I wanted to level up my characters."

The entire battle system is a joke to anyone who knows how to abuse it. You can have some of the best spells in the game VERY early on using a combination of the junction/draw system and abusing the card ability to turn monsters into spells.

I remember being able to max out Quetzalcoatl in like 30 minutes.

If you're not doing things like junctioning ultima to attack for max damage, and hitting for 9999 every attack you don't have any idea what you're doing and need to look at some guides.

It's the easiest final fantasy for a reason.

"And then you have to KILL Adel without killing RINOA is HORSEshit."

a bloo blo bloo bloo, i can't do a single boss battle with one of my characters missing.

["This is NOT challenge."

If it's not a challenge then why are you complaining about it?

[kupomogli]

Final Fantasy 8 is pretty easy. The only times I've played it I've had 100 Zombie spells which you get early in the game until fighting Seifer late game, and drawing Flare, so not abusing the game system like Winzgrow stated. I think the only way to get 100 Ultima spells early is by changing a card into magic, which I never did. I liked to keep all the cards I acquired.

Although whenever I did play I did leave my characters health at 800 with 100 Curagas from the start, changing tents into Curagas. Then using nothing but limit over and over again. Zell > Squall until end game. If you get good with his limit you can loop it over and over and do it quick enough that once you do high amounts of damage to where it takes off half or more than half the damage in comparison to that of Lionheart.

You could also use a trick with Rinoa. Only learn the ability that allows Rinoa to change the party invincible. You start with Angelo Cannon so you have a 50/50 chance for party invincibility.

[SirPsycho]

Guys guys guys guys...

How to win at FF8.

Card Grind. Don't junction anything to your attack until just before a boss, that way you don't gain needless XP and accidentally level up. Turn every enemy into a card, you'll have plenty to spare except for the rare ones you get through actually playing cards. Turn cards into items, then turn items into spells for junctioning. The only spell actually worth using is Aura as it gives you limit breaks while having full health. Doomtrain everything. Using this method I have beaten the game (including all the ultra hard bosses) and not had anybody break level 25, it makes you stupidly overpowered while your enemies can only kneel before your might.

But I think you're missing the main reason FF8 is terrible. The asinine, nonsensical, overly dramatized, sappy, dime store romance novel plot.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Final Fantasy 8 saved TonyTheTiger's life.

True story.

Seriously.

[markusman64ds]

Final Fantasy 8 saved TonyTheTiger's life.

True story.

Seriously.

Tell us more! We crave knowledge!

[Edmond Dantes]

If you're not doing things like junctioning ultima to attack for max damage, and hitting for 9999 every attack you don't have any idea what you're doing and need to look at some guides.

This quote represents what I dislike about RPGs in the PS1 era. It represents the point where RPGs stopped being games you could actually learn on your own and started being that genre where a Strategy Guide was basically the instruction manual.

Give me classic Dragon Warrior any day.

[substantial_snake]

This quote represents what I dislike about RPGs in the PS1 era. It represents the point where RPGs stopped being games you could actually learn on your own and started being that genre where a Strategy Guide was basically the instruction manual.

Give me classic Dragon Warrior any day.

What?

I would much rather have a battle system with complex layers then the Attack, Magic, Item that was the norm for so long. It doesn't make a strategy guide a requirement but rather for the player to dig into the mechanics on there own and learn what was effective and what was not. I was kid when these games were coming out and I never had to look at a strategy guide to figure out where to go next or what the most effective X to junction or equip or whatever was. I got a lot of fun out of both FFVII and VIII trying to figure out new ways to boost my stats or just outright break the system. I know its just a difference of preference and probably simply what each of us experienced first but your post really did make me say what out loud to myself since the deep battle systems were one of the most enjoyable aspects of PS1 RPGs to me. lol

Anyways I loved Final Fantasy 8 when it came out and is on my regular PS1 RPG rotation. I also think most criticism of the game are valid in that the story is too convoluted (Elone just to start..), Squall is mostly an asshole, and the battle system is far too easy to break. I always felt that the game was rushed in comparison to VII and I missed not having nearly as much to do outside of the main storyline as its predecessor. In that way the world map felt too large to me like they were going to have more locations but never ended up putting them in the actual game, especially with all of the different train stops that went nowhere and cars you could rent which ended up being worthless.

That being said I always loved the music (still have Eyes on me memorized :P) and overall aesthetic of FF8. I liked Squall despite being a asshole because for a while I was very similar in overall outlook on everything, and also the rest of the cast especially Laguna. I have fun both breaking the battle system and playing through the game without exploiting the various loopholes. I mostly like it because it has a real feeling of adventure and to me that is what defines a good Final Fantasy game.

[calthaer]

I would much rather have a battle system with complex layers then the Attack, Magic, Item that was the norm for so long. It doesn't make a strategy guide a requirement but rather for the player to dig into the mechanics on there own and learn what was effective and what was not. I was kid when these games were coming out and I never had to look at a strategy guide to figure out where to go next or what the most effective X to junction or equip or whatever was.

No, it's not just a matter of digging into the systems themselves and figuring out how they work. Many of the best items / spells / cards / whatever are available only in one town in the game that you can access only during one small section of the story. You can never return to it - you have to have foreknowledge of what's coming ahead. After you leave, a band of marauding cactus-men (who appear entirely out of thin air - nobody in the town, the ministry of defense, the surrounding countryside, or anything seems to have any idea that such dangerous foes are wandering about and / or on their way) descend upon the town and everyone there giggles to death from the absurdity of it all, and the one person who happened to have the rare thing in their possession is dead - of course, you can't search their corpses for valuable loot. Or, you have to choose twenty different and (at least as it's translated in English) seemingly random conversation tree options in order for some diddly little fisherman in some out-of-the-way place to suddenly catch some piece of prototype weaponry in his fishing net - or some other completely random B.S. like that. Or, it's some rare drop on some monster that shows up 1% of the time in a forest that you normally breeze through in ten minutes, so in order not to miss that - or anything else in any other area - you have to spend an hour grinding in every area just to make sure you don't miss the monsters or drops that rarely appear. Unless, of course, you use a guide and gain knowledge of how and when to find these monsters.

You try to make it sound like figuring it all out is some sort of intuitive process. It's not - it's all random, from the player's perspective, and for all the non-Japanese-otakus in the world it's counter-intuitive. If some unique feather from some random bird was really worth a bajillion dollars when put together with slime jelly to make a piece of advanced weaponry (forgetting, for a moment, that it's absurd in and of itself that some slime jelly and a random feather would make the Penultima Blade, which can slice through six layers of advanced adamaticarbonitica metal and kill the big end boss of the game), then some company would be breeding those suckers like rabbits and farming them, and you'd be able to find out where that farm is and get some. Instead, you alone of all the people in the world happen to have come upon this and every other discovery in the game, and get to walk around like gods - IF you play through the game 100 times and figure all this out. Or, look at a guide.

Also, FF8's story sucked.

[Zing]

I mostly agree with the above. Final Fantasy games since 7 seem to have two ways to play: with a guide, or not caring if you miss stuff. I prefer to just not care and play through the game. If I miss some unique sword, I don't care. More specifically, ignorance is bliss. If I don't know the sword exists in the first place, I don't miss it.

[substantial_snake]

No, it's not just a matter of digging into the systems themselves and figuring out how they work. Many of the best items / spells / cards / whatever are available only in one town in the game that you can access only during one small section of the story. You can never return to it - you have to have foreknowledge of what's coming ahead. After you leave, a band of marauding cactus-men (who appear entirely out of thin air - nobody in the town, the ministry of defense, the surrounding countryside, or anything seems to have any idea that such dangerous foes are wandering about and / or on their way) descend upon the town and everyone there giggles to death from the absurdity of it all, and the one person who happened to have the rare thing in their possession is dead - of course, you can't search their corpses for valuable loot. Or, you have to choose twenty different and (at least as it's translated in English) seemingly random conversation tree options in order for some diddly little fisherman in some out-of-the-way place to suddenly catch some piece of prototype weaponry in his fishing net - or some other completely random B.S. like that. Or, it's some rare drop on some monster that shows up 1% of the time in a forest that you normally breeze through in ten minutes, so in order not to miss that - or anything else in any other area - you have to spend an hour grinding in every area just to make sure you don't miss the monsters or drops that rarely appear. Unless, of course, you use a guide and gain knowledge of how and when to find these monsters.

You try to make it sound like figuring it all out is some sort of intuitive process. It's not - it's all random, from the player's perspective, and for all the non-Japanese-otakus in the world it's counter-intuitive. If some unique feather from some random bird was really worth a bajillion dollars when put together with slime jelly to make a piece of advanced weaponry (forgetting, for a moment, that it's absurd in and of itself that some slime jelly and a random feather would make the Penultima Blade, which can slice through six layers of advanced adamaticarbonitica metal and kill the big end boss of the game), then some company would be breeding those suckers like rabbits and farming them, and you'd be able to find out where that farm is and get some. Instead, you alone of all the people in the world happen to have come upon this and every other discovery in the game, and get to walk around like gods - IF you play through the game 100 times and figure all this out. Or, look at a guide.

Also, FF8's story sucked.

The quote I was replying to was quoting a quip on the FF8 battle system so yeah that is exactly what it was about.

I won't deny that many of the top tier items in that era had stupidly cryptic paths you had to walk down to acquire them but that does not mean that you need an Guild as an instructions manual to play the game. It means that if you want every single piece of equipment or spell or whatever your going to have to be lucky and search everywhere for every little clue and even then your unlikely to get every ultra powered thing. If that's what your so pissed about I can't think of an RPG where I got every single piece of equipment on the first play through both pre and post PS1 era. That in no way means that you NEED to have a guide to play the game or has anything to do with weather you have an interest in Japanese anything, it just means you WANT a guide to get every little out of the way item in a quick and efficient manner.

[shopkins]

FF8 Sucks for various reasons.

The control is HORRIBLE. I must have re-entered the same screens 1000 times. If you move the Analog or D-Pad a hair to the left or right or up or down the wrong way you went back to the previous screen.

Oh no! The screen changes when I ... press the button to make it do that!

Without a guide or any tricks I found myself in a situation near the end of FFVIII where I was underleveled and couldn't figure out a way to level up quickly to beat one of the final bosses, so I gave up. I probably could have gotten past it eventually but I was trying to beat it on a rental. I used to do that all the time, rent RPGs, get to the end, and then be tragically underleveled and unable to finish them before I had to take it back.