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!

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

Tell us more! We crave knowledge!

I sent him a link to this thread. Hopefully he stops in and shares the story. It's pretty crazy stuff.

[TonyTheTiger]

I'd share my story but I'd much rather take the opportunity to plug episode 6 of the podcast in which you can hear it.

I'm just about finished with my current playthrough and I enjoyed utterly dominating the system. In not doing a no-level run but I am keeping low levels (leveling up is more a liability than benefit in this game) and abusing techniques like card, level up/down, no encounter, etc. I was essentially stomping everything on disc one and from there it was a matter of just how invincible I could be. I'm pretty sure I have the statistically best setup possible with three separate junction setups I rotate around, 100 of every spell for each and full junction slots. And I've not once had to use any offensive command other than "attack" (and "card," if it counts). Simply put, the game is easily exploited with minimal effort. Aside from the odd special "everybody's HP to 1" boss technique (and even that isn't as much a problem considering how limit breaks work) I've never felt remotely close to death. Part of the enjoyment of playing FFVIII was seeing just how badly I could break FFVIII. It was the proverbial "jumping the flagpole" that kept my interest.

It is by no means my favorite game in the series. The plot is something of a hackjob that takes massive leaps in logic and seriously challenges the player's suspension of disbelief, even for a fantasy RPG. In some ways, it's almost an unintentional parody of RPG stories at times. It's essentially an idiot plot that also likes to pull random "twists" out of its ass to justify itself. And it does spend too much time throttling the speed with which a player can accomplish tasks, often seemingly drawing (hur hur) pleasure from forcing the player to slow down and take in the sights. To say that FFVIII is self-indulgent would be an understatement and, in many ways, is the origin of numerous derided tropes that would define the future of the series.

It is, however, a game with a lot of spirit, which alone can hold my interest in spite of all else. I'll take a nonsensical story with a soul over a cohesive yet charmless one any day of the week. And despite its narrative failures, there are some good ideas being played with in there. The Laguna, Julia, and Raine plot thread and how it resonates 20 years in the future is incredibly well done and yet is unfortunately sidelined. There are also some good ideas underlying Squall's development from essentially a douchebag into a caring and driven hero. Unfortunately the script sometimes trips over itself trying to get that across and it becomes difficult to understand why anybody would even want to associate with Squall in the first place, let alone "fix" him. He starts out as such a nasty person, and his friends seem so willing to put up with him being a dipshit, never actually calling him out on it aside from a few cutsie jabs from Rinoa and Quistis, that it can be very difficult to sympathize with anybody. And his eventual change comes very slowly and very late.

There are good things in FFVIII. They're just buried in there. I'd argue that the game's broke-ass engine helps save it since it makes the game a peculiar curiosity and justifies at least one balls to the wall, no mercy playthrough.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I'd share my story but I'd much rather take the opportunity to plug episode 6 of the podcast in which you can hear it.


Oh SNAP! I forgot we did discuss it there!

Watch here: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?160144-NEW!!!-Episode-6-(Video-Version)

Listen here: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?160149-NEW!!!-Episode-6-(Audio-Version)

[markusman64ds]

Oh SNAP! I forgot we did discuss it there!

Watch here: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?160144-NEW!!!-Episode-6-(Video-Version)

Listen here: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?160149-NEW!!!-Episode-6-(Audio-Version)

Listening to it now! First time listening, good job on the theme song.

[LaughingMAN.S9]

you dont even really need to abuse the draw and gf junctioning abilities to break the game, i broke the game pretty early by leveling squall for like 5 hours in the garden training room fighting the t rex with quistis, this only works if you kill quistis so that she doesnt level along with you, the only person you should focus on is squall, i did that for the 5 hours like i said (this was before i knew that enemies scaled with you) and pretty much beat everything in the game with 1, 2 hits max, i fucking beat adele on 1 limit break, lol man i fucking LOVE FF8, BEST FINAL FANTASY AFTER 7 AND TACTICS!

[Rickstilwell1]

I always thought FF8 was pretty cool. I'm more disappointed in Suikoden IV as a Suikoden fan than I am at FF8 as a Final Fantasy fan.

[Jorpho]

FF8 sucks because it's been THIRTEEN FREAKING YEARS and people won't stop talking about it.

That is all.

[Ryudo]

Never got the hate. It's a great game period. The only true FF games that suck is FFXIII & FFXIII-2. Pure garbage.

Objectively FF8 is a very very very good game. IT's not perfect and hits a couple sour notes with some people but when it boils down to the nitty gritty it's well made in most aspects.

[Shulamana]

Being about 15 at the time I guess I didn't really mind the plot, but I remember never being able to find any of the items needed to upgrade equipment. Was there some secret to that? I don't really know anything about this whole turning enemies in to items thing or whatever. I remember getting all the way to Disc 4 with the starter weapons on my farthest attempt at finishing the game about 10 years ago.

[Retronick]

I thought 8 was ok. I did get bored with it by the time I hit the last disk and never actually beat the thing, but I don't know if it deserves all the venom that's been flung at it by... Well practically everybody.

It isn't the shit-fest that was FFX-2, I'll tell you that! I didn't get two hours in before I turned that stinker off. The scantily clad J-pop performance in the beginning really gave me a sour taste in my mouth.

[DDCecil]

I first played it back in 1999 and kind of enjoyed it, not really understanding anything, even after reading through the manual.

I then played through it in 2002 or 3 and finally beat the game, not understanding things like the card game and the junction system.

I then bought it off of PSN when it was released there, and everything just seemed to click. I figured out the card game and got one of every card. Junction finally made sense to me. I even took many, many hours just to get Rinoa's dog to get that damn Hungry Cookpot (I left it on overnight a few nights while at the PuPu battle and woke up surprised to see he had found one)!

[kupomogli]

It isn't the shit-fest that was FFX-2, I'll tell you that! I didn't get two hours in before I turned that stinker off. The scantily clad J-pop performance in the beginning really gave me a sour taste in my mouth.

As terrible as the storyline is, FF10-2 is still a great game because of how well done the battle system is. The first Final Fantasy to get its own sequel, a game I didn't think was deserving of one, and the sequel turned out to be many times better than the one it was based off of.

[Genesaturn]

Definitely not what I expected when I opened this thread. I don't like FF8 for different reasons - I never did and never will enjoy the Junction system and I didn't care for the storyline...maybe if I played 8 before 7 I would be singing a different tune...

About those 2000 games you want to give away...want to make my life miserable? I will gladly take them

[Collector_Gaming]

Oh SNAP! I forgot we did discuss it there!

Watch here: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?160144-NEW!!!-Episode-6-(Video-Version)

Listen here: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?160149-NEW!!!-Episode-6-(Audio-Version)

great..... now you got me watching the whole thing :P thanks

[TonyTheTiger]

Just finished it. I had forgotten Ultimecia randomly picks your party members and since I have only three junction setups I ended up with a superhuman Zell and completely empty second and third characters (Quistis and Irvine). A few limit breaks later and Zell single-handedly saved the universe with nothing but his fists.

[Zing]

great..... now you got me watching the whole thing :P thanks
The podcast is one hour, fourty eight minutes. Holy hole in a donut.

Anyone care to point out where the "story" is in the podcast. Assuming its worth hearing.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

The podcast is one hour, fourty eight minutes. Holy hole in a donut.

Anyone care to point out where the "story" is in the podcast. Assuming its worth hearing.

I'm not overstating the life-saving event that the game was a part of.

While I don't advise skipping the entirety of the episode to hear the story (we touch on a lot of great subjects in this one) if you must it's at the 1 hour 45 minute mark.

[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.

[TonyTheTiger]

While all those complaints are legit for many games, I don't think FFVIII necessarily fits that mold and it's certainly not the worst offender by any stretch of the imagination. Anything truly missable is pretty insignificant, certainly nothing like the ultimate sword of destiny or that one spell that renders the super boss a weakling. And any missed rare cards with the exception of one are winnable at the end of the game. Although one thing that did strike me as particularly ridiculous given the lack of direction is one puzzle in Ultimecia's castle with the paintings. The solution, involving a clock and figuring out which paintings have which combination of Is, Vs, and Xs, is extremely arcane. Without a guide most people will simply brute force it.

Of all Final Fantasies, FFXII is probably the worst offender. The "right" way to get the Zodiac Spear (one of the best weapons in the game) is probably literally impossible to figure out on your own, requiring you to specifically avoid opening certain chests throughout the game, chests which are otherwise completely ordinary in every way. Open one and you miss out on the item. Even if you get lucky and stumble on it you'd be hard pressed to connect the dots. The real slap in the face isn't even that you can't get it if you miss this method. The slap comes when you realize that the alternative method requires extreme repetition running back and forth in a specific area hoping a specific randomized chest with randomized contents appears and offers up the spear, itself a process that would require a guide. And this is only one of the many instances where FFXII plays games like this for the top items. FFVIII isn't even close. And it's certainly not any worse than FFVI which has at least a few instances where if you aren't careful you can lose actual characters.

I don't necessarily mind the player being asked to make a decision on less than complete information. Mass Effect uses this tactic to great dramatic effect. But I do have a problem with games asking players to make important decisions without letting them know that they're making a decision in the first place, especially in older RPGs where decisions are usually of the "but thou must!" variety.

[kupomogli]

A lot of RPGs have almost impossible to find secrets. Although it's usually one or two minor things.

Probably the biggest secret is on the original Wild ARMs. I could tell you I had probably everything. I was wrong. It wasn't until later that I found that there's a secret dungeon in the game that you have to have Rudy with the lowest luck possible, punch the ground in front of a teleporter, and then go into the teleporter, and trying a a few times or a couple hundred, it'd send you to The Abyss. The normal battles are the most powerful in the game, and the boss Ragu O Ragula, is the hardest of all the secret bosses, giving you the Sheriff Star which is pretty much a Ribbon that also raises all stats by 100.

As for having a good portion of the secrets unable to be found without a guide? I'd say Final Fantasy 10 receives that honor. If you say you've found all the secrets in FF10 without a guide or any help, you're either, a, a fucking liar, or b, you spent a couple thousand hours on the same save file trying literally everything imaginable.

[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.

[Kid Fenris]

Final Fantasy VIII is hilarious, and so are the people who didn't have sense enough to take the whole thing as a comedy.

[Jorpho]

FFVIII isn't even close.Getting one of the rare cards before the last disc involves losing a card and then backtracking to a random spot and starting a card game with an NPC that isn't even rendered – he's an anonymous blob in the background. (And he might not even play the card the first time you challenge him.) It's pretty hard to top that.

[JSoup]

Every time I try to finish FF8, something stupid prevents me. The first time, my system stopped working. The second time, my save got deleted somehow. The third time, the disc just...stopped working.

I conclude that FF8 is so bad that reality warps in on itself to prevent me from finishing it.

[Edmond Dantes]

It's not just finding all the top items and weapons that earned my "Guide is the instruction manual" comment. The basic game mechanics, to the best of my memory, were so convoluted (and poorly explained in-game) that you had to have someone looking over your shoulder to make sure you were doing it right.

I've seen a lot of comments so far to the effect of "FF8 is totally easy if you do X and X and X" but keep in mind, a guy playing it for the first time, without the benefit of a Guide, won't know about X and X and X, he'll have to figure out everything on his own. And its a long and tedious process, drawing 99 of every spell from each new enemy, experimenting with cards to see which ones yield what, finding out what every possible option does. On top of that, the game punishes you for levelling up, and is completely linear. I mean I'm all for letting the player choose their own path of development in a game like Oblivion where if a task is unsuited to your skills, you can go somewhere else and do something different, but in a more linear game where you're railroaded onto one story, you need more guided development.

[Jorpho]

And its a long and tedious process, drawing 99 of every spell from each new enemy, experimenting with cards to see which ones yield what, finding out what every possible option does.It wouldn't be so bad if the interface was up to it, I think. You end up with dozens upon dozens of weird miscellaneous items in your inventory, and there's no easy way to sort and navigate through it all.

[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.

[kupomogli]

a guy playing it for the first time, without the benefit of a Guide, won't know about X and X and X, he'll have to figure out everything on his own. And its a long and tedious process, drawing 99 of every spell from each new enemy, experimenting with cards to see which ones yield what, finding out what every possible option does. On top of that, the game punishes you for levelling up, and is completely linear.

Final Fantasy 8 didn't have much outside of its basic layer, so there really wasn't much to figure out. At the very beginning they told you everything you needed to know, and then each GF you got later it was your choice to test it out or not. Unless you put absolutely no effort into discovering the mechanics of the game, then of course you're not going to know anything about it. It takes less than a minute to scroll over a GF skill and read what it does, then you can try that ability out once you learn it. It's not difficult and it's your own fault if you don't attempt to learn the game mechanics.

As a new player I had no problem completing the game. I played a lot of Triple Triad, and as far as common sense goes, I attempted to draw from every boss in order to get new summons... er Guardian Forces. You'll get a few rare Triple Triad cards, and the first GF you get has the ability to change cards into spells or items. The one that you get after the mission that was in the demo allows for you to change items to spells. While I never changed any of the cards as I wanted to keep them all, it was simple to find out that Tents created Curagas, allowing me for very early in the game to have a high HP value. I'm sure that if I wanted to use a lot of those cards that I won, then yes I would have also been overpowered, but I kept the cards to play in more Triple Triad.

Now stuff like how to fight the Doom Train and acquire it as a GF, then yes. You have to have a certain number of many different items in order for the item to work. No where does it tell you what items you're required to have. I'd understand if people complain about that, but it does nothing to the main game.

[TonyTheTiger]

Maybe I'm just spoiled since, in comparison to other games, FFVIII is arguably one of the best in terms of telling you what to do and leaving alternatives should you fail the first time. It's mostly a numbers game anyway so as you're building your arsenal of spells, just playing the "this number is bigger than that number" on the junction screen should be effective enough to make the game a cakewalk. And since the most useful abilities like Card Mod are available almost immediately, you can quickly see which cards make which items/spells as you gradually build up your deck. There's actually very little guesswork, certainly less so than the alchemy bullshit you'll find in the likes of Star Ocean.

Granted, I do prefer games that don't do that kind of cryptic shit at all but within the Final Fantasy series itself, FFVIII is better in that particular instance than FFVI, FFVII, FFX, and FFXII. Arguably the biggest element of guesswork in FFVIII comes in the form of figuring out that leveling up is counterproductive. The fact that you really should avoid killing enemies is counterintuitive and it could take a guide to tell you that. Although that's arguably not by design and is simply a side effect of a broken engine.

[Jorpho]

I don't get why people keep saying that killing enemies is counterproductive. Actually, some enemies gain new spells when they level up, meaning you can draw another 300 of them after drawing 300 of the spells when they were at their previous level. :p


Now stuff like how to fight the Doom Train and acquire it as a GF, then yes. You have to have a certain number of many different items in order for the item to work. No where does it tell you what items you're required to have. I'd understand if people complain about that, but it does nothing to the main game.For starters, you never fight the Doom Train. And secondly, you do get told (or at least get hints regarding) what items you're required to have. It's in some of the magazines found randomly spread out in the game. Of course, it's possible to miss some of the magazines and never be able to pick them up again later. Still, it's a lot less hopeless than, say, the UFO hunting. Or the NPC that mumbles about the Tonberry King in his sleep.

[TonyTheTiger]

I don't get why people keep saying that killing enemies is counterproductive. Actually, some enemies gain new spells when they level up, meaning you can draw another 300 of them after drawing 300 of the spells when they were at their previous level. :p

The "Level Up" and "Level Down" techniques handle that for you without having to actually level up your own characters.