Final Fantasy VIII (1999)

Beat at least 3 or 4 times. There was my first playthrough, a challenge playthough where I refused to use summons, a magic only playthough (which may have been the same as the no summons one, can’t remember), and the final mastered playthrough where I used a walkthrough to do everything optimally. Back in the day I liked this game a bit more than FF7 due to the realistic graphics and much better music, though now I place 7 just slightly above due to 7 having better story and characters. 8 comes in as my seventh favourite mainstream Final Fantasy, though the exciting set pieces, action cutscenes and epic music make it stand out as more fun to play than most other Final Fantasies.

My criticisms focus mostly on the junction system, characters and story. Most of the story was excellent, and I enjoyed the love story aspect, but things went off the rails near the end with the whole time compression nonsense. Sorceress Adel was laughably weak, and I think she should have been the legit main villain and final boss without having to pull Ultimecia out of nowhere. The characters were mostly lesser versions of characters from previous games, and the fact that only Squall and Rinoa could be renamed made the others feel second rate. I like Squall and Rinoa as they seemed like a younger Cecil and Rosa, or Cloud and Tifa. I related to Squall far more than any other video game character because I was a lot like him at that age. I like Quistis because she is hot; god damn I would bail on Rinoa to go for her. Zell was Sabin when you order from Wish, and the same comparison holds for Ivine and Vincent. Selphie was just there and really did not seem like a character that should be fighting, but at least she was old enough unlike certain other little girl characters. My issue with the junction system was not so much how complicated it was, but in how it made the 3 characters not fully junctioned to be entirely useless. Item and defend should have been innate commands for everyone without requiring a summon to be equipped; that just made no sense. I did not like how multiple summons could be piled on the one character, and how sometimes during the Laguna flashblacks the game could decide to pull one of the useless characters with nothing junctioned. One of the best things about the Final Fantasy series is how different the mechanics are in each title, so I am glad that everything present in this game was created. I had no problem with the magic system and attaching magic to stats. This was the first game to butcher the spell naming system with nonsense suffixes. Fire 1, 2, 3 is a far superior naming convention than fire, fira, and firaga.

I found this game quite easy and never even knew that enemies levelled up alongside the player until recently. The summons in particularly were over powered, which was why I did a no summon playthrough; and the annoying long unskippable animations. It was probably over 10 years ago that I did my ultimate playthrough, so I do not remember much. I made extensive use of item and card refining to get powerful magic, and exploited Triple Triad whenever possible. It was an excellent minigame but I do not think I played it more than necessary to get useful items or magic; it was not something I played for fun. I have all the best gear and beat all optional bosses, though I do not have all the rare cards. I do not remember how much I exploited the +stat growth skills, nor how I beat the optional super bosses. I do remember that I can very easily wreck the final boss by having everyone buff themselves with aura, followed by spamming limit breaks. I suspect I used the same strategy along with special drinks for the optional bosses.

Final Stats:

Squall: level 100, with summons Ifrit, Minotaur, Bahamut, Siren, Leviathan, Cerebus and Eden. 9999 hp (tornado), 255 str (flare), 111 vit (regen), 184 mag (triple), 113 spr (curaga), 86 spd (haste), 16% eva (slow), 255% hit (water), 22 luck, 22% elemental absorb on every element (ultima, shell, full life, life). Bio on elemental attack. Drain on status attack. Death, reflect, pain and holy on status defense. Abilities: magic, recover, GF, hp+80%, str+60%, auto potion, expend 1 during triple.

Quistis: level 100, with summons Quezacotl, Carbuncle, Pandemonia and Alexander. 9999 hp (holy), 132 str (aura), 106 vit (regen), 204 mag (triple), 119 spr (curaga), 82 spd (haste), 7% eva, 107% hit, 21 luck, 80% absorb fire, ice and lightning with 90% defense for all other elements (life, full life, shell, flare). Water on elemental attack. Pain on status attack. Death, reflect, esuna and bio on status defense. Abilities: magic, item, GF, med data, hp+40%, mag+60%.

Rinoa: level 91, with summons Tonberry, Shiva, Diablos, Doomtrain and Sabtendar. 9999 hp (regen), 156 str (quake), 94 vit (curaga), 111 mag (flare), 66 spr (cura), 35 spd, 14% eva (tornado), 127% hit (firaga), 36 luck (blizzaga). 100% absorb lightning, 88% resist all other elements (thundaga, full life, shell, life). Aero on elemental attack. Pain on status attack. Reflect, silence, esuna and holy on status defense. Abilities: hp+80%, auto potion, no encounters (change to mag+40% for final boss).

And this shows in part why the junction system was so complicated.

Zell level 62, Selphie level 35, Irvine level 18

The GF levels range from Carbuncle the highest at 96, and Eden the lowest at 34. 3 of the later ones still have abilities to learn, but nothing useful. Quistis does not have bad breath for some reason. I could see playing around with this save to see what there is left to do, and level up the other characters. I could also see playing through again from scratch just for the story experience.

9.2/10

Playing FF8 for the first time and need to my thoughts and impressions because I just have so many. I had been under the impression that this was a bit of a black sheep amongst the mainline Final Fantasy series, and now I think I can see why.

-Narratively, the word that keeps coming to mind is disjointed. The setting of Gardens, places that raise children to be contract private mercenaries isn't super well elaborated upon in how they co-exist with and within various nations. As well as the mix of modern technology and culture, such as spy movies, with monsters, magic, and sorceresses. There is a computer terminal lore dump available at the beginning but I still feel like I had plenty of questions. The swapping focus to Laguna and his antics adds to this further.

-There's a lot to take in with the game's battle system mechanics as well. The drawing system allows you to management a stock of spells instead of using MP or mana, which just makes resource management more cumbersome considering you'll additionally be able to tie the number of a spell you have to a boost to a stat for a character via the GF junctioning system. On top of this, at least during the first disc, battles are very slow with many enemies being very little threat to you, only chipping away at your health. However I can't seem to do much damage to them either, so I'll resort to just spamming summons, since they do a lot more damage to all targets, don't need or cost MP, and even take the damage for my character on a separate HP bar while summoning is happening.

It's like the devs didn't want you to feel too threatened to have time to use the Draw ability on monsters, so they made everyone feel like damage sponges. As a result, I just do a couple rounds of drawing and then summon spam to get through most battles. It's a good thing the remaster has a speed up option, especially since battle animations are very slow and drawn out as well.

I wonder if this GF junctioning system was intended to be an evolution of FF6's magicite system. It certainly seems that way, and could have been interesting if it wasn't for all the party member swapping, and the Draw system.

-The tone of the game is very, very goofy and silly. All of the characters are very extra and often over the top in back to back situations to the point that I think it was intended to make sure the player doesn't take things too seriously. I see the potential for character development for Squall and Rinoa, given how stunted and immature they both come across early on. The stage seems set for them to mature through the adventure. Zell has crackfiend energy with that face tattoo and is probably my least favorite design, though I dislike most of these character designs, but Edea is great and an easy favorite for me.

3/5

Played through this to go along with the State of the Arc podcast playthrough.

I thought the story and characters were interesting and engaging. Particularly so for the characters, they had a lot of goofy charm even for all the child-like decisions they all made. The story was pretty messy, but created somewhat engaging and at least fun scenarios to explor the characters through. There was definitely more than a fair share of contrivance but not unforgivably so. Strong supporting cast of characters, particularly laguna and co. The presentation of the story was greeat too, lots of cinematic flair used in the camera positions and the FMVs exceeded expectations big time.

The gameplay is a different story. I was not a big fan of this battle system. I ended up using draw spamming to get my characters strong but that was super boring even with 3x speed. I pretty much never used limit breaks in normal combat, and never summoned GF's, which is probably my own fault for not exploring those systems. I have no idea if they are good. The junctioning system was interesting but again paired with the draw thing it was pretty tedious. I ended up activating encounter-none as soon as I got it and scraping through most boss fights. By the final dungeon I was severely underlevelled and used the fighting cheat in the remastered version just to see the climax of the story.

In the end I would say the strong-ish story and strong characters made the playthrough worth it - as well as the podcast.

My Review on FFVIII

I've just finished this game and here's my opinion: for a final fantasy fan such as I am, the story was quite boring and confusing... the characters didn't have the charisma that other final fantasy ones have (except Squall), the story wasn't very credible in my opinion (I mean, for a fantasy story hahaha) and also the witches stuff is sooo confusing and non well explained.... The saga has created and developed better stories. The intro and ending cinematics were outstanding though, with great music from the great Mr. Uematsu, as always.

BUT, I must say, that the thing that I really liked about this game is the only thing that almost everyone hated: the battle system. I really enjoyed the battles (not Ultemecia's, god, i died like 10 times in a row hahah). I think that the extracting and junction system are very original and intelligent, which makes the player think a lot about his battle strategy (and I like that hehehe).

In conclusion, this is not one of my favorite games, but I quite enjoyed anyways. Some parts were a little bit boring, but some others made me cry (final scenes and intro music, Liberi Fatali). I'm still thinking that FFIX is the best game of the saga :) Playing next: FFVI.