Current Events > what's the deal with Final Fantasy 8 (open spoilers even tho i never played)

(+) Yeah! (+)

it's just a total blindspot for me, i never owned it despite loving 7 and 9. apparently the battle system was kinda stupid but also easily breakable? and the villain kept changing until they literally reached the https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere trope?

is it worth playing or what

its one of the better games in the series

The card game is lit.

My favorite FF game. Best characters in the series.

Its divisive. Favorite for many, hated by many. Its different.

It's a funny game, I should go back to it some time.

The story got pretty good, some unique takes, but then it gets real weird. No clue why they baited and switched Seifer as the big bad, marketing made him seem like the Sephiroth of the game when he was closer to Draco Malfoy.

The card game was pretty fun, they expanded on it more in FF9.

It's very easy to break and one major plot point is very wtf, but overall it's still a pretty good game.

the combat system varies between weird and tedious to easily breakable depending on how much time you want to mess with it. i really dont know what they were trying to accomplish with it but they did not manage in the end.

the story is all right for about half of the game but the latter portion of it is such a confusing fever dream that there is a popular theory that the characters actually die halfway through the game and that section is like a Jacob's Ladder-esque dying hallucination. I personally think it was just dumb and poorly written.

The card game is kind of addictive

"It's not Final, and it's not Fantasy"

The story is Decent. Dialog is very cringe by todays standards since it isn't voice acted so take it with a grain of salt.

The Battle system/Junction System is the main draw. You either love it or hate it. If you take time to learn how and abuse it, you become a literal god and p much can't die unless your facing Omega or The final Boss. As well, leveling in this game is unique. Every enemy in the game scales to your level so leveling up doesn't make you relatively stronger and the game is infact significantly easier if you stay as low as possible and abuse junctioning.

The card game is fun AF but gets annoying with the stupid rules in specific regions.

1st disk Is God tier but the story slowly falls apart afterwards.
Great music, combat and card game though.

The narrative was actually really good until they got into time travel shenanigans. If uhh... Adel? Was that her name?

If the Sorceress they tossed into space would have been the final boss I think it would have been way better.

The game is broken by either carding everything or Meltdown>Aura>Renzokuken/Duel.

I had quite a lot of fun with it back in the day. Only went through it once though.

Even imported a PocketStation at the time to access some of the content exclusive with that.

I liked it back in the day and enjoyed playing it but haven't in a long time. Level scaling enemies always suck and I didn't know how to cheese the system back then so if I ever revisted I would probably not enjoy it as much.

The opening though was top tier with the squall and seifer fight.

It had a beautiful world, I loved the military-style advancement exams and pay system they have, yes the magic system can be exploited (I was too dumb as a kid to figure it out on my own though), has some of the best music and cutscenes in the series, Triple Triad was pretty cool, and it actively discourages mindless grinding.

Your options in combat are more limited than in FF7. The sooner you figure out the good strength junctions the sooner youll just pound everything to death with Attack.

Incidentally this means the ability to spam limit breaks is actually a positive thing. On one hand everyone says its overpowered, but on the other, when youre level 100 and thus everything else is too, what other alternatives do decent damage? Imagine slogging through Omega Weapon without limit breaks

I would just skip 8 TBH

It's pretty weak. The junction system is broken, the plot is terrible, the art design (While Triple A production values for the time period) is dull. Squall is one of the worst protaganists in modern gaming.

It just feels less polished than most Final Fantasy games. It plays more like a Final Fantasy knockoff made by less talented people.

There's a reason why after making it Square went "Shit! We need to back to fantasy basics" for like a decade.

It's still my favourite FF game.

Maze_ posted...

Squall is one of the worst protaganists in modern gaming.

Whatever

misterbum posted...

Whatever

Confirmed he played it.

Decent I thought, could be potentially a bit tricky, up until you knew how to exploit it. At which point it was potentially hilariously easy, personally I used to limit my junctions per act (disc) to keep things a little interesting.

solosnake posted...

its one of the better games in the series

It might be the worst game in the series.

darkace77450 posted...

It might be the worst game in the series.

Where did I put that banhammer, I know it's around here somewhere...

darkace77450 posted...

It might be the worst game in the series.

Imagine having this opinion when 2 exists

misterbum posted...

Imagine having this opinion when 2 exists

13.

TomClark posted...

Where did I put that banhammer, I know it's around here somewhere...

I sort of get it in retrospect?

When it came out it was astonishing, seamless (for PS1) segues between CGI and in game graphics, and stunning set pieces.

Maybe doesn't hold up so well, but 25 years is a long time in gaming.

Alright let's do this, single player rankings!

9 > 6 > Tactics > 10 >= 7 > 16 > = 4 > 5 > 8 > 12 > 1 > 3 > 15 > 13 > 2

Mussurana posted...

I sort of get it in retrospect?

Where did I put that banhammer, I know it's around here somewhere...

I wish I liked the gameplay and characters because the story always seemed really big brained and interesting.

TomClark posted...

Where did I put that banhammer, I know it's around here somewhere...

FF8 board was my first home board, haven't been there in years mind you.

Do what you gotta do though :)

Half the time when people call Squall a bad character its because they dont actually understand him.

A good litmus test is to ask the following question: did his character development in late disc 2 onward come out of nowhere?

Dark_Arbron posted...

Half the time when people call Squall a bad character its because they dont actually understand him.

A good litmus test is to ask the following question: did his character development in late disc 2 onward come out of nowhere?

He dramatically changed his actions. I don't think it was entirely unwarranted but it was extreme.

Mussurana posted...

I sort of get it in retrospect?

When it came out it was astonishing, seamless (for PS1) segues between CGI and in game graphics, and stunning set pieces.

Maybe doesn't hold up so well, but 25 years is a long time in gaming.

I think the thing was, it was devise even at the time. I mean, after FF7, it kinda seemed there was no way they could have possibly topped it. So they went balls to the wall with changing up shit as if almost to just test anything possible to see what all would stick.

Triple Triad was awesome, and nothing that had been done yet in the series.

2 is the worst in the series. It also was one that tried to do a bunch of weird crap, but it just wasnt fun and not polished at all. For all 8s faults, the plot is a clusterfuck really, it was at least fun to me. It kept me invested enough to dump over 100 hours into it. I think it has enough elements that are core to the series so you have some air of familiarity, but the Junction and GF systems kept me interested in seeing what would come next. And although they were weird systems, they never annoyed me or felt like a burden.

9 still comes out on top for the PS era tho

misterbum posted...

I think the thing was, it was devise even at the time. I mean, after FF7, it kinda seemed there was no way they could have possibly topped it. So they went balls to the wall with changing up shit as if almost to just test anything possible to see what all would stick.

Triple Triad was awesome, and nothing that had been done yet in the series.

2 is the worst in the series. It also was one that tried to do a bunch of weird crap, but it just wasnt fun and not polished at all. For all 8s faults, the plot is a clusterfuck really, it was at least fun to me. It kept me invested enough to dump over 100 hours into it. I think it has enough elements that are core to the series so you have some air of familiarity, but the Junction and GF systems kept me interested in seeing what would come next. And although they were weird systems, they never annoyed me or felt like a burden.

9 still comes out on top for the PS era tho

One thing you can say for Square is that they never just churned out the same FF with a different scenario. Not to say people always liked the changes of course.

In retrospect the biggest problem with FF8 was how constricted dungeons felt, they put so much detail into the characters that they couldn't take more than 10 steps before you were in the next screen at times.

FF9 was certainly the most polished of the PS1 era, but then as the last it should be, and pushed the aging hardware to the limit (I know my PS1 chugged like Thomas the Tank Engine trying to run it).

Jeff_AKA_Snoopy posted...

Alright let's do this, single player rankings!

9 > 6 > Tactics > 10 >= 7 > 16 > = 4 > 5 > 8 > 12 > 1 > 3 > 15 > 13 > 2

You ranked 10 that high?! Are you serious?!

Bleuets posted...

You ranked 10 that high?! Are you serious?!

10 is absolutely amazing.

Bleuets posted...

You ranked 10 that high?! Are you serious?!

X being in the top 5 main Final Fantasy games is hardly an uncommon opinion

The orphanage twist still pisses me off to this day.

Jeff_AKA_Snoopy posted...

Alright let's do this, single player rankings!

9 > 6 > Tactics > 10 >= 7 > 16 > = 4 > 5 > 8 > 12 > 1 > 3 > 15 > 13 > 2

6 > 10 > 7 > 9 > 16 > 4 > 15 > 8 > Type-0

Haven't played the rest.

Squall could have been a great protagonist if handled properly but... his character development was way too sudden to be realistic.

Overall, I'm inclined to call the game's story a train wreck. Between bad character development, a perpetually rotating antagonist (It was Ultimecia the whole time! doesn't make it any better), and a certain ridiculous plot twist, I can't name anything particularly good about it. The draw system was annoying and I didn't particularly like feeling forced into using it, either.

I havent played any of the FF games but visually it definitely captures a gothic romance tone more than the other games do, having not played them

still own an OG first edition copy of VIII, original case and all.

that said, I couldnt get into it at all. I had just come off VII and couldnt separate from that one to understand that VIII wasnt a sequel, but a whole new story. I had bought it because I thought it was a sequel to VII.

boy was I bamboozledI was like wtf is this squall dickheads problem? Whos the try hard in the grey trenchcoat? Wheres the buster sword? This sucks, change it.

I went through it directly upon release and loved it. It gets shit on quite a bit, may not of aged well or something.

Do yourself a favor and play ff8
It's a masterpiece from everything
The card game
The ost
The guardian forces
The story
The characters
It was my first ff and easily put 1000s of hours into playing it again and again over all my saves
* and FYI pre rendered graphics was the fucking best, I loved looking at what felt like fine artwork of the masters

Justin2Krelian posted...

"It's not Final, and it's not Fantasy"

Curious, did any games in the series name drop the title like that besides sixteen?

On topic though I played 8 for the first time with the remaster, got thru disc one before I gave up on it. I used triple triad to get Squall's ultimate weapon ASAP but the gameplay was too tedious for me to keep going. I hated the junction system

The card game is great, until some bullshit rules are added because you played against the wrong person.

I am sure there is a way to fix it but really once that happens I. Ant okay the game anymore.

I will say it the Theory of the ending fits so much better for the game.

shyguybry posted...

The card game is lit.

It is until you get Fisherman's Horizon snd get fucked over by the random rule.

I could tell you a lot, but I forgot.

Mussurana posted...

I sort of get it in retrospect?

When it came out it was astonishing, seamless (for PS1) segues between CGI and in game graphics, and stunning set pieces.

Maybe doesn't hold up so well, but 25 years is a long time in gaming.

Young me hated it from day 1. The junction system was tedious, the tutorials a slog, the plot convoluted, the characters shallow, the overworld dull, and the soundtrack largely forgettable. Triple Triad and Laguna's flashbacks were about the only aspects of the game I didn't hate my first playthrough all those years ago.