Reminiscing: Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy VIII was my very first game of the series and, in spite of not having the best story of them all, I still have a special place in my heart for it. I decided to replay it last week while getting up to date with a couple of podcasts and realized that I couldn't have picked something better. Before that, I was playing Torchlight, which gets awfully repetitive after some time (I really mean it. Even the scenarios start getting annoying after a while. I may talk about it a bit more in later posts).
In my first gameplays (I must have finished the game from beginning to the end about two or three times) I overused the Guardian Forces. No wonder I started finding the game boring after a while. Except for the last confrontation, where I pretty much spent all my Ultima, Holy and Meteor, most of the bosses were beaten using the GFs. This time, I decided to pay a bit more attention to the Junction system and, boy, did that make a difference. I must have used my GFs once or twice in moments of desperation (a.k.a. the characters had a really, really low HP and I wouldn't be able to heal them in time), all the rest was achieved with regular attacks. I'm not even sure I'm using the best strategy around here, but it' been working pretty nice so far. I could set the Auto >> Atk Junction, but I've been trying to benefit from the Elemental junction since I still remember most of the bosses' weaknesses.
While I'm not going for the "Squall lvl. 10" challenge, I haven't been worrying too much about grinding my characters. So much that I'm nearing the end of the first CD and Squall is still level 14 (the rest of the party is no higher than level 11). I'm only waiting for the moment when I can get Carbuncle so that I can confront Diablo (which is probably only going to happen on CD 2).
I'm also having a bit more fun with the bosses. I'm not very fond of the Draw system, since it requires more time per battle than I have to patience to deal with. What I do is usually leave two characters Drawing and the last one to load the ATB gauge is the one to attack. Once I completely fill the maximum amount of magic per character, I exchange magic with characters that have little to no Magic, then repeat the process. It's a bit quicker than spending a single battle making all characters Draw, but it's still painfully slow. I thought about just using the GF's abilities to refine magic, but I'm currently focusing on their status abilities so I can improve my Junction and AP takes a hell lot of time to obtain.
The good thing about going through the game after having finished it is that I still remember when I'm about to confront certain bosses and what are their weaknesses, so I can optmize my status. I do wonder, however, how the heck you can foresee the bosses' status when you're making a run for the first time. For an instance, can you guess Cerberus is absorbs Wind and Thunder elemental attacks? Okay, you can always use Scan to check their status, but what if you set Thunder as Elemental Attack before the battle? Will you dodge using your regular attacks until the end of the battle? That doesn't really sound fair. The second run is a lot more interesting though. You can anticipate the bosses' weaknesses and strengths and act accordingly.
If the gameplay aspect became far more interesting than before, it saddens me that the same cannot be said about the story. While I still really like Zell and Selphie, all other characters just sound awful to me. Squall really does act like a douche in the beginning of the game. He does have a bit of character development through the rest of the game, but he remains the same in his essence. I also cannot, for the love of all gods, figure how I managed to like him and Rinoa as a pairing. Good lord, they are so annoying! The entire first CD consists of Rinoa acting like the spoiled girl she is. Irvine is just a gross Don Juan, I have never really liked him. Seifer is a bully and I honestly don't know why he got his redemption in the end of the game. I think that the story only works well enough if you didn't not get too much contact with more complex characters from other games. But then again, I was 14 years old when I finished this game for the first time, I WAS a silly, romantic teenager who enjoyed a sappy romance. Nowadays this sort of story just doesn't work for me.
In my first gameplays (I must have finished the game from beginning to the end about two or three times) I overused the Guardian Forces. No wonder I started finding the game boring after a while. Except for the last confrontation, where I pretty much spent all my Ultima, Holy and Meteor, most of the bosses were beaten using the GFs. This time, I decided to pay a bit more attention to the Junction system and, boy, did that make a difference. I must have used my GFs once or twice in moments of desperation (a.k.a. the characters had a really, really low HP and I wouldn't be able to heal them in time), all the rest was achieved with regular attacks. I'm not even sure I'm using the best strategy around here, but it' been working pretty nice so far. I could set the Auto >> Atk Junction, but I've been trying to benefit from the Elemental junction since I still remember most of the bosses' weaknesses.
While I'm not going for the "Squall lvl. 10" challenge, I haven't been worrying too much about grinding my characters. So much that I'm nearing the end of the first CD and Squall is still level 14 (the rest of the party is no higher than level 11). I'm only waiting for the moment when I can get Carbuncle so that I can confront Diablo (which is probably only going to happen on CD 2).
I'm also having a bit more fun with the bosses. I'm not very fond of the Draw system, since it requires more time per battle than I have to patience to deal with. What I do is usually leave two characters Drawing and the last one to load the ATB gauge is the one to attack. Once I completely fill the maximum amount of magic per character, I exchange magic with characters that have little to no Magic, then repeat the process. It's a bit quicker than spending a single battle making all characters Draw, but it's still painfully slow. I thought about just using the GF's abilities to refine magic, but I'm currently focusing on their status abilities so I can improve my Junction and AP takes a hell lot of time to obtain.
The good thing about going through the game after having finished it is that I still remember when I'm about to confront certain bosses and what are their weaknesses, so I can optmize my status. I do wonder, however, how the heck you can foresee the bosses' status when you're making a run for the first time. For an instance, can you guess Cerberus is absorbs Wind and Thunder elemental attacks? Okay, you can always use Scan to check their status, but what if you set Thunder as Elemental Attack before the battle? Will you dodge using your regular attacks until the end of the battle? That doesn't really sound fair. The second run is a lot more interesting though. You can anticipate the bosses' weaknesses and strengths and act accordingly.
If the gameplay aspect became far more interesting than before, it saddens me that the same cannot be said about the story. While I still really like Zell and Selphie, all other characters just sound awful to me. Squall really does act like a douche in the beginning of the game. He does have a bit of character development through the rest of the game, but he remains the same in his essence. I also cannot, for the love of all gods, figure how I managed to like him and Rinoa as a pairing. Good lord, they are so annoying! The entire first CD consists of Rinoa acting like the spoiled girl she is. Irvine is just a gross Don Juan, I have never really liked him. Seifer is a bully and I honestly don't know why he got his redemption in the end of the game. I think that the story only works well enough if you didn't not get too much contact with more complex characters from other games. But then again, I was 14 years old when I finished this game for the first time, I WAS a silly, romantic teenager who enjoyed a sappy romance. Nowadays this sort of story just doesn't work for me.