Mini-review: Final Fantasy VIII

[moogle1]

Will you kill me if I tell you this game is better than Final Fantasy VII? I don't mean that categorically, of course. From a strict gameplay standpoint I think 7 beats 8, and it's very rare that I decide on any other basis, but hear me out

Comments

[ex_haggard573]

First of all, I agree with you that FFVIII is technically better than FFVII. But

[fenrirlunaris]

Girls: name me a non-amano FF girl who is in any way interesting.

Angelo?

[moogle1]

Same as FFX: FFX is definitely the closest in visual style. I'd agree that the characters have the exact same visual style, but the locations don't.

An illusion: Then it's a really effective one.

Near-future: I don't consider FFVII to be near-future, but that's probably because when I think of FFVII I think of Midgar, which is more of an industrial dystopia. Either way, FFVII clings stronger to its fantasy roots, with traditional dungeons like an ice cave and whatnot.

GF: I don't know what Square's deal with summons is. Except in FFX, they have never been different from any other attack. I should have been clearer: I was referring to everything about the GF system except the actual GFs.

Girls: Ashelia.

[fenrirlunaris]

FF8 has enough of a world built in the background that makes it interesting. It's like what would have happened to ours had monsters such as dragons and beastmen been around, but pushed into the background by the industrial revolution. Would we have preserves set aside for the last few unicorns, or would there be disaster recovery operations for London and Paris after being burned by Dragon's flame?

Interestingly, my AD&D campaign world sounds suspiciously similar to this.

[rinku]

"Complementing the nice visuals is some of Uematsu's best work. There isn't a single battle theme that isn't fantastic, and there are many of them: regular, boss, sorceress, and the three final battle themes."

You forgot Laguna's battle music.

[shaede]

I liked that one. heh

[konami]

ff8 is interesting to talk about

[moogle1]

Yeah, exactly. You can spend hours just using the GF menu abilities or tweaking your junctions or whatever, but the battles aren't designed to make any of this feel as rewarding as it should be. It's as if there was one group of competent designers who designed the menu-related goodies and another bunch of morons who did the battles and story.

[jsh357]

Diablos is in FF6 Advance. (if you have the patience to beat the bonus dungeon)

[konami]

That I have not as of yet, I kind of burned out on FF6a and palette-swap dunegon isn't getting me excited. But its cool he's there, I'd hope though that it's a sign they want him in some further FF games.

[flamer_ohr]

What I'm getting at here is that the junctioning and refinement systems were fantastic ideas, but the game was so horribly implemented that everyone hated them anyway. It is a bad idea that I have to sit there Drawing from an enemy for ten minutes so that my stats will be decent. The customization and strategy that the junction system brings are excellent, but never fully exploited.
Somehow, I keep visualising FFXII when I read this, horrible implementation... but this isn't about FFXII, just needed to mention it.

On topic, I agree with the majority of what's been said. I'm not not fond of FFVII's huge AP required to level materia up, to me the junction system to draw spells out was better because of the time required.
The drawback to the junction system would be that you're more inclined to just normally attack (or limit break with Aura) enemies/bosses than pull off spells to blow a better deal.

If you think FFVIII was easy, try it with maxed stats, thanks to devour.

The malboro is truly evil, status ailment galore.

[moogle1]

I tried it with near-maxed stats thanks to infinite cards. This is why Omega couldn't touch me.

[fenrirlunaris]

The Malboro can be (somewhat) dealt with assuming you junction Esuna, Reflect and Dispel to your St-Def. And something else, I forget which. Berserk probably. The fact that the Ribbon junction can ONLY be gotten through the pocketstation add-on, which was only released in Japan was a HORRIBLE idea.

[flamer_ohr]

yeah, the ribbon junction was horrible to get... the pocketstation game was available as a separate game on the PC version of FFVIII though (which was the version I played). Ironcially, I never had the patience to play that long enough to obtain.