The Great Final Fantasy Retrospective - Let's Mosey
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?!?! You haven't played Symphonia?! Get yourself to Steam and buy it my dude.
I could see that.
I think of them as two separate entities with aligned goals mostly because of those (admittedly few) times Sephiroth expresses himself directly. But I can see it the other way too.
Square Enix also certainly enjoy emphasising Sephiroth as a distinct figure, because they put him so front-and-centre in that "defy fate" nonsense in the remake.
But is that a Korean BBQ plate or a Sushi plate??
I can't tell you I'm under NDA.
So I've been drinking and really I needed it to talk about this fucking disaster piece of shit I played over the weekend with Godmode and speedup cheats on because fuck it I don't care.
Final Fantasy 8:
People often think of Cloud Strife as a broody emo dickhead who's whole life is suffering and pain and yet somehow all the hot chicks want his dick without exception. Everyone thinks that this is Cloud but it's not Cloud at all, it;s Squall Lionheart the dipshit who's the lead of Final Fantasy 8. Squall is that kid in your high school who wore nothing but black even when it was hot as shit outside and he never wanted to be a part of anything ever. But he also wasn't quite edgy enough to actually do anything to himself because he was more in love with the image of being in Nirvana than actually learning how to play a guitar and playing guitar is pretty easy Kurt Cobin wasn't even good at it and he wrote million dollar songs, and quite honeslty I don't know where this paragraph is going but I'm going to keep adding words to it because that means I don't actually have to write about Final Fantasy 8 which is by far the worst game in the series with the only exception of 2 and in retrospect I'd rather play two again because at least I don't have to deal with fucking time travel shenanagans, oh wait....fuck!
Final Fantasy 8 takes place in a world with Super Colleges who instead of NCAA Football teams each school has a squad of mercenaries and no police whatsoever so I guess we can make our children fight crime and shit why not. You are Squall and Squall's a stupid piece of shit who hates everyone and everything. But because this is an anime, Squall gets to live out every emo kids fantasy when at a party the hottest girl in school comes up to him and forces him to dance with her for some reason his broodiness hits all of her buttons when really they should be raising her red flags because you can't change a man with a cute smile and a couple of perky titties, oh who am I kidding, of course you can.
Also his teacher has a crush or someshit on him and that's also kind of weird because not only is she his teacher but she isn't even MILF territory because she's literally a year older than him and how the hell did she become a teacher already? Anyway who gives a shit, not the devs that's for sure.
I think the biggest jarring disappointment for me playing this fucking game when I was a kid is that coming off the huge well-thought out world of FF7, Square literally shits this game out like a year later and it has none of that. You're in high school but what if high school was also a mercenary training camp and also you have to take literal exams to raise your badass rank so the school will pay you more, which you can look up the answers online now and get max rank really fast which is the only way to make money and you get a max payout early so money becomes meaningless super quickly.
Which is a big metaphor for the entire game. EVerything is fucking meaningless. Battles are meaningless because leveling up doesn't matter, beat the game at level 7 who cares it's not like leveling up is a core part of RPG's, people hate leveling up so why do that shit? You know what people like? Poker and gambling. So let's build an entire mini game about that. A card game played around the world and somehow your party must be famous already because the best cards in the game have your fucking face on them so that's just another thing Squall gets handed to him despite being a huge piece of shit, I fucking hate Squall man.
What else, oh yeah...so leveling is meaningless because the enemies just match your level and the game gets harder the higher your level gets and by harder I mean more annoying so don't level. But no worries you can get stupid strong following a few easy steps.
1. Get into a battle.
2. Use the Draw ability on the enemy until you have 100 of any spell they have on every character in the group. This takes 20 minutes.
3. Run away, DO NOT KILL the enemy. Killing means EXP and EXP means leveling and we don't level here.
4. Go to the junction menu and throw those spells you drew onto your stats.
5. Never spend or use any magic spells because it will fuck up your stats.
6. beat the game.
Cool? Cool. It sucks.
Oh and the bad guy is your love interest but from the future and she's all pissy about some shit I don't know fuck this game.
Final Fantasy 8:
People often think of Cloud Strife as a broody emo dickhead who's whole life is suffering and pain and yet somehow all the hot chicks want his dick without exception. Everyone thinks that this is Cloud but it's not Cloud at all, it;s Squall Lionheart the dipshit who's the lead of Final Fantasy 8. Squall is that kid in your high school who wore nothing but black even when it was hot as shit outside and he never wanted to be a part of anything ever. But he also wasn't quite edgy enough to actually do anything to himself because he was more in love with the image of being in Nirvana than actually learning how to play a guitar and playing guitar is pretty easy Kurt Cobin wasn't even good at it and he wrote million dollar songs, and quite honeslty I don't know where this paragraph is going but I'm going to keep adding words to it because that means I don't actually have to write about Final Fantasy 8 which is by far the worst game in the series with the only exception of 2 and in retrospect I'd rather play two again because at least I don't have to deal with fucking time travel shenanagans, oh wait....fuck!
Final Fantasy 8 takes place in a world with Super Colleges who instead of NCAA Football teams each school has a squad of mercenaries and no police whatsoever so I guess we can make our children fight crime and shit why not. You are Squall and Squall's a stupid piece of shit who hates everyone and everything. But because this is an anime, Squall gets to live out every emo kids fantasy when at a party the hottest girl in school comes up to him and forces him to dance with her for some reason his broodiness hits all of her buttons when really they should be raising her red flags because you can't change a man with a cute smile and a couple of perky titties, oh who am I kidding, of course you can.
Also his teacher has a crush or someshit on him and that's also kind of weird because not only is she his teacher but she isn't even MILF territory because she's literally a year older than him and how the hell did she become a teacher already? Anyway who gives a shit, not the devs that's for sure.
I think the biggest jarring disappointment for me playing this fucking game when I was a kid is that coming off the huge well-thought out world of FF7, Square literally shits this game out like a year later and it has none of that. You're in high school but what if high school was also a mercenary training camp and also you have to take literal exams to raise your badass rank so the school will pay you more, which you can look up the answers online now and get max rank really fast which is the only way to make money and you get a max payout early so money becomes meaningless super quickly.
Which is a big metaphor for the entire game. EVerything is fucking meaningless. Battles are meaningless because leveling up doesn't matter, beat the game at level 7 who cares it's not like leveling up is a core part of RPG's, people hate leveling up so why do that shit? You know what people like? Poker and gambling. So let's build an entire mini game about that. A card game played around the world and somehow your party must be famous already because the best cards in the game have your fucking face on them so that's just another thing Squall gets handed to him despite being a huge piece of shit, I fucking hate Squall man.
What else, oh yeah...so leveling is meaningless because the enemies just match your level and the game gets harder the higher your level gets and by harder I mean more annoying so don't level. But no worries you can get stupid strong following a few easy steps.
1. Get into a battle.
2. Use the Draw ability on the enemy until you have 100 of any spell they have on every character in the group. This takes 20 minutes.
3. Run away, DO NOT KILL the enemy. Killing means EXP and EXP means leveling and we don't level here.
4. Go to the junction menu and throw those spells you drew onto your stats.
5. Never spend or use any magic spells because it will fuck up your stats.
6. beat the game.
Cool? Cool. It sucks.
Oh and the bad guy is your love interest but from the future and she's all pissy about some shit I don't know fuck this game.
(Edit: This is meant as a "The way this is written makes it look like you were drunk while writing it, not that your take is like that of a drunk man.)
Yeah, exactly. Both FF6 and FF7 had such a gripping world, especially with the intros of the respective games. While I love FF8's opening song, there certainly seems to be less at stake, and "you guys are gonna save the world" thing is just kinda horseshoed in. Also, I just remember magic-tech thing going overboard in this game. I feel FF6 and FF7 did such an amazing job at explaining why magics and techs both exist in their world. Here, everything is just kinda.... there.
And who can't forget fans coming up with the idea of Squall being dead? I personally don't think it happened, simply because we don't see anyone recognizing his death.
Similiar to FF15's Noctis and Luna, Squall and Rinoa seem to have no chemistry. They just are attracted to each other. Hell, I think Quistis has a better relationship with Squall.
I was trying to be funny. Because even playing FF8 15 years after hating it before, I still hate it. Replaying for this thread was not fun, and I didn't like a single moment of it.
Sorry if FF8 is your favorite of whatever guys, but you're wrong and you should feel bad about those choices. (I'm kinda of kidding).
Welp, here's hoping FF9 will make up all the frustration you had. I know I certainly prefer it over 8
So here's the cool thing about FF8, it has an amazing story/cast... in the side story. For those who never played, every once in awhile you'll play as an entirely different cast of character in what, you eventually find out, is a sort of prequel to the story (I won't get into the reason why because they're nonsensical). During these moment you play as Laguna, who's everything Squall isn't. Laguna is a charming goof who gets on wacky adventure with his couple of buddy whom he has... actual chemistry with! These sequence are pretty great, even the regular battle theme change to reflect it and its freaking awesome. Then those sequence end and you're back with the miserable Squall.
Squall is everything wrong with a main character, he's an asshole to everyone, but every character stick with him because... the plot demand it I guess. So you have all these character, with almost no chemistry between them, going on adventure with each others, yay... Squall is such an asshole that when it comes time to give a pep talk to someone on your team getting cold feet, his idea is to tell him he's pretty sure he'll fail anyway so who cares. And somehow that works. Of course Squall is in the center of a love triangle and it fall so flat. Quistis is lust incarnated, but the reason why she lust after Squall is dumb (answer: magic), and when she essentially tell Squall he can barely be bothered to listen. Rhinoa is the main love interest, and there's not even magic to explain why she's into Squall. She barely has any scene with Seifer (the game rival) and yet they have more chemistry together. Oh and of course Laguna also has a bit of a love triangle that takes only a fraction of Squall's but its still way better. Laguna is so cool that the only fun part of 8 main story is when your party is reunited with him in the present. You get to ride in these awesome looking dragon ship, and Laguna is so awesome that he's actually get all excited at being able to ride in one, while Squall just complain and moan.
The one cool thing the game does is that half way trough the game Squall actually get killed! After FF7 killing the love interest they had to raise the stake, so they kill the main character since there's nowhere else to go but up. This is actually pretty cool since they setup Seifer, the rival, as a potential replacement, he fights just like Squall (with a, sigh, gunblade) and is never portrayed as being all that evil so... wait what? Squall is just alive and has no injury from having a giant fucking icicle go right trough his chest. Well fuck.
Anyway, I talked about gameplay so I won't go over that again. The game is just overall lesser, one of the greatest part of 7 was the fun little side game/content along the way, but 8 has almost none of these. Instead, there's a massive card collecting game whose only redeeming feature is that its not as bad as FF9 card game.
Squall is everything wrong with a main character, he's an asshole to everyone, but every character stick with him because... the plot demand it I guess. So you have all these character, with almost no chemistry between them, going on adventure with each others, yay... Squall is such an asshole that when it comes time to give a pep talk to someone on your team getting cold feet, his idea is to tell him he's pretty sure he'll fail anyway so who cares. And somehow that works. Of course Squall is in the center of a love triangle and it fall so flat. Quistis is lust incarnated, but the reason why she lust after Squall is dumb (answer: magic), and when she essentially tell Squall he can barely be bothered to listen. Rhinoa is the main love interest, and there's not even magic to explain why she's into Squall. She barely has any scene with Seifer (the game rival) and yet they have more chemistry together. Oh and of course Laguna also has a bit of a love triangle that takes only a fraction of Squall's but its still way better. Laguna is so cool that the only fun part of 8 main story is when your party is reunited with him in the present. You get to ride in these awesome looking dragon ship, and Laguna is so awesome that he's actually get all excited at being able to ride in one, while Squall just complain and moan.
The one cool thing the game does is that half way trough the game Squall actually get killed! After FF7 killing the love interest they had to raise the stake, so they kill the main character since there's nowhere else to go but up. This is actually pretty cool since they setup Seifer, the rival, as a potential replacement, he fights just like Squall (with a, sigh, gunblade) and is never portrayed as being all that evil so... wait what? Squall is just alive and has no injury from having a giant fucking icicle go right trough his chest. Well fuck.
Anyway, I talked about gameplay so I won't go over that again. The game is just overall lesser, one of the greatest part of 7 was the fun little side game/content along the way, but 8 has almost none of these. Instead, there's a massive card collecting game whose only redeeming feature is that its not as bad as FF9 card game.
The card game in FF8 is easily the best thing to come out of that game. It's legit fun and very useful in terms of gameplay. You can use it early in the game tor efine cards for some uber powerful magic to instantly boost your stats to insane levels before even leaving Balam Garden for the first time, effectively breaking the game in the first hour or so of gameplay and further making the rest of the game pointless to get through.
You are also right in that the Leguna stuff is the best story in the game and legit feels bad to enjoy their plot only to have to go back to Squal and his band of idiots. The characters in FF8 are unbelievably unlikable to the point that's rather sad. Especially coming off of the great cast of FF7 who each had their own problems and personalities and were legit interesting.
FF8 feels rushed on a level that no other FF game feels imo. But the sad part is that I don't think it was actually rushed, it was just built off a giant pile of bad ideas.
The actual card game is indeed pretty fun because its very simple and you can grasp all the rules in a few minutes. The side quest to collect all the card isn't. To collect some card you need to manipulate the local rule so that you can actually obtain the card your opponent used, this is incredibly annoying to do and, if you don't do it troughout the game, you can also be screwed out of some cards, iirc.
Most I can say for FF8 is the card game was alright (although trivial against AI), and some semblance of builds being back was interesting (if the execution was a bit weird. The idea of either using Magic as magic or as physical stats is good on paper... but the execution was off).
Prettymuch the entire cast has cloned Cloud's personality of "..." (and his "twist" character point). Squall got the double helping of it. Seifer is more memorable then most of the good guys despite being an insufferable twit and woefully incompetent. Laguna (the one you'd actually wnat to play as only gets cameos). I don't even remember exactly how many Sorcereses there were or there individual names.
This bleeds a lot into the game having no real sense of story. The defined bad guys do bad things but their goal only ever comes up in the waning hours of the game (when your brain melts from the nonsense of "Time Compression"). The heroes seem equally unmotivated, they start off as child soldiers (or well, teenage soldiers) and once they finally finish up with that, seem purely reactionary to the bad guys doing their bad things.
Most of the game boils down to setting up spectacle setpieces. I mean they're visually striking and all. The tutorial beach storming thing, the two Gardens fighting, the outer space bit. But you could watch the FMV supercut and you'd probably still as much of a grasp on the story as actually playing through the thing. This was around when they were pushing towards Spirits Within too so maybe they were just obsessed with would be moviemaking.
Also I dunno wth is with the characters. They almost seem like they're Mortal Kombat esque capped people, but they're obviously drawn. Like they're out of framerate and out of place with the background. While 7 had awkward early 3d "models" clunked on the 2d backgrounds, those at least sort of blended in as art style. These just felt weird and out of place.
Another notable point in FF8 was this was probably the main entry you could hard point at for ditching "fantasy", being almost a pure sci-fi base. Like, magic exists but thats about it. The plot line is time-travel and monsters come from the moon in a sort of Cthulhu thing. But there's no ancient races, or spiritual traditions, or knights or dragons here. Even Summons/Espers/Eidolons get the scrubbed over "guardian force" name, and no real mention is made to where they come from.
Prettymuch the entire cast has cloned Cloud's personality of "..." (and his "twist" character point). Squall got the double helping of it. Seifer is more memorable then most of the good guys despite being an insufferable twit and woefully incompetent. Laguna (the one you'd actually wnat to play as only gets cameos). I don't even remember exactly how many Sorcereses there were or there individual names.
This bleeds a lot into the game having no real sense of story. The defined bad guys do bad things but their goal only ever comes up in the waning hours of the game (when your brain melts from the nonsense of "Time Compression"). The heroes seem equally unmotivated, they start off as child soldiers (or well, teenage soldiers) and once they finally finish up with that, seem purely reactionary to the bad guys doing their bad things.
Most of the game boils down to setting up spectacle setpieces. I mean they're visually striking and all. The tutorial beach storming thing, the two Gardens fighting, the outer space bit. But you could watch the FMV supercut and you'd probably still as much of a grasp on the story as actually playing through the thing. This was around when they were pushing towards Spirits Within too so maybe they were just obsessed with would be moviemaking.
Also I dunno wth is with the characters. They almost seem like they're Mortal Kombat esque capped people, but they're obviously drawn. Like they're out of framerate and out of place with the background. While 7 had awkward early 3d "models" clunked on the 2d backgrounds, those at least sort of blended in as art style. These just felt weird and out of place.
Another notable point in FF8 was this was probably the main entry you could hard point at for ditching "fantasy", being almost a pure sci-fi base. Like, magic exists but thats about it. The plot line is time-travel and monsters come from the moon in a sort of Cthulhu thing. But there's no ancient races, or spiritual traditions, or knights or dragons here. Even Summons/Espers/Eidolons get the scrubbed over "guardian force" name, and no real mention is made to where they come from.
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Brutal.
I liked FF8. Not as much as 7 or 9 but well enough.
I liked FF8. Not as much as 7 or 9 but well enough.
*Gasps* Sacrilege!!
*Points index finger intensely and repeatedly while averting gaze* Heretic!! HERRRRETIIIIICCC!!!
