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inverts posted:
I think I just found my next avatar (if you don't mind, that is) Now for some text to go with it.
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Apr 28, 2015 04:11
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Kilonum posted:Now for some text to go with it. Just pick one of the many, many weird lines of dialogue this game has and/or NOBODY TALKS ABOUT MY FLOWERS IN THE PAST TENSE
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Apr 28, 2015 04:24
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Kilonum posted:I think I just found my next avatar (if you don't mind, that is) I would be flattered. Please, feel free! I have no good ideas for text, but I'd second Psion's suggestion about game dialogue.
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Apr 28, 2015 04:58
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Psion posted:Just pick one of the many, many weird lines of dialogue this game has and/or NOBODY TALKS ABOUT MY FLOWERS IN THE PAST TENSE
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Apr 28, 2015 05:27
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Nihilarian posted:... Whatever. This is the right text.
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Apr 28, 2015 06:14
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Darn, that's wonderful. Makes me wish the flower thing was actually true. I'd take it as an avatar if it wasn't already taken.  Make the text "Seeing flowers takes away people's will to fight. We steal the will to fight, then we invade."Imagine that game, though. You're a florist-mercenary, taking jobs, fighting armies and planting flowers. The game does not end until the world is at least 70% parks, forests and gardens.
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Apr 28, 2015 10:11
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Kilonum posted:Now for some text to go with it. "Then go talk to a wall."
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Apr 28, 2015 13:30
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inverts posted:
This is very nice, thank you. I'm going to add it to the second post.
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Apr 28, 2015 13:37
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Mans posted:I appreciate it, my mind was already blown with the Seifer and film reference, proving that no matter how many times i played this game as a kid i probably wasn't paying much attention (that and i was still learning English at the time, that probably affected it a bit too If it's any consolation, the explanation is fairly subtle. Optional NPC dialogue here, noticing something in the background there, and having the player make a few logical connections. Oddly enough, it actually makes sense in pretty much every regard except to answer "so why don't we hear anything more about it".
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Apr 29, 2015 18:49
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Aithon posted:Darn, that's wonderful. Makes me wish the flower thing was actually true. I'd take it as an avatar if it wasn't already taken. ...So, you're Zack + Aerith.
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Apr 29, 2015 18:54
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Vil posted:If it's any consolation, the explanation is fairly subtle. Optional NPC dialogue here, noticing something in the background there, and having the player make a few logical connections. This game is full of neat ideas that are never finished. Reading back i still love that moment where everyone is in a room talking about a presumedly deceased comrade and Squall storms out saying "DON'T TALK ABOUT ME IN THE PAST TENSE!", because he was so immersed in his own thoughts about Seifer's death he didn't even realize or care about the hell was going on in that room. It makes sense as a mentally scarred adolescent but it's still funny as hell.
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Apr 29, 2015 20:23
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VagueRant posted:I've been fascinated reading about how much the Laguna sequences must have gotten gutted in later development. Cut content is always super interesting. Thanks for sharing!
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May 4, 2015 13:59
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Part Thirty-Five: The Rescue  : (...Stop grabbing my...leg. Let me sleep...) He always seems to be bothering people while they sleep. : (Shut up...)Squall's not in the mood right now. Voice: Laguna! : (...Laguna?)Voice: Laguna!!! : (...Laguna!?)I promise that exchange is contained within the game.  I guess those moombas are the Laguna fan club.   Well, they've set Squall free, so they're not all bad. Moomba: Laguna. : Laguna? We'll get back to that scintillating conversation in a bit.  Fun fact about this scene: it ran at about 5 FPS. It was extremely annoying.  : Voila!  I think the slowdown has to do with this.  When a character gets their weapon back, you're treated to a zoomed-in display of their victory dance.   There's even one for the moomba.   Then you get a chance to junction. Actually doing the junctions is too exciting to be conveyed in screenshots, so we'll have to skip it.  Back to standin' around.  Mean Guy: Yes, this is it. Please give'em something to really complain about. Man B: Should we be picking on prisoners so soon after gettin' transferred here?  I like everyone just standing there, listening and knowing that they're about to spring their trap.    Hey, it's our pals from the comm tower.  Everyone sort of looks at each other for a second while it sinks in.  Small world. Biggs: S-So we meet again! Now we'll teach you the lesson we should have taught you earlier! I know it might seem cowardly to fight unarmed prisoners...  Hey, don't worry about it.  As soon as everyone pulls out their weapons, the mean guy legs it. Biggs: W-WHAT!? H-Ho-How...  I like your attitude, Biggs.  Time for round two with these guys. Biggs: I was demoted because of you! I'm only a lieutenant now! I'll get my revenge!  Even though she's not HP-critical, Quistis's limit comes up.  Being as I wanted to stick a specific status on these guys, I went with Bad Breath (which dumps a bunch of status effects on all enemies).  It does not hit them with the one I want (Confuse), but Biggs and Wedge are such a non-threat that Poison will handle this fight by itself.     It saves me the trouble of having to beat them up while I draw spells off 'em. Haste is the only real winner here. This isn't one of the FF games where Slow is indispensable, and Regen is kind of situational.  As Vil pointed out in the thread, I missed out on the value of Reflect and Regen: they're great for junctions. Regen is great on Vit, and Reflect is great on Spr. Reflect is also one of the few spells in the game that is easier to draw than to refine. I think this comes up when he's at half HP. You might also notice that Selphie's slots have come up. I was trying to get her to cast Confuse.  Wedge also has a line for when his HP is low.   Selphie has some really good spells in her slots when her crisis level is way up.   I finally got Confuse to stick on Biggs so I could get this line. Biggs has one if you can get Wedge to hit him. Too bad, though, he died every time I got Wedge to hit him.   Eventually, I gave up on trying to get the one throw-away line and just ended things.  What an appropriate prize.  Elixirs aren't bad either, but I don't think I've ever actually used one in Final Fantasy VIII.  Vitality is a very important stat if you want to keep characters at low HP to spam limits.   Biggs and Wedge aren't as eloquent after the rear end-whoopin'.  Biggs has one last trick up his sleeve, though. Biggs: Ugh. He's done now.  : You have any idea?Moomba: Srrr...Srrr...    Don't start this poo poo again. : I don't know why, but I feel kinda lucky! At Level 100, Zell has the lowest Luck stat of anyone in the party. If Squall lies to the Warden during the torture sequence, the moomba won't give you a hint to go upstairs here.: Let's just go after them. OK? At this point, an alarm goes off. Announcement: Warning! Escapee alert! Monsters will be set loose on each floor. If escapee refuses to surrender, you have permission to kill. The anti-magic field will be lifted. Fun fact: the anti-magic field never affects anything outside of that cutscene with Selphie. Any time you're actually playing the game, magic works just fine. I have no idea why it's ever mentioned, except as a throwaway answer to "why don't they just use magic to escape?" On the other hand, nobody is answering that question. Anyway, it's gone now! See ya never, anti-magic field! : Tch! The security alarm! This is the first thing I do when I'm in the D-District Prison. I do not particularly care for the D-District Prison, and I do not want random encounters forcing me to spend more time here.  Off we go! Now that we're free to roam the D-District Prison, here's the D-District Prison theme ("Jailed"):   Here's why I don't like this place: every floor looks the goddamn same. It's mind-numbingly tedious to run around here, and random encounters don't help any. I basically just sprint through whenever I play the game.  At least we still got paid. Squall's not even here and we got his cheque. You can actually get paid at any time, except in the past. The only thing to break up the monotony of prison is that some cells contain other people.  I think there's a line of dialogue missing here, but I'm not sure. Bad Segue Man: Well, to tell you the truth, I'm also a Balamb Garden student. Oh, but I can't give you any info. I'm working for Galbadia right now. I'm not supposed to do this, but I wanted to see you all with my own eyes.  This guy plays the role of the item shop for the prison.  He has absolutely nothing special. But I wonder why Fuel is so expensive.  While I'm at the shop, I picked up a bunch of Tents.  Then I capped off everyone's Curaga stock.  Look at their max HP now! It's high!  Now it's back to runnin' around the floors.  Oh, here's an exciting thing: some of the doors? You can't go into them. What a lark!  Whatever, floor 9.   Berserk is a spell that can be sort of useful if you have a character who never does anything but attack. It's mostly upstaged by being able to spam limit breaks, but it's not the least useful spell in the game.  Also on the tenth floor, we can find this guy. He'll Upgrade Our Battle Meter if We Beat Him at Cards: If you win this game I'll add something special to that thing for you. But I charge 300 Gil per game.  I have a lot of Gil.  I also got an Abyss Worm card out of the deal. That's 20 free Tornado spells!   We Beat Him at Cards So He's Upgraded Our Battle Meter: There you go. Now you can look at even more detailed records.  You may remember the completely useless Battle Report.    Well, now we have the equally useless Character Report! Who could possibly give a gently caress!  There's also a save point on this floor.  Floor 11!  Highlights: an empty room! (There's actually an invisible Thundaga draw point in here, but that's not as funny.)  Another highlight: a guy who likes to play cards but lives in a prison! Likes to Play Cards but Lives in a Prison: I'll give ya something if you win. But I'll have to charge you for the game. Only fair, right? How about 200 Gil per game? I have a lot of Gil, so why not?  Like he said, you get an item if you beat this guy at cards.  Some of the items are pretty good. He only has one HP Up, and you have a 1/32 (3.125%) chance to win it.   Most of his prizes suck. These two are the most common by far.  This still isn't great, but it's neat: you can get upgraded potions in this game. Usually you have to make these yourself with GF abilities. I never bother, to be honest.  The Rosetta Stone is the guy's real prize here. It took me something like a dozen games of cards to win one (3/256 chance; ~1.17%).  Like the screen says, Rosetta Stones teach GFs the Abilityx4 ability. It's handy when you have GFs with a lot of useful passive abilities, but it's not essential. Some people will play game after game of cards with this guy to get three Rosetta Stones (to put Abilityx4 on the whole party) but Christ, what a hassle.  Floor 12!  We want to follow those moombas up. As you can see, though, we have to go around the whole floor to do so because the stairs are separated. This is the case on most floors, and I don't know why I waited until now to point it out. Before we check out those moombas, though, let's check out poo poo I originally forgot to do. It's all very exciting, I promise.  See, in the D-District Prison, you can also go down the stairs. This bit, where you're controlling Zell, is actually the only time that you have a full run of the place and can go all the way down. I normally forget to do this, because it's not the way you need to go to get the plot moving.  Specifically, you can go down to the third floor.  This is one of the few places in the game that you can find an item just lying on the ground that isn't a magazine. When they made FFVIII, they weren't really feeling treasure chests, so they replaced them with Draw Points.  So, we find a Pet House in a box. A Pet House is like a Tent, but for GFs. I've never had any reason to use one.  On the second floor, there's a Pet Nametag. This lets you rename Rinoa's dog, Angelo.  Also on the second floor: a Str Up. It raises Str by 1! Later on in the game, you can actually make these through refine abilities to get your natural Str up to 255, one point at a time! It's way more trouble than it's worth!  With Zell leading the party, you can actually go all the way down to the first floor.  Here, you can find a magazine lying on the floor.   Combat King is a magazine that teaches new moves for Zell's Limit. Unfortunately, due to the fact that Zell's Limit is easily exploited and I can't remember combos, we'll probably never see this in action. I've certainly never used any of Zell's special moves. In the other room on the first floor, there's an invisible save point, but I don't have the GF ability you need to use it, so I couldn't show it off. Sorry.  Anyway, that's been "poo poo I missed the first time"! Let's get back to our regularly-scheduled program!  On floor 12, both doors are locked. There's nothing to find.  I did figure out that you can go into these little alcoves. It doesn't do jack poo poo!  Whee!  Floor 13 has, at long last, a change in scenery.  Another thing it has is a closed hatch. Classic floor 13.  It's also got a fuckin' lot of moombas.     And they all fuckin' love Laguna. Moombas are crazy for that motherfucker.   Oh, it is not. Don't lie to him.  : You OK!?: It was hell...: Let's just get the hell outta here! ZELL DO NOT THROW A GUNBLADE.  Jesus Christ those things are so dangerous.   By the way, we're Squall now. Junctions &c.     Since we held out during the torture, these three moombas will make shortcuts for us. Also, as long as you stand near them, moombas will constantly yell "Laguna! Laguna! Laguna". It's great, I love it.  I just make these shortcuts randomly because I don't actually give a gently caress about them. There's no specific floors that really improve your quality of life by having a shortcut.  I'm sure he's just fine. I don't know of any long-term effects torture might have.  Yes, let's.  Okay.  Well, it's more that I know of him.  Outside the torture chamber, everyone is just milling about. : Didn't you come here as Laguna in the 'dream world'?: ......No. : So Squall doesn't know how to get out, either. This shot included because of Selphie's idle animation playing. : It'd be a pain to go down every floor. The alarm alerted monsters and security guards are everywhere.: By the way, how the hell did they carry you up here, Squall?  Probably more trouble than it's worth. : It's like a crane that can carry a detachable cell from downstairs.How do you think they came up with that as their system for moving prisoners?  Also, I just realised that Squall's cell had a toilet but nobody else's did.  Well, yes, but not for the reason you want. : Go ahead if you want to be squashed like a pancake.Some of the dialogue in this game is very fun.  Zell's just remembered where the cafeteria is. He wants pancakes. : We can move this arm by using the panel above and the control room. I remember Ward doing this. But we need to operate them both at the same time. Someone needs to stay upstairs and control the panel...  There really are some great animations in this game. : ...Me? Jeez, don't act so excited.   Next time on Final Fantasy VIII: we finally escape the D-District Prison! Cool Ghost fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Nov 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2015 23:54
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Play infinity cards with him, Rosetta Stones are great.
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May 5, 2015 00:19
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I can only imagine Quistis' face as Zell/Selphie/Biggs/Wedge recognize each other. I believe the line when you get Wedge to hit Biggs with Confuse is 'Idiot! What are you doing!?' Biggs will then counterattack Wedge, snapping him out of his confusion and making him go, 'Err what? What WAS I doing?' For added hilarity, you can even inflict Zombie on them to kill them instantly with something like Phoenix Down.
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May 5, 2015 00:25
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Man, the D-District prison. It is not a good dungeon. Gameplay-wise, it's probably the nadir of FF8. Aren't there a couple unique enemies on the floors, though? I seem to remember some that don't show up anywhere else.
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May 5, 2015 00:26
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Cool Ghost posted:
Man, the torture must've been really bad if he's asking himself things 
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May 5, 2015 00:41
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And we thought the sewers were bad...Yeah, this dungeon is the goddamn worst. You have to run all the way around the ring to get to the next set of stairs and it's two screens too - all for no particular reason. The game definitely takes a bit of a nosedive after disc 1. Even with enc-none it's mind-numbingly boring, without it it is torturous. (Most players probably would be lucky to have enc-half at this point) And the dungeon doesn't even direct you very well. VagueRant fucked around with this message at 00:46 on May 5, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 00:44
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Cool Ghost posted:
Good, you're a proper RPG player! Also, screw this dungeon - getting up those floors is a huge pain, especially when you haven't taken the time to learn Enc-None...
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May 5, 2015 00:44
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That prison is one of the worst parts of the game and that's saying something.
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May 5, 2015 00:53
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I actually don't mind the prison. It's a little dull, but there are enough things to do (items, cards) to get along the way to keep it from being a completely boring stretch, and there's enough interaction between characters - Zell/Selphie/Quistis sections are always good. Maybe it's because I never had Enc-None on in this place to keep it from being mindless. It's certainly no worse than say, the Feymarch from FFIV, or Mt. Gagazet from FFX. One thing about FFVIII is that it doesn't really have that many gimmick dungeons. There's the Tomb of the Unknown King, and a couple others we haven't seen yet, but there aren't any really bad puzzles involving dumb things like teleport pads or magnetic dungeons. It's got one annoying optional one, but that can be mostly trivialized by Enc-None. It does suffer from a bit of 'this room looks just like the last three', though.
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May 5, 2015 01:24
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I've never noticed this in spite of playing this game so many times, but a Fuel costs as much as a Car Rental. 
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May 5, 2015 03:48
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Good job, Zell. Squall was slumped against the wall, unable to support his own weight after being tortured- that's a great time to throw a sword at him with a dickish "think fast!" And this dungeon really is the worst. I seem to remember going down instead of up one time on accident, so I basically doubled the length of time you spend running around the identical monotonous levels. No way these highly trained elite soldiers could hop over the waist-high wall separating the stairs; nope, gotta go allllllll the way around.
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May 5, 2015 04:08
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Artelier posted:I've never noticed this in spite of playing this game so many times, but a Fuel costs as much as a Car Rental. "We sold the car so we could afford the gas payments."
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May 5, 2015 04:31
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Cool Ghost posted:ZELL DO NOT THROW A GUNBLADE. 
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May 5, 2015 04:44
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 Perfection.
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May 5, 2015 04:51
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Brunom1 posted:Good, you're a proper RPG player! Giant robotic crabs, you hate em right?
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May 5, 2015 04:57
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Cool Ghost posted:
If you're not powergaming with cards, this is actually a really great fight for getting yourself some nice junctions. Reflect is worth 72 Spr, only surpassed by Full-life (85) and Ultima (95). Since those other two (especially Ultima) are popular for a few other places, you'll often end up using Reflect on Spr in your endgame junctions. Regen is worth 70 Vit. The de facto endgame junction for Vit is Meltdown (80), so this is pretty close. Other options are Full-life (also 80) and Ultima (82), but Meltdown's crap for other junctions and the other two aren't, so why would you? Haste is worth 50 Spd once we can junction to that. People usually have Triple (70) for Spd when they have it (because it's the best junction for that stat and it's a great stat), though sometimes you want Haste on Spd even if you have Triple. For example, if you're earlier in the game and using Triple on Str because you don't have Aura/Meteor/Ultima for that yet. It's also the only one of these spells where you could make a case for casting it. Slow is boring for everything except ST-Atk, where it can actually be surprisingly useful against a wide variety of opponents. It doesn't junction well to anything except Spd (40, and why get it for that when you can get Haste?), and it's not even useful on status defense in the long run. There's an Auto-Haste ability which is useful for obvious reasons, and that has a side effect of giving you immunity to slow and stop. Cool Ghost posted:
You can manipulate the game's random number generator to guarantee Rosetta Stones here, actually. The tricky part is that spending time in those hallways (but not the rooms/cells, such as where you actually play cards) will consume random numbers, so you have to take a very consistent route from the save point to this card player's room. NB that consistency is a priority over outright speed. Also worth noting is that there are floors/cells if you go down from where you start, too. They include another card player (with the same common items but different rare items), and one of the game's very rare occasions of having items that you pick up off the ground. The goon hivemind may have noticed that FF8's not exactly big on treasure chests and the like. Items almost always come from enemy drops/steals, shops, or refinement. This first period before you meet up with Squall is, I think, the only time when you have the full run of the prison. After that there's various plot stuff basically going "you can't go below floor X" or "you can't go above floor Y". So if you're going to explore, pre-Squall is the time to do it.
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May 5, 2015 05:44
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This dungeon loving blows holy poo poo. Whenever I think about how much I hated a lot of FF8 when playing it, this garbage is first and foremost in my mind. It's like the FF7 stairwell, but not funny, mandatory, and the rewards for doing even more optional faffing about on copy-pasted screens are very meager. It is anti-game design and only somewhat excusable by the existance of Enc-None. I can't even imagine how much of a complete nightmare it would have been with random encounters. It also houses two of my go-to examples for absolutely nonsensical spergery. I was following a GameFAQs guide for FF8 when playing it (I freely admit that caused me to spend even more time here because the knowledge of poo poo on the bottom floors forced me to go there, obviously), and there were sections detailing how to get a "perfect game". This, of course, entails having 99 of every item in your inventory at the end of the game. And this means that you have to spend literal real-time weeks playing cards to get 99 Rosetta stones. The guide detailed a route perfectly made to manipulate the RNG and get it every time, but with all the soft-resets and walking there and other fluff, it was actually calculated to take that long. It is one of the least fun sounding experiences someone obviously willingly submitted themselves to I have ever read about. The other thing is the battle statistics thing because of course getting perfect stats on it (no deaths and kills maxed out) for your characters is also vital, somehow.
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May 5, 2015 12:16
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I usually dig setting personal challenges in games, but man, people who do "perfect" JRPG saves have brain problems.
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May 5, 2015 13:30
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Fifth panel: The gunblade fires.
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May 5, 2015 13:45
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Had to look it up:code:code:code:code:
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May 5, 2015 13:46
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Simply Simon posted:Had to look it up: Wh...what?! That's madness! It's not even like there's some obscure achievement associated with maxing your inventory, this game came out in the 90s! Why would anyone do this?!
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May 5, 2015 13:54
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What happens far more realistically is that someone gets some starry-eyed idea of doing a "perfect game" by one of those insane definitions, actually runs into one of the crazy grinds for 99 (or 100 in FF8's case) of an item that's slow to get and pointless to have anywhere near that many of, and suddenly finds themselves with other priorities in life. This is not limited to FF8. I'm all for being completionist myself, but I generally ascribe to the "at least one of everything, as many copies as exist of finite stuff, max quantity only if it's easy" philosophy. And even that gets compromised out of necessity when you start running into things like mutual exclusives or games where there are more possible inventory items than there are spaces in the inventory. (Or, you know, losing interest and going on to do something else besides play the game in question. Teenage me was way more about 100% saves than adult me is.) In situations like these, it's up to the player to define what their goal is and what they consider complete/perfect/100% to be. I can totally sympathize with wanting such a thing, but I'm far more impressed by someone who sets a reasonable goal for that and actually reaches it than with someone who sets some crazy goal that they obviously get nowhere near reaching. In tyool 2015 there are bigger priorities in life than the number of Rosetta Stones in your save file of Final Fantasy VIII. Vil fucked around with this message at 19:19 on May 5, 2015 |
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May 5, 2015 14:15
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You seriously have to be autistic to care about any of that.
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May 5, 2015 15:33
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Gameshark. There. I have a perfect save.
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May 5, 2015 15:51
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Technical Analysis posted:Gameshark. There. I have a perfect save. Also, Hyne
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May 5, 2015 15:55
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Zell's little hands-over-mouth expression in panel 4 is my favourite thing, ever.
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May 5, 2015 20:37
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inverts posted:Zell's little hands-over-mouth expression in panel 4 is my favourite thing, ever. Yeah, I think if I actually liked Zell then I'd buy it up for an avatar in a heartbeat.
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May 5, 2015 20:52
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| # ? May 12, 2024 16:56 |
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This is good. Thank you. Simply Simon posted:Perfect file stuff. That is a huge amount of hassle for basically no pay-off. To be honest, I've never even tried to get the Rosetta Stone before this run. Also, gently caress that FAQ guy, I got the HP Up first try.  Vil posted:Junctions and items downstairs. You are 100% about those junctions, and I even should have known that because I know those spells are good for junctions. For some reason, though, when I'm drawing spells in battle I only think about their actual uses as spells. As far as the items, I'm going to back and add shots of them. I forgot to get them this time because I always forget they're there. Blaze Dragon posted:Man, the torture must've been really bad if he's asking himself things Thanks for pointing this out, I will fix it.
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May 5, 2015 22:55
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