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Watching FFVIII always gives me the terrible urge to play it myself, but then I remember how easy it is to abuse and get discouraged. I wish Square gave enough of a poo poo to make some kind of hard mode for the Steam release, the Junction system is pretty neat to play around with but it doesn't really have any meaningful choices to make when most battles are so straightforward. It's the one FF game where I would actually appreciate some gimmick dungeons that required you to be smart about Junctioning, like there are only a couple of instances where elemental attacks are actually really useful.
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Dec 9, 2014 23:41
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I love the exam. It was a huge thing for me when I was 9 years old and playing this for the first time. That and Ifrit's design being the coolest thing my brain had seen at that time. I've seen that black boxes problem too, but I did fix it. I just don't remember how. "Special fixes", probably.
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Dec 10, 2014 00:17
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There's a lot to hate in this game, but one thing I always liked was the way the text is presented and the character animations. Squall pointing at Seifer when Selphie asks where the captain is still cracks me up, and I love Quistis's little interruptions. It's clear that rather than using the text boxes as a substitute for spoken dialog, the creators actually had some fun thinking about how to take advantage of the medium. I also like how FF8's character's are just a bunch of dorks and the narrative for the most part doesn't try to make excuses for them. FF9 was almost as good about this, but in no other Final Fantasy are you being constantly reminded that your teenagers are teenagers and that nobody's actually as cool as they think they are. It's almost like flaws make characters more endearing.
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Dec 10, 2014 00:57
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That's what I always liked about it. I was in high school when it came out, and I felt like I could have met any one of these people walking down the hall. I even had a friend who was all into brooding, like Squall. I once brought the Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec album to our art class to listen to over headphones. I loved its versions of "Don't Be Afraid," "Fisherman's Horizon," and "Man With the Machine Gun"; he'd play "Liberi Fatali" on repeat.
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Dec 10, 2014 01:10
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Molly Millions posted:There's a lot to hate in this game, but one thing I always liked was the way the text is presented and the character animations. Squall pointing at Seifer when Selphie asks where the captain is still cracks me up, and I love Quistis's little interruptions. It's clear that rather than using the text boxes as a substitute for spoken dialog, the creators actually had some fun thinking about how to take advantage of the medium. I gotta say, Selphie is my favorite character. So Bubbly and Happy. I'm pretty sure I'd jump down because it was faster as well. Maybe I just relate to her more than the main character.
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Dec 10, 2014 02:00
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Cool Ghost posted:If you're really dedicated, you can grind Seifer to stupidly high levels to get some good drops from Anacondaur, or level your GFs to 100 without real consequences. If you level Seifer high enough you unlock his second limit break that you'd normally only see during disk 2 or 3. I found this out by grinding to the point where the red Galbadian Soldier had aga level spells.
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Dec 10, 2014 03:36
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes Selphie.
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Dec 10, 2014 03:42
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ZevGun posted:If you level Seifer high enough you unlock his second limit break that you'd normally only see during disk 2 or 3. I've never heard of this happening.
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Dec 10, 2014 03:57
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MarquiseMindfang posted:I've never heard of this happening. Probably because no one would want to do that unless they really wanted to spend 15 hours.
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Dec 10, 2014 04:25
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Silegna posted:Probably because no one would want to do that unless they really wanted to spend 15 hours. I've never heard of it happening either.
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Dec 10, 2014 04:27
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Silegna posted:Probably because no one would want to do that unless they really wanted to spend 15 hours. It was some absurd number around that. I did the grind while BSing with people in college between classes and such.
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Dec 10, 2014 04:33
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ZevGun posted:It was some absurd number around that. I did the grind while BSing with people in college between classes and such. There is literally no other verified information on the internet about this, so you'd need solid proof. Considering the Elite Soldier starts packing -ga spells at a fairly low level 30 onwards, if this was true someone would have made it widespread by now.
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Dec 10, 2014 04:55
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I will write a treatise on Selphie towards the end of the game. She's so wonderful.
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Dec 10, 2014 05:00
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All playable characters not named Squall, Quistis, Zell, Selphie, Rinoa or Irvine have one limit each, with no variations or options. I'm calling faulty memory here. Back in the day, people tried (and failed) to use GameShark hacks to accomplish exactly what you describe.
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Dec 10, 2014 09:37
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curiousCat posted:I will write a treatise on Selphie towards the end of the game. She's so wonderful. Word. Easily the best party member, in terms of personality and character. That is permanent a permanent memeber, and not a temporary thing. One of the future characters you get to play as is better, IMO.
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Dec 10, 2014 10:27
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Selphie is a lot like Yuffi from FF7. The fact that Selphie seems like a really good character is more of an reflection on the rest of the cast. The only really interesting character is Laguna. And I don't even know if he counts as a main party member.
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Dec 10, 2014 15:22
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Vil posted:I'm calling faulty memory here. Back in the day, people tried (and failed) to use GameShark hacks to accomplish exactly what you describe. Must be the case. I can't recreate it poking around in memory to increase Seifer's various stats (level, number of kills), apologies for my earlier post.
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Dec 10, 2014 19:26
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Vil posted:All playable characters I'm thinking by "second limit" the poster meant "second finishing move," which does exist. That said, everything I read indicates it's impossible. But let's be fair here - anyone who grinds on those screens for 15 hours is bound to start hallucinating. I mean, drat  e: CIA document time Psion fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 19:34
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Cool Ghost posted:[b]Selphie[/b: Has everyone equipped a GF? You haven't forgotten... Have you...? There's a small broken tag here! Anyway, Selphie seems like a pretty interesting character so far, and she's looks like she's contrasting with everyone else, particularly Squall.  I've never played VIII before, so it's really nice to see a LP on it. Cool Ghost, I'm not sure if you've mentioned this yet, but what are your feelings on this game overall? A flawed game with some interesting concepts?
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Dec 10, 2014 22:45
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Booky posted:There's a small broken tag here! Thank you for pointing out the broken tag, I've now fixed it. As for the game, I like it pretty well. I think a lot of the experimental design (like junctions) needed polish and deserve to be revisited. With regard to the story, I don't think it's as bad as a lot of people make it out to be, and I like most of the characters. There's a couple things that aren't great, but it's good enough.
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Dec 10, 2014 23:38
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tonberrytoby posted:Selphie is a lot like Yuffi from FF7. The fact that Selphie seems like a really good character is more of an reflection on the rest of the cast. No, this is so wrong. But that's for later.
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Dec 11, 2014 03:39
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I think that it does both games a disservice to compare FFVII and VIII, honestly.
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Dec 11, 2014 04:10
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I agree. This game doesn't feel like a Final Fantasy. It was a bold attempt to take the series in a new direction. I mean, it failed on several fronts, but they could have given it another name and not missed a beat. And comparing it to former games when it's incredibly obvious when the designers wanted to distance themselves from the past games (in all but name) makes it harder to judge on its merits.
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Dec 11, 2014 04:23
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:when it's incredibly obvious when the designers wanted to distance themselves from the past games I wouldn't go nearly that far. The way the story is told (not the storyline itself, but the means used to tell it) is directly built on techniques used in VII, and there's never been a FF game that used the same mechanical means of improvement as the one that went before. Indeed, until FF5, they'd never repeated a system, and even when they do, the details are very different (III, V, X-2, and III) all use the same basic job system, but the details are quite different.
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Dec 11, 2014 08:33
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I think it was bold of them to move away from the mp system but its clear they didn't notice the fatal flaw of the junctioning system, there is no reason to ever use magic. It's a shame because the mp system was a relic and on a conceptual level the idea of infusing characters with magical power is interesting.
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Dec 11, 2014 12:39
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I think they expected people to think along the lines of "Use a little magic to take down powerful enemies faster but sacrifice some strength in the process" or something but it kinda fell flat when auto-attacks were just as or more powerful than magic.
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Dec 11, 2014 17:03
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ZevGun posted:Must be the case. I can't recreate it poking around in memory to increase Seifer's various stats (level, number of kills), apologies for my earlier post. Well, limit unlocks are stored in their own little batch of memory; I want to say it's between character/GF stats and the inventory, but can't be hosed to check my notes from 10 years ago when I was more into these things. Except Squall, who has no overt limit unlocks, and it's literally a dependent calculation based on his currently equipped weapon. That said, if Seifer did work as you described then raising his level (well, raising his experience - level is also a dependent calculation) would probably be the way to go. The game's remarkably clean about how it stores things, and you don't have both an independent and a dependent variable stored separately in the permanent save-able memory. Non sequitur, but one of Cool Ghost's previous posts said GFs required 500 experience to level. As a minor nitpick, that's true for most of them, but there are four exceptions: three (the one with the shittiest damage and the two that don't do damage at all) require 400 experience to level, one (the Super Secret Optional One With A Long Animation And Highest Damage) requires 1000 like a character does.
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Dec 11, 2014 17:20
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Vil posted:Non sequitur, but one of Cool Ghost's previous posts said GFs required 500 experience to level. As a minor nitpick, that's true for most of them, but there are four exceptions: three (the one with the shittiest damage and the two that don't do damage at all) require 400 experience to level, one (the Super Secret Optional One With A Long Animation And Highest Damage) requires 1000 like a character does. I knew about the one taking more, and was just going to mention it when we got there, but I didn't know about the other three, thanks.
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Dec 11, 2014 17:49
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Foxhound posted:I think they expected people to think along the lines of "Use a little magic to take down powerful enemies faster but sacrifice some strength in the process" or something but it kinda fell flat when auto-attacks were just as or more powerful than magic. For magic, casting vs junctioning is a good idea, and it is implemented well enough (it is not more tedious just from button presses alone to cast stuff than to junction it, for example), but there are so many other things that work against magic: - Drawing is tedious, so if you rely on that to get your stats up, you will value that 1 Fire far more highly. - If you do figure out Refining, the value of one spell plummets so much that the choice between stats and casts vanishes completely. - Still, a "balanced" mix between refining the odd magic crystal drop, leftover card you don't need anymore and draws to top you off is probably The Way It's Meant To Be Played, and this "knows how the game works, but not enough to murder it" thin line for a player is what the game relies on too heavily in almost all of its design. - As soon as you figure out even one "trick" like wooo 100 Water for 5 minutes of work, you will practically never be in a situation where you have, say, 66 Fire on Str and go "okay whatever, that one cast won't kill me". Players will get 100 junctions easily through the multiples the game offers and never cast poo poo because afterwards it's not at the maximum, and that's terribly important for the target audience. Squall himself also falls into the trap of only being an enjoyable character if the player has a very specific mindset: you need to not hate him from the get-go (and, let's face it, there are a lot of different reasons to - maybe irrationally - hate him, even if you reading this don't), but he is obviously meant to be a flawed character, so you also need to see the flaws to understand him correctly and appreciate his later development. The opposite is true for Zell: he is written and treated by the plot as somewhat of a doofus, a comic relief more often than not and I think they want you to only see him as that, checking off a bullet-point list like: - hot dogs - skateboard - SCROOGE Hoping fervently that you'll find this stupid (in contrast to Squall who is ~professional~), but endearing enough to wait for his later development into someone that tones it down a little, like Tidus and/or Wakka. Judging from the discussion here, however, you either hate his guts because his mannerisms are surpremely annoying to you, or you (like me) love him for being far more competent than the game is willing to acknowledge.
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Dec 11, 2014 18:03
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The problem with the junction system is that even if you don't know about the tricks to break the game, it can still get extremely easy later on if you have a functional brain. I didn't play the card game at all on my first time through the game, and by the end of it I was still ridiculously overpowered through a mixture of drawing and just refining the cards I got as part of the story. Squall with auto-haste and Hastega junctioned to speed and then some powerful spell(Meteor maybe?) junctioned to strength was just chopping through people with no real effort, doing huge damage each hit and hitting 4 or more times for every turn the enemy got. Up until that point I did stumble through the game more or less how the designers probably wanted you to, using GF summons, occasionally portioning out my magic when needed, etc.
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Dec 11, 2014 18:17
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Then there are those of use with RPG Hoarder Syndrome, who refused to refine any cards or items, excepting only the ones that you had to in order to upgrade weapons.
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Dec 11, 2014 18:27
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I'd use magic from a stack of hundred (you can always refine more!), but it's so very rarely useful. Unless you're hitting an elemental weakness, physical attacks basically always do more damage than magic.
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Dec 11, 2014 18:37
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Kheldarn posted:Then there are those of use with RPG Hoarder Syndrome, who refused to refine any cards or items, excepting only the ones that you had to in order to upgrade weapons. I RPG hoard like the best of them, but I never had any problems refining my cards. At least the common monster ones you can get back after a few matches. That said, I didn't understand which cards I should be refining until my second or third playthrough when I went out of my way to figure out what each card's item was good for.
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Dec 11, 2014 18:50
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I thought there was a FFVIII goodstuff LP that showed off the card game a lot and how to optomize that. Was it any of the ones that aren't on lparchive anymore?
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Dec 12, 2014 00:14
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Kajeesus posted:I'd use magic from a stack of hundred (you can always refine more!), but it's so very rarely useful. Unless you're hitting an elemental weakness, physical attacks basically always do more damage than magic. And if you want to exploit an elemental weakness, you just use Elem-Atk-J.
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Dec 12, 2014 00:19
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ZevGun posted:I RPG hoard like the best of them, but I never had any problems refining my cards. At least the common monster ones you can get back after a few matches. That said, I didn't understand which cards I should be refining until my second or third playthrough when I went out of my way to figure out what each card's item was good for. Not just the monster cards, but you can win back virtually any card (only one exception) from players much later on. Given that you can only play 5 cards at a time and it's VERY easy to make a 5-card set that's unbeatable barring specific gently caress-you-over rules, you can just keep a few high-end cards to actually play with, card mod basically every other rare card in the game ASAP, then just fix your collection much later in the game. If you want to absolutely shatter FF8's difficulty curve, this is the way to do it. As fun as it is to play, the FF8 card game has the sad flaw that no opponent will ever, at any point, have a deck that can come anywhere close to yours.
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Dec 12, 2014 03:48
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Can you get Malboro cards from someone in Balmb Garden? I've always viewed Bad Breath as kind of a precursor to Doomtrain. (I'm not sure all of that needs to be spoilered but figured better to be safe.)
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Dec 12, 2014 07:51
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Oh, sweet! I had this game, but the first disk was broken so it always froze in the middle of an FMV right after the exam. It'll be pretty cool to see anything that happens after you actually make SeeD.
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Dec 12, 2014 07:55
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nunsexmonkrock posted:Can you get Malboro cards from someone in Balmb Garden? I've always viewed Bad Breath as kind of a precursor to Doomtrain. I'm... preeeeeetty sure you can, yeah. Been a long time though, so could be wrong. Most likely from the gatekeeper dude (I forget if we've played them so tag) though; they're basically the best player in Balamb/Garden. Although.... MagusofStars posted:As fun as it is to play, the FF8 card game has the sad flaw that no opponent will ever, at any point, have a deck that can come anywhere close to yours. That is 100% true. CmdrKing fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Dec 12, 2014 |
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Dec 12, 2014 08:27
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Karia posted:Oh, sweet! I had this game, but the first disk was broken so it always froze in the middle of an FMV right after the exam. It'll be pretty cool to see anything that happens after you actually make SeeD. Prepare to be disappointed
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Dec 12, 2014 11:16
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