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Thanks a ton to Boardroom Jimmy and ultrafilter for helping me to find this. FFVIII is...it's the worst FF ever, in my humble opinion. That doesn't mean it is completely without good features. There are several things I like about it and I am glad to see someone daring to undertake this mess. But man oh man, even by JRPG standards, the beginning is slow and boring. I find this a very common trait in JRPGs because the first hour or two is the most basic character establishment and worldbuilding. It simply informs you of the most mundane and uninteresting poo poo. Maybe it was cool the first time around but on a second playthrough I just want to skip through all of it and get to the big plot reveals and the like. But in FFIV you had fighting some monsters on an airship after you attacked a town and stole their magic stone. Then the king immediately sends you out and you burn down another town. FFVI saw you playing as the invaders in a small town, kinda like if it had been playable when Dark Knight Cecil attacked Mysidia FFVII had you frickin' terrorist bombing a reactor. FFVIII? Stand in line for hotdogs and go to the library and play some card games. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Nov 29, 2014 |
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Nov 29, 2014 00:10
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Nihilarian posted:This is also why Squall's gunblade is actually better than Lightning's. And Seifer's is better than both of theirs.  I mean, I tend to prefer revolvers over pistols, but something about Seifer's just looks cooler to me. Maybe it's the way he holds it.
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Dec 1, 2014 23:40
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Silegna posted:Then...what. How in the world did he go from writing FF7 to...this? He didn't write VII on his own. He had a couple helpers. A bloke named Kitase and one or two others. Of course, FFX is still much better written than VIII. How did he screw up so badly between VII and X? Maybe time limitations? The game does feel rushed at points and I know of at least one somewhat large plot point they started to elude to and then just dropped. As for "a different team wrote each disk", do you know what game was actually the culmination of several people writing each area? Or "era" would perhaps be the better word? Chrono Trigger, everyone's beloved SNES JRPG. I forget the exact order but the point is that each segment of the game was handled by someone else. Yet it all seems to come together. And then there's FFVIII, all done by one guy, and it has a ton of crap that feels disjointed and just kind of crammed together. In short, it feels more like a team effort than Trigger does.
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Dec 6, 2014 03:26
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The topic of "why the hell is Seifer put in charge when he's a known gently caress-up?" has been brought up several times on this forum since I joined. My favorite answer is that it was a challenge to his Squad mates. Sometimes you are going to get a not-so-good commander you are going to want to contradict and maybe even abandon. Seifer is a good test of character and discipline.
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Dec 6, 2014 15:24
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I do seem to recall one of the NPCs you can talk to before getting on the ship specifically notes that your squad is the "Problem Team." I suppose it makes sense it was a test for everyone involved since Seifer's, Squall's and Zell's personalities all clash so heavily.
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Dec 6, 2014 16:02
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Seifer is 18 to Squall's 17. I don't think it takes much imagination to make an educated guess about why Seifer might have taken the test several times while this is Squall's first attempt. Seifer is quite a bit more enthusiastic than Squall about this whole Mercenary Thing and probably jumped at the first chance he got to try and take the SeeD Exam while Squall easily could have put it off until he had no choice but to do it or it was expected of him to at least try it. Or, if you want to be nicer to Squall, maybe he was just being more prudent and held off on trying until he felt reasonably confident he would succeed whereas Seifer would have taken the test the first chance he got, even if he wasn't fully prepared. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Dec 6, 2014 |
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Dec 6, 2014 20:57
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There's a scene coming up that kind of addresses your question about if Squall and Seifer harbor any hostile feelings towards each other.
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Dec 6, 2014 21:23
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All Tidus wanted to do was play blitzball and bang groupies.
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Dec 7, 2014 07:53
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Cool Ghost posted:
drat right he is. Also this post has been answered now: Kajeesus posted:I don't know if this is mentioned anywhere, but do Squall and Seifer actually harbor any hostile feelings towards each other? Everyone assumes Squall is mad about Seifer cheating during their sparring match, and Seifer does occasionally put Squall down, but they obviously decided to spar together, and notice that Squall complained about Zell, and both Zell and Quistis were unhappy with Seifer, but Squall never said (or thought!) he had any issues being on Seifer's team. Seifer and Squall have a complicated relationship built around mutual respect it seems. They are complete opposites in most ways but they're true rivals in that they don't really seem to dislike one another at all. So they clash the way two dissimilar people would but there's no enmity there. Honestly, I would say Seifer and Squall's dichotomy is one of the few well-done aspects when it comes to the game's writing.
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Dec 9, 2014 10:41
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: More fun for us. Come on....
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Simply Simon posted:Zell is one of only two good characters in your party because he's a moron like everybody else on the entire planet but not a total loving rear end in a top hat about it. Also, as we're going to see during the course of the LP, he and the other good character are the only persons who actually get things done competently at all. Squall not being an rear end in a top hat is a new interpretation. Also I'd say Seifer is about as competent as one can expect. Admittedly he has very little in the way of competition in this game.
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Dec 9, 2014 19:38
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Vil posted:Zantetsuken? Leaving that untranslated was a smart move because Zantetsuken is a name. It's apparently a hodgepodge of words (as are a lot of names in these Japanese things) but it sounds cool. Separating the words and translating them is kinda loving up the name I figured. FF7 translated it and Odin was attacking with "Steel Bladed Sword" which I think is close to what Zantetsuken translates to (not exactly though...I forget. I looked it up ages ago) Point is, it sounds kinda dumb compared to Zantetsuken.
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Dec 15, 2014 00:07
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Schwartzcough posted:Seifer is easily the best-handled character in this game. I know that's damning with faint praise, but still true. So true. And no wonder Seifer has a ton of issues, one of his professors essentially just said "you're a failure, Seifer. Saying you'll pass is a joke." What a fine academy they have here. Vil posted:Another subtle detail, which doesn't come through in SSLP format, is that between Xu's burn on Seifer and Cid getting his attention by addressing him, he's shaking. His polygon model actually quivers slightly. This isn't a graphical artifact, it's meant to subtly express his emotional state there. Shaking with anger or is he actually maybe kinda, well, not crying exactly but something close? Or both?
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Dec 19, 2014 09:14
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I hate FFVIII as much as the next guy but Rinoa was never that bad to me. She's flawed but it's intentional so it doesn't bother me much.. Her relevance to the plot makes me forgive her more than say, Zell, who does not need to be there.. Rinoa has a justification to exist, Zell does not.
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Dec 30, 2014 21:26
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ultrafilter posted:Quistis was always my favorite. I wish she'd gotten a more satisfying arc. I noticed this on my last run of FFVIII, where I was playing with a mod to make it harder, Quistis has a lot more character grwoth than you might think. You just need to have her in your party for certain bits. I usually used Selphie and she didn't say poo poo but Quistis gets a ton of extra dialogue. ApplesandOranges posted:I can't completely dislike her though, because I really dig that outfit design. Sure it's impractical combat wise (a cape and shorts?) but from an aesthetics point of view it flows really well. Rinoa's competition include Tifa, Garnet and Yuna, so practicality is hardly an issue. It's just about what looks best and out of those four, I honestly think Rinoa has the best design. I've always loved her look. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Dec 31, 2014 |
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Dec 31, 2014 16:26
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Seifer just proved why he should be the hero of the story.
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Jan 16, 2015 06:30
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The FFVIII Datalog is depressingly sparse. Considering all the world and lore they tried to establish, most of the entries are like, a couple sentences from what I recall. Really bland, simplistic and short sentences too.
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Jan 30, 2015 07:38
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Well with the Three Stooges dead maybe we can get back to the riveting action of FFVIII.
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Feb 8, 2015 15:21
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HOLY poo poo SQUALL IS INSANE! Let's never speak of this again. That really always bugged me, how Squall had a clear little breakdown there and no one will ever comment on it ever again and just act like it didn't happen. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Feb 18, 2015 |
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Feb 18, 2015 03:09
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CmdrKing posted:As goddamned stupid as The Plan is, it does ultimately lead to two of my favorite moments for Squall, so I just can't mock it with the gusto it deserves. Yes, Rinoa is not an easy character to like and the fact a lot of people interpret her as merely a spoiled brat doesn't do her any favors. Even if she was the Worst Rebel Ever before this, people could respect she was fighting a dictatorship. After Deling City and learning who her father is, people start to think her noble rebelling was just plain teenage rebelling. Me personally I think it's a little from Column A and a little from Column B. But then again, I'm one of the weirdos who doesn't hate her guts.
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Mar 14, 2015 23:42
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I'd say the entire cast has maturity issues, localization or not. It's not like Zell and Selphie act all ADULT compared to Rinoa. And Squall being sullen and introverted doesn't mean he's exactly mature.
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Mar 15, 2015 01:33
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Schwartzcough posted:I think it's hard for the audience to take her for a "real" rebel, because her dad doesn't. He's a general in the Galbadian army, he knows his daughter is the leader of a rebel group, and he treats it like mild teenage rebelliousness. I mean, sure, you can have family members on different sides of a conflict- but it's not even treated as a big deal here. She still lives with him, and she's not even put on house arrest for trying to kidnap the president. If she were serious about opposing Galbadia, she probably won't be living peacefully with a general in their military. You have a strange definition of "peacefully." Sure they aren't shooting at each other but their relationship is severely strained to say the least. Also given that Rinoa is working for the Forest Owls, her dad has every reason to treat her rebelliousness as a joke. Zone and Watts are the real deal, fighting to avenge their murdered fathers, but that doesn't mean the general of one of the world's superpowers wouldn't laugh at them just as easily as the Fake President did.
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Mar 15, 2015 02:00
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With each new post about how stupid this plan is I become more and more depressed that the earlier idea of Barret as a SeeD isn't what we really got. I mean, the game tries to pretty it up, but SeeDs are basically mercenaries. Mercenaries can do some pretty ugly poo poo, which makes sense since they are soldiers who serve, not to protect their nation or ideology, but to get a big, fat paycheck. Anyway my point is that mercs setting off a giant bomb to assassinate an ambassador would be pretty sensible and something I'd expect. It's also not something she can easily avoid with magic powers.
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Mar 16, 2015 23:32
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e: gently caress, nevermind. The link to the mod for this game contains spoilers....dammit. Well my post was just saying this LP has made me want to play FFVIII again and I was gonna play a mod called Final Fantasy VIII Requiem. You can easily find it on Google if you care to try it. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 00:30
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https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6VYabIvxqaYcURyb180bXJWMTg/view?usp=sharing Just figured I'd host the FFVIII Mod I was recommending somewhere else, that way spoilers can be avoided. I've talked about the mod on here before and some have said it sounds awful. But the only way I can play FFVIII anymore is with this mod. quote:The thing about the Requiem Mod is it actually makes it a necessity to utilize the game's various features. You could beat the game with ease in any number of ways in the original and that's precisely why I never had fun with it. Since you can break the game with minimal effort, actively learning about the game mechanics probably isn't going to happen. The mod though was so hard that you needed to understand how everything worked or you are screwed. I needed to learn about Triple Triad, I needed to learn about Crisis Levels, I needed to learn about what items refined into what, I needed to actually play the game instead of just coasting through it. I had a lot of fun with the refining system in particular, just figuring out what cards made what items and then these items can be changed into some other items and so-on. And a small sample of another poster's early run through the mod to give you a more clear idea of it: Doctor Goat posted:Characters now hit like pillows even with second tier magic on STR-J. 200 is my current limit on damage with Squall kitted out with 100 Thundara on his attack junction. Elem-ATK-J is negligible.
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Mar 17, 2015 03:37
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Well you know you'd have to play this on an emulator unless you're gonna burn it to disk like some sort of weirdo. My point being, since you'd be playing it on ePSXe or something, you have save states. You save state after the cutscene and before the hard boss. I think all mods and patches take the power of save states into consideration. Or they should anyway. Edit: Or wait, are you just saying the game is so bad that making the gameplay take longer in addition to the horrible story makes the game more unpleasant? Well...that's an interesting position I guess.
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Mar 17, 2015 05:06
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ApplesandOranges posted:I'll probably play it at some point, but making an entire game walls-hard isn't entirely appealing either; that's what put me off FF4DS. I'd be fine with having to use strategy and such for bosses, but if random encounters are going to be an absolute slog.... Not all Random Encounters are that tough. The Anacondaurs were the worst by far except for the Wendigos. After all, if REs were that much of a nightmare you would be screwed when you had to draw magic. And there are some spells you will absolutely need to draw, like Flare from a certain monster on Disk 2. A real lifesaver when I found it. Of course, it would have wrecked me if not for Status Junction and putting it to sleep. Which is just more of why I love the mod - the original game made a big deal out of Status Junction against T-Rexaurs when you can just annihilate them no problem with physical attacks like you can do with everything else. In the mod, being able to put enemies to sleep or blind them will be very, very useful at times. That all being said, there are some bosses in the mod that are just plain nightmares..... Don't forget about the Queen of Cards Sidequest! For the love of god you will need to do that as soon as possible and get Auto-Haste by refining...I think it was Kiros' Card? It turned into 3 Accelerators and you can teach a GF Auto-Haste with that. There is a boss in the mod that I died so many times to because I didn't do the Card Queen quest and didn't have Auto-Haste... And it wasn't even close. They would destroy my party repeatedly within the span of 2-5 minutes. But forget that, let's talk about the update. I'm gonna say I understand what Quistis was doing here. This doesn't make it not stupid but it does fit her character. The thing about Quistis is, unlike what a poster earlier said and what most others see in this scene, it wasn't just Quistis yelling at Rinoa for being a spoiled brat and dumb. Quistis was yelling at Rinoa because Rinoa is a romantic rival. We all know Quistis has a thing for Squall and we also have seen Rinoa attempting to be close to Squall. What's more - and this separates Rinoa from Quistis - Rinoa will not be denied. In spite of all the times Squall rebuffs her, Rinoa keeps trying to break through his icy exterior. Quistis has apparently all but given up after Squall mercilessly shot her down back at Balamb. The point is, Quistis did not snap at Rinoa because Rinoa was being "childish" or anything like that. She was just snapping at her perceived competition and someone she's a bit jealous of. And so naturally she feels bad about this and wants to say sorry, because Quistis is a good person. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Mar 17, 2015 |
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Mar 17, 2015 08:20
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Hey man! Don't talk poo poo about my Super Serious JRPG! Final Fantasy VIII is a classic; one of the best selling JRPGs of all time. Sure you laugh at them now but just you wait and see. If JRPG Stereotypes hold up, Squall and friends will end up murdering God. And then you'll look back at this incident and think "well, I guess they aren't as incompetent as I thought." Or maybe you'll just think God is even more incompetent....
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Mar 18, 2015 04:03
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Zeikier posted:I gave Requiem a shot and beat it a couple years ago. Its heart is in the right place, but the execution is full of holes. Bosses are exponentially stronger than your team, who have all been nerfed up to and especially their junctions/abilities (the game probably expects you to waste hours playing Triple Triad to minmax and stand a chance, which is personally fine cuz I don't mind grinding TT, but I also like not obsessively carding every monster and Requiem basically punishes you for getting a single experience point), a lot of handy abilities don't show up until several bosses after they'd be useful (particularly Auto-Shell and Auto-Protect iirc), and the nastier enemies are extremely resistant to status effects if not immune. All of what you say is true and I can't deny it. Some bosses do come down to luck and if their AI wants to be nice or not. Granted, this is true in a lot of games. The thing is, FFVIII is such a completely broken game, that you need to do more than Requiem did to make it both fun and challenging. Removing certain abilities, nerfing the stat boosts from Junctions, these were all good ideas but they're really just treating the symptoms instead of the disease. The "disease" is the fact FFVIII is such a mess that you'd have to retool it from the ground up. As far as I know, this has never been attempted or done. I don't know if it's a lack of effort on the modding community or if FFVIII is just harder to....do whatever modders do, but Final Fantasy VII for example has received many gameplay overhaul mods. But for FFVIII, Requiem is the best I've been able to find and, as you said, its heart was in the right place. I appreciate that fact and overlook a lot of its flaws because it actually did make FFVIII fun for me. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 18, 2015 22:50
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Well in the Requiem Mod Magic is actually the best way to deal damage. But your list of alterations is pretty good. What would you do with the level scaling system, though? The absolute dumbest thing about this game's mechanics was the idea of scaling enemies combined with the Junction System. In a game full of bad decisions, this one really sticks out to me. I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to use enemy level scaling in the one game where your stats aren't really determined by your level. So any sensible person stays at Level 20 but uses Junctions to give them stats like they're Level 100. And then they utterly obliterate all the Level 20 enemies they fight because the Level 20 Enemies think the party has Level 20 stats.
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Mar 18, 2015 23:15
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On my last FFVIII playthrough when using the Requiem mod, my game time was 120 hours. (that's not counting the many, MANY deaths which aren't factored into game time) I didn't leave for Timber until about 15 hours into the game. See, I had never seriously played Triple Triad before and I kinda got addicted. Probably about 10 hours of that 15 was me grinding TT cards. I'm not actually any good at the game mind you but I could BS my way to victory under normal rules. Mostly I was having fun learning about the different cards and what they could be modded into. In the normal ame I would have been loving invincible. It's so easy to get 100 Tornado's.
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Mar 19, 2015 01:04
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So I figure I've insulted FFVIII enough and I'd like to say something positive about it while it's on my mind. Remember when our heroes went to the Timber TV Station and Squall kinda bitched out Rinoa? Whoever your other party member is, they'll sidle on up to you and say "hey, you're being kind of an rear end in a top hat. Wanna lay off?" You can choose to apologize to Rinoa or continue to lay into her. Now FFVIII is no Western RPG but there is a surprising amount of dialogue choices in this game when compared to FFVII or FFIX. There will be some significant ones in the future and the reason i like these is because you can kinda make your own Squall. Everyone remembers his infamous "go talk to a wall" line to Quistis, and later on you have some dialogue options that are just as dickish, but I'm a nice guy and I always pick the Nice Guy Options when those dialogue choices come up. So I think of Squall Leonhart as more or less a nice guy, or at least he develops into one. That is just something neat I found myself enjoying last time I played the game. I think it might have to do with a fan theory I read on this very forum at some point in the past, about how Squall and Rinoa are the only party members you can name and the significance of this fact. The poster put forth the idea the two characters are self-inserts for people playing the game. So the reason Squall would get a relatively high amount of dialogue choices is so you can put more of "you" into your avatar. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Mar 19, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 10:09
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Cloud is kind of dying in Advent Children. Plus that little kid is also dying. I can understand being bummed because of these two facts. No idea what the gently caress is going on in Kingdom Hearts or Dissidia however.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:12
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Hey it's Seifer1 He's alive! What a shocking turn of events. But he's part of the evil sorceress evil parade? What kind of foul tomfoolery is afoot here?
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Mar 29, 2015 05:43
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In the Requiem Mod that Seifer fight is no joke. (yet another reason I love said mod) He casts Flare which WILL oneshot you unless you have Shell up. He's also ridiculously fast. Edea is a nightmare in her own right. She has Ultima and sometimes she likes to cast it twice in a row. Admittedly this only happened once which was lucky for me because I'd never have beaten her if she did that often. You cannot survive it twice in a row, it's impossible. "Premonition" is such an awesome theme though and that was a great fight to end the disk. Also quote:Looks like that day has come.
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Mar 31, 2015 03:46
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I want to remind everyone that Seifer stormed the TV Station in Timber when it was said our heroes couldn't do that. He's as much of a prodigy as Squall is. He's just an easy boss because...well, it's FFVIII and everything is too easy. Could have the most amazingly built up and well-written villain ever and you'd still beat them in one move.
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Mar 31, 2015 11:00
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I have maintained for many years Seifer is the best character in FFVIII. What everyone is talking about now is just one of the many reasons why this is true. Damning with faint praise perhaps but he's one of the few reasons I constantly come back to this game.
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Apr 2, 2015 17:54
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Blaze Dragon posted:The Seifer/Squall contrast is really well done, I find. Seifer definitely feels like he should be the hero before this, he's loud, driven and enthusiastic, while at the same time being rebellious, all characteristics usually given to heroes (the rebellious and loud parts being key in basically every manga/anime ever). Squall is silent, unfriendly, and overly harsh, not particularly heroic attributes (admittedly, his harshness is just as bad as Seifer's constant insults). Even their designs seem to be made for us to think of them as the opposite they are: Seifer is almost entirely in light colours (blond hair, white jacket) versus Squall's far darker scheme (brown hair, black clothes). Of course, the roles they take only make this even more obvious: the "Knight" that protects the sorceress (basically the princess here) entirely because of his own drive, versus the mercenary from a shady organization who only cares about the money. This will become even more obvious because of a later scene that everyone seems to be dying to talk about every time Seifer comes up and for drat good reason, but let's let the game follow its own (admittedly flawed) pace. Agreed. The contrast between Seifer and Squall is easily the best writing this game manages. It goes all the way from the superficial right down to their roles and development in the story. It helps that this is one of the few plot points the game sticks with. Most others are either brought up or dropped. Also I love this song. Rivals
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Apr 19, 2015 02:05
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Psion posted:I wonder if that was changed intentionally? I could see an argument going either way for it - but who even knows. Some people were pretty harsh on this game's translation over in the FF Megathread. Edea's Speech is supposed to be fairly different for example. Me? I don't have a problem with it. I like the translation overall and whether Rinoa is saying she still loves Seifer/that she doesn't still love him, it doesn't really matter because it's just another example of this game's hosed writing. (Seifer/Rinoa relationship goes nowhere and contributes nothing to the plot. SPOILER)
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Apr 28, 2015 01:59
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Vil posted:However, it's worth noting that if you send Rinoa to the missile base that there are a number of interesting scene variations worth watching. Which is what I did on my last run of the game. Far as I'm concerned, sending Rinoa on the Missile Base Team is the better option. I can't go into it now obviously but I prefer the scenes you are referring to here.
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Jun 26, 2015 19:46
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Senior Woodchuck posted:Yeah, pretty much. If you send Rinoa there she's like "Squall must truly hate me, which is why he sent me on this doomed mission." At least, pretty sure that's what she says... It's been a while.
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Jul 2, 2015 13:53
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