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I'm not the biggest fan of FF8, but it's a fascinating mess of a game to me. My first playthrough was back when me and a buddy were going through all the FFs, and he was both into breaking games and following optimal strategies, so he had a guide open and we just broke everything. It was hilarious, but it also showed how much story we thought was stupid there actually is, and how little game you have to play - Enc-None is optional, so we put that on immediately, and then it's just running from boss to boss and playing cards. And there's not even that many bosses! I often wonder how the game was actually meant to be played. Full on 3k life from the start and limit spam with 100+ Str can't have been the intention, right? Some designer must have thought "okay, at this part of the game, the party will reach the threshold for the enemies getting better spells to draw, so we outfit these dudes with Firaga and those ones with Meteo..." etc But I don't know what that "intended" way might be. How often would you play cards? Which abilities would you get, when would you start refining?
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Feb 16, 2022 13:57
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| # ¿ Sep 20, 2024 14:01 |
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zedprime posted:You can sort of see the degree of tacked on mechanic with the different forms of draw and refining. Magic is originally gated by enemy level, enemy presence, and map draw points. If you play no refine conduct, you're generally going to be fine just drawing what's in front of you and the game is at it's most balanced this way, sort of, arguably. Item refine still gives a degree of gating by presence, although it's obviously a little less thought through considering early access to big refiner payoffs like tents. Card refine guts the whole system and let's you get end game magic a couple hours in. Yeah, I think "just" not refining might make the game play more smoothly instead of going full challenge and/or "I have no idea what I'm doing" run. Another idea I had is not changing the order GFs learn abilities, so you'll actually have to fight a bunch before you get the crazy stuff. Another mechanic I was wondering about is all the GF stuff, with compatibility and such - it seems completely superfluous. Maybe it'd be fun to explore that a little as well. Get some mileage out of those cool animations.
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Feb 16, 2022 14:46
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I'm the kind of weirdo who plays these games to poke at the combat and character building systems so FF8 breaking so easily and simply never gelled with me. I think ignoring refine is a good first step to make it a bit more varied and interesting. Maybe I will replay it at some point with that in mind!
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Feb 16, 2022 15:15
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Big part of breaking is abusing the fact that you can keep cycling through your characters' turns until they get a Limit break, and they can always be in limit range because you can pump their max HP and blind Squall without consequence. Then use multi-hit limits with your absurd strength from modding and refining (see above) and the game can't do poo poo to stop you anymore
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Feb 16, 2022 19:16
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