I would like to wax eloquent for a while about Final Fantasy VIII, but alas; I am preparing for a lengthy trip to New York City and am much too busy packing and such to gush about a video game, even one that I love without reservation despite (and, in some cases, because of) its flaws. Dry those bitter tears, though, because the other Jeremy does a fine job of picking up my slack.
If I don’t post for a few days, don’t take it personally. I’ll be traveling, so any absence can probably be chalked up to TSA touching my junk and me dying of embarrassment.
Wow, I never realized FFVIII was so awesome. I’ll probably download it on PSN when I get a PSP, it’ll be easier for me to play the game on the go.
God, I loved this game so much, and miss it’s golden days. Though, not so much my first playthrough, in which I tried to power level with minimal drawing, and ended up turning every random encounter into a boss fight… made for it by delightfully breaking the game on the 2nd play through. It’s too impossible to talk about all the awesome things I loved about this game. I’m happy that at least here, it avoids the hate it gets many other places.
I had never thought to make the comparison to the early SaGa games, but that’s an interesting way to look at it. If only Final Fantasy 8 had cutscenes no longer than the ones in Final Fantasy Legend 2, it would be just as infinitely replayable.
There’s so much I hate about FFVIII. The characters are terrible, the storyline even worse and the levelling up and skill system is buried in menus and hard to comprehend. However for some reason I have to admit I still enjoyed the game immensely. It looked gorgeous as well and had that soundtrack. I enjoyed it even more the second time through after I had grasped how the combat and levelling system worked and realised how easy it was to break the game.
Justread the article and have to disagree with the translation being good. It was awful with classics like ‘Sup Squall. Fushin gonna treat you ok’ as a treat amongst others. It was fairly awful.
I think by ‘good’ he means ‘not full of mistakes’ (like FFVII).
Suppose so but it’s still a bit of a turd and badly done.
We all have fond memories of FFVII (well, most people), but we can also all agree that it’s deeply flawed.
FFVIII, on the other hand, is clearly the best FF out of the three for PS1 (not including Tactics).
The story manages to be the same as that of VI and VII, but the environment in which it’s set is much more consistent. It also makes it much more gloomy than most FF games, too. But it works.
I kinda feel bad for the parents of the people who can’t figure out the Junction system. This game was my bitch when I was in the 4th grade, and I was no child genius.
(At the time, I didn’t understand how I was exploiting it, I just thought the game was easy)
Always found FFIX the best for me. It felt the most complete and less flawed. FFVII and VIII always seemed a bit half finished.
With regards the difficulty I didn’t have much problems with it. When I didn’t understand the battle system I was using Summons all the time and it was a breeze even though I had to sit through the animations all the time. Eventually hit a bump in the road fighting the sorcoress on the space station where area effect spells would mean failing the game. It was the point I got really stuck but it also made me investigate the menues and figure out how everything worked.
Breezed through the rest of the game then until I got to the final boss. Was severely underlevelled since I hadn’t been abusing the game system for so long even though I was on level 99, I hadn’t much magic to junction. Cue an Epic 2+ hour boss fight of me abusing triple meteor to do paltry damage to the boss. Managed it in the end at least!
Don’t feel bad Mr Parish, I think you have written more in defense of FF8 than anyone else. I also find myself defending the game, which I enjoyed, though I thought it dragged in the middle, right before you stumble onto the big futuristic city.
There are definitely things to like in this game, though back in the day I had a hard time forgiving it for forcing me into ‘Hard Mode’ when I more or less accidentally hit Lv99 in the process of hunting ingredients for the ultimate weapons. I appreciate games systems that give you ways to excel with little or no grinding, but on the other side of the coin I don’t appreciate being *punished* for grinding. Ah well.
Had I infinite time, I’d be tempted to go back and break the game from the start. I’m sure I could have fun doing that, but I have a lot of other things to play…
Ah FF8. A game so bad I became a JRPG hating troll for quite some time. Of course when titles like Planescape Torment and Fallout 2 were out in the same rough timeframe it sort of makes everything in the same genre look weak.
I hated the story, loathed the main characters, and found the junction system to be terrible & slow. Add in the game’s refusal to let you skip watching the long summon animations and we had a big old failure.
(I can’t play early Super Robot Wars games for that reason. The exact same minute long animations that you see hundreds of times. Thank you to games like the Wii Fire Emblem or the Advance Wars games that let you skip that malarkey and just see the results instantly!)
If it wasn’t for Quistis I probably would have given up much sooner.
Another thing I note is the game has level scaling. I have yet to find an RPG with level scaling that has genuinely been fun. FF8 fails with it. Oblivion failed with it. Wizardry 8 was utterly KILLED by it.
It makes me wonder why developers keep trying to scale encounters to level (and in party games its always your almost never removed main character it goes by..) when it always turns out to be an unmitigated disaster?
The PS1 Lunar remake is the only one where the scaling didn’t kill things. As it was REALLY limited. It just managed to ruin the last few boss fights into hour long battles of TEDIUM. (Sort of like the fights in SRT Endless Frontier only lots longer and a few 100 less button presses.)
….but you’ve been able to skip animations in SRW since Alpha, at least. I think maybe A had unskippable animations, but not the PSP rerelease and why would you play normal A now anyway. Unless you’re still playing SRW3 the complaint is kind of…weird.
I liked this game.. though I was playing the utterly woeful PC port. You still had to select a slot to save your game to… I think I got about half way through disc 3 before giving up, that was enough for me. Which makes this one the FF that I’ve played the most of! Of course, being in Australia means the first one ever to land here was FF7 and I never had a PSX, so.. yea.