Final Fantasy VIII - A Different kind of Final Fantasy

              Recently, I noticed RPGs are the largest chunk of all the games I play. This is not restricted to any one kind but represents a broad mix from western to Japanese and everything in the middle. I have also started way more games than I should have. Today, I started one more, Final Fantasy VIII. It is not the first time I have played this game, but I never get past the first hour or two. Hopefully, I will be able to finish it this time. The Steam version comes with built in cheats which can be turned on and off. I figure if I have to brute force my way past a particularly tough part, those should help.

The graphics go from this…

              Of all the JRPG series, Final Fantasy is the one I am most familiar with. It is the most famous outside of Japan. FF VII was the first role playing game I played seriously, FFX was the first one I bought, and FFVI was the first one I finished multiple times. Final Fantasy VIII is probably the one I have tried and failed to play more times than any other game.

              FFVIII came right in the middle of one of the most successful periods of Square. They were churning out a game a year. It was the middle game of the three on Playstation. In a way it became a middle child of the series. Final Fantasy VII made RPGs popular in North America, IX was a throwback to the SNES era Final Fantasy. But VIII was different. Grinding made it harder, magic spells had to be extracted from the enemies. There were guardians and Junctions and tutorials. For the people who had fallen in love with VII, this was a bridge too far. It was not well liked by the new fans who wanted more Cloud and materia.

              The ones who liked FFVIII, really loved it. To this day it has its defenders. They will take every opportunity to let everyone know how much better it is. Mechanically it feels complicated, but that just means there are more opportunities to figure out builds that break the game in the most fun way possible.

…To this!

              The magic consists of spells that need to be stolen from the enemy. The players can store these and use them at a later time. Anyone can use the spells as long as they have loaded up the Magic option to their menu. Attack is the default option, but each player can choose between Magic, Draw, Item, GF, etc. The Guardian Forces or GFs are the summons here, but they also need to be equipped to allow the character to truly customize with all the other options. Different spells can also be equipped or Junctioned to the character to get attack and defense boosts. It all sounds complicated, but after having seen those tutorials multiple times, I am getting the hang of it.

Since the enemies scale with the player levels, grinding actually makes the game tougher. This is different from all the other ones where player can always grind to make the game easier. AP is more important here and overall getting more EXP is actually worse. With AP the guardian abilities can be upgraded, but EXP levels up the player characters which consequently means enemies are stronger as well.

The cheats in the Steam version allow the players to hit harder, or max out, etc. I wish there was a no encounter cheat also because my tolerance for random encounters is not what it used to be. Walking five steps only to see the screen tear up and then a slow pan into the battle tends to get aggravating pretty quickly. The battles also seem slow as well. Especially when compared to the ones in Persona 4 and 5. Some of it is probably because Playstation would have a hard time loading everything quickly. That may be why there were so many slow pans into the fights.

The graphics are nothing to write home about, but they still seem to be better than the original Playstation version. The beginning looks absolutely gorgeous. I think it was an FMV in the original. There is a song playing over a dramatic looking fight between Seifer and Squall, which ends with Seifer giving him a scar across the face. Squall then wake up in the infirmary bed (and the graphics take a major. The doctor is annoyed, they took the training to far but relieved he will be ok. Although the scar is not going away an time soon. She calls Quistis, the instructor, to come take her student away.

This is definitely going to lead up to Ifrit

Quistis is a remarkably patient and overly friendly teacher. I wonder how her relationship with Squall will pan out in the game. There is definitely one other mysterious girl we saw while Squall was in the infirmary. Nobody else seems to know who she was and there is a distinct possibility Squall is just hallucinating from the brain damage he took at the hands of Siefer. Regardless, there is an exam coming up and we have more important things to worry about.

The story so far (as I have understood it) revolves around cadets at a military academy. All of these students are training to become soldiers. Both Squall and Siefer have advanced far enough to take their final exam which will make them proper soldiers in this school’s private army. Before Squall can go take the exam, he does have to visit one of the caves full of monsters and complete a test battle in there. He was going to go earlier today but got tangled up with Siefer and ended in the hospital. Quistis offers to accompany him and evaluate his visit. This is the tutorial section of the game. She will go over multiple different combat related tutorials as we fight Ifrit. Once beaten Ifrit is too embarrassed to live freely and decides to join Squall. After completing the pre-requisite battle, Squall is almost ready to go take his final SeeD exam. All he has to do is change into his uniforms. He just has to go find Quistis and ask about his assignment.

Like I said before, I did not have as much trouble with the tutorials this time around. Most of the Junction related things are not too hard to understand. Levelling up the GFs is simpler than I imagined as well. It reminded me of Espers from Final Fantasy VI.

I am looking forward to finally playing this game past the first two hours. It has been the most divisive game in the series. I have bounced off of it enough times to know all the things players do not like about it (too many tutorial, no MP for magic, GFs ruin the games, etc.). What I want to know is why it is loved by so many other players. This was the one Square experimented with the most, and I would love to see what they got right.

And maybe if I finish this one, then I can also play IX which I have never even attempted to play.

01-11-21

There is definite improvement over the original