If it was a mission-based game with the garden as a HQ where you always return to, it would have been a lot better.
no
Objectively false. They already tried that with Type-0 and guess what? No one really liked it. Doesn't matter since this is obviously bait thread, not sure why I'm wasting my time with this shit I'm outta here.
>>736800227but then it wouldn't have been a final fantasy game, those games are about adventuring
>the guy sperging out about bait thinks a game that came out a decade later than the game in the OP is proof of anything
Agreed. Sailing around the overworld in the airship looking for the next event to advance the story was one of the worst things about the game and destroyed the pacing. It makes sense why they later removed the overworld entirely in X.
No way. Half the fun of FF8 is wandering around the open world and collecting rare materials to break the game.
>>736800227Probably. Make sure to tell Square Enix that for the remake. Changes like that should be what a Remake entails, not whatever slop Rebirth was.
>>736803809X was too linear. You just walk in a straight line the entire game. There's no sense of adventure, it's too curated.
>>736803809When a game gives you an Airship they low key telling to go exploring the world and not look for the next event. For example, getting the airship in FF8 let's you visit Shumi Village. It has an Ultima draw point which are great for every stat plus if you talk to the NPC there, you'll find even more evidence that Laguna is Squall's biological father.Also Rinoa is Ultimecia
>>736804094VIII is also linear, it's just that you have to waste time flying to the next story event instead of them all being connected.
>>736804184Just admit you didn't play thd game.
>>736800227If it didn't have the junction & draw system, enemy level scaling, shit cast, and shit story it would've been a lot better.
>>736800227The third disc is awful and I tired to pretend it's not.
>>736804329There is very little to do between advancing the story, unless you count brief little things like going to get Odin or playing cards. The overworld is empty as fuck compared to most other FFs and much of it is gated by story progression anyway.
>>736804439>There is very little to do between advancing the story, unless you count brief little things like going to get Odin or playing cards.Not true. The game has two optional dungeons and many secret bosses.https://jegged.com/Games/Final-Fantasy-VIII/Side-Quests/
>>736804331Junction and Draw system were great, the game just didn't explain it well enough. The characters and story are great too, the game is just a lot more subtle than other Final Fantasy games so it threw people off.
>>736804402Perhaps, but disk 1 is great. Might even be the best one.
>>736804024>mfw fucking car fuel returned as a big deal in FF15
It fumbled the ball after VII changing everything good from it
>>736804971drawing spells simply should have been faster by letting you get MORE spells per draw by default. as is entire thing is just busywork you need to sink time to get 99 spells.
>>736800227it's a perfect game, retarded retard
>>736804892To this day I have no idea how I did this shit as a kid. I have no memory whatsoever of it.
Junction system was the only real issue, and even then it only needs another pass, not scrapped entirely. Other than that the pacing is a bit weird but its a good game. Your idea is shit
>>736800227Remember, it canon.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa5gcYA8xf8
>>736800227Goddamn monhuntards trying to retroactively ruin games from before they were born.
>>736800227I just don't want to play cards. Let me play a jrpg.
>>736800227The "missions" are a lot more involved than a quick trip somewhere to kill a bad guy, and most of FF8 is just Squall and company doing whatever the fuck they want. No, it wouldn't be better as a mission-based game without heavy rewrites, and heavy rewrites could already make the game way better without turning it into Splinter Cell Blacklist.
>>736805681Not necessarily structure itself, but it simply needed a different kind of main story. CD1 anon above praises is basically a series of SEED missions you get sent on and it's the highlight of the game.
>>736804892They're integrated very poorly. 99% of the time you won't find them unless you're using a guide (in which case you didn't beat the game).
>>736800227absolutely I wouldn't have been. the whole gimmick would have gotten boring 3 missions in. the concept of final fantasy is going on a grand adventure across the world.
>>736804971>the game just didn't explain it well enoughThat's the least of its issues. They're great conceptually, but the game is completely unbalanced, so if you do understand the mechanics, the entire game is just an exercise in exploiting the systems to demolish everything with no restrictions whatsoever. It's like the mechanics were created in a vacuum and tacked onto a game that was created in a separate vacuum.
Remember that everything post Disc 1 is a fever dream by Squall being in his deathbed
just found my ps1 ff8 packagethis game just holds a special place in my heartalways will
>if thing was just (what I personally thought it was going to be from the first 5 minutes and nothing else) it would have been betterWhy are autists like this? Like, the incredibly dull idea guys who cannot allow anything to exist as window dressing without it consuming everything else. I see it for Fate all the time too
>>7368041848 is somewhat linear but has the best illusion of freedom and that choices matter in the series. it handles the party splitting better than any other jrpg i've played.
>>736805096Did anyone ever run out of gas in 15? I eventually got tired of driving around that I just fast traveled everywhere
KURSED SEED
>>736800227if the forced rinoa romance wasn't a thing it would have been a lot bettershould have gone to the moon to fight an evil sorceress
>>736804892FF8 quest are shit, they are obscure and give you terrible rewards.
>>736808169I'm not going to defend Potential Man idiots, but Fate/ Stay Night is a sort of Battle Royale situation where 7 teams are competing for the same thing and will probably kill each other to get it. It makes sense to want to see that and then get annoyed when it doesn't boil down to 7 teams all trying to kill each other, and some opposing team members fuck.
>>736800227>I wish FF8 was "Monster Hunter FF"No.I'll play Monster Hunter if I want that.
>>736800227>f it was a mission-based game with the garden as a HQ where you always return to, it would have been a lot better.Correct.Which is why FF Type-0, which does exactly that, is the best FF game to come out these past 20 years.
>>736804149>Rinoa is Ultimeciadeboonked fanfiction
>>736805183No.And "Draw" was simply one of three different options for garnering Magic spells. You never had to Draw even once, if you didn't want to.
>>736800227>if thing was completely different from what it is it would've been differentshocking analysis but that's what one expects from ff8 fags
>>736800227First disc may have been the peak of final fantasy. As awful as the homosexual FF8 contrarians are, I will always give them that. Shit game, stellar start.
>>736804149>Rinoa is UltimeciaSecretly official confirmed
>>736812035My uncle got molested by Hironobu Sakaguchi and he said this is canon.
>>736811556
>>736811942Absolutely. It felt like they went into it with a lot of the momentum to their back from FFVII, and then got tired like halfway through.
>>736800227Honestly, ff8 wasn't a bad game. It was just the first Final Fantasy title that wasn't at least as good or better than the previous one, so fans of the franchise were very disappointed.
>>736811556https://youtu.be/rKBe41CpptY?si=Q3HApRUlztkwLqRS&t=28
>First disc may have been the peak of final fantasy.Explain
>>736814595its just well made. good pacing, good hooks, good scenarios.
>>736814736>good pacingHow is it better paced than something like Midgar or the first world of V?
My only gripe is they added badass shit like rentable cars and then there’s basically nowhere to drive toXV had the same issue
>>736814959It also gives you an airship so early on that there's no reason to ever use the cars.
>>736814959Was this the first game that had a card game minigame? If so they kicked something off that's still added to games to this day.
>>736814817He's mentioning FF8's "first disc."You're mentioning FF7's "Midgar."The keyword action YOU are using is "better paced."Guess what? FF7's "first disc" is ends with Aeris' death at The Forgotton Capital after Meteor has already been summoned.You haveno ideawhat you're talking about.salt goes in all fields
I still feel like the intro to FF8 should have been that first SeeD mission. It was set up that way in the Parasite Eve FF8 Demo disc.
>>736815261You said "good pacing". I'm thinking in terms of playtime. FFVIII's first disc ends at the parade when Squall gets impaled with the ice spell. In terms of playtime that's about as long as Midgar because FFVIII has like 5x the amount of FMVs that VII had. V's first world is about as long.
>>736814595Only time I ever felt the characters were cool. I loved the intro setting. The start the story is easy to follow and the missions were well put together. The making of the plan and than following through was the basis of GTA V. FF8 was a decade ahead with doing that.Than you complete the big mission, get the twist, and the game that had been incredibly tight up to that point turns into a fever dream.
>>736815476>FFVIII's first disc ends at the parade when Squall gets impaled with the ice spell.And then he wakes up in a desert prison with no injury, no explanation of where it went and no mention of it ever again lmao.
>>736814817First world of FFV is my other competitor for #1, so maybe it is all about the pacing.Im just starting to loath the FFV fanbase so I hate to praise the game.
>>736815597>Only time I ever felt the characters were cool>Zell>cool>missions were well put together>a fucking train mission with riveting mechanics like "remember what order to push the face buttons in">turns into a fever dreamIt turns into a fucking slog where you're immediately hit by the prison area which is quite literally nothing but multiple floors of the exact same background where you run around in a giant circle on every floor. After this incredible piece of dungeon design the party immediately splits up and you have to do gimmicky shit in that desert base with Selphie's team. FFVIII is like a case study in wasting the player's time.
>>736800227Type-0 is like that and is garbage.
>>736800227It's still the second best FF.
>>736812158Wtf bro, uncles are supposed to be the ones doing the molesting
>>736803809Cringe.>>736804149Based until the fanfic at the end of your post.
>>736800227Main mission, kill Edea.Everything else is prep, intelligence gathering, budget and raising funds, soldiers training and weapons, planning, etc and YOU get to do it all, like Rainbow 6, but Final Fantasy mixed in. Actually sounds kinda fun.
>>736800227>be me>it's my annual attempt to replay ff8 for the first time since I was a child>get to Draw and Junction mechanics >turn off the game having remembered why I never want to play it again>wait until I forget so I can try again next yearIt's crazy. I still have fond memories of the characters and music but the gameplay is so aggressively dogshit that it's a total non starter.>b-but the card game!Nah, pass. That's worse and less fun than the draw/GF mechanics all on its own.
>>736815893Zell was by far my favourite character! I seriously feel you played this a decade after release a decade too old for it.Its not that you are wrong but if felt this way well playing it at age 13, your life must be absolutely awful!
>>736815686squall is in a coma and the events from that point onwards are part of his dream as he writhes in pain while in critical condition. the end
>>736808984>Centra Ruins/Odin/Tonberry>Doomtrain>Cactuar>Triple Triad>final weapons>Shumi Village>Deep Sea Research Center/Bahamut/Eden>Omega WeaponIt has some of the best content in the series along FFV, VI and VII
>>736801542And walking down corridors
>>73680409410....IS Tidus' story, says so at the start.Overall is a pilgrimage for Yuna to stop Sin, why SHOULD we be exploring?
>>736804892ADORED the Deep Sea Research Center as a kid, felt taken straight out of a Resident Evil game same as the underwater Junon reactor in VII.
>>736804094It's linear because it's literally a pilgrimage on a predetermined path. The adventure is discovering these places as Tidus. 13 is how you do that poorly.
>>736816421The point of draw is to balance your time performing it. Junction is literally just equipping, you’re seconds of away from calling Fortnite a masterpiece
>>736815686it's almost like curative magic and items exist commonplace in this world and literally nobody ever suffers a meaningful injury that Curaga won't deal withhe and Seifer both healed over giant fucking slashes across each other's face in the time frame of literally a morning (even if they scarred that was the SAME DAY as the Ifrit test)
>>736804331Those systems are lvdokino, thoughever. Junctioning is one of the coolest ideas I've seen in a game.
>>736816183https://youtube.com/shorts/R4F5cJhf3aY?si=SUc4_OVePraEPu09
>>736816732>giantNot deep though
>>736816442>I seriously feel you played this a decade after release a decade too old for it.True, I didn't play it as a kid and came at it with a full adult brain. I can see why a kid would think Zell is cool due to his hair, tattoos, and upbeat attitude, but I just found him annoying. If I had played it as a kid maybe I would have liked him more. I don't hate the game, the plot is cool as fuck (R=U is obviously intended) and so are the mechanics, I just think it has some serious problems, mainly with the pacing for me, that make it below average for an FF game overall.
>>736816747I forgot about the cards to! I didnt love it at the time but the best part of roeplays. Best minigame until the FF7 Remake DLC.
>>736815686You're a RETARD that for some REASON doesn't want to THINK for three SECONDS to realize in a world with MAGIC and shit like prisons drilled underground there could be as EASY an explanation as MAGIC healing him and not being indicative of a RETARDED THEORY about him being DEAD you dumb CUNT.
>>736816664More like the point is to WASTE my time performing it. I can replay every other game in the franchise up to about 12 with no issues, take your -oomer babyshit insults elsewhere because im old enough to be your dad. The mechanic is has been derided near-universally since the game came out and I can assure you that you dont have some magical level of insight that the literal majority of people that played it dont.
>>736800227I don't know why you'd bother to add structure to a story about a teenager falling deeper and deeper into psychosis while the world around him mirrors his mental state.Seems counterintuitive.
>>736816732They had shallow cuts across their brows that were healed with magic, not 5 inch diameter holes through their sholder/torso.Also, movie scene logic has never followed in-game logic. If someone is shot in the chest in a movie scene they are dead, whereas in a player battle you can have a giant sword the size of a tank cleave through you and only lose 10% hp.
>>736816421Imagine being filtered for 27 consecutive years.
>>736816874I did play it as a kid and I still rank it second last to 13. I just love that first disc, and talking to you help me figure out why. When FF is at its best its due to the pacing. I'd also never thought about it outside 5, 8, and BoF3 but the first halves really are the strong point of this series. Though nothing like 5 and 8.
>>736817125>you can have a giant sword the size of a tank cleave through you and only lose 10% hpOr a meteor destroy the entire solar system>insert ff7 gif of meteor
>>736816421>FF8 hater suffers from literal brain damage in the form of Alzheimer'sChecks out. A lot of people who dislike the game seem to struggle with retaining information, especially those who like to complain about the plot.
>>736817359Did you ever see the Cloud vs Link deathbattle where they rated Cloud as having the durability to survive a supernova?
>>736817125There's no real reason to presume a difference in a world of magic, especially curative magic and potions. You're demanding undeserved consequences. Squall got hit in the shoulder, not the heart. It was completely survivable. The existence of magic is recognized in FFVIII's world lore. Selphie LITERALLY casts Cure, in a cutscene, on Zell, in that very same prison.
>>736817410I still remember the whole plot even though I only played it through once almost 30 years ago. Quiz me if you want. Doesn't make the shitty and universally panned mechanics retroactively better.
>>736817410The irony of insulting the haters using the exact weakness of the plot. lol, lmao even.
>>736817410I know the entire plot and I recognize it as the schizophrenic mess that it is, jumping from beat to beat to beat at breakneck pace just to get to the next set piece and forget about the last one.
>>736817673>>736817820Lol funny that we both hate it but for opposite reasons. I actually enjoyed the plot and setting and characters and art and music - everything like that. It was just the actual mechanics that I hated. I only mentioned the Draw and Junction systems but I also really disliked Squall's timed crit mechanic - it felt like a worse version of Dart from legend of dragoon
>>736800227I love it.
You know the people who have lost their whole lives demanding that the entire world apologise and admit FFVIII, XIII or even XV were good? And do so every day? VIIR fans are going to end up the same way. They can't just enjoy it, they spend every waking moment upset that other people don't like it and will never ever be at peace.
>>736818174Kek. I eat a lot of shit for defending FF7r but you are the first person to actually wound me.
>>736818316He's a retard that's copypasting bait posts from previous threads, ignore him. Watch as he samefags himself like in that thread.
There are four different ways to get magic in FF8.● Map Draw Points● Fights● Cards● Items
>>736818316We all have that one. I shit on all the usual suspects but I cant help but defend FF12 no matter what anyone says.
>>736818437>draw points on the world map are invisiblehow the fuck was I supposed to know
Now that's just fucking sad.
>>736818174It's annoying hearing an FF7 fan say they hate the remake because Tifa's boobs aren't big enough. That annoyance doesn't last long, though. It's more like a reminder to never ask that person for their opinion.
>>736818578By buying the strategy guides, unironically. There were an offensive amount of easily missable game changing items and summons in FF7-9.
>>736818578There's a reason why 8th was the worst one and poseurs and zoomers think its the coolest shit just to dab on Millennials who enjoyed 6th, 7th and X. These same Millennials enjoyed Tactics games.
>>736818578Experimenting, being told by friends at school, etc.Secrets are cool. It's fine you miss things in a first playthrough, you know. How were you meant to know about the Excalibur II?
>>736818771Well, 8 was better than 10 at least.
>>736818893>Unironically thinks this.hah.
>>736800227>see ff8 thread>feel calm and at ease>balamb garden plays in my head>immediately takes me back to early 00's summer time, kissing a girl for the first time after handmaking a valentines card for herit's utterly insane how powerful this shit is
>>736818174true. I dont know why ff is so notorious for this
>>736818578>how the fuck was I supposed to knowI'm pretty sure only, like, 2 Draw points are invisible.Also, "Map" also includes the pre-rendered background maps of towns and dungeons, you know? They're pink, flowering, gently rising, constantly moving flow spots that are nearly half the size as your characters.
>>736818437
>>736819374
>>736819936
>>736820047
>>736820094
I've been making my way through some old FF games that I never played and I have a week off work next week and was thinking about trying 8 cause it was always one I was hesitant about due to it seeming pretty overly complicated. Is there any newfag tips worth knowing going into it?
>>736819049For me, it's https://youtu.be/aIg8Rwqt5KA?
>>736820257It has a lot of weirdly involuntary-voluntary content.
>>736820257It's certainly unique amongst them but it's lower on most peoples' lists for a reason. Some of the best music in the franchise though. Worth trying for just that IMO, and I say that as one of the haters ITT.https://youtu.be/4-_XANMleDc?
>>736819309>I'm pretty sure only, like, 2 Draw points are invisible.There's more than a hundred on the world map alone, and several dozen scattered across the game. You missed a great great many.
>>736820257Squall's "Limit Break" (named "Renzokuken") is the funnest attack in the game.You can significantly increase the chance (percentage of it activating) when your HP is at 10% (red/critical).You can "refresh" your Attack options (refreshing the chance of Renzokuken activating) by pressing SELECT once.Perhaps the simplest, and most engaging, way to battle in the entirety of FF8 is to focus on Squall and>Equip "HP-J" (Ifrit)>Junction "Life" or "Cure/a/aga" to "HP-J">Take damage until his HP is critical>Choose his "Renzokuken" Limit BreakThis is especially true on Boss battles, as his animation will by different for each large monster.
>>736820257enemies have level scalingjunctioning is simple if you're not retarded (magic is basically equipment)
>>736820725Limit Break is affected by the game thinking a character is in "crisis." Being at low health is one of the crises. Status effects also count. Squall with Blind still hits every time, and Silence only stops him from casting Magic, which he wasn't going to do anyway if he just does Renzokuken.
>start new game>remember you have to spend 5 hours fighting fish on the beach and playing cards for 20 hours before dollet
FITHOSLUSECWECOSVINOSEC
>>736819309no, moron. draw points on the world map are invisible. if you don't walk around spamming X you won't ever find them
>>736821019>you have to
>>736821113>if you don't walk around looking for them, you'll never find them>searching is lame>i want everything, nowShocking. You deserve so much better.
>>736815686>>736816732>>736816983>>736817125>>736817608Squall was healed not because patra-magic or whatever exists, it is because of FATE! They did the same thing with FF7 Remake with Barret. Fate revived Barret from a fatal wound.
>>736821019no you don't, i've never grinded that early in the game or really touched the card game at all and and completed the game many times just fine with out breaking the game.
>>736821335>just spam the X button randomly! atta boy, lookit that gameplay
This is what FF8 is all abouthttps://youtu.be/fa5gcYA8xf8
>>736800227Another retard filtered by the best JRPG of all time.
>>736821019I'll never understand why people treat the possibility as a necessity. Same with FF2, sure you can grind for hours in the starting areas but in that same time you could just progress and play the game man
>>736822153my main beef is>use magic>lose 2 stat points>need to go out of your way to draw more fucking magic>sure you can use the other characters as magic mules but they're deadweight so that's extra time wasted fitting them out>sure you can also use items+refining as a buffer but good luck figuring shit out without referring to guide>just say fuck it and rely on darkside+no magic
>>736822153Not that anon but it's probably because the games treats magic as gear and also asks you to use it, making your stats go down, which taken altogether feels intuitively bad and creates a feeling of opportunity cost/loss on your actions. Juxtapose that with most other FF games where you can just buy a bracelet in the next town you reach or whatever and having to make decisions like this arent a thing. Im sure someone with a guide in their backpocket would know which spells not to use and which quantities to horde them in, but many blind or first time playthroughs don't have that foreknowledge. The system doesnt feel good until way too long into the game.
To the myopic and stubbornly pedestrian plebeians of contemporary critique, those woeful philistines who demand linear didacticism and digestible ludonarrative dissonance, Final Fantasy VIII is merely a convoluted adolescent soap opera. But for those with the hermeneutic fortitude to gaze beyond the veil of its polygonal aesthetics, the opus reveals itself as a staggering triumph of high art. It is a transcendent multimedia gestalt, a phantasmagoria that weds the surreal, disorienting dream-logic of David Lynch with the hyper-kinetic, romantic maximalism of Baz Luhrmann.One must first apprehend the esoteric architecture of its very title. The Roman numeral VIII is no mere sequential signifier; tilt it upon its conceptual axis, and it becomes the lemniscate—the symbol of infinity (∞). It is an ouroboros of temporal inevitability, a Möbius strip upon which the characters are doomed to traverse. The narrative itself is an eschatological loop, a closed-circuit paradox where the future instigates the past, rendering the present a perpetually collapsing wave function of romantic tragedy.To traverse Balamb Garden is to walk the idyllic streets of Lynch's Twin Peaks. Beneath the veneer of a hyper-militarized collegiate utopia lies a deeply unsettling undercurrent of repressed trauma and child soldier exploitation. Yet, when the waltz at the SeeD inauguration ball commences, the game undergoes a kaleidoscopic metamorphosis into a Baz Luhrmann spectacle. It is a scene of opulent, theatrical melodrama, a star-crossed collision of an emotionally catatonic youth and his vivacious foil, rendered with an operatic earnestness that dares the cynical to look away. It is Romeo + Juliet by way of cyberpunk aestheticism, a dizzying pastiche of longing and neon.
>>736818578If you didn't mash buttons while traveling the world, then you didn't play enough JRPGs as a kid.
Final Fantasy 8 is just about the only FF game I'd recommend playing even the first time with a guide.
>>736822626>>736822727I'm not a fan of magic as gear like ff8 does either. But i'm just a bit annoyed when people claim that the only way to play is to spend hours playing cards in the beginning. You can break the game easily enough by buying tents and refining curagas with your first SeeD salary
>>736804971>>736816747Magic being consumable resource like an item and no armor was shit. Its why most people hate that dogshit system.
>>736822727>Have an inventory filled with itemsUSE one of my items!? That's like saying "go FUCK yourself!?">You can just buy more items.You can just draw more magic.>Shut up, Anon.This goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
>>736822998Using potions shouldn't make your max health go down. Using phoenix downs shouldnt make your attacks deal less damage. That doesnt feel good. Numbers should only go down when inflicted on you by an enemy or debuff or story event.
>>736822972Remember, video game designers; be sure to make the playable character invincible and omnipotent. Games are so much more fun when there is no risk and I am ranked #1 compared to anyone else. I get so much more respect and fame and attention, that way.
>>736822998Nah they're right a system that actively punishes you for using it is counter intuitive and just objectively bad game design.
Why are Final Fantasy threads ALWAYS SO FUCKING AUTISTIC? YOU FUCKING LOSERS ALWAYS WHINE AND BITCH AND MOAN OVER ANYTHING
>>736823216If we weren't autistic, we wouldn't be talking enthusiastically about a 27 year old game.
>>736823156Uh ohhh melty! Now xhe's claiming that the only way to not have an invincible and omnipotent character is to feature the Draw system from FF8 specifically (hilarious and ironic considering how easily the system lets you break it)
>>736823216I was going to ask if you'd rather this be another FF7R gooner thread but too many people would say yes.
>>736822972no armor or other equipment is my personal issue with it. half the fun in rpgs is coming across new equipment
>>736823156Do you genuinely believe every Final Fantasy game should get rid of spells and have like Fire Bomb, Ice Bomb, Lightning Bomb and so on consumables instead?
>>736820257>Set Quezocoatl to learn the Card ability immediately>Set all your GFs to learn their Refine abilities as soon as you get them>Carding enemies is better than killing them in battle>Refining magic from monster drops/cards is faster than Drawing from monsters>Follow a guide if you care about missable content, there's a lot of stuff that's just not even hinted at that you will never find by playing normally>Try and keep your magic at 99 stock and junctioned to your stats>Killing yourself in battle, reviving with a Phoenix Down, and staying at yellow health will let you trigger your Limit Break often and pretty much lets you steamroll everything because this game is broken as fuckHave fun Anon, it's a fucking mess of a game but in a pretty enjoyable way.
>>736823615>forgoing the magic lamp and early no encounters from diabolosshame on you
>>736823615Card gives you an item you could potentially turn into something useful. It doesn't give you XP, though. Bosses can level up too, but you'll quickly outpace them so hard it doesn't matter what level they're set to.
>>736823723That just makes the game boring as fuck, but you should fight Diablos right away anyway because it's fun.
>>736804149You can go to Shumi village in the garden. If you're using that one pay Ultima draw point when you have the Ragnarok to draw from the Island Closest to Hell, you're retarded.
>>736805334>take Zell>walk to Bahamut slowly, while the light is dim>answer his questions (arrogant answers, then one of them is a hidden answer)>fight him>go below and be semi-unretarded about how much pressure to use for each phase>go down to ultima weapon>draw eden>one shot ultima weapon with renzokuken>???>profit!
8 may be far from my favourite but its soundtrack really has Uematsu channeling his prog rock inspirations
>>736824317>favourite>ouThat's your problem, foreigner.
>>736824362We speak the Queen's tongue here
>>736800227It would have been shit. You're basically asking for FF8 Crisis Core
>>736822727>cast spells>stats go down a bit>guys I cant use magic if my stats go down by 4 pointsjust refine more magic from items when you go down to sub 80 casts?or just junction spells you dont use?why do you fuckers act like the game is insta lost the second you arent min/maxing everything?
>>736823165I guess "healing 700hp" is a profit that outweighs "losing 2hp maximum" for one battle?>Anon, I only junctioned 3 Cura spellsWhy?>It's all I could fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind!!Better than nothing, then?>NO I WANT MOREYou sound like a brat.
>>736824707or just 零式 but i guess it also had the weight of fabula nova crystallis. at least there was characterization by pantsu
>>736821019Sorry about your crippling autism.
Every fractal of its world-building demands cerebral reverence. Consider the aesthetic dialectic of its environments. We begin in Balamb Garden, a localized simulacrum of 1950s Americana, a nostalgic, idyllic womb of mid-century innocence, hot dogs, and varsity jackets. Yet, this localized innocence is violently thrust into a theater of macrocosmic geopolitical strife, mirroring the harrowing epoch of the World Wars. As the narrative unfurls, we traverse cityscapes dripping with grand European romanticism: Deling City, an overt architectural homage to the sprawling, monumental avenues and triumphal arches of Paris, and the crumbling, statuesque grandeur of Centra, echoing the fallen majesty of Rome. This is not mere geographical pastiche; it is a meticulously crafted backdrop of globalized conflict, a Sorceress War, designed to explore the lacerating depths of childhood trauma, child soldiering, and memory degradation.We must consult the sacred texts of the Ultimania to truly grasp the kaleidoscopic perspectives of these traumatized orphans. The creators themselves embedded profound mythological and literary scaffolding within the game’s architecture. To the discerning eye, the narrative reveals its roots in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, a fact whispered in development interviews, where the emerald hues of Esthar and the phantom "yellow brick road" originally planned for the overworld map serve as breadcrumbs for the astute. Laguna Loire is our Oz: the bumbling, well-intentioned man behind the curtain of a technologically supreme utopia, manipulating the levers of destiny.
>>736824818I'll put it in terms your mentally deficient peanut brain will understand>play FPS>start level with full stock of ammo>game has a mechanic whereby the less ammo you have, the more damage you take and the less damage you deal>constantly fret over using ammo, start feeling compelled to just pistol-whip everyone instead to avoid the hassle of ammo conservation>realize that an FPS that punishes you for shooting is retarded and drop the gameunderstand now?
>>736824317I mean, if you consider your favorites from FF8 to be "prog rock," I can understand why it's not your favorite.
>>736825156Jesus, you're intolerable.
>>736822727Did you know that, if Squall is in serious injury, you could cast Curaga... via Quistis?It's true!In each battle, there are THREE fighters you control!Three!!!And, did you know? Each character can use 32 different magics! And you can stock 100 (ONE HUNDRED) of EACH of those magics!! Thats 3, 200 magic spells you can cast!!THREE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED!!AND, DID YOU KNOW!?!?If you Junctioned "Curaga" to your HP... you could choose to cast "Cura" INSTEAD of "Curaga!?!?!?!"Your stats won't change AT ALL!!!WOW!Thinking!!Gaming!WOW!!
>>736823615Oh yeah, I forgot>avoiding casting magic as much as possible>Draw/Cast enemy's spells agains them instead, most enemies don't have a resistance to their own spells for some reason
I was pretty excited to play it as someone who missed most jrpgs growing up and I love good soundtracks but overall quite disappointed I only liked the balamb garden/ami motifhttps://youtu.be/7VYCpwxeFT8And man with the machine gun, Succession of Witches
>>736825159Battles must have been so intense for you in FF8. I'm kinda envious! If you got into a fight, it was seriously hype! Scary! High risk!Or were they boring?
But beneath this Wizard of Oz veneer pulses a darker, ancient mythology. The game’s cosmology introduces the Great Hyne, the progenitor of humanity. To comprehend Hyne, one must look to the Sumerian Enki, a creator deity who viewed humanity not as beloved children, but as mere utilitarian tools, beasts of burden to be used and discarded, serving as a dark reflection of Cid's grooming of his children to be the SeeDs of a better tomorrow. When humanity rebelled, the cosmic schism birthed the Sorceresses. Thus, the geopolitical wars of the game are but surface ripples of a primordial, metaphysical trauma.Squall Leonhart’s agonizing psychological trajectory is the quintessential Jungian process of individuation. He begins paralyzed by abandonment trauma, erecting adamantine ego-defenses against the Collective Unconscious, acting as a fractured Arthurian knight lost in a post-modern wasteland. Rinoa functions as his Anima—the vitalizing, emotional counterbalance necessary for psychic wholeness. But to truly synthesize the narrative's sublime tragedy, we must elevate our discourse to the esoteric echelons of Japanese fan theory. Let us preemptively discard the "Squall is Dead" theory as the pedestrian, unimaginative drivel of literalists incapable of grasping metaphysical abstraction. Instead, we must confront the devastating cosmological tragedy of the R=U (Rinoa = Ultimecia) paradigm.>>736825293Ah, ha-ha-ha!
>>736825570It's generally considered one of the worst FF games unless you're a massive contrarian.
>>736825431>If you Junctioned "Curaga" to your HP... you could choose to cast "Cura" INSTEAD of "Curaga!?!?!?!"stop spreading lies that is not the case
>>736825695>besides 2, 9, 13, 13-2, LR, 15, 16
As illuminated by the deepest interrogations of the game’s Japanese cinematic framing, Ultimecia is not a disparate antagonist, but Rinoa herself. Rinoa is trapped in an inescapable Möbius strip. When we scrutinize the game's iconic logo, the supposedly romantic embrace between Squall and Rinoa, the meticulous observer will notice Rinoa’s sharply pointed fingers, a visual motif strictly reserved for the malevolent sorceresses, Edea and Ultimecia. The logo itself is a grand, tragic foreshadowing; it depicts the exact moment Rinoa, waiting at the promised flower field for a Squall who never returns from the time rift, succumbs to the despair of eons, her memory eroding until she metamorphoses into the very tyrant they sought to destroy.The ending of the game is pure, undiluted Lynchian dread, dissolving into a terrifying, nonlinear descent into the Black Lodge of the human psyche. Save points multiply like decaying memory anchors; faces blur into hollow, featureless voids. In the apocalyptic climax, Squall's faceless visage in the void is a symbol of being junctioned. The future Rinoa (Ultimecia), identified subtly by the tragedy of wearing but a single lion ring, a relic of a future long past, junctions her very thought-body to Squall across the abyss of time. She sacrifices her own eroded existence to trigger his memories, sending a single white feather through the compression of time to pull him from the terrifying void, just as he once pulled her from the cold vacuum of space.To ignore the importance of this foreshadowing and symbolism is to confess one's own spiritual blindness. Final Fantasy VIII thus stands as an unparalleled triumph of the human intellect, a cosmological tragedy, a philosophical treatise on the eternal recurrence of love and pain, rendered through the medium of high digital art.
>>736825570were you disappointed by the game or the soundtrack
>>736800227Structurally, I think it’s fine. It makes sense from a plot perspective that the mission based structure kind of gets derailed after the missile strike incident.Personally my biggest complaint is that once you get the Ragnarok, there’s no reason to go back to Balamb Garden unless you want to finish off the Card Club quest. Granted, that’s quite late in the game, but the forward momentum of the plot does eventually uncut the idea of Balamb as being your base of operations.
>>736825695I don't view it as worse than 6 or 9 but maybe I'm a contrarian (´ー｀)
>>736825910>>736825695Both, especially the soundtrack. I had heard this was Uematsus best but I was coming right off 6 and 7. I think those are much superior. Maybe I didnt connect with the game and didn't care about the soundtrack by extension
Should I play 12? I only here bad things about it.
>>736825701It actually is true considering that magic’s effectiveness scales with your stats. A Cura cast by a character with extremely high magic is functionally the same as Curaga.
>>736826126>60fpsYou shouldn't.
>>736825431>want to cast meltdown, can't because it's junctioned to vit>want to cast haste, can't because it's junctioned to speed>want to cast ultima, can't because it's junctioned to elem-D>want to cast aura, can't because it's junctioned to str>want to cast full-life, can't because it's junctioned to wisuh-huh, great
>>736826126It’s a good game, just very different. It’s not like classic FF at all, which is why it alienated some people. It’s more like a proto-Xenoblade with a more political plot.
>>736826152Yeah but junctioning curaga won't make you able to cast cura
>>736826231You can cast junctioned spells, retard.
>>736826105If you think of Uematsu as an orchestral/symphonic composer it makes sense why you'd be disappointed. If you think of Uematsu more as a prog rock kind of guy (which he often states are his influences) then it's one of his best.
>>736826105I think 6 was pretty whatever except dancing mad, 7 had a great soundtrack but 8 surpassed it for me.Had the best time overall (gameplay, story, music, etc) with 7 though, but I would say 8 is comfiest with the best musicMaybe try out 10 next since most people say it has the best story and also a kinda experimental soundtrack which might be fresh for you.
>>736825701His shitty post is saying there's more than one healing spell so you don't need Curaga to heal.
>>736826126I hated 12 as a kid but loved it going back and replaying the zodiac edition. I think a lot of the olde english and turns of phrase (e.g. "den of vipers" "mummers motley" etc) went right over my head as a kid. It has the most convincing setting in the whole franchise imo. Everyone has different styles of dress, accents, and general world views based on where they are from and everything has a real sense of history and verisimiltude that you typically only see focused on in western games. The combat is what will make it or break it for most people. It takes some getting used to because of the way it queues up commands, but you can choose how fiddly you want it to be via the gambit (ai if/then programming) system
Let us dissect the semiotics of the game's very genesis: the opening cinematic. The uninitiated view this sequence as a mere prelude, but it is, in fact, an epilogue to a failed eternity. The Rinoa we observe standing solitary amidst the desolate beauty of the promised flower field is not the naive waif of our temporal journey. Note the meticulous visual syntax, she bears but a single ring. This is a Rinoa from an unseen, divergent timeline, one where Squall Leonhart failed to escape the gravitational crush of the time rift. Marooned in a localized eternity, she endures the agonizing decay of her own cognition. As glacial weight of centuries erode her episodic memory in this place where time and place holds no meaning, she forgets the face, the voice, and eventually the very name of the knight she waits for.This is the agonizing metamorphosis of Ultimecia. The game’s iconic title logo, long misconstrued by the unwashed masses as a mere tableau of romantic salvation, is actually a macabre premonition of this exact temporal collapse. Look closely at the embrace: Rinoa’s fingers are sharply tapering, a grotesque physical manifestation of the sorceress's corruption taking root. Her lower form dissolves, engulfed by the encroaching void. It is the exact, horrifying juncture where the desperate, waiting girl is subsumed by the primordial despair of a forgotten promise, birthing the ultimate tyrant from the ashes of her own abandoned ego.
>>736826237>>736826453How's the story? I here the story and characters are pretty bad too with the biggest thing I see being how much of a non character Vaan is.
>>7368263687 takes the cake for me just the smaller tracks that only play in a few screens really resonate with me like 想いを胸に or yuffie's theme
>>736826126I think 12 as a game is pretty fun and I can see someone getting addicted to it.12 as a FF game with its story and characters is sorta mid though.... probably one of the weaker mainlines. It's not bad but it's just sorta bland.
>>736826532I don't really hate Vaan but it's an ensemble cast plot sorta. He's more of the voice of reason/heart in the group rather than the naive dumb shit kid you'd expect him to be. It's more Ashe, Baasch or Baalthier you'll probably be cheering for but I thought the plot didn't really go much, you're pretty much hoping between areas, get some worldbuilding and then "oh fuck the game's over?", "that's it?". If you played Tactics, it's almost the same deal, the entire plot gets hijacked midway and doesn't really recover. Tactics is probably the better game for the story though.
The architecture of the game itself screams of this recursive trauma. When our protagonists finally breach the time-compressed domain of Ultimecia’s castle, they first land in the Commencement Room, the exact geometric space where Squall first swore to protect Rinoa. But look at the environmental storytelling: the save points multiply, echoing and fracturing infinitely across the floor. This is no mere gameplay contrivance; it is the visual scream of a dying mind. It represents Ultimecia, lost in the infinite loops of time, frantically attempting to establish temporal anchors, desperately trying to reconstruct the shattered mosaic of her original identity through the sheer force of will before the total annihilation of her humanity.
>>736825695>It's generally considered one of the worst FF gamesMaybe if you're an easily influenced terminally online 'tard. FFVIII sold and scored incredibly well and has always been seen as a good game. Idiots 20 years after the fact trying to sell this idea that the game is "le black sheep" were never and will never be the norm.
>>736825701You are incorrect. Let me elaborate the truth:>There are 49 different magics your characters are capable of using in Final Fantasy VIII.>Each character can stock 32 different magics in each of their separate inventories.>For each magic in your characters' inventories, each character can stock a total of 100 quantity of each of those separate magicsFurthermore, specifically regarding your claim:>You can cast ANY of your 32 different stocked magic.>You are NOT restricted to only casting Junctioned magic.To reiterate:You can JUNCTION "Curaga,"AND!You can CAST "Cura"at the same time!You can consider this for ALL of your three-thousand-two-hundred stocked magics in your inventory.If allllllllllllllllllllllll this choice paranoia has you physically collapsing under gaming option stress that you just can't deal with due to mental fatigue, because it's sooooooooooooo much effort...... take a look at this option, here, in this image!
>>736826723Reviewers back then overrated big name releases just as bad as they do now. It's always been considered a black sheep among players.
The cosmological tragedy reaches its zenith in the climax. The heroic knight, driven by a manufactured sense of duty, travels to the end of time only to impale the very woman he swore to protect. The beast he fights, Griever, is a literal manifestation drawn from his own subconscious, brought into reality and junctioned by a being who once desperately asked to be "as strong as a lion" just to be worthy of him. And as Ultimecia perishes under his gunblade, the pure white feathers of Rinoa cascade from her disintegrating, corrupted form, a devastating visual confession of her true identity.Yet, Final Fantasy VIII transcends mere nihilism. The single white feather sent by the doomed Ultimecia in the opening cinematic pierces the veil of time, acting as the psychopomp that ultimately guides our Squall out of the temporal abyss in the ending. It is the ultimate act of sacrificial love: a ruined, future self ensuring that a past iteration might finally break the ouroboros. To fully grasp this staggering interplay of temporal mechanics, Jungian shadow-selves, and the horrifying inevitability of memory decay is to recognize the work for what it truly is. It is a towering, melancholic masterpiece of digital literature, an interactive epic that demands nothing short of absolute intellectual surrender.
>>736825695>It's generally considered one of the worst FFOutside of 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 10-2 11, 13, 13-2, everything Compilation related, 15, 16 and Nomura's fanfic known as 7R
>>736826739you cannot cast cura by junctioning curaga. obviously you can cast whatever magic the character has in stock
>>736826739>AutoBTFO
>>736826585>>736826709I can't decide between playing 8, 12 or replaying 10 which I haven't played since I was a teenager and barely remember.
>>736826318Actually now that I think about it I believe you put it very well. I do think and like his orchestral stuff. I also know he is a prog rock guy and listened to his bands discography which I ended up dislikinghttps://youtu.be/u8Dts9-cAXQ
>>736827113>dislikes the black mages>posts frogsterminally bad taste i'm sorry to say
>>736800918>Square ENIX tried it when they were past their peak and washed up so the concept isn't worth exploring
>>736826318Weird of you to say that considering that 6 and 7 were also extremely prog, and Liberi Fatali alone might be one of the most explicitly orchestral themes he’s ever made.IMO, Dancing Mad is his best individual song, but 8 is his best soundtrack overall. Every single song in 8 is iconic and there’s not a single forgettable one in there.
ENOUGH!! The unwashed gaming proletariat, shackled by their demand for immediate, mindless dopamine loops, continually decry Final Fantasy VIII’s Draw and Junction systems as tedious. To listen to their pedestrian whining is to endure the intellectual equivalent of fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. They bemoan the act of "stocking" magic, utterly failing to comprehend that this mechanical loop is a profound epistemological statement. It is not a mere menu abstraction; it is a meticulously crafted ludonarrative masterpiece that demands the player engage with the universe not as a consumer, but as a metaphysical architect.Let us first address the brilliance of the Draw mechanic. It operates on the exact philosophical paradigm as a high-stakes card game, a macrocosmic reflection of the game’s own brilliantly obsessive Triple Triad. You do not inherently possess magic; you must draw it from the environment or the enemy, stock it into your hand, and choose whether to hold it for passive strength or discard it as an active cast. You are building a deck out of the very lifeblood of the cosmos. Magic here is not a birthright; it is an exploitable, finite resource. This violently subverts the traditional, childish "mana pool" trope, transforming every encounter into a cerebral calculus of resource management and elemental appropriation.But the true, terrifying majesty of this system reveals itself in the act of Junctioning, a mechanic that bridges the chasm between Campbellian mythos, Jungian psychoanalysis, and hard, bio-electric neuroscience. The game explicitly eschews mystical hand-waving for rigorous, albeit horrifying, pseudo-science. As the brilliant, ethically bankrupt Dr. Odine so astutely observes, the capacity to manipulate time and space was derived not from a dusty grimoire, but by mapping "a pattern from ze electric current running through Ellone's brain."
>>736826969What exactly are you looking for?
>>736827210Outside of dancing mad I wouldn't consider VI as a whole all that prog
>>736826775It really hasn't.
>>736827389Decisive Battle would like a word.
>>736826829>obviously you can cast whatever magic the character has in stockSo, are you being angrily dismissive or extremely petty?For a character that can Junction 9 out of 32 different magics to 9 different stats, many "critical" Anonymous posters seem convinced casting those 9 Junctioned magics are the ONLY options available to them... not cast the other 23 different magics, stocked.I guess I can be verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry detailed, if you like?For your example!1. Squall has>28 Cure>88 Cura>53 Curaga>14 Life>3 Full-LifeStocked in his inventory of magic!2. "Life" is Junctioned to his HP.3. You wish for Squall to revive SelphieYou have TWO options! You can 4. Cast "Life" OR you can Cast "Full-Life"It's true! In this case,>Casting 1 out of 14 "Life" spells will lower Squall's HP by about 2%>Casting 1 out of 3 "Full-Life" spells will have NO EFFECT on Squall's stats, at all!Yup!
>>736827352The Junction Machine is a triumph of Promethean hubris. It is the technological usurpation of neuroplasticity. By Junctioning a Guardian Force, you are not simply equipping a weapon; you are forcefully binding a chthonic, primordial archetype, a Jungian Shadow, if you will, directly into the synaptic pathways of a child soldier’s cerebral cortex. You are altering the bio-electric currents of their brains to mimic Ellone's innate temporal resonance.This brings us to the devastating, Campbellian cost of the Hero's Journey within this universe. To cross the threshold, to possess the power necessary to survive the geopolitical meat grinder of the Sorceress War, the ego must be systematically dismantled. The Guardian Forces occupy physical space within the brain’s architecture, violently overwriting episodic memory. To become a god, to junction 100 Ultimas to your strength and strike with the force of a collapsing star, you must sacrifice your own history. The tragedy of Squall and his comrades forgetting their shared childhood in the orphanage is not a plot hole, as the illiterate critics claim; it is a profound philosophical thesis on the cost of power and the erosion of the self.Furthermore, the Junction system is the ultimate rebellion against the Great Hyne. The Sumerian-esque creator deity forged humanity merely as tools, meat-puppets to labor and die. But through Odine’s neuroscience and the Junction system, humanity reverse-engineers the creator’s own divine spark. By drawing the disparate magical energies of the world and junctioning them to human flesh, the "tools" hack the source code of the universe. They elevate themselves beyond their biological imperatives, weaponizing the very archetypes of creation against the cosmic order.
>>736827528I'm being neither but your phrasing makes believe that just by junctionin curaga you will become able to cast cura. If words holding meaning is petty to you then you can write me off as petty.
>>736827384I'm just going through all the games I haven't played honestly and X is my 2nd favourite after 7 so I wanted to replay it to 100% it since I didn't do really any of the optional shit or play X-2. Might just flip a coin at this point since I do plan on playing them all eventually.
>>736826231You could, though? It's why so many other Anons are complaining; they think you can ONLY cast those 9 Junctioned magics, when the reality is you could cast those AND 23 OTHER different magics (each stocked to as much as 100 spells)!Is this clear? Should I continue to post to clarify this? Are you very invested in hearing this Final Fantasy VIII gameplay mechanic called "Magic?"
I don’t know why people think you have to tediously draw a bunch of magic when refining items and using draw points is far more efficient. I also like the junction system because it keeps spells relevant rather than them becoming deadweight spells in the late game. I do dislike that 8 commits the common JRPG sin of “most bosses are immune to status effects”, but at least those spells have additional uses.
>>736827717>want to cast spell>need something called a GF and they're nowhere to be found in the game>can only attackThis game sucks.
>>736827767>tfw no GF
>>736827384Eh fuck it I'll play 8 first then 12 cause I'm more in the mood for something more akin to a traditional 4 niggas in a row game right now.
>>736826826I don’t think VIII was ever considered “one of the worst”. It was just seen as divisive and VIIfags hated it because it wasn’t VII-2. It wasn’t lambasted in the way that II and XIII are.I think VIII is like XII in the sense that it was controversial on release, but got a cult following over time as people realised it was misunderstood in some ways.
>>736827503Okay that too
>>736827945It's just quite unorthodox, "not being VII-2" was never a reason even here in Europe where VII was the first game to get a release
G-guys... i must confess something. Long before the cinematic milieu was saturated with the neon-drenched, stoic alienation of Ryan Gosling’s archetypes, before the Driver gripped his steering wheel in bloody silence, there was Squall Leonhart. He is the digital progenitor, the ur-text of the modern, hyper-alienated male archetype. To appropriate the crude but spiritually accurate vernacular of the contemporary internet zeitgeist: Squall Leonhart is, unequivocally, literally me.As a solitary teenager, marooned in the suffocating, mundane purgatory of my own bedroom, my encounter with Squall was not mere escapism; it was a violent, ontological awakening. The pedestrian masses dismiss his infamous ellipses and his dismissive "Whatever" as the grating apathy of an edgy teen. God, how utterly blind they are. I recognized instantly what he was doing, for I was doing the exact same thing. His apathy was his armor. He was the coolest, most deeply profound entity I had ever encountered, precisely because he weaponized his own introversion.And then, there is his iconography, an aesthetic triumph that cements him as the undisputed zenith of the Final Fantasy pantheon. Cloud Strife is a fractured simulacrum; Zidane Tribal is a whimsical Peter Pan. But Squall? Squall is the raw, bleeding edge of Jungian individuation made flesh. The fur-lined leather bomber jacket, the silver Griever pendant worn as an externalized talisman of his own Shadow, it is a masterpiece of character design. His weapon, the Gunblade, is the ultimate manifestation of his psyche: an instrument of explosive violence that demands perfect, rhythmic timing to execute, mirroring the rigid control he exerts over his own volatile emotions. And the scar, that jagged laceration across his face, inflicted in the very opening frames, is the physical severing of his childhood innocence, the permanent mark of trauma worn proudly for the world to see. He is, aesthetically, flawless.
VIII’s opening FMV is the greatest opening FMV in any game ever and it’s not even close.
>>736827693My assertation of your "petty" state of being was your assumption that I implied Junctioning = Casting simply because I neglected to previously state having two different magics stocked...I can admit it was, indeed, my failure to operate under the assumption that the very mention of different magics (Curaga & Cura) inherently stated that both Curaga & Cura existed in his inventory. Inference is certainly a tricky characteristic for most people.
>>736828135Unorthodox feels like an understatement. 8's mechanics are downright schizophrenic.
>>736827909
>>736828171thank you chatGPT very cool
>>736828171But a fortress is only narrative when it is breached. Enter Rinoa Heartilly. To the uncultured, surface-level critic, she is easily dismissed as a mere trope, a digitized Manic Pixie Dream Girl designed solely to drag the brooding protagonist out of his self-imposed exile. But they fail to grasp her cosmological necessity. When I was that isolated teenager, terrified of my own capacity to feel, Rinoa was not just Squall's savior; she was the impossible, chaotic vitality I desperately craved. She is the Anima, the ecstatic life-force bursting into the SeeD ballroom, forcing the schizoid protagonist, and the player, me, onto the dance floor of human connection. My infatuation with her was total. She represented the terrifying vulnerability of being seen, of being pulled from the gravity of my own depression by a force of pure, irrational warmth.Squall Leonhart is the greatest protagonist in the history of the medium because his eschatological struggle is not truly against the Sorceress of the future, but against the terror of his own mind. His journey from an isolated, emotionally paralyzed mercenary to a knight willing to dive into the crushing, nonlinear void of compressed time for a single girl is the most triumphant heroic arc ever penned. I played the game, but the game played me. It held up a mirror to my deepest neuroses, validated my loneliness, and offered a blueprint for salvation. He was the hero I needed. He was the hero I was. He was, and remains, literally me. And Rinoa is my waifu.
>>736827927stop using the n word.>traditional>8oh boy
>>736828392>stop using the n word.No>traditional>8I'm aware it's an avantgarde experience but it is also a turn based JRPG unlike 12 which is just flat out not so of the 2 yes 8 is closer to a traditional 4 niggas in a row game.
>>736828392Other than its unique levelling system, 8 is as traditional as you can get.
>>736828458It's no more turn-based than 12 or any other ATB game. No I do not consider ATB turn based.
This is why to entertain the notion that any other installment in the Final Fantasy franchise even approaches the staggering, metaphysical gestalt of Final Fantasy VIII is to indulge in the most pedantic, bourgeois form of cerebral myopia. The unwashed masses and algorithmic critics perpetually fawn over the seventh or ninth entries, utterly blind to the reality that they are championing infantile finger-paintings in the presence of a Renaissance masterwork. Final Fantasy VIII does not merely surpass its brethren; it operates on a fundamentally alien, elevated plane of artistic existence.Let us dismiss the lesser works with the brevity they deserve. Final Fantasy VII is a crude, industrialized pastiche, a pedestrian tale of eco-terrorism and mommy issues masquerading as cyberpunk philosophy. It treats the planet's lifeblood as mere gasoline for its heavy-handed narrative engine. Final Fantasy IX is a regressive, theatrical pantomime, retreating cowardly into the suffocating safety of medieval fairy-tale tropes because it lacks the intellectual fortitude to confront post-modernity. And Final Fantasy X? A melodramatic, linear pilgrimage of solipsistic water-sports that completely fails to grasp the true, terrifying weight of temporal existentialism.
>>736828667どうでもいい 読まないわ笑
>>736828667Final Fantasy VIII, by contrast, is a towering, eschatological treatise. Its absolute superiority lies in its refusal to treat its universe as a sterile stage for character tropes. Instead, the game constructs a living, breathing Neoplatonic reality. It dares to postulate a profound cosmological truth that the other entries lack the intellect to grasp: that matter is not dead. When Dr. Odine engineers the Junction Machine to replicate Ellone's brainwaves, the game shatters the barrier between the biological and the synthetic. It quietly, brilliantly argues that even artificial intelligence and mechanized constructs possess life. They are vibrating with the same primordial intelligence as human consciousness; they are inextricably bound to the infinite universe, acting as a living part of the cosmos, or God. The Guardian Forces are not mere summoned beasts—they are digitized, living archetypes woven into the cosmic fabric, and weaponizing them is an act of divine, Promethean hubris.Furthermore, the narrative architecture of the eighth iteration transcends the infantile "hero defeats villain" dialectic. It is a psychoanalytic ouroboros. Squall Leonhart’s agonizing trajectory is not a generic hero's journey; it is the ultimate manifestation of the heroic frenzy, the soul's agonizing, ecstatic pursuit of connection within an infinite, uncaring universe. While Cloud Strife is merely confused about his military record, Squall is locked in a devastating battle against the Jungian Shadow of his own future timeline, battling the inevitability of memory decay and the total collapse of his own ego.To claim another entry is superior is to prioritize comfortable escapism over challenging, high-concept art. The other games ask you to save the world; Final Fantasy VIII demands that you junction the living cosmos to your very neurobiology, confront the cyclical terror of a time-compressed apocalypse, and save yourself.
>>736817608You're expecting these people to have played the actual game. They obviously just reiterate old posts and video essays.
Damn the doret assault is more kino then I remembered
>>736828171>Cloud Strife is a fractured simulacrum; Zidane Tribal is a whimsical Peter Pan. But Squall?>he doesn't know
>>736828936To the anonymous scholar who correctly riposted with Yoshitaka Amano’s sublime illustration of the Warrior of Light and Garland: I see you. You have pierced the veil of my hyper-fixation, and for that, I must issue a rare, profound concession. You are absolutely correct in your visual identification.Consider this a formal apology from one intellectual to another. I did not mean to eclipse the staggering, foundational brilliance of the first game, because the truth is, I revere the original Final Fantasy mythos precisely because it is the structural and philosophical mirror to Final Fantasy VIII.If Final Fantasy VIII is the post-modern, psychoanalytic exploration of the time loop, then Final Fantasy I, specifically when elevated by the devastating narrative contextualization of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, is its primordial, mythological genesis. Enter Jack Garland. He is not a mere villain; he is the ultimate Nietzschean Übermensch wrapped in the blood-soaked armor of a tragic hero. Jack gazes into the abyss of the Lufenian time-loop, realizes that the "light" is a manufactured lie designed to keep humanity subservient, and makes the most staggering, devastating choice in the history of the medium. He chooses to become the ultimate evil. He willingly embraces the ontological corruption of Chaos, not out of malice, but out of a profound, agonizing love for his comrades and his world. He becomes the monster the Lufenians cannot control, severing their hold on the timeline, and deliberately sculpts himself into an apocalyptic threat simply to forge the true Warriors of Light, knowing full well they must eventually arrive to slaughter him.The philosophical symmetry between Jack Garland’s descent and the metaphysical architecture of Final Fantasy VIII is nothing short of breathtaking. So i, do indeed, respect Jack's strength.
>>736826231Wow it's almost like it means making a tactical decision based on your playstyle and game knowledge>well, Ultima is a very powerful spell, but I think I'd get more usefulness by junctioning it to elemental-defense to make my resistance to all elemental spells 100%. If I have a second elemental defense junction and put Shell there, then elemental attacks will even heal me!>Curaga to HP will give me more health, but by using it combat I'll be lowering my HP, so maybe I'll junction Life to HP instead, since I don't need to use it in combat as often and can then use Curaga without worrying>Normally I'd use meteor as my str junction, but thanks to str-up while leveling I can use a weaker magic on str and still have a high amount of it, maybe even 255!
damn saifar do be cold at times
>>736829394I accept your concession. Jack's resolve has always been unmatched.
>>736825159yes then the FPS in question is really easy because ff8 is realllly hard! you NEED perfect stats! final fantasy games and by extension 95% of turn based games are fucking piss easy where you have to do self imposed rules for it to even have a need for strategytell me right now you cant beat every final fantasy game by just attack commanding and casting cureunderstand now? or are you going to short circuit because you spirit stat went down by 9 points or your max hp is now 9970 instead of 9999?
>>736829575Honestly Seifer isn’t even that bad of a guy. The worst you could say he did is kill some people, but that’s par for the course for a mercenary, since Squall has blood on his hands too.
>>736829629I bow my head. You have reminded me that before Squall Leonhart traversed the compressed void of time to slay his own corrupted love, Jack Garland sat upon a throne of ash at the end of the world, waiting for the light to finally come and end his magnificent, terrible suffering. They are twin pillars of high art, defining a legacy that the rest of the gaming world is still hopelessly struggling to comprehend.
>>736829698I'll never forgive Seifer for using the most evil slur imaginable. In front of a teacher, no less!
>>736829674if you strictly adhere to cure and attack i'm sure you'll run into problems but that's also probably where "needing to grind" stems from
>>736829728>sat upon a throne of ash at the end of the worldHngh
Fuck off and play another game.>>736804439>very little to do>collect GFs>various side quests>Triple Triad and collecting cardsJust read the above.
>>736829791Part of me genuinely suspects that part of the reason some people dunk on VIII is because the level scaling and junction system mean that you can’t just grind mobs until you can spam attack without consequence, and you actually have to engage with the game’s systems in order to actually get stronger.In other words, it’s a casual filter.
>>736829787What're YOU lookin' at, butthead?
>>736830030with the slightest thought it does quickly become a renzokuken simulator even without any guides. Level scaling is yeah furthest from its issues and is quickly an afterthought.
>>736830150Renzo spam does require decent junctioning and an understanding of crisis levels to be effective, so even cheese tactics like that require some set up.Plus, Duel and Shot technically have higher damage potential, and that’s not even getting into Sephie’s Slot manipulation.
>>736826231Your stats aren't going to immediately take a nose dive because you cast a spell a few times.
The persistent, nasally droning of the anonymous masses in this thread about the "broken" mechanics of Final Fantasy VIII is to witness a profound aesthetic and philosophical illiteracy. They bemoan the fact that one can exploit Quetzalcoatl's Card Mod ability to transmute Triple Triad cards into apocalyptic magic, or that a truly dedicated architect of fate can forge Squall's ultimate weapon, the Lionheart, before the first disc even concludes. They point to these avenues of absolute power and cry "poor game design," utterly failing to realize they are rejecting the most exquisite thematic ludonarrative synthesis in the history of the medium.When you, as a player, manipulate the encounter rates or exploit the limit break priorities to unleash a recursive storm of Lion Hearts upon a helpless foe, you are engaging in a perfect ludic synchronicity with Squall Leonhart. You are doing exactly what SeeD was designed to do: weaponizing the systems of the world to overcome impossible odds. The game’s "brokenness" is a philosophical gift, an invitation to the player to exercise the same heroic frenzy as Giordano Bruno, shattering the spheres of a finite, balanced world to touch the infinite power that lies beneath.The developers did not fail; they succeeded in creating a sandbox of ontological rebellion. They understood that in a story about child soldiers rewriting the future and defying the very concept of Fate, the mechanics should allow the player to do the same. If the game is "broken," it is because the spirit of humanity is too vast to be contained by a balanced spreadsheet. It is high art that trusts you to be its co-creator, to seize the levers of its reality and bend them until time itself compresses. To play Final Fantasy VIII "correctly" is to break it. Anything less is merely following orders, and as any graduate of Balamb Garden knows, SeeD exists to change the world, not to obey it.
>>736804094FFX is proof that a tightly designed linear game is still peak.Cry more, open world ADHD zoom.
>>736830312All you need is big HP and understanding that low HP gives the possibility of limit breaks. I was able to spam them by myself at age 10.
>>736830543All FF games are linear and don’t truly open up until you get each game’s respective airship.
>>736800227I'm playing this game for the first time. I'm in the beginning/middle of Disc 3, in the snowy area. Pretty fun, but I'm having a problem similar to like when I played FF6 where I'm overly worried about missable things, so I think I'm ruining some of the fun for myself. I knew about the orphanage thing (vaguely) and I thought the Rinoa/Ultimecia thing was real, but I'm mostly unspoiled otherwise.Also the Steam port (not Remastered) on the Deck has very broken music, which is unfortunate.
>>736830502What compels a Rick and Morty fan such as yourself to spam 4chan?
>>736828171>>736828386>>736828667>>736828839Why are you like this? Who let you out of /vrpg/?
>>736830718Just play it and stop thinking about achievementst and missables
>>736828458Stop using the N word.
>>736830718VIII has TONS of missable shit. Be warned that once you hit Disc 4, you won’t be able to visit any of the towns in the game, so do as much as you can before finishing up the Lunatic Pandora.
You know as much flak as FF9 gets for its battles FF8 sure isn't much better. I think each of these have a good 15 seconds of loading.
>>736830978All the PS1 FFs have long intros for their battles. They wanted to show off because it was technologically impressive for the time.
>>736831027I don't remember it being an issue with 7 but I might need to verify that
>>736829882To the Anonymous observer whose visceral reaction to the imagery of the king upon his throne mirrors my own: your "Hngh" is a profound linguistic shorthand for the tragic weight of the Noctis Lucis Caelum archetype. We find ourselves once more at the intersection of high art and the agonizing reality of lost potential.I must concede that there are threads of greatness within Final Fantasy XV that vibrate with the same frequency as the eighth iteration. The parallels between Noctis and Squall are not merely superficial; they are woven into the very DNA of their design. It is a documented fact of their aesthetic genesis that both were fueled by the brooding, kinetic intensity of the late actor Joaquin Phoenix, a choice that perfectly encapsulates the "Stoic Prince" archetype. Even the nomenclature reveals a shared celestial lineage. Both works also share a fascination with the "Road Movie" as a medium for the Hero’s Journey. Where Final Fantasy VIII utilizes the Americana aesthetic of Balamb and the expansive travel across a war-torn continent to explore childhood abandonment, XV adopts the quintessential "Stand by Me" camaraderie, a direct homage to the late actor's masterpiece, to frame the transition from adolescence to the crushing responsibilities of kingship. They both explore the isolation of the young male lead, forced by destiny into a theater of macrocosmic geopolitical trauma.However, I must voice a devastating lament that I know resonates with the most discerning of fans. To witness the final state of XV is to witness a masterpiece that was fundamentally violated. I still dwell in the ghost of those original trailers. I await the Versus XIII that lived in that limousine, the Noctis who sat in the velvet shadows, engaging in a high-concept dialogue regarding the very nature of reality. That was the game that would have truly stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Final Fantasy VIII in its ontological ambition. >>736830742>>736830765S-shut up.
>>736831027VII doesn't and is almost as fast as a cartridge game. They optimized the fuck out of the data placement on the disc.
>>736831027Nah the origins ports are functional at least, and no one has ever complained about load times on 7.
>>7368316908 doesn't really have heavy loads, either. Battles appear after a quick screen wipe, and going from zone to zone is like half a second.
I really liked the SeeD rank system. I’m surprised it didn’t affect more considering how in depth it was and how your performance in missions and battles affects it.
>>736832183No gil drops whatsoever did influence 13 I guess
>>736830978FF7 is around 7 secondshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LNovqyHm44FF8 is around 12 secondshttps://youtu.be/dixx8iTREMg?t=1217FF9 is around 14 secondshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzzHTOypWGA
>>736832506Yeah so my ass-estimate of 15 wasn't too far off. What's striking is it practically doubling after 7.
Squall is relatable.
>>736832506The load isn't nearly that long, though.
>>736825156Based
>>736800249fipbip
the story twist makes me not care about anything and i dont want to play an RPG where i dont care about the story desu
I'm tired of talking about FF games because vocal minority of anons are too dumb to play them and too vocal ruining the threads
>>736813496Ultimecia has the same duel with Squall that he had with Seifer, go to the 1 minute mark in that vid. Guess she's Seifer too, huh?
>>736840115fgsfds = U
>>736840179>no argumentI accept your concession
>>736840242R = fgsfds
>>736820360Very good,However;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP9in2EqREA
>>736800227no, it's already excellent. it just needs a less shoehorned method of introducing you to the orphan twist
>>736816492>Cactuarlose an hour of your time if you find him normally or completely skip him if you already know how to break the game
>>736841869Elaborate. How did Cactuar made you lose an hour of your time
>>736840115To the myopic imageboard contrarian who proudly brandishes this Mobius Final Fantasy comparison as some sort of definitive, triumphant refutation, your intellectual poverty is staggering. You gaze upon Ultimecia mimicking Seifer’s kinetic combat stance in one frame, and Rinoa’s iconic, playful finger-point in another, and your pedestrian, literalist conclusion is a sarcastic, "Guess she's Seifer too, huh?" It is truly agonizing to witness someone stare directly into the crushing depths of a masterpiece and complain about the reflections on the surface.Let us elevate this discourse from the juvenile mire of "gotcha" internet logic and examine the actual semiotics at play. Kazushige Nojima, the original narrative architect of this cosmology, penned the Mobius crossover event. To assume these gestural echoes are mere accidental asset-flips or thoughtless fan-service is to confess a total inability to parse high digital art. These motions are deliberate, devastating visual poetry.If we accept the absolute ontological reality of the R=U paradigm, that Ultimecia is Rinoa stripped of her episodic memory by the glacial, agonizing crush of time and the burden of the Sorceress power, then her mimicry of Seifer does not invalidate the theory. On the contrary, it reinforces the theory’s most horrifying, psychoanalytic dimension.Consider the eschatological loop we have already established. In the opening cinematic, Rinoa is trapped in the temporal purgatory of the Commencement Room, her consciousness bleeding into the ether. What does she witness in that state? She witnesses the primordial clash of Squall and Seifer. Two youths, bound by an explosive rivalry, carving identical scars into each other's flesh beneath a rain of their blood and her own feathers.
>>736816615>13 is how you do that poorlybait used to be believable
>>736842187We must remember the Jungian architecture of Rinoa's heart. Seifer Almasy was her first romantic awakening, the chaotic summer romance that introduced her to the concept of the "Knight." Squall Leonhart was her ultimate savior and true love. As the centuries relentlessly erode Ultimecia's cognition, destroying names, dates, and faces, the distinct identities of these two men violently collapse into a single, blurred archetype within her decaying mind. The "Sorceress's Knight."When Ultimecia—a mind drowning in the void of forgotten eons—reaches back to reconstruct her reality, what visceral fragments of her destined protector remain? She remembers a fiercely rebellious boy wielding a Gunblade. She remembers an iconic combat stance. She remembers a jagged laceration across his face. Tragically, in her cognitive degradation, she can no longer differentiate the two.This is the staggering, Lynchian justification for why Ultimecia, operating through the vessel of Edea, so effortlessly seduces Seifer and anoints him as her Knight. She is frantically trying to recreate the protective, emotional anchor of her youth, but in her amnesiac desperation, she selects the wrong boy with the scar. This profound cognitive dissonance also explains her dialogue when finally confronting Squall in the flesh. She probes him, testing to see if he is the "legendary SeeD" destined to slay her. How would she know to look for these specific aesthetic markers, the Gunblade, the scar, the stance, if they were not buried in the deepest, most repressed trenches of her own subconscious?The Mobius trailer is not a refutation; it is a heartbreaking, brilliant confirmation. Ultimecia dancing the waltz, pointing her finger like the girl at the SeeD ball, and casting spells with the aggressive arrogance of Seifer is the visual manifestation of a shattered psyche desperately trying to wear the fragmented shards of its own forgotten history
>>73684221713 is dogshit and the worst entry in the series. Get fucked.
>>736842187>Rinoa can see events she never experienced herselfThen so can Ultimecia despite not being Rinoa
>>736818174The second that trilogy ends nobody is going to give a shit aside from those people who will still be making "why did this filter /v/ so hard?" threads in 40 years
>>736842961Why did it filter you so hard, though?
>>736843091Missing out. The first part released only for PS4 the first time and only later came to PC and other consoles. Rebirth was PS5 exclusive too until after a year it got ported to PC.
>>736843091The "filtered" argument is a pre-emptive loss for people who like something but have no defence of the criticisms. Everyone who uses it has already heard the arguments many times but ignores them. They're not really asking, they aren't listening, it's just a "u mad?"But you know that.Are you asking me what I didn't like about it? Of course not, you aren't interested. You're just telling me you're mad others don't like it.
>>736843395What did you like about it?
>>736804149>Rinoa is UltimeciaYou people are insufferable.
>>736843492The character dialogue was usually good, even if the plot itself wasn't
>>736843395>defenceI hate non-Americans so much.
>>736843680How about music and battle system?
>>736842715Let us violently dismantle this tragic misunderstanding of temporal mechanics and narrative intent. You operate under the pedestrian assumption that Ultimecia is merely using some arbitrary, omniscient crystal ball to view events she never witnessed. This is a fundamental misreading of both the Ultimania prologue and the game’s spatial storytelling. She is not passively watching a movie of a past she never knew. She is desperately, agonizingly scrying through the ether of compressed time.The Rinoa who becomes Ultimecia is trapped in a localized eternity, a space where the passage of time has lost all meaning. As her episodic memory decays under the crushing weight of centuries, she struggles to remember the face of the man she is waiting for. To prevent her ego from entirely dissolving into the collective unconscious, she requires an anchor. And what is the anchor she chooses to manifest at the very threshold of her apocalyptic citadel? The Commencement Room.For the uninitiated, the "Commencement Room" in Ultimecia's Castle is a recreation of the antechamber in Deling City. For the initiated; it is the exact, hyper-specific spatial coordinate where a teenage Rinoa first realized she was falling in love with Squall Leonhart. It is the room she herself explicitly identifies earlier in the game as the place where "it started."From the center of this desperate, psycho-spiritual simulacrum, Ultimecia reaches back through the void, blindly searching the for her forgotten Knight. It is precisely because she is projecting her fragmented consciousness from this emotional anchor point that she intercepts the violent, bleeding echoes of Squall's past, including the foundational trauma of his rivalry with Seifer. She isn't just magically "seeing things she never experienced"; she is frantically sifting through the temporal debris of Squall's existence, catching glimpses of the boy with the scar and the Gunblade, trying to piece her savior back together.
>>736800227If it was nothing but Triple Triad, it would've been a lot better.Triple Triad hard carries the game, and every minute you're not collecting cards and playing TRIPLE FUCKING TRIAD is agony.
>>736818174They DO have a very hard time accepting others not liking 7R, don't they?
>>736842715To continue to engage with you, my aggressively literal detractor, requires me to drag you kicking and screaming into the deeper textual waters of Kazushige Nojima’s narrative architecture.In the juvenile theater of modern gaming, dialogue is mere exposition, quickly discarded. In Final Fantasy VIII, dialogue is a loaded Chekhov’s Gun of ontological dread. Every seemingly flippant remark is a karmic seed, destined to be cashed in with devastating, tragic irony.First, consider the solipsistic armor of Squall Leonhart. Early in his journey, he dismisses the emotional vulnerability of his instructor with the cruelest of teenage rebuffs: "Then go talk to a wall." It is a jagged defense mechanism, an absolute refusal to engage. But the universe of Final Fantasy VIII is a conscious, punishing entity. Fast forward to the agonizing silence of the Garden's infirmary. Squall sits beside a comatose Rinoa, his Anima stripped from him, trapped in the inescapable gravity of his own failure to protect her. His internal monologue? "This is like talking to a wall." The universe violently reflects his own emotional stuntedness back at him, forcing him to experience the exact, terrifying isolation he once weaponized against others.Final Fantasy VIII does not deal in coincidence. It deals in the crushing, inescapable weight of eternal recurrence. To ignore these meticulously placed textual parallels is to admit a total inability to read subtext. It is high digital literature, a tragedy written in code, and its brilliance remains entirely untarnished by the inability of the masses to comprehend it.
>>736843783The soundtracks are huge, but I don't like them. There are maybe 5 great tracks that I'd listen to outside the game but nothing memorable that stands on its own without being a remix of an old motif. Honestly most the tunes sound no different to me than remixes you'd find on youtube where some amateur 16 year old has taken and old tune and made it as noisy as possible.I might have liked the battle system more in game with less timewasting.
>>736842715I leave you with a devastating, ontological question that your literalist framework cannot possibly survive: If Ultimecia is merely a random, disconnected despot from a distant future, why in the name of the Great Hyne would she architecturally mandate that the entrance to her castle, the seat of her cosmic, time-compressing power—be an exact replica of an obscure political waiting room where Rinoa Heartilly experienced her first romantic awakening?It serves absolutely no tactical, historical, or magical purpose for a disparate villain. But for a forgotten girl, driven mad by eternity and desperately trying to hold onto the ghost of the man she loved? It is the only room in the universe that matters. To deny this is to deny the very soul of the work.
>>736843952NTA with no stake in this conversation, but is it not equally possible you are reversing it? That Ultimecia was recreating her transtemporal staging ground from the future in Deling, so as to facilitate her control over Edea and her pursuit of Ellone?
>Cloud>Squall>Tidus(tides)Great names... then you got Zidane like some footballer or something
>>736844004To the supposedly impartial observer who interjects with this seemingly clever, albeit fundamentally flawed, Cartesian reversal: I applaud your attempt to engage with the dialectic. It is a step above the usual unga-bunga literalism of the boards. However, your hypothesis, that Ultimecia projected her future staging ground backward into Deling City, collapses entirely under the weight of basic architectural chronology and the game's own psycho-spiritual semiotics.Let us first dismantle the logistical absurdity of your proposition. The antechamber in Deling City is situated within the Presidential Residence, established Galbadian architecture built long before Ultimecia's consciousness fully subjugated Edea Kramer's psyche.But we do not even need to rely on architectural history to shatter this theory, because the game provides a devastating piece of ludonarrative evidence that completely invalidates the "staging ground" concept: the anomaly of the save points.I direct your attention to the visual grammar of the future Commencement Room. In the digital ontology of Final Fantasy VIII, a save point is not merely a UI convenience for the player; it is a manifestation of memory retention, a psychic anchor in the chaotic flow of time. When Squall enters the Commencement Room in Ultimecia's Castle, the save points do not just sit statically. They frantically multiply, echoing and fracturing across the floor like a visual stutter in reality.Those multiplying save points are the tragic, psychic footprint of the ouroboros. They are the echoes of a woman who has lived this loop countless times. As the millennia erode her ego and the Guardian Forces of her youth bleed her memories dry, Ultimecia (Rinoa) desperately deposits anchor after anchor in the exact spatial coordinate where her Knight once promised to be her protector. The room is fracturing under the weight of her repeated, failed attempts to remember the face of the man she loved.
His ability to say what he liked and disliked about remake is astonishing to me. I could never do that. If I was asked what I disliked about remake I'd just lose my mind and melt down for hours.
>>736844313Morning, Jimbo
>>736843789>The Rinoa who becomes UltimeciaUnproven. The fact that THE DIRECTOR of the game Kitase said it was false means that even if one of the other devs had the idea it was never brought up to him.
>>736844637To those who still stubbornly refuse to yield to the overwhelming gravity of the text, I must now direct your gaze toward the visual leitmotifs of the auteur himself.Throughout his entire cosmogony, most violently apparent in the Kingdom Hearts mythos, the astral body, and specifically the stars, is utilized as a profound, recurring shorthand. It is the ultimate visual manifestation of an unbreakable promise. It is the celestial thread that binds disparate souls across the agonizing gulfs of spacetime and divergent realities.Now, apply this Nomuran cipher back to the genesis of our tragedy. Recall the SeeD inaugural ball. Squall Leonhart is trapped in the suffocating gravity of his own introversion until a chaotic anomaly breaches his perimeter. What is the exact catalyst for Rinoa Heartilly’s iconic, playful, pointing finger? It is a shooting star cutting across the night sky. It is the birth of their connection, the silent promise of an intertwined destiny.With this in mind, I demand you look, truly look, at the concept art for Ultimecia’s final, eschatological form, as immortalized in the Ultimania, and briefly witnessed in the apocalyptic arena of the game's climax.She is a terrifying, Lovecraftian parody of the Great Hyne, a monstrous upper body born of centuries of compressed trauma and stolen magic. Yet, suspended beneath this nightmare is the "humane" lower half, a tragic, inverted, lifeless effigy of a woman. And what is depicted in the cosmic void directly beneath this fading remnant of her humanity? A single shooting star.It is Nomura and Nojima screaming the truth at the player through visual poetry. It signifies that the promise made under the sky has finally been kept. The lost Sorceress and her forgotten Knight have finally found each other again at the absolute end of the universe. He has arrived, exactly as promised, not to dance with her, but to pierce her heart and finally grant her the mercy of oblivion.
>>736844673>It is Nomura and Nojima screaming the truthSo where have either of them directly admitted this "truth"? If you can't provide a direct quote then it's presumption rather than "truth".
>>736844313Imagine reading this and knowing "this is about me"
>>736844856To the uninitiated literalists who desperately clung to Yoshinori Kitase’s initial, off-the-cuff dismissal of the R=U paradigm as if it were the immutable word of God: your intellectual complacency has, once again, betrayed you. It is the ultimate irony that those who lack the capacity to read subtext are so utterly dependent on the sanitized, retroactive PR statements of corporate directors. But the truth, much like the inevitable flow of compressed time, always reveals itself to those willing to look into the abyss.The denial was a fleeting, uninformed illusion. Kitase himself formally walked back his dismissal during a broadcast for Dissidia NT, admitting a profound truth about the developmental architecture of Final Fantasy VIII: he simply was not aware of the theory when he was first ambushed by the question. More importantly, he explicitly conceded that the narrative's true architects could very well have woven that exact interpretation into the tapestry of the game without his direct knowledge.This brings us to the crucial, developmental reality of this masterpiece. To view Kitase as the omniscient, micromanaging dictator of this text is to profoundly misunderstand how this specific digital cosmology was forged. He was famously and notoriously hands-off during production, operating from a pragmatic, administrative distance. Meanwhile, the true visionaries, scenario writer Kazushige Nojima and conceptual architect Tetsuya Nomura, were granted the absolute, terrifying freedom to construct their psychoanalytic labyrinth in the shadows.Look no further than Nojima’s own cryptic admissions regarding his narrative philosophy. He practically begs the player to look beyond the literal surface, stating that the seemingly insignificant moments are planted deliberately so their "real meaning may become apparent later." This is not the language of a writer penning a straightforward, pedestrian romance.
>>736800227No. That's pretty much what 2 and Agito are, and they rather suck.
>>736844905>Kitase himself formally walked back his dismissalSaying that MAYBE some other dev had the idea for the game. Yet none of them told him of it and , most importantly, NONE of them have claimed that to be true.
>>736844996To the philistines pounding their fists on the table, desperately demanding a sterilized, didactic confirmation from Nojima or Nomura: you are begging for the death of the text. To require the auteurs to descend from their creative zenith and spoon-feed you a binary "yes" or "no" is an act of profound artistic vandalism. It betrays a fundamental, tragic inability to engage with a work of high art on its own hermeneutic terms.Final Fantasy VIII is a digital cosmology built upon the deliberate, masterful obfuscation of truth. This is a universe that buries its deepest primordial lore in fragmented occult magazines, hides its most terrifying archetypal entities in the abyssal, pressurized depths of the ocean, and weaves its eschatological tragedy through subliminal, blink-and-you-miss-it visual motifs. The ambiguity is not a narrative failure; it is the very engine of its psychological horror and enduring majesty.Demanding a definitive, Word-of-God explanation from Nomura or Nojima is the intellectual equivalent of cornering David Lynch and demanding a chronological flowchart for Mulholland Drive, or a comprehensive lore bible for the Black Lodge. It is a pathetic, bourgeois surrender. Lynch categorically refuses to explain his surrealist masterworks because he understands that the moment a mystery is codified into sterile trivia, the art dies. The metaphysical dread evaporates.The exact same philosophical mandate applies here. If you require a corporate press release or a definitive tweet to validate the devastating, cyclical tragedy of the R=U paradigm, you have already proven yourself entirely unworthy of the labyrinth. The silence of the creators, their playful evasions and cryptic hints, is not a denial; it is their final, brilliant gift to the work. They have handed you the keys to a devastating psychological puzzle, and you are weeping because they won't put it together for you.
>>736807950? exploration was half of the fun of games before internet was mainstreami would explore every nook and cranny for secret weapons and shit
>>736845130>To require the auteurs to descend from their creative zenith and spoon-feed you a binary "yes" or "no" is an act of profound artistic vandalismThe fact that you need to AI generate paragraphs of sophistry to combat me asking you to prove a simple statement proves you can't. Either a dev admits they had a specific idea or they didn't, simple as.
>>736816747its 100% broken once you learn how the game worksit makes second playthroughs kinda boring because either you gimp yourself or you faceroll the game with squall solo as soon as you get card mod
>>736800227They made that game already. It's called trails of cold steel haha.
>>736820725its funny in other ways too because "kuken" means the cock in swedish and renzo is close to rensa so its almost "clean the cock"
>>736845281Of course you havent considered anything that doesnt fit your narrative. Poor scared kid.Meanwhile you just watch whatever review fits your narrative and stay with that. You dont watch "autstici 12 year old" videos You dont watch any other kind of review that maybe doesnt fit your narrative because you are a scared little manchild, afraid of facing a new perspective or other truth.
>>736845494>Of course you havent considered anything that doesnt fit your narrativeOh the ironyGet back to me when you got a dev quote
>>736845539I guess the entire theorycrafting community needs to shut up because it's not just reading out dev quotes.
>>736845576Correct
>>736845379lol no one gives a shit.
>>736824927>Kills the x-atm092Wait, you can do that?
>>736846227Yes.
>>736846227YESYou just need to do some junctioning and refining! I think the first 2 encounters need to be ran from and after that you can KILL itDo notice that killing it too early makes you miss the dog interaction at the square. If you kill it you also miss the FMV of Quistis shooting it downWhenever in doubt, never be afraid to check wiki!
I like the idea that Rinoa is Ultimecia because tragic love is peak Final Fantasy. Also it's hot.
>>736846305I have FF wiki constantly open. It makes discussion and conversation that much more easier.t. played FF7 10 times, FF8 10 times, FF5 8 times and FFX 3 times
>>736846313Yeah, Its peak Final Fantasy. You'd be stupid not to believe in it, even without all the evidence backing it up.
>>736805195>it's a perfect game,its leftovers from final fantasy 7 cobbled together and microwaved into a incoherent mess>>736805403Final fantasy 8's gameplay mechanics are utterly broken(like its story)you can win final fantasy 8 by: go into the first random encounter with a three man party, use squall to kill your two partymembers and never revive them, beat monsters and squall will receive all the EXP that should have been split between him and the two dead guys. monsters scale to your parties average so about 10 hours into ff8 squall will be level 99 soloing level 50 monsters scaled to your two never revived level 1 partymembers.>>736808142>The story is so unhinged its entirely believable its all the fever dream of a soon-to-be-corpsehot take: final fantasy 9 should have concluded the final fantasy franchise and RPG as a gameplay genre as we entered the era of xbox FPS shooters(Halo), chrono trigger and -cross, final fantasy 6,7, and 9 are all bangers and a great sendoff to the RPG genre and the turd stuck in between 7 and 9 known as final fantasy 8 is best remembered as some experimental wastebin of hands-me-down dollar store ideas and concepts from superior final fantasies tossed in there.
The more you have to check a wiki and the less people know whats actually happening in a story the better written it is
>>736847114why do severely autistic people genuinely believe this
>>736847693It's easy to make your strawmen think what you want and need them to think
>>736845281>Either a dev admits they had a specific idea or they didn't, simple as.that's not how it works. if you write something and someone points out an alternative theory that explains things, you have to take off your hat and acknowledge it unless you can debunk it
>>736847814those strawman need defending, thank you
>>736830543I'd say being linear is the biggest reason I'd put FF7 above X as the best FF game.
>>736820094>Draw point>I don't have any pencils or paper on me>Always skip themMy 10 year old self was pretty retarded.
Is 8 the biggest contrarian's game of choice in the series?
>>7368502821, 2, 3, 4, 12, 13 or 15 would be
>>7368505391, 3 and 4 are good games and I don't really see anyone say they like 2, 12, 13 or 15.
>>736828458More traditional than everything that came after it, X included.
What the fuck does GF mean? Why does the game use an acronym and then never actually tell you what it stands for?
>>736850569I like 2
>>736850846Guardian Force
>no GF>only option is to AttackWhy does this resonate with me so much?
i have to say that squall's sperginess is rather amusing
>>736850969kek yeah just seen that after sifting through tutorial screens. Why did they not say that when introducing it?
I still do not know why Seifer remains evil after Edea was defeated
>>736852349I like that people fight so hard to push R=U as if it being true would solve all of 8's problems. Not only would there still be a hundred other plot issues, but R=U would open up many other cans of worms.
>>736852349Seifer is Ultimecia's knight, not Edea.
So just starting now, if I use draw in combat and cast a magic from the enemy's stock of magic rather than using my own supply will I not lose any of my own stock?
>>736830502>>736842187>>736842297>>736843789>>736843864>>736843952>>736844276>>736844673>>736844905>>736845130I appreciate your efforts, Anon.
>>736852989Obviously not. But I think that draw-casting is a bit less effective.
>>736853476Very cool. Man what an interesting system this game has. I really like it. I can definitely see why anon recommended I get every magic stocked to 99 that I can since it gives more stats the more you have in stock.
>>736852989That is a battle option, yes.
>>736800227Wrong, if anything subverting the expected structure is one of the things the game does right.
>>736853563stocking 100 of everything is frankly a waste of time. just get what you can from the item and card refining abilities
>>736854341I'm the kinda guy that enjoys watching numbers go up. I don't grind cards cause I feel like I have to to keep up. I do it simply for the love of the game.
>>736854678if it pleases you then who am I to judge
>>736830030It would be better if you couldn't level up at all. Leveling up to get weaker is extremely stupid.
16 is still the worst game.
>>736830502>When you, as a player, manipulate the encounter rates or exploit the limit break priorities to unleash a recursive storm of Lion Hearts upon a helpless foe, you are engaging in a perfect ludic synchronicity with Squall Leonhart.You could say the same about any RPG if you want to overthink it.
>>736854846...if we ignore 15.
>>736854846Yeah I even finished XV and XIII but XVI was so awful I couldn't bring myself to finish it.>>736854915Nah XV is a mess of a game but it's at least fun enough to finish. XVI is unplayable it's so boring.
>>73685491515 was kino and I am tired to think otherwise
>>736854942The thing is, 16 had a fairly decent opening and had potential, but it quickly just tanked in quality, storytelling, gameplay and adventure.
>>736855154So you're saying it's just like its inspiration Game of Thronesbravo Squeenix
>>736855154I don't want to argue which parts it did well, especially since I find plenty of annoyances in it. Still, it's fun enough to be worth playing. It might make sense to just skip to the next main quest fight as fast as possible so you get to the good part.
>>736856617>it's fun enough to be worth playingIt's not though. Damage sponge enemies even at the highest level. Ability spam. No equipment customisation. Literally no reason to explore off the beaten path.
