So what exactly was the 'intended' way to play this game? Surely they expected you to understand the junction system but did they expect you to do all the broken shit it allows and make the entire game a cakewalk? It seems like either you're a clueless idiot/kid who doesn't utilize it well and just spams summons or you use card mod to get 100 tornados junctioned to STR before you even go to Dollet and then autopilot the rest of the game.
There is no "intended way"FF8 is the sandbox J-RPG,just expériment and have fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa5gcYA8xf8
I play it as you normally would play RPGs. Fight most encounters, draw here and there, play cards occasionally to break things up, mug and refine some stuff when you need it. Never summon once. Try out some of the sillier magics and abilities and see if you can make them work. Level up naturally. Much more fun.I've done all the gimmicks and they aren't as satisfying. If you do the low level "run from everything non-mandatory" shtick and or the curaga tent trick then the game is basically just the story. And the story is only good if you're 14 playing it for the first time.
You were supposed to play it like every other final fantasy, enjoy the story and play with new mechanics, like summons and "draw". The optimization of the game would come from you beating the game, not worrying about levels, finding what magic is best through the fights you were a part of, etc. Maybe you realized at some point you can get some crazy powerful spells from cards, but you likely wouldn't know this on a first playthrough. You have to reduce some pretty rare cards after all, and not everyone would be willing to do that or play triple triad in the absurd amounts you have to to do those tricks. Putting it all together would be unlikely for a young kid playing this on its release.Just b urself and enjoy the ride, you don't HAVE to play every game in the most optimal way.
>>12387590Definitely intentional, and they probably expected you to have something competent by the end because the bosses in the final dungeon are more like puzzles
you're supposed to lean into the card game and find rare cards to get the upper hand in refining or learning other shit. not supposed to power level like a normal final fantasy since everything scales with you. you ARE supposed to abuse junctioning system, be it with magic to boost stats/immunities or with GFs to unlock better abilities
>>12387590I remember when I originally played FF8 on my first time normally back in those days before I learned about level scaling I ended up having to use gameshark cheat codes to spam the Moomba guardian summon item to finish off Ultimecia and beat the game.
>>12387590The intended way is to let Zell have his goddamn hotdog. He earned it.
>>12387639>>12387647Pretty much these.
>>12387590Draw spells from every enemy and spam summons until you learn that you can junction your most powerful magic to atk and spam basic attacks, then you discover spamming cancel at low health to force limit breaks, then you get aura and lion heart and go to town.
>>12387590It's really not a super difficult game unless you're going for 100% superboss completion. It's just weird and annoying on an intuitive level to figure out how to build a character really well. But if you are leveling up your GFs and pulling magic as much as you can you can rely a lot on auto-speccing to get you through to the end. Being a dumb kid will fail you in most games unless they are really super easy. You only really have to have a modicum of intelligence to make decisions that will benefit you; prioritizing the long-term over the short-term is something people only realize as they get older. I guess I just think you don't have to have intricate knowledge of the games systems to get to the end. You just have to have vague knowledge that having more magic equipped to a stat is good and maybe prioritizing certain stat boosts is good if you want to use that character more for attacking, support or magic use. And if something isn't working then try something else. Children generally lack patience and are prone to give up if the one thing they tried isn't working. FF8 allows you a lot of freedom in respeccing your characters to making something that works.
>>12388682>You're supposed to follow an internet minmax guide that trivializes every battle in the game.Yeah, if all you want is to say you completed the game.The real sign of a good player is how quickly they discover and pick up things on their own. Sussing out the systems of a game yourself is much more satisfying.I recommend leveling as much as possible, enemies learn new abilities at lvls 20 and 30 keeping things fresh.There's no fun in playing an RPG when you know you can't lose.
>>12387590Most of the gamebreaking shit is conceptually simple but very laborious. Getting 100 tornados or 9999 hp or even the fucking lionhearr tin disk 1 ids possible but you have to make a very intentional and dedicated effort do it and honestly there's no real reason to. You can just play the game without excessive grinding or minmaxxing or deliberately staying low level. As long as you make some moderate effort to draw, refine magic and upgrade your junctions incrementally you will outpace the level scaling of the enemies. Which is how I think they intended most people to play. You get everything incrementally under normal circumstances and the availability of more powerful draw points, GFs and items progresses with the story. You want to be doing a little of everything all the time but not lingering in one spot to get 99 of something or gain 20 levels. A normal, non-obsessive run is perfectly doable and you don't really need to try and break shit until the endgame when it becomes much more efficient to do so anyway. But I will point out that the game's handling of the magic lamp is interesting because it's unmissable. It's a not a sidequest reward or found in a hidden chamber or anything. Cid just straight up gives it to you. They wanted you to have Diabolos and they give it to you very early in the game. I think they wanted players to get enc-none and mitigate random encounters because the level scaling makes exp grinding unnecessary. The ideal way to play is a minimal encounters game at fairly low levels with heavy reliance on card modding (which is *not* the same as the full autist "never fight anything stay at level 1 forever" runs that are another completely unnecessary overcorrection). I don't think they necessarily expected everybody to play that way but they encourage you to and give you all the means to. The game is as comfy or as boring as you make it.
>>12389205>I think they wanted players to get enc-none and mitigate random encounters because the level scaling makes exp grinding unnecessary.I think they simply wanted to give players the option to play it that way.As you said "The game is as comfy or as boring as you make it." That is absolutely the best synopsis of VIII I've heard.If you do the Shumi Village sidequest you get almost nothing other than the elder telling you that goals aren't as important as the experience. They were really going somewhere with this game.
>>12388982your green text was not any part of what I said retard. I never said you had to use gamefaqs or any other walkthrough. you can discover the cards and all that stuff by playing the game
As the others said, you just play the game and do a bit of everything (draw, refine items/cards, cards, spell sources) and experiment.Foreknowledge, guides and retarded advices like "Don't level up it punishes you! Instead you should spend 100 hours playing cards!" completely ruined this game for any new player dumb enough to listen.
>>12389283Oooooh, you discovered these things on your own! How foolish of me!No, you didn't. I know all about this game and even if you do have outside knowledge that stuff is still tedious. Oh man, you just happened to intuit naturally that 20 Elnoyle cards refine into pulse ammo to get Lionheart. And you happened to figure out the only 2-3 npcs that occasionally have them, and you figured out RNG manip to make it easier on your own! You just guessed that curagas are great for HP and prioritized the GF junctions that make all this happen. Only so you can make the game incredibly boring.I bet.
>>12389312And how do you even know Lionheart exists at all without the last Weapons Monthly that isn't available on disc 1? How do you know to get L-mag RF to do the curaga trick nstead of stat boosts or additional junctions?You don't.
>>12387590I wonder how a playthrough without stocking magic or refine abilities would go. Relying on those draw points. Will your stats be enough for the challenges?
heres the optimal way to play for a balanced, non broken and fun experience.>one draw per character per battle max>each character can only have one GF junctioned at a time>only one GF summon per character per battle>no item or card refining whatsoever>no running from battles unless used in moderation>no meltdown or aura>no cerberus because free triple for the whole team is way too busted>do not go to the island closest to heaven or hellthere you go now the game is fixed. you will have to be strategic about your setups and magic usage, you will need to take advantage of GF stat buffing abilities, but it wont be kaizo difficult either. one caveat is that you can take the handcuffs off and use whatever you want for omega weapon because otherwise its probably gonna be impossible. my last playthrough I used this ruleset and it was by far the most fun Ive had playing ff8
>>12389420forgot one more rule:>no powerleveling past level 70 before tackling ultimecias castle. the bosses in the castle have level cap around there and if you past it they will become trivial and ruin the experiencemade that mistake my first time playing, did all the sidequests and leveled to 100 and it was really disappointing. pretty fucking retarded the whole game scales with your level until you get the final dungeon where they just give them a hard cap for no fucking reason.
I still think the art style, setting and OST for this game is better than literally any jrpg ever made. and the story is way way better than people give it credit for, the ending is such a mindfuck when you first play it. its flawed for sure but still the most ambitious and beautiful game on the ps1
>>12389454It's one of those games where online folks dogpile on them for arbitrary reasons.
>>12389213shumi village is really something else, an entire town with sidequests spanning 2 discs and it's completely optionalyou can also tell if someone never did that shit cause they'll say they have no idea what was up with NORG
>>12389420>making it as tedious as possible is le fun!
>>12389546NTA but that doesn't sound tedious. Doing triple triad for hours to boost one stat is tedious.Only his second stipulation really has much impact.You don't have to follow his ruleset. But if you want a game with lots of player choice, it's going to have unbalanced broken shit. If you've played the game 25 years and have seen att the exploits online you have to consciously not use all of the exploits or else the game is easy.In most RPGs enemies don't scale with you. People think they're smart to grind and get OP early then complain the game is too easy, "mash x to attack." But they did it to themselves, over leveling and summoning are there so kids under 10 can play RPGs too.
>>12387590You have to keep Squall at level 1, and spend the first 10 hours drawing 100 of every magic you can, because the game is absolutely impossible otherwise.If you're a retard that is.
>>12387590Personally i didn't enjoy the junction system. I enjoyed breaking the game, but using spells was counter productive.
>>12389742You were supposed to use draw to replace what you spend, not autistically min max every stat with 100 of each spell and never use them. Ammo management with Irvine must have put you into a tism tantrum.
>>12391024>12391024its not autistic to max your stats holy shit. it was definitely counter productive to stock 99 triples or whatever other good spells and then not want to use them because your stats start dipping. it was a stupid system in that regard
>>12391310>Not want to use them because your stats start dippingSo, let's say you have 99 Thundara junctioned to Atk, giving you 46 Atk, suppose the character's base Atk is 22.It realistically takes casting it 5-10 times just to drop you one point on one stat.You can obviously get more after the battle.Yet people refuse to cast even 1-2 times, which wouldn't reduce your stat. Have a little fun with the game, experiment a little.
>>12391376right but some spells are harding to get until you can refine items or cards or whatever to get steady supplies of stuff. Junctioning curaga to HP or magic or whatever its best at, before you have common access to it and then having to use it to actually heal (more than just a couple times) was stuff that I found annoying. but its been awhile I definitely need to revisit FF8
>>12389519Played it multiple times and I still have no idea what was up with NORG. It comes totally from left field.
>>12391412Yeah, the story is an incomplete shitshow. I love it though.I know there are more details about NORG in the game. Shumi side quest (norg is a shumi) and/or a couple NPCs mention him?Shumis turn into moombas when they achieve personal fulfillment, or the other way around, I forgot, and norg went against the tribe to make money or something idk, I prefer not to question it too much.
>>12391393Since enemies level with you, as long as you're not grinding you shouldn't need shit like Meltdown and other rare spells junctioned in the first place. The natural curve of the game for an expected progression fits well within the normal rarities for spells at any given point in the game, and chasing after rare shit early just makes you way too powerful in normal play. Besides, you can always just keep everyone in critical and spam limits if you want to not play the game that badly.
>>12391483the only thing that meaningfully changes when enemies level up is that they have better magic to draw and drop different items that often refine into better magic tooa lv100 bite bug is still just a bite bug while malboros and ruby dragons are dangerous at any level
>>12391565> is that they have better magic to draw and drop different items that often refine into better magic tooThats... kinda my point? You don't need to junction powerful magic let alone bug out because casting spells a few times lowers a stat by 1.
>>12387614thisit's one of the more open games in the series, so it seems logical that they expected you to explore and experiment. it has a ton of mechanics to experiment with and side content to find out in the world.
>>12391393Well yeah, of course you can't just find an infinite supply of high-level spells early in the game. It would make the game easier to break than it already is. The fuck do you want, max stats halfway through disk 1? The earlier portions of the game as designed with the assumption that you don't have those spells at all, much less in high quantities. If you happen to acquire some, great, but you are never going to be softlocked or in any real trouble because you failed to hoard spells you shouldn't even have by that point. Curaga heals for more HP than your characters probably have until at least halfway through the game.And the other thing is, spells that are rare in the early game shouldn't be part of your ideal junction setup anyway precisely because you're unlikely to have a decent quantity. If you have like 5 lifes or firagas or whatever you're probably better off junctioning something that you *can* get in large quantities at that point. Getting 100 zombies or waters is piss easy and that'll boost any particular stat significantly enough in the early game. If you only have a few of a particular spell and can't find more then it's not going to be a crucial part of your junction setup any time soon so fuck it, fire one off if you feel like it. Having 4 in your inventory instead of 5 won't change anything
