FF8 was an underrated masterpiece.Yes it did receive some attention but not nearly enought.It deserved to be bigger than FF7.Discuss FF8 and why it was so great
>>3618636>It deserved to be bigger than FF7.It sold more.But no way there was ever going to be a game that surpassed VII. No chance, the bar was too high.That said, I like VIII and what it went for.
>>3618636>t. nostalgic zoomer
Tell me about Laguna's Cat.
>>3619028Laguna has a cat?
Im early into it, been playing all the FFs in order for the first time. I only just got to Laguna but up to this point I can see why it didnt hook people as much as 7, a mercenary school is much less cool than midgar. The mechanics and graphics are cool but neither, again up to this point at least, has the same hook or strong impact that 7 had. I know this is a bait thread but I always post in threads about games im playing if theyre not new
Force Your Way best song out of the entire game, maybe even entire franchise. Umetsu fell off hard after 8.https://youtu.be/ak-AfYL-rfI?si=POnQQ-Wfh4urf1zb
>>3618636>Story goes downhill in the 2nd half>Forgettable characters>Clunky Junction systemYeah noGood worldbuilding though
>>3618636FF8 was only great in its ambition. They clearly had some ideas for a huge JRPG that was unlike any other, and I think some of it still shines through in the final product, but it's clear they had to cut a LOT of content in order to rush the game out for release--especially since this and 9 were the first time the core FF team had ever worked on two games at once.I'm actually astounded that people don't talk more about how obviously rushed this game was--there are entire areas used for nothing but pointless fetch quests, and the game constantly resorts to wasting your time in order to pad out length, obviously having way less actual content than FF7. The world map feels so horribly empty, and even towns themselves only feel like backdrops for infodumps. It's pretty clear that there was supposed to be a super-epic story that spanned two generations, with you starting as Laguna and finishing as Squall, but they completely lacked the manpower to make that a reality, so that's why so many plot elements seem to come out of nowhere (it's pretty obvious the whole "we forgot we used to know each other" twist was a symptom of this), and why the whole "magically being transported into Laguna's brain" mechanic even exists, and why the villain is basically a complete non-entity who just wants to "compress time" for some reason. It's literally just developers scrambling to cobble something together out of a bunch of disjointed and unfinished assets.Are there any interviews that go into more depth about what they had originally planned? I'd like to know, because it seemed really ambitious, but the final product is just an absolute shitshow.
>>3621802>"we forgot we used to know each other" twistI'm surprised people bring this up so often. It didn't feel jarring to me.
>>3619028It's in the concept art. The ultimania guide says it's something to do with Squall being a lion.
>>36186368 is the shittiest squaresoft FF (no one cares about 2)
>>3624214>The ultimania guide says it's something to do with Squall being a lion.Maybe he is a lion...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1qVczfirxU
>>3618636Well i like 8 so i´m glad it didn´t do as well as VII. I mean, the "reward" for doing well seem to be to be milked to the end of time with shitty spin offs and sequels and the like.
>>3618636>as a kid thought ix was great but viii was mid>replay them as an adult and it's the exact oppositeI might like 8 even more than 7 at this point. The story filters people but I think it's genius. Battle system filters people but every ff game has braindead gameplay, and junctioning/gf abilities is satisfying once you know how it works. The side content is absolutely top tier. Music and setting is the best in the series. Best card game in any game. Summons are more fun and involved than any ff except maybe X. Some of the story beats like the space shuttle/time compression sequences are PEAK. The only real knock I have is a lack of character development outside of the main few. It's a 10/10 and contender for greatest jrpg of all time, though I'd probably still give that to vii or earthbound. But it's extremely close
>>3624350>I might like 8 even more than 7 at this pointI unironically rate both as 0/10s in the scope of rpgs. I would never play either of these ever again and did not enjoy the one time I played them.
>>3624214I've got a couple of theories. First of all, it says the moon represents his time in Winhil with Raine. Presumably Raine's name is Lionhart. When they say "Master" it might mean "predecessor" or "guardian". Because FF8 has "Witches" and G.F.s, it stands to reason that the cat is a familiar or successor. Squall is Raine's successor in some capacity. Cats in Asian tradition were also useful weather predictors. Like the cat saw a "squall" on the horizon. Since it's concept art, the game's story couldn't have been completed at the time. They say "Winhil" but what or where Winhil originally? Timber was Laguna's hometown, allegedly. It's along the railroad tracks to Fisherman's Horizon. Both of these locations have lots of cats. I believe Raine's Ghost in the Winhil side-quest was also accompanied by a cat.
>>3618636>FF8 was an underrated masterpiece.Junction and draw system were dogshit, characters were forgettable, and the story was mediocre. It was a shit game.
This is the game where they went from writing somewhat interesting stories to retarded teenage drama. It never was and never will be a masterpiece.
>>3624549However, I recall an interview with Kitase saying Laguna was meant to come from another world. And that the ending FMV was a world where Sorceresses didn't exist. He say "world", but that could also mean "timeline" as well. One without "Hyne's Descendants" In context to the game as we know it, the dual moons could represent a passage of time. However they could also be parallel worlds. We know Square Enix likes to recycle unused concepts. Both FF9 and Chrono Cross had 2 Moons. Zidane, a genome, was meant to have a black panther tail (changed for visibility). And Serge was bitten by a "werepanther", and his father was transformed by FATE into Lynx. But that part was never very clear, plus there was a magician that could turn people into cats, who had a connection to the Doppleganger living in the "dimensional rift" painted world, that was also never explained. Forespoken had lots of cats too. With witches - or "Tantas". Spoiler: The Main Character is actually the daughter of a Tanta. Her father was - oof - they don't really say. Some guy named Al. We can only joke. Al Roker, the weatherman? Or maybe Alf
>>3624556
>>3624217What about 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 11? Those are all worse than 8 as well.
>>3624565At least get it right...
>>3624556Frey's absent father could also be connected to Norse mythology. Freya. There is a melding of Norse mythology and Russian folklore involving Freya's Cats. Freya's cart is pulled by 2 "blue" cats that were given to her by Thor. Thor discovered the cats while he was fishing. He heard a song that lulled him to sleep but some disturbance woke him up. The disturbance turned out to be the kittens, and the song that put him to sleep was sung by the magic cat, Bayun. In folklore, Bayun is a large cat with a hypnotic voice. Sometimes he lives with Baba Yaga. Sometimes he's a sort of psychopomp that moves between the realms of the living and dead. Usually he eats the people that put him to sleep. But his songs also have restorative properties. Then again, so does a good night's sleep. An iron helmet can protect you from his song. Then again, it's probably hard to sleep in an iron helmet. Bayun tells Thor that the kittens are his. He met their mother in the spring, but she left him as a single father. "Woe me". Thor thought they would be perfect for Freya, and Bayun was like "Great! Not my problem anymore." and got the hell out of there. Bayun isn't actually in the Eddas. The kittens are, but there's not much written about them. However there is plenty of context to make sense of it. Freya is something of a psychopomp, as all Valkyries are. Bringing the souls to Fólkvangr and Valhalla, which are in Asgard. Traveling between Midgard and Asgard means ascending the world tree, Yggdrasil. And, you know, cats climb trees.
>>3618636People like you are why I have to suffer for hours through this crap in hopes that it will get good at some point. The characters are mid and the protagonist is a cringe insufferable twat pretending to be deep every chance he gets. This wouldn't even fly in a fanfic.The quirky stat system doesn't work, which would be obvious after a half-hour of testing the game. The scriptwriter either had no concept of politics or had to pretend like he doesn't to avoid alienating the teenagers. "Le resource extracting megacorporation bad" is solid gold compared to this.This game ruined the hopes for FF franchise for me and I'm sorry it's something you've played in your edgy teenage years while getting bullied at school and grew unreasonably attached to. Looks good and has a great card game in it though.
>>36247567R should be about 20 tiers above 7. If 7 was so good, why did it need a remake?
>>3618636FF8 could have been as good as FF7 if Quistis raped Squall in the SeeD classroom...and then again in the Training Centre.
>>3624927>If 7 was so good, why did it need a remake?7/10 bait
>>3625137During the train sequence everyone runs a train on selphie.
>>3625144Don't project your filthy thoughts on Selphie's purity.
>>3624927>If 7 was so good, why did it need a remake?Combat needed change, so you don't have to suffer through mindless battles just to enjoy the rest of the game. I can't recall fights that required any thought in the original..
>>36242178 was one of the weaker FFs in my bookno as bad as 15 but still bad
>>3625455image did not attach
>>3618636It's overrated if anything. Junction provides a lot of freedom and ability to break the game, but makes progress in a normal manner feel bizarre and static. Only the GFs add an element of interest. It's so cinematic that it feels like a walking sim. Beautiful atmosphere though. VII and IX are both better.
the gameplay is fucked on a fondamental level, this places it far belove most of them already
>>3625492>Junction provides a lot of freedom and ability to break the game, but makes progress in a normal manner feel bizarre and static.Yeah--it ends up making progression itself feel really disjointed from the actual gameplay, and your party never really starts to feel stronger, especially since, in the later discs, the stronger enemies will cause your levels to skyrocket in an attempt to also power-level the enemies, but everything still dies in a hit or two.The problem is that junctioning yourself to be that overpowered only takes a tiny bit more effort than doing lazy junctions anyway. All that really matters for 99% of the game is HP and strength, and those are some of the easiest good spells to get--waters, quakes, and tornadoes can easily be gotten from enemy drops and steals, and you can refine tents into fucking curagas within the first few hours of the game. It occurs to me that the reason the game doesn't specifically point out how much more effective it is to refine spells than to draw is because it would completely remove the only actual "difficulty" hurdle the game has.it also makes all the characters feel pointless, because each character is basically only the sum of whatever junctions they have. I went the whole game basically just having three junction loadouts that I transferred between whoever was in my party at the time--every single encounter and boss battle felt like the exact same thing. The only time I needed to significantly change up my strategy was for Ultima Weapon, and after that, I kept the exact same setups for the rest of the game.
>>3626215>I transferred between whoever was in my party at the timeI hated switching junctions. Maybe I should've self-imposed some rules and spread the GFs evenly for every character...Although that would mean spreading magic across characters as well.
>>3626257>Maybe I should've self-imposed some rules and spread the GFs evenly for every character.>Although that would mean spreading magic across characters as well.That's the problem, imo--doing things fairly literally makes more work than just being broken. Supposedly there's some kind of penalty, and GF's level slower if you put a bunch on a single character, but it was never an issue for me.>I hated switching junctions.Really? It was easy as pie. You just go to "switch" in the main menu and it lets you transfer all junctions and magic between any two characters, even if they aren't in your party. Takes like 5 seconds.The shitty part, imo, were the few instances in the early game where it just randomly de-junctions your party without telling you. Also the Laguna sequences where it isn't clear which of your junctions are going to whom in the past. It gets even worse on disc 3 where, seemingly out of nowhere, they actually start prompting you to manually switch your junctions to Laguna and friends before the flashbacks, but for some reason EVERY character except for Squall is forcibly de-junctioned for that screen, so it's entirely useless--the only workaround I found was to re-load my game, and put extra good magic and GFs on Squall just so I could take them off of Laguna to share with Kiros and Ward once the flashback started.I played on original hardware so I'm going to have to assume this is all just glitchy crap because of how rushed the game was, but goddamn. Way to add insult to injury on an already-tedious system.
>>3626300>It was easy as pie. You just go to "switch" in the main menu and it lets you transfer all junctions and magic between any two charactersExactly. Every time a scene switches characters, it's interrupted by the whole "go to the menu and do the obvious thing"An improvement would be to tie GFs to the character slots. Nevermind how odd it is to manage junctions for Laguna and the bros.
>>3618636no thanks, ill take my FF games without multiple pages of gimmick explanation, please.
My biggest complaint about GFs is that they had the potential to make them interesting, but they fucked it up. Their in-battle command abilities are all boring shit that isn't worth using over your regular attack command. You can get Mug and Darkside early on and unfortunately that's where it peaks. Almost every other command you can equip is just duplicating the function of some spell or item.Your characters are nothing but the sum of whatever GFs they have, and GFs are nothing but a list of attributes. The whole damn system is two tiers of bland. They somehow combined the concepts of jobs, spells, and summons all into a singular mechanic so fucking weak that the player is actively discouraged from engaging with any of its core components. It's almost impressive.
>>3626536>They somehow combined the concepts of jobs, spells, and summons all into a singular mechanic so fucking weak that the player is actively discouraged from engaging with any of its core components.this was always my complaint. For a game that, allegedly, has one of the most in-depth customization systems to the point that it allows you to put all available abilities and attributes on any character and customize them any way you want, right down to individual stat values... there's nothing interesting to do with it, at all. Even with only three party members, it seemed pointless to do anything beyond just making them all hit as hard as possible. I set two characters up for brute strength, and made the third to be more magic-focused, but outside of a few isolated instances, it's pretty clear my "spellcaster" would be far more useful as just a third blunt object.The coolest aspect of the system, imo, is being able to junction stuff to your weapon for elemental/status attacks, but even that is pretty braindead. A little trial and error will quickly teach you that sleep is the most useful one, and then you just do it for every party member and leave it that way for the rest of the game. At least when you had a status inflicting weapon in older games, it had some nuance about it--the exitement of finding it in a chest or getting it as a reward for a sidequest, seeing which of your characters can equip it, figuring out which one it's most useful on, and, over time, considering whether a stronger weapon with no special effect is worth replacing it with or not. All of those aspects of party-building are just completely absent in FF8. It's tragic.
>>3626844For me it took until the endgame to get more than one STR scaling GF and a status inflicting one.So my party was one character with STR, one with status effects+mug, and one for magic.
>>3626867>For me it took until the endgame to get more than one STR scaling GFImpossible. The game gives you Shiva and Ifrit right at the start--you literally cannot miss them--and they both allow strength junctioning.
>>3626881Goddamn you're right, I just completely misremembered. Already by disc 2 I had STR junctions for everyone, it's just that Squall had almost double the strength anyways, so I gave the status effect attack to somebody else.
>>3626952>Squall had almost double the strength anywaysSquall starts out strongest, has the damage boost from the gunblade trigger, is permanently in your party for the whole game, and then they did that stupid gimmick where the character who lands a killing blow gets more EXP. It basically just ensures Squall is going to always be the strongest in your team by a country mile.I'm actually half convinced they added the gunblade trigger gimmick in the late stages of the game after they realized how boring combat was because all you ever have to do is regular attacks.
>>3627141>added the gunblade trigger gimmick in the late stagesI think it might've been planned, based on the gunblade thing>character who lands a killing blow gets more EXPI could like this extra layer of autism, if it was effortless to plan out who gets it. Unfortunately it would require scanning enemies, so no thanks.
