So after watching the AWESOME reviews of FF8 by Spoony I decided to revisit Final Fantasy 8 again and see if its as bad as I remember. Why you ask? well after playing through the horrible vomit-inducing shitfest and sorry excuse for an RPG called Final Fantasy 13 I realized that 8 would be a masterpiece now.

So Final Fantasy 8, the previous worse Final Fantasy in my book, actually had some stuff going for it. The graphics were amazing for its time, and the way they mixed CG Movies at key moments while you could control your character through the movie was pretty impressive. I also like the art direction in this game, it's pretty cohesive and the characters don't look too ridiculous. Also, Final Fantasy 8 had some amazing music in it. Some of the best songs in the whole series are in this game. The music just got worse from this one on.

aaand that's about it.

So here's my experience disc by disc. Today, Disc 1:

In the first disc you are introduced to one of the worst aspects of FF8, if not the worse. The Draw and Junction system. In previous Final Fantasies, you could obtain magic by buying it on a store, or from espers, by obtaining materia or simply learning it from different jobs. Here you obtain magic by "drawing" it from monsters. Which sounds interesting until you realize that you will spend hours on end just drawing magic from a monster to stock them.

You want to stock magic because you can "junction" it to your stats. By Junctioning magic to stats you make the stats grow, so you want to have a lot of different types of magic, all stacked to 100, to get the most out of it. for at least 3 characters. Believe me, thats A LOT of drawing. Lots of hours just drawing and drawing from monsters. It's tedious as hell. (please watch this. That gentlemen, is final fantasy 8 in a nutshell. You can stop reading this and just watch that video)

After you get all the magic you want, you just save it there and never spend it. Yep that's right, you don't want to spend your magic because it will reduce your stats, which makes the point of obtaining it pretty useless. This game also has another fatal flaw, the monsters level as you do, so in this game, you DON'T WANT TO LEVEL UP. That's pretty backwards to everything we know about FF, right?

Since I know all the exploits you can do to this system, I can get amazingly powerful (which I did) without even ever fighting. Since I can obtain an ability that nullifies random encounters, the only fights I do are the mandatory bosses. I'm actually on the 4th disc right now, and I'm only level 18.

No other final fantasy allows this kind of bullshit. This is the most broken system of ANY RPG I've ever played. It's completely retarded that the best way to get powerful in this game is through a card minigame called triple triad than by fighting. That you want to AVOID fighting at all costs to maximize your returns.

Let me empathize this: the best way to play final fantasy 8, is by NOT FIGHTING, instead it's best to play a completely retarded card game to obtain the magic you need. Also, NEVER use the magic you obtain. Just limit break or attack the mobs all the time. It's useless to level up because the monsters will just level up with you.

You also get GFs which are the usual summons from Final Fantasy, but again, you don't want to use them except for special cases because you do more damage by just using your normal attacks anyway. The serve more as a meatshield than as a powerful attack.

Anyways that is all I have to say about the drawing/junctioning system but if you are still not convinced, please watch spoony's review. He explains in detail how broken this system is.

I got sidetracked, lets go back to Disc 1:

So after a rather impressive intro where we are led to think that Squall is actually a kickass character, we are introduced to two of the main Characters, Squall, the hero of the story, and Quistis, who has the hots for Squall and is also her instructor in this mercenary complex which is more like a japanese high school from the future.

Disc 1 is basically about introducing the main characters of the story. These are:

Squall, as I previously mentioned, the hero of the story, and one of the precursors of the emo movement. Seriously this guy is beyond annoying, but I gotta say that after replaying this shitfest my opinion on Squall has changed and I don't hate it that much now, because I realized that the poor guy is surrounded by idiots and a whore. I can now relate to him not caring about his teammates, and ignoring the huge whore that is Rinoa all the time. I would be pissed off if I was surrounded by dimwits and dumbasses.

Actually Squall isn't that much of an emo, he's more of an asshole, and yes he gets pretty emo at several points, but as I said he's more of an asshole most of the time, which I can relate.

Rinoa oh by all hells I hate this skank. This woman is a complete whore. Picture this: you are in a party minding your business and a girl you're obviously not attracted to comes to talk to you and the first thing she says is that she has the hots for you. Not only that but she forces you to dance with her. That my friends is what we call a whore.

Most annoying is that for some explainable reason all the dumbasses Squall has to hang out with are trying to force him to be with her. He even says so in a scene. Yeah, not to mention this girl is devoid of any personality other than wanting to bang Squall. Did I mention she had the hots for Squall and for another guy named Seifer at the same time? yeah... whore.

Quistis is Squall's instructor. At first she wanted to fuck with Squall REAL BAD. But then after Rinoa appeared and she saw she couldn't compete with that level of whoriness she just called it quits. We get almost no backstory on her so we don't care for her most of the time. I do pick her as a party member because well, compared to the rest, this is the less annoying character in the game and the only one that doesn't make me want to stab babies.

Zell.... oh Zell you little rascal. I so hate this idiot. This guy acts like a child and is ALSO devoid of any personality. If you ask me to describe this guy, all i can tell is that he wears silly shorts, likes to punch things and has the mind of an 8 year old kid.

Selphie is this final fantasy's mandatory jailbait. Contrary to all the other supporting cast, she does have a personality, and an annoying one at that.

Irvine what can I say about this guy. He's a cowboy stereotype, a complete pussy and always find new ways to dishonor the gun-wielders in final fantasy history. Also devoid of personality.

I guess the makers of this game wanted to focus on Squall and Rinoa's "Love Story" (I just laughed out loud at that concept) and thats why the supporting cast of this game feel like cardboard cutouts. I'm going to hell for this but hell, even Final Fantasy 13 at least TRIED to develop all their characters. Oh well.

So Disc one is about getting accustomed to the systems of this game, and meeting your team and the main villian, the sorceress. For some reason she wants to destroy the world (oh my what a surprise) and you are sent on a mission to stop her. She also has allied with Squall's school rival, Seifer, which also gets laid with Rinoa. more on that later.

Anyways in the mission Irvine pussies out, Quistis' almost fucks up her part and everything goes to shit. In the end Squall has to face the sorceress, and he gets STABBED IN THE CHEST BY A GIANT ICICLE. and we are left at that cliffhanger until Disc 2.

A lot of unimportant things happen, between the beginning of the story and that, but again, it's just filler. Except for the recurring dreams your party has about a guy named Laguna. And Laguna is the saving grace of this game.

More on that the next time, where I talk about my experience with disc 2.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A woman is not a whore unless she sleeps around with multiple men, just thought you'd know that a girl interested in a guy then asking to dance doesn't make her a whore.

Sir_NutS said...

Hmm yes, I agree it does not. Bugging and stalking the hell out of him just because she wants them to be together while the guy is CLEARLY NOT INTERESTED, all while there's a world crisis going on kinda does. But yes, maybe even there she doesn't fit the dictionary definition of whore so I'll just call her a crazy ass stalking bitch from now on :).

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