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This thread has been linked to the game 'Final Fantasy VIII'.
Final Fantasy 8 is one of the never final fantasies of the Final Fantasy series. This instalment was published and developed by Square for the Playstation in 1999. This game was the first in the series to aim for a more realistic look and ultimately hasn’t aged that well in the graphics department, but I think it still looks better than FF7’s chunky pixel characters with triangle hands and hair do.
The game starts on a Military Academy where students know as “SeeD” train to become elite mercenaries to help others. The three members of SeeD that you meet are Squall, the protagonist who spends most of his time sulking; Zell, a short tempered rich boy who loves martial arts and Quistis the instructor to the other SeeD students although the same age as most of the other students.
It doesn’t take long before the city, Dollet gets invaded by Galbadian military forces, forcing Dollet to call upon the members of SeeD to fight against them. The story continues and the scale eventually moves from saving a city to saving the entire world.
I believe that the gameplay in Final fantasy 8 is arguably the weakest in the series. This is because of two poorly thought out ideas: Junctioning and Gardian Forces.
In this game, I believe that the creatures and enemies level at your entire party’s average level. This means that you don’t gain much of an advantage over enemies by grinding for experience. You get an advantage over your opponent by using the Junctioning system, which allows you to attach Magic to your character’s attributes. Magic in this game isn’t infinite until you run out of mana points, but instead you have a limited stock of spells. You can either draw magic from the enemies that you face or find draw points that are scattered around the world.
The higher the stock of spells that you have on an attribute, the more stats you gain from it, so using magic spells actually makes you weaker. Each creature in the game has its own magic that you can draw from and you have to memorise which ones have the best magic and hope that you find them when your bouts are randomly generated. It is pretty dull to spend many fights spamming “Draw” at an enemy till you have 100 of a spell or two.
The Guardian Forces in the game can be called upon infinitely in any battle as long as they still have health points. The GF’s are also your most powerful source of damage in most fights. When you call upon a GF, they are introduced in an over the top cinematic that lasts almost a minute and it is unskippable. At first these are impressive, but you will be sick of the sight of them before the game ends. You can increase the power of the Guardian Forces by spamming the Square button at certain intervals which you will lose if you press square at the wrong time. I suppose it takes your mind off the cutscene, but it also gets repetitive.
However, the game does have some form of logic in enemies’ elemental weaknesses. The first boss that you fight, Ifrit, is a Guardian of fire and so you intuitively cast water magic on it to beat it. The junction system also works well with this too, as you could attach water to your attack stat to cause additional water damage with your standard attacks or you can attach an element to your defence stat to absorb the type of damage you wish. You can also do the same with status effect magic, increasing your resistance to blind or confusion if a boss or enemy uses those abilities.
The gameplay complaints could be ignored as some of the Guardian Forces can give you an ability that stops random encounters, and because the enemies level with you, you won’t be put at a disadvantage when doing so.
The protagonist Squall is characterised so that he is distant and pushes away other characters due to his childhood, but then a post twist occurs and you find that all the characters had the same upbringing as him which leaves you wondering why it is only the protagonist that has these issues. His flaws also spread over to the love interest in Rinoa, who is always trying to cheer him up and have fun, while he shows little interest in her. It is hard to believe that she doesn’t give up on him and try her charms on another character like Irvine, the so called Ladies man.
The cinematic cut scenes are still impressive by today’s standards and the game does feature sequences with the 3D in game models on pre-rendered backgrounds, which was also done in FF7.
Ultimately, I believe that the game’s strength comes not from the gameplay or the overarching story, but the fairly detailed characters, the memorable set pieces and most importantly for me, the epic scope of the game.
It becomes easier to forgive Squalls flaws when he saves Rinoa in so many memorable ways. I don’t want to spoil much, but he goes up into space to save her at one point.
I want to state that the epic scope of the game is something that I miss in the Final Fantasy series. The amount of detail that went into this game is amazing and this game also has the Military Garden used as an airship, allowing you to fly across continents of the game world. You can find secret islands which hold secret bosses and minigames.
Once the series lost the airship, the areas also seemed to lose the details that made the towns and cities memorable too. If the series could take a graphical hit to return to what the series used to be, then I would definitely make that trade. Due to time it takes to develop games in HD, it takes larger development teams and ultimately making a game of the size of FF7 – 9 in HD is not financially feasible.
Even with the flawed gameplay, the game still has a quality to it that I associated with the series and expected back then. I wish I could say the same today. I also love the music from this game composed by Nobuo Uematsu, which is usually sweet memorable melodic music.
This game isn’t suited for everyones taste and I find it somewhat difficult to recommend, due to its issues but it contains what I love about the series.
8.0
The game starts on a Military Academy where students know as “SeeD” train to become elite mercenaries to help others. The three members of SeeD that you meet are Squall, the protagonist who spends most of his time sulking; Zell, a short tempered rich boy who loves martial arts and Quistis the instructor to the other SeeD students although the same age as most of the other students.
It doesn’t take long before the city, Dollet gets invaded by Galbadian military forces, forcing Dollet to call upon the members of SeeD to fight against them. The story continues and the scale eventually moves from saving a city to saving the entire world.
I believe that the gameplay in Final fantasy 8 is arguably the weakest in the series. This is because of two poorly thought out ideas: Junctioning and Gardian Forces.
In this game, I believe that the creatures and enemies level at your entire party’s average level. This means that you don’t gain much of an advantage over enemies by grinding for experience. You get an advantage over your opponent by using the Junctioning system, which allows you to attach Magic to your character’s attributes. Magic in this game isn’t infinite until you run out of mana points, but instead you have a limited stock of spells. You can either draw magic from the enemies that you face or find draw points that are scattered around the world.
The higher the stock of spells that you have on an attribute, the more stats you gain from it, so using magic spells actually makes you weaker. Each creature in the game has its own magic that you can draw from and you have to memorise which ones have the best magic and hope that you find them when your bouts are randomly generated. It is pretty dull to spend many fights spamming “Draw” at an enemy till you have 100 of a spell or two.
The Guardian Forces in the game can be called upon infinitely in any battle as long as they still have health points. The GF’s are also your most powerful source of damage in most fights. When you call upon a GF, they are introduced in an over the top cinematic that lasts almost a minute and it is unskippable. At first these are impressive, but you will be sick of the sight of them before the game ends. You can increase the power of the Guardian Forces by spamming the Square button at certain intervals which you will lose if you press square at the wrong time. I suppose it takes your mind off the cutscene, but it also gets repetitive.
However, the game does have some form of logic in enemies’ elemental weaknesses. The first boss that you fight, Ifrit, is a Guardian of fire and so you intuitively cast water magic on it to beat it. The junction system also works well with this too, as you could attach water to your attack stat to cause additional water damage with your standard attacks or you can attach an element to your defence stat to absorb the type of damage you wish. You can also do the same with status effect magic, increasing your resistance to blind or confusion if a boss or enemy uses those abilities.
The gameplay complaints could be ignored as some of the Guardian Forces can give you an ability that stops random encounters, and because the enemies level with you, you won’t be put at a disadvantage when doing so.
The protagonist Squall is characterised so that he is distant and pushes away other characters due to his childhood, but then a post twist occurs and you find that all the characters had the same upbringing as him which leaves you wondering why it is only the protagonist that has these issues. His flaws also spread over to the love interest in Rinoa, who is always trying to cheer him up and have fun, while he shows little interest in her. It is hard to believe that she doesn’t give up on him and try her charms on another character like Irvine, the so called Ladies man.
The cinematic cut scenes are still impressive by today’s standards and the game does feature sequences with the 3D in game models on pre-rendered backgrounds, which was also done in FF7.
Ultimately, I believe that the game’s strength comes not from the gameplay or the overarching story, but the fairly detailed characters, the memorable set pieces and most importantly for me, the epic scope of the game.
It becomes easier to forgive Squalls flaws when he saves Rinoa in so many memorable ways. I don’t want to spoil much, but he goes up into space to save her at one point.
I want to state that the epic scope of the game is something that I miss in the Final Fantasy series. The amount of detail that went into this game is amazing and this game also has the Military Garden used as an airship, allowing you to fly across continents of the game world. You can find secret islands which hold secret bosses and minigames.
Once the series lost the airship, the areas also seemed to lose the details that made the towns and cities memorable too. If the series could take a graphical hit to return to what the series used to be, then I would definitely make that trade. Due to time it takes to develop games in HD, it takes larger development teams and ultimately making a game of the size of FF7 – 9 in HD is not financially feasible.
Even with the flawed gameplay, the game still has a quality to it that I associated with the series and expected back then. I wish I could say the same today. I also love the music from this game composed by Nobuo Uematsu, which is usually sweet memorable melodic music.
This game isn’t suited for everyones taste and I find it somewhat difficult to recommend, due to its issues but it contains what I love about the series.
8.0
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Final Fantasy 8 is one of the never final fantasies of the Final Fantasy series. This instalment was published and developed by Square for the Playstation in 1999. This game was the first in the series to aim for a more realistic look and ultimately hasn’t aged that well in the graphics department, but I think it still looks better than FF7’s chunky pixel characters with triangle hands and hair do.
The game starts on a Military Academy where students know as “SeeD” train to become elite mercenaries to help others. The three members of SeeD that you meet are Squall, the protagonist who spends most of his time sulking; Zell, a short tempered rich boy who loves martial arts and Quistis the instructor to the other SeeD students although the same age as most of the other students.
It doesn’t take long before the city, Dollet gets invaded by Galbadian military forces, forcing Dollet to call upon the members of SeeD to fight against them. The story continues and the scale eventually moves from saving a city to saving the entire world.
I believe that the gameplay in Final fantasy 8 is arguably the weakest in the series. This is because of two poorly thought out ideas: Junctioning and Gardian Forces.
In this game, I believe that the creatures and enemies level at your entire party’s average level. This means that you don’t gain much of an advantage over enemies by grinding for experience. You get an advantage over your opponent by using the Junctioning system, which allows you to attach Magic to your character’s attributes. Magic in this game isn’t infinite until you run out of mana points, but instead you have a limited stock of spells. You can either draw magic from the enemies that you face or find draw points that are scattered around the world.
The higher the stock of spells that you have on an attribute, the more stats you gain from it, so using magic spells actually makes you weaker. Each creature in the game has its own magic that you can draw from and you have to memorise which ones have the best magic and hope that you find them when your bouts are randomly generated. It is pretty dull to spend many fights spamming “Draw” at an enemy till you have 100 of a spell or two.
The Guardian Forces in the game can be called upon infinitely in any battle as long as they still have health points. The GF’s are also your most powerful source of damage in most fights. When you call upon a GF, they are introduced in an over the top cinematic that lasts almost a minute and it is unskippable. At first these are impressive, but you will be sick of the sight of them before the game ends. You can increase the power of the Guardian Forces by spamming the Square button at certain intervals which you will lose if you press square at the wrong time. I suppose it takes your mind off the cutscene, but it also gets repetitive.
However, the game does have some form of logic in enemies’ elemental weaknesses. The first boss that you fight, Ifrit, is a Guardian of fire and so you intuitively cast water magic on it to beat it. The junction system also works well with this too, as you could attach water to your attack stat to cause additional water damage with your standard attacks or you can attach an element to your defence stat to absorb the type of damage you wish. You can also do the same with status effect magic, increasing your resistance to blind or confusion if a boss or enemy uses those abilities.
The gameplay complaints could be ignored as some of the Guardian Forces can give you an ability that stops random encounters, and because the enemies level with you, you won’t be put at a disadvantage when doing so.
The protagonist Squall is characterised so that he is distant and pushes away other characters due to his childhood, but then a post twist occurs and you find that all the characters had the same upbringing as him which leaves you wondering why it is only the protagonist that has these issues. His flaws also spread over to the love interest in Rinoa, who is always trying to cheer him up and have fun, while he shows little interest in her. It is hard to believe that she doesn’t give up on him and try her charms on another character like Irvine, the so called Ladies man.
The cinematic cut scenes are still impressive by today’s standards and the game does feature sequences with the 3D in game models on pre-rendered backgrounds, which was also done in FF7.
Ultimately, I believe that the game’s strength comes not from the gameplay or the overarching story, but the fairly detailed characters, the memorable set pieces and most importantly for me, the epic scope of the game.
It becomes easier to forgive Squalls flaws when he saves Rinoa in so many memorable ways. I don’t want to spoil much, but he goes up into space to save her at one point.
I want to state that the epic scope of the game is something that I miss in the Final Fantasy series. The amount of detail that went into this game is amazing and this game also has the Military Garden used as an airship, allowing you to fly across continents of the game world. You can find secret islands which hold secret bosses and minigames.
Once the series lost the airship, the areas also seemed to lose the details that made the towns and cities memorable too. If the series could take a graphical hit to return to what the series used to be, then I would definitely make that trade. Due to time it takes to develop games in HD, it takes larger development teams and ultimately making a game of the size of FF7 – 9 in HD is not financially feasible.
Even with the flawed gameplay, the game still has a quality to it that I associated with the series and expected back then. I wish I could say the same today. I also love the music from this game composed by Nobuo Uematsu, which is usually sweet memorable melodic music.
This game isn’t suited for everyones taste and I find it somewhat difficult to recommend, due to its issues but it contains what I love about the series.
8.0
The game starts on a Military Academy where students know as “SeeD” train to become elite mercenaries to help others. The three members of SeeD that you meet are Squall, the protagonist who spends most of his time sulking; Zell, a short tempered rich boy who loves martial arts and Quistis the instructor to the other SeeD students although the same age as most of the other students.
It doesn’t take long before the city, Dollet gets invaded by Galbadian military forces, forcing Dollet to call upon the members of SeeD to fight against them. The story continues and the scale eventually moves from saving a city to saving the entire world.
I believe that the gameplay in Final fantasy 8 is arguably the weakest in the series. This is because of two poorly thought out ideas: Junctioning and Gardian Forces.
In this game, I believe that the creatures and enemies level at your entire party’s average level. This means that you don’t gain much of an advantage over enemies by grinding for experience. You get an advantage over your opponent by using the Junctioning system, which allows you to attach Magic to your character’s attributes. Magic in this game isn’t infinite until you run out of mana points, but instead you have a limited stock of spells. You can either draw magic from the enemies that you face or find draw points that are scattered around the world.
The higher the stock of spells that you have on an attribute, the more stats you gain from it, so using magic spells actually makes you weaker. Each creature in the game has its own magic that you can draw from and you have to memorise which ones have the best magic and hope that you find them when your bouts are randomly generated. It is pretty dull to spend many fights spamming “Draw” at an enemy till you have 100 of a spell or two.
The Guardian Forces in the game can be called upon infinitely in any battle as long as they still have health points. The GF’s are also your most powerful source of damage in most fights. When you call upon a GF, they are introduced in an over the top cinematic that lasts almost a minute and it is unskippable. At first these are impressive, but you will be sick of the sight of them before the game ends. You can increase the power of the Guardian Forces by spamming the Square button at certain intervals which you will lose if you press square at the wrong time. I suppose it takes your mind off the cutscene, but it also gets repetitive.
However, the game does have some form of logic in enemies’ elemental weaknesses. The first boss that you fight, Ifrit, is a Guardian of fire and so you intuitively cast water magic on it to beat it. The junction system also works well with this too, as you could attach water to your attack stat to cause additional water damage with your standard attacks or you can attach an element to your defence stat to absorb the type of damage you wish. You can also do the same with status effect magic, increasing your resistance to blind or confusion if a boss or enemy uses those abilities.
The gameplay complaints could be ignored as some of the Guardian Forces can give you an ability that stops random encounters, and because the enemies level with you, you won’t be put at a disadvantage when doing so.
The protagonist Squall is characterised so that he is distant and pushes away other characters due to his childhood, but then a post twist occurs and you find that all the characters had the same upbringing as him which leaves you wondering why it is only the protagonist that has these issues. His flaws also spread over to the love interest in Rinoa, who is always trying to cheer him up and have fun, while he shows little interest in her. It is hard to believe that she doesn’t give up on him and try her charms on another character like Irvine, the so called Ladies man.
The cinematic cut scenes are still impressive by today’s standards and the game does feature sequences with the 3D in game models on pre-rendered backgrounds, which was also done in FF7.
Ultimately, I believe that the game’s strength comes not from the gameplay or the overarching story, but the fairly detailed characters, the memorable set pieces and most importantly for me, the epic scope of the game.
It becomes easier to forgive Squalls flaws when he saves Rinoa in so many memorable ways. I don’t want to spoil much, but he goes up into space to save her at one point.
I want to state that the epic scope of the game is something that I miss in the Final Fantasy series. The amount of detail that went into this game is amazing and this game also has the Military Garden used as an airship, allowing you to fly across continents of the game world. You can find secret islands which hold secret bosses and minigames.
Once the series lost the airship, the areas also seemed to lose the details that made the towns and cities memorable too. If the series could take a graphical hit to return to what the series used to be, then I would definitely make that trade. Due to time it takes to develop games in HD, it takes larger development teams and ultimately making a game of the size of FF7 – 9 in HD is not financially feasible.
Even with the flawed gameplay, the game still has a quality to it that I associated with the series and expected back then. I wish I could say the same today. I also love the music from this game composed by Nobuo Uematsu, which is usually sweet memorable melodic music.
This game isn’t suited for everyones taste and I find it somewhat difficult to recommend, due to its issues but it contains what I love about the series.
8.0