I can barely form a coherent thought about what I just finished but I feel weirdly seen by Final Fantasy VIII and its protagonist in particular as this understanding of specific feelings of capitalist alienation that I've been unable to articulate for the longest time. I don't have any official diagnosis and especially do not want people I barely know armchair diagnosing me online but Squall's struggles to process the most basic social interactions in terms of anything other than capitalist obligations like school or work, "shut up and get the job done" mentality, and specific jaded outlook are core parts of myself I never expected to see reflected in this fashion. While I narrowly prefer the basic bitch choices of VI and VII in terms of Final Fantasy games, this surreal response to the cultural zeitgeist of the latter game and weird as fuck (complimentary) use of Marxist theory (specifically the "annihilation of space by time" described in Grundrisse and expanded upon over a century later by David Harvey) in the same way that most RPGs use religious/mythological concepts solely because it sounds cool is a game that will no doubt have a special place in my heart from now on.
ff8 is a game that is very hard for me to compile my thoughts on, but i thought i might as well try now that it's been a bit since i've finished it
i can get 8 not being somebody's favorite final fantasy, but this is such a beautiful piece of art to me that it feels like most of the game's bad reputation is just a mass gaslighting campaign perpetuated by early 2000s gaming magazines and kept alive by people who are scared of earnest emotionality in their video games. not everything that happens in this game is necessarily logical and it does have its flaws—the main antagonist is good but far from the series strongest and the disc 2 twist, while not nearly as bad as anyone has ever made it out to be, is delivered a little bit clumsily—but i feel like that's in service of being such an emotionally resonant game that it can barely be seen as a downside. the story of squall and rinoa is so beautiful to me in a way that so few love stories between a man and a woman can be for me and there were multiple points where i started to tear up a bit just because of how much i loved my experience with 8's story and characters.
when it comes to ff8's gameplay the junction system is unironically one of the few times that the atb battle system has been even remotely enjoyable, and while it isn't as strong mechanically as materias from 7 and the tutorials conveying the system in game aren't the best, i think it's a bit sad how having to engage with the mechanics differently is enough to put people off to the game's combat. with just a little bit more time in the oven and an audience more willing to engage with change, the junction system would probably be one of the most celebrated battle systems in any square enix jrpg with dickriders at the level of smirk and press turn from smt, and maybe in general final fantasy 8 would be more celebrated for the amazing game that it deserves to be seen as.
also gunblades are raw as shit and are by far the coolest weapon that any square enix game has ever had don't @ me
i can get 8 not being somebody's favorite final fantasy, but this is such a beautiful piece of art to me that it feels like most of the game's bad reputation is just a mass gaslighting campaign perpetuated by early 2000s gaming magazines and kept alive by people who are scared of earnest emotionality in their video games. not everything that happens in this game is necessarily logical and it does have its flaws—the main antagonist is good but far from the series strongest and the disc 2 twist, while not nearly as bad as anyone has ever made it out to be, is delivered a little bit clumsily—but i feel like that's in service of being such an emotionally resonant game that it can barely be seen as a downside. the story of squall and rinoa is so beautiful to me in a way that so few love stories between a man and a woman can be for me and there were multiple points where i started to tear up a bit just because of how much i loved my experience with 8's story and characters.
when it comes to ff8's gameplay the junction system is unironically one of the few times that the atb battle system has been even remotely enjoyable, and while it isn't as strong mechanically as materias from 7 and the tutorials conveying the system in game aren't the best, i think it's a bit sad how having to engage with the mechanics differently is enough to put people off to the game's combat. with just a little bit more time in the oven and an audience more willing to engage with change, the junction system would probably be one of the most celebrated battle systems in any square enix jrpg with dickriders at the level of smirk and press turn from smt, and maybe in general final fantasy 8 would be more celebrated for the amazing game that it deserves to be seen as.
also gunblades are raw as shit and are by far the coolest weapon that any square enix game has ever had don't @ me
Just finished Disc 2 and the twist that everyone hypes up as "ruining the game" is something that, while kinda corny, is such a nonissue that all it does is prove that everyone who hates this game is simply too weak
Go back to using a bad fan theory to cope with your inability to recognize a good game, losers
Go back to using a bad fan theory to cope with your inability to recognize a good game, losers
The 2000 Toyota Echo of Video Games
This review contains spoilers
Final Fantasy Marathon Review #3
I respect the subversiveness of this game a lot and it’s laudable that Square went for something so experimental right off the heels of FFVII, but I would be lying if I thought the result was very successful - for every interesting thing it does there’s ample flaws to compensate - or at least, things I don’t think work well. The way this game is composed readily opens itself up to saying that any given flaw is part of the overall point, especially in the narrative, and I do think that aspect of it is interesting, but for me at least I wasn’t drawn to a lot of these interpretations so the result was fairly mixed.
The junction system is tragically close to being amazing. It’s understandable that so many misunderstand it considering it’s one of the most poorly tutorialized mechanics I’ve seen in recent memory, the UI is a nightmare, GFs default to learning useless skills and it’s incredibly unintuitive to hoard magic instead of using it, but the fundamental idea behind it is great. Instead of a traditional levelling and MP system, you have a sort of magical economy - triple triad cards get turned into items, those items get turned into magic, low-level magic gets converted into high-level magic, it’s this glue that binds the disparate mechanics together and it makes decision-making (at least in theory) more interesting when you are essentially sacrificing your stats to cast strong magic. I like the implications it has for character switching too; instead of individual builds, you essentially have three different loadouts that you pass around the cast, which feels quite flexible when it’s working.
It’s a shame the whole thing is largely undermined by the ability to draw an infinite amount of magic out of a single enemy, and it’s this more than anything which ruins the system for me. You can’t have a resource economy and then give the player an easy, low-risk way to max out the resource as long as they’re willing to stand around for a bit. This could be defended by saying that drawing a max stack out of an enemy is this system’s equivalent to grinding and shouldn’t be considered intended play, but I don’t find that defence very convincing. In a traditional system, it’s quite clear when you’re grinding, walking back and forth and trying to get into encounters instead of progressing. Whereas here, there’s nothing to signpost or demarcate any stopping point to drawing - because it’s confined to a single encounter, you just keep doing it until you get bored or max out the magic. For me it was often the latter, and the game was very unengagingly easy as a result, but I think I would still say that overall, the combat in this is much more interesting than VII’s.
Weirdly though, it’s more so the minutiae which brings down the gameplay for me. I immediately noticed something off about the game feel and that never really went away: Loading screens are even longer than VII, attack and spell animations feel much slower with less weight, I found myself getting annoyed with the pre-rendered backgrounds a lot more here than VII, often it was confusing where I had to go to progress, where screen transition zones were and what was traversable (shoutout to the random crane you have to walk on at the start of Disc 4) and interacting with the background was a lot more fiddly and unresponsive (shoutout to the random floor tile you have to interact with to find the sniper in Deling City). Environments and scenario design are also quite poor: You go from a repetitive, copy-paste, maze-like sewer level in Deling City into a prison escape with copy-paste floors that all look the same, into searching for Cid by tediously going through every room in Balamb Garden, into an annoying sequence where you search repetitive, copy-paste rooms and corridors in Galbadia Garden to find keycards, into Esthar City - which has a cool design but is excruciating to traverse with its long, empty, and narrow footpaths. You can’t tell me I’m misremembering VII and that it had the same issues either! I played it for the first time last week and this really made me appreciate how hand-crafted all of VII’s environments feel in comparison.
As for the story and characters… I feel this game really suffers from how slow it is to get going, it’s not until well into Disc 2 that the main cast starts to have a real rapport, which isn’t a problem in terms of internal narrative, considering they’ve literally forgotten their history with one-another, but on a meta-experiential level it does result in a first disc where it feels like there’s no chemistry between the characters or much characterisation or backstory for any of them besides Rinoa, which especially stings coming straight from VII, where the cast have instant cohesion and all generally feel like they have an authentic place in the world distinct from their function as party members (with the deliberate exception of Cloud). I think a lot of this is just a result of having 5 out of the 6 party members be SeeDs who have spent their whole lives inside the Garden with little connection to the outside world - there are no moments like Nanaki’s arc in Cosmo Canyon in VII, for example.
The worldbuilding feels very thin too. Very basic questions about the world like what the Galbadian’s whole deal is and why they worship the sorceress or… what the hell even is a sorceress and where do their powers come from and how does Edea transfer her powers to Rinoa “without realising it”?… what is “Guardian Force” and why does it make you forget things and what is the relationship between GFs and the civilizations of the world? What is so special about SeeDs for them to be considered such a powerful force when it seems like anyone can use GFs? Don’t even get me started on “time compression”... only some of these questions get answered and even they arrive only dozens of hours after they get raised. I recognise that, to some degree, this is the point. Squall and the player are supposed to feel like they’re being jostled about by forces bigger than them, but it’s really unsatisfying when you’re just sitting through text laden with jargon that you don’t have a meaningful grasp on. Again, I like the disregard for narrative conventions in principle, but it feels like there’s so many narrative dead-ends here that my good-will for this exercise runs thin pretty quickly. Laguna is probably the worst of these, the game creates this intrigue in the relationship between him and the party and so much time is devoted to these flashback sequences and it amounts to… he’s just the president of Esthar? He’s not important to the plot at all? You’re telling me passionate doo-gooder himbo Laguna didn’t search for his daughter-figure Ellone for like, over a decade because he was “busy”? That’s actually what he says, he was “busy”. Seifer also goes nowhere, we learn basically nothing about his deeper emotional state or his motivations for doing what he does and he undergoes no development and barely appears past Disc 1 (despite being on the cover of the game!). Cid and NORG’s whole plot point is glossed over and then discarded, Zell gets the setup for an arc but no followthrough, you get the point.
On the bright side, the emotional core of Squall and Rinoa’s romance is actually quite good and feels like a successful execution of that disregard for convention. Instead of Cloud and Aerith’s instant storybook chemistry, Squall and Rinoa don’t care for each other at first and their personalities clash heavily. It’s only after considerable time has passed and Rinoa is gone that Squall realises he actually loves her, and I love how this complements the overarching themes about yearning for the past which is already gone. It’s a much more realistic portrayal of romantic feelings; taking someone for granted and thinking you don’t care about them until they’re gone and you realise they were actually incredibly important to you and wanting them back.
Gotta give it props for having the best battle theme and the best boss theme too. Even if I prefer VII’s soundtrack overall, this one is pretty damn good.
I should also mention triple triad since it’s such a large part of the game. It’s decent, I like the flavour of it more than the act of playing it. I think it gets pretty uninteresting once you have a roster of top-tier cards and you can kinda invalidate anyone with weaker cards, and the rules are there to make things more interesting with this in mind. It’s cool how different regions have different rules (bizarrely one of the most grounded details of the worldbuilding) though some of the lategame rules are kinda bullshit. Once you start combining closed with same/plus and random, it feels like you can just lose based on bad luck a lot more, maybe I just suck though!
There’s some really diehard fans of this one so I hope I can come back sometime and appreciate it more. Knowing in advance that IX will play it relatively safe might make me appreciate the weirdness here a lot more in retrospect, but for now, I like it, just not a lot. But onto IX we go!
-----------
Previous FF Reviews
FFV
FFVII
I respect the subversiveness of this game a lot and it’s laudable that Square went for something so experimental right off the heels of FFVII, but I would be lying if I thought the result was very successful - for every interesting thing it does there’s ample flaws to compensate - or at least, things I don’t think work well. The way this game is composed readily opens itself up to saying that any given flaw is part of the overall point, especially in the narrative, and I do think that aspect of it is interesting, but for me at least I wasn’t drawn to a lot of these interpretations so the result was fairly mixed.
The junction system is tragically close to being amazing. It’s understandable that so many misunderstand it considering it’s one of the most poorly tutorialized mechanics I’ve seen in recent memory, the UI is a nightmare, GFs default to learning useless skills and it’s incredibly unintuitive to hoard magic instead of using it, but the fundamental idea behind it is great. Instead of a traditional levelling and MP system, you have a sort of magical economy - triple triad cards get turned into items, those items get turned into magic, low-level magic gets converted into high-level magic, it’s this glue that binds the disparate mechanics together and it makes decision-making (at least in theory) more interesting when you are essentially sacrificing your stats to cast strong magic. I like the implications it has for character switching too; instead of individual builds, you essentially have three different loadouts that you pass around the cast, which feels quite flexible when it’s working.
It’s a shame the whole thing is largely undermined by the ability to draw an infinite amount of magic out of a single enemy, and it’s this more than anything which ruins the system for me. You can’t have a resource economy and then give the player an easy, low-risk way to max out the resource as long as they’re willing to stand around for a bit. This could be defended by saying that drawing a max stack out of an enemy is this system’s equivalent to grinding and shouldn’t be considered intended play, but I don’t find that defence very convincing. In a traditional system, it’s quite clear when you’re grinding, walking back and forth and trying to get into encounters instead of progressing. Whereas here, there’s nothing to signpost or demarcate any stopping point to drawing - because it’s confined to a single encounter, you just keep doing it until you get bored or max out the magic. For me it was often the latter, and the game was very unengagingly easy as a result, but I think I would still say that overall, the combat in this is much more interesting than VII’s.
Weirdly though, it’s more so the minutiae which brings down the gameplay for me. I immediately noticed something off about the game feel and that never really went away: Loading screens are even longer than VII, attack and spell animations feel much slower with less weight, I found myself getting annoyed with the pre-rendered backgrounds a lot more here than VII, often it was confusing where I had to go to progress, where screen transition zones were and what was traversable (shoutout to the random crane you have to walk on at the start of Disc 4) and interacting with the background was a lot more fiddly and unresponsive (shoutout to the random floor tile you have to interact with to find the sniper in Deling City). Environments and scenario design are also quite poor: You go from a repetitive, copy-paste, maze-like sewer level in Deling City into a prison escape with copy-paste floors that all look the same, into searching for Cid by tediously going through every room in Balamb Garden, into an annoying sequence where you search repetitive, copy-paste rooms and corridors in Galbadia Garden to find keycards, into Esthar City - which has a cool design but is excruciating to traverse with its long, empty, and narrow footpaths. You can’t tell me I’m misremembering VII and that it had the same issues either! I played it for the first time last week and this really made me appreciate how hand-crafted all of VII’s environments feel in comparison.
As for the story and characters… I feel this game really suffers from how slow it is to get going, it’s not until well into Disc 2 that the main cast starts to have a real rapport, which isn’t a problem in terms of internal narrative, considering they’ve literally forgotten their history with one-another, but on a meta-experiential level it does result in a first disc where it feels like there’s no chemistry between the characters or much characterisation or backstory for any of them besides Rinoa, which especially stings coming straight from VII, where the cast have instant cohesion and all generally feel like they have an authentic place in the world distinct from their function as party members (with the deliberate exception of Cloud). I think a lot of this is just a result of having 5 out of the 6 party members be SeeDs who have spent their whole lives inside the Garden with little connection to the outside world - there are no moments like Nanaki’s arc in Cosmo Canyon in VII, for example.
The worldbuilding feels very thin too. Very basic questions about the world like what the Galbadian’s whole deal is and why they worship the sorceress or… what the hell even is a sorceress and where do their powers come from and how does Edea transfer her powers to Rinoa “without realising it”?… what is “Guardian Force” and why does it make you forget things and what is the relationship between GFs and the civilizations of the world? What is so special about SeeDs for them to be considered such a powerful force when it seems like anyone can use GFs? Don’t even get me started on “time compression”... only some of these questions get answered and even they arrive only dozens of hours after they get raised. I recognise that, to some degree, this is the point. Squall and the player are supposed to feel like they’re being jostled about by forces bigger than them, but it’s really unsatisfying when you’re just sitting through text laden with jargon that you don’t have a meaningful grasp on. Again, I like the disregard for narrative conventions in principle, but it feels like there’s so many narrative dead-ends here that my good-will for this exercise runs thin pretty quickly. Laguna is probably the worst of these, the game creates this intrigue in the relationship between him and the party and so much time is devoted to these flashback sequences and it amounts to… he’s just the president of Esthar? He’s not important to the plot at all? You’re telling me passionate doo-gooder himbo Laguna didn’t search for his daughter-figure Ellone for like, over a decade because he was “busy”? That’s actually what he says, he was “busy”. Seifer also goes nowhere, we learn basically nothing about his deeper emotional state or his motivations for doing what he does and he undergoes no development and barely appears past Disc 1 (despite being on the cover of the game!). Cid and NORG’s whole plot point is glossed over and then discarded, Zell gets the setup for an arc but no followthrough, you get the point.
On the bright side, the emotional core of Squall and Rinoa’s romance is actually quite good and feels like a successful execution of that disregard for convention. Instead of Cloud and Aerith’s instant storybook chemistry, Squall and Rinoa don’t care for each other at first and their personalities clash heavily. It’s only after considerable time has passed and Rinoa is gone that Squall realises he actually loves her, and I love how this complements the overarching themes about yearning for the past which is already gone. It’s a much more realistic portrayal of romantic feelings; taking someone for granted and thinking you don’t care about them until they’re gone and you realise they were actually incredibly important to you and wanting them back.
Gotta give it props for having the best battle theme and the best boss theme too. Even if I prefer VII’s soundtrack overall, this one is pretty damn good.
I should also mention triple triad since it’s such a large part of the game. It’s decent, I like the flavour of it more than the act of playing it. I think it gets pretty uninteresting once you have a roster of top-tier cards and you can kinda invalidate anyone with weaker cards, and the rules are there to make things more interesting with this in mind. It’s cool how different regions have different rules (bizarrely one of the most grounded details of the worldbuilding) though some of the lategame rules are kinda bullshit. Once you start combining closed with same/plus and random, it feels like you can just lose based on bad luck a lot more, maybe I just suck though!
There’s some really diehard fans of this one so I hope I can come back sometime and appreciate it more. Knowing in advance that IX will play it relatively safe might make me appreciate the weirdness here a lot more in retrospect, but for now, I like it, just not a lot. But onto IX we go!
-----------
Previous FF Reviews
FFV
FFVII
If you know me, you know that I have not played many JRPGs. I've been told through friends and reading online discourse that Final Fantasy VIII was contentious. I get it.
I do not agree, though.
I've been interested in this genre much longer than I have actually been playing them. There's no way of getting around it, most of my close friends are aware of this. The first two that I played (Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger) had me feeling emotions on opposite ends of the spectrum; amazed, and underwhelmed, respectively. Funnily enough, both of these games have notoriously risky successors. Anyways, I digress, because the point that I am trying to make here has nothing to do with narratives in video games (something that FFVII and Chrono Trigger are of course rightfully praised for).
Before I started playing JRPGs, I knew I liked the idea of games being experimental. I like seeing game developers take risks! Have fun with it! I saw plenty of gameplay where I didn't understood why people even visited this genre because it all just felt so same-y to me. If I'm playing a game where I somehow don't get annoyed by random enemy combat, you did a damn good job at making your game. Square did a damn good job at making this game.
Final Fantasy VIII takes whatever you knew about the genre and says "fuck it - let's do something new". I absolutely adore that mindset and creativity that gave us this game's mechanics. The junction system. AP and GF. Triple Triad. The limit break mechanics. It's all just so charming to me. This is the most fun I have ever had in a game's combat system, and I mean that. The concept of enemies leveling up alongside you REALLY kept me immersed as well, and I found myself doing less mindless fighting and really strategizing my team's next move.
A lot else of what else is criticized is the story. What is most baffling to me is that despite Square taking a similar approach to Final Fantasy VII, dealing with complex characters with complex emotions, the reaction to what this game does and says seems to be downright despised. If you are not a fan of this video game's storytelling, then that's fine. But is your journey entirely ruined because of the end result?
Let's say there are two people walking. Person 1 enjoys walking, but has no destination in mind. Person 2 also enjoys walking, but just cares about getting from point A to point B. Which of them more than likely had a memorable experience? Hopefully you see what I am getting at here.
Art as a whole should not solely be about the endpoint. If it was, then what is the point of experiencing art? What's stopping someone from just going on Wikipedia and reading the synopsis of a game and saying "ah, 5/5, best game I ever played" if they're not even thinking about the journey they took to get there?
Maybe this is just all cope for the bashing I see Final Fantasy VIII get, I really don't know anymore. My adderall is wearing off, and I'm hungry. Regardless, I love this game. I can't wait to play more experimental PlayStation games.
(i'm looking at you, Chrono Cross and Xenogears...)
I do not agree, though.
I've been interested in this genre much longer than I have actually been playing them. There's no way of getting around it, most of my close friends are aware of this. The first two that I played (Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger) had me feeling emotions on opposite ends of the spectrum; amazed, and underwhelmed, respectively. Funnily enough, both of these games have notoriously risky successors. Anyways, I digress, because the point that I am trying to make here has nothing to do with narratives in video games (something that FFVII and Chrono Trigger are of course rightfully praised for).
Before I started playing JRPGs, I knew I liked the idea of games being experimental. I like seeing game developers take risks! Have fun with it! I saw plenty of gameplay where I didn't understood why people even visited this genre because it all just felt so same-y to me. If I'm playing a game where I somehow don't get annoyed by random enemy combat, you did a damn good job at making your game. Square did a damn good job at making this game.
Final Fantasy VIII takes whatever you knew about the genre and says "fuck it - let's do something new". I absolutely adore that mindset and creativity that gave us this game's mechanics. The junction system. AP and GF. Triple Triad. The limit break mechanics. It's all just so charming to me. This is the most fun I have ever had in a game's combat system, and I mean that. The concept of enemies leveling up alongside you REALLY kept me immersed as well, and I found myself doing less mindless fighting and really strategizing my team's next move.
A lot else of what else is criticized is the story. What is most baffling to me is that despite Square taking a similar approach to Final Fantasy VII, dealing with complex characters with complex emotions, the reaction to what this game does and says seems to be downright despised. If you are not a fan of this video game's storytelling, then that's fine. But is your journey entirely ruined because of the end result?
Let's say there are two people walking. Person 1 enjoys walking, but has no destination in mind. Person 2 also enjoys walking, but just cares about getting from point A to point B. Which of them more than likely had a memorable experience? Hopefully you see what I am getting at here.
Art as a whole should not solely be about the endpoint. If it was, then what is the point of experiencing art? What's stopping someone from just going on Wikipedia and reading the synopsis of a game and saying "ah, 5/5, best game I ever played" if they're not even thinking about the journey they took to get there?
Maybe this is just all cope for the bashing I see Final Fantasy VIII get, I really don't know anymore. My adderall is wearing off, and I'm hungry. Regardless, I love this game. I can't wait to play more experimental PlayStation games.
(i'm looking at you, Chrono Cross and Xenogears...)
Pra mim esse jogo é uma ofensa a tudo que é arte, definitivamente a experiência mais merda da minha vida com essa mídia. Eu vou tentar colocar em palavras o quão perverso e maldoso esse jogo é.
Começando pelos personagens, eu vou falar um pouco o que penso de cada um deles:
Squall: o Squall é um protagonista que narrativamente falando eu tinha muita esperança, de começo eu não odiei totalmente dele porque eu pensava que seria um cloud 2.0, que começa chato mas tem um desenvolvimento incrível, mas puta merda como eu tava errado, o jogo inteiro ele é insuportável e bem lá pro final da metade ele para de ser um cuzão, só que o problema é que ele vai de um cuzão pra uma porta que só existe, e eu sinceramente não sei qual das duas versões dele é a pior. Outra coisa que me irrita profundamente, é o como esse jogo fica forçando a barra de que o Squall é um líder, sendo que ele não é, ele claramente não sabe trabalhar em equipe, mas o jogo fala como se ele fizesse magia, como se fosse um líder foda e que todo mundo depende dele.
Edit na parte do Squall: as minhas críticas a ele ainda perduram, porém, depois de consumir o vídeo do Stenddy eu determinei que o Squall ao menos tem um bom desenvolvimento, o problema é que pra mim, ele realmente não tem carisma nenhum e não é um bom líder.
Quistis: ela é mostrada no início do jogo como uma professora que tá bem afim de dar uns pegas no Squall, no início do jogo você já percebe que essa mulher não deveria ser professora, ela claramente não sabe separar o profissional do pessoal, em um momento mais pra frente no primeiro CD, você vê que ela tá quase perdendo o cargo, e mesmo a beira de perder o título de professora ela chama o Squall pra um canto pra tentar dar uns pegas no muleque, o Squall da um chega pra lá nela, fala umas duras verdades e vida que segue. Só que mais pra frente lá pro finalzinho do primeiro CD, o Squall deixa ela encarregado de uma missão extremamente especial, e o que a filha da puta me faz, foge no meio do bagulho pra ir pedir desculpas por umas coisas que ela tinha falado pra Rinoa, depois de uma dungeon (horrível) ela consegue chegar a tempo (forçada de roteiro do caralho) e completar a missão dela e do grupinho, SÓ QUE PQP MANO, o Squall sabe que ela não é uma boa líder e mesmo assim ele colocou ela encarregada disso (na party tinha o Zell e a Seph que são pessoas bem mais confiáveis). Olha como esse é só o primeiro CD, eu não iria me incomodar muito se ela se desenvolvesse nos outros CDs, mas assim como muitos outros personagens, o jogo só decide abandonar ela, então basicamente ficou um personagem incompleto, que teve poucos momentos sendo todos eles horríveis (não ironicamente é paia pq se tu parar pra pensar direito, ela basicamente fica assediando o Squall) e que parece que nem estava nos planos originais.
Zell: o Zell talvez seja o menos problemático do grupinho, o Zell é um personagem bem simples, ele é basicamente um jovem sonhador que tenta buscar as coisas através do próprio esforço, o jogo não se esforça muito pra dar uma história pra ele, tem até um rolê com os irmãos e a mãe dele, mas tudo é bem irrelevante. Mas eu vou usar o Zell como porta de entrada pra falar de um problema dos personagens desse jogo. Todos os personagens desse jogo são extremamente desinteressantes e nada profundos, é até difícil acreditar que esse jogo é um Final Fantasy, eu não sei como conseguiram regredir tanto em comparação com o 6 e 7 (e olha que eu já tenho umas críticas a alguns personagens do 7). No caso do Zell nem tentaram, só colocaram no jogo e fds. Mas fora isso, é um personagem "legal", acho que seria melhor se ele fosse só um figurante que aparece de vez em quando.
Seph: essa personagem é a definição de irrelevante, não ironicamente ela entra no meu top 5 personagens mais irrelevantes da ficção, ela aparece muito raramente e eu juro que acho que além da introdução, esse personagem não teve foco em nenhum momento. Ela é um exemplo perfeito do que eu disse na parte do Zell, a diferença é que o jogo nem finge se importar com essa personagem, ela fica só de fundo fazendo umas piadinhas que ninguém da mínima, nem os próprios personagens acham graça. Pra mim a Seph é tão inofensiva e irrelevante quanto uma bomba caseira que não funciona.
Rinoa: provavelmente uma das personagens mais desinteressantes que eu já vi, desdo começo eu não sou muito fã dela, é até um pouco interessante ver ela liderando um pequeno grupo mas nada muito impressionante, ela tem uma historinha interessante com o pai mas nada que o jogo leve muito além. Mas acho que o que me irrita mesmo é como essa personagem é indefesa, ela luta muito bem e é uma boa líder até (melhor que o Squall), só que o que me irrita profundamente é que sempre que o Squall tá perto ela vira uma princesa indefesa, e o que me irrita mais ainda é o romance desses dois, ela do nada se apaixona por ele, não é totalmente do nada, já que ele tinha salvado a vida dela umas duas vezes, só que aí vem o que realmente me deixa puto, as duas vezes ele salvou ela não por vontade própria e sim por acidente e uma porque o obrigou ele, até daria pra criar uma questão legal de razão vs emoção, mas o jogo tenta fazer isso, claro que não, é Final Fantasy 8 no final de contas. Fora que esse casal só não tem nenhum tipo de química, é tipo tentar juntar o lado curto do coberto junto com a parte quente do travesseiro.
Seifer: esse provavelmente foi o personagem que mais me decepcionou, não só no jogo mas sim de todos os tempos. De começo eu já não fui com a cara dele, só que o tema e a quebra de sonhos do personagens me fez realmente pegar interesse, conforme o tempo foi passando, ele foi a única coisa que ainda me dava esperanças, mas infelizmente elas não foram atendidas. Eu pensei que seria um personagem que teria uma redenção foda por ter feito tanta merda, mas basicamente nada acontece e no final tudo bem todo a cacete que ele fez, sendo manipulado por magia ou não, ele pelo menos deveria pedir desculpas, o que não acontece, até o kain que tem suas controvérsias demonstra arrependimento pelo que fez, tipo?? Jogo que porra é essa, pq esse cara tá feliz, eu não perdoei ele, ele nem ao menos pediu desculpas. Tipo tem o negócio dele e do squall serem Ying e Yang (o que faz um pouco de sentido até), só que o Seifer não tem um, e eu repito, nenhuma qualidade que seja boa, ele é só uma péssima pessoa que nunca responde pelas consequências dos seus atos e que nem ao menos demonstra arrependimento.
Laguna: vai se fuder esse personagem na moral, eu acho as partes com ele insuportáveis, a história não alterna bem entre ele e o Squall e eu não dou a mínima pra quem é Laguna. Pelo menos como pessoa ele é um dos menos piores, é legal até, principalmente as partes com os amigos dele, mas o seguimentos dele em gameplay são tão chatos que pra mim já estraga qualquer ponto positivo.
O resto da história não se salva em nada, eu até gosto do começo, não é exatamente o melhor começo da franquia mas é uma história que demonstra bastante potencial, é até divertida de certo modo, a estética do jogo é até que bonita e pelo menos no início, os personagens são interessantes, mas conforme vai passando o jogo tenta ir adicionando mais coisas e profundidade naquele mundo, o que funciona em alguns casos mas na maioria tu recebe umas informações irrelevantes ou coisas que só ninguém liga. A forma como o jogo altera de vez em quando pro Laguna é até que um pouco interessante, mas bem malfeita, em vários momentos é uma puta quebra de clima, o ritmo dos momentos com Squall são bem frenéticos em suas maioria, daí chega o Laguna com um ritmo bem diferente e que até atrapalha as vezes, se essas parte ao menos fossem mais interessantes eu não reclamaria tanto, mas elas são só chatas, o jogo meio que tenta ir construindo uma história um pouco diferente pro Laguna, onde você vai vendo uma série de eventos diferentes em formas de time skips, é uma idéia bem diferente e que eu realmente aprecio, a idéia, pq na execução ficar alterando entre Squall e Laguna acaba ficando um saco, principalmente se você quiser ver mais coisas do Laguna (seja lá como). Talvez a história do Laguna nem seja tão ruim assim, mas ir mostrando uma história (que pelo que você sabe) não tem ligação nenhuma com o que você viu, principalmente quando essa história tá cortada aos picadinhos, e o mistério da história de quem é ele e o que ele tem a ver, só não funciona e é uma péssima decisão narrativa.
Mas o que mais me incomoda nessa história além dos personagens subdesenvolvidos, é a forma como FF8 usa o tema central dele. Só deixando claro pra quem não tem experiência com essa franquia, as histórias de FF quase sempre giram em torno de algum tema que é "secreto". O desse jogo é destino, que pô, é um tema legal apesar de meio controversio. O problema mesmo começa quando o jogo começa a usar do tema pra fazer os acontecimentos e plots sem sentido desse jogo, eu não teria problemas com isso se fosse vez ou outra, só que FF8 usa isso várias e várias vezes, ele basicamente tira o sentido que a história precisa manter e usa o destino como desculpa para as coisas muito convenientes que vai acontecendo durante o jogo. O maior exemplo disso é o plot twist do orfanato, meu deus, é até difícil falar sobre ele, como eu sei que tem gente que pretende jogar, eu não vou soltar spoilers, mas esse plot do orfanato é um evento extremamente convencional que acontece pra ligar várias das histórias diferentes, uma vez discutindo com um amigo sobre um plot twist de outro jogo ele soltou uma frase que faz sentido: "nem tudo precisa ser lógico, nem na vida real é assim", coisa que faz sentido e eu tô de acordo, mas nesse jogo simplesmente não faz sentido, porque não é uma história que faz sentido com pontos sem lógica, é uma história sem lógica nenhuma que as vezes tem umas coisas que fazem o mínimo de sentido, o jogo basicamente usa o tema mais fantasioso pra ficar fazendo uma série de plot twists sem sentido, isso até se aplica no que eu disse do Squall não ter a intenção de salvar a Rinoa em alguns momentos do jogo, mas no final a desculpa do jogo é que Isso já estava destinado, o destino é mágico uau destino e destino, é basicamente só um bla bla bla do caralho pra tentar justificar as coisas.
O último ponto que eu quero reclamar é em relação a vilã do jogo, ela é provavelmente a mais irrelevante da franquia (pelo menos dos que eu joguei), antes que pensem, eu não sou fanboy do Sephiroth, na verdade eu tenho minhas críticas sobre ele, mas a Ultimecia é tão irrelevante que nem parece que o jogo inteiro gira em torno de tentar parar ela, ela basicamente não tem personalidade, não tem motivações, eu não tenho nada contra vilões assim, desde que eles compensem em alguma coisa, o que não é o caso da Ultimecia, é um dos vilões mais vazios que eu já vi, e tá, o jogo pode até não ter um foco muito grande nela, mas deixar uma personagem central tão abandonada e de lado é só mais um de vários erros desse jogo ridículo.
Eu poderia parar por aqui, mas não teria como não falar da gameplay desse jogo.
O combate de FF8 é o mais disparado e ambicioso da franquia, tiraram o sistema de MP da franquia, então basicamente você pode usar as magias de formas ilimitadas, desde que você consiga pegar as magias no draw, que é a nova mecânica do jogo, tu basicamente pega as magias dos inimigos, e usa elas como se fossem itens mesmo, então é limitado mas você pode ficar estocando as magias que quiser. A propósito é uma idéia relativamente boa e diferente, mas os GF (os summons) quebram o jogo inteiro, tu já tem o Ifrit e a Shiva desdo começo, além de um pássaro de raio lá, então os 3 elementos principais tu já não precisa se preocupar, os summons dão muito dano e a única forma de cancelar o summon é caso o HP dele acabe enquanto tu tá invocando ele, mas quase nunca acaba porque eles tem um HP insanamente alto, fora que os inimigos de adaptam ao seu level, então é muito melhor nem fazer as lutas, só ir embora e de vez em quando pegar algumas magias de cura. Mas eu tenho um elogio a fazer sobre o sistema dos GFs e magias, os GFs dão várias skills pra tu equipar e elas fazem uma diferença legal até, o problema é que pra que isso se é só melhor pular todos os combates possíveis e só fazer de verdade os obrigatórios.
Só que o real problema é o sistema de junções, é basicamente o sistema de você afiliar as magias aos status dos seus personagens, tipo, se você colocar uma magia de fogo na defesa você ganha resistência, se colocar várias você ganha imunidade e absorve dano de fogo, quanto mais você coloca mais aumenta o efeito das magias nos seus personagens, é uma idéia interessante e que funciona um pouco, só que na execução fica um cu, pq em vários momentos sua party muda e lá vai uns bons minutos arrumando a party, fora que como eu disse, tu não precisa entrar em combate e quando precisa os summons dão conta de tudo de forma tranquila, se tu quiser farmar as magias pode, só que vai quebrar mais ainda o jogo. Eu não concordo totalmente com quem fala que o combate de FF atb é só bater sem parar, não totalmente pelo menos, mas o combate desse jogo é tão fácil e quebrado que é literalmente só usar os summons até os inimigos morrerem, deve ter tipo uns 3 - 4 bosses onde isso não se aplica, e só 1 é obrigatório.
As dungeons são outro lixo, tem poucas e as poucas que tem genuinamente entram como as piores da saga, o level design da maioria é ruim, os visuais são extremamente sem graça e nenhuma tem alguma coisa que seja carismática ou alguma mecânica diferente e boa. A dungeon do Bahamut é provavelmente top 3 piores da saga, é basicamente uma sala que a cada coisa que tu faz aparece um dragão extremamente forte pra tu lutar, e pra evitar os dragões você tem que esperar a luz de um núcleo lá ficar apagada, só que ela fica apagada por uns 3 segundos, tem hora que ela vai apagar mas é só bait do jogo, e o pior é que antes de lutar com ele você tem que lutar de forma obrigatória contra vários dragões muito chatos, é um dos poucos momentos do jogo que é difícil, só que não é uma dificuldade boa, e o foda é que em baixo dessa dungeon tem mais uma dungeon que é tão chata quanto, mas felizmente é uma dungeon normal, só tem muito encouter rate. No máximo mas bem no máximo, eu acho a última dungeon minimamente aceitável, mas eu ainda acho chato o jogo tirar tudo e você ter que ficar fazendo puzzles chatos (fora que eu tenho umas críticas a duração do último boss).
Antes de finalizar a análise, eu só quero falar umas últimas coisas: a Soundtrack é a mais sem graça e marcante de FF, eu literalmente só lembro da música da abertura e nem é tudo. Os modelos desse jogo são muito feios, o jogo de cartas não é tão divertido quanto falam e o sistema de craft de armas é um saco.
Conclusão: FF8 é um jogo que não é totalmente ruim, da pra se achar algumas qualidades, pra mim nenhum das qualidades anulam nem o menor dos pontos negativos, mas apesar de poder não ser tão ruim quanto eu falei, pra mim é objetivamente um jogo ruim, um jogo que não representa em nada essa franquia e que só serviu pra manchar a era do PS1, só não dou 0 estrelas porque não da.
Começando pelos personagens, eu vou falar um pouco o que penso de cada um deles:
Squall: o Squall é um protagonista que narrativamente falando eu tinha muita esperança, de começo eu não odiei totalmente dele porque eu pensava que seria um cloud 2.0, que começa chato mas tem um desenvolvimento incrível, mas puta merda como eu tava errado, o jogo inteiro ele é insuportável e bem lá pro final da metade ele para de ser um cuzão, só que o problema é que ele vai de um cuzão pra uma porta que só existe, e eu sinceramente não sei qual das duas versões dele é a pior. Outra coisa que me irrita profundamente, é o como esse jogo fica forçando a barra de que o Squall é um líder, sendo que ele não é, ele claramente não sabe trabalhar em equipe, mas o jogo fala como se ele fizesse magia, como se fosse um líder foda e que todo mundo depende dele.
Edit na parte do Squall: as minhas críticas a ele ainda perduram, porém, depois de consumir o vídeo do Stenddy eu determinei que o Squall ao menos tem um bom desenvolvimento, o problema é que pra mim, ele realmente não tem carisma nenhum e não é um bom líder.
Quistis: ela é mostrada no início do jogo como uma professora que tá bem afim de dar uns pegas no Squall, no início do jogo você já percebe que essa mulher não deveria ser professora, ela claramente não sabe separar o profissional do pessoal, em um momento mais pra frente no primeiro CD, você vê que ela tá quase perdendo o cargo, e mesmo a beira de perder o título de professora ela chama o Squall pra um canto pra tentar dar uns pegas no muleque, o Squall da um chega pra lá nela, fala umas duras verdades e vida que segue. Só que mais pra frente lá pro finalzinho do primeiro CD, o Squall deixa ela encarregado de uma missão extremamente especial, e o que a filha da puta me faz, foge no meio do bagulho pra ir pedir desculpas por umas coisas que ela tinha falado pra Rinoa, depois de uma dungeon (horrível) ela consegue chegar a tempo (forçada de roteiro do caralho) e completar a missão dela e do grupinho, SÓ QUE PQP MANO, o Squall sabe que ela não é uma boa líder e mesmo assim ele colocou ela encarregada disso (na party tinha o Zell e a Seph que são pessoas bem mais confiáveis). Olha como esse é só o primeiro CD, eu não iria me incomodar muito se ela se desenvolvesse nos outros CDs, mas assim como muitos outros personagens, o jogo só decide abandonar ela, então basicamente ficou um personagem incompleto, que teve poucos momentos sendo todos eles horríveis (não ironicamente é paia pq se tu parar pra pensar direito, ela basicamente fica assediando o Squall) e que parece que nem estava nos planos originais.
Zell: o Zell talvez seja o menos problemático do grupinho, o Zell é um personagem bem simples, ele é basicamente um jovem sonhador que tenta buscar as coisas através do próprio esforço, o jogo não se esforça muito pra dar uma história pra ele, tem até um rolê com os irmãos e a mãe dele, mas tudo é bem irrelevante. Mas eu vou usar o Zell como porta de entrada pra falar de um problema dos personagens desse jogo. Todos os personagens desse jogo são extremamente desinteressantes e nada profundos, é até difícil acreditar que esse jogo é um Final Fantasy, eu não sei como conseguiram regredir tanto em comparação com o 6 e 7 (e olha que eu já tenho umas críticas a alguns personagens do 7). No caso do Zell nem tentaram, só colocaram no jogo e fds. Mas fora isso, é um personagem "legal", acho que seria melhor se ele fosse só um figurante que aparece de vez em quando.
Seph: essa personagem é a definição de irrelevante, não ironicamente ela entra no meu top 5 personagens mais irrelevantes da ficção, ela aparece muito raramente e eu juro que acho que além da introdução, esse personagem não teve foco em nenhum momento. Ela é um exemplo perfeito do que eu disse na parte do Zell, a diferença é que o jogo nem finge se importar com essa personagem, ela fica só de fundo fazendo umas piadinhas que ninguém da mínima, nem os próprios personagens acham graça. Pra mim a Seph é tão inofensiva e irrelevante quanto uma bomba caseira que não funciona.
Rinoa: provavelmente uma das personagens mais desinteressantes que eu já vi, desdo começo eu não sou muito fã dela, é até um pouco interessante ver ela liderando um pequeno grupo mas nada muito impressionante, ela tem uma historinha interessante com o pai mas nada que o jogo leve muito além. Mas acho que o que me irrita mesmo é como essa personagem é indefesa, ela luta muito bem e é uma boa líder até (melhor que o Squall), só que o que me irrita profundamente é que sempre que o Squall tá perto ela vira uma princesa indefesa, e o que me irrita mais ainda é o romance desses dois, ela do nada se apaixona por ele, não é totalmente do nada, já que ele tinha salvado a vida dela umas duas vezes, só que aí vem o que realmente me deixa puto, as duas vezes ele salvou ela não por vontade própria e sim por acidente e uma porque o obrigou ele, até daria pra criar uma questão legal de razão vs emoção, mas o jogo tenta fazer isso, claro que não, é Final Fantasy 8 no final de contas. Fora que esse casal só não tem nenhum tipo de química, é tipo tentar juntar o lado curto do coberto junto com a parte quente do travesseiro.
Seifer: esse provavelmente foi o personagem que mais me decepcionou, não só no jogo mas sim de todos os tempos. De começo eu já não fui com a cara dele, só que o tema e a quebra de sonhos do personagens me fez realmente pegar interesse, conforme o tempo foi passando, ele foi a única coisa que ainda me dava esperanças, mas infelizmente elas não foram atendidas. Eu pensei que seria um personagem que teria uma redenção foda por ter feito tanta merda, mas basicamente nada acontece e no final tudo bem todo a cacete que ele fez, sendo manipulado por magia ou não, ele pelo menos deveria pedir desculpas, o que não acontece, até o kain que tem suas controvérsias demonstra arrependimento pelo que fez, tipo?? Jogo que porra é essa, pq esse cara tá feliz, eu não perdoei ele, ele nem ao menos pediu desculpas. Tipo tem o negócio dele e do squall serem Ying e Yang (o que faz um pouco de sentido até), só que o Seifer não tem um, e eu repito, nenhuma qualidade que seja boa, ele é só uma péssima pessoa que nunca responde pelas consequências dos seus atos e que nem ao menos demonstra arrependimento.
Laguna: vai se fuder esse personagem na moral, eu acho as partes com ele insuportáveis, a história não alterna bem entre ele e o Squall e eu não dou a mínima pra quem é Laguna. Pelo menos como pessoa ele é um dos menos piores, é legal até, principalmente as partes com os amigos dele, mas o seguimentos dele em gameplay são tão chatos que pra mim já estraga qualquer ponto positivo.
O resto da história não se salva em nada, eu até gosto do começo, não é exatamente o melhor começo da franquia mas é uma história que demonstra bastante potencial, é até divertida de certo modo, a estética do jogo é até que bonita e pelo menos no início, os personagens são interessantes, mas conforme vai passando o jogo tenta ir adicionando mais coisas e profundidade naquele mundo, o que funciona em alguns casos mas na maioria tu recebe umas informações irrelevantes ou coisas que só ninguém liga. A forma como o jogo altera de vez em quando pro Laguna é até que um pouco interessante, mas bem malfeita, em vários momentos é uma puta quebra de clima, o ritmo dos momentos com Squall são bem frenéticos em suas maioria, daí chega o Laguna com um ritmo bem diferente e que até atrapalha as vezes, se essas parte ao menos fossem mais interessantes eu não reclamaria tanto, mas elas são só chatas, o jogo meio que tenta ir construindo uma história um pouco diferente pro Laguna, onde você vai vendo uma série de eventos diferentes em formas de time skips, é uma idéia bem diferente e que eu realmente aprecio, a idéia, pq na execução ficar alterando entre Squall e Laguna acaba ficando um saco, principalmente se você quiser ver mais coisas do Laguna (seja lá como). Talvez a história do Laguna nem seja tão ruim assim, mas ir mostrando uma história (que pelo que você sabe) não tem ligação nenhuma com o que você viu, principalmente quando essa história tá cortada aos picadinhos, e o mistério da história de quem é ele e o que ele tem a ver, só não funciona e é uma péssima decisão narrativa.
Mas o que mais me incomoda nessa história além dos personagens subdesenvolvidos, é a forma como FF8 usa o tema central dele. Só deixando claro pra quem não tem experiência com essa franquia, as histórias de FF quase sempre giram em torno de algum tema que é "secreto". O desse jogo é destino, que pô, é um tema legal apesar de meio controversio. O problema mesmo começa quando o jogo começa a usar do tema pra fazer os acontecimentos e plots sem sentido desse jogo, eu não teria problemas com isso se fosse vez ou outra, só que FF8 usa isso várias e várias vezes, ele basicamente tira o sentido que a história precisa manter e usa o destino como desculpa para as coisas muito convenientes que vai acontecendo durante o jogo. O maior exemplo disso é o plot twist do orfanato, meu deus, é até difícil falar sobre ele, como eu sei que tem gente que pretende jogar, eu não vou soltar spoilers, mas esse plot do orfanato é um evento extremamente convencional que acontece pra ligar várias das histórias diferentes, uma vez discutindo com um amigo sobre um plot twist de outro jogo ele soltou uma frase que faz sentido: "nem tudo precisa ser lógico, nem na vida real é assim", coisa que faz sentido e eu tô de acordo, mas nesse jogo simplesmente não faz sentido, porque não é uma história que faz sentido com pontos sem lógica, é uma história sem lógica nenhuma que as vezes tem umas coisas que fazem o mínimo de sentido, o jogo basicamente usa o tema mais fantasioso pra ficar fazendo uma série de plot twists sem sentido, isso até se aplica no que eu disse do Squall não ter a intenção de salvar a Rinoa em alguns momentos do jogo, mas no final a desculpa do jogo é que Isso já estava destinado, o destino é mágico uau destino e destino, é basicamente só um bla bla bla do caralho pra tentar justificar as coisas.
O último ponto que eu quero reclamar é em relação a vilã do jogo, ela é provavelmente a mais irrelevante da franquia (pelo menos dos que eu joguei), antes que pensem, eu não sou fanboy do Sephiroth, na verdade eu tenho minhas críticas sobre ele, mas a Ultimecia é tão irrelevante que nem parece que o jogo inteiro gira em torno de tentar parar ela, ela basicamente não tem personalidade, não tem motivações, eu não tenho nada contra vilões assim, desde que eles compensem em alguma coisa, o que não é o caso da Ultimecia, é um dos vilões mais vazios que eu já vi, e tá, o jogo pode até não ter um foco muito grande nela, mas deixar uma personagem central tão abandonada e de lado é só mais um de vários erros desse jogo ridículo.
Eu poderia parar por aqui, mas não teria como não falar da gameplay desse jogo.
O combate de FF8 é o mais disparado e ambicioso da franquia, tiraram o sistema de MP da franquia, então basicamente você pode usar as magias de formas ilimitadas, desde que você consiga pegar as magias no draw, que é a nova mecânica do jogo, tu basicamente pega as magias dos inimigos, e usa elas como se fossem itens mesmo, então é limitado mas você pode ficar estocando as magias que quiser. A propósito é uma idéia relativamente boa e diferente, mas os GF (os summons) quebram o jogo inteiro, tu já tem o Ifrit e a Shiva desdo começo, além de um pássaro de raio lá, então os 3 elementos principais tu já não precisa se preocupar, os summons dão muito dano e a única forma de cancelar o summon é caso o HP dele acabe enquanto tu tá invocando ele, mas quase nunca acaba porque eles tem um HP insanamente alto, fora que os inimigos de adaptam ao seu level, então é muito melhor nem fazer as lutas, só ir embora e de vez em quando pegar algumas magias de cura. Mas eu tenho um elogio a fazer sobre o sistema dos GFs e magias, os GFs dão várias skills pra tu equipar e elas fazem uma diferença legal até, o problema é que pra que isso se é só melhor pular todos os combates possíveis e só fazer de verdade os obrigatórios.
Só que o real problema é o sistema de junções, é basicamente o sistema de você afiliar as magias aos status dos seus personagens, tipo, se você colocar uma magia de fogo na defesa você ganha resistência, se colocar várias você ganha imunidade e absorve dano de fogo, quanto mais você coloca mais aumenta o efeito das magias nos seus personagens, é uma idéia interessante e que funciona um pouco, só que na execução fica um cu, pq em vários momentos sua party muda e lá vai uns bons minutos arrumando a party, fora que como eu disse, tu não precisa entrar em combate e quando precisa os summons dão conta de tudo de forma tranquila, se tu quiser farmar as magias pode, só que vai quebrar mais ainda o jogo. Eu não concordo totalmente com quem fala que o combate de FF atb é só bater sem parar, não totalmente pelo menos, mas o combate desse jogo é tão fácil e quebrado que é literalmente só usar os summons até os inimigos morrerem, deve ter tipo uns 3 - 4 bosses onde isso não se aplica, e só 1 é obrigatório.
As dungeons são outro lixo, tem poucas e as poucas que tem genuinamente entram como as piores da saga, o level design da maioria é ruim, os visuais são extremamente sem graça e nenhuma tem alguma coisa que seja carismática ou alguma mecânica diferente e boa. A dungeon do Bahamut é provavelmente top 3 piores da saga, é basicamente uma sala que a cada coisa que tu faz aparece um dragão extremamente forte pra tu lutar, e pra evitar os dragões você tem que esperar a luz de um núcleo lá ficar apagada, só que ela fica apagada por uns 3 segundos, tem hora que ela vai apagar mas é só bait do jogo, e o pior é que antes de lutar com ele você tem que lutar de forma obrigatória contra vários dragões muito chatos, é um dos poucos momentos do jogo que é difícil, só que não é uma dificuldade boa, e o foda é que em baixo dessa dungeon tem mais uma dungeon que é tão chata quanto, mas felizmente é uma dungeon normal, só tem muito encouter rate. No máximo mas bem no máximo, eu acho a última dungeon minimamente aceitável, mas eu ainda acho chato o jogo tirar tudo e você ter que ficar fazendo puzzles chatos (fora que eu tenho umas críticas a duração do último boss).
Antes de finalizar a análise, eu só quero falar umas últimas coisas: a Soundtrack é a mais sem graça e marcante de FF, eu literalmente só lembro da música da abertura e nem é tudo. Os modelos desse jogo são muito feios, o jogo de cartas não é tão divertido quanto falam e o sistema de craft de armas é um saco.
Conclusão: FF8 é um jogo que não é totalmente ruim, da pra se achar algumas qualidades, pra mim nenhum das qualidades anulam nem o menor dos pontos negativos, mas apesar de poder não ser tão ruim quanto eu falei, pra mim é objetivamente um jogo ruim, um jogo que não representa em nada essa franquia e que só serviu pra manchar a era do PS1, só não dou 0 estrelas porque não da.
I used to have mixed feelings on this one, but I've really turned around on it after replaying it some time ago. It has a lot of messy ideas, but I kinda love that about it, and I think they mostly succeed, if you are willing to experiment more and figure out how things work. In the context of the greater franchise, it is still very its own worthwhile experience, even if sometimes it feels like it's overlooked by the games in the series that released both before and after it. Plus, it's one of the only games in the series where I can confidently say I really like all the party members!
Memories are more real than time
"I'm going to start out by taking you through this first part of the game step by step.
You begin with Squall. An anti-social Garden military trainee who is yet to meet the love of his life. First off, if this storyline is truly to reach epic levels, then I hope one of the lovers dies. From Shakespeare to The English Patient to Titanic, death has proven to be the most effective instrument of high-romantic drama.
As you can see, the full-motion video is impressive, but sometimes the characters feel dead inside. They're too mechanical. Rinoa’s eyes aren't lively enough, and Squall’s face shows no character. He’s over-idealized, and the emptiness he feels inside isn't quite captured in his eyes and facial expressions. Perhaps that will change. If you think Squall looks young, check out Zell, the ultimate geekazoid. Look how he smiles right into the camera! Can you get any cheezier than that??? Oh well!
When you're in class, go into the tutorial in the study panel on your desk. Here you can download your first two guardian forces, or GFs. A Guardian Force is a powerful mythical creature, or spirit which casts and defends against certain types of magic. Shiva's elemental magic is ice. So shes effective against fire enemies.
Once you download the GF’s, leave the classroom. When you run into Selphie, tell her you don't have the time to give her a tour and then head in the direction from which she came. Notice the guy on the right. He'll give you 7 magic cards for later use. Take the cards and go down the elevator. On the next floor, keep walking out toward the screen until you find Quistis, your teacher. Talk to her and then leave the irritating music of Balamb Garden.
Welcome to the overworld, home of dated Playstation graphics. If you look at the ocean and face left, you'll spot a cave behind a small forest area. Go there to fight Ifrit, the fire boss. If you beat him, you can equip him as a GF. You will quickly learn the only way to cast non-GF magic spells is to draw the spells from your enemies while in battle. Personally I like this system a lot. It gives weaker characters something productive to do, while you wait for the impending doom of your characters GF. Sometimes only one GF will be effective on a larger enemy.
In Final Fantasy VIII, once you draw a magic spell, you can either store it or cast it. Therefor, enemies with cure spells can actually help you heal yourself. The junction system is confusing at first, but you should get the hang of it in about 30 minutes. The menu system could be much more organized. Especially the sub-menus which are opened by pressing X while on another screen. If you don't read the mandatory in game tutorials, you'll never know they exist.
For every con there is a pro however. One con is that the status screen does not show which GF are equipped. One pro is that item and magic inventory lists are now composed of pages. No more endlessly scrolling item lists.
For extended critical analysis of this game, visit flightsoffantasy.com, where we discuss the pros and cons of the junction system, the pacing problems of the battle system left over from Final Fantasy VII, and some minor story quirks.
Final Fantasy VIII is a MUST BUY. It’s not perfect, and as of yet the story is more plot driven and character driven, but this game is perhaps the most engaging RPG of all-time. The easy difficulty level allows you to freely enjoy the momentum of the story above all else. While traditional RPG elements like armor and money are less apparent in this title, its a nice change of pace without them. That doesn't mean we don't wanna see them again. Look for continued coverage of this game soon.
Oh by the way, if Square doesn't add voiceovers to Final Fantasy IX, I'm committing suicide. I hate text!"
You begin with Squall. An anti-social Garden military trainee who is yet to meet the love of his life. First off, if this storyline is truly to reach epic levels, then I hope one of the lovers dies. From Shakespeare to The English Patient to Titanic, death has proven to be the most effective instrument of high-romantic drama.
As you can see, the full-motion video is impressive, but sometimes the characters feel dead inside. They're too mechanical. Rinoa’s eyes aren't lively enough, and Squall’s face shows no character. He’s over-idealized, and the emptiness he feels inside isn't quite captured in his eyes and facial expressions. Perhaps that will change. If you think Squall looks young, check out Zell, the ultimate geekazoid. Look how he smiles right into the camera! Can you get any cheezier than that??? Oh well!
When you're in class, go into the tutorial in the study panel on your desk. Here you can download your first two guardian forces, or GFs. A Guardian Force is a powerful mythical creature, or spirit which casts and defends against certain types of magic. Shiva's elemental magic is ice. So shes effective against fire enemies.
Once you download the GF’s, leave the classroom. When you run into Selphie, tell her you don't have the time to give her a tour and then head in the direction from which she came. Notice the guy on the right. He'll give you 7 magic cards for later use. Take the cards and go down the elevator. On the next floor, keep walking out toward the screen until you find Quistis, your teacher. Talk to her and then leave the irritating music of Balamb Garden.
Welcome to the overworld, home of dated Playstation graphics. If you look at the ocean and face left, you'll spot a cave behind a small forest area. Go there to fight Ifrit, the fire boss. If you beat him, you can equip him as a GF. You will quickly learn the only way to cast non-GF magic spells is to draw the spells from your enemies while in battle. Personally I like this system a lot. It gives weaker characters something productive to do, while you wait for the impending doom of your characters GF. Sometimes only one GF will be effective on a larger enemy.
In Final Fantasy VIII, once you draw a magic spell, you can either store it or cast it. Therefor, enemies with cure spells can actually help you heal yourself. The junction system is confusing at first, but you should get the hang of it in about 30 minutes. The menu system could be much more organized. Especially the sub-menus which are opened by pressing X while on another screen. If you don't read the mandatory in game tutorials, you'll never know they exist.
For every con there is a pro however. One con is that the status screen does not show which GF are equipped. One pro is that item and magic inventory lists are now composed of pages. No more endlessly scrolling item lists.
For extended critical analysis of this game, visit flightsoffantasy.com, where we discuss the pros and cons of the junction system, the pacing problems of the battle system left over from Final Fantasy VII, and some minor story quirks.
Final Fantasy VIII is a MUST BUY. It’s not perfect, and as of yet the story is more plot driven and character driven, but this game is perhaps the most engaging RPG of all-time. The easy difficulty level allows you to freely enjoy the momentum of the story above all else. While traditional RPG elements like armor and money are less apparent in this title, its a nice change of pace without them. That doesn't mean we don't wanna see them again. Look for continued coverage of this game soon.
Oh by the way, if Square doesn't add voiceovers to Final Fantasy IX, I'm committing suicide. I hate text!"
I think people who bitch about the junction system are just bad at the game. It's literally just a fancy word for equip and you have the option to do it automatically anyway, not to mention a plethora of online resources. Despite the quality of the FF7 remakes, I wouldn't want modern Square to remake this.
My favorite memory related to this game is when I was playing it for the first time, my brother would occasionally stop by to watch when he had nothing better to do. There was this one time when I was playing one of the Laguna sections, a battle started and The Man With the Machine Gun played, after a few seconds my brother said "Wow, this battle theme is so much better than that lame-ass one that played all the time before." referring to Don't Be Afraid in the Squall part.
While I don't agree that Don't Be Afraid sucks, I absolutely cannot argue against Man With the Machine Gun being vastly superior, that's like a 6/10 track compared to a 9/10 track.
While I don't agree that Don't Be Afraid sucks, I absolutely cannot argue against Man With the Machine Gun being vastly superior, that's like a 6/10 track compared to a 9/10 track.
This review contains spoilers
This is the best game ever made.
Coming hot off the back of 7, an international sensation that thrust square front and center of the videogame scene, the madlads decided to make a fully modern final fantasy who's main plot was a romance. Nothing about the development makes sense. That said, I can't think of another game which is so bold about its romance. Most relegate romance to subplot, treat it as a dirty secret, or hide behind innuendo. 8 is bolder, and the romance is one of the most ambitious ever penned. Squall and Rinoa get a beautiful tale spun, one that acknowledges previous and former love interests in a very adult and mature fashion, whilst being filled to the brim with tropes and melodrama as befitting the stakes of the plot. The game is bold enough to tackle its themes earnestly, fear of inadequacies, fear of being alone, fear of failure just to name a few.
My favourite moments are too numerous to list but I do want to shout out when loveable himbo Squall forsakes everything and everyone to walk Rinoa miles to a doctor on the off-chance he can save her. Like bro you have a flying city you don't need the cardio.
Laguna is to 8 what Zack is to 7, but more realised. Both are puppies, and both deserve the world. The Man With The Machine Gun goes hard, and I always show up for my boy Laguna.
Rinoa trying to keep pace with the mercenaries, and lamenting that she can't, only to be shown Griever by Squall, and deciding "Maybe I'm a Lion too" lives rent free in my pigeon brain.
I replay 8 yearly, and it ages like fine wine.
I'll admit I have my grievances with a few mechanical aspects, but if Squeenix remakes the game, just call me, I know how to make it perfect. Decouple magic from stats, or have a hardcap for stat boosts from spells. Add voice acting, and give Squall to Ben Starr. Add more Garden v Garden battles, and more Squall x Seifer duels. Give Quistis literally anything to do after the first 3 hours of game.
Remember the time they used Liberi Fatali at the Olympics? That was weird
Coming hot off the back of 7, an international sensation that thrust square front and center of the videogame scene, the madlads decided to make a fully modern final fantasy who's main plot was a romance. Nothing about the development makes sense. That said, I can't think of another game which is so bold about its romance. Most relegate romance to subplot, treat it as a dirty secret, or hide behind innuendo. 8 is bolder, and the romance is one of the most ambitious ever penned. Squall and Rinoa get a beautiful tale spun, one that acknowledges previous and former love interests in a very adult and mature fashion, whilst being filled to the brim with tropes and melodrama as befitting the stakes of the plot. The game is bold enough to tackle its themes earnestly, fear of inadequacies, fear of being alone, fear of failure just to name a few.
My favourite moments are too numerous to list but I do want to shout out when loveable himbo Squall forsakes everything and everyone to walk Rinoa miles to a doctor on the off-chance he can save her. Like bro you have a flying city you don't need the cardio.
Laguna is to 8 what Zack is to 7, but more realised. Both are puppies, and both deserve the world. The Man With The Machine Gun goes hard, and I always show up for my boy Laguna.
Rinoa trying to keep pace with the mercenaries, and lamenting that she can't, only to be shown Griever by Squall, and deciding "Maybe I'm a Lion too" lives rent free in my pigeon brain.
I replay 8 yearly, and it ages like fine wine.
I'll admit I have my grievances with a few mechanical aspects, but if Squeenix remakes the game, just call me, I know how to make it perfect. Decouple magic from stats, or have a hardcap for stat boosts from spells. Add voice acting, and give Squall to Ben Starr. Add more Garden v Garden battles, and more Squall x Seifer duels. Give Quistis literally anything to do after the first 3 hours of game.
Remember the time they used Liberi Fatali at the Olympics? That was weird
The year was 1999 and Square-Enix had all the money and momentum in the world. God what a game.
I just replayed this masterpiece and i have to say i remember why it was my #1 game for a while infact its returning to being My #1 that ending makes me cry a river man
also "...whatever"
also "...whatever"
I hate that stupid fucking pussy ass song that all the shippers squeal over. Why couldn’t they get real music like Metallica?
Might just be the worst sequel to a game ever made. What happened to Cloud and friends? Unbelievable.
"Give me the best story told in flashbacks of a good-hearted man who inspires a musician, falls in love, goes off to fight in war, is involved in the downfall of a political leader, and is finally reunited with his son after his lover's death."
Forrest Gump
"I mean, the best story told in flashbacks of a good-hearted man who inspires a musician, falls in love, goes off to fight in war, is involved in the downfall of a political leader, and is finally reunited with his son after his lover's death."
Final Fantasy VIII
"Perfection."
____________________________________
If you'll excuse the corny meme transcribed awkwardly into text, I just wanna say that Laguna is not only the true main character of FFVIII, he is the best main character in the FF series. Endearingly goofy and relatable, he also has some of the best character development squeezed within relatively little screentime (and secondhand accounts from people who've interacted with him).
And if you'll excuse me jumping excitedly from point to point, I have to draw a parallel with another movie (or book, if you prefer): Battle Royale. The entire premise of the story - addressing deliquency among the youth by sending one randomly-selected class a year over to murder island - is such monumentally stupid policy, but it's still an awesome movie because of the way it really explores the character and motivations of everyone in that class through the lens of extreme circumstances. See also exhibit B - Gantz - for a manga whose strength lies in viewing how each character copes with being called into extreme danger, and whose quality arguably plummets once a logical 'plot' starts to reveal itself.
I tend to view FFVIII's much-maligned reveal (you know the one) in much the same way as the above two examples. Ok yeah, it's contrived! But it throws the actions and personalities of every party member into sudden context. These are all orphan child soldiers (which we already knew) carrying various mental and emotional scars which they can't begin to work through because they have no memory of what scarred them in the first place. Quistis' inappropriate behavior towards Squall - and Squall's reluctance to reach out and form any kind of connection - makes more sense. As the only one who still has a memory of their orphanage days, Irvine's reluctance to shoot at Edea makes more sense. And my favorite of the bunch is actually Zell - the kid who deep down is kind of a big dorky nerd but acts loud because he also desires to be cool. He's always the first to protest when the party decides to go against orders, but Seifer knows how to play him like a fiddle ("fine, stay here. I don't want any boy scouts.") It also manifests in him being the de-facto Mr. Exposition when he's in your party, giving you plenty of information about where you're going, resulting in an (optional) subtle bit of character development from Squall who goes from "Thank you Mr Know-It-All Zell" to "I should give this guy more credit".
And that's what I like about the game - big romance aside, the character work isn't grand and sweeping and theatrical - it's just a lot of little moments that subtly shade each person's character. There's isn't a whole lot of point to much of it, but that's what the vast majority of dialogue is like anyway - a lot like what hanging out with friends is like. I do have to say that FFVIII is helped immensely by possibly being the first FF with a truly excellent localized script. It still has its blemishes, but it nails a lot of the nuances that make the subtle character work possible. This is the first time I'm playing the game as a dad, and young Ellone's no-filter "Uncle Laguna says yoo dress weird but you're a nice person!!" is 1000% something a little girl would say.
The intimate character stuff is good, but let's not ignore that the large-scale stuff is phenomenal. This is actually the first FF game I played so I could be speaking with my nostalgia shades on, but this game is probably the one with the best-directed cutscenes, perhaps ever. Practically every setpiece left me with my jaw hanging when I first played it in '99, but even now, between the beach landing at Dollet, the clash of the Gardens, the first glimpse of the city of Esthar, and the scenes on Lunar Base, I'd be hard-pressed to single one out as a favorite - perhaps the creepy Sorceress Parade, with its absolute banger of a soundtrack complete with dancers doing the moves from Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Mechanically the game is controversial, but there's a lot of fun to be had once you get to know its ins and outs - there are so many ways you can tweak your playstyle that will lead to a very different experience of the game. I just finished a self-imposed 'bigamy challenge' where each character stays with the same two randomly-chosen GFs, and it forced me to get really creative with how I approached combat - especially since only two characters had any way of boosting their strength.
Finally, I love FFVIII's world and its lore. It doesn't spell everything out, but you do have access to a ton of optional information that adds context to what you're doing. And - fitting for a game that is all about fate - almost everything is connected to everything else, just waiting for you to talk to the right person and make the right connection. The fact that the movie starring Laguna as the sorceress' knight is the inspiration for Seifer's romantic dream - and ostensibly the reason he uses a gunblade - is something I only caught this time, and the game is all the richer for it.
I know that this review overlooks a lot of flaws - but I know they exist. Perhaps the best way to summarize the issues with the game is that it's kind of a mess. The writing, the pacing, the mechanics, the way the lore is presented - it's all kinda messy. But it's a mess with heart, it's a mess with substance, it's a mess that - like its characters - reveals more and more layers as you peel away the surface, and its a mess that does so many things so exceptionally well that I can't help but love it.
FFVIII is one of the very few games that I've done a complete 360-turn on. The flashy graphics and fantastic cutscenes made a huge impression on me at first. Then for a while I found the game to be rather cringe, the mechanics needlessly complex, and the game generally unrefined compared to its cousins. After four completed playthroughs, the 360-degree turn is complete: it sits second on my list of favorite FF games, a position that is entirely subjective but also entirely earned.
Forrest Gump
"I mean, the best story told in flashbacks of a good-hearted man who inspires a musician, falls in love, goes off to fight in war, is involved in the downfall of a political leader, and is finally reunited with his son after his lover's death."
Final Fantasy VIII
"Perfection."
____________________________________
If you'll excuse the corny meme transcribed awkwardly into text, I just wanna say that Laguna is not only the true main character of FFVIII, he is the best main character in the FF series. Endearingly goofy and relatable, he also has some of the best character development squeezed within relatively little screentime (and secondhand accounts from people who've interacted with him).
And if you'll excuse me jumping excitedly from point to point, I have to draw a parallel with another movie (or book, if you prefer): Battle Royale. The entire premise of the story - addressing deliquency among the youth by sending one randomly-selected class a year over to murder island - is such monumentally stupid policy, but it's still an awesome movie because of the way it really explores the character and motivations of everyone in that class through the lens of extreme circumstances. See also exhibit B - Gantz - for a manga whose strength lies in viewing how each character copes with being called into extreme danger, and whose quality arguably plummets once a logical 'plot' starts to reveal itself.
I tend to view FFVIII's much-maligned reveal (you know the one) in much the same way as the above two examples. Ok yeah, it's contrived! But it throws the actions and personalities of every party member into sudden context. These are all orphan child soldiers (which we already knew) carrying various mental and emotional scars which they can't begin to work through because they have no memory of what scarred them in the first place. Quistis' inappropriate behavior towards Squall - and Squall's reluctance to reach out and form any kind of connection - makes more sense. As the only one who still has a memory of their orphanage days, Irvine's reluctance to shoot at Edea makes more sense. And my favorite of the bunch is actually Zell - the kid who deep down is kind of a big dorky nerd but acts loud because he also desires to be cool. He's always the first to protest when the party decides to go against orders, but Seifer knows how to play him like a fiddle ("fine, stay here. I don't want any boy scouts.") It also manifests in him being the de-facto Mr. Exposition when he's in your party, giving you plenty of information about where you're going, resulting in an (optional) subtle bit of character development from Squall who goes from "Thank you Mr Know-It-All Zell" to "I should give this guy more credit".
And that's what I like about the game - big romance aside, the character work isn't grand and sweeping and theatrical - it's just a lot of little moments that subtly shade each person's character. There's isn't a whole lot of point to much of it, but that's what the vast majority of dialogue is like anyway - a lot like what hanging out with friends is like. I do have to say that FFVIII is helped immensely by possibly being the first FF with a truly excellent localized script. It still has its blemishes, but it nails a lot of the nuances that make the subtle character work possible. This is the first time I'm playing the game as a dad, and young Ellone's no-filter "Uncle Laguna says yoo dress weird but you're a nice person!!" is 1000% something a little girl would say.
The intimate character stuff is good, but let's not ignore that the large-scale stuff is phenomenal. This is actually the first FF game I played so I could be speaking with my nostalgia shades on, but this game is probably the one with the best-directed cutscenes, perhaps ever. Practically every setpiece left me with my jaw hanging when I first played it in '99, but even now, between the beach landing at Dollet, the clash of the Gardens, the first glimpse of the city of Esthar, and the scenes on Lunar Base, I'd be hard-pressed to single one out as a favorite - perhaps the creepy Sorceress Parade, with its absolute banger of a soundtrack complete with dancers doing the moves from Michael Jackson's Thriller.
Mechanically the game is controversial, but there's a lot of fun to be had once you get to know its ins and outs - there are so many ways you can tweak your playstyle that will lead to a very different experience of the game. I just finished a self-imposed 'bigamy challenge' where each character stays with the same two randomly-chosen GFs, and it forced me to get really creative with how I approached combat - especially since only two characters had any way of boosting their strength.
Finally, I love FFVIII's world and its lore. It doesn't spell everything out, but you do have access to a ton of optional information that adds context to what you're doing. And - fitting for a game that is all about fate - almost everything is connected to everything else, just waiting for you to talk to the right person and make the right connection. The fact that the movie starring Laguna as the sorceress' knight is the inspiration for Seifer's romantic dream - and ostensibly the reason he uses a gunblade - is something I only caught this time, and the game is all the richer for it.
I know that this review overlooks a lot of flaws - but I know they exist. Perhaps the best way to summarize the issues with the game is that it's kind of a mess. The writing, the pacing, the mechanics, the way the lore is presented - it's all kinda messy. But it's a mess with heart, it's a mess with substance, it's a mess that - like its characters - reveals more and more layers as you peel away the surface, and its a mess that does so many things so exceptionally well that I can't help but love it.
FFVIII is one of the very few games that I've done a complete 360-turn on. The flashy graphics and fantastic cutscenes made a huge impression on me at first. Then for a while I found the game to be rather cringe, the mechanics needlessly complex, and the game generally unrefined compared to its cousins. After four completed playthroughs, the 360-degree turn is complete: it sits second on my list of favorite FF games, a position that is entirely subjective but also entirely earned.
I'm impressed by how daring FF8 is as a game, it's too experimental and ambitious, even for its time. It's weird in gameplay, story and also in its music it's weird, and I love it, it's just what I needed.
I hate to admit it, but I identified a lot with Squall, my high school self is still inside me after all and will never leave, and this whether I like it or not influenced a lot in how I enjoyed the story, so whether you like this story or not depends a little bit on your personality and your age in a way, I think... Well, the truth is that the story is very weird no matter where you look at it, I think what made me like it were its characters. Each character feels very human in a way, even in their interactions and dialogue. The story is entertaining mainly because of seeing how it is that said characters perform in the different events throughout the game, especially Squall, who is a misfit most of the time, and it's fun to see how he always confuses his companions by the way he is, or to see how he disappoints and annoys them... I thought it was a cool detail too how the decision dialogues make what your companions have to say fit very adequately to what a real person would say. Maybe a lot of times the characters can seem silly or flat, but looking at it from the perspective that they're just teenagers (if not kids) in the middle of all the conflict, I don't know, it all makes more sense than it seems at first glance. As I mentioned before, the story is pretty weird, though by the third disc it all made sense to me and somehow clicked and I liked it too much, maybe not one of the best stories, but certainly one with a lot of memorable moments. I guess it's important to keep in mind at all times that despite how realistic and serious the game can be at times, it's still a Final Fantasy game, so it's common to see out of the ordinary vehicles, characters and situations, for better or worse.
I'll save the gameplay for last this time as I plan to talk in depth about that because of how "complex" it is, so I'm going to talk about the music and graphics. And wow, they are really of a very "fine" quality to say the least. Speaking of the music, it was very different from the rest of the other games, especially in how varied it is. It's definitely a weird soundtrack, but it's one that I really liked. The battle theme and boss theme are very "different" from the rest of the series, but I think they've become my favorites. Sometimes more traditional themes are present which are always very memorable and relaxing themes. While sometimes we have songs that seem to belong to a different game, and I love them.
On the graphics at first I got the impression that they were bad, in fact worse than FF7, but once I got further into the game I realized that they are actually a huge improvement. The models look better in every way, they are no longer deformed humans but have a more realistic complexion, and the same goes for the monsters, which look great, all added with very well done animations for characters and monsters that, it's just awesome, it shows as a very high budget game with a lot of attention to detail for its time. Even the interfaces look very polished, and menu navigation is more fluid and responsive than ever. I like how in battles the command menu is very clean and minimalistic compared to previous titles, you can even hide the command menu by pressing "Select", which I really liked. The prerendered backgrounds now look more detailed and better done in general, I guess because the development team already had more experience in making them, which allows for a more diverse and different set of scenarios, it just looks great, and this looks very well complemented when the game mixes CGI cinematics with real time models, it looks amazing.
Now yes, regarding the gameplay this time the gimmick that has as FF game to distinguish itself from the other titles is the Junction System, which in short is a rare combination between the Espers of FF6, the Materia of FF7, and in turn serves as a class system, and to finish off, also serves as a replacement for armor and accessories, as here there are none. That's right, it sounds incredibly weird, and it fascinates me. For starters, the attributes of our characters depend on this, because how much attack or defense a character has is determined by the magic and the amount of it that we link to those attributes, for example, if we want to increase our base HP, linking a healing magic would be the most preferable. In addition to the stats, we can also link magic to our attacks or our defense against enemy attacks, for example, if we link ice to the attack, our attacks will be of that element and will inflict more damage to fire enemies, or on the other hand, if we link a status alteration magic to the attack, we can do things like every time we attack an enemy, we have a 50% chance of putting them to sleep. But well, in order to have these abilities, we have to make Junction with a guardian (a summon, like Ifrit for example) and the abilities or attributes available to modify depend on which Guardian it is, for example, a Guardian specialized in magic can give us the ability to make that every time we level up the magic attribute goes up 10% more than normal, but another guardian can unlock the command to defend, for example. I love it, this offers a huge degree of customization, I said it resembles FF7 Materia as the guardians have their own level independent of the character, so they are very "portable", and makes you can have strong characters even if their level is low.
Speaking of how to get magic, this time it is not learned by leveling up or buying it from stores, instead it is drawn from enemies, which makes it exciting every time we encounter an enemy to know what kind of new magic we can get from them. Magic can also be obtained from transforming objects if we have the ability to do that unlocked. Although in this system a problem can arise, and that is that many can get too distracted trying to steal 99 magic from enemies to have the stats at the maximum or to never "lack" that magic to have stock to spare, which is not really necessary in my opinion, because doing that is the equivalent of grind in a traditional RPG, It's something that only needs to be done if you really need it or if you're struggling a lot. Certainly by its very nature it is quite easy to break, and I like that, because if you want to make the game easier the same game gives you the freedom to do so and allows you to have the highest stats and not have to worry for the rest of the game about it. You can literally play the game the way you want and you set the difficulty to your own liking.
Another thing I should mention to finish covering this aspect of the game is that all enemies are at your level. Which means, the stronger your character is, the stronger the enemies will be, and therefore, the better the magic you can get from them. To be honest, it's an idea that I like a lot, as it made the battles against some bosses very interesting most of the time, the bad thing is that I think that on the other hand some bosses are very easy as they have a quite... pacifist behavior, I guess it was a rare case where some were very difficult and challenging, which I liked, and some others were very easy, which was a bit disappointing.
Conclusion
It's not a masterpiece as other games in this series were, Final Fantasy 8 instead dares to be different, to be unique, with gameplay that allows you to progress at the pace you want and a story that is sometimes ambiguous but hides a certain charm behind all the weirdness it can be. Final Fantasy 8 is imperfect, and somehow, I think that sometimes that's better than being a masterpiece.
I hate to admit it, but I identified a lot with Squall, my high school self is still inside me after all and will never leave, and this whether I like it or not influenced a lot in how I enjoyed the story, so whether you like this story or not depends a little bit on your personality and your age in a way, I think... Well, the truth is that the story is very weird no matter where you look at it, I think what made me like it were its characters. Each character feels very human in a way, even in their interactions and dialogue. The story is entertaining mainly because of seeing how it is that said characters perform in the different events throughout the game, especially Squall, who is a misfit most of the time, and it's fun to see how he always confuses his companions by the way he is, or to see how he disappoints and annoys them... I thought it was a cool detail too how the decision dialogues make what your companions have to say fit very adequately to what a real person would say. Maybe a lot of times the characters can seem silly or flat, but looking at it from the perspective that they're just teenagers (if not kids) in the middle of all the conflict, I don't know, it all makes more sense than it seems at first glance. As I mentioned before, the story is pretty weird, though by the third disc it all made sense to me and somehow clicked and I liked it too much, maybe not one of the best stories, but certainly one with a lot of memorable moments. I guess it's important to keep in mind at all times that despite how realistic and serious the game can be at times, it's still a Final Fantasy game, so it's common to see out of the ordinary vehicles, characters and situations, for better or worse.
I'll save the gameplay for last this time as I plan to talk in depth about that because of how "complex" it is, so I'm going to talk about the music and graphics. And wow, they are really of a very "fine" quality to say the least. Speaking of the music, it was very different from the rest of the other games, especially in how varied it is. It's definitely a weird soundtrack, but it's one that I really liked. The battle theme and boss theme are very "different" from the rest of the series, but I think they've become my favorites. Sometimes more traditional themes are present which are always very memorable and relaxing themes. While sometimes we have songs that seem to belong to a different game, and I love them.
On the graphics at first I got the impression that they were bad, in fact worse than FF7, but once I got further into the game I realized that they are actually a huge improvement. The models look better in every way, they are no longer deformed humans but have a more realistic complexion, and the same goes for the monsters, which look great, all added with very well done animations for characters and monsters that, it's just awesome, it shows as a very high budget game with a lot of attention to detail for its time. Even the interfaces look very polished, and menu navigation is more fluid and responsive than ever. I like how in battles the command menu is very clean and minimalistic compared to previous titles, you can even hide the command menu by pressing "Select", which I really liked. The prerendered backgrounds now look more detailed and better done in general, I guess because the development team already had more experience in making them, which allows for a more diverse and different set of scenarios, it just looks great, and this looks very well complemented when the game mixes CGI cinematics with real time models, it looks amazing.
Now yes, regarding the gameplay this time the gimmick that has as FF game to distinguish itself from the other titles is the Junction System, which in short is a rare combination between the Espers of FF6, the Materia of FF7, and in turn serves as a class system, and to finish off, also serves as a replacement for armor and accessories, as here there are none. That's right, it sounds incredibly weird, and it fascinates me. For starters, the attributes of our characters depend on this, because how much attack or defense a character has is determined by the magic and the amount of it that we link to those attributes, for example, if we want to increase our base HP, linking a healing magic would be the most preferable. In addition to the stats, we can also link magic to our attacks or our defense against enemy attacks, for example, if we link ice to the attack, our attacks will be of that element and will inflict more damage to fire enemies, or on the other hand, if we link a status alteration magic to the attack, we can do things like every time we attack an enemy, we have a 50% chance of putting them to sleep. But well, in order to have these abilities, we have to make Junction with a guardian (a summon, like Ifrit for example) and the abilities or attributes available to modify depend on which Guardian it is, for example, a Guardian specialized in magic can give us the ability to make that every time we level up the magic attribute goes up 10% more than normal, but another guardian can unlock the command to defend, for example. I love it, this offers a huge degree of customization, I said it resembles FF7 Materia as the guardians have their own level independent of the character, so they are very "portable", and makes you can have strong characters even if their level is low.
Speaking of how to get magic, this time it is not learned by leveling up or buying it from stores, instead it is drawn from enemies, which makes it exciting every time we encounter an enemy to know what kind of new magic we can get from them. Magic can also be obtained from transforming objects if we have the ability to do that unlocked. Although in this system a problem can arise, and that is that many can get too distracted trying to steal 99 magic from enemies to have the stats at the maximum or to never "lack" that magic to have stock to spare, which is not really necessary in my opinion, because doing that is the equivalent of grind in a traditional RPG, It's something that only needs to be done if you really need it or if you're struggling a lot. Certainly by its very nature it is quite easy to break, and I like that, because if you want to make the game easier the same game gives you the freedom to do so and allows you to have the highest stats and not have to worry for the rest of the game about it. You can literally play the game the way you want and you set the difficulty to your own liking.
Another thing I should mention to finish covering this aspect of the game is that all enemies are at your level. Which means, the stronger your character is, the stronger the enemies will be, and therefore, the better the magic you can get from them. To be honest, it's an idea that I like a lot, as it made the battles against some bosses very interesting most of the time, the bad thing is that I think that on the other hand some bosses are very easy as they have a quite... pacifist behavior, I guess it was a rare case where some were very difficult and challenging, which I liked, and some others were very easy, which was a bit disappointing.
Conclusion
It's not a masterpiece as other games in this series were, Final Fantasy 8 instead dares to be different, to be unique, with gameplay that allows you to progress at the pace you want and a story that is sometimes ambiguous but hides a certain charm behind all the weirdness it can be. Final Fantasy 8 is imperfect, and somehow, I think that sometimes that's better than being a masterpiece.
One of the finest in the series and a quality evolution. Squall is such a dick but you can't help relating. Maybe it was the FMVs, that unforgettable opening cinematic. Maybe it was the way it took the best FF ideas from previous games and improved on them in every way (howls of protest ensue but I don't care.) Whatever it was it worked. Wonderfully.
Gorgeous gorgeus video game. Squall & Rinoa's love story is one of the best in the whole medium. The space sequence absolutely stands the test of time, breathtaking, romantic, beautiful.
In general the whole game looks fantastic, the pre-renderd cutscenes together with the visual world and city design make scenes like the Sorceress' parade amazing to witness for the first time even now, 24 years after release.
The story is held back by poor translations and pacing but the core of what is being told is classic top tier Final Fantasy, full of angst and heart and drama.
The junction system is completely unbalanced and I wouldnt have it any other way. One of the most unique systems Square has ever come up with, and a lot of fun to experiment with and find broken combinations by turning enemies into cards, cards into items, items into spells, and junction said spells.
Also Triple Triad.
I hope this game gets an FF7 style remake in the future, because the foundation is there for 8 to be maybe the best Final Fantasy of them all, it just needs a bit of polishing and restructuring.
In general the whole game looks fantastic, the pre-renderd cutscenes together with the visual world and city design make scenes like the Sorceress' parade amazing to witness for the first time even now, 24 years after release.
The story is held back by poor translations and pacing but the core of what is being told is classic top tier Final Fantasy, full of angst and heart and drama.
The junction system is completely unbalanced and I wouldnt have it any other way. One of the most unique systems Square has ever come up with, and a lot of fun to experiment with and find broken combinations by turning enemies into cards, cards into items, items into spells, and junction said spells.
Also Triple Triad.
I hope this game gets an FF7 style remake in the future, because the foundation is there for 8 to be maybe the best Final Fantasy of them all, it just needs a bit of polishing and restructuring.
final fantasy
squall and rinoa get so much hate for the crime of being teenagers
I don't say this lightly but, they would find each other in every universe.
I have a big soft spot for this game, but I think it doesn't quite hold up as well as its peers. There's a lot to love. The game has the most amazing, most cinematic, most bombastic set pieces in the series up to this point. X-ATM 092 chasing you through Dollet, the parade assassination, the battle of the gardens, the lunar cry. Junctioning and drawing, min-maxing your stats, I love it all.
The problem is the whole isn't quite the sum of its parts. The plot connecting the set pieces is just not as good as the set pieces themselves. The Battle of the Gardens, for instance, happens more-or-less because the Gardens bump into each other. There are no particular stakes to it, it doesn't change anything, and it doesn't feel very connected to the next plot beat (Rinoa going into a coma). The revelation that all the main characters are amnesiac orphans is just thrown out by Irvine at no point in particular. I have a friend who's fond of saying the game needed a second draft. I'm inclined to agree.
Mechanically, it feels the complete opposite of its predecessor, where materia started out simple and had you waiting half the game to get interesting, Guardian Force and junctioning are super complicated right out the gate, but fail to really develop or evolve as the game goes on. I found the game most difficult at the start, then super easy right up until Omega Weapon. My biggest disappointment here is there's no real incentive to specialise or diversify, I ended the game with three beefcakes who could smack enemies hard with the fight command and absorb any amount of punishment. Still really chasing the SNES peak where I could spread out all the game's toys between the full party.
Still, a good time, and I'd love to see it revisited someday to redraft the rougher bits of the story. If you haven't played it, here's my advice: unlock "Encounter None" on Diabolos and never, ever feel bad about using it!
The problem is the whole isn't quite the sum of its parts. The plot connecting the set pieces is just not as good as the set pieces themselves. The Battle of the Gardens, for instance, happens more-or-less because the Gardens bump into each other. There are no particular stakes to it, it doesn't change anything, and it doesn't feel very connected to the next plot beat (Rinoa going into a coma). The revelation that all the main characters are amnesiac orphans is just thrown out by Irvine at no point in particular. I have a friend who's fond of saying the game needed a second draft. I'm inclined to agree.
Mechanically, it feels the complete opposite of its predecessor, where materia started out simple and had you waiting half the game to get interesting, Guardian Force and junctioning are super complicated right out the gate, but fail to really develop or evolve as the game goes on. I found the game most difficult at the start, then super easy right up until Omega Weapon. My biggest disappointment here is there's no real incentive to specialise or diversify, I ended the game with three beefcakes who could smack enemies hard with the fight command and absorb any amount of punishment. Still really chasing the SNES peak where I could spread out all the game's toys between the full party.
Still, a good time, and I'd love to see it revisited someday to redraft the rougher bits of the story. If you haven't played it, here's my advice: unlock "Encounter None" on Diabolos and never, ever feel bad about using it!
Doomtrain
What they don’t tell you is that this is actually the best one
peak final fantasy
Um woah, whatever my expectations were going into this, they certainly didn’t expect anything near this level of insane wacky shit.
Story and characters are soooo surprisingly good man, i think squall, the protagonist, has genuinely one of the best character arcs i have ever seen in a piece of media. And the party of supporting characters are all wonderfully realised.
There’s so much to talk about with this game i’m gonna have to do a second more in depth review later.
Story and characters are soooo surprisingly good man, i think squall, the protagonist, has genuinely one of the best character arcs i have ever seen in a piece of media. And the party of supporting characters are all wonderfully realised.
There’s so much to talk about with this game i’m gonna have to do a second more in depth review later.
Final Fantasy VIII, oh, the memories. A game that whisked me away to a world of magic, love, and mind-bending twists, leaving an indelible mark on my young, impressionable mind. It was the first Final Fantasy I ever played.
The cast was equally memorable. Rinoa's fiery spirit and unwavering loyalty balanced Squall's quiet strength. The enigmatic Quistis Trepe, the caring Laguna Loire, and the mischievous Zell Dincht, Irvine Kinneas, Selphie Tilmitt, hell, even the nemesis Seifer Almasy and his two goons, the blunt Raijin and the mysterious Fujin, each brought their unique quirks and complexities to the table. Together, they formed an unlikely family, bound by their shared experiences and the pursuit of a common goal.
The game's visuals, though dated by today's standards, still hold a special place in my heart. The vibrant backgrounds, the dynamic character designs, and the cinematic cutscenes were a treat for the eyes at the time.
The Junction system, while initially confusing, added a layer of complexity and strategy to the combat, but most importantly did something many thought worsened the experience but actually improved mine: it actually got rid of the need to farm for hours against boring monsters like in previous FFs! You could complete the game at level one thanks to both the junction system, making you stronger without the need to level up, and the fact that enemies' levels scaled with yours.
The music, oh, the music! Nobuo Uematsu's score is a symphony of emotions, perfectly capturing the game's highs and lows.
Final Fantasy VIII holds a special place in my heart, a reminder of my childhood and the power of storytelling. It's a game that has stood the test of time, its characters and themes resonating with players even today. If you're looking for an immersive, emotional journey, Final Fantasy VIII is a must-play. Just don't forget your tissues.
The cast was equally memorable. Rinoa's fiery spirit and unwavering loyalty balanced Squall's quiet strength. The enigmatic Quistis Trepe, the caring Laguna Loire, and the mischievous Zell Dincht, Irvine Kinneas, Selphie Tilmitt, hell, even the nemesis Seifer Almasy and his two goons, the blunt Raijin and the mysterious Fujin, each brought their unique quirks and complexities to the table. Together, they formed an unlikely family, bound by their shared experiences and the pursuit of a common goal.
The game's visuals, though dated by today's standards, still hold a special place in my heart. The vibrant backgrounds, the dynamic character designs, and the cinematic cutscenes were a treat for the eyes at the time.
The Junction system, while initially confusing, added a layer of complexity and strategy to the combat, but most importantly did something many thought worsened the experience but actually improved mine: it actually got rid of the need to farm for hours against boring monsters like in previous FFs! You could complete the game at level one thanks to both the junction system, making you stronger without the need to level up, and the fact that enemies' levels scaled with yours.
The music, oh, the music! Nobuo Uematsu's score is a symphony of emotions, perfectly capturing the game's highs and lows.
Final Fantasy VIII holds a special place in my heart, a reminder of my childhood and the power of storytelling. It's a game that has stood the test of time, its characters and themes resonating with players even today. If you're looking for an immersive, emotional journey, Final Fantasy VIII is a must-play. Just don't forget your tissues.