![]() Being frozen for multiple minutes a battle in an RPG adds up very quickly. You begin making choices not based off strategy but rather time. This summon alone takes almost 90 seconds of gameplay: This segues nicely into the problems with the animation: they are LONG. Since you have three people in your party, this increases the repetition by a factor of three leading to you getting quite tired of the animation that accompanies draw. With 100 being the cap, that leads to anywhere from 10-30 actions of draw to max out a particular spell type. You usually draw any where from 0-9 spells of a particular type. Drawing is repetitive, tedious, and ridiculous. One way to procure magic is to draw it from enemies who always carry around a specific set of spells. The most maligned aspect of FF8 is the Draw system and rightfully so. The game offers a variety of outlets to do this. You want to do whatever you can to avoid gaining levels while still progressing your GFs and getting magic. That’s because enemies within the game SCALE with you. Actually, it’s worse than that in FF8: leveling up is counter productive. Leveling up, the traditional way of progressing through an RPG, is an afterthought. They also power up as the game goes along, unlocking more ways to accrue magic, skills such as steal and cover, and more stats to unlock for magic assigning purposes. These Guardian Forces (GF for short) unlock specific stats allowed for junctioning. Guardian Forces (otherwise known as Espers or Summons) are equipped by characters. You can’t just assign whatever you want to a particular stat, however. Equipping Haste to speed creates quite the advantage. If you want to have mega health, picking up lots of restorative spells (cure, life, etc.) and assigning it to HP will give you a huge boost in hit points. ![]() In FF8, you are able to assign magic you have accrued into certain stat lines (the game refers to this as junctioning). The way FF8 approaches building your characters has its hands in absolutely everything you do from choices in battle, managing inventory, reluctance to use spells, and motivation to play an optional card game for hours. What makes FF8 Tricky is that everything is tied together talking about one thing, no matter how much you hate or love it, flows into everything else. Come Monday, I tried to discuss it with anyone who was willing to listen on Bus #22, but no one out in rural Virginia gave a damn about my RPG exploits. The music kept me moving forward as I rode the wave of every twist and turn. It all swirled about me as I hustled trying to keep this mission together. Third, the sniper began to have a nervous breakdown. Second, a teammate went rouge and began to be assaulted by monsters. Then….BANG.įirst, the gate team got out of position and locked in a room away from their designated area. The sniper team would get in position for a clear shot on the sorceress while the gate team would trap her along the parade route so she couldn’t escape. With clear derivatives from leadership, we were supposed to split into two groups: a sniper and gate team. I sat in my basement enthralled by what occurred: with each passing step, the story writers swept me away and kept pushing me forward. My mission to assassinate the sorceress might have ended in failure, but it was a pure thrill. It’s after 10:00pm, a time that I am now beginning to stay up till as a middle schooler. ![]() So no matter how silly and broken everything becomes, there are still pieces and parts that propel it forward. It’s the reason we are willing to toil for a 40 hour adventures: the sense of wonder and connection that FF8 occasional provides. There are amazing moments in this game, exquisite experiences where we feel it in our gut. These were the three times when I beat this game, and while Final Fantasy VIII might not have changed in those 20 years, I sure have. The only way I felt like I could address this was by presenting all the problems alongside a twenty year perspective from three different vantage points: 2000, 2010, and 2020. ![]() It’s full of problems start to finish, but I can’t untangle that from the peaks of sweet experiences and nostalgia. A convoluted, mish-mashed story with amazing moments nestled in a beautiful world full of culture which has a completely broken fighting system that is also immensely addicting… this game is nothing but contradictions.įinal Fantasy VIII is such a hard game for me to unravel.
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