[Editor's note: Count Grishnack talks about Final Fantasy VIII for his Monthly Musing piece. -- CTZ]
Many of the entries in this month's Monthly Musings have been colorful and entertaining tales of youth - of unwrapping their first NES and being throughly enthralled with an awesome old-school game or scrimping and saving allowance money to buy that new game that kicked off their love affair with gaming.
Not that these haven't been great reads (the Earthbound one, by Dexter345 especially) or in theme, but my story is a bit different. It doesn't start with my first (or even second) console or a story of eight-year-old me playing these new fangled Nintendos. It's the story of the first game that made me realize that I'm a gamer.
The Sony PlayStation was the third or fourth console in my gaming career. I had already loved the NES, SNES and Genesis at this point - playing titles like
Mario,
Sonic,
The Star Wars games and many others with my friends. I genuinely loved videogames. But one game took that love to the next level.
I don't remember how I got a PS, what the first game I played on it was or any of that. I do remember that it was a kickass machine. One of my best friends had a PlayStation as well and a bunch of awesome games. One of those games was
Final Fantasy VII.
Regarded as one of the best games ever,
FFVII is a game, still to this day, I have yet to beat (I know, my RPG gamer card should be revoked). But the next installment in the
Final Fantasy series kicked off what can only be called an obsession with RPGs and videogames for me.
The thing that first struck me about
FFVIII was that it was four freakin discs. I remember on the car ride back from the mall after getting the game, flipping through the manual and just being amazed that a game could be this ... epic - and that was before playing it.
After popping disc one into my PS, the opening cut scene started. The music, the amazing graphics, the introduction to the hero and villain before even playing one second - it all seemed like a movie to me. After playing the game three or four times through, I still get goosebumps after watching that intro.
I had played a few other RPGs before, so
FFVIII was familiar, gameplay-wise. I loved the summons - five minute animations and all. I loved tinkering with the junction system, trying to find the perfect combination to beef my stats. I loved flying the Ragnarok around, looking for tougher enemies to throwdown with and power leveling on Cactuar Island. I loved the card game - Triple Triad - so much that I wondered what it would take to make a real-world version of it.
Doomtrain was the man. I logged over 100 hours on my first play through, making damn sure I exhausted nearly every side quest before taking on the multi-staged and ridiculously epic final boss.
But then I did something I had never done with a game before - I bought a strategy guide. The thing was a tome - it was thicker than most of the books I had read up to that point as a kid - and I did everything in it. From unlocking the myriad of Guardian Forces, to hunting for the rare items to make the best weapons, to bending over backwards to beat Ultima Weapon - I did it all.
In today's GameFAQs.com age, strategy guides are a thing of the past. But after
FFVIII, I usually dropped some coin on a strategy guide to go with my RPGs, mainly for that OCD induced sense of completeness. Call me a cheater, but I miss the days of brightly pictured, glossy strat guides giving my detailed maps and telling me "this guy is weak to Ice" right before a big fight.
Shhhh, secret tech. FFVIII showed me what it's like to be throughly engrossed in a make-believe world. But what's more, is that it showed me what an obsessive and crazy gamer I am. I still love finding hidden things in games - collecting heart containers, finding cog tags or leaping for those last agility spheres. I think I have
FFVIII to thank for that.
FFVIII, to me, will always be regarded as the red-headed stepchild to
FFVII.
FFVII has Sepiroth, it has Aeris' death, it is one of the elite "best game ever?" candidates. But
FFVIII shaped me into the gamer I am today. Without it, I don't think I would be nearly as passionate about playing games as I am today.
I played through
FFVIII recently - in a time when funds were low and boredom was high - and loved every minute of it. I blew through enemies with my superior knowledge of the junction system, memorized the weaknesses for nearly every boss battle and taught the final boss a lesson for making me sweat gallons years ago wondering "is this the last form of this motherfucker?!"
Final Fantasy VIII is my favorite game of all-time and the game that started a life-long love for games that I don't envision going away anytime soon.
Squall over Cloud for life.
Contest:
3:39 PM on 06.24.2008
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I don't know man, I need to play through this again maybe try and finish it.
But yeah, I too enjoyed FFVIII more than its predecessor.
Beating the Omega Weapon was a bad idea as I found out because I blew most of my holy wars and this made fighting the last boss extremely difficult. It was a down to the wire event with Irvine pulling a limit break with 1 hp left and the rest of party dead. I remember smashing the controller buttons over and over trying to get as many shots out as possible before the time limit ended. Somehow on the last shot he killed the boss, and I remember screaming like I just won a million dollars!!!
The end bosses of that game were so awesome, and Irvine will always be way cooler that Vincent because of the Hail Mary save he did. I still think Final Fantasy VIII is better than Final Fantasy VII just because how crazy my end bosses experience were.
Great write up!!!
Great article and congrats for getting front paged.
I too, have never beat FFVII...I got it for free, played the hell out of it, and ended up never beating it.
Of course, back in those days I didn't beat a LOT of games. 70% of my PS2 and older library, I never beat.
I loved VIII, and Quistis haunts many a fantasy of mine. Felt nothing for Rinoa though... Nice work. :)
So much so that i practically wet myself at the begging car chase in Alone in the Dark and can't get enough latin sounds from even the likes of SSBB. Stupid ausueme sounding Latin.
i even spent the time to draw enough ultima spells to make my party immune to all the spells...that took so freakin long.
my head hurts just thinking about it.
P.S. If you don't know about them already, there are some Triple Triad programs out there, so you can at least play it on your computer. :P
It's one of those, gaming shaped who I am today and forged lifelong friiendships, helped me find my wife, etc. stories.
-Favorite Uematsu score
-Triple Triad FTW
-With the right magic and junctions you could actually get three characters with all stats at 255(within a reasonable amount of time(looking at you X))
And does anyone know what game came with demo for this? I couldn't remember for the life of me...
The settings and music were all beautiful too. I'll be revisiting the game again once my main computer gets fixed. Until then, the shiny PC version box shall sit here on my desk, mocking me... lol.
The final boss wasn't so hard if you had 99 Ultimas, 99 Auras and 99 Melta lined up in your stats for Squall, Zell and Rinoa. Then just Aura everyone, have Rinoa renewing them and Pheonix Down-ing fallen paries and proceed to limit break the hell out of her. With Squall's ulimate weapon you should be thumping her for 18,000 hp or so per break and Aura allows you to do it every time.
I so wish we'd got some more stories set in the VIII universe though - it's the game left most open for a sequel. SeeD were pretty much intact at the end, and could go on to further adventures without going their seperate ways like so many FF groups.
Brave Fencer Musashi, my favorite game on the PS behind FFVIII.
I still think that FFVIII has the best love story. I loved the fact that you can make this game as easy or as hard as you like with Card-Mod. I think this might have been the only Minigame that actually helped you for more than one thing.
That said, the junction system remains one of my favorite character advancement systems in an rpg (2nd only to FF tactics). Once you reach the end of the game (if you've done things right) you can basically woop on anybody with no problem, and that's a rare feeling in an rpg (aura, ftw).
My gaming experience was defined by playing FF7 when it came out, when I was a mere 7 years of age. I fell in love with the final battle between Cloud and Sephiroth, and would sit and do that fight about 4 times a day (considering it took about 2 hours from loading my file to the end of the credits)
When Final Fantasy 8 came out, I was amazed by the cinematics and in-game graphics, having rid the heroes of their block hands, and overall created a much flashier looking world.
Now, since I'm a die hard fan of the series, I manage to complete each game once a year, and upon playing FF8 last year, was agast at how the graphics are. I'm not comparing them to the likes of FF12, which will be on par with many PS3 games for some time to come, but with Final Fantasy 7.
You could claim this is because I am a true Cloud fanboy, but if you play FF7, the graphics are very clear, despite being moderately cartoon like. In FF8 however, the graphics have an 'etchy' feel to them. Try it yourself, compare the battles from FF7 to that of FF8. Infact, not just the graphics, but the fluency of the ATB.
Don't get me wrong, FF8 was an amazing game. And it is still possibly the easiest Final Fantasy that exists. For example, within 10 hours, I had Squall and Quistis at level 100, Quistis weilding her amazing Save The Queen, and Squall carrying the powerful Punishment. Simply from Card and Card-mod. Now, because of Junctioning, my Squall's attack bordered 200. Junction Blizzaga to my elemental attack, BAM, Ifrit takes a nice 9999 damage.
From here, the game gets easier still! Simply junctioning high level magic to any level character to get the effects you so desire!
Omega Weapon? Somewhat overated. Yes, he is capable of dealing 9998 to all of your characters at once, but at level 100, he only has 1,160,000 HP I believe? Lion Heart does 17 hits, each doing 9999, plus a minimum of a four hit Renzokuken, adding another 16,000 or so, giving approximately 186,000 damage per limit. Simply have Irvine, Squall and Rinoa in constant Aura, expand a little Pulse Ammo and maintain Invincible Moon. Try it yourself, Omega Weapon won't last very long at all! 50 bullets or so later and 4 Lion Hearts, he's dead.
I still enjoy Final Fantasy 8 a great deal, and still get goosebumps as the Seed ships break the reflection of the moon in the sea as they approach Dollet, with The Landing belting out as loud as possible. It may well be the easiest game, but it doesn't take away from it's enjoyment.
What makes others so much better though, such as FF9, and FF10, is the re-introduction of the job system. Versatile characters are incredibly useful, but it takes away from the real nature of Final Fantasy games, in Japan, a Zodiac Job system version of FF12 was released, where the player chooses a job for each of their characters, and this job can then not be changed for the duration of the game.
Anyway, my rant is over, this was a great review of an all time great, which despite many of it's flaws, has some amazing redeemingly qualities to ensure it will never be forgotten.
But the story was what really hit me hard... really there seemed to be so many little problems in the story that i just couldn't ignore. And i never did develop much of a fondness for any of the characters... it's kinda of odd to say that since i think FFVIII might have been like my second RPG with the first being FIX; i say it's odd since i was still new to rpg's but already new what i wanted to see in a game... FFVII, FF:Tactics, and FFVI all came after and those i loved
My copy of FFVII came with a demo disk for FFVIII. I think you could play through the gardens area up until that boss (I keep wanting to think of fighting T Rex at some point... am I way off?)
Anyway, FFVII was my first game for my PSone, I had a friend who was really into RPG's and we had decided that I would get VII first and then get VIII later (I managed to completed VII 100%).
When I finally got VIII I loved it even more. I finish it 100% as well, but it was a messy 100% I didn't want to fight the final boss until I had done everything else, which made the final boss pretty freaking hard.
I finally beat her after quite a few attempts, and remember letting out shrieks of joy, which to my parents (with my pre-pubescent voice) apparently sounded like I had broken my leg, as they ran into my room...
http://www.creativeuncut.com/gallery-01/ff8-moomba.html
I tried to go back and play it a year or two ago and got about 15 minutes in before I said screw it and turned it off. It's just not the game for me. I've played every other Final Fantasy multiple times (with the acception of 10 and 12) but I just couldn't bring myself to play through this one again.
Vincent Valentine > Cloud > Squal
I got struck in Eshtar playing endlessly Triple Triad to get some rare card...
Maybe the junction system is disappointing at first but the plot is one of the most fascinating ever...these two aspects making FFVIII one of the most enjoyable and underrated RPG of all times.
Gunblade? Hells yea.