Final Fantasy VIII

[synaesthetic]

If you've seen Spoony's video review of FF8, I have been extremely gentle in comparison...

People who complain about me complaining about the Draw system and say you should use the item/card conversion ability instead? That isn't available from the start. Until you get it, you're stuck either spending hours drawing or dealing with having gimped stats because you have no magic to link.

Either way I see absolutely no reason why they couldn't just use MP. I don't like any of the "new" FF magic systems. I like how the old titles and also FFXI worked. You're a black mage, you go buy/find/kill a monster and get a Fire scroll, read the scroll, you learn to cast Fire, you spend MP to cast Fire.

Simple, clean, effective and not nearly as retarded as materia, drawing, the inane ridiculousness of the sphere grid and license board.

[ZGoten]

Yes, I've seen the review, I guess you're really gentle in comparison. However, I'm relieved I'm not the only one who disliked the draw system.

[AnimeFangirl]

Originally Posted by ZGoten

You better get ready for some "feedback".

"Feedback"? Over an 11-year old game? He's not saying anything that hasn't been said before, often in much harsher terms. Everyone who's played it knows about the flaws of this game, and even those who love it (like me) can think of many, many ways it could have been made much better.

I still rage every time that whole "ZOMG we all grew up in the same orphanage and we all magically forgot" scene comes up, and that other time when Quistis decided she had to apologize to Rinoa in the middle of a vital mission, and that annoying scene in space where you have to save Rinoa no matter how badly you want her dead (love the BGM that plays though: "Roses and Wine"), etc. etc. There's a lot of crap in there, but there's a lot to like as well if you care to look deep enough.

As for gameplay, for people like me who love easy games it's a godsend. Learn Enc-Half and Enc-None ASAP, breeze through the game battle-free except for boss battles, wipe the floor with the bosses because your level is low (I only break out Meltdown+Aura+Renzokuken for special cases like Ultima Weapon), get -aga level spells as early as Timber just by buying and refining GF-scrolls (screw drawing, that's for noobs), and so on and so forth. The sheer number of ways to break this game is mind-boggling. I love it!

(I also love posting in necro-ed threads so YMMV)

[MakubeX2]

The game is what it is all because Square was giddy after the success of VII and got a tad too ambitious.

You can see there are several elements that were resolve by deus ex machina and others left hanging, which might or might not be because Square realise that they have gone overbudget and had to do some serious cutbacks ala Xenogears. But one supporting factor that lend weight to this theory is that Square was involve in their disastrous forray into Hollywood known as Spirit Within which inevidently led them to fall from grace into SEX today.

[ZGoten]

Originally Posted by Dorfl

"Feedback"? Over an 11-year old game? He's not saying anything that hasn't been said before, often in much harsher terms. Everyone who's played it knows about the flaws of this game, and even those who love it (like me) can think of many, many ways it could have been made much better.

True, but not everyone is as reasonable as you seem to be. There are people who would defend their favorite game/manga/whatever from any kind of critizism, however legit it may be, without being objective.

I just had a long "conversation" about whether or not DBZ is outdated, and my counterpart was one of those people.

[AnimeFangirl]

I blame it on immaturity, really. A mature person can accept that:

1. No work is perfect, no matter how good you think it is or much you like it.
2. No matter how good something is, someone out there dislikes it, sometimes for very good reasons.
3. Someone disliking your favourite work does not diminish the work in any way.

There's plenty wrong with FF8, and even if everyone in the world liked it, those things wouldn't change. Being able to be honest about a work's flaws makes you a better fan, not a worse one.

[synaesthetic]

Exactly. I love Parasite Eve, yet I know that the game richly deserved pretty much all the negative reviews it got. It's a pretty flawed game, yet I love it all the same... which I think may have to do with one of the most badass and least-sexualized female protagonists in gaming history. Aya is #2, though, because Tetsuya Nomura still sexualized the promotional art as much as he could and Jade from Beyond Good & Evil didn't get that treatment at all, making her #1.

Especially since it came out shortly after Tomb Raider, which features the most sexualized female protagonist in gaming (at the time; Bayonetta hadn't existed yet back then... ).

[ZGoten]

That's the same thing with me and Breath of Fire V. The average rating it got was below 8.0, and I rated it even lower in my own review, due to uninspired leveldesign, mediocre characters at best and a gameplay system that's hard to accept because of it's repetitive nature. Yet I still love it, and rank it among my favorite games of all time.

[AnimeFangirl]

Haha, I feel the same way about Breath of Fire II. I don't even dare play it again these days for fear of finding yet more new flaws, but ten years ago it was the very first RPG I played by myself from beginning to end (previously I used to backseat-drive my brothers' games), so I still love it to this day.

[zebra]

I feel that way about FF VIII

Despite all it's flaws, I love it dearly and still have a lot of fun replaying it. I can easily understand why people don't like it, though, but it's my favourite. Can't define that with logic it just is.

I enjoyed Spoony's review immensely, though xD I actually could nag about the game for hours, too, but I can always do that with things I love.

I don't know, I loved the setting, the graphics blew me away then and I actually liked the system, even so I wasn't a big fan of drawing. I always got by with leeching a little bit in battles and draw points, loved the enemies didn't have set levels. I hate grinding.
I also liked that the game left you with things open to interpretation and didn't shove everything at your face. I greatly enjoy character interaction, too and the game gave plenty. Plus, I admit Squall has a special spot in my fangirl heart . But oh well.

I wanna replay the PS1 FFs soon actually, but there still is so much on my "to play & to finish" pile D:. Also am in the middle of finishing FF IV. Shake your mane, Cecil!

@zgoten, uhuuu a german reviewer, I'll look in your channel sometime soon~

[Sphire]

Whoa FFVIII thread.

People say this game is breakable, now granted I didn't know any of that when I played, heck I wasn't even drawing GF's in the beginning. But somehow I screwed myself by having Squall at lvl 31, Rinoa 28, Sniper dude(forgot his name..) 22, and the rest below 20, like around 17-18.

And I was getting around fine until

Spoiler for Boss:

the Adel fight, since Rinoa was out of the party, so while Squall was doing fine, the rest of the gang was pretty useless. I couldn't be bothered to grind then, heck the party was stuck in that 'area'....whatever it was they were in

Luckily enough I'd seen the rest of the game from there on out. Overall though, didn't really like it....

[C.A.]

This is certainly the easier FF of all.

There's no need to heal characters at all, just spam limit breaks. And with all 3 characters stocking 100 Life, you just let characters die if they do.

[AnimeFangirl]

You can get Curaga for your characters HP by refining Tents, and this can be done really, really early on. One of the easiest spells to get in the game, and after that you're set for most of the rest of the game, until you get Full-Life.

[C.A.]

Wait, why are you healing your characters? I played 90% of the game with all my characters in near death condition. You only need Life, Full Life is only useful for junctioning elemental defence.

I spammed Renzokuken, Angelo and Duel the entire game. I defeated Ultimecia and Omega weapon the same way. The chance for Rinoa to use Invincible Moon is so high, those bosses stand no chance at all.

[AnimeFangirl]

Heal? Who's healing? I said "Curaga for your character's HP" as in junctioning HP-J. With my character's levels low, most bosses were over so quickly I only had to do Aura+Meltdown+Limit Break for a few special cases. The other times I just bludgeoned the bosses to death with my eyes half-closed.

[C.A.]

lol I see, as long as well agree that the game is easy, all is well.

[AnimeFangirl]

Easy if you want it to be and know what you're doing.

[Kafriel]

The game's broken, because through the mini-game (Triple Triad), enemy cardification and the card conversion skillz, you can have a Lionheart from Disc 1...a friend of mine never bothered with the complex gameplay though, he had reached the Propagators with pure stats, just limit breaking each and every single fight. I thoroughly enjoyed the game though, I found it very immersing, with interesting characters and a good plot, filled with moments of humour. As for the "draw", all you really need is 5-6 spells to junction until you can start getting mid and high-tier spells from cards or refinement. GFs are very useful in the beginning of the game, and you can completely customize your characters, for once. Maybe I don't want the ever so standard [Squall->warrior, Quistis->blue mage, Zell->monk, Irvine->"archer", Seplhie->black mage, Rinoa->white witch] arrangement, and I loved the range of characters you could play as (Seifer, Edea, Laguna/Kiros/Ward in addition to the main six).
Oh yea, if anyone has doubts about the game being broken, try killing the X-ATM091 in Dollet. If it dies, you don't get to see the video, but to do irreparable damage to it, you gotta spend a good lot of time dealing 9999s...in the first few hours of the story 0_o

Also am in the middle of finishing FF IV

Or so you think :P

This is certainly the easier FF of all.

I'd say FFXIII beats this

[ZGoten]

^I'd say FFXIII was one of the more challenging games of the series, much more challenging than VIII at least.

[Sassarai]

All FF games are easy except for 11 which is a mmo.

FF13 actually ranks up there as one of the harder ffs which isn't saying much.

FF12 practically plays itself.