Final Fantasy VIII, like final fantasy II has always been the "Zelda II" of the series. You know a little bit helter skelter. Similar to that strange uncle everyone has, you one the one who thinks that apple is secretly controlled by the Chinese government and the iPhone is a device to spy on westerners, or something to that abode. Now now Squall fanboys before you limit break yourselves all over the comments section (please do hate traffic is still traffic : P) think carefully about the core concepts of VIII and how they compare to both past and present FFs.
Junctioning
Take the junctioning system, the junctioning system has some good points, in the fact that it allows one to totally customize your play style. It allowed you to turn Zell into the fiercest spellcaster, or Rinoa into a brutish thug. However the junctioning system also had its flaws, it essentially replaced level grinding (a staple of the final fantasy series) with the ohh so lovable draw system. The draw system took the absolute worst component of level grinding (i.e physical time from our very short minuscule lives!) and then thought " I could make this experience even more monotonous". You see level grinding however tedious allows the player to see gradual steady improvement in the characters. Having trouble beating a boss? Go grind for an hour or so, come back and most of the time that boss will become as fumbling as Ultros! (Basically people who didn't play FF VI Ultros is like a comic relief character constantly failing even the most simple tasks in life) Yeah sure don't get me wrong grinding can get pretty boring, but with the draw system the boredom is tripled! ( GET IT triple is like a spell in FF.....yeah......)
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| Ultros lol just google him he is the epitome of failure |
OK some of you may be wondering what the draw system is, and unlike 99.9999% of the internet I at least endeavor to back up bitching with actual knowledge and facts. The draw system in a nutshell is, every enemy you encounter in the game has a set of spells, you then use the draw command to take these spells from the enemy (FYI the amount of each spell you would get during a draw is random, however if your name happens to Ben then most of the time you only get 1 FUCKEN spell or the equally lovely DRAW FAILED!)and then junction them to your base stats to increase them. Now dear reader if you have ever even remotely touched a final fantasy game then you know HOW MANY GOD DAMN SPELL VARIATIONS THERE ARE! Imagine just for one second drawing out all the possible spell types and then junctioning them one by one to see the effect of each! " OK here goes..." "Protect to strength, nope no effect" "Shell? Nope" "OK how about haste? " "FUCCCKKKK" (Several mind numbing hours later!)
There is also more bad news for the draw / junctioning system. The increase junctioning brings to the base stat is proportional to the amount of that spell, In other words the more you have of that particular spell the greater the increase in the base stat. The big consequence of this is that YOU the player would have to sit there in battle and draw out 100 of that spell just to insure the maximum base stat increase. Now with most of the average noob spells (Firaga, Blizzaga, Curaga, Shell etc) drawing up to 100 is not hard, just time consuming and about monotonous as playing dragon age! (jokes). However the real falcon punch to the ovaries/ testes comes when you try to get HARD/USEFUL spells like Meoteor, Quake, Demi, Death, Triple and my personal favourite Ultima. To get these all rare and illustrious spells you need a lot of lube (for the ammount anus torture that will be inflicted to your poor white bum), some luck, and access to two locations on the final fantasy VIII world map, the island closest to hell and the deep sea research center. FYI going to these two scary places will require great patience and a lot of man crying.
So by the end all of this junctioning BS, you have figured out which spells go where and then presented your findings in a simple colour coded flow chart ( which will roughly take 10 years of your poor life : P). FYI While you spent 10 years of your life mastering the draw/junction system here are some which you could have engaged in.
1.) Completed 3 PhDs (roughly).
2.) Played the rest of the Final Fantasy numbered series.
3.) Yes maybe even settle down and find a nice lovely female to shack up with!
There is also more bad news for the draw / junctioning system. The increase junctioning brings to the base stat is proportional to the amount of that spell, In other words the more you have of that particular spell the greater the increase in the base stat. The big consequence of this is that YOU the player would have to sit there in battle and draw out 100 of that spell just to insure the maximum base stat increase. Now with most of the average noob spells (Firaga, Blizzaga, Curaga, Shell etc) drawing up to 100 is not hard, just time consuming and about monotonous as playing dragon age! (jokes). However the real falcon punch to the ovaries/ testes comes when you try to get HARD/USEFUL spells like Meoteor, Quake, Demi, Death, Triple and my personal favourite Ultima. To get these all rare and illustrious spells you need a lot of lube (for the ammount anus torture that will be inflicted to your poor white bum), some luck, and access to two locations on the final fantasy VIII world map, the island closest to hell and the deep sea research center. FYI going to these two scary places will require great patience and a lot of man crying.
So by the end all of this junctioning BS, you have figured out which spells go where and then presented your findings in a simple colour coded flow chart ( which will roughly take 10 years of your poor life : P). FYI While you spent 10 years of your life mastering the draw/junction system here are some which you could have engaged in.
1.) Completed 3 PhDs (roughly).
2.) Played the rest of the Final Fantasy numbered series.
3.) Yes maybe even settle down and find a nice lovely female to shack up with!
Story
The overall narrative flow and direction is another reason why FF VIII is the strange uncle of the series. Its not that the story as a whole is bad, but how the story is told. Ask any normal gamer to describe the story of FF VIII explicitly upon completion and I guarantee you, you will get a whole plethora of answers " A great love story" " Some german sounding sorcerer wants to become a god by kompressing time" "Seifer has a thing for older ladies" "Zell really likes hotdogs : P " " Irvine is just a sleazy pervert ". These explainations of the story (Which I gathered from a large sample base of just me at different times of the day) say more about ones emotional and psychological state rather than an ability to explain and grasp the overall narrative.
(So much so that one day there will be a mental health test based on your ability to explain the story of FF VIII, which I will explain the logistics of in another entry) This is in stark contrast to say FF VI, whose story is simple enough that even the biggest casual madden meathead could eloquently regale the tale, yet FF VI has enough meaty chunky padding to back up its simple underlying narrative than a BBW stripper (or suckling : P sorry personal joke). Not only is the overall narrative flow in VIII bad but when the tidbits of VIIIs convoluted story are actually dropped, they are dropped at the most inappropriate times! (There about appropriate as a casual convo on the pros and cons of 4chan yiffies at your girlfriends family reniunion/grandpas 99th birthday dinner table!). These tidbits of story also have no bearing/context on the current events and often when context is finally given its for an event that happened on the first FUCKEN disc!!
Music
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| Im sorry but this is the most awesome pic of Mr. Uematsu |
Music in Final Fantasy to me has always stood out, there isn't a day in my life where I'm not humming some FF tune, be it "Kingdom Baron" or " Clash on the big bridge" I cant get enough of the stuff! I actually firmly believe that with FF it is the music that delivers emotional gravity to the scenes. For example Aeriths death (FF VII) without the music its not really sad at all its just a rectangle stabbing a triangle, but as soon as I hear that melancholic slow piano my eyes burst into a fit of sobbing and its what I still remember 15 years down the track, and most likely what Il remember 30 years down the track! So with such an epic name to live up to how does the FF VIII score compare? Overall I think the score of FF VIII holds up really well with a whole host of catchy and meaningful tunes such as "Man with the machine gun" "The extreme" "Maybe I'm a lion" "Ami" "Balamb garden" "Waltz for the moon" "Fisherman's horizon" . All these tracks and many more will have a permanent spot on my FF playlist for many years to come....others such as the poppy cliché "all eyes on me" not so much but yeah apart from that good work as always Mr. Uematsu. I actually highly advise if you don't have a cool casual 60 hours to hunk into the actual game just acquire the soundtrack and read the story tab on the wiki page! (You may not understand every plot point but you ll be able to fool most hipsters : P)
Final Judgement
Now by the end of this you may think that I actually don't like FF VIII a hell of a lot but this is not the case. FF VIII is a lot of things, strange, quirky, but certainly not boring (unless your drawing : P jokes). So if your sick of killing Russians zombies, establishing a comm link, defending a location then be sure to check into FF VIII I'm sure you wont be disapointed : p
Ragingoldgamer gives it a...... "Its quirky, its graphically challenged but give it a whirl "
P.S
Biggest bitch is the camera angle and archaic controls HOLY SHIT! The amount of times I wrestled the camera (roughly 9999 : P ) was crazy
P.P.S
Dont play it on a Vita, as to run away from a random battle in FF VIII was L2 and R2. On the Vita L2 and R2 is the rear touch pad, so to escape from a random battle you need to TOUCH and HOLD onto the rear touchpad for dear life! Let me tell you that the rear touch pad in this instance is about as laggy and unresponsive as 56k modem loading 1080P youporn....I mean youtube : P yeah this little hummdigger caused several loud F BOMB drops.
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