Now that the September flood of good games is out of the way I guess it's about time I came back and mentioned that I finished FFVIII.
First mainline FF I've ever finished. I like it a lot.
In many ways it wasn't what I expected. I had a bit of a preconception going in, and now I've played it, I remember exactly why: I mentioned that my cousin showed me a little bit of FF8 back in the day, but he actually showed me the 'greatest hits' by loading up his last save at the end of each disc. I saw way more than I realised.
There was the intro, junctioning, triple triad, the missile base, the prison, gilgamesh, ultimecia castle, and probably even some side content that I didn't do in my own somewhat rushed playthrough.
It was absolutely mental at the time- crazy high quality FMV, actual story, gameplay systems that were totally alien to my young self, a huge open world you could fly around in an airship. Whoa man. Whoa. My N64 and Master System don't do any of this.
Gilgamesh in particular, ye gods. Between the cinematic animation and unprompted shift from what i (barely) understood as a 'battle' in this crazy 'turn-based' system to a cutscene, I didn't have a clue what I was looking at. And the idea that sometimes you just win and that's that? Mind blown, coolest thing ever.
I thought that's what Odin was when I first got him. Yeah. No. How goofy that it took ~19 years, months of subbing to FFXIV, and at last playing
that one fight for me to figure out that the super cool badass auto summon that stuck in my head for all these years was Final Fantasy's biggest jobber. Fuck sake
I did think there would be more characterization for the main cast though. I was still pre-anime the first time I saw them, and the snapshots I experienced had me taking it as read that they were all deep, nuanced individuals with a vivid tapestry of background lore and personality. Because their designs were cool. Eh, kids are dumb.
Regardless of that, I enjoyed the plot. It was a little patchy here and there, particularly with the orphanage story beat which I initially assumed was
timey wimey stuff with the past suddenly being changed by ellone or ultimecia in order to facilitate whatever, but I guess really was just
the GF in the end.
I guess the Laguna stuff didn't work out as fancifully as I thought it would either, because
you can't change the past and the power of friendship that was in our hearts all along is the real key, mister president.
I don't quite see the notion that it all goes to nonsense around disc 3 though. Maybe I've seen too many nonsensical anime plotlines over the years, but
SPACE and
traveling through compressed time to the big bad castle in the future seemed to be within expected margins for that kind of thing.
I gotta say though, I really dig this game from a mechanical standpoint. Yes, please do give me weird breakable systems that appear utterly arcane at first but are in fact fairly simple until you get into the real high level this-is-a-card-game-now fuckery. I love it.
I need to get on and play FFIX sooner or later, but I will absolutely be returning to the world of FFVIII in the future. Hopefully via OpenVIII if it gets into a nice playable state, but I want to do a proper full run without missing any GFs and actually seeing all the optional events they weaved in and out of the various plot states the main story goes through. I realised that I'd missed everything somewhere around fisherman's horizon, and big yikes at how-well hidden those extra scenes are.
Finished disc 3, just over 25 hours on the clock.
Zell is still level 9. Everyone else is somewhere between levels 11-14. I actually raised a few levels fighting cactuars and maxing out my GFs abilities.
Game is an absolute cakewalk when you keep your levels low.
Your playthrough sounds like the stuff of legends. I want to hear how hard you clown on the ultimecia castle content since that was a bit of a wake-up call for my casual run.
I think I finished with my main party of Squall / Quistis / Rinoa somewhere around level 30 after trying to card or escape most battles and draw fat stacks of as many spells as I could. Cleared out the entire castle, and phase 3 of the final boss was probably the hardest thing there, gimmickry aside. I beat the last phase on my first go, but man do these old school JRPGs have a way of building tension with multi stage no-save fights.
. At worst it'll make for some interesting "low level" guides and at best it'll help someone enjoy the game a lot more than they would have otherwise, so I'm not dissing it or anything. Just noting that it seems out of place.
