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Final Fantasy VIII is going over my head

J

Jonneh3003

Banned
Well this has been sitting in my backlog for a while, I planned to go straight onto 8 after finishing 7 last year (one of my favourite RPGs) but I got distracted. Just started 8 and i'm about an hour in...I think i'm enjoying it? There's a lot going on technically and I can't say i'm entirely following it. The stories pretty simple and the game has it's moments of beauty but I can't for the life of me explain the junction system. I kind of get it, but i'm a simple man, I don't want to manually deal with all these stats as it just doesn't feel fun.

I'm going to continue playing for a while longer and hopefully i'll grow to like it, it's one of my best friends favourite games and he finished it when he was 10 so if a 10 year old can get it...well I guess I should be able to. Probably.
 
The problem with 8 is it's so easy to grind on some drawing for an hour or two and essentially become invincible. Not to mention the story really starts to go to shit later in the game.

MakeMeFeelAlive said:
I loved ff8. It's probably my favorite ff8 game. You'll get it. It's a fun game.
Click to expand...

Considering it didn't get any spinoffs, that's not hard to do >.>
 
VIII's draw system and mobs leveling to your level...was just weird. It could get crazy unbalanced in both good or bad ways depending how you're doing for your level.

Was not a fan. I liked other parts of the game, but I vastly preferred the combat systems of VII and IX (and even X).
 
Managing all the junction stuff can take up a chunk of time. It would be great if all that time could just be crunched down into a few seconds. Maybe one second, even.
 
ff8 junction system is shit. they(squaresoft) tried to outsmart the simple system of ff7... and fucked it up.
dont spend too much time, just make your way through, it'll click eventually.
i dont like those replacable characters like xell, quistis and sophie(i think the yellow suited girl?)

but squall and rinoa... damn best couple in videogamehistory.

Rinoa and princess garnet are be the best ff heroines of all time for me.
 
The whole first disc is sorta simple to grasp, but you aren't very far into it yet. You will learn much more later on.

I played this back in 1999. It wasn't difficult to grasp back then because it looked amazing and the story was progressing real well. FF8 has some simple themes at times, which makes the world come to life a lot more. Lots of detail to look at.

It's probably been under the microscope and broken many different times since it was a hot new release. I think they should use the idea of Edea more often in games.

FF8 still has a late fan base, lots of people bought gunblades too. It just gets caught up as being a looked down upon entry because the battle system is either messed up or its too broken.

Cast blind on the t-Rex FYI

There's also a few guides on how to properly manage GF's too. You can also do some grinding to get Squall's best gunblade.
 
It's my favorite game ever. I love it for the characters, the music, the world and its cities and towns, and less so for the actual story and gameplay, but man, I could spend forever running around that world and listening to the sights and sounds it has to offer.

I'd love a remake with a better battle system and less loopy story one day...
 
The Praiseworthy said:
The best world design and atmosphere in any game IMO.... And that amazing stunning OST helped to shape it too.
Click to expand...

Hum, while FFVIII has its qualities, I certainly wouldn't say that it has the best world and atmosphere. There are quite a few other JRPGs which were more interesting to me (Grandia and Suikoden II, notably).
As for the OST, it isn't bad, with some pretty iconic themes such as "Premonition" , "The Man With The Machine Gun" and "The Extreme", and I also love "Fisherman's Horizon" (so soothing), but I think Uematsu composed better songs in other games.
 
Junction is hella confusing in the early game the first time you play it. Once you begin to accumulate an inventory of spells and GFs, it starts to make sense (as you start to see meaningful bumps in stats) but until then just roll with it.

I'm not a terribly big fan of FFVIII. The narrative has some glaring issues and the cast leaves much to be desired, but the game still manages to hold up plus it's an interesting case study to see how much Squaresoft had managed to improve the technical prowess of their design and graphical output from previous games.

Regardless of if you finish FFVIII, absolutely find a way to play FFIX if you haven't. My favorite game in the franchise and of all time.
 
The Junction System is odd. I finally understood it when someone described it but used an entirely different word. It is basically another word for "equip".

Replace Junction with another word that makes a bit more sense... Say, Augment or Empower. J-Str skill suddenly becomes Augment Str, which means power up your strength. You can now equip your gathered magic as if it is an item and it'll raise the strength stat.

So, say you have 10 Fire and Fire is "Augmenting" your Strength. As you draw more casts of the Fire spell into your stock your Strength will increase. As you use up the Fire spells your Strength lowers again.

Elemental and Status Junctions works pretty much the same. Elemental gives you an elemental attack if you junction the right magic to it and the same goes for Statuses.
 
I never had to think about the Junction system. All I saw was that equipping certain spells gives a bigger increase for a particular stat and left it at that. I usually just used Auto and then switched spells if Auto put something on that I tend to cast a lot for that character.
 
I respect VIII for not just being another version of VII even though I don't like Junction as a mechanic very much or the story as much as other FF games. I still haven't beaten it though, I got stuck on the boss right before the last disc. I should go finish it up, I just stopped when moving back to college in August and never got back to it.
 
I could never get into VIII. I think it's one of those where if you weren't into back in the day, it's harder to go back to now.

PS1/N64 3D in general is hard for me to get into, though. I remember VIIIs world map feeling really weird
 
Jonneh3003 said:
Well this has been sitting in my backlog for a while, I planned to go straight onto 8 after finishing 7 last year (one of my favourite RPGs) but I got distracted. Just started 8 and i'm about an hour in...I think i'm enjoying it? There's a lot going on technically and I can't say i'm entirely following it. The stories pretty simple and the game has it's moments of beauty but I can't for the life of me explain the junction system. I kind of get it, but i'm a simple man, I don't want to manually deal with all these stats as it just doesn't feel fun.

I'm going to continue playing for a while longer and hopefully i'll grow to like it, it's one of my best friends favourite games and he finished it when he was 10 so if a 10 year old can get it...well I guess I should be able to. Probably.
Click to expand...

I beat the Japanese version,
with no Internet help or translation back when it launched
I'm sure the system is quite simple to understand.

Loved the game btw.
 
Don't micro-manage the stats too much. Once you figure out what "class" of magic works best on what stat (which is fairly intuitive), keep an eye out for stronger magic on enemies when you enter a new area, and that should keep you strong enough.

If you want to go the really easy route, earn the magic-RF abilities and instead of drawing you can get extremely powerful magic just by buying common items from shops.
white magic-RF and I think tents? gets you Curaga or somesuch as soon as Winhill.

In any case, it doesn't hurt to experiment, you can't have too much magic, and when you find something that works it is immediately apparent as you play.
 
Junctioning is an evolution of the Esper system used in FF6, which is why I liked it a lot. Gives you a ton of control, but also gives you the option to just auto-everything if you don't want to deal with it.

That said, the storytelling is awful and I can't ever get through it. I get halfway through Disc 3 and just stop. I've tried to play it 4 times since 1999.
 
JoeNut said:
Kill that T. rex in the training jungle man
Click to expand...

I did that on accident apparently:

bjork said:
I just fought a dinosaur for like an hour, and then some big bee or something. But getting to that point from the beginning of the game took me two separate sessions. I feel like there's something I'm missing here.

Put a GF on, link magic to your stats, ok. But she tells you "put this dinosaur to sleep" and then when you do, it wakes up when you attack it? Maybe I missed a step or something. I killed him, but it took forever.

Also, regarding the draw option: I can basically sit there and draw and max out all my magics, but I don't have to use those because I can just draw and cast ones from the enemies? What?

Anyway, I'm not real far in, if someone can give me some kind of tips to enjoy this better (other than "take it out and put in [other game]"), that'd be spiffy.
Click to expand...

I stopped playing shortly after this. 9.9.99 is Dreamcast Day for a reason.
 
Best advice I can give regarding junctioning is: when you're able to junction to MAG (MAG-J) try to raise that stat as high as you're able with the magic you have on hand. It not only governs magic strength but makes it easier to draw stock from enemies during battle. A high MAG stat can mean the difference between drawing 2-3 Firas at a time or 7 to 9. That should save some time.
 
It's not just you, OP.

The Junction system is horrible. It's needless complexity for complexity's sake, not because it gives you more control or adds more fun and challenge.

And the story and characters are pretty whatever. It felt to me like stuff that was left on the cutting room floor from the making of VII: thematically very similar, but none of it quite as good.

Squall is among the worst main characters in the series by a fairly wide margin, and for a game that's ostensibly centered around the romance between the two main characters—it's the featured image in the official logo, even—the romance wasn't as believable or touching as the ones in either the game directly before or directly after it.
 
My favourite FF, Followed by FFVII and X
The draw/junction system is pretty simple I don't get the problem.
 
Jonneh3003 said:
Well this has been sitting in my backlog for a while, I planned to go straight onto 8 after finishing 7 last year (one of my favourite RPGs) but I got distracted. Just started 8 and i'm about an hour in...I think i'm enjoying it? There's a lot going on technically and I can't say i'm entirely following it. The stories pretty simple and the game has it's moments of beauty but I can't for the life of me explain the junction system. I kind of get it, but i'm a simple man, I don't want to manually deal with all these stats as it just doesn't feel fun.

I'm going to continue playing for a while longer and hopefully i'll grow to like it, it's one of my best friends favourite games and he finished it when he was 10 so if a 10 year old can get it...well I guess I should be able to. Probably.
Click to expand...

All you need to know about junctions:

1. Draw magic from enemies or draw points, as much as you can.
2. Put the magic into a stat. The stat goes up.
3. When in battle, don't use magic that has a box next to it.

That's everything. A side note:
-Don't bother leveling up. All bosses and enemies scale with your level.
-Seriously draw as much magic as you can. You can literally draw 100 casts of a magic from an enemy on the field and increase your stats a lot. Doing so will by you time before you need to touch your junctions at all.
-If you really need help getting some momentum going, play with a walkthrough or a let's play for at least a little bit just to get you going.
 
I didnt think the junction system was that bad.

You just never want to use magic because it will degrade your stats if you are using one you have junctioned, and usually the ones you would use are the good ones

I liked the draw system.
 
why draw?

card mod ability is there for a reason
- playing card at garden
- mod to items
- mod to magics, very powerful magic (Tornado, -ga tier spells, etc.)
- junctions
= done

I can finish FF8 drawing only summons
 
Game definitely favors physical damage vs. magic damage. It can be a pain not wanting to take the stat penalty for using magic but that is what the summons and limit breaks are for anyway.
 
Actually had a decent plot but horrible characterization. Rinoa is your classic Manic Pixel Gamer Girl that's why most of the people like them.

The Junction system is actually dope, the problem was the Draw system taking into account the quantity of the spells, it could had been the potency of the spells instead, and the party should have shared magic pool so that you cannot have the same fucking character build.
 
I loved it! Was a lot of fun manipulating the junctioning system to become really powerful. As everyone else is saying, just follow a few basic rules:

1. Gather powerful magic spells (either by drawing, or crafting etc) but don't use them in battle
2. Equip those powerful magics to your HP to boost HP, or to your Str to boost strength
3. Revel in your might!
 
Final Fantasy VIII is a great game starring Laguna and his pals.

Sometimes some random kids show up instead for some reason and outstay their welcome, but then the game goes back to the main story of Laguna and all is right again.
 
This game is the only hole in my PS FF career. I have it on my Vita and have been playing Theatrhythm Curtain Call lately. Maybe it is time.
 
ramuh said:
9/9/99.. Good day. :)
Click to expand...

Preach. This and the Dreamcast launch made a great Fall for me :)

I think all the PS1 Final Fantasies are great; just depends on your personal preference and mood. I appreciate that none of them are simple retreads of one another, which would've been easy to do following FFVII's success.
 
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