• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

GAF plays: Final Fantasy 8

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!


So I picked this up again today and did all the outer space stuff, with the ragnarock landing and the twist with rinoa. next stop is the sorceress memorial.


I'm really surprised how well this game holds up. The story isnt nearly as bad as i remembered it, and the romantic stuff comes across as cheesy but it does the job quite well.

The scene where eyes on me plays is awesome, and i think that was the 1st time i ever saw a vocal song in a game like that. Just as awesome even today. They really did a lot using just the in game models, especially since they could have just done more CG, kind of impressive.

I'm actually kinda glad i overlooked this long enough so that now that im playing it again i can actually appreciate it.
 

Zoe

Member
Been playing the Japanese version for the past couple weeks. I've had to go back and forth between the PSP and an emulator a few times to get past some FMV triggers and battles.

I'm playing alongside the English script for those times my eyes glaze over at all the kanji, and it's good to see that they didn't really change too much. The English version of Squall comes off as a little too desparate in the third disc though.

It threw me for a loop when Selphie started thinking in Osaka-ben :lol

Next up for me is either the Lunatic Pandora or Deep Sea Research Center. I'm kinda anxious to move on with the story, so I might forgo all that stuff.
 
So is anyone else still playing / has anyone else who was playing finish? Just curious because this thread was going strong for a while.
 

SleazyC

Member
pancakesandsex said:
So is anyone else still playing / has anyone else who was playing finish? Just curious because this thread was going strong for a while.
Apollo Justice came out..... and now Crisis Core is coming out :lol

My game is still in limbo near the end of the 1st disc, I'll probably pick it back up when I am done with Crisis Core.
 

RSLYG

Member
How about some Final Fat-assy 8 ? :D

fat.jpg
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
FFVIII is my fav FF, sadly someone at Sony thought it would be clever to remove it from the PS3's b/c in FW2.10.............bastards.
but as soon as it returns, I'm playing it:D
 
TGO said:
FFVIII is my fav FF, sadly someone at Sony thought it would be clever to remove it from the PS3's b/c in FW2.10.............bastards.
but as soon as it returns, I'm playing it:D


What? it works fine for me.
 

Zoe

Member
It's disappointing how poorly this game is emulated. Squenix must have no choice but to remake it!

:(
 
finally,after 82 hours,i completed the game.Every chars and every gf(ecept for eden)reached lvl 100,i kicked the shit out of Omega and i have this sense of satisfaction that makes me feel so good!
Now i have to create those last cards from the queen of cards' quest and the alien and i'm done.
FiFVIII was really one of the best videoludic experience i ever had in my whole life as a gamer,it did made me want FFXIII even more now.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
pancakesandsex said:
What? it works fine for me.

I've got a PAL PS3, it did work before but now all I get is the PSlogo and a black screen.
 
TGO said:
I've got a PAL PS3, it did work before but now all I get is the PSlogo and a black screen.

Lemme test with the most recent update. Those screens were all taken from a ps3, but ive switched to a ps1 with an lcd screen as of late for pocketstation support.

Might be a PAL thing.
 

StuBurns

Banned
TGO said:
I've got a PAL PS3, it did work before but now all I get is the PSlogo and a black screen.
Yeah same for me, mine's PAL as well.
I recently bin'ed my PS2 and I've just changed to a Mac so I can't even play the PC port, kind of lame, it's one of my favorite PS1 games by a long way.
 
i'm gonna play all 3 psx FFs after crisis core, and seven... then maybe a break before this and IX. ive never played any of them, just a bit of vii. hopefully im in for a treat but the graphics...they dont look so neat...
 

GaimeGuy

Volunteer Deputy Campaign Director, Obama for America '16
For those of you who completed the game:

Did you know that Laguna and Raine are Squall's parents, and that Julia is Rinoa's mother?

A lot of people seem to miss these facts, for some reason
 

StuBurns

Banned
GaimeGuy said:
For those of you who completed the game:

Did you know that Laguna and Raine are Squall's parents, and that Julia is Rinoa's mother?

A lot of people seem to miss these facts, for some reason
I don't know how you could miss it, from what I remember you are basically told flat out by Kiros and Ward.
 

Zoe

Member
stuburns said:
I don't know how you could miss it, from what I remember you are basically told flat out by Kiros and Ward.

But only if you talked to them outside of the scripted events.

To be honest, I don't remember if I found out on my own or if I read about it. The clues are pretty obvious though if you pay attention and are looking for it.
 

NetMapel

Guilty White Male Mods Gave Me This Tag
I like FF8. It's actually one of the few few RPGs that uses the theme of love as their "main storyline." Perhaps GAF can also recommend some other love-centric RPGs ?
 

sw26

Member
TGO said:
I've got a PAL PS3, it did work before but now all I get is the PSlogo and a black screen.

Yeah I get that too.

As far as I'm aware (I've tried numerous times on different firmwares) FFVIII has never worked on PAL PS3's.

My PS2 is still under the TV pretty much solely for this whenever I decide to go back to it (I've never played it start to finish since I picked it up for £5 a couple of years ago), as almost everything else works fine on my PS3.
 

Roxas

Member
sw26 said:
Yeah I get that too.

As far as I'm aware (I've tried numerous times on different firmwares) FFVIII has never worked on PAL PS3's.

Has on mine, and still does. I have the platinum and black editions and they both work fine on a 60GB PAL launch console. very wierd indeed.
 

Rolf NB

Member
Roxas said:
Has on mine, and still does. I have the platinum and black editions and they both work fine on a 60GB PAL launch console. very wierd indeed.
Same.
I went far enough into the game to check out Diablos' gravity attack, because a poster somewhere said that was the point where his PSP (I think) always hung. Everything seemed to work just fine.
 

sw26

Member
Roxas said:
Has on mine, and still does. I have the platinum and black editions and they both work fine on a 60GB PAL launch console. very wierd indeed.

Really? That's pretty strange. What's the SLES Number on the spine of your copy?

Mine is SLES-02080 (original non-platinum PAL version bought in the UK) and I get the PS Logo and a blank screen on all 4 discs on my 60Gb PS3.
 

RevenantKioku

PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS oh god i am drowning in them
Zoe said:
But only if you talked to them outside of the scripted events.

To be honest, I don't remember if I found out on my own or if I read about it. The clues are pretty obvious though if you pay attention and are looking for it.
What I never got was that the "Eyes on Me" lyrics were actually about the one story event. Never paid attention to the lyrics before, but when I bought the FF8 Ultimania and was flipping through it I noticed the lyrics and finally read 'em.
 

StuBurns

Banned
RevenantKioku said:
What I never got was that the "Eyes on Me" lyrics were actually about the one story event. Never paid attention to the lyrics before, but when I bought the FF8 Ultimania and was flipping through it I noticed the lyrics and finally read 'em.

Eyes on me is just about Laguna watching Julia in the bar, she says something about her being able to write lyrics thanks to him, and it's later mirrored with Squall and Riona in the ship.
 

dirtmonkey37

flinging feces ---->
Jesus. I just received this game in the mail today, played for about two hours, and am confused as hell (not about the story but rather the customization).

This is the most confusing JRPG I have ever played.

Someone help me understand the following:

1. First off, on a note completely unrelated to my main concerns, how do you play the card game?

2. When you junction magic to different attributes (like adding "thunder" to "str" (strength) what happens? What happens when you add fire to "Str" and what happens when you add, say, thunder to magic defense?)

3. From the menu-window in the above ^^^, when you push left, it brings up another window with two slots (on Squall) to which I can assign more "magic." One of the icons on one of the two slots look like a muscular man and the other looks like a sword...

4. When you're assigning which skills you want to devote earned AP to for the GFs (the summons), what do the following skills do: Magic-J, Strength-J, MGDefense-J...and so on? Does this mean that when I equip the summons to a certain character, they allow the character to add a "magical ability" to one of their atributes (such as adding "thunder" to "strength" in concern # 2).



If I have ever played a more complicated and and utterly confounding RPG, it's FFVIII. It's back to replaying FFVII for me until I get the above issues ironed out. Oh yeah, I should mention that it's not that I have forgotten how to do these things: it's my first time playing FFVIII.
 

StuBurns

Banned
dirtmonkey37 said:
Jesus. I just received this game in the mail today, played for about two hours, and am confused as hell (not about the story but rather the customization).

This is the most confusing JRPG I have ever played.

Someone help me understand the following:

1. First off, on a note completely unrelated to my main concerns, how do you play the card game?

2. When you junction magic to different attributes (like adding "thunder" to "str" (strength) what happens? What happens when you add fire to "Str" and what happens when you add, say, thunder to magic defense?)

3. From the menu-window in the above ^^^, when you push left, it brings up another window with two slots (on Squall) to which I can assign more "magic." One of the icons on one of the two slots look like a muscular man and the other looks like a sword...

4. When you're assigning which skills you want to devote earned AP to for the GFs (the summons), what do the following skills do: Magic-J, Strength-J, MGDefense-J...and so on? Does this mean that when I equip the summons to a certain character, they allow the character to add a "magical ability" to one of their atributes (such as adding "thunder" to "strength" in concern # 2).



If I have ever played a more complicated and and utterly confounding RPG, it's FFVIII. It's back to replaying FFVII for me until I get the above issues ironed out. Oh yeah, I should mention that it's not that I have forgotten how to do these things: it's my first time playing FFVIII.

1. The cards have number representing it's strength on each side of the card, you win by placing the cards with higher numbers with the correct side to make them turn to your side. eg, you have a card with a bottom side point of 7, the other guy puts a card with the top side of 8, if you place the card you'll lose it, but if he's card has a top side of 6 you win the card.

2. They benefit the stat, adding a lot of magic helps your states, and if you tab along you'll find your elemental attributes, adding Fire magic to strength will add a fire element to your physical attacks. 2 things to note, junction with the magic that is strong in that area, ie don't attack a fire monster when you have lots of fire on your strength. Second try not to use the magic you have junctioned, if you start using a magic that is attached to a stat, the stat will drop.

3. I'd need to see it to know what you mean, someone else can answer that one.

4. Basically, yes. And get Boost before anything else, you'll use it by holding select during a GF summon cutscene and by bashing square.

FFVIII isn't that hard to understand, basically stockpile magic to strength an attacking character, use magic to attack with on a character you aren't trying to make physically strong.
 

dirtmonkey37

flinging feces ---->
stuburns said:
1. The cards have number representing it's strength on each side of the card, you win by placing the cards with higher numbers with the correct side to make them turn to your side. eg, you have a card with a bottom side point of 7, the other guy puts a card with the top side of 8, if you place the card you'll lose it, but if he's card has a top side of 6 you win the card.

2. They benefit the stat, adding a lot of magic helps your states, and if you tab along you'll find your elemental attributes, adding Fire magic to strength will add a fire element to your physical attacks. 2 things to note, junction with the magic that is strong in that area, ie don't attack a fire monster when you have lots of fire on your strength. Second try not to use the magic you have junctioned, if you start using a magic that is attached to a stat, the stat will drop.

3. I'd need to see it to know what you mean, someone else can answer that one.

4. Basically, yes. And get Boost before anything else, you'll use it by holding select during a GF summon cutscene and by bashing square.

FFVIII isn't that hard to understand, basically stockpile magic to strength an attacking character, use magic to attack with on a character you aren't trying to make physically strong.

Oh okay. What I was getting confused about with the Junctions business is how you would see your stats increase by adding "thunder" and I just could not see the correlation there. But now I guess it's just as weird as it looks: adding thunder etc. to strength or magic-defense just "generally" increases those attributes and also adds a thunder element to your attack/defense....weird...


And for number 3, I mean, when you're at the menu where you can junction magic to different aspects of your character (adding thunder to "strength" for example, again), you push "left" on the d-pad and scrolls left to a new grey window that has two slots listed: one with a sword and one with something that looks like a muscular torso. You can also apply magic to these two slots....which confuses me.
 

StuBurns

Banned
dirtmonkey37 said:
Oh okay. What I was getting confused about with the Junctions business is how you would see your stats increase by adding "thunder" and I just could not see the correlation there. But now I guess it's just as weird as it looks: adding thunder etc. to strength or magic-defense just "generally" increases those attributes and also adds a thunder element to your attack/defense....weird...


And for number 3, I mean, when you're at the menu where you can junction magic to different aspects of your character (adding thunder to "strength" for example, again), you push "left" on the d-pad and scrolls left to a new grey window that has two slots listed: one with a sword and one with something that looks like a muscular torso. You can also apply magic to these two slots....which confuses me.
oh that, that is your elemental junctions, if you add fire to your attack there your strength won't change, but your attack will carry that element. Try adding things like Bio to that for some really cool effects. You can in theory use it to make yourself close to invincible, putting 100 ultima on your element defense is pretty awesome.
 

dirtmonkey37

flinging feces ---->
stuburns said:
oh that, that is your elemental junctions, if you add fire to your attack there your strength won't change, but your attack will carry that element. Try adding things like Bio to that for some really cool effects. You can in theory use it to make yourself close to invincible, putting 100 ultima on your element defense is pretty awesome.

I thought the first menu we talked about was where you could make your attacks carry a certain element...

:lol Confused...


Thanks for the help though, I definitely understand things better now -- with the exception of that little detail above.
 

Rolf NB

Member
dirtmonkey37 said:
I thought the first menu we talked about was where you could make your attacks carry a certain element...

:lol Confused...


Thanks for the help though, I definitely understand things better now -- with the exception of that little detail above.
For most stats, the elements are irrelevant. The strength and count of the spell determines how much of a boost to the bound stat you get. The spells are in certain tiers of strength, e.g. the basic fire/thunder/ice/cure spells are all the same strength, fira/thundaga/cura etc are in a stronger tier and so on. The strongest spells, i.e. the spells that will provide the biggest boost when bound to any given stat, are, I think, Meteor, Ultima and Triple.

Spells that inflict status ailments can be bound to the status attack, which then gives your regular attack a change to inflict that status. Likewise, the status defense binding provides immunity to the ailments.

The same goes for elemental spells that are bound to elemental attack and defense, they will either add elemental damage to your regular attack, or provide resistance against the element, again in accordance to the strength of the spell, and the count of the spell on the character.

HTH.
 

Red Scarlet

Member
You'll probably get better directions for the card game from other players, so I'll skip that part (there's a tutorial that goes over the different card rules in the game).

dirtmonkey37 said:
2. When you junction magic to different attributes (like adding "thunder" to "str" (strength) what happens? What happens when you add fire to "Str" and what happens when you add, say, thunder to magic defense?)

Junctioning a spell to a stat makes the stat amount go up compared to if you had no spell junctioned. If you have 100 Fire and 100 Thunder, you probably will get the same Strength stat if you had either spell. The AMOUNT of the spell and what spell is being junctioned to what stat make a difference (you will gain more Strength with 85 Fire spells in your possession than if you had 30).

What you want to do is get a lot of a spell, then choose each stat that you can junction (that's what the things in your 4th question are talking about) and compare the stat amount with each spell to see what gives you the biggest bonus. Like early on, the Water spell will give you more Strength or Magic than Fire/Blizzard/Thunder will.

Some spells work better when junctioned to certain stats, like Cure-family spells work better when junctioned to HP than it would for Strength. So when you get a new spell it may be better to junction than what you currently have junctioned.

dirtmonkey37 said:
3. From the menu-window in the above ^^^, when you push left, it brings up another window with two slots (on Squall) to which I can assign more "magic." One of the icons on one of the two slots look like a muscular man and the other looks like a sword...

Somewhere on the initial junction screen (I think right above HP) it says something like <<Stat Atk/Def <Elem Atk/Def. So from the main junction screen, if you hit left once, that is your Elemental Attack/Defense junction menu. If you can put a spell there, that is what elemental your physical attacks will be and the percentage of damage done by the elemental is displayed in a window to the right. There are up to 4 elemental defense junctions, and using the window to the right will show you what your elemental defenses are with what you've currently chosen to junction.

dirtmonkey37 said:
4. When you're assigning which skills you want to devote earned AP to for the GFs (the summons), what do the following skills do: Magic-J, Strength-J, MGDefense-J...and so on? Does this mean that when I equip the summons to a certain character, they allow the character to add a "magical ability" to one of their atributes (such as adding "thunder" to "strength" in concern # 2).

Magic-J is 'Magic Junction'. When you've learned that, whatever character has that GF equipped can junction a spell to the stat for a boost. So, take a look at Quetzacotl. See that HP-J? Once you've had Quetz master that, the character using Quetz can then junction a spell (like Cure) to his/her HP stat to get more HP. That's how those work.

I will admit it is much less confusing in the Japanese version of the game, as the US one has really stupid icons representing elementals and stats that confuse the hell out of me to this day. I can type up what the pictures represent if that helps.

I think you're making it a bit more complicated than what it really is, though. If you have some questions about what I said I'll try to clarify if I can.
 
Its not my first time, but I recently started again. I just finished up the scene after the dance in the training ground. I've always liked this game but I'm appreciating it in a differnet light now. It's been about 6 years since I last played it.

Anyway just a warning with the card game, once you leave the first continent the rules start to get switched up - I recommend reading a guide on gamefaqs so that you don't ruin the game by having the particularly stupid random rule spread everywhere. (Also because some of the other rules effect the way cards can get flipped over, and these can be a little confusing).

With the junction screens you're talking about - on the first screen all the junctions only effect the stat. They don't give any elemental or status effect just a stat boost. The second screen is the element junction. The first slot is an element attack junction - junction an elemental spell here and then your attack will have that element to a certain extent. The other two are elemental defence. Same thing but for defence. The third screen is the same but for status effects. I think Quistis explains this all eventually.

The HP-J ability and so on are so that when that GF is junctioned to a character, they can then junction magic on those attributes.

edit: wow that was quick
 

Red Scarlet

Member
The last time I played was the first one where I tried to get most of the character cards, and I spread so many crappy rules..the easiest way to not spread any rules is that if you play cards and a person mentions other rules, refuse to play cards and then speak again until the person just says 'lets play cards' and does not mention anything about rules from another area. That would've made some later cards a bit less annoying for me to get!
 
Then again, if they want to use the Balamb open rule - say yes. I think the random rule is Galbadia, thats the big one to avoid passing about. Some of the others are interesting and add more depth to the game - meaning that the game is no longer just about brute force, but they are also very confusing to begin with.
 
Finally done! Only took like 3 months! 1st time ever completing the game, I had never played past lunatic pandora on disc 3 due to losing a save in a power outage.

Ultimecias castle is bullshit. Utter bullshit. Sealed abilities with no explanation (which i would have noticed "resurrection" sooner) puzzle dungeon with encounters (turned them off though), AND they took away saving? wtf Lamest final dungeon ever.

The final boss battle was great fun, but i won by the skin of my teeth. She cast apocalypse and then i lost 2/3 guys and managed to kill her in the next hit.

The ending was really sweet and i liked it. Definitely a positive experience overall, marred by a few silly things in the end making it frustrating to continue on.
 

TheExodu5

Banned
This game relied way too much on Limit Breaks. I remember using that item that induces Limit Breaks to kill every hard boss in the game. Squall's Renzokuken or whatever it's called just rapes.
 

StuBurns

Banned
TheExodu5 said:
This game relied way too much on Limit Breaks. I remember using that item that induces Limit Breaks to kill every hard boss in the game. Squall's Renzokuken or whatever it's called just rapes.
Quists (pardon the spelling) had this devastating limit-break called degenerator, it was a one hit kill on everything but bosses. I remember keeping her weak and putting 100 triples on her speed so she would always be able to go first.

So cheap of me.
 
TheExodu5 said:
This game relied way too much on Limit Breaks. I remember using that item that induces Limit Breaks to kill every hard boss in the game. Squall's Renzokuken or whatever it's called just rapes.

I did the magic approach and used aura. The game gave you plenty of opportunity to get the spell and items needed, so its not like it was unfair.
 
Top Bottom