NipplesAndToes23
Member
So since is the series 30th anniversary I decided to play these games again and I started with VIII. I haven't played this in a while, but it's always been among my top 3 in FF. I never had a problem with the Junction system and the Draw system, actually drawing is addictive to me. At the end of the game where I have plenty I still feel like I have to draw. But anyway, I still have the same issues with the story and discovered some new complaints about the level and game design. The story overall I think is fine, but the reveal of Edea being the matron and all of the cast except for Rinoa being in the same orphanage did feel left field and weird. Irvine not wanting to say anything because he think they all forgot was conveniently dumb to me.
Like, he wouldn't think it would be weird that all of them just happened to get put in Gardens, become SeeDs, and having to assassinate their foster mother? I don't know about that....
I also find it weird that no one questions Sorceress Edea and Rinoa's existences. To become a sorceress you have to pass your powers to another so there should only be one sorceress at a time. We know why there are two because of Ultimecia transferring her spirit to the past but no one knows of this until towards the end of the game, but people still know that Adel is alive. Now, maybe only Esthar knows that only Adel is alive, but they don't find it weird that there are two sorceresses either. It's just fucking weird.
I do love the Laguna shit. Him, Kiros, and Ward brought a different tone from the serious of the Sorceress story. For the gameplay issues I had I'm annoyed with how the SeeD ranking system is handled. It's almost entirely reliant on defeating enemies and sometimes enemies can be a pain and I just want to get to where I'm going. I shouldn't be punished for wanting to explore or wanting to do a sidequest. Your ranking is growing to drop doing the Shumi Tribe quest and mentioning that quest it's not really worth it. All that fucking running around for a got damn Phoenix Pinion which you already get one of before you get to the village.
This is a small complaint that's almost negligible, but I feel that some of the weapon upgrade materials to be too tedious to get or come too late in the game. In the Deep Sea Reasearch Lab a dungeon opens up after beating Bahamut, but getting in it is some bullshit that I have to ask why. So you got to leave the center, open the bridge of the Ragnarok and talk to Irvine and go back in. I think I'm in the majority who don't press triangle on the Ragnarok when I already know where I want to go. Once you get the spaceship there's really no reason to walk around the ship. Everyone's on the bridge and there's no monsters to fight or items to find. I was struggling for a while trying to figure out why the dungeon wouldn't show up when I read online that I just have to go in. That was a really dumb design choice. It really should only trigger after beating Bahamut and going back in immediately no boarding the Ragnarok required. That dungeon also has something I think is a glitch because I can't imagine this beating intentional. There are two save points in the dungeon. The last save point is right where the boss shows up. I was trying to level up my party evenly so I had used it to switch party members and it disappeared so I had to run back up to the first save point and ran into monsters because the game punishes you for using Enc-None. I had died against Ultima Weapon a lot so I had run all the way down there each time I wanted to fight the boss. That was annoying as fuck. There's also a weird thing with the stairs in that dungeon. If you approach it from the side it'll force Squall to walk backwards as if he's not supposed to go there. I was thinking there was something I was supposed to do first, but all I had to do was go around to the side to walk down the stairs. Why? In other points in the game they would let you know something like this by having your character hit a wall. That's how most games indicate you can't get into something at least in one direction.
I decided to tackle almost all of the side content and enjoyed all of it with the exception of the Shumi quest and getting Eden. Ultimecia's Castle I still think has the best music for a final dungeon and I enjoy hunting down the bosses. I do find it weird that the monsters in the dungeon are mostly weak. You find monsters scaled up randomly throughout, but most I ran to seemed like they were were at the original level that I encountered them. The final boss gauntlet is some of the best spectacle in the genre and it was different for me to try and beat it with the random characters it chose. I distributed GFs onto everyone and I had to add new abilities so that everyone could junction the important stats. When I finally beat Ultimecia I think I broke the game. Since you can't pause during the ending sequences I just hit the PS button to pause it instead while I was surfing on the web. The controller must've got desynced because it resumed and jumped ahead to the scene with Rinoa at the SeeD ball and then I hit the PS button again because I wasn't finished and then just took it off a moment ago and the screen is just black. Oh well, at least I got to beat it. I really wanted to see the ending because in the story Edea mentioned she became a Sorceress at the age of 5, but I remember in the ending Edea was an adult and found Ulti dying while Squall and co were there. So according to the ending she became a sorceress then.
It would really be cool to see a game that takes inspiration from FFVIII. I can see some potential with the SeeD rank system. In IX it's very simplistic how it increases and decreases. Throughout most of the game your only method for increasing it is taking tests or fighting lots of enemies and if you don't fight any it will go down.
We see that it's affected more in the early parts in the game: The rank you start out with is determined by how fast you beat Ifrit in the Fire Cavern, if you follow orders during the Dollet mission and talking to certain NPCs. You're not aware how any of this affects you until you get your grade mark and even then its ambiguous. I wasn't sure what gave me what points until years later when I read it on the net.
You also have a few minor parts where your rank can be affected. For the first time I found a scene where a student asks you to perform magic for him because he struggles with it. Squall casts Blizzard in the hallway, a staff member sees and penalizes you by dropping your SeeD rank.
I think in a spiritual successor they could play up with this a lot more. Have the military/mercenary organization where the player is sent on missions throughout the game. You'll have a test mission like in VIII where you're not sure what affects your rank, but afterwards you'll get a brief explanation of how you're being monitored on your missions and your decisions will affect your rank.
There will be multiple times when you'll have to make a dialogue choice and immediately after making the choice you'll see a bar that either fills up or decreases. Scanning new enemies increases your bar slightly, almost losing decreases it, and defeating enemies quickly increases the bar. Once the bar fills up you'll gain a rank and if it depletes all the way you lose a rank. Killing rare monsters gives you a lot of points as well.
You'll also get benefits when gaining ranks too. Maybe access to better equipment, new missions of course, and maybe vehicles.
A JRPG like this would be so dope to me.
