Final Fantasy VIII

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ratsoalbion
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Final Fantasy VIII

Post by ratsoalbion »

Here's where you can contribute your memories and opinions of Final Fantasy VIII for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.
Ciaran86

Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Ciaran86 »

*First contribution - I have some very fond memories of FFVIII so thought I'd better register and chuck in my two cents!

As I'm sure will be a trend with a lot of the responses to this, Final Fantasy VIII was the first Final Fantasy game I played. My first memory of Final Fantasy VIII was reading a preview of it in Play magazine (UK), which will have been at some point in 1999, putting me at being around 12 years old. I remember that one of the screenshots showed realistic-looking characters in a train car and I just thought it looked so cool. Also, I mean 'realistic-looking' only in that they actually looked human. The fashion choices were a little less realistic...

I didn't end up actually playing the game until a number of years later. My parents weren't so keen on dropping the forty-or-so quid for a new Playstation game, so I obtained a dodgy copy from a friend. This ended up being a copy of the NTSC version, so I had 60hz and faster game-speed from the start, which at the time didn't really mean anything to me at the time, but having played the PAL version since, I can see how much better the NTSC plays.

I thought Final Fantasy VIII looked amazing, and the pre-rendered backgrounds were amazingly vivid and colourful, regardless of where in the world you are. Going back to it today with much bigger TVs and higher resolutions, they have lost a bit of their sheen, however they still look wonderful. The cut-scenes were truly jaw-dropping at the time and the transitions from cut-scene to gameplay were fantastic.

The story kept me compelled throughout the game, owing a lot to the various twists and turns the plot takes (the orphanage - what the heck?!). As I would have been around 14 or 15 at the time, the "emo" protagonist probably appealed to me a lot more than if I had been a little younger ("whatever..."). In hindsight, the story of a bunch of teenagers saving the world from evil forces is super-tropey these days, however Final Fantasy VIII was my first real JRPG experience, so it was new to me!

Final Fantasy VIII is possibly the game I have started the most times and I am sure I could play the first disk or so in my sleep, but I only ever managed to finish it once. Gutted it seems to be missing from the re-releases coming to the Switch as I would love to revisit it again, especially on a handheld.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Final Fantasy VIII is such an unusual game. It has definitely earned it's reputation as being a bit of a narrative mess, but I've grown fonder of it over the years for exactly that reason - it's *not* a traditional narrative. If I were to speculate, the massive success of Final Fantasy VII probably had Squaresoft scrambling to make their "Empire Strikes Back" to 7's Star Wars. What resulted was not another masterpiece and critical darling, but something of a kitchen sink approach of themes and ideas. And when looking at it through that lens, when critiquing it less as a cohesive narrative and more of a Kafkaesque series of events, my heart really grows quite fond of FF8.

To the uninitiated listener, here is a list of things that actually happen, all in the same game, all of it played 100% straight:
- Zell, one of the main characters, plans a tactical strategy to ensure he and his team are able to get hot dogs from the cafeteria before they sell out.
- Your party fights a zombie President on a speeding train.
- Your school can transform into a flying castle, but only after defeating the overweight yellow space wizard in the basement.
- Squall and Rinoa fall in love after exterminating horror movie aliens on a spacecraft orbiting the moon.
- Squall's teacher barely avoids the "bad touch" threshold after the two of them fight a giant T-Rex in the school's in-house jungle.
- All of your party members grew up in the same orphanage, and their caretaker is a time sorceress, but not the final boss time sorceress you fight at the end of the game. That's a different time sorceress.
- Selphie in general.
- Your party stealthily infiltrates an military-occupied city... After being chased several kilometres by a giant mechanical spider.
- Your primary protagonist speaks mostly in ellipses and has a sword that also fires bullets, because the sword's hilt is a revolver.

The game is, to use academic jargon, absolutely bonkers. And I love it for that. Final Fantasy VIII is not the traditional masterpiece a la 6, 7 and even 9, but it succeeds at being something of a surrealist work. It's like finding a print of M.C. Escher's "Another World" drawing hidden among more traditional landscape paintings. Does it belong there? Not really. But it's still intensely captivating nonetheless - even if the game is something of a cobbled-together nightmare of happy accidents.

I'm sure you'll get to it eventually, but the popular "Squall Is Dead" hypothesis really plays into just how odd the game is - people have essentially pieced together their own meta-narrative to justify the ethereal nonsense of this game. The story makes more sense in the hands of speculation than in literal analysis, and there's something quite fun about that. The game isn't a trainwreck - people care about this game because it's got all these weird and wonderful little moments, which bad games just don't have. But for the sake of historical archival, I do hope this game is understood as a work of surrealism... Even if it wasn't the intent of the artists behind it. I can't wait to go back and play it once I get a little deeper through my gaming backlog.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Three Word Review:
It's Not 7.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by DomsBeard »

I have hazy memories of VIII but they are good ones. I enjoyed the characters and the dynamic between Seifer and Squall. My favourite sections were the build up to the assassination attempt and the hard as nails bit on the space station.

It will always annoy me that I never finished it though. I got stuck on a section where you have your abilities taken (ie attack or magic or item) and you were expected to beat difficult bosses to get them back. I must have got there too early as I had no chance of winning those battles and I tried countless times. I do still own my original copy of this (as well as VII)

Would love to play it again on Switch but I have not looked into why this has never been rereleased outside of Vita
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by ratsoalbion »

Short version is, they lost/binned the code.
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Magical_Isopod »

ratsoalbion wrote: January 3rd, 2019, 10:49 am Short version is, they lost/binned the code.
Innit just emblematic of the gaming industry? "This thing we spent millions on, beloved by many gamers? Yeah, throw it in the E-waste bin."

Perhaps the assets fell victim to disc rot, but still, you'd think they'd give a little more consideration?

I suppose this means Einhander is never getting a remaster.... so this is what it sounds like when doves cry.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by ratsoalbion »

BBC used to do exactly the same thing with now precious TV.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Flabyo »

I like a lot of the mechanics in 8, but the plot ‘twists’ and characters make me want to cry, and not in the way they intended.

Does have some of Uematsu’s best work in the series in there though.

It occupies a weird space in my head, I never want to play it again, but I have way more memory of playing it than any of the ones that come after it, even 12 which I *really* like.

It’s never going to sit ahead of two other games from roughly the same time period from Square for me though. Parasite Eve is more visually interesting and Xenogears has a better plot by a country mile.

(Also, does doing 8 mean you’re skipping over Final Fantasy Tactics? Boooo :) )
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Flabyo »

Oh, random bit of game dev trivia to bring up here that might’ve been forgotten.

This was around the time developers were starting to see early PS2 devkits, and one of the tech demos that did the rounds was the Squall and Rinoa dance scene being rendered in real-time.

You can see it here: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Fina ... nical_demo
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by rob25X »

I remember being disappointed with FFVIII and having a hard time getting into it. I wanted to like it, I really tried but for some reason I just didn't enjoy it. I put many hours into the game but in the end I decided it wasn't as good as FFVII and sold it. I don't think there was anything seriously wrong with FFVIII, it might just have been that I played and liked FFVII too much to appreciate a different Final Fantasy game at the time.

Not long after FFVIII came Shenmue on the Dreamcast which pretty much destroyed my memories of RPG's before it and dwarfed almost every other video game around 1999-2000.

Maybe I should revisit FFVIII someday and give it another chance.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording (16.2.19) - Issue 357: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Alabastermage »

I understand a lot of the criticism that Final Fantasy VIII gets. As you all know the story is a bit of mess, asking players to really suspend disbelief in places and some long and heavy handed exposition dumps can really kill the pace for a lot of people, especially in the case of newer players. The junction system asks players to stock up lots of magic to augment character stats but this leaves you not wanting to use some powerful spells as this could mean a drop in Strength, HP or vitality which feels a bit mean spirited at times. And Zell, I just don't like him. All that being said, I love this game. It was my first Final Fantasy where I was in from day 1. I even kept the Official Playstation magazine preview issue in my school bag, in fact my entire year 8 art class was spent copying character art from that magazine.

I have a lot of respect for the team that made FFVIII because of how different this game feels to FFVII which was already a very popular game by this time. The art style is completely different, not just in the the shift for more realistically proportioned character models, but within the painted backgrounds themselves and world design. The color palettes used, the design of buildings, and shape language used to construct these images are full of imagination, which has a very strange dreamlike but also believable feel to the world - There is no way you could visually confuse FFVIII with another game, let alone another Final Fantasy.

Even the storytelling of FFVIII feels like a change up - taking the linear nature of storytelling literally and having the player scramble from mission to mission down a train line, tethering the characters to particular places with not much scope to explore for a good while. All the while interrupting this flow with seemingly unrelated characters and events. This of course opens up and comes together more after the first disc but there is still a marked difference in the stories pace and narrative design. Whether this is a good or bad thing is up to your personal taste but these differences show Square was still experimenting with formula and not happy to repeat FFVII.

I have done everything in that game, I have acquired all GF's, beat Omega Weapon etc but never got through Ultimecia's castle. I have got to this point with a fully levelled maxed out party and also a party with the lowest levels I can achieve on numerous occasions in the 19 years I've owned this game but i have never been able to pull the trigger on finishing Disc 4. Whether this being something as simple as I got distracted by something else, or my sister putting my memory card through the wash (don't ask...) I can never seem to finish FFVIII. Everytime I start a new adventure and get close to the end, it's like if I were to finish it, I would have no reason to go back to it at this point- and I can't have that. I wish I could just equip a GF to forget i played it so I could start all over again.
Andy CT

Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording (16.2.19) - Issue 357: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Andy CT »

With its predecessor having been an extremely influential game for me, and my introduction to JRPG style gaming I remember saving up in advance in order to buy it immediately on release.

Having played every inch of 7 on multiple occasions I eagerly tore into this new instalment and my immediate reaction was one of absolute delight! The visuals, both in game and FMV were a huge step up, and the early set piece of the SEED exam being pursued by the (Proto-Giant Enemy Crab looking)mech had me quickly hooked.

Indeed, there was no stopping me as I delighted in meeting the new characters, collecting and junctionoing the new twist on summonable creatures and chasing down the evil sorceress as a new moody lead character with fabulous hair and an unsual sword...but then I hit a bit of a wall.

The slightly more surreal turn the story takes following Squall’s frosty reception was a bump in the road for me which I was either slightly too young, impatient, ignorant or unfocused enough to follow. This disengagement with the story combined with some game mechanics that had begun to grate on me (specifically drawing magic and the unfortunate frequency of bosses not granting any XP - driving more grinding of base enemies to tough enough to beat future bosses who in turn I’d get no XP for fighting). Before another disc had passed, the game had shaken me off.

After a break of close to a year, I took advantage of an Xploder cheat cartridge peripheral which maxed all of my character’s stats to unfair levels, and filled my pockets with magic - Essentially allowing me to mechanically click through the remainder of the story (there was no YouTube then). However with no struggle or personal investment to get through the later story beats my memory of them is fairly limited....something, something time compression, yak yak Big teardrop of monsters from the moon etc.

I now list FF8 as one of my gaming regrets, having heard the outpouring of love for its merits, several articulate defences of the mechanics and years of more diverse RPG experiences under my belt which led me to an understanding that an RPG didn’t need to replicate FF7 to be good. I very likely owe the game another play through where I take on the challenges as intended and invest in the rich narrative experience.

I’ve purchased a copy on Steam - Now if I can just find a spare 100 hours or so.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Sage + Onion Knight »

Magical_Isopod wrote: January 3rd, 2019, 9:38 am I'm sure you'll get to it eventually, but the popular "Squall Is Dead" hypothesis really plays into just how odd the game is - people have essentially pieced together their own meta-narrative to justify the ethereal nonsense of this game. The story makes more sense in the hands of speculation than in literal analysis, and there's something quite fun about that. The game isn't a trainwreck - people care about this game because it's got all these weird and wonderful little moments, which bad games just don't have. But for the sake of historical archival, I do hope this game is understood as a work of surrealism... Even if it wasn't the intent of the artists behind it. I can't wait to go back and play it once I get a little deeper through my gaming backlog.
I love all your post but particularly this bit, it was reading this theory that spurred me on to my last playthrough of FF8 (sadly a while ago, because it hasn't been remastered for the PS4). I love how, on one level, it is presentationally far more realistic than the constantly-shifting look of 7 and the bright cartoonishness of 9; and yet the narrative itself involves you playing as the student of a school that houses several dinosaurs and where standardised testing involves going into an active warzone. The fact it's all played totally straight is something I appreciated a lot more as an adult than I did as a kid.

I have a weirder nostalgia for this game than I do for 7. Until I replayed it as an adult, I think I barely got past the second disc; but the whole game - the music, the colour palette, even the shade of grey on the text boxes, etc. - brings back the feeling of aimless childhood summers.

Another thing I'd really recommend when it comes to unpacking the tone of the game is this article, describing it as "the PS1's great cringe comedy" - https://killscreen.com/articles/final-f ... kwardness/ - and looking at the levels the game goes to emphasise the teenage awkwardness of its main cast and those extreme teenage feelings that can't be so effectively conveyed in a purely realistic way. Maybe that's another reason why it feels so weirdly nostalgic.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording (16.2.19) - Issue 357: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by ThirdDrawing »

I played this when it came out and it is one of my biggest gaming disappointments ever.

I have a lot of things to say about FF8, and none of them are good.

The characters are bland and devoid of ...well...character.

The junction system is tedious and repetitive and makes the game a chore to play.

The plot revelation that the characters lived together with the main villain as the sort of nanny to their Final Fantasy version of Muppet Babies made me literally hurl my controller and rage quit the game - the first time I have ever done so with a JRPG, and I am a massive fan of the genre.

It's an awful f**king game and I'm glad they lost the code. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Three word review - Bin it forever.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording (16.2.19) - Issue 357: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Alex79 »

I came to this game with sky high expectation and wasn't disappointed. I devoured every screenshot, preview and video I could get my hands on. I loved this game. I remember it getting an incredibly unfair reception by a lot of people, and I just don't think it deserved it. I've only ever completed it once, back at release, although I've played the first few hours many times. I love the way it looks, the magic system, the battles, and although I don't remember the story any more, I know I enjoyed it at the time. This really is a brilliant game, and I'd urge anyone on the fence about it to give it a go. I can't say I love it more than VII, but my gosh it's a close second.

THREE WORD REVIEW : Very worthy sequel.

EDIT: And now I want to play THIS one again, too! Damn you, Cane and Rinse. DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!

EDIT 2: <3 XxX
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Alex79 »

Magical_Isopod wrote: January 3rd, 2019, 12:47 pm
ratsoalbion wrote: January 3rd, 2019, 10:49 am Short version is, they lost/binned the code.
Innit just emblematic of the gaming industry? "This thing we spent millions on, beloved by many gamers? Yeah, throw it in the E-waste bin."

Perhaps the assets fell victim to disc rot, but still, you'd think they'd give a little more consideration?
I mean, I suppose it's fair to assume it was clearly a mistake, given they've managed to hang on to every single other one of the series.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by AndrewBrown »

Alex79uk wrote: January 4th, 2019, 8:18 pm I mean, I suppose it's fair to assume it was clearly a mistake, given they've managed to hang on to every single other one of the series.
The versions of FF7 available out there are all based on pre-release code sent to the people who ported the game to PC, which they luckily did have the good sense to hang onto. This is why even the best ports available today are still ever-so-slightly different from the released PS1 version. So no this was definitely just a standard practice thing of the time. :roll:

I was going to do a writeup for this game but I won't bother since I missed saying good things about 7 and my contempt for this game would probably not reflect well on me. Maybe I'll check back in on 9 and 10, which are fantastic RPGs.
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording (16.2.19) - Issue 357: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Sage + Onion Knight »

Forgot to mention how much I like the soundtrack to this game. Partly for the aforementioned nostalgia reasons, but also because yer man Uematsu really delivers on the 'Twin Peaksy' jazz promise of parts of the FF7 soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjTw1Wcjzf8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frzO5OX8zf4 particularly
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Re: Our next Final Fantasy podcast recording (16.2.19) - Issue 357: Final Fantasy VIII

Post by Nupraptor »

I bought FFVIII second hand when I was at uni. All our games were second hand then of course and bought to play on the second hand and communally owned PlayStation that I shared with my flatmates at the time.
One of my memories related to the game is being slightly tipsy at a party and having a mock-fight with one of my flatmates with both of us using moves from the game including the pose that Zell adopts in the in-game-engine cut-scenes, when he's angry and drops into that half-crouch with his fists clenched and his elbows bent. Obviously this was no match for the spellcasting gesture that Squall makes, where he puts two fingers to his forehead "Firaga!" or for his "Blasting Zone" limit break. We called it a draw in the end and had another beer.

FFVII was my first JRPG and I wasn't sure what to expect from this sequel. I had a vague understanding that the FF games were all stand-alone adventures, but FFVII had made such a huge impact on me personally and UK gaming culture in general that we all wondered at the time whether it would be more of a direct sequel. I clearly remember a preview in a uk games magazine that claimed that the main antagonist in the game was going to be a virus, grown from Sephiroth's body!
Of course, FFVIII is a stand alone adventure in a brand new world and I am delighted that is the case. It was wonderful to realise that you could have a whole sequence of these epic adventures all taking place in completely different worlds and with brand new characters rather than milking the same IP to death, as we saw to horrific effect with the "Compilation of Final Fantasy Seven".

I have a few random observations about the game, positive and negative:
- The game has some great locations, but quite a few are just a bit dull. Fighting a geezard enemy on a barren plain is just depressing.
- I think the design of the "Weapon" class of enemy, peaked with this game. A sort of armoured-knight-centaur-beast, this time with Ultima Weapon actually wielding it's eponymous sword! The very epitome of badass.
- to this day, if I want to express mock outrage at something, then I loudly proclaim: "ANGER! RAGE!" in the manner of Seifer's taciturn crony, Fujin. No one around me will ever get this reference.
- the soundtrack is once again, amazing. A stand out track for me is the wonderfully discordant, jangly and unnerving "Succession of Witches" which always creates the right atmosphere when a sorceress is about to do something despicable.
- Cut scenes had leapt forward in quality since ffvii. Even in 1996, the ffvii cut scenes were pretty lame, but in ffviii, they looked gorgeous -and still look pretty good now. The ball at Balamb Garden in particular was jaw-dropping. I would load up a save just to show it off to people.
-Status effects seemed to have more of an emphasis and to be more sophisticated in this game including the "float" effect that let you avoid any earth-based attacks, the "blind" spell that you get a specific tutorial on and the fact that healing and resurrection spells can be used to damage and even kill undead enemies. On the downside, the party seemed to be very susceptible to enemy status effects and the Marlboro enemies absolutely destroyed me

So, Final Fantasy VIII. Unfortunately and possibly unfairly, it will always be compared to it's immediate predecessor. I don't have the same love for FFVIII that I do for FFVII. VIII wasn't the eye-opening introduction to the world of epic JRPGs that VII was for me. The bold and iconic heroes and villains of FFVII will always come off better in comparison with VIII's surly teenager and sinister, but ultimately confusing villain. What is "time compression" anyway?
HOWEVER, viewed in isolation and judged on it's own merits, this is a superb, epic adventure in it's own right, with a bonkers plot, quirky characters and a limit break where a woman shoots a dog off her arm like a rocket. Bravo FFVIII!
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