Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Excuse you. Are you going to talk about Cinderella and skip the glass slippers?
There it is. The narrative peak of Final Fantasy 8.
...okay that's mean even by my standards. FF8 is...hard to talk about this early in the LP although it's clear Omicron is setting up some of the dominos that will lead to some of the famous grievances with this game. Where FF6 and FF7 were both unambiguously massive, broad hits, FF8 was at one time the most hated numbered Final Fantasy title - although even that is harsher than I think it deserves. Rather, FF8 is one of those games that, in my experience, is either loved or hated. I know some people who absolutely adore this game. I know some people who loathe it.
I'm in the latter camp. "Water off a duck's back" is the proverbial phrase, as every part of FF8 just rolls off me. The system, the story, the people...
Let's start with the system. One of the big stumbling blocks for FF8 that I could never get over is how gameified the system feels. How do you advance in strength? Well in other games, you fight monsters, gain levels, buy equipment, learn spells, etc. In FF8, your primary source of strength is to junction GFs and spells. How do you junction them? You...junction them. Do you attach them to your gear, like materia? No, you junction them. Are we summoning primal icons and fusing them to our body? No, you...you just. you junction them. In the menu.
View: https://youtu.be/fCVKCUB5w50?t=34
FF8 just felt like it shot itself in the foot from the beginning - a more comical or meta-narrative RPG like Off or Undertale could get away with this level of "just go into the menu and do it lol" but with FF8 it was the first curtain I felt dropping between me and my suspension of disbelief. This may be a weirdly particular thing to get hung up on, but I feel like it informs on how FF8 was built.
As far as the system itself...well, it was certainly a swing for the fences, what with the junctioning and the draw system and whatnot, but remember a long time ago when we went over Final Fantasy II and we talked about how Square was so determined to reinvent the wheel that they replaced a D&D clone with something completely different and then it turned out the system was such a mess that by the time we got to the end the game had been broken on the rack? Well. FF8 is FFII-2.
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- Pronouns
- Him/He
I expect a lot more explaining/remembering how stuff works in a lot of updates, but for the most part FF8 does just open up really fast to let you break the game or figure out how you want to play it.
There are a few limits to how badly you can break it in the first few hours before you get to the first actually-dramatic parts (There's a couple ways you can break the game there if you're up for some grinding, without tripping over the common problems that come from grinding in FF8), but even limited to the most basic enemies you can gain massive amounts of combat power with a few dedicated bursts of grinding, or just plow through the section without much thought.
The ceiling on power is set really really high for the first few hours compared to most games, and the game just pushes that theoretical ceiling of power higher and higher and a bewildering pace for awhile, if you know what you can do.
This is because FF8 unlinks, more then any other FF game, progression of characters strength and progression of abilities/magic. This is the first FF game that I've played that stops giving XP for mandatory boss fights, and only gives AP. Which means with tactical play you can gain a massive amount of AP and new GF abilities, and even strong magic, without going up a level.
I'm interested to see where you go with this, I doubt you'll be pushing the theoretical maximal power at every section, but it's pretty easy to become moderately unstoppable for easier gameplay. I don't know of any casual method there is that has FF8 stay at a moderate difficulty throughout most of the game.
There are a few limits to how badly you can break it in the first few hours before you get to the first actually-dramatic parts (There's a couple ways you can break the game there if you're up for some grinding, without tripping over the common problems that come from grinding in FF8), but even limited to the most basic enemies you can gain massive amounts of combat power with a few dedicated bursts of grinding, or just plow through the section without much thought.
The ceiling on power is set really really high for the first few hours compared to most games, and the game just pushes that theoretical ceiling of power higher and higher and a bewildering pace for awhile, if you know what you can do.
This is because FF8 unlinks, more then any other FF game, progression of characters strength and progression of abilities/magic. This is the first FF game that I've played that stops giving XP for mandatory boss fights, and only gives AP. Which means with tactical play you can gain a massive amount of AP and new GF abilities, and even strong magic, without going up a level.
I'm interested to see where you go with this, I doubt you'll be pushing the theoretical maximal power at every section, but it's pretty easy to become moderately unstoppable for easier gameplay. I don't know of any casual method there is that has FF8 stay at a moderate difficulty throughout most of the game.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Indeed. You probably want to check everywhere, but if you're on a hurry, the two places you absolutely need to go to before heading for Quistis are the Cafeteria and the Quad. The Cafeteria expecially has a lot of interesting stuff that won't show up ever again.
The easiest way to keep the game from being too easy is to NOT junction anything to your stats. That tends to weaken the power of all the other gamebreaking options available enough to keep some semblance of difficulty.
I'm pretty sure this came up previously in the thread, but apparently since every Disk actually has all the same game content barring the cinematics, apparently kid you could have just loaded up the game, popped open the disk tray, and swapped in Disk 2 to continue just fine.
You know, in case someone else reading this thread is somehow in the exact same situation with original hardware, and also somehow internet-pilled enough to be on this obscure web forum but not tech-savvy enough to just emulate the game or buy one of the multiple versions available on Steam.
The comparison I like the most was from, iirc, the TBFP podcast where someone pointed out there is seriously only a seven year gap between Final Fantasy 6 and Final Fantasy 10, and just what the two generation system difference accomplished there. The thread might not be at FFX yet, but just... consider the fact that in the heyday of Final Fantasy, we went from sixteen bit pixel graphics to PS2 graphics which were approaching the peak of realism for the time.I want you to take a look at the timeline of turn-of-the-century Square.
Final Fantasy VII was released in 1997. Development of VIII began that year. It was released two years later, in '99. Then IX the next year in 2000. Then X, for the Playstation 2, a whole-ass new console, the following year in 2001. Then XI, the MMO, the following year in 2002.
Final Fantasy I was released in 1987. That's eleven Final Fantasy games in fifteen years. Pretty much every year you could go out and grab a new FF. Even in the PSX era, with its incredible leaps in graphics, and the following jump to sixth generation hardware, the trend did not merely continue but if anything, accelerated. One FF game a year for four years, '99 to '02.
What a world to live in
*Insert Belt Joke Here-*
Ah shit called out immediately.
Personally, remapping the controller with pre-designed options on Steam Overlay worked for me, but it looks like later down in the thread you found an option that works better for you overall.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, is this legal?
Actually using magic in a cutscene, making it story relevant? FFVII told me magic is exclusively a gameplay feature.
Well, as we quickly learn Balamb Garden seems to have a focus on combat over most other things... so yeah, from that perspective, it probably is considered a non-serious injury. Hell, might make them look more intimidating when they go out and do military jobs or something.
(18 years old btw)
Maybe it's little wee bab McFluffles nostalgia talking, but I do vastly prefer the aesthetic of Balamb Garden to Midgar. Not that Midgar is bad mind you, but boy those sweeping shots do a lot for it.
Oh hey, we're back to the FF6 standard of "but what if battle and world sprites were the same though?" FF9 does retain this, to be fair... but as mentioned, it's also an overall much more cartoony looking game.
And that's when I spent 20 minutes reading LORE on my playthroughThis is pretty short, for a class session, but the main purpose here is to get us in touch with Squall's desk computer, which…
…
We'll come back to this in a little bit.
TRIPLE TRIAD IS LOVE
TRIPLE TRIAD IS LIFE
AND honestly I'm kind of surprised you didn't go into much detail on the card game itself... though I'm sure we'll get there eventually.
Ah, our benevolent headmaster. Can't wait to meet Cid in person, seems like a great guy running a school and all that in this game. Certainly an improvement over Maybe Abusive Maybe It's Mutual FFVII Cid.
Now the real question is, which one is more "problematic" when looked at through a modern lens?
Hahaha
But who would do that
Certainly not me, talking to literally every single NPC and the playing cards with them all
Oh yeah, I guess I never really noticed as a kid, but now replaying the game? I'm left with "okay but did we need separate screens for the gate, the stairs, a draw point, another open area, and the second main gate?"
Force Your Way is always the easiest way to compare, because man is the PC version kind of ass. I mean it's not on par with "we removed the vocals from One Winged Angel have some ass trumpets", but it's up there.
Fair enough choice.
Now imagine being me
Being like eight years old
and proceeding to skip every tutorial and play half the first disc entirely without junctioning any GFs
Suffice to say I got really good at using the Limit Break commands, because I sure as fuck didn't have any other options.
(Still 18 btw)
...A somewhat accurate summation, I suppose, if funny because if you check your party member's limit breaks in the menu, you might find out a little something.
Drawing from enemies (and Draw Points) is the most common way of getting magic, for sure... but there are other ways that open up as you get more GFs, or train certain skills. I'm sure we'll get there.
Well hey, as long as people don't start going "OMI OMI THIS IS HOW YOU BREAK GAME", we should hopefully be fine? Or at least Omi will naturally figure out how to break the game partway through, instead of being told the exact steps to do so before setting foot in the Fire Cavern.
Huh, I grabbed FFVIII remastered a while back since it was on sale. Is that the version Omi was using with the bad soundtrack?
Nah, bad soundtrack is on the original version of FFVIII on Steam. The remastered version iirc has the proper soundtrack, the main complaint it gets is that a lot of stuff is (sometimes poorly) upscaled, or so I have heard.
Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
To be fair with the gap between XIII and XV (the two mainline single player games) that chart doesn't show the two XIII sequels (XIII-2 and Lightning Returns, released 2011 and 1013 respectively) which were absolutely supposed to be 'real' Final Fantasy releases, AFAICT.
With FFVIII... my biggest memory involves fighting hockey players, on an ice rink? At some point? Not like a boss fight, but just... hockey player mobs? That and kid me having negative understanding of how anything worked RE levelling and junctioning and so on.
With FFVIII... my biggest memory involves fighting hockey players, on an ice rink? At some point? Not like a boss fight, but just... hockey player mobs? That and kid me having negative understanding of how anything worked RE levelling and junctioning and so on.
- Location
- The Z-Cave
Since my first big experiance with Squall was in Kingdom Hearts as Leon along with VIII following VII's cultural impact I completely missed how much pop culture impact VIII had in Japan and helped craft the magic academy light novel genre. As Omicron said VIII came out in 1999 and the Irregular Highschool came out in 2008 and the Asterisk Wats came out in 2012. More than enough time for kids and teenagers to take inspiration from it for their own infinitely more skeevy takes about a decade down the line.
In this first update the primordial soup of it all is here. The vanilla love interest, the magitech high school, the hotter, sexier teacher, everyone using a cool weapon, the vague magic powers. All it's missing is everything wrong with the genre like the harem and being trapped in the hellpits of high school. This is like a museum piece showing what the genre was like before the rot set in.
In this first update the primordial soup of it all is here. The vanilla love interest, the magitech high school, the hotter, sexier teacher, everyone using a cool weapon, the vague magic powers. All it's missing is everything wrong with the genre like the harem and being trapped in the hellpits of high school. This is like a museum piece showing what the genre was like before the rot set in.
Now this brings back memories. I first played FF8 when I was 6 or 7, and encountered almost this exact issue during a pivotal disc 2 cutscene. Only difference was my game would freeze at a random point during the cutscene, giving me false hope that one day it'd just play a few more seconds and I'd be free to keep playing. I think that might be the first time I ever got angry at a video game.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
FF8 didn't grab me in the same way 7 or 10 did, but it DID come out when I was in 9th grade and I DID unironically think Balamb Garden was the school I wanted to attend.
The world space of the Garden felt busy and interesting and the outfits were cool and, of course, I was devastated by Quistis.
Like, I didn't think I could be a Squall or a Seifer dueling in the hallways, but I could have been one of those background nerds telling passersby how the SeeD exams worked or playingMagic: the Gathering Triple Triad and been content.
The world space of the Garden felt busy and interesting and the outfits were cool and, of course, I was devastated by Quistis.
Like, I didn't think I could be a Squall or a Seifer dueling in the hallways, but I could have been one of those background nerds telling passersby how the SeeD exams worked or playing
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Japanese schools aren't the only ones that do this. The thing about Japanese schools that's an oddity is frequently their teachers rotate and the students stay in place (barring stuff like Gym) instead of the students moving to the Teacher's assigned rooms. The fact the students all break up after Quistis talks to them and leave makes me wonder if this is more of a Western style system or if classes are done for the day.
This is a term which I've seen used at many US colleges, but only at US colleges, it's basically a square courtyard and short for 'quadrangle'.
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Man, the nostalgia already hits like a truck.
This will be a long train of trucks.
FFVII's FMVs are one those 'I will not forget this view' things.
That said, the most memorable FMV isn't this one. That's come later.
At least it's a familiar ceiling.
Ah, I've forget how much in love I was with the Garden.
Not me, tbh. I never got how playing the cards works. This is back then before regular internet, not even regular visit to netcafe, so I can't easily google them. As result I never really played them.
LOL, that's new to me. 😂
Look, I was innocent kid from non-english country back then. And I never really talk about FFVIII with internet after I'm of age for regular internet and dirty jokes.
Heh, I never really got how to pronounce that, yet this name stuck with me for a long time.
This is the point where I realize I must have never read this stuffs back then, or at least not much.
Think of Witch from Mercury instead.
That's actually kind of funny. I laughed out of my ass when I realize WfM is Gundam's foray into battle school romcom genre. If I only encouter FFVIII nowadays or has been old and jaded back then, I probably would have laughed too. As it was, this was not just really cool for the kid me, it was new and exciting.
Since when battle school anime is a thing anyway? There's probably something like it prior to FVIII but as I recall their popularity was in 00s, after VII came out.
Hey, no worries, we all here for you going all over the place.
IIRC, you can even have combat encounter before your first combat encounter. It possible I misremember, but I think its possible at this point to go into Training Room and have combat encounter. I recall doing something like that ... and met a T-rex for the first encounter, to which I immediately press escape, and left Training Room promptly after. I forgot if I did that before or after I party with Quistis though.
Hmm, Its been years since I tried PS emulator. I remember doing it in 00s was kinda annoying. Involving choosing a number of setting and doing trial and error to see which works. I wonder if I should try again ... because I think I still have my old FFVIII discs. Maybe. I'm pretty sure I never throw them out. Finding where those discs will be tricky though.
I think the abbreviated name is easy enough to understood.
Accidentally, I thought it was short for 'Summon Magic'?
Ah yes, I remember have inlking of this and spend some time testing to confirm it.
FFVIII was so impressionable that it feed into my chuuni (though I was actually have not even reached seventh grade back then) imagination for some time. I recall tracing map of Balamb on thin paper and then filling it with all sorts of newly imagined places, because man, these maps are nice but they are kind of empty.
Oh dear, the amount of dirty jokes that my innocent past self unable to notice.I've never run into RPG system like FFVIII again. Which is a pity, because it was a great fun
Huh, I never really thought about that
Hype.
Man, I want to play this game again now, but I missed the discount on steam. Either wait for next discount or try where on earth I store those discs.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
For reference to what a quad is, it's a term used in architecture of Anglosphere colleges, short for "quadrangle" for reasons I do not understand either. Refers to a rectangular grassy often tree lined courtyard area with large buildings on all four sides (usually not entirely enclosed, with walking paths out all four corners).
en.wikipedia.org
Why we don't just call it a "courtyard" or "rectangle" I don't know, English is not a language many would describe as "consistent" or "sane" thanks to its random jumble of Norman, Anglo-Saxon, and Latin derived words.
How they have a rectangular courtyard with buildings demarcating all four sides in a Garden that's predominantly indoors and characterized by one giant round building I'm even less clear on.
Quadrangle (architecture) - Wikipedia
Why we don't just call it a "courtyard" or "rectangle" I don't know, English is not a language many would describe as "consistent" or "sane" thanks to its random jumble of Norman, Anglo-Saxon, and Latin derived words.
How they have a rectangular courtyard with buildings demarcating all four sides in a Garden that's predominantly indoors and characterized by one giant round building I'm even less clear on.
My highschools also did this (I'm Indonesian, for context), except when we need to use lab or media room. Dunno how they do it nowadays though. I went through HSs during the time when the goverment did a lot of revamps and experiment with the school system.
25 years of confusion and TILFor reference to what a quad is, it's a term used in architecture of Anglosphere colleges, short for "quadrangle" for reasons I do not understand either. Refers to a rectangular grassy often tree lined courtyard area with large buildings on all four sides (usually not entirely enclosed, with walking paths out all four corners).
Quadrangle (architecture) - Wikipedia
Why we don't just call it a "courtyard" or "rectangle" I don't know, English is not a language many would describe as "consistent" or "sane" thanks to its random jumble of Norman, Anglo-Saxon, and Latin derived words.
How they have a rectangular courtyard with buildings demarcating all four sides in a Garden that's predominantly indoors and characterized by one giant round building I'm even less clear on.
Space magic
There it is, the thing which burned me out on ffVIII back in the day. Kid me could not stand for not maxing out every spell as soon as it became available, and did not figure out the other methods aside from drawing to get them. Kid me was an obsessive and stubborn little twerp.
There's a reason 'Gamers will optimize all the fun out of their games if allowed' resonates so strongly with me, lol.
There's a reason 'Gamers will optimize all the fun out of their games if allowed' resonates so strongly with me, lol.
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You can also upscale the resolution of the character models in emulators these days. It's usually a option buried in the graphics\enhancement settings somewhere.
Best used with a option that... How to explain it... The ps1 didn't have a good floating point unit, which means that when devs tried to create 3d games, it was exceedingly easy for poligons to just appear to jump discreetly on positions as they move and sometimes deform. That setting, usually called something like "pgpx geometry correction" usually has a battery of subsettings because it's in the end a hack, and all settings won't work for most games, and it's not how the games originally looked.
But when set up well for the game, it makes the game comparable to the "remastered" edition. It's not that these remastered ps1 ports changed the models often, but that they're not being tortured with the travesty the ps1 used as a graphics engine.
Best used with a option that... How to explain it... The ps1 didn't have a good floating point unit, which means that when devs tried to create 3d games, it was exceedingly easy for poligons to just appear to jump discreetly on positions as they move and sometimes deform. That setting, usually called something like "pgpx geometry correction" usually has a battery of subsettings because it's in the end a hack, and all settings won't work for most games, and it's not how the games originally looked.
But when set up well for the game, it makes the game comparable to the "remastered" edition. It's not that these remastered ps1 ports changed the models often, but that they're not being tortured with the travesty the ps1 used as a graphics engine.
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21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
FFVIII's intro changed your life but for me, it was Chrono Trigger.
It's such a powerful thing for a game to have a lifelong effect on someone.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
I should add as an addendum that if you actually said "quadrangle" instead of "quad," generally the same college students who threw the term "quad" around freely would look at you as if you were insane.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I've mentioned this before I think, but the first time I played I was young enough (also: zero anime exposure at the time) that I had no idea about the "just roll with it" sensibility of High School Protagonists. I was looking at all this and directly applying IRL moral sensibility.
So. A school for teenaged mercenaries who use forbidden magic? I was convinced Cid was the Big Bad Guy, and that Squall finding out that being a child soldier is Fucked Up, Actually, was gonna be a major arc.
"When do we kill Cid" I said to myself, utterly convinced that was going to happen.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
It wouldn't be the first time the series has made the player ask that about a Cid. But weirdly always in different ways.
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You're pretty general there so I don't know if calling that spoilers is exactly right, but probably oughtta save that for later in the LP all the same.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
It's all things that have been mentioned in the review so far, including the mercenaries, the possible moral ambiguity to the magic, and the fact the headmaster is named Cid.
There is one spoiler and that is it pretty heavily implies
you don't kill Cid.