Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
As a half-formed adolescent video game protagonist, the smart money is on "Squall doesn't know, but will find out over the course of the adventure."
I wonder if making a game where you play as the Turks was on anyone's mind while VIII was in its planning stages.
In certain latin languages, Laguna is a enclosed ocean water front. That's the joke. Squall is a storm, usually a water front storm, also a euphemism for a baby crying in English specifically.
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21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Laguna! He's my favorite FF8 character. He's a soldier who wishes to be a journalist. that's romantic to me. a man who wields the sword hoping to wield the pen.
I'm sad every time i see Squall saying "I dreamt i was a moron" in internal monologue. Squall doesn't get Laguna at this point.
Timber is also one of my all-time favorite towns in Final Fantasy for that reason. It is SO PRETTY!
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
VI had one as well, if you'll recall. In the Phantom Train, we got to see both the sumptuous interior, with private booths and a banquet hall for a dining car, as well as the far more grungy and industrial (to the point of being automated - there was no engineer in that cab) "backstage."
Dybbukpossesed
Falling Somewhere
- Location
- California
I see the theory about the man in the flashback being Squall's father and my first thought is "that's not nearly extra enough." My current theory is that reincarnation is real and that was one of Squall's past lives. Him and the mystery lady were lovers in the distant past and are trying to reunite across time!
Yes it's bat shit crazy and probably wrong but it would be super funny if I was right so I gotta put it down just in case.
Yes it's bat shit crazy and probably wrong but it would be super funny if I was right so I gotta put it down just in case.
- Location
- The Middle of the Howling Wilderness
Gonna register my own wild theory that Laguna is literally Squall and he's got memory loss from GF overuse or something. And he's the same age because he got put in stasis or yote forward in time or something. We haven't really seen anyone who knows Squall from before he became a SeeD candidate, like a family member or old friend, IIRC. The mystery girl is presumably the piano lady who also got time-stasis'd i guess?
- Location
- Portugal
I knew nothing of substance about FF8 before this, except for a handful of very specific details and names, so this is kinda wild. What a weird turn. The timeline is really sussy, I think that's some good preliminary theorizing. It would be really funny if even half of your speculations were right, and if everything else paled in comparison to what's really going on.
And on that note... OK, I have a supposition about Guardian Forces but honestly I cannot tell whether this is at all based on some spoiler I heard about the game enough time ago that it just sank into my subconscious, or if it's purely my mind trying to connect dots.
On the mechanics side though: the breakdown of the Diablos fight and how you worked out the tactics makes for a fun read. I'm wondering now, given how the entire loop for the successful run is enabled by options that are self-contained in the fight, how many bosses or special enemies in FF8 are designed in a way that you can engage with them solely or mostly through deciphering the mechanics within and putting them together in the right way?
And on that note... OK, I have a supposition about Guardian Forces but honestly I cannot tell whether this is at all based on some spoiler I heard about the game enough time ago that it just sank into my subconscious, or if it's purely my mind trying to connect dots.
Are GFs made out of people, as in people who already existed, are they derived from or extracted somehow from humans through the cryptically referenced sorcery and the reason why they cause ambiguous memory-related disturbances that they are junctioning their wielder to the memories of their source?
On the mechanics side though: the breakdown of the Diablos fight and how you worked out the tactics makes for a fun read. I'm wondering now, given how the entire loop for the successful run is enabled by options that are self-contained in the fight, how many bosses or special enemies in FF8 are designed in a way that you can engage with them solely or mostly through deciphering the mechanics within and putting them together in the right way?
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Yeah, Diablos's physical attacks can hit like a truck if you aren't super junctioned up to counteract it.
And here we see why Selphie was my absolute most super favoritest character on my first, "I don't know what junctioning is" play of Final Fantasy VIII - she was literally the only character with any real versatility to her in that Limit option. Squall, Zell, Quistis? All variation of "do damage". Selphie? Can dump a bunch of elemental hits against multiple enemies, or heal the party, or really heal the party with Full Cure.
To go into a little more technical detail on Selphie's Slots: Basically, whenever you choose Slots Selphie goes through a bunch of variables like "how beat to shit is the party" and "what are the levels of everyone involved", and from that she chooses a random set of spells you get to shuffle through. So early game, you'll get things like triple casting -ra tier spells as shown here, and late game she might go "but what if Three Flares". In addition, Selphie has several completely unique options mixed into each slot list, each of which is usually something decently useful - Full Cure, for example, is a full-party heal and status restore in one, which the wiki even lists as "basically the same as using a MegaElixir". There's some even cooler potential options in there, but I'll leave those a mystery for now so you can have the fun of running into them naturally (or if they never come up, there's always another 30+ updates to spoil them in).
Yeaaah, the thing is... the GFs you have at this point in the game are all AoE elemental attacks. Which is great for things with weaknesses, or big groups of enemies - but not nearly so useful for hard hitting bosses, the way something like say Golem or Carbuncle in previous games could be.
Alright, so having never used this strategy myself (I usually just nab 100 Blind spells from Granaldo and slap that on someone's status junction attacks to cripple his physical capabilities), I always figured it was like... Demi wouldn't do damage or would heal Diablos, and he goes "oh hey thanks bro" and heals you in response, Rubicante style.
Nope apparently Diablos is just a masochist who likes having his ass gravity-pounded, who knew. Devil be Kinky.
Yep, Diablos is a fun challenge to work your way around, though iirc higher level scaling doesn't do anything to change his moveset or how he fights - just adds a few extra spells you can draw from him (apparently past level 40 he has Flare and Holy of all things). The rewards, though?
Diablos is loaded with useful abilities, from Mug being the only source of stealing in FFVIII, to Encounter-Half/None making travel much less of a hassle, to refining some useful spells, to the aforementioned Abilityx3 which will obviously become useful once you start bothering to learn things like "Stat+20%" (My Squall is breaking 80 Strength at this point between Str+ and Junctioning).
Not just the Trepies, plenty of people have this boss card for some reason??? I don't know, are Biggs and Wedge supposed to be famous in Triple Triad Circles that they have so many cards going around, or do they just spend their entire salaries on commissioning these things?
Oh boi, and Quistis isn't even the rarest card for someone to play. Have fun grinding out some of the others later on.
TRAIN TRAIN TAKE US AWAY
TAKE US AWAY, FAR AWAY
Having worked with both kids and adults on the spectrum before... yeah, this right here? Pretty much the conclusive argument for me of "Selphie is absolutely somewhat ASD".
HERE WE GO.
I would link Man With The Machine Gun here, but thankfully Omi has taste and already linked it.
Alright ignoring Game Mechanic Neccessities for a moment - Man I really do love Laguna and his bros. In particular, Laguna's Limit Break, Desperado always stuck in my memory for how over the top it is:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkO2sjmC0jw
Where does he get the chain, what is it attached to. Is Laguna an alternate-universe Spiderman? Does he have to worry about Miguel showing up sometime and telling him "SORRY BRO YOU GOTTA LET JULIA DIE IT'S THE SPIDERMAN WAY"?
Anyways as for the junctioned stuff, I always assumed it was just a mechanics thing of letting the player still use the stuff familiar to them in these flashbacks. Though that said, it does specifically transfer over one character to another, one to one as whichever one they're observing from, so... could be more to it.
Well I'll tell you one guy who really doesn't care, and that's Laguna, he don't give a shit between this and literally jam-packing the entire city with his parking job (if you head back out of the hotel later before meeting with Julia, you'll see he's caused a multi-block traffic jam).
Alright, so this right here is a very, very important moment in child-me's first playthrough of Final Fantasy VIII.
You see this? This is where my playthrough ended, time and time again, because somehow I repeatedly missed the existance of that staircase. I was stuck here in this flashback forever, unable to advance, hopping between two save points in the hotel and in a nearby sewer tunnel you can reach that leads absolutely nowhere.
I even convinced myself for some time that the key to escape was that I had to defeat Diablos, because turns out since inventory carries over you can still use the Lamp while in the Laguna flashback. But nope, just couldn't pull it off without Selphie. Started the entire game over (or maybe loaded an earlier save) and tried fighting Diablos pre-flashback on the train... still couldn't win.
And thus, died my first playthrough of Final Fantasy VIII, the challenge run of "No Junctioning Allowed" was killed not by a difficult boss wall, but by blindness RIP
Eh, don't worry about it too much Laguna, we all have weird voices in the back of our heads sometimes, right?
...Or not. Hm. Maybe I should get that checked out.
Replaying FFVIII, I really do find I love the Ward and Kiros interactions more than I remember. They're total bros to Laguna at every turn, even if they'll give him all the shit about it.
Unfortunately, if there's one thing I've learned up to this point about the Galbadian Army it's that Red > Blue in terms of rank, soooo wouldn't be too surprised if this guy is behind the "Super Duper Urgent Special Mission" Laguna and company get called for at the end of the flashback.
I can't recall if this flashback is the first we hear of one of the game's main leitmotifs or not, but I do know it's one place it makes an appearance.
AND THEN THEY F-
No, wait, Laguna had to leave, guess they didn't. Poor Goober.
"Who the fuck is Laguna" is a question that plagued me as well as a kid, so it was nice to finally see it answered when I played through FFVIII properly,
Do keep up the wild speculations, Omi, it's what keeps us Spoiler Thread users well fed!
NitroFumetsu
Blaze of Glory
The 'Blind Diablos' strat is only possible because you can draw Blind from Grenaldo, the previous boss.
That's it, that's the only source before you get the lamp.
This shit is why people rotate thier saves.
That's it, that's the only source before you get the lamp.
This shit is why people rotate thier saves.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Nah, summoning chains from nowhere is Ghost Rider's schtick if we're going Marvel.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
What? Why?
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
What a bizarre choice. I got the magazine in balamn hotel and thus the same scene as Omi, and there was no indication that affects anything else.
Has the level-based enemy scaling in a game where leveling up does next to nothing for your combat abilities taught you nothing about the level of game design decisions FF8 is operating on?
To be fair, it's not like you have to fight Diablos here and now, you just happen to have the lamp this early. Considering there's actually an empty space on the GF screen between Siren and Diablos, I wouldn't be surprised if the devs intended for it to be something you tackle closer to the end of Disk 1 when you have more resources at your disposal/a better understanding of the game's mechanics, and pulling it off early is just a nice bonus if you manage it.
Well okay but that's cheating all The Black Mages remixes are toppest tier.
Replay fodder. May also be censored even in spoiler.
Also, this: Sir Laguna's Page and this Timber Maniacs, ie, it's a setup for a joke, but they also wanted to leave a 'secret' scene without the joke, so don't pick it up or pick up the alternate, or pick up after the vision.
I'm not sure what was the expected flow there because jrpg players are conditioned to run with the interact button pressed, but I suspect you're supposed to not get the hotel version normally.
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- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Oh come on, don't hide such huge things behind spoiler tags. Really, dude? We have a thread for this.
Here's a tip for one of the future switches with Laguna. At one point, you'll be in a town with an item shop, and some extra money. Make sure you spend that money before you wake up - you get to keep the items you buy, you don't keep the money.Our characters dream of three Galbadian soldiers.
Which we are in control of. (Although all we can do is move forward.)
Yes, that's right: We switched to a new party.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
You'll note that I deleted and replaced the contents of your spoilers with utter irrelevancy before posting it, because I'm not an idiot and already thought of that.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
I didn't say you called me an idiot. Also, you still haven't deleted it, so I don't think I'm assuming anything.