...Why not just put Diablos on the Brothers/Carbuncle team so they can recover HP on counterattacks then use Darkness on their own turn?
I could do that, but then I would be hard pressed for ability slots - Diablos has Darkside, Mug and Enc-None, and with Brothers and Carbuncle taking up slots for Cover and Counter things start feeling a little crowded.
Also, what do you MEAN you don't know what a lion is Rinoa? And yet you know what a Moomba is, which is *just* a cutesy, mascot-ified lion? ...All this time...did Rinoa just think Squall was going around wearing jewelry based on an edgy version of a kid's cartoon character? IS RINOA IN LOVE WITH A GUY WEARING THE IN-UNIVERSE EQUIVALENT OF THOSE
BOOTLEG BART SIMPSON T-SHIRTS FROM THE 90'S?!
This post has been a revelation: Squall's favorite Sonic the Hedgehog character is Shadow. In our world, he would have Shadow merch in his bedroom. This is undeniable truth.
Well, at least it makes them memorable, doesn't it? Which I'm not sure could really be said of the Tonberry before FFVIII.
Now, Tonberry actually has been in the series since FFV; it was in the Yeti's Cave in FFVI, and while it wasn't possible to meet it as a random encounter in FFVII, it could be fought at the Battle Square, and the final dungeon had the "master" variant. However, I think FFVIII really is the game who raised the Tonberry to iconic status and made it into one of the series' mascots, specifically due to how memorable it is as a real slug match of a fight. Plus that special prize if you kill enough of them.
But what's your take on it? Would you say that Tonberry made itself known as a series regular in FFV-to-FFVII, or would you say this version is the most memorable one yet?
Tonberry in V was notable for being a huge HP wall with a neat visual gimmick, but it wasn't altogether that difficult. I'd say in the context of its original game it was a fun novelty like a lot of the game's other monsters that didn't endure to become series icons like the Skull Eater. I think by the time it shows up in VII, though, as the Master Tonberry variant, it's already pretty established; its gimmick has been consistent across the three games it's appeared in, Everybody's Grudge gets its first appearance as its iconic move, and it's high level enough that it's a genuine threat in the endgame dungeon in an otherwise very easy game. Even more importantly, the switch to 3D has slightly altered its design to the now familiar large head and rounded features, making it cuter-looking, rather than the more slender, sharp design of V and VI.
So I'd say by VIII the Tonberry has established itself as one of the series' mascots, and its return is a familiar face.
So, obviously the fact that the game is on four disks makes this attempted final battle fakeout something that never could have succeeded. However, as I've asked in the past for other games, I'm curious: if the game was a NES one on a single cartridge, or perhaps more believably a PS2 game on a single disk, do you think you would have been fooled in believing that this upcoming confrontation was the final fight, or would you have been able to tell that the game still had a lot in store?
And while we're at it, if you were to rank the various "fakeout endings" (facing Dark Knight Leon in Palamecia castle, ExDeath's castle, FFVI's floating continent, the first visit to Northern Crater) in the series so far, which would you say was the most convincing?
As usual, I don't think it's possible to be fooled if you're even halfway paying attention. Here, we still don't know what Laguna's deal is, we still have no clue what Ellone is and why she's trying to send us to the past, much of Cid and Edea's history remains obscured, and as usual the map is a killer give-away -
we still haven't visited Esthar. Plus, even accounting for the fact that each summon represents more mechanical overhead, we only have 9 GFs at this stage of the game; where's Bahamut? I do
not believe this is the first game in the series to not have the big dragon.
And besides - we haven't been to the moon yet.
Of all the games so far, I'd say II is the only one that can
truly bamboozle an attentive player, in large part because storytelling was so novel to the series at this stage that no standards had been established and anything could have gone. Sure, the Dark Knight hadn't been defeated and his identity not revealed yet, but maybe the game was just so early it was
bad at storytelling and forgot to close that thread, you know? Even so, if you'll recall, I
did try and hoodwink my thread by playing the fakeout ending as if it were the real one, and
@AKuz immediately called shenanigans.
I think VI does a good job of selling the Final Continent as endgame, the problem is that it's spoiled by mechanics. You just have to pay attention to your spells, weapons, and character levels to notice that some franchise staples are missing and there's some game left. VII with the first visit at the Northern Crater might actually be a better contender here; the game plays a funny trick by having Bahamut be relatively early, so you can
feel like you've reached peak summon, only for the game to reveal Neo Bahamut, Bahamut ZERO, Phoenix and the Knights of the Round in the 'true' endgame. You could easily be lured into a false sense of confidence and believe the game is simpler than it was, Cloud's unresolved psychological issues are not as big a deal as they might have appeared originally, and things will solve neatly soon. Unfortunately this is also the first game to be on multiple CDs so it is incredibly obvious that you're being tricked just by looking at your CD case.
Anyway, I believe you've now experienced every character's Limit, so you should have a good idea of how they're all different in terms of gameplay: Squall's is a rhythm game derived from the Gunblade trigger mechanic, Zell has the fighting-game style combo setup, Quistis has a collection of abilities with incredible variety of effect in Blue Magic, Selphie has her Slots with their risk/reward and "pray for something good" mechanic, Rinoa calls forth a random effect of variable potency, and Irvine has a button-masher on a timer.
Compared with the Limits in FFVII, and considering how both FFVII and FFVIII have otherwise next to no mechanical identity for their characters so that the Limits are how each character individuality is expressed in gameplay, would you say that FFVIII does a better job at it than FFVII, or are the extreme differences too much of a gimmick?
I have complicated feelings there, because I feel like the originality of the new Limits is hampered by the Limit
system. Because Limits only trigger in crisis, it's possible to spend long stretches of the game without ever seeing them, so they're never a
consistent feature of play, whereas in FF7 accumulated damage over time would ensure you saw your Limits at relatively predictable intervals. You can
game Limits in VIII by inflating HP count to make the crisis range larger and putting people in Blind or whatnot, but if you don't do that the pacing of Limit usage is very weird.
As for what the Limits themselves feel like, them each being a minigame of sort is definitely
interesting, but... Well, not to put too blunt a point on it but whenever I think "I might want to use Limits in this fight" I would put Quistis on my team just because her Limit
doesn't have a minigame, just a menu I can open up and pick from (and one of the option is an instant kill that works on nearly everything). Selphie is for my money the more
interesting, but it hurts me more than it benefits me because I always spend more time fishing for the strong slots than I should, effectively wasting character turns. Squall's is
fine, the rhythm game is okay; Zell's fighting game combo just doesn't jive with my brain and I fuck it up every time. So far, Rinoa has only ever used Angelo Cannon; I think her RNG-based Limits might have triggered like once in the whole game so far, if that, so her Limit system seems like a huge waste of time and mechanical space (given that Angelo Cannon isn't particularly strong). Irvine's Limit is boring, but mechanically refreshingly staightforward and effective.
Perhaps the worst sin of the FF8 Limit system is this: The best and most convenient Limits are the ones that are least trying to do something weird and cool. One-hit kills and spamming high-damage multi-hits that you can't fuck up with the wrong button presses beat everything short of the best results on Selphie's slots, which are unreliable.
Also, this made me finally realize why I am far more comfortable with Rinoa's pushing Squall's boundaries then I was with Aerith doing the same to Cloud; I mentioned back during the FFVII run that Aerith rubbed me the wrong way while Rinoa (which I didn't name at the time to avoid spoilers) did not, and I think this is the reason why. While they both do it with an intention to help their target open up, Rinoa's way of doing it is softer, and Squall's reception of it is less annoyed and more confused/amused, with more of the former at the beginning and more of the latter as the game goes on. Also, Rinoa seeks feedback from Squall and does express insecurities of her own, which makes the relationship feel more equal to me.
Is that just me? I feel like there might be something interesting to glean from comparing Aerith and Rinoa, but that might be something best left for the end of the game, I suppose. I just wanted to voice my opinion on this point.
I can't really say, because Aerith never bothered me; I think both are fine in their own way.
Squaresoft undoubtedly reuses their designs and built a mythos, but I doubt I'll ever see the day a FF game has 20+ espers.
I mean, VI had 27 Espers, and VII has 17 Summons, so you know, I could totally see another game going over the 20 mark again.
