Archived Discussion Videogame / FinalFantasyVIII

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

This editor won't comment... he'll just say that Final Fantasy IX, the next game in the series, was a return to the more fantasy-based roots of old.

SethWell this editor loved the game, come on the Triple Triad card system rocked and the lore was much more developed than Nine)

HeartBurn Kid: Well, this editor doesn't want to see the game's entry turned into an argument... but now that we're safely over on the discussion page, let me just say that the elaborate Guardian Force animations got really tedious, really fast. And I also found the characters entirely too emo.

Tanto: Well, that's kind of the point of the series. It appeals to adolescents with pretensions, and values style and technical whizziness over actual, y'know, gameplay.

Seth: In my case it was the first RPG i had ever played and the FMV was breathtaking. it isn't much now but back then it was awesome. It wasn't as good as 7 and 6 is the best for character development but 8 was the first game i ever played to 100% completion - all sub quests, cards, maked out players Bonus Dungon and Bonus Boss ect ect..

Boobah: Can Irvine be a Ted Baxter when he inspired an Estrogen Brigade?

Roland: This editor liked it as well because of the characters. And that's debatable- certainly his self-image is inflated...

crapface: This editor was turn on to the series buy this game.

wia: This was the first FF game this editor played as well. Went through the first time and got stuck by the lunatic pandora (second visit) because I hadn't bothered drawing during battle. How I made it to the end of disk 3 with only 4 G Fs (Quezacotl, Shiva, Ifrit, Diablos) and limited magic I will never know. Needless to say, things went far better the second time around, when I realised 2 things: 1. drawing during battle makes for stronger characters and more G Fs and 2. the damage cap makes using your characters to lay down the hurt a far better prospect then doing it with summons.

Figuring out how to get 'hero' potions from the triple triad cards was just icing on the cake...

I have to disagree with Tanto to an extent. FF games before this point were generally fairly simplistic, technically. This is the first game in the series to feature something realistically human. Voiceovers wouldn't appear for another 2 games. You could say 7 or 8's about the start of the technical bloat in the series, but it wasn't there much before.

MRL: For this editor, the main flaw was the Junction System. Besides being an easy Game-Breaker when one saw what spells were effective for junctioning into which stats, the big problem is that it's actively encouraging the player not to use magic. Any time using an ostensibly useful skill, particularly one as genre-iconic as spells are to [=RPGs=], is actually detrimental to your gameplay, there's a design flaw.

Unknown Troper: Never really struck me as being detrimental; more like the game was forcing you to carefully ration and choose your spells against the right opponents and at the rigth times. Plus, the proper refining skills pretty much ensure that anything worth using is readily available anyway.

Kjorteo: This editor had FF 8 and Vandal Hearts II at the same time, and for a while attempted to play them both equally so one wouldn't overshadow the other. It worked for a while, until he hit an almost literal (with a controller instead of a book, but still) Wall Banger in the freaking orphanage scene, then another one in Squall and Rinoa's completely random space rescue. Then they landed and Rinoa got captured and taken to some place called the Sorceress Memorial or something, which wasn't as horrible in and of itself, but...well, if the first two were the plot's mortal injuries, the third was about when it finally died from its wounds. He suddenly realized that an extremely important character was in peril and he just couldn't bring himself to care. He was supposed to go to this Sorceress Memorial or whatever to save Rinoa, but the thought of trudging through another dungeon to go pick up a character he never did like from the very beginning...he just couldn't bring himself to want do it. Screw Rinoa, the Sorceress Memorial could keep her for all he cared. Conversely, it was about at this time that Vandal Hearts II got amazing, so he forgot this "must play them both equally" rule, gave up on FF 8, and beat VH 2. To this day, VH 2 is one of his favorite games and screw FF 8.

• Unknown Troper: Point of irony - the Sorceress Memorial isn't a dungeon at all.
  • Don: Plus Rinoa had some very good reasons to "randomly go out into space."

Shale: Selphie's a Yandere? Did somebody get that confused with Genki Girl?

• Cliché: From my experience, many Final Fantasy forums tend not to bring this up, because they failed to catch the subtext. Either that or it's just T Vtropes looking too far into things. It could also be the usual "combination of the above".
• Rebochan: Probably because she's the first one to suggest the most violent and messy solution to a problem, to the other characters' shocked reactions. I don't think that's quite Yandere though, because she doesn't actually do it...
• Joie De Combat: The baseline definition of Yandere sums up as "seems cute and harmless on the surface but is dangerously unstable underneath." Selphie is a mild case, but the combination of her normal Genki Girl behavior and her predisposition toward excessive violence qualifies her.
• Rebochan: But she's not really psychotic at all. Excessive suggestions of violence that are played for comedy seem a bad fit for Yandere. It's not like she actually went on a murderous rampage. I'm mainly making a sticking point of this if only because there's been effort on the Yandere page to keep it from suffering Flanderization.
  • Rebochan: I added a Tsundere entry for her - the Type B describes her to a T.
    • Joie De Combat: Split the difference, put her in Beware the Nice Ones.
    • Rebochan Ooo. Even better.

Rebochan: This editor not only remembers a time before this game, but picked it up on release, loved it to death, and still smacks her head on the table over the idiots in the fanbase that were trashing it since the first press release that haven't gotten over it a decade later.

• rsm109: I was late to the party so missed all the initial fuss, and it was excellent.

Rebochan: Okay, I'll bite - why is What Happened to the Mouse? relevant to this game? Everything is rather neatly resolved at the end of the game.

• Don: Because people do not pay attention to the plot and expected everything that happens to get resolved through a quick jaunt through a dungeon.
  • Rebochan: Well, my original comment was because that trope was added with no explanation of what was left unresolved - which is kind of important. So I eventually took it off since nobody could explain it.

"Getting it that early also means that Squall will almost *always* perform that Limit Break (his limits are randomly selected from the ones he knows)"

PuppetChaos: I don't think that's quite how Squall's Limit Break exactly worked, I believe that if you went straight from the Revolver to the Lionheart, you learned all the Limit Breaks in between. Even if it did work that way, you'd still have his first Limit Break in there, so no 100% chance. Does anyone know if that's the case? Also, two cents on my opinion of the game: I hearts it.

• Rebochan: I haven't tried it myself, but my understanding is that one of the reasons people try to get Lionheart on Disc 1 (besides the obvious) is because of this. I'd also like to add that while it is still a Gamebreaker, I tried this on my most recent playthrough and found that getting 20 Elnoyle cards on Disc 1 is so long and tedious that I gave up and just moved on.
• Zef: Limit Breaks for Squall's gunblades only stack the techniques associated with them. I went straight from Revolver to Punishment, and Squall's only Limit Break finishers were Rough Divide and Blasting Zone. Fated Circle never showed up.
• Joie De Combat: I recall there being something tricky about it, beyond simply the end moves correlating to which models Squall's gunblade is actually upgraded to. I think the Weapons Monthly magazines may also be involved somehow.

Rebochan: Since this has popped up before, why does the Die for Our Ship entry keep getting added for Rinoa? The only circumstance I can even think of was when Squall/Laguna incest shipping was popular.

• Joie De Combat: I suppose it depends on which end of the fandom you hang out in, but in my experience Rinoa has a pretty thriving Hatedom, and I've seen a lot of fanfics in which she either goes batshit crazy evil or simply breaks Squall's heart by being a shallow, self-absorbed nitwit who doesn't actually care about him, leaving the field open for Seifer or Zell or Irvine or Laguna or Quistis to pick up the pieces.
  • rsm109: The persistent "Ultimecia is future!Rinoa" Epileptic Tree doesn't help matters.
    • Rebochan: I know she has a Hatedom, I just wondered if she had a persistent shipping Hatedom. I did finally discover the thriving Seifer/Squall fandom, but my only surprise was not finding it sooner. Oh well, at least I know. The entry kept getting added with no elaboration besides who it was, so I seriously had no clue.

eowynjedi - A guy who has forcefully withdrawn himself from all social life because of a single childhood trauma (Squall), a woman who shoves all of her negative emotions under a rug and thinks she's in love with her student (Quistis), a cheerful spazzy girl who is delighted at the thought of any kind of explosion (Selphie), a guy who hides behind a confident facade and then cracks under the pressure of an actual mission (Irvine), a girl who lost her mother and tried escaping her overbearing father by taking up a rebellion as a pet cause (Rinoa), and a guy who wouldn't let go of his warped childhood dream even when it became clear to everyone around him that he was being manipulated (Seifer). And the majority of them have had their childhood memories chiseled away by giant summoned beings that live in their heads. Also, most of them are like this because they were orphans who were put into a military school to learn how to kill people and blow stuff up for money (and oh by the way kill your foster mom if she turns evil, not that you remember who she is). How is this not Dysfunction Junction?

Rebochan - Only one person is ever really angsting about anything full-tilt. The rest of them have a moment or two, but they're otherwise well-adjusted and they don't angst-24/7. Dysfunction Junction is supposed to cover a cast of people with extremely screwed up lives that are front and center. You have to really re-interpret and psycho-analyze the characters in VIII to find these elements of them - again, except for Squall. A Dysfunction Junction cast has these front and center. At least that's my impression of the trope.

Unknown Troper: I agree with rebochan here. Squall is the only one whose issues we really see play out; most of the rest of the characters (save Seifer, who is just insane) are well-adjusted in spite of their rough and unusual circumstances.

Alkirin - Between how the gunblade operates mechanically in gameplay, in junction with how it is displayed in KH and Dissidia; ontop of it's description in the Ultimania (which says nothing of vibration)...I really don't see how Vibroweapon is an apt description, moreso than a mundane type of power weapon. Particularly in how we see it upgraded to Lionheart, where the Vibroweapon bit seems to fall off entirely.

The Tambourine Man: I played this game recently. It's become one of my favorites. Good plot, good gameplay, and what may be the only remantic subplot I've ever actually liked. I always find it ironic, though, that people tend to see romantic subtext everywhere it isn't, and, when presented with actual subtext, miss it completely.