Final Fantasy general

VIII at the very at least was a triumph of character animation to what came before and after on the playstation, VII's battle animations where obviously very primitive and IX's comparatively much more simple.

IX wasn't exactly groundbreaking or anything. It ran on Nostalgia Goggles.

It had great gameplay, great cast, and a good plot.

But yeah the models haven't exactly aged well. Zidane looks so ugly.

It did being an anniversary title,and they knew it,which is why they went the extra mile with so many characters

VIII doesn't have it so bad, really. It has a reputation for being not so great among FF fans and RPG players, but it has more mainstream recognition and popularity than most FF games including IX. It still gets some of most frequent discussion among FF games on other sites I've been, even if the discussions have a lot more arguments than most games.

I think they went "back to the roots" with IX's style alittle too premature. After all, that was the style for the first five games, VI was a bridge to the more futuristic VII and VIII games. So after two games, it was time to go retro again? That should have been a later game, to help build an actual nostalgic feel to it longer than 2 weeks ago (Like VH 1 doing their nostalgia I Love The Decade series for the 2000s while we were still in the 2000s!).

I just don't find the way leveling up works in that game or the Draw mechanic very appealing.

I wouldn't even say that IX had a good plot, I mean the heroes basically going for a constant string of failures right up until the last moment got really old.

I found it odd how the characters always start the first few battles after joining either getting few draws or failing to draw. Then a couple of fights later, it's 9 draws every time. Makes that beginning aspect so pointless.

VIII does have alot of customization options, but its either not enough freedom until the second half when G Fs come more varied in their abilities, or it's ignored because GF spam 99% of all fights. And, of course, because the stat boosts were tied to magic stock, you avoided using magic unless it was weaker versions.

I don´t think VIII´s mechanics are that intuitive, either. It seems like most people I´ve spoken to don´t really understand how Drawing stuff or the finer mechanics of the game even work.

That said, I've mentioned before that I like how the leveling in VIII shows how important Guardian Forces are for the Seeds.

If you compare the stats of even the most basic starter enemies like the soldiers in the beginning to the Seeds, you can see that the enemies' stats will always be higher than that of the Seeds if they don't have a GF junctioned. And that makes sense — without the power boost from the Guardian Forces, the Seeds are just a bunch of teenagers with combat training. The soldiers otoh are seasoned adult combatants so of course they'd be stronger if the Guardian Forces aren't a factor.

VIII is like if people complained about how easy FF6 and FF7 are, so Square decided to make a game easier than the two of them, just to prove the complainers wrong.

Except VIII is not that easy and it has its fair share of difficulty if you grind.

VIII is pretty easy to break, but also complicated to learn to actually break.

When I talk about game difficulty, I'm assuming that the player is using every tool at their disposal, every Game-Breaker and Good Bad Bug is exploited to hell and back.

By that metric, FF 8 is one of the easiest games in the series.

I don't know how reasonable a metric I'd consider that. The average player just isn't going to play games that way.

Edited by Perseus on Jan 27th 2022 at 5:09:48 AM

Yeah, I personally consider game difficultly based on the average playthough where you use the mechanics presented to you, but don't spend much more than a few minutes tweaking things optimally.

I consider most Final Fantasy's fairly difficult as games go, because you don't fall into breaking them by accident. Unless you're the type to try out everything possible, its hard to stumble on broken strategies.

Like I know VIII can be broken apart at pretty much anytime, but if you play it blind its going to be a fair bit harder.

Whereas I think something like Xenoblade 1 falls on the easier side because of the way level scaling and accuracy works in that game. And how sidequesting, a pretty basic response to feeling underleveled, will quickly make you strong enough to deal with whatever boss is in your path.

Early FF games can actually be pretty tough especially in the dungeons with no checkpoints if you don't go out of your way to grind.

I guess a problem can be determining what an "average playthrough" even is.

Though I suppose I'm just one of those people who will try every Game-Breaker in a title, even if the game isn't particularly hard on a normal playthrough.

Most aren't going to figure out wouldn't have figured out how draw-ing can break VIII. That takes some obsessive farming with a mechanic that isn't visually interesting and often very RNG.

Its possible in the digital age where that info/strategy can easily be discussed on forums, but remember VIII came out when Game FAQS was four years old and most social media/gaming websites probably didn't exist or weren't as accessible/user-friendly.

Edited by FOFD on Jan 27th 2022 at 3:10:16 PM

Draw is based on your level and magic stat vs the opponent's level and the spell's draw resist with a standard FF's 10%ish variance added in.

The spell's draw resist varies massively by spell.

Add "hidden variables the average player not a PC will almost never witness" to the list of "things you didn't know could break the game."

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1yjnpw7cz5cg4ml0iq40h5wk&page=2782#comment-69533

That's pretty much how V's story goes, too.

Granted that turned out to be a good thing mostly kinda by the end I recall, since the world couldn’t stay split forever. Of course Exdeath wanted the world fixed for    THE VOID!   

I wouldn't say IX has the heroes failing across the story any more than other FF games or just other games in general that have stories in which the villain is actively doing things at the same time as the heroes. The only notable problematic aspect to me is Beatrix, which is kind of her own problem.

It was kind of then or never, considering Sakaguchi was a big part of making IX and he left Square altogether just a couple years later.