why no love for FF8?

Because it's an incoherent mess of a game and a waste of good art assets and Nobuo Uematsu's magnum opus.

>>3933503
Hey Spoony, off twitter for a few minutes?

>>3933503

It's a complete mess because it was rushed. They wanted a sequel out as quickly as possible to cash in on FF7's success. And Square didn't understand the appeal of FF7. They thought it was because it was:

>cinematic story telling
>realistic
>detailed cut-scenes

So they doubled down on those. Oh sure, FF8 has a LOT of the above. But it has none of the charm of FF4-7.

>>3933605
Spoony still alive? I had no idea.

>>3933617
yea, and he's going full libtard against Mein Fuhur.

It's very sloppy but has some remarkable ideas in terms of its mechanics, it was just executed very poorly and ended up broken. It was the first major departure in its gameplay since FF2, and that's a good thing, the series was pretty stale in that department by that point.

The story is fucking weird and lopsided, a party based RPG just doesn't work when it's about only two characters. After FF6 and FF7, the rest of the cast in this game feel like side characters rather than main/supporting ones.

Other than that it's pretty good, it's my favorite one despite all its flaws and I hate Spoony and his autistic legion of redditors who make the same boring, tired jokes and criticisms of this game, especially when all of them worship FF4 which is equally as flawed.

>>3933495
I was going to write about 200 lines of opinions but that's autistic.
Real reason is: Not enough Laguna.

>>3933636
I learned to appreciate VIII after suffering through the XIII trilogy. I even put the time in, and beat VIII for the first time in several years.

>>3933617
now he only livestreaming
so...

I've played through FF8 three times, not never beaten it because each time I stop playing at Lunatic Pandora. Da fuk is up with that?

>>3933629
Glad to hear he's at least retained a few marbles.

>>3933495
It has the most boring opening of any FF game

>>3933790
You mean after the FMV, or including it?

>>3933790
A friend of mine lent me the game but I didn't have a memory card. Played the opening so many times, enjoyed it every time

>>3933939
The cinematic is great, but I think that anon meant the actual game opening, where you putz around the Garden for 90 minutes, reading tutorials.

>>3933495
It has terrible game mechanics that are too easily broken and usually devolve into just spamming GF's. Frankly, FF7 had similar problems but not as pronounced. My favorite thing about 9 is that it brought classes back, which kept every party member unique with balanced strengths and weaknesses.

The story isn't bad, but nor is it great. Could have used some more work.

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>>3933605
>Everyone who hates 8 is spoony

yeah or it's just not a good game. Maybe actually try defending it instead of crying about a discount e celeb

>>3933629
Kek what a fag.

I find that the gameplay of ff8 was nothing special, but not horrible. The story was okay but got, weird, at points. The music was top tier, and the graphics/art style was alright.

What really sells it for me though, is the world that it builds. A world coming back through an industrial build up after a civilization crash or two, trying to modernize with all the geopolitical issues that implies, while at the same time having this sub-race of ungodly powerful sorceresses that invariably wreck shit. The lengths people will go to to reach for that magic and so on. I would love to have other things set in that unnamed world at various points before and after the main game.

Still can't hear that theme without relaxing and wanting to just sit back for a bit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSt-fNv5d68

>>3934121
>posting the 30 minute version

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

You know it's eating up all our data (yes, on mobile) for no reason at all, when you could just post the normal 3 minute version?

>>3934137
haha, go fuck yourself, phoneposter

>>3934142
>>3934142
Yep, this website is cancerous and I'd better stop associating with gentlemen like you. I'd better do something valuable with my life. Thanks for the reminder and go fuck yourself too.

>>3933503
>uematsu's magnum opus
>not one-winged angel
If you'd argued Main Theme or Prelude, we could talk, but even he knows what his crowning achievement is.

>>3934068
Besides the story, the primary complaints deal with not understanding the junction system, not understanding the enemy scaling, not understanding the importance of the GF system, not understanding using Siren's ability to transform cards/enemy drops, and not understanding the importance of Triple Triad to get cards.

Only two of those are legitimate complaints (using Siren's ability to transform items and the importance of Triple Triad), because only those two are not explained in-depth with early game tutorials and can't be figured out with basic experimentation. That being said, neither of them is remotely necessary to successfully complete the game and only matter if you want to 100% it, which was never intuitive or easy in any Final Fantasy game without a lot of in-game research or guides.

So, besides the story (which I know is all anyone shows up for with a Final Fantasy game since 12 isn't universally recognized as the best), there's literally nothing wrong with 8 unless you're an idiot or a kid who didn't bother to read the basic, early tutorials and bother to experiment even the barest amount.

>>3934193
Don't the early tutorials basically tell you to draw from enemies to get magic? They literally point you in the wrong direction.

>>3934193
>there's literally nothing wrong with 8

It just lacks the little bit of magic to make the game "work" like FF6 or FF7 (or FF9).

FF8 has all the reasons to work... but it just doesn't.

>>3933979
>and usually devolve into just spamming GF's
But that's the worst and most inefficent way to play this game.

>>3933629

That's silly, no one cares who he is NOW...

>shitty storytelling
>shitty love angle
>shitty music
>shitty magic system
>squall is the new cloud

>>3933636

People are going to criticize your beloved pile of shit. Only a very small fraction of those people will be Spoony or a Spoony Disciple, mainly because the dude is such an ass he has very few Disciples left.

Final Fantasy 8 is Wasted Potential: The Game. The number of times it seems like it is almost, *almost*, ALMOST gonna pull off a last minute save are nearly too numerous to count, yet each time it

A. Genitally mutilates two more plot points for the one it just put to bed.

B. Takes something that was cool for the first few times and begins to fuck it into the ground.

C. Simply decides to ignore the gaping anus of a plothole it just tore in the hopes you will too (despite the unexplained blood and shit everywhere).

D. Abruptly does four U-turns and a loop-de-loop into the realm of insanity to show you something nearly context-less in the name of "we thought it would look cool".

>it's a keep your HP low and spam limit breaks episode

I liked playing cards, though.

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>>3933495
I like 8 a lot, but it isn't the best FF.

>>3934314

Low is a relative term. You can get crazy high HP and go down to a few thousand and you're still in the yellow

>>3934193
>not one-winged angel
It's a strong piece. But as far as the overall soundtrack goes, I think FF VIII is his greatest, most mature work. It's just too bad it didn't have as great a game backing it up.

>>3934301
>shitty music
Beside Eyes On Me perhaps, fuck you.

>>3934436

Totally agree. I feel 6 is prolly that sweet spot of "good score to go with good game", though.

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>>3933613
>FF7
>charm

All it has is angst and complete nonsense. The only charm is might have is that it was an "everything goes" mess, with sci-fi, cyberpunk(yes, both), fantasy, corporate plots, cross-dressing, distopia, hippie utopia(hippie ancients + gaia planet theory), far east, memory loss, multiple personalities, love triangle, giant robots, submarine battles.... it had so much fucking stuff crammed in while FF8 is well-planned and linear in comparison and is proper cyberpunk, with technology not really going far past 20th century level even in Esthar.

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>>3934451
>FF8 is well-planned
>cyberpunk

>>3934454
Nice argument right there. FF8 is infinitely more coherent than 7 jamming every cool idea a team of hundreds a people could think of in, regardless of consequences.

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>>3934461
>FF8
>more coherent

>>3934468
(You)

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>>3934451
>well-planned

>>3933495
I have a lot of love for the game

It's people complaining it's too hard due to the junction system (which I thought was easy to figure out).

>>3934301
I'll crap on FF8 of almost any other reason, but anyone with any sense to them has to admit it has a damn fine soundtrack.

>>3934584
Force Your Way will forever be one of my favourite boss themes.

Disk 2 is the best part of FF8.

Prove me wrong.

After the last thread I wrote a little bit about it, planning on making it a series of blog posts. This part is mostly about the story/characters.

https://pastebin.com/b0znK2Vf

>>3935031
If you search around a bit, you'll find plenty of well argued blogs defending it around to couple of years after its release. Won't change anyone's mind, but for the sake of yours I recommend reading them in order to strengthen your arguments. Also read the ones damming it in order to be able to provide counterpoints. Good luck, and god bless.

>>3934987
Ehh.. Disc 2 is only good after the prison section.

Disc 1 would be the true GOAT if you were allowed to take trains and boats from Balamb to Galbadia before the assassination mission.

Disc 3 is true goat after the Ragnorak, because of all the side quests being open and able to go to all the towns freely.

>>3934461

Norg alone says otherwise

>>3934193
People understand those systems just fine, they just don't like them.

The entire junctioning/GF system completely scrambles up the conventional Final Fantasy "incentives" when it comes to how to build your characters and how to approach combat. And lots of people don't like that.

Back in the day I remember people making very similar arguments about FF7 and the materia system, actually. Both games removed a lot of "innate" characteristics of the characters. Even the job system requires you to commit the character to a job for a while in order to get any benefit from it, and you can't just instantly switch between all the jobs without devoting time to all of them to unlock stuff.

>>3934437
Eyes On Me did start a disturbing trend of putting shitty J-Pop singles into the games for no fucking reason.

Other than that the music was great.

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I don't think the story itself is bad at all. The pacing and lack of focus on other party members weaken it though.
Of course not as many people would want it, but I think VIII would benefit a lot more with a remake than VII.

>>3935167

Melodies of Life was at least thematically and tonally appropriate

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>>3935031

You know Ive thought about it some and I think the game story works better if you remove the amnesia stuff entirely. Let's do some rewriting.

First off we have Squall. The hurt introvert saddened by the loss of his sister he doesn't remember. Eh. Doesn't work so good. But what if instead of a sister he doesn't remember he has a mother who betrayed them set their orphanage ablaze and Ellone was seeming lost in the incident. Now he has a reason to be such a introverted dick that's actually hard to argue. I mean sure it basically makes him Ryuudo but even Melfice wasn't the first guy to get possessed and go on a murder spree.

So now the kids are grown up and party of mercenary school. Squall wants to stop Edea for personal reasons (Unaware she was possessed) but Seifer believes Edea is innocent and wants to protect her. He feels like something had to happen to make her do what she did and this causes friction between them.

We also have everyone in the party's insistence on butting into Squall's business make more sense as his basically their brother and we can see why Quistis might fall for someone she's known for a long time and has been unable to help his hurt.

The big thing about the amnesia is that they wanted their big reveal. Thing is you can still do that. Have the party only allude to some "incident" but never linger on it because it's too painful and then when time comes and Rinoa insists on know what the fuck is happening they all tell the story about the orphanage to her.

Best part is you can have Rinoa's own sorceress awakening help shed light on what happened to Edea and her trying to stop Squall from fighting her and kill his innocent mother is what triggers him falling for her. She actually helps him look past his pain and rage against what happened. And even after the reveal Seifer is still pissed that Cid would try to kill his wife so he defects anyways.

Boom. A much more straightforward and I think stronger story.

>>3934193
GF's arent hard to understand, everyone gets it.

Its just stupid is all, and only makes the big issue with 6 and 7 even more prevalent in 8: everyone ends up the same/similar outside Limits, and why would you never use anyone besides Squall/Zell/Irvine/THE END in every case? It also harms and makes Magic pointless outside buffs and debuffs since it hurts your stats to cast while doing damage that isnt up to par.

Enemy level scaling in a JRPG is stupid. It doesn't do anything in FF8 except make random battles more tedious. They don't really hurt much more at all and take way longer to kill if you arent spamming limits. There's no benefit to it and only forces you to avoid battles.

>>3935263
The sound of that already makes Rinoa not the worst thing ever in FF so yeah its an improvement.

I miss good Spoony.

>>3935230
I still didn't care too much for it.

In retrospect, FFXII is so refreshing. I have never had any interest in online RPGs, so I never was going to play XI or XIV. When I saw what XIII looked like I had no feeling like I had to experience it. It seemed like a more concentrated form of the Tetsuya Nomura Era stuff that I got burned out on.

>>3935076
Thank you very much.

>>3935263
That's something I've noticed too: it takes a minimal amount of effort to fix a lot of the weaker points. There was no excuse for the storyboarding team.

>>3935374

It's what happens when people think their stories have to be the next big complicated super deep thing. I mean Im not a pro writer, I just spit that out in a minute or so I had before work, so its pretty clearly intentional.

>>3933495
8 killed the series for me. So much so that I couldn't even enjoy 9 and stopped playing, despite people here claiming its one of the best.

>>3935941

That's some next level autisim. They play nothing alike

>>3935941
>despite people here claiming its one of the best
It is, but you need to go through an existential crisis before you can appreciate it.
And I'm not joking, if you're a man child who hasn't put down their children's entertainment long enough to contemplate your own morality then you won't get the appeal of IX.

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>>3933495
I thought Squall was interesting at first, but when his backstory was revealed I actually started to hate him.

>abloobloobloo im an orphan trained to be a warrior

Except that everyone else in the game went through the same experience and were able to get over it and move on with their lives. What's worse is that he has nothing else to his personality besides his angst. He has no other character flaws or traits to make him relatable. And of course everyone loves him for it because no matter how much of a rude prick he is to everyone around him they still want his cock. At some points I wanted grab Squall by the neck and tell the mopey faggot to man the fuck up and grow a pair.

>>3934451
>with technology not really going far past 20th century level even in Esthar.

Explain this shit then.

>>3936054

The setting in 8 seemed to have no idea what technological level it wanted it be

>>3934584

>>3934967
This

The Castle and all the final boss themes are top tier too.

>>3934308
I like and agree with this post.

>>3934291
It is however, the easiest and is very effective up until the final boss decides to kill the GFs you summon.

>>3936405

yeah but by then you're spamming lionheart

>>3935161
>Even the job system requires you to commit the character to a job for a while in order to get any benefit from it, and you can't just instantly switch between all the jobs without devoting time to all of them to unlock stuff.
Are you talking about FF5 specifically? Because the plain old vanilla job system from FF3 is literally about swapping roles in an instant, there is no character 'building', a character that's been a Fighter for 50 levels and is now suddenly a Black Mage is just as good a BM as one that's been magey for 50 levels. That's the purest form of the job system.

The garden fight part was hype, too bad it's all railroad and matters little.
Expected more since they made Fort Condor a minigame.

>>3936410
>FF3 is literally about swapping roles in an instant, there is no character 'building',
job levels matter, a Thief for example can't steal good items until his job level is high enough

>>3936410
>Because the plain old vanilla job system from FF3 is literally about swapping roles in an instant, there is no character 'building',

There's also no character.

>>3936085
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

>>3935292

We all do, Anon. But the crazy got to him, and I'm pretty sure it's never letting go.

>>3936054
>>3936085
>Tech
Keep in mind, there were three general technology levels present.

The Centra (which is things like the gardens) that had a large and self-contained magi-tech civilization based partly around harnessing sorceresses and their knights. This level was thoroughly demolished by a lunar cry roughly a century before the game starts, putting the other tech levels/civilizations at the 'just recovering from an apocalypse scenario' level of development.

Esthar, which had a much better foundation of recovered and new technology from the old Centra civilization, enough so to be considered their inheritors and the ones who still knew what the hell was going on everywhere, hence their ability to cloak their nation and use para-magic.

Dollet/Galbadia/Timber, which didn't manage to hang on to any of the magitech and had to make to with purely mechanical technology and the occasional new advancement in that field, putting them at a mostly modern level after a generation of recovery and clean up.

>>3936510
Makes ya wonder why the Centra didn't have the foresight to nuke the moon.

how many hours before ff8 gets good?

>>3936554
You don't understand. The first disc IS the good part. It all goes downhill once it ends.

>>3936554
I would argue that instead of >>3936594 that the first disc is the most COHERENT. There are good bits in later discs but they are sprinkled inamongst an increasingly erratic plot.

>>3936658
Coherency is but one of several measures of goodness. They aren't mutually exclusive.

>>3936664
I didn't say they were, what I meant was there are good bits in later discs, it's just that unlike disc 1 where most follow one after the other you instead have to slog through more and more of the retarded plot.

But then again it's subjective as to how good the good bits are and whether they're worth enduring the rest. If >>3936554 is playing FF8 for the first time I would just suggest playing through regardless, enjoy the good, enjoy laughing at the bad

>>3936554
Spoilers ahead, not actually going to spoil them since I'm just covering the first disc of a 20 year old game

>Entry
Good and enjoyable. Should be able to get immersed, talk to all of your peers, get your first deck of cards, equip your GF's and set up their abilities in the order you want to learn their skills, hit up the training center solo for a good session, play cards, hopefully get a rare one, or lose your deck since you're new and suck dick.. Maybe give that cute cadet a tour of the new garden, and ultimately meet up with Quistis at the front gate

>Fire Cave
Yadda yadda, banter with Quistis AKA best girl, too bad Squall isn't interested, anyway. Beat Ifrit, get a new GF to junction, go draw some basic magic from the mountain area (I like to stock 100 Cures on my dudes just for some comfy health at the start)

>Mission time
So, tour Balamb again in costume, and get ready for the exciting Dollet mission. The game picks up pretty dramatically here, as it gives you Seifer in your party, with enough GF's to go around. Proceed with confidence, and enjoy the comfiest town in it's least comfy state. Don't forget to have the draw ability on for the boss fight, or you'll be hurting until Disc 4.

>SeeD deployment
If you're here, let me know and I'll discuss in detail how to fully enjoy it.

>>3936706
>>3936554

8 should have started with the Dollet mission. Man, it dicks around for like 1-2 hours before antyhing happens.

>>3936710
I like the comfy slow intro. Get a tour of the garden, play the card game, learn some basics in the training center/fire cave. The Dollet mission has such a strong false sense of urgency, I'd feel too stressed to have that as an opener.

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Things I remember from FF8

- playing cards
- reloading the game because fuck you I won't let you spread RANDOM
- that stupid dance/parade scene
- driving around in weird looking cars for half a minute
- cool airship
- can't land airship anywhere because everything is bubbled up
- 3 minute summon
- running up chains to some weird theme park castle

>>3935230
Melodies of Life is a clear example where the English translation is better than the original Japanese. And that's not just bias. The words fit with the song better in English, whereas there's tons of extra syllables they have to awkwardly force into the song in Japanese.

>>3937431
>- reloading the game because fuck you I won't let you spread RANDOM

You know you can abolish random from every single region, right?

Also real men play with random on.

>>3937431
>he doesn't trash his bullshit cards to have a good deck even on Random rule

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I never beat this game. Just a question, is keeping one of your characters at a super low level while making everyone else a beefcake a viable strategy to take down the Weapons in this game? My friend would convert a one-time card into a bunch of holy wars for the invincibility, but I thought that was lame. I just assumed the fight was pretty much impossible, but I never had a chance to see. Are there other good strategies?

>>3937528
I can't speak for Ultima, but Omega is a constant 100, no matter.

>>3937452
>He doesn't just reset the game whenever a crap rule is forced on him.

>>3936410
I'm the anon you're responding to.

The reason I wasn't aware of that is because FF3 is one I've played the least of (actually I've never played any of them after XII either, I'm talking about the "classic" ones).

So, I didn't actually realize that about the original, FFIII job system. Lesson learned!

I've played a little bit of the 3D mobile version, couldn't really get into it though. And obviously it's very altered from the original form.

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>>3933495
Because idiots don't realize GFs are nothing but suits of armor.

>>3934169
don't forget, you're here forever

>>3937528
No, that wouldn't work. Even if bosses scaled like normal monsters they'd scale to your highest level member. If it did work though, it would be just as lame a 'strategy' as abusing invincibility.

>>3937585
You know instead of wasting your time like this, you could have 1) abolished rules you don't like for every region 2) set the win rule as "all" so you win all the adversaries cards instead of just one

also you make it sound liked there are several "crap rules". I understand not willing to play with randoms, but Plus and Same Wall make triple triad a lot better.