Recently @zombiepie and I wrote a lengthy series of blogs about our experiences playing FFVIII and 90s adventure games. For months we both slowly went mad as we played our respective games and wrote up our experiences with them. @zombiepie may have gone a little bit madder than me considering he made FFVIII his game of the year, but who can really measure madness?

After our blog series completed, we recorded two lengthy podcasts to talk over the games we played in the hopes of getting some kind of closure. I needed to know how someone could appreciate the puzzles in Riven and ZP needed to know stuff like "what the hell happened at the end of the game?" and "who am I?". I posted both of the podcasts to my personal blog, but if you followed our ridiculous odyssey and wanted to know how it ended, here are the two debrief podcasts.

Myst, Riven, and Pajama Sam 90s Adventure Game Extravaganza

FFVIII Claims Another Soul

The Myst podcast is mostly a discussion of what I appreciated about the games with ZP providing context and explanation where needed. I critique some of the design of the Cyan games and praise some of the design of the Pajama Sam games, but the podcast is mostly observational. The FFVIII podcast is a 3 hour vision quest where I try to answer ZP's basic questions about FFVIII. We talk about stuff like the design of the game's combat system, whether the developers knew they were making a breakable game, the characterization flaws that litter FFVIII, the plot holes that the game fails to fill in, the jaw dropping moments of awe-inspiring earnestness, and the acid trip that is the end of the game.

This blog series was so successful that we're going to be expanding on it in some cool ways in the near future. I'll just say that this year's Community Endurance Run might have a lot of Final Fantasy in it and leave it at that.

Here's an archive of our blog posts if you missed them:

Me: Lost in the Myst: Part 1

Lost in the Myst: Part 2- I Wish I Could Save

Lost in the Myst: Part 3- Leaving the Myst

Lost in the Myst: Part 4- Riven Rysing

Lost in the Myst : Part 5- Riven is Trying to Kill Me

Lost in the Myst: Part 6- Finishing Riven

Lost in the Pajamas: Part 1- Hunting Darkness

Lost in the Pajamas: Part 2- Top 8 Things About Pajama Sam 1

Lost in the Pajamas: Part 3- The top 7 Things About Pajama Sam 2

Deepish Look: Riven: The Sequel To Myst- This Game Is The Best/Worst

ZP:

Playing My First Final Fantasy Game - Parts 1-8: Getting Use to Final Fantasy VIII

Playing My First Final Fantasy Game - Parts 9-20: Final Fantasy VIII is Breaking Me

Playing My First Final Fantasy Game - Parts 21-37: The Quest to Defeat Disc One

Playing My First Final Fantasy Game - Parts 38-55: HELP! This Game is Melting My Brain!

Playing My First Final Fantasy Game - Parts 56-72: Everyone Was Right...I Was Not Ready for Final Fantasy VIII

Playing My First Final Fantasy - Parts 73-94: When Your Story Doesn't Make Sense...Just Add SPACE!

Playing My First Final Fantasy - Parts 95-115: Is This the Real Life, or is This Just Fantasy?

Playing My First Final Fantasy - Parts 116-134: It's Over...It's Finally Over! I Am Finally Free!

ZombiePie's 2015 Anime and Video Game Award Show

whether the developers knew they were making a breakable game

That's a bit of a none-question, every RPG that doesn't put upper limits on progression is breakable with enough time and FF8 is no where near as easily and quickly broken as some others of the series like FF2: The actual FFII, you spend more time hitting yourself than monsters.

FF5: Dual Wield + !Spellblade + !Rapid Fire. I am death incarnate.

FF6: Relic combo brokenness off the charts. Not to mention glitches like "Vanish+Doom/X-Zone" and "Psycho Cyan" being the most notorious examples.

Nice! I'll try to give these a listen at some point.

I tried to re-play FFVIII not too long ago and found that, much like XI, the beginning of the game is just too slow and plodding to really get me to give it much time before moving on to other stuff. If they just had a boost mode that started each of your first few characters off with 99 of fire, ice, and lit cards, that would've probably propelled me forward a bit.

I have to admit I've very much enjoyed all this faux agony and utter bewilderment caused by playing some of the 90's greatest games in both your blog series and the podcasts.

Or maybe you guys would think I have terrible taste in games.

@redking56: Those are broken, but examples you provided actually take time and effort to execute. You can break FFVIII in like 10 minutes if you know what you're doing. I have never seen a 40 hour JRPG that is as easily and efficiently exploitable. Usually the broken stuff is reserved for people who do all of the side quests and burn untold hours on the game.

@rorie:The PC version does have that booster if you want to go that route. FFVIII does start a bit slowly, but it really picks up stream at the end of disc 1. If you don't want to use the boosters, there is a fairly easy way to break the game about 20 minutes in if you'd like to try that. All you have to do is beat the first boss, then fight fish on the beaches of the first island until Shiva learns Ice Magic Refine and Quetzalcoatl learns Card and Card Mod. Once Shiva has Ice Magic Refine you can turn the fish fins you naturally receive from the fish into water spells that you can put on Squall's strength stat. With that 10-20 minutes of grinding you will overpower everything through the end of disc 1. You can then use Card Mod to get you 100 uses of a bunch of good spells without fighting. The real trick to replaying FFVIII is getting Encounter None early and turning off random battles. It saves so much time.

The same point can be made for the others, if you know what you're doing you can min-max easily in every rpg. Some of it requires time but that's no different from grinding Ulitma spells and leveling GF refine commands if you really want to break the game.

The only way to stay on top in FFVIII is to know exactly what items you need and which GF ability to level whereas in FFII you can intuitively understand how to get stronger and just hold down the confirm button and dish out attacks forever and be able to kill the final boss in two hits from the start of the game.

@redking56: Yeah, but in FFVIII you can turn off random battles, never level up, and still beat the final boss handilly. Like those other games can be broken, but FFII is the only one that comes close in terms of time to break and ease of breaking. And even when you break FFII you still have to fight random battles. In FFVIII you don't even have to see a random enemy after halfway through disc 1 if you don't want to.

@slag: Aren't you a JRPG person? I doubt your taste in games differs that much from mine.

I played through Final Fantasy VIII about 15 times as a kid in a variety of ways, from low-level runs to level 100 for all, and many of my games ran ~120 hours. I never did the Enc-None play, though. All I ever used that skill for were dungeons that were heavily puzzle oriented and I just wanted to burn through them after several prior experiences (Tomb of the Unknown King is a great example) or running across the two islands littered with hidden draw points, Island(s) Closet to Heaven/Hell.

Just wanted to clarify I used Enc-Half quite a bit but always felt Enc-None was a bridge too far other than a few select circumstances.

It has certainly be a ride hasn't it?

@nodima: Once you live that Enc-None life you won't go back. I can beat the game in 15 hours now without trying and it's all thanks to Enc-None.

Yep, and I love how broken that battle system is. Spending four hours at the beginning hitting yourself cuts many hours off of the end and makes the game a cake walk.

@thatpinguino: Yup but I'm also a big Myst/Adventure game guy too.

Well except for Riven, that game is maddeningly obtuse.

So what's Zombiepie gonna make you play in exchange for FFIX? Fatty Bear?

@teddie: I would play the shit out of some Fatty Bear, but no. We're talking over some potentially mirrored features for the Community Endurance Run. We're also going to have a little bit of vote with your donations, but that's all I'll say for now.

@slag:I love Riven, but also fuck Riven.

@thatpinguino: Riven is both the worst and best of the Myst games. And while I believe FF VIII to be the best of the PS1 era Final Fantasies I'm really hoping 4, 6, 10, 13, and/or Final Fantasy Tactics are on that list as I think each of those games are great staples of the series.

@zirilius: Every PC Final Fantasy is on a list that may or may not be part of a thing for the Community Endurance Run.

@thatpinguino: I look forward to seeing if you can remain any semblance of being human after that.

@zirilius: I'm willing to bet @zombiepie's sanity on it!

The early game portion of Final Fantasy VIII was mechanically speaking the hardest portion of the game. Not only were its byzantine mechanics horribly explained to me, but the game actually is more difficult in the beginning than in the latter portions of the game overall. Then we have the story which is...a walking train-wreck. It was so bizarre to witness for the first time that I began to find myself slowly drawn into it. It was a hot mess that I had to see worsen as time passed by.

It should be mentioned that the person who proposed that question on the podcast, which is myself, is a Final Fantasy neophyte. Everything that you are citing...I have never heard of until now. That said my gut reaction to your evidence furthers my theory, from my standpoint. This is the eighth entry in the Final Fantasy series. Shouldn't they stop doing this, or know exactly how to prevent this from happening?

If I had not used Enc-None I may well have walked away from the game; never to return. While the actual gameplay is one of the more benign aspects of Final Fantasy VIII I never felt especially drawn in to play more of it. That and I was never competent at performing any of the inputs for the Limit Breaks that required them.

Which was a major problem by Disc Two.

I mean...I feel like I lost my humanity decades ago.

@zombiepie: Hey, I didn't say I love the game, just how easy it is to break the battle system. That being said, FFII isn't the worst FF game.

@zombiepie teenage me got a real visceral pleasure out of sneaking as many Zell combos into a break as possible, or smashing the hell out of R1 with Squall hoping the dice would roll in favor of the break I wanted. I also loved boosting the GFs and trying to break my own records.

I read all your entries so I get most of that was inaccessible to you and shame on Square for that, but the combat of FFVIII was always pretty enjoyable for me and more interactive than any other game in the series. Between the draw system and the interactive move sets there was actually a decent amount of skill involved rather than the series' usual smash the confirm button until your health is low style.