I'd like to ask ZombiePie what he got accomplished in his first hour of FF8, or recall what happened in my first hour of FF10, because those games feel much... slower. I wonder how many hours it'll take me to finish the whole game.
So here's what I managed to accomplish in my first hour of Final Fantasy VIII:
View the "unofficial" introduction with the still images of all of the scenes you will experience in the game.
View the OFFICIAL introduction with the "Liberi Fatali" music.
Waking up in the nurse's office and being greeted by Quistis who shares how I got my ass handed to myself by Seifer.
Quistis asking me to meet her at the front of the Garden.
Giving a tour of the Garden to an inauspicious girl that will eventually be revealed to be Selphie.
Quistis giving me Shiva and Quetzalcoatl.
Quistis performing a fake junction in order to teach me how to complete a junction.
Me frantically trying to copy what Quistis did during the tutorial and failing miserably.
Killing fish in order to collect water magic
Making the trek to the Fire Cavern.
Quistis providing a tutorial on the drawing and magic system.
Entering the Fire Cavern and dealing with the random encounters insider there.
Fighting Ifrit.
Collecting Ifrit as a junction, and failing to understand how to properly junction him.
Re-entering the Garden and being congratulated by Cid.
Man, I love this game. I also think it's the worst possible choice for a person's first Final Fantasy game. This has been entertaining.
For what it is worth once you wrap your mind around the junction and item refining systems you can almost immediately break Final Fantasy VIII. One of the first bits of advice that I got out of penguin was to go to the coast by the garden, and fight a bunch of fish and collect their fins. From there I was able to gain access to water magic, and when junctioned to Strength I was able to blow through most of the story related bosses with relative ease.
The game also discourages grinding and even has a GF that allows you to never experience random encounters throughout the duration of the game.
In many ways this was the WORST Final Fantasy game to start with...in other ways it was the BEST.
This was the second best piece of Giant Bomb content this year, next to Metal Gear Scanlon 4.
You don't like the moment at the end where Irvine checks out some girls and then Selphie punches him and gives him the face? I want more of that, they should have been doing that the whole game. The world used to be safe for a harmless lech. I suddenly realize that allmy favoritemaleFinal Fantasy characters are like that. My favorite was introduced in that game by kidnapping a woman he was attracted to. Seems problematic now.
Not gonna lie, this has made for some of the most entertaining content on Giant Bomb throughout the whole year. I am also now having doubts about whether you'd enjoy the Resident Evil remake :o...
Thank you for the kind words. This blog series was certainly an interesting "roller-coaster" of a ride. Not only did I have to actual play and experience the nonsense of Final Fantasy VIII, but I also had to find ways to articulate my feelings about Final Fantasy VIII's nonsense in a coherent way. I know that the diction and verbiage of my words could have been tighter and more refined in parts, but I enjoyed creating every entry in this blog series. Not only that, but I am incredibly grateful that this blog series managed to develop its own audience of sorts that saw me through until the end.
God damn. Thanks so much for sticking it out with us, man. I was really heartened by your final thoughts on FFVIII. For all the criticisms one could levy against the game, insincerity is definitely not one of them, and it's absolutely one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had, for good or ill. I will never forget key moments like the assassination mission, the orphanage scene, the GARDEN BATTLE, Squall catching Rinoa in space, or that climactic last battle against Ultimecia.
Fuck Final Fantasy VIII.
Long live Final Fantasy VIII.
Indeed that is the case. Final Fantasy VIII is as sincere a game as you could possibly make. Rarely does the game's narrative work without caveats. When it does, it kind of puts everything into context as to why this game turned out to be the mess that it was. The developers really tried to create a game that was nothing like its predecessors.
And that is both Final Fantasy VIII's greatest attribute, as well as its greatest weakness.
@zombiepie: I legitimately liked the ending because I had no idea that anything like that was going to happen. But, then again, I enjoyed the story in the game even though it is pretty nonsensical.
Also, I disagree with the item refining/low-level-run/card game/junctioning system breaking the game because to do any of those to maximum efficiency it requires a lot of time. The easiest way to break the game is to do a low-level-run. And to do that properly there is a lot of time that needs to be spent in the game doing a lot of side things and getting extra magic that helps you avoid getting experience from the few mandatory battles in the game. Playing the game "normally" would probably run the average first-timer a longer amount of time than a "broken" run. This is simply because, while battles become shorter, the preparation becomes much much longer.
But reading your blog posts did make me realize that Final Fantasy VIII doesn't have a good story, but it has great moments. Playing through the story I got to experience some really memorable gaming moments, but I was confusing that with actual plot and story. Also, even though I really like Zell because he is a lovable moron, the game does almost nothing for character development for party members.
The big problem about the story is how the good points of the story are never capitalized upon in Final Fantasy VIII. You occasionally get some good characterization of Squall or Rinoa, and then the game puts them on the afterburner for a good solid three to four hours.
In regards to your gameplay points I'll just default to my original point on the blogs: I wouldn't have been able to accomplish beating this game, had I not messed around with the game's mechanics. If I had not been able to mess around with the junction system then I would have never completed this game.
After experiencing this game second-hand through a let's play years ago, and now through your blog series, I guess all I can say is that FFVIII is at least bad in an entertaining, if not somewhat compelling way. FFXIII is just outright bad, and I honestly think if some monster were to force you into writing a blog series on that game it'd be at least twice as long as this series was because of all the garbage you'd have to cover.
I'll just chime in with the others recommending FFIX, if you ever have the opportunity to play it. If FFVII was focused on getting one of those games to work in 3D, and FFVIII was getting the production values up, FFIX was the one where they had all the technical know-how already and focused on the writing, characters and worldbuilding. I still think one of the characters in that game has the best arc/storyline I've experienced in a game, even when held up against acclaimed modern stuff like The Last of Us.
Just wanna say, this series was a long road (and read), but a damn good one. Thanks for all the time you put into this!
Also as an aside, if you liked the final boss music for FFVIII you should check out some of the final boss themes from other Final Fantasy games (although, spoilers and all that). A lot of them have similar motifs of slow, eerie builds into fast-paced distortions of the main battle themes-- as far back as the first game, even.
These are all good points, but I now own a copy of Final Fantasy XIII, as well as Final Fantasy XIII-2, because my friends are monsters.
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