Fixing Final Fantasy VIII

[Geoffrey Francis]

Now right off the bat I have to confess I started the final fantasy series with VIII so it will always hold a special place for me. But in my opinion it really is one of the better Final Fantasies.

The only real problem with it that I had, was the Draw system. I kind of like that magic has to be earned by finding monsters that have it in the beginning. But limiting each draw to 9 was the biggest flaw in the system. You quickly hit that cap with a simple junction, and then you just have to sit there with a sleeping mob drawing turn after turn.

If you could draw any amount as a function of whatever stat it was, magic I think, I feel that this problem would be eliminated quickly. Imagine junctioning scan to magic and every time you draw scan you can draw more scan. Scan being a very weak magic junction it seems possible to be able to draw 100 of whatever spell you find in a single draw with the right junction. There are also other ways to gain magic of course , triple triad.

The story is fine for a time travel paradox story. I definitely haven't seen a better time travel paradox story.

The weapons are weird but thats fantasy based in science for you. The gunblade adds a little timing based puzzle for extra damage which is fun. The Limit Brakes are a little broken but I feel they balance the risk and reward nicely.


So what do you think was a problem with FFVIII? Do you think the limit of 9 per Draw was a good idea, and if so why?

 

[RJ 17]

I won't berate you for liking 8, I can certainly respect and understand that as the first FF game that you played it holds a special sentimental value for you. The story, however, is pretty ridiculous and leads to an infinite time loop if my interpretation of the one time I actually played through the game is correct.

I mean come on, Ultimecia's ultimate plan to cause time to collapse or whatever and thus destroy this universe and every other possible universe? And Laguna's brilliant plan to counter that is to..................let it happen? OH! But we'll be clinging to the power of friendship! That'll make it so we can survive the apocalypse and go on to beat the bad guy! Good thing we have a military trained sniper who...can't make a shot because he's too nervous to pull the trigger, a worthless emo git who's so obsessed about what other people think about him that he'll burst out without even being prompted "NO ONE'S GOING TO TALK ABOUT ME IN THE PAST TENSE!!" then run out of the room leaving everyone standing there thinking "....what the fuck was that?"

Oh, we've got a moronic princess character who gets herself kidnapped almost as much as Yuna in FFX, a hyper-active idiot in Zell, a perky lolicon character in Selphie, and the token fan-service Hot Blonde with a Whip in Quistis.

In other words: the characters were crap and the story was crap, and since generally most RPGs revolve heavily around character and story, that'd certainly be a good place to start if you're trying to "fix" FF8.

Here, watch these videos:
http://spoonyexperiment.com/game-reviews/final-fantasy-series/final-fantasy-viii/page/2/

Hopefully if nothing else you'll get a kick out of them because they're pretty funny. But Spoony's breakdown of the game pretty much encapsulates every criticism that has ever been thrown at this game.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

You know, I never got why the draw system irks so many people.

As far as I'm concerned, it's almost completely superfluous. Beyond getting GFs, you can get by without ever drawing. Firstly, the bonuses you get from early game magics aren't so big that you absolutely need them. And by the time things start getting hard enough that you need to junction to get by, you should have the way more efficient Refine abilities from GFs to turn items into magic. I stopped drawing at all when I learned this in my first playthrough and I've never looked back.

 

[shrekfan246]

VIII's biggest problems to me were, as you mentioned, the Draw system and the level scaling of enemies. Or rather, how the Draw/Junction system completely broke the progression of actual leveling.

VIII actually makes "Level 1" runs really easy comparative to most other JRPGs because of that, too, because every enemy in the game, including bosses, will scale to the level of your party. But the junctioning system was a complete mess and the game did an abysmal job of explaining it and providing actual feedback to the player. Unless you want to spend the time reading up on how each spell weighs each stat it junctions to, there's a whole lot of trial-and-error you're going to be experimenting with and, again as mentioned, drawing magic to get the best out of a junction is very time-consuming and tedious. Especially once you get to the end-game and want to stock up on Ultima spells but you can only draw them conveniently from one location and it takes a certain amount of real-time out of the game to respawn, and you only get a small number of spells per draw...

Yeah, I like the idea behind the Draw/Junction system, but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired and the fact that the spells impact your stats more than anything else in the game is a nice thought, but also a massive inconvenience when you're junctioning something like Curaga and like to keep it maxed at all times but have to use it to heal your party.

I didn't really mind much else about the game. Final Fantasy stories have been batshit insane for as long as I've been playing them and the combat itself wasn't different enough that I couldn't beat the game even without min-maxing or spending hours reading up on the math of everything. I do recall using a heavier reliance on normal physical attacks and GF summons than in most other Final Fantasy games, though, and I rarely ever triggered Limit Breaks because I hate leaving my characters at Critical Health in any game if I can help it. So I'd maybe change the way Limits were actually activated back to the Final Fantasy VII/IX style. And I did quite enjoy the ability to manually trigger critical hits by pressing R1 (I think that was it?) at the right time during a melee attack.

 

[Geoffrey Francis]

I've already seen the spoony one. That series is great and I did get a kick out of them thanks.

Regarding the story, how would you propose to defeat someone in the future? It's a little tricky getting there though I guess you could just wait. The problem is you only exist at the time that you know about Ultimecia is because She did collapse time and you did defeat her. Thus the story works as a time paradox story. Ultimecia gives her powers to Edena, she tells Cid to make Garden, gives her powers to Rinoa through Ultimecia, something something some witch gives her powers to Ultimecia, who compresses time, leading to her demise. Especially as it seems Sorceresses are immortal until they give their power away. I haven't heard any better story about time paradoxes though I would love to hear them if they exist.

Yeah the characters are terrible, I forgot about Laguna, that idiot. However, I can't think how to write better characters in this war torn world where your very memories are eaten/subsumed by Guardian Forces. And have them work in both English and Japanese.

 

[lacktheknack]

I straight up liked the draw system.

I have OCD (like, actual clinically-diagnosed It-Comes-With-Tourette's-Syndrome OCD) and spending time drawing as much as I could out of enemies was immensely satisfying.

Yes, it was grindy... but, as a kid, grind added stability and enjoyment to my otherwise hectic and unsure life. That's why I played a ton of games as a kid. It was predictable and easily planned out with just enough chance of something going wrong to keep it interesting, and I've kept that appreciation of the draw system and other grinds as I grew up and my OCD got less serious.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I actually completely forget about the Draw system in that game. I never hated it, but I rarely used magic in the game. I always preferred to hit enemies with my Gunblade. Of course, when you got a GF for it, I was all over that. But really, the only spells I remember drawing as much as I could were Meltdown (because that spell looked awesome!) and Aura because limit breaks are the bomb.

I love Final Fantasy VIII. There's nothing I would change about it. Well, maybe the card game since the rules for it started getting way too complicated, but otherwise I found it highly enjoyable and I liked the story and the characters and the combat and...it's just my favorite Final Fantasy game. Period.

 

[FrozenLaughs]

I liked the duality of the draw system. Linking spells to a stat is a great idea. The concept of sacrificing a little bit of yourself every time you cast your magic intrigued me far more than an MP bar. I also come from years of D&D, where spell slots provide an entirely different system too.

Honestly I'd like to see the return of a similar draw system in a future game. More draws from the land, less drawing from monsters would make it better for me.

 

[RJ 17]

I've already seen the spoony one. That series is great and I did get a kick out of them thanks.

Glad to hear that, then you already know pretty much everything that's wrong with the game.

Regarding the story, how would you propose to defeat someone in the future? It's a little tricky getting there though I guess you could just wait. The problem is you only exist at the time that you know about Ultimecia is because She did collapse time and you did defeat her. Thus the story works as a time paradox story. Ultimecia gives her powers to Edena, she tells Cid to make Garden, gives her powers to Rinoa through Ultimecia, something something some witch gives her powers to Ultimecia, who compresses time, leading to her demise. Especially as it seems Sorceresses are immortal until they give their power away. I haven't heard any better story about time paradoxes though I would love to hear them if they exist.

Well I'd start off by...not having a story based entirely around a cyclical time-loop that apparently just keeps playing itself out over and over again. At least that's how I interpreted the ending. What happens after Ultimecia dies? Her power is flung back in time to Edea and the whole thing starts up once again.

"Hey Irvine! Come meet these shmucks that will be going on the high priority assassination mission with you! You know, the one where all you'll have to do is sit on an elevated look-out, wait for some gates to drop, and pull the trigger but we all know you're a bigger chicken-wuss than Zell and you'll flake out at the end! What's that? You knew all these people the whole time and you never mentioned it? Because of "reasons"?" That's an example of crappy writing, my friend.

Telling off a little girl who's trying to play at being a military leader is perfectly justifiable. Her plans are stupid and over-complicated. Yet Quistis - a trained military "leader" - suddenly decides that she should go back and apologize for telling off the little girl and ends up getting herself and her squad locked in a house. Again: bad writing.

Allowing Selphie access to the controls of intercontinental ballistic missiles and having her just pushing random buttons yet accomplishing her task. Bad writing. Wanting to use TV in order to make a broadcast around the world...when nothing has been broadcast for well over 10 years. Why would people turn on their TV's now and expect to see something? How were the people of the world supposed to know "On this day at this time something will be on TV"? If there was some kind of interference which prevented TV from being broadcast because the high tech city of Esther was releasing a planet-wide jamming signal...how does the remote control robot spider tank still function? All more examples of bad writing.

The short answer is that there's no way to "fix" this story. Just as there is rarely a way to simply "fix" any bad story. A bad story is a bad story because it's bad. Not because it just needs some tweeking here or there. If that were the case it'd at least be considered a "decent" story. One that people could find enjoyable but might contain a couple plot holes. This is just bad writing and plot-holes.

Yeah the characters are terrible, I forgot about Laguna, that idiot. However, I can't think how to write better characters in this war torn world where your very memories are eaten/subsumed by Guardian Forces. And have them work in both English and Japanese.

And that was my main problem with the game. The characters themselves were just unlikeable and unrelatable. Like with the story, there's no real way you can "fix" the characters without simply coming up with some new and better ones.

 

[krazykidd]

I liked the sidequests. And 13 year old me thought Squall was cool...whatever.

OT: i did like 8 but not as much as the other final fantasies. Then again my standards were a lot lower as a teen.

 

[McMarbles]

I think the worst thing about FF8 was the bland world design. The world felt... empty. There were few secrets to find. Few areas that were memorable. The only real "dungeon" was Ultimecia's castle. For the most part, you're running around the overworld, towns, or samey ruins looking for the thing to examine or the place where the thing happens.