Final Fantasy VIII General Discussion

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
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Ite
Funnily enough, the way to "powerlevel" in FFVIII is through the card game. Which might be the most fun part of replaying FFVIII.

Happy 20th anniversary, Final Fantasy VIII! In a series where every entry gets a turn being the black sheep, you really stand out! <3
 

Blade

That Man
AKA
Darkside-Ky/Mimeblade
The only thing that... to this very day made no sense to me:

Why did Odin show up in Laguna's flashbacks for me? That's a total paradox, man.
Odin was in the Centra Ruins, but Laguna never even went near them.

I could see and understand if he was a GF you could junction to Ellone and she could send him in to the past like the other GFs, but Odin wasn't a traditional GF... he worked independently of the party...

Especially funny was when Laguna was working as a film actor and ended up fighting a "real" Ruby Dragon...

Then all of a sudden Odin swoops in and cuts it down... WHAT THE HELL, ODIN!?!?

Not that I don't appreciate an easy boss fight.
 

Gary Caelum

Pro Adventurer
AKA
Gary Caelum
So, all that being said, out of all the Final Fantasies (aside from Crisis Core, can't forget that) I would like them to remake VIII after VII is finished.

8 would likely take them another decade to remake, like with FF7. I'd prefer them to remake FF6 in the Octopath Traveler style. That would be awesome but also a lot quicker. We'd possibly get the whole game in like a 2-3 year dev cycle.
 

Sprites

Waiting for something
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Gems
@Blade, I assumed with Odin it's because he pleged his allegiance to Squall and his team when they defeated him and although he's a random summon he still says for them to call if they need him, I assume in some way he's still connected to Squall and the others even if his appearances are randomized and therefore able to appear in the past.

Or it's just because you've got Odin in game and it's random game mechanics for when he puts an appearance in :mon:
 

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
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Ite
The only thing that... to this very day made no sense to me:

Why did Odin show up in Laguna's flashbacks for me? That's a total paradox, man.
Odin was in the Centra Ruins, but Laguna never even went near them.

I could see and understand if he was a GF you could junction to Ellone and she could send him in to the past like the other GFs, but Odin wasn't a traditional GF... he worked independently of the party...

Especially funny was when Laguna was working as a film actor and ended up fighting a "real" Ruby Dragon...

Then all of a sudden Odin swoops in and cuts it down... WHAT THE HELL, ODIN!?!?

Not that I don't appreciate an easy boss fight.

Hah! That's never happened to me. Of course, it's just the game mechanics working independently of player choice, but let me see if I can justify this...

GFs are fae-like spirits that inhabit the world of Final Fantasy VIII. Long before Dr. Odine developed junction technology, humans and GFs co-existed, although there aren't many records of them co-operating. It's possible, however, that GF and human co-operation did exist, and it would have looked like the power bestowed upon the party by Odin, Gilgamesh, Phoenix, Boko, and Moomba -- that is to say, the GFs can sense where the party is and help out whenever they damn well please. So in that sense Odin is a VERY traditional GF :P

While I don't think it's totally unthinkable that Laguna traveled to Centra and won the favor of Odin in between his tenure in Winhill and his journey to Esthar, it's also likely that Odin is helping out Laguna because Odin is sensing the spirits of the party with Laguna. But if Odin is locked to linear time (a fair assumption... although anything goes with fae-like spirits) why would he care about the party? They won't visit him in the Centra ruins until 20 years later, he shouldn't know about them yet! Unless... he senses the powerful energies that the party's spirits bring with them into the past - junctioned GFs, drawn spells, etc. It's possible Odin sensed this and came to check it out. If that's the case, then that might explain why you can win his favor in the first place -- he felt your energy 20 years ago, and while he's not super interested in binding himself to you, he'll still co-operate.
 

Sprites

Waiting for something
AKA
Gems
So as well as my current ff12 playthrough I decided to replay this and i'm aiming to do something I've never done in any of my plauthroughs and that's get Lionheart on disk one and I'm gonna beat x-atm092 (although I've done that one before).

So I've spent probably 7 hours already after fire cavern doing a combination of AP grinding for the Card ability Card MOD ability getting Quezacotl all the summon mag +% and boost ability and playing triple triad.

So far I've managed to add mini mog and Quistis to my collection of cards which is superhelpful and I'm currently aiming for 20 elnoyle cards so I can convert them to energy crystals for pulse ammo (I'm up to 6 so far) usually after 3 card rounds I go and save incase I do something stupid with my moves and lose one of my better cards.

Then next move will be before I leave for timber to get Diablos and start grinding AP for him for the mug ability and also fight T-rexaurs in the training center for dragon fangs although I'll have to be careful about that one because they need to be between lvl 21-29 to drop them.

Then after timber it'll be heading down near dollet to go hunt some adamantoise and then done.
 
Last edited:

leadmyskeptic

Pro Adventurer
So as well as my current ff12 playthrough I decided to replay this and i'm aiming to do something I've never done in any of my plauthroughs and that's get Lionheart on disk one and I'm gonna beat x-atm092 (although I've done that one before).

So I've spent probably 7 hours already after fire cavern doing a combination of AP grinding for the Card ability Card MOD ability getting Quezacotl all the summon mag +% and boost ability and playing triple triad.

So far I've managed to add mini mog and Quistis to my collection of cards which is superhelpful and I'm currently aiming for 20 elnoyle cards so I can convert them to energy crystals for pulse ammo (I'm up to 6 so far) usually after 3 card rounds I go and save incase I do something stupid with my moves and lose one of my better cards.

Then next move will be before I leave for timber to get Diablos and start grinding AP for him for the mug ability and also fight T-rexaurs in the training center for dragon fangs although I'll have to be careful about that one because they need to be between lvl 21-29 to drop them.

Then after timber it'll be heading down near dollet to go hunt some adamantoise and then done.
So, I've never been much of a 'completionist' in the sense of getting every item, supermove, etc etc. I try to go for the fun ones, and WILL diverge from the main plot to excessive and ridiculous degrees for anything plot/dialogue/NPC-interaction based...so, in VIII for example, I always do the Shumi Village sidequest as soon as possible, make sure to talk to Master Fisherman and interact with the Grease Monkey to expose his connection to the Shumi, check into the library obsessively to make sure I get all of Zell's "Library Girl with Pigtail" moments, etc etc...

Anyway, my point being that a lot of the powerful moves and such that are placed behind 'difficulty gates' that require obsessive grinding, or ultra-specific battle setups and such, I've NEVER acquired. In 7, I've never beaten either Weapon (I already had a Gold Chocobo, and the Master Materias are super cool, but if you can beat Emerald Weapon to acquire them...wtf are you going to use them on?). From what I remember, Lionheart is nowhere near as annoying as fighting in the cheap-ass Battle Arena in VII to get shit like Omnislash; however, getting in on Disc 1 ups the ante to the point where the challenge seems comparable. So...okay, now I realize this is more of a 'how do you play FF' ramble than it was a question lol, but my original question was going to be something like: If you acquire Lionheart on Disc 1, is it gamebreaking? Make the battles more fun/interesting? Not have much of an effect, but merely a completionist challenge??
 

Sprites

Waiting for something
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Gems
Nah it's not gamebreaking, will it make earlier battles easier, sure but then the junction system already does that early enough to your stats. I've always found it surprising how easy it is to break the junction system and push your stats so high so early if you how what to look for to do it.

For me yeah I guess it's a completionist thing, getting lionheart on disc 1 because I've never done it before, I've attempted it and then lacked the patience to finish it so I guess I want to after owning the game for the best part of 18/19 years.
 

Ite

Save your valediction (she/her)
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Ite
“Game breaking” as it applies to FF8 is as simple as playing the game twice. If you know the mechanics and put in minimal scum work (resetting when you lose at cards or drawing-and-running from battles) it takes only an extra hour or two to become unstoppable in Disc 1.

Edit: ninja’d by Sprites ^_^
 

Sprites

Waiting for something
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Gems
It's probably one of the quickest stat raising games in the FFseries.

I have 2 more Elnoyle cards to get before I get my final energy crystal I know I could get laser cannons later but it leaves me with more left over pulse ammo and I can build my card stock anyways while I'm at it.

Also I know I could refine my Brothers Card when I get it for adamantines but I don't want to get rid of the card. So that why I'll be hunting for Adamantoise I'll probably grind enough to have some for Selphie's final weapon too.
 

Kuja9001

Ooooh Salty!
AKA
roxas9001, Krat0s9001, DarkSlayerZero
You could also get Dragon Fangs from Grendels located in the forest after the second Laguna dream.

Disc 1 Lionheart was a must have during my challenge run yrs ago, it's weak as all hell buuut it saved me some rage.
 

Sprites

Waiting for something
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Gems
I could get them but they're only available to level 1-19 and at the moment my party is probably gonna be over that plus it's fun to blind t-rexaurs in the training center and beat the crap out of them :)
 

Sprites

Waiting for something
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Gems
Operation dragon fang is now complete, I ended up doing this with just Squall and Quistis think it took me about 10 t-rexaur rounds to get it to drop dragon fangs, junctions Siren to Quistis and the sleep status attack, then couple of rounds of Shiva to whittle down the HP and then I card modded to prevent Squall and Quistis gaining levels too high.

Just the adamantine to go!

Oh and I beat x-atm092 and it luckily dropped a Force Armlet so that means I don't have to go on the hunt for that later.
 

Sprites

Waiting for something
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Gems
And to add on I'm just in Timber now but before that I went and did a bit more card playing got Zell's Card and in the midst of doing that got enough cards to make Rinoa's Shooting Star weapon on ahead. Is it necessary? No but I like Rinoa and her final weapon looks cool and she's always a main in my team composition I've never done any of this, this early in the game before either so it's kinda fun.
 

Sprites

Waiting for something
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Gems
Sorry for the triple post I've been doing a lot over the last few hours so I'm thirty six hours in now and basically where I'm at is probably where you'd expect to be towards the end of a normal playthrough.

So immediately after leaving Timber I went straight for the haspberry plains and after A LOT of hunting along the coast for Adamantoise (hard to find, even harder to get them to drop adamantine), I finally got 2 Adamantine drops one for Squall and one for Selphie and I've now got Shooting Star, Strange vision, which I wanted for the hit rate and Lionheart.

Never done it before glad I did though very satisfying but also quite weird gaining final weapons and in Squalls case his final limit so early in an FF game even though without the proper junctions to the Str stat the final weapons aren't that powerful.

I've also never had a GF reach level 100 this early(Quezacotl) before and I ended up knocking Squall out for a bit while AP grinding certain abilities because he's levelling too fast (he's level 55) everyone except Irvine who I'm currently in the process of bringing up to speed is level 30, I've def gone overkill this playthrough.

I've gained full stocks of tornado, quake, meltdown, the 'aga' spells nearly all the major ones that give massive boosts to stats, again a first for me and really for the first time I'm seeing how broken the draw and junction system is, I mean I've got stuff early before but not this early you shouldn't be able to get so much so early in the game.
 
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