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Here's the story.  I've been playing through Final Fantasy VIII recently.  No problem, right?  I mean, even though most FF fans denounce the game, there's nothing wrong with giving the four discs a little spin, now, is there?

Ordinarily, no.  But recently, I've been noticing a phenomena which has been, quite frankly, scaring me.  No matter how much I try to ignore it, rationalize it, or make it go away, it's slowly beginning to creep into the back of my mind...

Okay, enough beating around the bush.  The fact is, the more I play Final Fantasy VIII, the more I start...well...sort of...actually...liking it.

I swear!  Back when the game came out, I disliked it as much as any other RPG fan.  But now, for some reason, I've discovered a brand new appeal to the game.  The plot and futuristic setting, which before I had disdained and rejected so openly, is starting to grow on me.  I've gained an appreciation for the graphics, which I once denounced as shallow eye candy.  Even the characters, which once annoyed me to no end, are now becoming more and more likable. (Okay, everybody but Irvine.  I haven't lost it that much.)

I also like the little touches that they added to the game, like a regular SeeD salary (as opposed to getting money from monsters for no apparent reason), and the idea of characters actually holding down a job as they progress through the adventure, as opposed to just laying everything down for a world-saving quest.

Well, give it to me straight.  Is this natural, or does crazy old SM need to pull himself together?

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"I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking."
~Dorothy L. Sayers

"The truly remarkable thing about television is that it allows several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely."
~T.S. Eliot

"Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as reality - in your own mind!"
~ Bruce Lee

its natural, i do the same, I just got back into FFVIII myself actually..

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Why do kamakazi pilots wear helmets?

I never disliked the game. It's not as good as most of the others, I don't think, but I never once disliked it. So nyah, all of you.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Well I thought the game was unique and I liked it too. But whenever I've said that, I've just gotten flamed. Because it's not traditional final fantasy, then it has to be written off they say. Well they had to try something new didn't they? People were beginning to become sick of playing the same standard "small conflict erupts into save the world" conquest, as some still are. You gotta at least give them credit for attempting to satisfy the gamer's wants. I still like 6, 7, and maybe 9 better, but that doesn't mean I didn't like 8.

I liked the whole dream thing, and trying to figure out what that was all about, and who Laguna was. The card game was good(much better than 9's, with the stupid random crap), and I thought it was kind of funny when I realized Squall was talking to himself all the time. I didn't like Ultimecia though, kind of boring when you don't even know anything about who you're fighting.

That's just my opinion though.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

I liked the game, because no one that I really knew was an old-school gamer, so no one told me it was bad. I wasn't an old-school gamer either. Hell, I came really late. The first RPG I've ever played was Phantasy Star (for Sega Master System), and the first MODERN RPG I've ever played was Legend of Dragoon at the Metreon. Yeah, I came REALLY late.

But, yeah, it's natural. The game's good. I like it.

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Nine-hundred ninety-nine billion nine-hundered ninety-nine million nine-hundred ninety-nine thousand nine-hundred ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall...

Well, as Tidu will tell you, you'll never convince me FF8 is anything but massively disappointing.  I don't HATE it, but most of the new things they tried just didn't interest me whatsoever.

Having a salary is a nice idea, but the way you drop SeeD levels for exploring instead of doing your quest (and points in the examination at the start) seems massively, massively contradictory to the way an RPG should work.

The items don't seem to actually do anything, for the most part.  You have the regular potion etc. then a load of items with fancy names that give your GFs exciting!!! skills like the ability to turn pieces of rock into more potions.

No equipment, nowhere to buy weapons, and we can only upgrade them by running round the world fighting enemies for a 1/3792536275 chance of winning a Monkey Grinder or something, which for no reason combines onto our weapon to give it a new limit break, which we then use for the rest of the game to win every single battle without thinking (except vs. Adel/Rinoa).

No, our only equipment is GFs.  We can't pair some GFs up because they don't like each other, and they all develop more when they're attached alone, and stop me before I slip into a coma and dream of Pokemon, or something where you kept creatrures that were even a bit interesting.

And to cap it off, there's a massive, MASSIVE leap of the imagination required to believe the end of Disc 2, where:

SPOILER ALERT!  Highlight to view:

It turns out they all grew up together and forgot.

OH HOW CONVENIENT!  And how shall we explain it?  I know, let's use GFs, that's the only thing we bother doing anything with most of the rest of the game.

And I'll never understand how people liked the graphics.  FF7 used the PlayStation's limited capability well, and produced some nice colourmapped images that looked very stylish and worked about as well as they could.  FF8 tried to make it look realistic, and was, to my mind, COMPLETELY defeated by the hardware it was running on.  It's like trying to do FF6 on a NES, to me.  I mean come on... Squall's polygon form looked like his face had been smashed in with a hammer.  It's just poor.  Maybe it's because I was a spoilt PC gamer when I played it, and I was used to better, but FF7 never made me wince like FF8's graphics did.

Yeah, I enjoyed it when I played it, and I still do enjoy it when I replay it, to an extent.  The setting is neat, and though its non-FFness irritates me, I have the feeling that's mostly because it was a divergence from the system that just didn't work as well as it could have done.

If all of the game had lived up to the first disc, and the FMVs, great.  Sadly, the second disc took it into the town of complete pants, and it never redeemed itself.

That's my opinion, and I stand by it, in spite of the pockets of FF8ophilia that well up every now and again.

Tiddles the Cat  puts his fingers in his ears and ignores the rest of the topic.  

Quote (Tiddles the Cat @ 7 Jan. 2003, 20:12)

but FF7 never made me wince like FF8's graphics did.

Is that because FF7 chracters looked more like they did in the FMV, and FF8 had Brilliant FMV chracters who looked smashed in the real game. Similar thing happened in Tenchu 2, the FMV's were brilliant but some of the characters looked ugly eg: Kagami.

I agree, SM, I like it more and more each time through. It's mainly just because I have more patience to draw from enemies for half an hour (one of the main problems I still have with the game.) I always liked the idea of SeeD, and I think the story is underrated (except for the plot hole Tiddles pointed out, and all the Ultimecia crap.) I also really enjoy the final dungeon more and more each time. But I hate not getting new weopons, and I got tired of my damage being determined by how much I press the square button (that got annoying quickly.) There are a lot of good aspects of the game, but it still ranks just behind FFIV for "worst of series" in my book.

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Hip-Hop QOTW:

"Yeah, where I'ma start it at, look I'ma part of that
Downtown Philly where it's realer than a heart attack
It wasn't really that ill until the start of crack
Now it's a body caught every night on the Almanac"

"Game Theory"
The Roots

heh, same here, FFVIII used to be FF game I hate most.
Although it may not make sense with how those magics are used (like you use memories if u use GF's...that's so random), The junction system is my favorite part of FFVIII, first I was annoyed and didn't understand, everytime I update it, I thought "do i have to do this again?" but now it's pretty good, customize how you want your stats/resists/specials.

I was wondering...it would be really cool if FFVIII is online. You can trade of those items (like Maroboo's tentacles whatever...i think i'm just making things up) and see how well you did your junctions by fighting against others

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I will be there...

That was hilarious Tiddles, well put.

Well I'd also like to say that the FF8 ending was done better than any other FF IMO. It helped you come to conclusions for most of everything, but still left a couple things open for debate.

I completely forgot about the grew up together thing. That also was kind of, right...Irvine knew the whole time but didn'twant to say anything? Sounded like something they just scraped together to "thicken the plot". Want a "what in the hell" plot hole? How about how all the Card Club players including Xu come with you and somehow magically appear on the Ragnorak 1283709 years in the future. Don't forget how they're just sitting there by themselves for who knows how long until you come. You'd think just maybe they'd try to fly somewhere?

Another note was how cool Esthar was the 1st time. That place was just plain awesome. The store place I found so "high-tech". I never was a big fan of renting cars though. You won't get any EXP that way.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

I *think* I've always liked the game, in a sort of guilty-pleasure way.  I just didn't like how it was so darn impossible to upgrade weapons.  Oh, and Rinoa.  Rinoa was, and still is a definite deterring factor in ever playing the game.

But otherwise it's a pretty nice game.  I love the idea of SeeD and Garden (it's sort of like Mercedes Lackey's Heralds).  Squall is quite possibly one of the funniest people in video game history, and of course he's terribly attractive.  Before you protest, Squall is funny in the way that people with no sense of humor who are surrounded by high-spirited people are riotously funny.  

If Rinoa had fallen off a cliff, and if Quistis could have developed her proto-feminist nature instead of turning into a 'love-starved twit' 30 minutes into the game, FFVIII would be thoroughly enjoyable.

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"Turd-cookies!...they're hot and soft, though..."

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved's bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.  - Percy Bysshe Shelley

FFVIII is by no means the best in the series. In fact, it's arguably the worst in the series, but I've always enjoyed it and all the ways it diverged from the norm in FF.

I whole heartedly agree, Seifer should have been the final boss, but I'm just thankfull that she was mentioned a few times and even shown (breifly) earlier in the game. I really can't stand the whole orphinage c^@p, but all my complaints have already been spoken of by tiddles, so I won't go on.

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*END TRANSMISSION*

I liked FF8. I have not played much FF games, only FFVII then FFVIII and last FFVI. I though all of them was good, but FFVI and FFVII was a bit better.

Amen. FF8 was great, despite many problems. Upgrading weapons was cool, but it got on my nerves sometimes. GF's were an ingenious idea, but using magic became obsolete. The story was fresh and new, but there were many plot holes. Limit breaks were fun, but too easy to execute. Once again, many problems, but overall it was enjoyable.

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Lou: There's a couple of guys fighting down at the aquarium, Chief.
Wiggum: Do they still sell those frozen bananas?
Lou: I think so.
Wiggum: Let's roll.

I enjoyed FF8 alot. Not as much as FF4, 6, and 10 which I just finished, but I did enjoy it more then FF7 actually. The only reason is because of the setting and graphics. Compared to FF8, FF7 graphics are dismal, although the plot is much better. I don't understand how sooo many people can hate the game so much.

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War is for the participants a test of character; it makes bad men worse and good men better. - Joshua Chamberlain

U sir R a n00b >:-( - Cactuar

Because most people don't care much about graphics if the game isn't solid.

Also, some don't like the "realistic" graphics.

If i ever go into a deep depression and isolate myself at home, I'll give FF8 another spin.



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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

Quote (Bismark87 @ 8 Jan. 2003, 01:12)

I was wondering...it would be really cool if FFVIII is online.

actually i think FFT would make a better online game, imagine
fighting different parties online and trading weapons and stuff.
cmon, its brilliant!

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Why do kamakazi pilots wear helmets?