/vr/ - Retro Games

>>2475446
Aside from Laguna she was by far my favorite character in that game. Everyone in it sucks, but at least she's not Squall or Rinoa or fucking Zell.

That she has little to nothing to do with the story is a plus, not a minus.

Yes; Genesis.

>>2475452
I guess I meant party-characters but good point

>>2475446
Doesn't she have an instant win that works against bosses?

JUST

?

I thought the way she was obsessed with trains kind of implied she was a bit of a dork in the Japanese language?
You know, train otaku and all.

>>2475563
You loved him and you know it.

You only wanted to fuck Selphie.

She isn't the best character in the game but more useful than Rinoa (and much more than interim character Edea). All are designed to be magic users and Selphie has the most balanced stats when it comes to mix attack and magic power. Because of the whole drawing magic thing, I always ended up with a party with pure attack power (Squall, Xell, Irvine) towards the end of the game, as in most of final fantasy game. Defeating encountered enemies at random with simply pressing X / attack makes long dungeons less tedious. For the final boss, having a magic user in your party is always a good idea, but annoying to drag his body through the last dungeon. So I chose Selphi the last time. She could at least spank those monsters' asses with her nunchakus on my way to Ultimecia.

In (almost) all Final Fantasy games, (black) magic users become more and more useless the farther you progress in the game. In the games before VII, the job system at least made it possible to change the characters' job.

Despite popular opinion often suggests otherwise, the most useless characters in Final Fantasy are:

>Rinoa, Edea (FFVIII)
>Cait Sith and Aeris (no seriously) and Tifa is a highly overrated character (FFVII)
>Quinna, Eiko (IX)
>mog (VI)
>edward, palom and polom (FFIV)

>>2475583
I forgot:

The most useless character of all Final Fantasy games, although not retro is

>Lulu (FF-X)

>>2475446
Sorry but this stat growth chart proves you're wrong in your
>next-to-useless in combat
appreciation...

she's one of the best NPCs in the game:
the best magic user after Rinoa, and the 2nd fastest NPC to act, alongside Squall.

>>2475586
I object, lulu is very good for eye candy

>>2475587
da fuq how did rinoa get so powerful?

>>2475593
She becomes a Sorceress... so it's expected that she'll be overpowered.

>>2475587
oh forgot to mention that her best weapon is the only one that has 255% hit rate, Squall also has that stat, but with ALL his weapons.

>>2475446

She is the perky girl. I always saw her as shitty version of Yuffie. But yeah, you could remove her and probably a bunch of others from the story with no impact.

The only time she's relevant is that one scene where her Garden got bombed.

>>absurdly boring design

That's every single FF8 design. They're all so boring. And they're all thin stick figures too, even the guys.

>>2475563

Umaro's not even a character. Just a bonus you can get late game.

>>2475446
She ditches this guy she meets a full 30 seconds after BEGGING him to dance with her and makes an ass of herself/him by bumping into other people in the process
She forms a group of rebels to piss off daddy general
She ditches her rebels to be with the guy she ditched earlier
She only likes said guy because he reminds her of her previous boyfriend
During the Parade she runs off alone to see a dangerous Sorceress by herself almost screwing up Squall's and Irvine's undercover mission. Both of them could have gotten caught and shot.
When both of the main Gardens head into war, the only thing Rinoa cares about is Squall's ring?
Then even though she's scared of fighting/ dislikes seeing violence. She fights in a war anyways and when she gets into trouble (AGAIN ) She creates more panic/ stress for everybody.
Yeah, she falls into coma. Squall is worried. More panic/ stress for Squall.
When she gains the powers that were once from Edea/ Matron. Just feel like Rinoa brings more sadness and heavy emotions onto the group. Everybody is trying to be strong and get ready to fight the final last evil. But just feel like Rinoa's rants about how no one likes her anymore bringing down the groups morale.
She's way too open about her feelings and HER emotions. What about Irvine's, Zell's, Seifer's, Quistis's and Selphie's feelings?
She also shoots her dog like a fucking rocket launcher with total disregard of it's safety.
The "romance" with her ruined the entire game

The worst part is how they tried to make her naive stupid retarded mistakes and nature "endearing." It wasn't good with her, wasn't good with Garnet, and it did retards like Yuna no favors. Only stupid Japs like this archetype

Also Rinoa's character was really defined by her role in the story as the eventual love interest of the hero they just tried to make her more important by making her a sorceress, and if it wasn't for that part I find it really hard for her to have as much face time in the game as she did

>>2475587

>muh stats

Next to worthless in FF8. Junctioning magic gives so much more boosts than anything else. It makes your base stats irrelevant. The only thing that distinguishes characters in FF8 are the limit breaks. Eveything else is just for show.

>>2475626
>the only reason why she falls in love with squall is because of how good he looks
Come to think of it she's the most realistic videogame female ever written. 10/10 Square.

>>2475563
Saved my ass many a time in the tower of fanatics. YETI/10 would walk with in the winter wonderland again!

Selphie is meant to be cute and optimistic. They likely felt that Squal was an emo bitch and needed something to balance it.

>>2475630
If we're talking about junctioned NPCs, then it's almost pointless to speak about useless in battle, except for as you said limit breaks, and if we were to judge a character 100% based on limit breaks it's almost as pointless as the latter.

Stats ARE a thing in the game and there are ways to level, it's just a part of the game that the casual player, or a one time playthrough person, won't notice or won't care, that's another issue.

The final fight in the game even teaches you that the best way to survive the fight if you were to lose criticial junctions in your build during the fight, is to have your characters with their high stats bossted by GF abilities such STR % buff or MAG % buff.

>>2475583
Quina is hella ugly, but it's blue magic comes in really handy at various points in the game. And Eiko despite being possibly the most annoying FF character of all time is a way more useful summoner than Garnet.

>>2475630
>Junctioning magic gives so much more boosts than anything else.
Congrats on nullifying the point of your whole thread. The game is so easy you never have to bother with limit breaks either. As with VII, the difficulty is low enough and the characters are similar enough that they're all completely interchangeable.

>>2475668
ultimecia fight can become nearly impossible if you overlevel and missed too many equipment mags and GFs

>>2475671
I can see how that would be theoretically possible, if you for some reason decided to grind all your characters to 99 but didn't bother collecting GFs or decent equipment. But in that case you'd be going out of your way to make it more difficult. That's like pointing out VII can be hard if you run from every random encounter. Played normally they're cake walks.

>>2475653
>Squall was emo

For fuck's sake, he was the opposite of emo. I don't remember him breaking down into tears at every opportunity, do you? No, I remember him being the only one who DIDN'T do that.

>>2475685
What are you talking about? Emos don't break down crying all the time, they're mostly just mopey which is Mr. Whatever to a tee.

>>2475446
She had a story?

I guess, she cared about Balamb disco party or something and got upset when her Garden got blown to pieces. Then she just sort of existed.

>>2475691
That's a goth. Emos are into wristcutting, colored hair dye, and other crybaby activities

>>2475586
Lulu is pretty good, she has high damage potential with Trio of 9999. Not as high as Wakka, but really high nonetheless.

>>2475630
that's just fine because Selphie has the most powerful limit break in FF8

>>2475721
there was that plot where she disguised herself as a grunt to infiltrate the giant desert drill thing to revenge her garden and ended up launching a nuke that almost destroyed the planet

>>2475736
> into wristcutting, colored hair dye, and other crybaby activities
>implying that's not what goths are/were

Emos and goths are virtually interchangeable. In the 80's and 90's we called them goths but that go unfashionable and now they call them selves emos but they're essentially all the same. I'm sure in their own stupid sub cultures they think they're completely different but to 99% of the world it's the exact same mopey bullshit with a different name.

>>2475661
This. Garnet is useless for a significant chunk of the game.

>>2475786
that's unfair anon...
she went into the base to prevent an attack on the garden (balamb?), and succeded, but they almost got themselves killed.

>>2475446
best waifu, you niggerfaggot.

>>2475640
this. well done, Square but damn you if I don't fucking despise Rinoa.

>>2475721
She had more story than Zell and Irvine. Maybe Quistis too.

>>2475847
who cares? Squall is fucking neither.
that emo squall meme is the stupidest shit the internet ever brought up. it's not true in the slightest. that motherfucker just doesn't like people because they judge him all the time.

>>2475885
No Squall is both. Not to the farthest extremes, but he's very clearly in the emo/goth/whiny bitch camp. He spends the vast majority of the game just moping and saying whatever.

>>2475882
too bad Zell and Irvine are both complete simpletons.

Zell is basically a proverbial textbook teenager and Irvine is the most retarded faggot for taking a playboy magazine or whatever just to mark the space where he imagined Squall and Rinoa would have sex and have the magazine "help them out". this is the most awful idea any video game character ever had. and he's a two dimensional faggot who only cares about guns and women.

and this is coming from somebody who loves FF8 for what it is.

>>2475891
enjoy your shitty pop culture labels that don't provide any decent insight about any character ever

>>2475893

Even worse, he screws up the assassination, and he never redeems himself. After disk 1 his story ends and he just tags along.

I haven't heard the word "emo" so many times since 2005 at least.

>>2475901
Squall is one of the most shallow and annoying characters in any rpg period. Whatever label you want to slap on him doesn't change that.

>>2475903
>he screws up the assassination

he couldn't "screw up". he had no chance in the first place to make it work. if Edea wouldn't have had a shield to block the bullet he would have given her a perfect headshot. it really wasn't his fault. the whole plan was just awfully stupid because it didn't consider Edea's powers for some retarded reason.

>>2475910

No, Edea if caught off guard can be sniped. She doesn't have a shield 24/7. They blew their cover, and she put up a shield in response.

>>2475904
Kinda surprised no one's started spamming Squall is a hipster yet.

>>2475926
you're wrong. she already sensed something was wrong once the gates closed her in and thus put her shield up. the assassination plan was crucially flawed and even moreso because the timing of everybody involved was shit. it could be that Irvine might have waited too long but that was not clearly noticeable.

>>2475928
Squall is triple triad card autist.

>>2475928
That's because Squall makes hipsters look like well adjusted cool people.

>>2475947
hipster detected

>>2475659
Do you know what NPC means???

>>2476068
>Do you know what NPC means???
lmao sorry, my bad. I meant another playable char, not the main.

>>2476068
>Do you know what NPC means???
lmao sorry, my bad. I meant another playable char, not the main... chars in general to be more precise... that's what I was thinking about.

>>2475751
How...?

>>2476215

>>2475587
>NPC

You sure you know what that term means?

>>2476323
see>>2476182

What the actual fuck is up with final fantasy 8 hate base? You guys just don't quit.

>>2476373
OP here. I actually really like the game. I just thought the cast was poor, especially in light of the vibrant cast of the previous games and the games following. VIII's cast was just dull, which is a shame considering how much more effort was put into character development.

>>2476227
it's also really inconsistent and requires an exploit to make worthwhile

>>2475587
Rinoa has some of the highest stats in the game, yet as a character is the mos helpless and useless piece of shit in the series.

How does that work.

>>2475446
I never noticed how much Selphie looked like a dude with long hair until now.

>>2476543
seriously an asinine design. probably the worst in the series

>>2475587
how the hell is Rinoa's strength that high?

>>2475587
>NPC
Dunno where you're getting that from. A character that the player can control cannot be an NPC.

i feel like lots of people misunderstand the roles of the characters in ff8. i feel like more people would enjoy the story if they saw it from my angle.

ff8 is a coming of age story. most of the characters in your party or the story through their plotlines and personality are meant to contribute ultimately to this theme, that the story is about growing up. i like to think of ff8 as similar to the breakfast club, because they share alot of similar themes.

when you first meet squall, he is more or less an angst filled teenager with trust issues and a superiority complex. squall struggles with his emotions, but doesn't hesitate to do his duty and be a leader. from the beginning of the game onward, he meets characters who all have a trait or quality that defines them, and he learns something from each one, and they also learn from squall.

selphie busted her ass to be admitted to balamb garden,she basically does a shitload of extracurriculars and works extremely hard. the fact that she became a seed over seifer is meant to show squall the value of dilligence and hard work, and not just physical strength.

each character carries a trait like this that squall acknowledges or assimilates into his own personality, to make him a more mature person by the end of the story.

seifer teaches squall the value of having a dream to achieve, and how to rely on his friends.

zell teaches squall about passion and thus inspiring himself and allies to fight.

quistis and irvine encourage him to love people as family and romantically, which squall probably repressed up until that point in the story.

rinoa shows squall a person who tries hard even when they know they aren't strong enough to succeed, and gives him somebody to love.

laguna who resembles a more traditional final fantasy hero teaches squall to believe in the impossible, and squall becomes more like him in the end.

all the characters learn something from eachother and ultimately grow up by the end of the story

>>2475446
>travels from one Garden to another as a transfer student at the beginning of the story
>likes trains because they take her to new places
>keeps a blog of places she's travelled to
>becomes the pilot of Ragnarok at the end of the game

She has more of a character arc than many others in the game.

>>2475963
No don't get me wrong, hipsters are insufferably annoying attention whores. They're just not as bad as Squall.

>Only stupid Japs

What a solid, non-racist argument you've presented there

>>2476379
Not any more than the other characters' limit breaks. Low HP + Aura will get you The End pretty reliably.

>>2477481
who are you replying to

>>2476765
Didn't you see how long she held onto the side of Balamb garden, with it even smashing into Galbadia's, and then on the space station she effortlessly tosses Squall aside. She lifts

What 4chan boards would the cast of FF8 like?
Rinoa might be into /pol/. Zell might be into /x/.
Zell's mom definitely goes to /ck/.

>>2475446
Man I used to jerk it all the time to Selphie.
I'd go into battle and cast zombie on her and Riona then have them beat the shit out of Squall. I still don't know why.

>>2475446
>implying that's a woman
Is this /b/?

>>2477248
And all of those things are incredibly boring and inconsequential to the plot

>>2477179
see>>2476182

Does it really matter how shitty the support characters are when you can beat the game and do everything by keeping Squall at low hp and renzokuken spam?

>>2475446
That spoony bard from FF4 may not be as shitty as Selphie, but goddamn was he ever fucking useless. I can't even remember that guy's name because he was gone from the party so damn early on.

>>2478819
...The plot? Enjoying the characters?

>>2478819
>not using zells 30+ hit limit break
use all available tools to win, gets you Odin (99x3 triples) and Townberry king once you get the garden in the water.

>if using a macro you can make an un(equipped&junctioned) low level zell kill a protected flan (255 def+protect, so almost no damage and then half that) with one limit break... that lasts about 5 minutes.

>>2478936
correction, unjunctioned strength* junctioned life and to a higher critical level to get a higher available time to use during the limit break
>my macro makes his count down @ 3 centiseconds intervals
>12 seconds = 1200 centiseconds / 3...
>400 attacks
>3,999,600 possible damage
Who is better or close to this output? (across the ff series)

>>2478430
Dude what the fuck hahahaha

>>2478936
>Townberry

>>2478991
I had a habit of glancing at the guides and using familiar words and not thinking how to pronounce it correctly so you caught me, I'm lazy for not actually looking and trying to pronounce its fictional name.

>>2475893
Irvine was the only one from the orphanage that remembered his old buddies. Old buddies he had zero qualms with leaving to rot in prison had Rinoa not hen-pecked him into assisting with the breakout.

>>2479256
He only vaguely recalls.

You have to keep in mind they were also kids, so its likely that he didn't recognize crybaby Zell when he's a grown ass man with flood pants and a Mike Tyson tattoo.

I played this when I was like 14 and I was a hardcore panty fetishist, so I kind of liked Selphie.

>>2479256
>Irvine was the only one from the orphanage that remembered his old buddies.

only because he wasn't not exposed to GFs as much as the others. And he kept his mouth shut just for that moment at the basketball court.

>>2476379
All you have to do is open the disk lid. Her slots will continue to spin but the monster's attack animation is halted while the lid is open.

>>2475626
>When both of the main Gardens head into war, the only thing Rinoa cares about is Squall's ring?
this sounds way dirtier than it really is.

>tfw I just played it and reached that awesome rescue in space scene

I barely have anything against that storyline at all. Just enjoyed it thoroughly. Also, you gotta give Square massive respect for those fucking cool cutscenes in Esthar, Pandora and in that space station.

I actually liked her. Am I allowed to like her for reasons completely unrelated to how useful or strong she was? Because I have more of those. I liked her because she was silly and made me laugh, mostly. Also I kinda had a crush on her... But she's actually pretty useful in combat too. Every character can be a god in human form if you junction the right magics to them, but their limit breaks stay exclusive to them, and when hers came up, I almost always had enough time to retry until I got something super-useful. Maybe I was cheating, but it still made her useful to me.

>>2481194
visually the game is impeccable, I don't think anyone will dispute that.

>>2475626
>>2475640
>>2481183

>>2475626
>>2475640
>>2481183
>>2481394
>Rinoa puts a hex on Squall at the dance...
>It's presented to us the way an actual hex would seem in real life:
>Innocent and charming
>"You're going to liiike meee!"
>Rinoa's hex didn't only affect Squall, all are hexed to hinder progress;
>Zell asks squall for his ring/slows down defense preparations,
>Rinoa falls off of garden/"Go look for a rope!"/Quistis forgot she has a whip
>Rinoa "faints" after defeating Edea, successfully diverting Squall's attention to her
>Reminder: These were all students raised in a military environment...
>Taught to fight, kill, maintain order and of course manage emotion, amongs many other skills
>Rinoa had them at "hello"

>Garden party/shooting star/kiss on balcony
>Squall saved his own personal sorceress
>Not too long until Galbadians realize this
>The last living sorceress ruined their day pretty bad
>Irate galbadian citizens approach local government
>Galbadian government approaches Laguna
>"Even You wanted Rinoa locked up! This is unjust!"
>"Isn't his very job description to destroy sorceresses?!"
>Word spreads/within 6 months most of the world wants Rinoa lynched
>When she dies her powers move on/new sorceress

All characters in final fantasy 8 are poorly designed and poorly written.
And seriously, FUCK TETSUYA NOMURA AND HIS AUTISM. Worst part is that after final fantasy 8 the same stereotypes of characters from there repeated on other games. Selphie is rikku/vanille/cute anime otaku girl with ADD. Lulu/quistis/lightning are the "strong women that don't talk much"...

Anyone that likes final fantasy 8 for its story is either underage&b or a weaboo female.

>>2481472
>Anyone that likes final fantasy 8 for its story is either underage&b or a weaboo female.
Don't be one of those man-boy children that pretends all the other FF games are more mature. It's a fantasy series.

>>2481472
You should write a Final Fantasy game and in your fantasy world your opinion can mean something special.

>>2481394

I subscribe to the "Squall is dead" theory

It basically states that in the fight with the sorceress when she sende that giant ice spike through his chest and he falls off the platform he is actually dying and udring the fall to his death everything that happens after disk one ends is a dream and ends with the final cutscene where everyone is out of focus and faces are missing (because his brain cells are dying and his memories are being erased) then heas laying in a shroud of darkness and suddenly a bright light pushes everything away and hes in a field of flowers (hes in heaven now basically)

I like that interpretation because it literally means this entire game from disc 2 onwards was squalls "Final Fantasy"

>>2481496
>I subscribe to the "Squall is dead" theory
Right there with you man.

>>2481472
Lulu talks plenty. Did you even play FFX or were you just staring at her tits?

>>2481512

It explains everything perfectly

the weird fucking little orange lion things at the prison the massive engine buried under the garden that apparently nobody knew about, the bizarre plot twist of them all being from the same orphanage Rhinoa turning a 180 and actually falling in love with him when she was a complete cunt throughout all of disk 1 and of course the fucking Moon monsters

it was all a deranged fantasy from a dying man filled with regrets who was having his brain flooded with psychotropic substances from his pineal gland

>>2481474

Not much more mature. But had characters I could enjoy as a kid.

>>2481518

Lulu, like lightning and quists talks only the essential and is overly serious.

>>2475583
>In the games before VII, the job system
...What? You mean 3 (bad) and 5? That isn't even "most" of the games before 7. If you want to really stretch and let 1 fall into that category, you barely get "half". What are you talking about?

I mean, I'm on your side about black magic users. It's a shame that jRPGs normally obsolete them at some point, and in a lot of cases they're just plain worse than physical, but the thing I quoted is a weird and mostly incorrect point.

Also
>palom and polom (FFIV)
are pretty damn good for the time that you have them. This is the wrongest and "I can't even"

>>2481496
>I subscribe to the "Squall is dead" theory
This is the only way that 8 is enjoyable, so I subscribe to it as well, but I honestly do not believe that it is what Square intended. I can't entirely redeem a game just because a fan-created theory makes the story not suck as much.

---------

Anyway, Edward is the worst character in Final Fantasy. Apparently in The After Years he gets some weapon that 9999s all the time so he's good, but I've never played TAY and I never intend to.

HE LEAVES THE FUCKING BATTLE WHEN HE'S WEAK and he's not even remotely good to begin with. His character concept isn't even cool; it's like he's designed specifically so that you hate him.

>>2481472
>All characters in final fantasy 8 are poorly designed and poorly written.
>Worst part is that after final fantasy 8 the same stereotypes of characters from there repeated on other games.
>Anyone that likes final fantasy 8 for its story is either underage&b or a weaboo female.
The same could be said about FFVII, FFIX, FFX and most JRPGs in general since they recycle the exact same stereotypes.

>Squall is dead
>Rinoa is Ultimecia
>NORG travelled through time to evolve into Angelo

What these 'theories' have in common is that they're concerned by the superficial plot and ignore what VIII's story is about.

This is a game where the protagonist carries a pendant that symbolises his repressed grief and at the end of the game it's manifested into a physical obstacle that the protagonist is able to overcome because of his emotional growth, as opposed to the antagonist who literally attacks the past because she can't get over it. And people are more interested in writing fanfiction about time travel conspiracies.

>>2481570
>And people are more interested in writing fanfiction about time travel conspiracies

Most final fantasy 8 fans are more interested in writing gay fanfiction involving squall, zell and seifer.

>>2475903
Hey you try to shoot your mother figure while kids you once lived with have no idea who you are and see how well you do.

After that part he seemed pretty well adjusted for an 18 year old. He seemed to have figured his shit out by the basketball scene.

>>2481536
At least edward does serve purpose to the plot in some points of the game.
While selphie is pretty much there to cater to weaboo girls

>>2481573
>one of the highest damage outputs in the game
>useless

Despite being the obvious EDGY character and not affecting the storyline that much, this guy isnt useless. He deals a fuckton of damage by mid-late game and he also has some support skills.

>>2481521
I know it's kinda g4yl0rd of me but I've played 8 through the scope of the Squall is dead theory and the Riono is Ultemicia theory, both are really fun and well supported as it goes. The next time I play through I want to use the scope of Rinoa being the master manipulator as in >>2481394 and >>2481436 and see how it feels...while also doing the whole Zell's love story stuff because I didn't know about that until recently (thanks again to /vr/!).

Has anyone come up with an idea of how Seifer might have been pulling the strings right from the very start? Seifer's unauthorized and uncalled for use of magic against Squall in training (openning sequence); Why wouldn't he mind dealing with Garden's consequences for doing that as wel as other things that got him into more trouble? In his eyes he succeeded in becoming the sorceress' knight.

>>2481523
you JUST complained that FF8 is appealing to kids

>>2478448
Isn't that a good thing in FFVIII's case? I went in knowing that the plot is a mess and tried to appreciate whatever I could. Selphie and Quistis were my favorite characters.

>>2481137
Yes, which is why I said an exploit

>>2481573
He's definitely up there but he isn't as bad as Selphie

>>2481573