/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8673628]

The crown jewel of PSX library

[Anonymous No.8673637]

>>8673628
Fuck off

[Anonymous No.8673658]

>>8673628
You little fucking faggot that's not Crash Team Racing.

[Anonymous No.8673676]

JRPGs have always been a shit genre

[Anonymous No.8673678]

weird Kingdom Hearts ripoff but at least it has a cool card game

[Anonymous No.8673679]

>>8673676
t. ADHD zoom-zoom

[Anonymous No.8673680]

>>8673676
Fpbp.

>>8673679
t. Can't into actual gameplay.

>>8673658
This, or Tekken 3.

[Anonymous No.8673691]

>>8673680
>actual gameplay
>posts buttonmashvania
pottery

[Anonymous No.8673698]

>>8673680
>Fpbp.
That's not the first post you retard

[Anonymous No.8673710]

>>8673679
>wanting to play an actual game (these were created before and after FF8)
>"heh adhd zoom"

[Anonymous No.8673721]

I’m actually playing through this now and the dialogue is ‘whatever’. Not ff13 tier but almost as bad. The story i don’t mind but the real killer is the pacing. Like in the battle of gardens there is an epic scene with all out fighting and then Rinoa and squall need to talk about his ring for 5 minutes right in the middle. Like, how is anyone supposed to be in that situation and not be like “SHUT THE FUCK UP WE HAVE TO GO”

[Anonymous No.8673734]

>>8673628
It really is but you have to play it properly

>realize level scaling makes grinding irrelevant
>do low level speedrun until Cid gives you the magic lamp
>acquire Diablos
>learn enc-half / none, card mod and the various refine abilities
>turn off random battles completely by the end of disk 1
>use card mod and draw points to obtain magic stockpiles
>explore the world at your leisure fighting only boss fights and not giving a shit about exp because junctions > levels

When played properly, the game ceases to be a typical JRPG grindfest and instead plays like the best possible version of the old Sierra games while the card game adds an element of collectathoning and dueling depending on how deep into the CC club and QOC quest you want to get. It completely changes the pace of the game for the better and makes it infinitely more replayable than any of the others. VIII is the comfiest FF but the trick is not to play it like it's a FF.

[Anonymous No.8674532]

>>8673628
Easily my favorite FF imo. FFVIII Ultimania fleshes the plot out and it's more interesting than VII I'd say. Combat is wacky and allows a lot of experimentation. Best Nomura character designs before he went too far with belts and zippers. Gunblades are kind of a dumb design but it's easy just to see them as plain old swords.

Main villain "Ultimecia"'s name hepburn form (Japanese character transliteration) is "Arutemishia" which could be translated as "Ultimecia" or it could be translated as "Artemisia" which could be a reference to feminist painter Artemisia Gentileschi whose most famous painting is a woman gorily cutting a sleeping man's head off. This is somewhat supported by Ultimecia being a collector of paintings and having an entire gallery (with an associated puzzle) of expensive looking oil paintings. In addition, Ultimecia never gives any impression of having a love interest and at times chides her male subordinates.

You could talk for days trying to unpack the plot of FFVIII, but the summary is some Sorceress in the future discovers a group of teenage soldiers in the past will come to kill her in the future but she understands time travel can't solve it (since going back in-time would be a self-fulfilling prophecy) so she embarks to compress "time and space onto a single point so she can rule over it". Whether this means she'll destroy the entire universe in the process is never explained. It's not a perfect story.

At the end of the game, Ultimecia fights the teenagers, and succeeds in compressing time and space. However, the spell is cancelled by the main characters ruminating on their friendships, but most prominently, Squall reflecting on his love for Rinoa demonstrating he learned how to let down his guard in order to become close to someone he loves. The main theme of Squall's arc.

[Anonymous No.8674536]

>>8673628
Continued from >>8674532:
So tl;dr the plot of FFVIII is the heterosexual love between a man and a woman is literally strong enough to destroy a time-traveling feminist Sorceress who seeks to destroy all time and space because she realizes she can never be successful living her life as-is.

That's what I think was probably intended when I see the game's logo of Squall and Rinoa embracing.

[Anonymous No.8674552]

>>8673628
Get real Jr, and play dual orb 2

[Anonymous No.8674579]

>>8673734
>realize level scaling makes grinding irrelevant
Grinding still matters because you can only draw the game's best spells in the higher level brackets (Meteor, Full-Life, Ultima). These are useful to get your stats up to fight the game's harder bosses. Solely farming these spells from the few Draw Points that have them is psychotic in comparison.

>do low level speedrun until Cid gives you the magic lamp
>acquire Diablos
>learn enc-half / none, card mod and the various refine abilities
>turn off random battles completely by the end of disk 1
This is valid to do for sure. Grinding still matters but it's better to grind the stuff that actually gives you what you want. Getting Lionheart on Disc 1 has been the most reliable way for me to breeze through the game though since everything with the exception of a couple normal enemies/bosses aren't instantly one-shot by it.

>use card mod and draw points to obtain magic stockpiles
Draw Points aren't as effective for getting the above spells I mentioned. Grinding to a higher level bracket gives you better spells to access in addition to enemies becoming stronger. Your party becomes much more powerful with those spells than the strength your enemies gain, so it's always a net-win to level up provided you're getting the best spells available at your bracket.

>explore the world at your leisure fighting only boss fights and not giving a shit about exp because junctions > levels
Junctions are better than levels but levels = high tier spell draws. You are not likely to get your hp/offense/defense maxed without them (which are necessary if you want to kill Omega, but virtually every other enemy in the game is one-shot/two-shot by Lionheart).

[Anonymous No.8674581]

>>8673628
Well I'm not sure about "crown"

[Anonymous No.8674589]

>>8673734

>When played properly, the game ceases to be a typical JRPG grindfest and instead plays like the best possible version of the old Sierra games while the card game adds an element of collectathoning and dueling depending on how deep into the CC club and QOC quest you want to get. It completely changes the pace of the game for the better and makes it infinitely more replayable than any of the others. VIII is the comfiest FF but the trick is not to play it like it's a FF.
Yeah I would be inclined to agree with the stance that FFVIII can be played in a way that relieves the typical grindfest problems of JRPGs but the game certainly doesn't make it obvious to you that it does that. Overall, I like your way of framing FFVIII this way and I have subconsciously felt this way about FFVIII without having the words to articulate it.

I also want to add in my post >>8674579 about Omega that yes of course you can cheese that boss fight with Holy Wars if you really wanted to, but I personally like killing bosses/enemies with strats that don't use those invulnerability consumables.

If you were to use Holy Wars, Holy War Trials (which are bugged to work 100% in-game), Heroes, and Hero Trials along with a combination of Lionheart, Angel Wing/Meteor, it's likely you could 100% the game at an extremely low level. But I guess the fact that FFVIII can be broken apart and reassembled into whatever you want is part of what makes it great.

[Anonymous No.8674591]

>>8673628
>The crown jewel of PSX library
Wrong. FF8 is a complete fucking mess, which means you can experiment and do a lot of weird shit, but at the end of a day a fucking mess is still a fucking mess. FF7 and FF9 destroy it.

[Anonymous No.8674594]

>>8674591
>is still a fucking mess
It's a mess but it's the most beautiful mess.
Its character design, story, open-ended character customization, and music are all the best of the series.

[Anonymous No.8674603]

>>8673734
Continuing from >>8674589:

I'd say FFVIII's difficulty overall is pretty easy to effortless once you understand the game's systems. Which is essentially equating it to a puzzle game, once you figure out stuff like how to get Limit Breaks to deploy regularly with optimal damage and how to make your characters defensive properties strong enough that they never die, virtually every boss in the game can be nearly one-shot and be incapable of killing you even if you were to walk away from your controller for like 10-15 minutes without an exceptional amount of grinding. I've never really seen a game (JRPG or otherwise) that's quite like that.

Comparatively, a relative of mine played through FFVIII while I was playing through it on my first play through and he didn't choose to really experiment with any of the game's systems and you would probably observe the difficulty of FFVIII during his playthrough to be relatively brutal.

It's an extremely bizarre game in-terms of how its systems were balanced but it's ultimately unlike anything else and precisely why it's the most special game in the series to me.

[Anonymous No.8674604]

>>8673734
>eliminating all challenge is playing it properly
Your brain on FFVIII

ACTUALLY playing it properly:
>go on as normal, fight as much as you want to
>don't spend hours drawing nor playing cards (play cards if it's fun to you, but don't mod them)
>instead just refine items won in battle
>you will still enjoy an edge over the enemies but not become über-mega powered, the pacing improves a lot, and you don't remove an essential part of the game (the battle) like the No-Enc homos

[Anonymous No.8674609]

>>8674532
It’s easily your favourite in your opinion?

[Anonymous No.8674610]

>>8674604
>go on as normal, fight as much as you want to
>don't spend hours drawing nor playing cards (play cards if it's fun to you, but don't mod them)
>instead just refine items won in battle
>you will still enjoy an edge over the enemies but not become über-mega powered, the pacing improves a lot, and you don't remove an essential part of the game (the battle) like the No-Enc homos

I mean that's a way for someone to play a blind playthrough on their first time, but that isn't the only valid way to play through the game.

If you want to be meticulous and experiment with the game's systems, it rewards you for doing so based on how much you tinker with it.

So the "correct" way to play the game is whichever way you want. If you want to not sweat it and kill stuff as you think is necessary, sure, that's fine.

What makes FFVIII great is that it's the most flexible of all the FF's (and maybe of any JRPG) in that you can totally play through the game being mostly ignorant to its systems and have a pretty fun challenge or you can tinker and experiment with its systems to the point of the difficulty being extremely easy to non-existent. It's a game you can break apart and make it into whatever you want it to be. Which is precisely what I would have hoped people to want from a game's "character customization".

[Anonymous No.8674616]

>>8674604
>go on as normal, fight as much as you want to
>don't spend hours drawing nor playing cards (play cards if it's fun to you, but don't mod them)
>instead just refine items won in battle
>you will still enjoy an edge over the enemies but not become über-mega powered, the pacing improves a lot, and you don't remove an essential part of the game (the battle) like the No-Enc homos
I mean that's a valid way for someone to play a blind playthrough on their first time, but that isn't the only valid way to play through the game. If you want to be meticulous and experiment with the game's systems, it rewards you for doing so based on how much you tinker with it. So the "correct" way to play the game is whichever way you want. If you want to not sweat it and kill stuff as you think is necessary, sure, that's fine. Or if you want to tinker the game into oblivion, that's also fine. It should be whatever someone wants it to be.

What makes FFVIII great is that it's the most flexible of all the FF's (and maybe of any JRPG) in that you can totally play through the game being mostly ignorant to its systems and have a pretty fun challenge or you can tinker and experiment with its systems to the point of the difficulty being extremely easy to non-existent. It's a game you can break apart and make it into whatever you want it to be. Which is precisely what I would have hoped people to want from a game's "character customization".

[Anonymous No.8674621]

>>8674610
>I mean that's a way for someone to play a blind playthrough on their first time, but that isn't the only valid way to play through the game.
Yes I'm talking about a first time playthrough. Just like a newbie would take wrongly your posts about going full no-leveling as gospel. So I'm trying to correct that. Everyone who already beat the game knows how to avoid leveling. Stop telling people to avoid battles. The story is shit so playing it like a non-interactive visual novel sucks hard.
>you can totally play through the game being mostly ignorant to its systems and have a pretty fun challenge
FFVIII's challenges completely suck though, which are either no-junction or no-junction/no-leveling. FFVII and V provides better, more varied and more difficult self-challenges while having some restrictions in place. FFVIII is all or nothing.

[Anonymous No.8674629]

Rinoa is the worst girl in the entire series

[Anonymous No.8674632]

>>8674621
>FFVIII's challenges completely suck though, which are either no-junction or no-junction/no-leveling. FFVII and V provides better, more varied and more difficult self-challenges while having some restrictions in place. FFVIII is all or nothing.
Within the space of what you permit yourself to junction or not junction is more complex than anything that V or VII had in it. Just false. This is also ignoring different ways of playing through with various GF abilities allowed/disallowed based on self-imposed restrictions.

It had a better story than VII in my opinion. I found every character relatable in some way unlike a quasi Native American talking tiger, but it’s not like we’re going to have a productive discussion on personal preferences.

Inb4 a lot of greentext when I’m going to go play a game after being in this thread for a while.

[Anonymous No.8674648]

>>8674632
>Within the space of what you permit yourself to junction or not junction is more complex than anything that V or VII had in it. Just false. This is also ignoring different ways of playing through with various GF abilities allowed/disallowed based on self-imposed restrictions.
The junctioning system is way too powerful (and the game way too easy) to make self-imposed restrictions matter. Which is why the only one that matters is no-junction. So there's no variety. If you try to gimp yourself by going solo, or mimicking jobs, or avoiding certain abilities, the game is still too easy to be considered a "challenge". I've never seen a single idea of a worthy FFVIII challenge that doesn't involve forgoing the junction system completely.

[Anonymous No.8674670]

>>8674648
So being able to do all sorts of weird challenge runs = good as opposed to the quality of the baseline game? People generally don’t solely base their tastes on what plays well on Twitch streams or squeezing hours of tedium from increasing the difficulty of a turn-based story-driven RPG which is already approaching a visual novel.

[Anonymous No.8674684]

>>8674670
I don't even know what the hell you're talking about now. You were the first talking about using the system to craft challenges and now are moving the goalposts to the baseline quality of the game itself again. You come here, every single month or so, make the same thread every time claiming it's the best game in the system, and when faced against criticism, you cry despite you being the one coming to this board with extraordinary claims in the first place. I don't even hate FFVIII, I just think it's a flawed game with some strong positives but I'm very tired of the cult it has here and on vrpg composed of anons who claim it's the best thing since sliced bread but also label every shortcoming the game has as imaginary.

Why don't you make a fucking blog and stop spamming this thread every time if you're not gonna allow differing viewpoints to meet each other.

[Anonymous No.8674801]

>>8674532
Very nice art, shame about the feet.

[Anonymous No.8674803]

>>8673628
>FFVIII

[Anonymous No.8674807]

>>8674684
I am not the OP of this thread. You are having paranoid schizophrenic delusions. It’s a fucking JRPG videogame meant for people to enjoy themselves and you’re throwing a tantrum over the internet and having a psychotic episode over it. Your life priorities are fucked. Get help.

[Anonymous No.8674815]

>>8674801
Even with the monstrous hands and feet, she’s very sexy.

[Anonymous No.8676132]

>>8673628
agreed

/thread

[Anonymous No.8676426]

>>8674579
None of the bosses are hard enough that you'd have to stockpile top-tier spells for every character. I never bothered with Ultima at all aside from junctioning it to Squall's STR stat and occasionally revisiting Shumi village will give you all you need for that. You can junction garden-variety spells to most stats and make out just fine as long as you have enough of them. I spend the first third of the game getting by with shit like water and zombie and whatever life / cure spells I can pick up along the way.

And as for disk 1 Lionheart, I can't think of anything more pointless. You can beat the entire game fairly easily without it and the only reason you might ever actually need it is Omega and even then that's just to make it as easy as possible, it can absolutely be done without it. So you might was well wait until the items are easily obtainable later in the game instead of doing it the most painful and awkward way possible in disk 1 when you would never, ever need it and are clearly not intended to have it. It's like using a nuclear bomb to kill an ant.

Hell I don't even bother upgrade Squall's gunblade at all until the endgame because I hate having to sit through all the more prolonged animations when I'm trying to kill Tonberries for the Tonberry king quest. People still don't seem to realize how unnecessary it is to brute force this game. You can beat it *easily* with like 30% of the max possible stats. You can go through the whole game without upgrading a single weapon and it's still not that hard. The CC club and the islands closest to heaven / hell will give you all the magic you ever need. The game rewards you for playing smart, so play smart.

[Anonymous No.8676430]

>>8674803
Still would rather play it over the FFVII remake on PS4, and Final fantasy X-2.

[Anonymous No.8676447]

>>8673628
not even top 3 psx ff
>>8674591
>forgetting the goat

[Anonymous No.8676470]

>>8674648
>The junctioning system is way too powerful

I've never understood this argument. Junctioning isn't any more powerful than being overleveled was in any of the previous games, and nothing is technically easier than grinding.

And yeah, there are some shortcuts to getting some powerful junctions but it's not like the game just hands out Ultimas and Full-lifes like candy. To really exploit the junction system you have to know what you're doing and most JRPGs can be broken if you know what you're doing, it's usually just a matter of putting the time in. I don't mind that FFVIII takes a little less time than most.

[Anonymous No.8676487]

>>8674591
I liked a lot of things about 9 and even beat the optional bosses which is not something I always do but at the same time I always find myself disinterested in the actual story and just enjoying the mechanics and the aesthetic of it. The characters all seem like they're straight out of a b-tier Disney movie and the villain is completely forgettable.

Literally, I don't even remember the dude's name. Puma? Kobe?

[Anonymous No.8677296]

>>8676470
>but it's not like the game just hands out Ultimas and Full-lifes like candy
Yeah you just can buy some tents after getting Siren in the beginning of the game and make the entire game pointless. Surely the same as grinding several hours.

[Anonymous No.8677301]

>Why is [negative thing] bad? in my mind [negative thing] is actually [positive thing]. This game is perfect and has no flaws, I will never admit it.
Every FF8 thread ever. All this attachment to a flawed game for contrarian snowflake points. Reconsider your life. Talk at least about the waifus and stop pretending you're some kind of patrician.

[Anonymous No.8677306]

>>8673734
>This is a pretty good game if you exploit the shit out of its flawed growth system
So... This is the power of JRPG players...

[Anonymous No.8677353]

>>8676487
Kuja. Personally, I find a character as flamboyant as him very memorable

[Anonymous No.8677367]

>>8677353
Personally I liked how he was 100% an asshole, he was not only some impersonate existential threat he didn't miss a chance to make it personal for the main characters
That being said, gameplay wise IX is one of the worst titles in the serie, tied with X

[Anonymous No.8678328]

EDEA WAS LIKE A MOTHER TO ME!

[Anonymous No.8678378]

>>8678328
Lmao shut up you fucking simp, at least one of us had the balls to fuck his sorceress

[Anonymous No.8678408]

>>8673628
I hated this when it first came out. Should I finally give it a shot again?

[Anonymous No.8678678]

>>8678378
Fuck off Squall you mincing twink, you're too much of a chicken wuss to fuck Rinoa.

[Anonymous No.8678847]

>>8678678
squall is the only ff main character who's ever have sex. cope

[Anonymous No.8678856]

>>8673628
Based. 10/10 game.

[Anonymous No.8678967]

Do you guys know how the PC version is including mod support? I don't have a CRT or anything and after trying vanilla FFVII and VIII ports on Switch/PS4 I was pretty appalled by what Square Enix finds acceptable for something that's supposed to be a remaster. I've been messing with the Satoshi/SYW5 mod for FFVII and find that it offers a great experience. I'm guessing FFVIII doesn't have anything that lets you play at 60fps, properly upscaled backgrounds, real analog support, etc?

[Anonymous No.8679235]

>>8673628
OP is not a faggot and has exquisite taste. People who bitch about FF8 are always autistic people who can't handle that it didn't have a 1:1 copy of every generic jrpg system ever. Still to this day there isn't a game that replicates the beautiful setting and atmosphere FF8 has.

[Anonymous No.8679256]

>>8678847
He starts his game in a solid relationship, marries his fiance by the end, and has a canonical son. I don't like After Years either, but it is confirmed: Cecil fucks.

[Anonymous No.8679260]

>>8678847
Pretty sure Tidus and Yuna had sex during that one cutscene they just didn't show it

[Anonymous No.8679389]

>>8679260
Jesus Christ I hope not, seeing Tidus awkwardly smash his lips on her was cringe enough

[Anonymous No.8679847]

Personally I like how you can do something different each playthrough. Challenges, limitations, class systems etc

[Anonymous No.8680132]

>>8678847
Ehh, Cloud and Zidane?

[Anonymous No.8680426]

>>8680132
oh right cloud had that weird 'oh no we're gonna die let's bang' moment under the airship with titfugg
>zidane
nah