Okay, so the reviews have been pouring out. I've been cleaving through my backlog, and getting to the real up to date games. One of the last games on this list, is a game it took me 15 years to get around to- Final Fantasy 8.
I have a funny history with this game. For so many years, whenever RPG discussions came up amongst colleagues, I always blindly referred to FF8 as my all-time favorite Final Fantasy game. There was even a point in time when I considered it my favorite RPG. This was lazy on my part. The thing is, that I drew that conclusion off of a very jaded and limited view. Years ago, in high school, my friend Luis hooked me up with a PS One system, with a few games. One of the games he gave me was Final Fantasy 8. He gave it to me with a partially used strategy guide. The game itself came out in 1999, as a continuation of SquareSoft's series. This was in the days before Square Enix. At the time I traded my friend, I was in 10th grade. The Game Boy Advance came out in 2001, and I got the system at lauch, by trading in my playstation, and finding a way to get the extra money. I was underwhelmed with my library, and after several months, the opportunity to get a playstation back, appealed to me.
Me and my brother used to love to sit in the basement and work on RPG's for long hours of the night. I was always a fan of the genre. When I got the game and took it home, I had the luxury of following the guide, and traversing the many early missions in the game. In fact, I made it to the second of four discs. The strategy guide told you everything you needed to know, and find, in order to maximize your party and summons. I ended up trading the system, with only the memory of what I played, which was only 1 disc and about 30 minutes. I downloaded it off Playstation Network some years ago, and it has been in my backlog until I recently finished Monster Hunter. This time, there was no neat Strategy Guide and cup of tea.
Final Fantasy 8 uses a very unique casting and summoning system. You have Guardian Forces (GF's) that you defeat and collect, in order to summon in combat to perform a powerful attack. Through these GF's, you can junction magic spells to your stats to increase them, and abilities to your character such as Revive or Devour, as the GF learns them. There is no MP, and leveling up does almost nothing to your stats, even with special bonuses that you unlock later on. There is also no normal money system. YOu get an allowance that is based on your Seed Rank.
To set the stage, you are a member of SEED. This is an organization that battles villainous sorceresses, and researches advanced technology. Raised on one of the many bases. You rise in rank to take on missions of keeping the peace. According to the level of missions you tackle, you receive upgrades to your rank, which increases your allowance, which is paid periodically. After assisting a resistance force in a city under oppression, you embark on a mission to liberate the people from the control of an evil Sorceress. After defeating her, you find that the truth is much deeper, and the sorceress received her power from a previous one, who is trying to manipulate space and time and destroy humankind. It takes the assistance of a great scientist, to embark on a journey to stop that from happening.
Visually, I felt at first, that the game was underwhelming for a 1999 game. This is mostly due to the fact that Legends of Dragoon came out slightly before, and had more beautiful textures. However, when considering the magnitude of the content and areas, the game actually does quite well. There are certain transitions and sequences, where cinematic graphics will blend right into real time environments, which I thought was a great touch. The cinematics at the end also make up for it.
As far as gameplay, that's where I feel the game was broken. And honestly, I almost gave up playing the game completely. As you level up in the game, the enemies get exponentially stronger. Yet, in order to get spells you need to be effective in combat, you have to level up to face stronger enemies. The game, I felt, overly relied on summons in the early goings. Even when junctioning spells, often they didn't do enough damage, and the enemy was so strong, that the only way to survive was to spam summons. Your characters have the ability to draw spells. They do not learn spells. They stock a limited amount, or draw cast spells. There is no definitive way to boost attack power or perform combos. Characters have the usual Final Fantasy Limit Breaker, which is a collection of special moves accessible to a character a percentage of the time when near death. Draw Casting was a savior in the latter parts of the game. Fortunately, a good number of the bosses, possess spells that are effective against them defensively or offensively, that can be drawn. There is a spell called Aura, which boosts a character to be able to perform Limit Breakers successively for a short time. This was one of the many spells that fell flat. Near the end of the game, Squall- the lead character's limit Breaker- Renzokuken, becomes mandatory. Bosses and high level enemies possess HP that is out of the world. Most of them have over 150,000 HP. Normal attacks do 2,000 - 3,000 HP damage, if you have leveled up and junctioned your character for physical damage appropriately.
Squall's Limit Breaker does about 4,000 damage with each of the 8 or so hits, minus the ultimate strike at the end, which is probability based. I heard about spamming that attack, but even with Auras cast, I was never able to do more than 2 in a row, before the spell just stopped working. I often cast Aura, and got not bonus at all, for no known reason. And all of this happens in the heat of combat with enemies that do almost full health bar damage with each attack. This game has a plethora of status magic, and elemental spells, but it is so hard to implement any of these strategies, due to how over powered the enemies are, and how quickly the battles, and damage move. If you stagnate too long during combat, the enemy will actually attack you at times during fights, as if it were a real time RPG. This felt unfair, as the lists of spells can get long, as you stock up on them in your inventory. If an enemy cast an augmentation spell on themselves, you can cast Dispel to undo it, but with bosses, they still get to attack 1 or 2 more times in that turn, doing massive damage. Then you'll be thinking you should have spent that turn casting damage on them. Each battle feels like a rush to kill the enemy before you get wiped out. It's hard to focus on defense.
The other thing about this, is that this game is dependent on secrets. I was so disgusted as I read through walkthroughs after starting the game. I read one, and followed it in the outset, but got away from the walkthrough, to enjoy the game naturally. I explore naturally when playing these games, so it's not like bee-lined for the end of each objective. First of all, the first half of the game, sends you from one Seed mission to the next, giving virtually no chance to explore and level up. I had to do my grinding late in the game. The GF's that you need to find to junction essential abilities, are hidden throughout the world. Some of them are in dungeons, some are hidden in cards. Without a guide, it is highly likely that you will bypass a good deal if not most of them. Yet, you can't beat the game, or even compete without them. In the final tower of the game, you have the option of getting them from the bosses you face. But once again, you wouldn't necessarily know that, and could miss some of them there too. The ship that you procure to fly around in, you can get back at the end of the game, but the way I found out was ludicrous. I read a guide, and only by that guide, did I find that I had to go through a certain portal, run up and around a mountain, find a Chocobo forrest, win the Chocobo and ride it out, and walk across the shallows on the shore to the next island, around more mountains, to a random corner with my ship. You tell me how you can guarantee that all players would have found that naturally.
When facing the last bosses, I found Draw Casting was a savior. However, you run into an ability they have to blow you hard earned spells away. The last battle comes down to attrition, and just taking the bull that comes your way. Don't expect to win the fight, with your toughest fighters still standing. You just have to hold on until you defeat the boss by the skin of your very teeth. I like nail biter boss fights, but this game feels too out of the player's control.
The music was absolutely amazing. I have not heard a score this breathtaking and memorable in a game in quite some time. Composition wise, and arrangement wise, you can tell this soundtrack was passionately put together. I loved every part of it. The way the recurring motif was used throughout the game was magical. There was even a scene in the game where the characters perform a concert, and play the ballroom theme song that the hero and heroine met and danced to. You go through the process of teaching the party members each part and solo, and then they perform it to a romantic scene. That theme comes back as such perfect times, all the way to the end, without over saturation. All of the other pieces are just as well written, and worthy of a disc. That added so much life to the game. I don't normally fancy myself a sucker for romance, but this game really does it well.
Story wise, this was another Final Fantasy in the vein of Crisis Core, where the story was compelling and beautiful. The characters were serious enough to relate to. All of their lives intertwine, from a small orphanage, to a unified battle to save the world. The ending movie sequence was well done, and I think that's where the game transcended to the next level. I was truly blow away by the level of love put into the production quality. The cinematics during the credits, were especially impressive because they were very intricate and high level, which I'm sure was pretty ground breaking at the time. I couldn't overlook the issues, but I was somewhat pleased with the end product. I had labeled this game, the worst one that I had ever played in the last few weeks leading up to my completion of it. I appreciate the story, and the level of open world exploration and detail in the world, but I feel like some of the idiocy which is done for plot reasons, and the combat system itself, takes away from what an RPG is supposed to encompass. I play RPG's to explore, get competent and strong, and get absorbed in the story. You don't get much of a chance to do that in this game, as you are always underpowered. A lot of the cool secrets that exist, you have no way of knowing about without a guide. Then you can't really get that comfortable exploring, because you can never get strong enough to do so confidently. This took away from what I usually like in this game, on top of not being able to have spells and abilities of your own, but rather having to stock them constantly from enemies.
There is a card game in this game that is played by people throughout the world. Winning strong cards is key, as you can use a GF ability to modify rare items from them later on. There is a quest that allows you to get access to very rare cards. However, winning these games is far from easy. In fact, it's extremely difficult. To lose a good card means, a restart of the game and a rematch. You get cards from some enemies as well. I beat this game for 2 reasons. 1- I managed to get the very hard GF- Bahamut and his card, which I modded into 100 Megaelixirs, which heal the whole party completely. And 2- I stocked up on a strong spell called Meteor, which hits all targest for good damage if you have your Magic Stat junctioned well. As I mentioned, the last boss can blow spells away, and does so all the way through the last fight at random. I was fortunate he didn't blow that spell away. My hero died, and it was a cycle of casting and healing until we just managed to survive.
Would I play this game again- possibly. Do I see it fondly- I can't say that I do. The game is endearing, in fact, I would say it is beautifully romantic. I just think it falls short of the freedom that RPG's should possess. All in all, it was a great game in it's own right, that you will loathe many things about. I can't bury a classic 8/10
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