Be warned, this is the worst of the final fantasy series

[DANK EMPIRAR]

It's also the one that introduced me to the concept of weapon effectiveness when I was a younger being.

Gunblades.

How to break ones wrist.

[BananaJane]

Katsuni님이 먼저 게시:

FF8 may not be the worst of the FF series, but it has one major issue: they screwed up the game play in the most fundamental of ways in virtually every possible manner available. The story's not too bad, nothing special, but not bad. The controls are pretty good, and the concept is nice. The characters are all varying shades of depression and honestly, you can interchange most of their lines for one another, as such, the writing could use a lot of work.

Even so, it's not a bad game... to watch a let's play of. In terms of actual gameplay mechanics, it's crap, and about as far down the craphole as is possible to go.

Why do I say that? Easy, there's a few major, gamebreaking flaws in the game that made it boring as hell to play, and are fundamental to the game itself that couldn't be removed without the whole thing falling apart. From the ground up, the gameplay is bad.

Let's start with your control options: In previous FF games, most characters had something unique they could do to make them stand out, such as specific action abilities. In FF6, anyone could change class to mix and match abilities, in FF7, you could master a command materia and get a huge range of options fit for any situation. In FF8... well, you get 4 slots, one for attack, one for drawing magic (required to do much of anything), one for summon, one for items, one to cast magic... wait, that's 5 already.

Yes, you read that right, you literally don't even have enough slots to perform the most basic functions of the game.

Second, magic gets junctioned to your stats, meaning you have to collect magic (which acts as an item that stacks to 100; some go up to 200 in the steam version) and NEVER CAST IT. If you cast it, you're literally lowering your stats permenently. What's that? You want to cast a cure spell? Well sure... but it'll lower your maximum health by 200 each time you cast it. Not so hot a tradeoff is it, now?

The third part is that this means you never really have any reason to ever cast magic... and to make matters worse, you're pretty much forced to drag on boss battles for ages. Sure, you could KILL the boss, but almost every boss has really powerful magic significantly before you could get it otherwise, so instead of, you know, fighting a boss and trying to kill it, you just sit there for 30+ minutes spamming "draw magic" off the boss over and over until it's out of free stat boosts to throw at you, which you'll never use as actual spells.

In short, you're stuck with autoattacks most of the game, or using very long cast time animation summons. I love the appearance of Eden's summon... but I don't want to sit through a summon that takes over a minute to cast every single fight because I have no magic.

The painfully severe lack of itemization in an RPG didn't help matters, either... you get a weapon aaaaand... that's it. Not even armour. Just a weapon, which gets tiny, negligible upgrades that are a pain to make and don't really feel like they have much impact.

The very core mechanics of the game are bad, simply put, and heavily reward players for not fighting a boss, but just drawing magic from it for long periods of time. This removes all real enjoyment from boss battles, and turns them into a chore rather than a climactic battle, or even something to be enjoyed. They're boring, flat out, and sure, you can avoid the draw spam on bosses, but you're only hurting yourself by doing so.

With monsters leveling up as your characters do, it only makes matters worse; you're actively discouraged from doing much of anything but drawing magic from bosses. The game flat out punishes you if you try to fight random encounters, and you're better off just running from every fight and junctioning magic stolen from bosses to your stats, and having all your characters at about level 20 at the end of the game. It's kind of absurd, really.

Of course, the game actually encourages low level characters even further by having bonus stats on levelup passives... which you don't get until much later in the game, so leveling your characters early on is actually highly discouraged and penalized.

FF8 is anathema to anything you'd ever actually want to do in a JRPG. You get penalized for casting spells, for leveling, for trying to use any of the special abilities available, or pretty much anything short of spamming autoattack.

As stated, you're better off watching a let's play of it; the story's interesting, the concept is good, and the overall game as a whole isn't bad... but the gameplay is just so awful that I flat out can't advise actually PLAYING the game. There's no enjoyment to be derived from grinding or earning the top level gear in FF8. It's just a badly designed game in general, and it works much better by watching someone else play it... which is sad, because that kind of defeats the whole purpose of it being a game instead of a tv show. Still, it is what it is, and that is a very poor set of bad ideas all dumped into a single, oversized melting pot of mediocrity.

Watch it on youtube, but don't buy it. I'm not joking here; every sale FF8 makes is another suggestion to Square-enix that they should make another bloodied abortion of common sense like this, and it's completely the wrong message to send them.

You also forgot the only really awesome characters in the game are quistis, ultimecia and edea

[BeastBox]

The only thing I remember about FF VIII is that I had setup for Irvine that had him auto-attacking for 9999. All strategy was pretty much out the window at that point.

[kyoselflove]

This is my favorite Final Fantasy :P

[Yeshuash]

valiantheartmoon님이 먼저 게시:

Me thinks you missed the "Fantasy" element of Final Fantasy

There is a diference between fantasy and making stupid $hit up as you go along that eventualy dosnt make any sence.

[KyrenCross]

This is the First Serious Final Fanatasy Game I ever finished ^_^, I actually cried T_T.
Loved the story and Card battle/collecting minigame Collected them all .

Previous final fantasy games to me looks like it's for kids, never emotionally connected to them.

Then they released FF9 which looked like a kids game again, did not bither to play it until FF10, finished that too but disappointed with Blitz Ball, hoping that some sort of card minigame would return.

[Kamishiro Yuna]

Happy_Turtle님이 먼저 게시:

FF8 is IMHO the best of the "3D generation" of Final Fantasies. Sure the characters were a little annoying (Rinoa with her daddy issues and Squall playing the stereotypical loner roles) But the plot had interesting twists and the gameplay mixed it up with the GF stats. Not perfect but certainly far from the trolling title of "worst FF game evar"

I'd argue that FF9 was slightly better, but I love both of them. I love the technological aspects of 8, and how everything is more present-day/near-future, but the high-fantasy styling of 9 also appeals to me a lot.

[Asamoya]

VIII is the best Final Fantasy in my opinion... don't know what game some of you guys were playing.
X-2 is the worst by far, and the only one I just could not bring myself to finish.

[Gyousel]

This is one of my favorite FF game next too FF9, 4, and 6. Some may like it others wont

[レイン]

i bet your a FF7 fan can already tell by your one post roflmao nothing but a f^g is what you are this was by far best one in the series it actually had good characters and a great story.

[Rapscallion]

BananaJane님이 먼저 게시:

Katsuni님이 먼저 게시:

...snip...

You also forgot the only really awesome characters in the game are quistis, ultimecia and edea

how are they awesome? ultimecia and edea are totally underdeveloped. we know nothing about them besides "edea was in charge of the orphanage" and "ultimecia is the big bad". quistis only trait is "she's a woman who desperately needs a man". I'd say most (if not all) characters in this game are super bland.

[Death]

7 is by far my favorite, but 8 and 9 were also great games. I'm going to have to pick this up ASAP and hope 9 comes out next.

[Trigun✰26]

Covarrfetch'd님이 먼저 게시:

No, FFX-2 is the worst of the series, followed by FF13, then FF13-2, then FF2, then FF12. FF8 might be the worst of the good ones, but it's still one of the good ones.

i quite enoy x-2, thank you very much.

[an_actual_whale]

God Tier: 6
High Tier: 5, 9
Mid Tier: 4, 7, 10
Low Tier: 1, 12
Garbage Tier: 2, 3, 8, 13

Only spinoff worth playing is Tactics (the PS1 version, the Gameboy ones suck) and it's God Tier.

[BeastBox]

landwhale님이 먼저 게시:

God Tier: 6
High Tier: 5, 9
Mid Tier: 4, 7, 10
Low Tier: 1, 12
Garbage Tier: 2, 3, 8, 13

I would maybe bump both 4 and 1 up one tier each, but otherwise agreed.

[WRO Your Boat]

your high final fantasy 8 is the best final fantasy 7 is just over rated but its still good and XIII is the worst