Final Fantasy VIII: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Triple Triad

Best FF? Worst FF? Discuss Triple Triad strategies, back issues of Pet Pals, criticisms, etc. Personally I really didn't like it when I started. That Junction tutorial was pretty daunting. But once you get past the Drawing (and the new release fixes that w a SUPER-valuable Magic Booster) it's a piece of cake. My biggest gripe at the moment (on disc 3) is the lack of interesting random battles. Feels like the number of monsters has been drastically reduced from previous series and I am fighting the same giant grasshopper for the 300th time now. You just can't top FFVII for WTF random monster battles, IMO.

The CGI is pretty cool this time, and the graphics are great. Music still has some high points (the main Garden theme is quite nice) but feels like a step down. Maybe the PC release just stinks in that department.

I got super into Triple Triad until I met up with the Sorceress and now all the card games have that Same/Plus rule and....ugh....I just need to keep trying until I figure it out. Feels like before every move I make now I have to double-check the numbers on the side of every single card on the board.

loved viii, best ost (i wore out all four discs), v underrated

nostalgia speaking though

Yeah i was just playing a card game and I had 9/10 cards and then the computer puts one down and FLIP.. FLIP .. FLIP... FLIP etc.

Been trying to win this one card for 20 minutes now, and just decided fuck it, it is not worth it. And yet i keep trying...

i liked 8 best when it came out. replayed it again not long ago... its ok. great final dungeon, love triple triad, combat is mostly just spamming Draw a lot. i like that you can time an extra button hit on the gunblade to do more damage. boosting is stupid but its not like you use GFs anyway

lol speak for yrself

GFs are somewhat useful on the first disc and never afterwards.

I played a lot of Triple Triad but have you ever tried rule nullification? It takes HOURS. Might as well just start the game over.

GFs are useful because they're awesome summons are always awesome get with it

Oh, Hell Yeah. Summons are the shit. And have you heard the new Korn album... its pretty twisted, but Hell, so am I

final fantasy viii

felt a bit boring when you ended up having at least one character on yellow permanently to do w/e they named limit breaks in this one. some good set pieces iirc, esp the assassination & garden battle. couldnt face playing the final disc where you had to unlock saving &c. more than once

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ff8+amv&sm=3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m3qGy4VNiw

Diablos is an awesome GF! VII Summons are still my favorite just cos they were so OTT but VIII GFs are still pretty entertaining. I just got Ragnarok and I really want to go get the Tonberry GF just to see what it looks like.

forgot all about that laguna stuff

"i dreamt i was an idiot" = classic zing tbh

Hah.....uh..... so yeah as soon as I start this thread is when I started losing interest in the game. Everywhere I read told me "Don't level up! This isn't like other FF games you shouldn't level up!" So I didn't and now I'm at the end game with half of my characters in the 30s.

I started playing X (which I'd never played before) and I like it so much more that I've already sunk 30 hours into it.

VIII definitely feels like the demarcation point between FF as a series of somewhat Open World questing and a series that tells CGI-driven stories with some fighting and light exploring in-between. Maybe this was true of VII, but at least there was a huge variety of random enemies, far more (and more complex) dungeons, stuff to find in practically every screen if you search enough. If you search everywhere in VIII you can find draw points which are cool but they don't exactly give you anything you wouldn't be getting by just playing the game.

Not that I didn't enjoy VIII. The set pieces were great. The whole train sequence was probably the best part of the game (zombie president doppelganger!). The graphics are a step up from VII even though that world was much more appealing. The card game is amazing great fun but the spreading of rules is too rigid (really should have an unlockable thing where you can just turn on and off rules from a menu) and playing Plus/Same games against stronger opponents feels at times like playing chess against Deep Blue.

I guess the cool thing about 3D FF games is that they were pretty ahead of their time, moreso I'd say than games like "Super Mario 64" or the other current 3D games. I keep thinking about how these compare to sandbox GTA-style modern games. Basically it all boils down to the one part at the end of Final Fantasy VII, where you have to press UP to go DOWN a winding staircase made of dragon vertebra.

The part in GTA: San Andreas when you realize you are about to go through flight school and be flying airplanes is more or less an analog to the part in FF games where you get the airship.

I beat VIII, and kind of yawned at that ending, half of which was just earlier footage with distortion effects. The final dungeon was cool though! Lots of minibosses that are easy to kill but hard to find, wandering a haunted castle, climbing up the clock tower like an old horror movie, etc.

Man this game is a mess! Is there any way to play Triple Traid at the endgame or should I just go back to old saves anytime I feel like playing cards?

ff8's final dungeon is great yeah

Sure is!

Unfortunately I did not care about any of the characters and once the time compression thing is introduced the plot much loses all it's steam. Locking off all towns at the very end was a lousy move imo. Great, I finally get an airship and now every town in the world is inaccessible!

Oh yeah, the lunar drop happened or whatever, and MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of monsters from the moon are flying across space to invade the earth. Then it cuts back to Earth and it's just a really nice day outside and the sky isn't cloudy or anything!

What a weird game! A flying school that teaches teenagers how to use magic and become mercenaries! Evil witches! Possession! Outer space! One of the Phantasy Star games (I think 4) did this same plot more or less (minus the witches but plus an anime robot woman with cat ears) and it was way more interesting.

the orphanage reveal is still one of the best funny-stupid things ever in a game

the triad owns

i want to goto a police state with underworld