Topic: Retrogaming: Final Fantasy VIII

[nickclone]

I never had a Playstation as a child, I never wanted one. I was a huge Nintendo fanboy and I saw Sony as the enemy. I've gotten older and a hacked PSP that can play PSX games, I have an infinite amount of games to play.

I played the PC demo of FF8 several years ago and I remembered liking it, so I'm playing it now. I'm on my first actual mission and the story hasn't really taken off yet, but I really like the characters and how you can customize them. One of the things I hated at first was how magic worked, in order to use magic, you have to steal (or "draw") it from enemies. However, the magic and junctioning system (assigning certain magic to attributes to raise them) has grown on me. All in all, I'm really liking this game so far.

[TheOtherBelmont]

Final Fantasy VIII was pretty good.  The magic junction system was ok, but in my opinion, later in the game it shows its weaknesses.  Certain parts of the story felt rushed, especially towards the end, but all in all told a pretty decent story.  I also loved the hell out of Triple Triad and wished they had put it in the future games.

[nickclone]

Triple Triad? I guess I have a ways to go, I'm still on disc one.

[TheOtherBelmont]

Triple Triad? I guess I have a ways to go, I'm still on disc one.

It shows up pretty early in the game, its a card game that you can play with various people throughout the world and the rules can change based on the person you play and certain rules can spread to other areas of the world based on who you play and when.  I want to say its introduced by some guy at Balamb Garden on one of the upper floors near the classrooms but I could be wrong on that since its been years since I've played it.

[iPPi]

I never finished this game.  I got to the end of the third disc and stopped playing.

[nickclone]

The card game pissed me off at first, I couldn't win no matter what. Now, I'm better, but is there an actual point to the card game?

[TheOtherBelmont]

The card game pissed me off at first, I couldn't win no matter what. Now, I'm better, but is there an actual point to the card game?

I want to say there is some kind of weapon or uber item after winning against certain people, but an FAQ would probably be a better source of info on that.

[PyroMenace]

Definitely look at a guide for this game or else it will totally come back and bite you in the ass with this game. I ignored the card game because I hated it, also the limit break system is different and you can totally overlook it if you dont know it exists. Those things fucked me in the end and I never finished it.

[nickclone]

Looks like I have some reading to do. I wanted to say more, but I'm blitzed.

[MysterD]

Digital Foundry looks at PS4 and PS1 versions of the recently released FFVIII: Remastered
(also now out on Switch and Steam for PC too):

Things to note:
- 3x speed is here as an option like it has been with many FF Remasters, likely to stop the grind & other non-sense that some of the FF's are known for (and in particular, this title w/ constant drawing of spells, lots of GF summons, etc).
- Character models were redone and are more in-line with the FMV's, while the textures weren't.
- This Remaster has more of the quirks & issues of the old PC version of FF8 actually.
- Original was at 320x240, but Remaster has everything running at 1080p.
- Still stuck with 4:3 aspect ratio in the Remaster here.
- In this Remaster: battles are capped at 16fps, while game-world roaming is capped at 30fps.
- Menus in battles were actually running at 60fps before, but Remastered is also now capped to 15fps...which is why some have issues with Limit Break's timing/rhythm & other things of this sort.
- No analogue control support & no rumble supported on controllers here.