FA+
Shop
Talking about Final Fantasy 7 and 8
2 years ago
General
So recently I got into an RPG mood after playing through the Super Mario RPG Remake on the Switch. Because of this I decided to play through Final Fantasy 7 just to see how it holds up.
TL:DR it's still good. Good gameplay, decent story, fun characters.
Playing through it again it is interesting how much of an absolute goober Cloud is. Like this character is NOT dark, brooding or edgy in any way, so I am not sure how he came to be viewed that way.
Sephiroth, well, I will be honest he's kind of a dull villain. Yeah he's iconic, but he's just kind of there most of the time.
Going into the game I was going to try and fight Emerald and Ruby Weapons, but I opted out of that once I saw just the shear volume of grinding I would have to do and noped out of that.
But all in all I enjoyed my experience playing through FF7 again. I wouldn't want to play the remake, but playing a version that is more so a hack of the PS1 version would be nice. Trim some fat, make grinding less of a chore and just smooth out some things. Seriously some of the Materia takes SO much AP to level up.
After beating FF7 I debated if I wanted to play FF8. One thing is like with FF7 I wanted to do as much as possible in FF8. The big issue is for as much as I love Triple Triad card game the Queen of Cards sidequest was something I never managed to do thanks to the Random rule. WELL, before playing the game I looked up online that you CAN abolish the Random rule thus making the QoC sidequest a LOT easier. It works even on the PS1 original so for the first time ever I managed to get EVERY card in the game.
So playing through the game I can see why people don't like Squall, he is a bit... much. Even as his character develops he's just okay.
The story as a whole is just okay, like it feels like there are too many things introduced into the story that just come up once and never again, or don't really add much.
For those reading this I will assume you have played the game. But the Lunar Tear bit to explain where monsters come from just felt unnecessary to me.
But the biggest thing that I dislike in this story, and this is something I recall even from the first time I ever played, the fact that every playable character (excluding Rinoa) all just so happen to be from the same orphanage... It always bugged me because of how absurdly coincidental it is. Then the handwave excuse as to why they forgot being tied to using Guardian Forces is just so lame. This is a fantasy world with highly powerful sorceresses, just have one of them cast a memory loss spell on the party, that would be more favorable to me personally than that lame excuse in game.
Now for the gameplay, I still actually like it. I can understand the hate for the Draw and Junction systems, but I still like it and will explain why.
So in most RPG's you of course have grinding, it's essentially part of the genre. But some RPG's have the grinding be either too long, or simply not worth doing. As in the gains are not sufficient enough to be worth the effort at all.
I mentioned Materia in FF7, well the huge time sink to level up some of the Materia is so huge that is makes it not worth the amount of time to grind.
So where is all this going?
Well in FF8 you have an enemy with a spell, you are allowed to draw that spell from that enemy until you have 100 of that spell, which is the max for a character. This endeavor does not take that long, and if you have all 3 characters doing it then all 3 of them will have 100 of that spell in a relatively quick amount of time. So it has the time factor down pat.
As for the gains, well if you Junction that spell to a stat you get INSTANT gains. I was at the point where you could encounter Cerberus. He has the spell Triple so I Drew 100 Triples from him for every character. I Junctioned that spell to Strength and in the very next encounter my attacks went from doing 500-700 damage all the way up to 1,500-1,800 damage! So THAT right there was time well spent.
Plus the whole Junction system plays into something I like doing, making lists. So I made a list of all the best spells for all the stats. I literally have a notepad with all the best spells and what spell would be best to Junction where so as to not waste a spell that would be more useful on another stat. It's gratifying to me to go through this process.
Furthermore in this playthrough I leaned more into better Junctioning and learning better Abilities for the GF's. I learned Abilities like Auto-Haste and Auto-Protect which made Omega Weapon surprisingly easy all things considered.
That leads me into another point in favor to the quick grinding in this game.
To get Auto-Haste I needed to first get 100 of an item called "Lightweights," which may seem like a tall order. Luckily there is an area where you have a 100% chance of encountering the enemy that has this item to steal. Furthermore when you do successfully steal from this enemy, which may take 3 tries, you receive 6 of this item, 8 if you're lucky. So after 17 encounters, 13 if you're lucky, you will get 100 Lightweights. This is much more favorable to some games where you can spend HOURS grinding to get ONE item from an enemy.
So to me this is what FF8 gets right, nothing in this game seems unreasonable to grind for. And furthermore, that process mentioned above CAN be avoided by simply winning the one card that you can refine to get 3 of the items that give you Auto-Haste! So if you don't want to grind, the game gives you the option to avoid said grind!
I chose not to Refine any of the cards and simply used what I could reasonably grind for. Yet with what I had I managed to grind for I was able to defeat Omega Weapon in 2 tries, what I did seemed to be more than enough to defeat the game's superboss.
So in closing I do love both of these games. FF7 has things I like more than FF8, but FF8 has things I like more than FF7. If I were to choose which of these games I like more as a game, which I enjoyed playing more, I dare say I liked FF8 more. Story wise though that honor goes to FF7.
Anyway, just felt like talking about these two games as they were fresh on my mind.
What about Final Fantasy 9? I'll be honest, it never clicked with me.
TL:DR it's still good. Good gameplay, decent story, fun characters.
Playing through it again it is interesting how much of an absolute goober Cloud is. Like this character is NOT dark, brooding or edgy in any way, so I am not sure how he came to be viewed that way.
Sephiroth, well, I will be honest he's kind of a dull villain. Yeah he's iconic, but he's just kind of there most of the time.
Going into the game I was going to try and fight Emerald and Ruby Weapons, but I opted out of that once I saw just the shear volume of grinding I would have to do and noped out of that.
But all in all I enjoyed my experience playing through FF7 again. I wouldn't want to play the remake, but playing a version that is more so a hack of the PS1 version would be nice. Trim some fat, make grinding less of a chore and just smooth out some things. Seriously some of the Materia takes SO much AP to level up.
After beating FF7 I debated if I wanted to play FF8. One thing is like with FF7 I wanted to do as much as possible in FF8. The big issue is for as much as I love Triple Triad card game the Queen of Cards sidequest was something I never managed to do thanks to the Random rule. WELL, before playing the game I looked up online that you CAN abolish the Random rule thus making the QoC sidequest a LOT easier. It works even on the PS1 original so for the first time ever I managed to get EVERY card in the game.
So playing through the game I can see why people don't like Squall, he is a bit... much. Even as his character develops he's just okay.
The story as a whole is just okay, like it feels like there are too many things introduced into the story that just come up once and never again, or don't really add much.
For those reading this I will assume you have played the game. But the Lunar Tear bit to explain where monsters come from just felt unnecessary to me.
But the biggest thing that I dislike in this story, and this is something I recall even from the first time I ever played, the fact that every playable character (excluding Rinoa) all just so happen to be from the same orphanage... It always bugged me because of how absurdly coincidental it is. Then the handwave excuse as to why they forgot being tied to using Guardian Forces is just so lame. This is a fantasy world with highly powerful sorceresses, just have one of them cast a memory loss spell on the party, that would be more favorable to me personally than that lame excuse in game.
Now for the gameplay, I still actually like it. I can understand the hate for the Draw and Junction systems, but I still like it and will explain why.
So in most RPG's you of course have grinding, it's essentially part of the genre. But some RPG's have the grinding be either too long, or simply not worth doing. As in the gains are not sufficient enough to be worth the effort at all.
I mentioned Materia in FF7, well the huge time sink to level up some of the Materia is so huge that is makes it not worth the amount of time to grind.
So where is all this going?
Well in FF8 you have an enemy with a spell, you are allowed to draw that spell from that enemy until you have 100 of that spell, which is the max for a character. This endeavor does not take that long, and if you have all 3 characters doing it then all 3 of them will have 100 of that spell in a relatively quick amount of time. So it has the time factor down pat.
As for the gains, well if you Junction that spell to a stat you get INSTANT gains. I was at the point where you could encounter Cerberus. He has the spell Triple so I Drew 100 Triples from him for every character. I Junctioned that spell to Strength and in the very next encounter my attacks went from doing 500-700 damage all the way up to 1,500-1,800 damage! So THAT right there was time well spent.
Plus the whole Junction system plays into something I like doing, making lists. So I made a list of all the best spells for all the stats. I literally have a notepad with all the best spells and what spell would be best to Junction where so as to not waste a spell that would be more useful on another stat. It's gratifying to me to go through this process.
Furthermore in this playthrough I leaned more into better Junctioning and learning better Abilities for the GF's. I learned Abilities like Auto-Haste and Auto-Protect which made Omega Weapon surprisingly easy all things considered.
That leads me into another point in favor to the quick grinding in this game.
To get Auto-Haste I needed to first get 100 of an item called "Lightweights," which may seem like a tall order. Luckily there is an area where you have a 100% chance of encountering the enemy that has this item to steal. Furthermore when you do successfully steal from this enemy, which may take 3 tries, you receive 6 of this item, 8 if you're lucky. So after 17 encounters, 13 if you're lucky, you will get 100 Lightweights. This is much more favorable to some games where you can spend HOURS grinding to get ONE item from an enemy.
So to me this is what FF8 gets right, nothing in this game seems unreasonable to grind for. And furthermore, that process mentioned above CAN be avoided by simply winning the one card that you can refine to get 3 of the items that give you Auto-Haste! So if you don't want to grind, the game gives you the option to avoid said grind!
I chose not to Refine any of the cards and simply used what I could reasonably grind for. Yet with what I had I managed to grind for I was able to defeat Omega Weapon in 2 tries, what I did seemed to be more than enough to defeat the game's superboss.
So in closing I do love both of these games. FF7 has things I like more than FF8, but FF8 has things I like more than FF7. If I were to choose which of these games I like more as a game, which I enjoyed playing more, I dare say I liked FF8 more. Story wise though that honor goes to FF7.
Anyway, just felt like talking about these two games as they were fresh on my mind.
What about Final Fantasy 9? I'll be honest, it never clicked with me.
But yeah, Junction system is fun. =3
What led people to view him as dark and brooding was actually Kingdom Hearts, where he was way more of a loner. (I love KH, but GOD, it killed Cloud's character a lot.) Advent Children continued this, and made Cloud much darker than in the original games.
FF7 Remake kinda helped fix a lot of characters - Aerith is once again the brash, headstrong woman who knows she controls how alive the party is, Barret is again the passionate man who cares about his family, and most importantly, Cloud, despite his tone of voice, is back to being a bit of a goofball.
Especially to Marlene. He really cared about her, it was sweet.
"Daddy your whiskers hurt."
I just have no real desire to play the remake. The action RPG angle doesn't appeal to me.
I'm sure the game(s) are fine, I just don't care.