Final Fantasy Megathread

[hardcoretyphoon hardcoretyphoon]

Hello! Welcome to my Final Fantasy VIII blind LP!
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In this thread I will play through Final Fantasy VIII on the PSX for the first time, while posting occasional updates. I'm playing on original hardware on my trusty Xstation, so no save states and yeah, the footage is gonna look a little crusty.
I've already played like 2 hours in so ill do my best to sum up the beginning (I spent most of it lost in the beginning area >_<)

Feedback is appreciated, but please don't spoil me!
I'm alright with gameplay tips and story refreshers.
But if you're going to mention anything that takes place throughout the game's story,
make sure to it!

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The Game starts with a super cool FMV cutscene, So far my favorite thing about the game. There's this guy I later learned was named Squall (I'm using the default names) he likes this girl I guess, and he doesn't like this asshole guy (named Seifer) who cuts him in the face. Cool intro but no clue what to make of it. Judging by how the logo consists of Squall and that girl hugging, I guess that's the main crux of this game, not sure how though.

Squall wakes up in what first seemed to be a hospital but later I learned was some type of school. The students are training for something called a SeeD exam. We'll learn later what's that for.

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So our first mission is to go to the [Fire Cave]. Guess I gotta fight a god for this exam.
I should have told the teacher I was sick today.]

Oh oops! You're right!
I forgot to bring my girlfriend! Wherever could she be?​

Onward! To the [Fire Cave]!

(Note: I didnt get any screencaps of this dungeon so take an artists' depiction)

After we beat Ifrit, the exam was through. A bunch of shit happens and we're on our first mission. Seems like this school is some sort of military school, so into the warzone it is.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2

 

[Dr.Kisaragi Dr.Kisaragi]

Make sure to play triple triad because it had benefits.

 

[χKai]

Don't set yourself up for disappointment expecting it to be as good as Final Fantasy VII, like I did.

Hope that's not too much of a spoiler!

 

[PSVitaForever]

My first and only playthrough has been with the official guide: it was also my first real videogame (after Tomb Raider 2) and I'm sure I would have miss LOTS of stuff without guide, and of course being one my first games it's also a very good memory!
Since you're already experienced with FF, maybe you'll enjoy it anyway going blind: best of luck and enjoy the journey!

 

[SpcDaicon SpcDaicon]

Hey, look! Its the Final Fantasy with the-best-looking-guy-here™

Hope you enjoy your playthrough! Junction can be a bit messy and frustrating but once you understand it, you can break the game.

Play Triple Triad

 

[Arudama]

Ah man, this is a game to play with a couple asterisks.

First and foremost, pay attention to the GF tutorial, and if you are somehow confused even after going through it, feel free to ask questions here; or read up about it a bit online. Its fairly straightforward, but for the life of me: this is one of the primary factors that fostered the notoriety the game has received to this day. -- Well that, and gamers mostly want a guided, straightforward experience with their games; that strictly adhere to the genre and/or franchise conventions from now, until the end of time, with only the most frivolous of novelties to suffice.

DO NOT grind on either axis for this game! The conventional means of grinding levels will effectively soft lock you; and the unconventional means of grinding via Triple Triad will effectively turn the game into a mash confirm simulator. The fine line to walk here is that you ought to engage in doing both in moderation, as ignoring one or the other leads to a worse game experience. This is a genuine flaw with the game, which could have been mitigated by having more guardrails on what you can junction with GFs; having consequences related to overloading a GF stat at certain intervals of the game; and most contentiously, by removing the concepts of levels from the game entirely (I'm sure this was proposed, and was effectively denied cos Square knows how ornery gamers can get!).

/rant Nice screenshot! Curious if that's a particular shader; or if you took a good pic of your physical display.

 

[SwaunyJones]

I actually really enjoyed this Final Fantasy. Makes me want to replay it

 

[medisinn]

I hope you like the game. It's certainly very different from the other FF games, but I appreciate them trying new things. You may want to spend some time absorbing spells from enemies. It's tedious, but you can absorb a spell indefinitely, you just get a random amount each time. Thus you can do it without needing to grind experience, and having a ready made selection of spells usable without worrying about MP is pretty fun.

 

[Guinea]

Well crap, since you already left Balamb I got nothing. It would've been a huge benefit for you to spam enemies on the beach near Balamb Garden and drawing 300 magics from the enemies, so you'll have OP stats for the next part.

 

[hardcoretyphoon hardcoretyphoon]

Hey, look! Its the Final Fantasy with the-best-looking-guy-here™

View attachment 132154

Hope you enjoy your playthrough! Junction can be a bit messy and frustrating but once you understand it, you can break the game.

Play Triple Triad

Post automatically merged: Dec 2, 2025

I hope you like the game. It's certainly very different from the other FF games, but I appreciate them trying new things. You may want to spend some time absorbing spells from enemies. It's tedious, but you can absorb a spell indefinitely, you just get a random amount each time. Thus you can do it without needing to grind experience, and having a ready made selection of spells usable without worrying about MP is pretty fun.

How does absorbing spells work? Do i have to junction spells to defense?

Post automatically merged: Dec 2, 2025

Well crap, since you already left Balamb I got nothing. It would've been a huge benefit for you to spam enemies on the beach near Balamb Garden and drawing 300 magics from the enemies, so you'll have OP stats for the next part.

Ah i see. I have a bad habit of going exactly where a game tells me to go without exploring first, sometimes. FF7 was pretty linear so i assumed the world map wasnt super useful yet

Post automatically merged: Dec 2, 2025

I actually really enjoyed this Final Fantasy. Makes me want to replay it

Makes me happy to hear someone wants to replay from reading my thread! All the feedback is making me wanna play more too.

 

[PSVitaForever]

Ah i see. I have a bad habit of going exactly where a game tells me to go without exploring first, sometimes. FF7 was pretty linear so i assumed the world map wasnt super useful yet

Post automatically merged: Dec 2, 2025

Your habit may have saved you from a painful, sudden and unexpected game over in one of the areas inside the garden :D (I got it because I remember I started exploring carefully every branch of the garden and I probably forgot to save).
I won't say anything else because you said earlier that you don't want spoiler. I don't remember when you can get back to the garden, if you will explore around you will understand.

 

[hardcoretyphoon hardcoretyphoon]

Your habit may have saved you from a painful, sudden and unexpected game over in one of the areas inside the garden :D
I won't say anything else because you said earlier that you don't want spoiler. I don't remember when you can get back to the garden, if you will explore around you will understand.

Right!! I left that out of my LP because it wasnt the right way to go and i didnt take screenshots. I got absolutely destroyed by those plant monsters and was so confused why what i thought was supposed to be the first fight of the game was so hard.

 

[medisinn]

How does absorbing spells work? Do i have to junction spells to defense?

I forgot the name of the battle command, it's Draw. When you draw magic in battle you get I think 1 to 9 of a given spell. You can do it indefinitely and get up to 99 of a spell. I can't remember if you need to do it for each character or if they share a pool of spells. Tough enemies or bosses might have hard to get spells, so it's worth trying out Draw on them. You can junction magic to your stats, yes, that is part of the uniqueness to the game. Which stats you can junction varies based on the GF I think, though your GFs learn abilities over time so you may have more stat options with that GF later on.

 

[PSVitaForever]

Right!! I left that out of my LP because it wasnt the right way to go and i didnt take screenshots. I got absolutely destroyed by those plant monsters and was so confused why what i thought was supposed to be the first fight of the game was so hard.

In that area you can find something even more difficult O.O After watching some video right now it seems maybe you can beat it, but when I did it I had no idea how to survive so I came back much later. Also, I never knew about levels and grinding, I beat the final boss with everyone level 99 and 99 elixirs that makes you unbeatable in the items (won with the Gilgamesh card, if I remember correctly... I know, maybe I was crazy, in fact we spent a whole summer just playing this game).

 

[hardcoretyphoon hardcoretyphoon]

(Sorry for my lack of postings! Ive probably got 30 minutes of gameplay in this week max.)





Making it further into the city and doing more battles, we head toward the [Communication Tower]. But before I reach it we're ambushed by a monster, guess I should expect to see more of these things.

As we head closer to the tower, a girl approaches us, and proceeds to stumble and fall (lol). This is Selphie. I think she was the girl I saw earlier in the game but didnt go with. When i made an alt file for screenshots i realized that girl early on is supposed to help you out but in my main file i was just like "sorry i gotta go"

Man, this game has a lot of party members, we've been switching out a lot, and im not even too far in. I guess i should be mindful of that because i left quetzlcoatl with the lady from the beginning of the game.

You know im gonna do it!​

To be continued part 3​

 

[Guinea]

Ok, so, kinda sorta spoiler alert I guess, I think. You're about to fight a boss that seems unbeatable, but you can beat it. And if you do, it will give you an alternate cutscene.

 

[hardcoretyphoon hardcoretyphoon]

Ok, so, kinda sorta spoiler alert I guess, I think. You're about to fight a boss that seems unbeatable, but you can beat it. And if you do, it will give you an alternate cutscene.

Thats a good tip! I'll do my best!

 

[Clippy]

So far I can tell you two things without spoiling anything. Make sure you use the draw command on bosses. Some of them have additional summons or, as the game calls them, GFs. The other thing is to find SeeD quizzes in the menu and complete them to the best of your ability as they increase your salary that you will periodically get. This salary is the only source of money in this game and while it's not uber useful there's no good reason not to have any and it can save your bacon every once in a while.

 

[Guinea]

So far I can tell you two things without spoiling anything. Make sure you use the draw command on bosses. Some of them have additional summons or, as the game calls them, GFs. The other thing is to find SeeD quizzes in the menu and complete them to the best of your ability as they increase your salary that you will periodically get. This salary is the only source of money in this game and while it's not uber useful there's no good reason not to have any and it can save your bacon every once in a while.

This. And honestly, I would just look up the answers to the quiz to get max SeeD grade, it doesn't really spoil much of anything (i think)

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

A Final Fantasy 8 discussion and i didnt get invited? BLASPHEMY!!!!


OK this Final Fantasy is unlike anything the series seen before so you're in for a surprise , while i would personally advise playing and learning yourself (that's what i did) as it usually leads to a better and in my case a funny experience i mean did you know if you increase the number of junctioned spells the stat you junctioned that spell on will improve?

One thing i tell you , this game is balanced around gurdian forces , melee damage isn't as impressive or good as previous installments and magic is good but if you're looking for amazing damage output just summon the GFs , this game is a more slow in everything it does by now you seen the animations and how they work , i guess square aimed for more detailed animations in this one as 7 and 9 have far less impressive animations.

Don't worry about difficulty this game isn't too hard , not having to buy armor and such eases up your spendings a bit , always have good surplus of potions just in case you run out of healing spells , you don't need to max out on stolen spells i beaten most of the game without knowing more spells = better junction results so if i can do it you can too.

You might want to build zell as physical damage dealer , give him ifrit and once you unlock the +1 strength gain per level you will want to keep that on him , later on haste+berserk on zell and he will absolutely wreck everything what's good about zell is his higher tier weapons are easy to come by.

You know about the gunblade and it's extra damage thing right? Well i didn't until i got to middle of disc 4.....ultimate abilities can be activated once character is low on HP , that's a valid strategy in some situations to keep certain characters with overpowered ultimates on low HP all the time , you will know him when you meet him (I'm a loner)



You probably didn't realize it yet but this game has a unique rule unlike 7 or 9 , the monsters scale with you when it comes to damage , still some weaker monsters damage will remain abysmal even if they do this.

Final Fantasy 8 "sense" spell is quite unique from other sense spells of the series as it will give you a pretty detailed analysis of the monster you are facing even some lore!

Unlike previous FF games and also next installment it also keeps all summons useful , you will still use ifrit or shiva later on oh and KEEP SHIVA ON YOU she is cold like squall kek but she also enables you to junction vitality/spirit which is the only way to reduce damage other than shield spells , that's how i played Final Fantasy 8 as squall i was just the guy who can take a huge amount of beating and still stand.

Its not a hard game at all i would say even the easiest Final Fantasy game save for the disc 4 and few things there and there.

 

[χKai]

Don't be too sad if you blow it and miss out on being able to get everything in the game

 

[PacGuy]

8 is so goddamn good

 

[Mago]

The story can be really dumb at points but I recall the presentation being incredible.

 

[hardcoretyphoon hardcoretyphoon]

The christmas season sure is a busy one ^^; but having a few minutes to sit back and play ff8 was nice. In my absence i've been able to read y'alls tips and I think i have a better understanding of the game that I would have if i just fucked around. This is definitely a different kind of RPG.

I feel dumb for realizing that Quistis, the party member I had at the beginning was STILL IN my party, just waiting on the sidelines, so I took her Quetzalcoatl for now and gave it to Selphie.







I also made sure to draw as much magic as possible.
The draw system is pretty cool, its like stealing in other RPGs but
actually fun to use.



​

As we make our way up the tower I spot some familiar faces... Or more like familiar names.
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We also get to see another cool fucking FMV.




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And so commences the fight against Biggs and Wedge. A pretty easy battle until...​

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WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING????
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I guess this is our first TRULY MENACING boss, Elvoret.
Not even the game knows what this god-forsaken
thing is. He really posed a threat! 3000 health is nothing to scoff at this early on in the game. His damage output was luckily pretty low, although he has one attack that does a ton of damage to the whole party. Drawing doubles and double-curing the party was very helpful. All in all it was easy, yet still tense.​

And with that, we overcame that wretched beast. Its demise was glorious.

And with another battle, another GF joins our team.


Man guess we better haul ass!

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Continued in PART 4​

 

[breremarer]

Aww man I'm stoked someone else is playing this for the first time! I'm a little farther than you (on the second half of disc 2 now), but I've really come to love it, despite how awkward some of the systems and storytelling are. It's just got vibes, you know?

It does love to switch around party members a lot, though. Get ready to spend far too much time tweaking the junctions when suddenly you're back with your B-squad.