Current Game: Final Fantasy VIII
Current Play Time: 0:10
Total Play Time - 534:55
Current Game Overs - 0
Total Game Overs: 59
Where I Currently Am: Balamb Garden
Stuff Did Today: Beat up Minerva... Beat up Genesis... got killed by the ShinRa army... and that was just in Crisis Core. I then loaded up Final Fantasy VIII to find out I need to go over to the fire cavern... and yeah, I saved and took a little break
Current Setup:
Squall - Lv 7
HP: 486
Str: 17
Spd: 21
Vit: 6
Luck: 16
Mag: 6
Spr: 5
Eva: 1%
Hit: 255%
Equipment: Revolver
Status & Notes:
Okay... so bunch to talk about today. Let's start with the end of Crisis Core... mission 9-6-1 will seriously go down as one of the most annoying boards I've ever played... that being said, I like the difficulty. You have Cactuars... which at this point in the game is really the only think that can legitimately kill you when they randomly use 100k needles. So, you always have to have a Phoenix Down on, and on top of that, you have these annyoing worms that just stop you all the time even through Ribbons... which give the Cactuars more of a chance to use 100k needles. So, yeah, that was annoying. Once I actually made it to Minerva, honestly I didn't even need to use the SP/Gil Trick... I had plenty to max out my stats... from there, its just a long fight to wittle down her 10 Million HP... That's right... she's second probably only to Yiazmat... oh we'll get there eventually... Her attacks are annoying, but with maxed stats which again, was no problem to do, they were not life threatening... just needed to Curaga once in a while. I've heard she can cast Ultima to one shot you unless you block, but that never came up for me. She does attack more rapidly as the fight goes on... again which is nice. I guess this would be a good endurance challenge without max stats, who knows, maybe I'll give it a try sometime.
The ending of Crisis Core(aargh, not Chrono Cross), was good. Really good. Really Really good.... it was good, but in such a brutal way. To actually make you play all that out, just kills you... even though you KNOW from the beginning it is going to happen. Cute little twist revealing the time lapse as well... Plus, seeing Cloud really "inherit" Zack... that was pretty neat too... though one question I have is... WTF HAPPENS TO CISSNEI AND WHAT IS HER REAL NAME?!?!? Sorry, no more caps.
Okay, on to FF VIII. This game... both beloved and hated... and for legitimate reasons. It has one of the better stories of Final Fantasy games... the first real love story that came out of the series. That said, we have some theoretically great mechanics which just do not pan out very well. We have card refining... yeah, that's broken. Junctioning... actually a very neat idea... broken by card refining. We have monsters levelling up with you... yeah, that was the worst idea ever. Not to say that if you play the game in the manner you're expected to you can't have a supremely enjoyable experience... its just, really, this is a Final Fantasy, the chances that even the first time through you're going to play it the way you're MEANT to is slim to none.... So, yeah.
Basically, today, after I finished up Crisis Core, I got all the kinks worked out with the Steam version, including figuring out how to play Chocobo World again... so now I can move forward. To lay out my plan with this game, yes I am going to Card Refine, and am going to eventually collect all the cards, I am going to do all the tricks to play the game overpowered... because really that's what this game is now... so why not... also its fun maxing out stuff right? So, with that in mind, there's ALOT to do before we move forward with a lot of plot, and we'll see how my Current Setup evolves through the playthrough...
Let's just see how it goes...
You put a little typo in there today. You said "The ending to Chrono Cross..." instead of Crisis Core. Not that it's a big deal, but it did puzzle me for a second. If only you were talking about Chrono Cross though, what a great game! Maybe a Chrono series thesis in the future? Wouldn't be very long though...
ReplyDeleteAlso, just wanted to say hi, since I haven't commented in awhile. You've inspired me again, btw. I've been playing FF7 on my Vita and have got Crisis Core ready to go in PPSSPP on my computer. Just started disk 2 of FF7. It's probably my least played FF outside of the original 3 so it's been years since the last time. I also only played Crisis Core once, when I first got a used PSP years ago, so I'm looking forward to that playthrough!
FF8 has got to be in my top 5 Final Fantasies. I've replayed it quite a few times. Something about the world and the story and the characters and the broken-ness just clicks with me. I don't mind at all that the game is super easy to break on disc 1. I usually end up just using physical attacks for thousands of damage for the rest of the game, makes things go faster than spells and summons. Maybe you can find a more creative way to play through the game though.
Rawr, you have no idea how many times during my playthrough of Crisis Core I was thinking Chrono Cross in my head... must be something with the alliteration... damn alliteration... Anywho... I can tell you I already know what my next series is going to be post Chrono-Cross. I'm only giving one hint, that it is not going to be a Squenix series... though it will be a hell of a good time... and I'm going to absolutely hate writing up the dailies... but that's a LONG way off.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear you're playing again. I'd only played through FF7 once before my playthrough for this.. Good game, just don't think its aged very well. I've heard good things about the steam version and some of the mods people have made to help alleviate that... but you're going the Vita route, so that doesn't help. Crisis Core I had never played before and was really pretty surprised of how good it was.
I'm not knocking your opinion... but I think I'd be hard pressed to place FF8 in my Top 5... not that its a bad game... I just think it carries alot more flaws than most of the games. I'm not going to rank them now... though, I will be in my year-end recap in a few months, so you can look forward to that.
Lemme guess... Suikoden? It's made by Konami, not Squenix, and there's 108 characters so the summaries would be astronomically long if you had everyone's info in it.
DeleteYeah I actually looked into some of those mods, but decided that I wanted to play on my Vita since it needed some love. It's weird, when you look at images from the game before you start replaying it, you think the graphics are awful, but once you start playing and get into it, you don't notice it as much. At least that's been my experience this time around.
No offense taken, I'm well aware that FF8 doesn't have as much love among fans that some (most?) of the other games do. Maybe it's because I played 8 before 7 when I was younger, so I don't have the nostalgic connection to 7 that a lot of people have. I always used to dislike FF7 a lot, probably from all the popularity it gets, but in recent years I've gotten over that and now I like the game just fine.