FFVII & FFVIII

Yeah, so much for me not using this to give my opinion on video games, haha. Whatever, it's my blog, I'll do what I want with it. To hell with whatever I say I'll do with this thing!

So yeah, just went through FFVII again and finished VIII for the first time.

So yeah, every gamer who's a gamer has at least heard of this title. Everyone basically associates the entire series with memories or the thought of the seventh installment, for it was that hard-ware change and presentation decisions that brought the Japanese Role-Playing Game into the international market and gave the JRPG the giant push into the mainstream that resulted in the pocket of fans who enjoy them. Myself included, but I was already on board with Final Fantasy VI (then-known as III) and, to a lesser extent, Super Mario RPG, a year before I'd heard of VII.

All in all, I enjoy it. I'm not exactly a die-hard fan, but I finally managed to defeat Ruby and Emerald Weapon, the red and green beasties you see in those pictures. During this playthrough, I told myself the following: "Dammit, Jim, you're going to beat Ruby and Emerald Weapon and in defeating the Superbosses, you shall have the gaming rights to claim you have mastered VII's battle system! So go out and finally get Knights of the Round, you lazy git!!!"

And thus I did.
I played, I saw'd, I curse'd, I conquer'd.

They're called Superbossess for a reason, folks - these guys are no joke. There's some serious planning to do before you attempt to beat the things and gain the awesome-but-by-that-time-ultimately-pointless fruits of your labor, but it's in those gifts that you can say "Yeah, I beat that sunnovabitch(es)" while pointing to your second Gold Chocobo after your first one after hours of inbreeding and the All-Materia that gives my Cloud every (and I do mean EVERY) skill in the entire game save for the remaining four or five Blue Magic - read: Enemy Skill - that I was too bored to attempt to collect since I had Big Guard; really, that's all you need.

But I beat 'em, and then I went back and defeated Sephiroth in one attack. Yeah, I didn't have a hard time with him the first time I actually beat the game and got to him and this time was even more laughable. Kefka gave me more of a challenge, but I was younger then.. younger and more ignorant than I am now...

I enjoy the game. And guess what? I enjoy what they're doing with the Compilation. *ducks from the oddles of untethered, seething, raw anger at the FFVII fans who absolutely loathe the Compilation)* Yeah, see, that's why I don't claim to be a die-hard: there are many more who claim that, er, claim, and I stand no chance against their fury and might.

While the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII doesn't exactly have the stellar gameplay, amung other things, of the original, I enjoy the fleshing-out of the world that the first game presented. I enjoy that world, and I've appreciated the amount of dedication - not to mention expensive - that Squeenix has put into it. I mean, I bought - yes, I actually bought it - Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete and absolutely beamed at it's Complete-ness compared to the original. I took that most-expensive-piece-of-official-fan-service-to-ever-be-made for the entertaining action extravaganza that it was, and absolutely adored it. It helped show a world after the world was saved from Meteor, and I enjoyed watching the retroscope and how the three other games that add to the mythos fit into the original tale. I've only played one fully, Dirge of Cerberus (which is a horrible, horrible game that I only bought for the story - which I thought was interesting, if a bit slow and over-dramatic at times - that set up for the ultimate sequel that's inevitable if the Compilation has been leading up to anything), but I enjoyed what I played of Crisis Core, which was pretty decent as far as my expectations and hopes were for it.

And because I find this amusinc, the abbreviations of the Compilation are AC (Advent Children), BC (Before Crisis), CC (Crisis Core), and DC (Dirge of Cerberus).

I believe the Complilation is heading towards two things, the first being a Final Fantasy VII remake. Yes, we got VII on the PlayStation Network a week ago, but I want a full-fledged, spared no expense remake with Advent Children's - or, to be a bit more reasonable, Final Fantasy XIII's - visual eyegasm with the over-the-top mechanics and melodrama that made Advent Children entertaining for me, you FFVII purists. It's bound to happen and I'd be surprised if they weren't working on it sporatically, even if it's only one of the members of the XIII team. Which, by the way, would explain the obscene amount of development time that's been keeping XIII which was announced during E3 of '05 from being released half a decade after it was shown, which isn't too bad since as a gamer I'm used to delays, but why show us a game that was barely in a showable form as a FMV and no actual gameplay? *vents*

Anyway, I'd be surprised if this inevitable remake wouldn't show up before 2017 when I expect number two of the Complilation's ultimate goal: a bone-fide sequel to the Final Fantasy VII lore. By what I know of Before Crisis, it was a game that fleshed out the Turks, which I'm sure many people adore, that explained (somewhat) the events that led to VII. Advent Children showed the world two years finally getting back on it's feet after the events of the main game. Dirge of Cerberus told the tale of Vincent Valentine - the one character who got, no joke, about five total minutes of backstory in the original game - and the events surrounding him a year after AC and three after VII. Crisis Core dealt with Zack Fair, the friend and Soldier that Cloud imagined himself to be, and his 9 years as a pawn of Shinra that led right into Cloud's story as told by VII.

What we got were a behind-the-scenes prequel, an after-game sequel, a set-up sequel, and a set-up prequel to VII. The Compilation revealed a character of interesting note - not to mention scores of opinions - Genesis Rhapsodos. While opinions on him vary by fan, he was shown in the secret ending of DC, and as CC and the Word of God claim, he became active to help protect the world again. While this threat isn't known at the time, the fact that this scene took place as the furthest chronological moment in the series (not counting the scene 500 years after VII where Red XIII is seen with his own kids looking upon a peaceful and at-ease Planet) suggests that this upcoming sequel would be the ultimate end-game for this series. The Compilation is stated to go on until the 20th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII, which would be 2017.

I wouldn't mind the remake arriving before the end-game, but then again I'm not too difficult to please. I'm a very 'casual' kind of fan, but that suits me just fine. I enjoy it, many don't; I don't really care. Yes, I know the Compilation's really an unnecessary addition to a game that many hold in high esteem and that many more hold close to their memories of fondness, but if you don't like it so much stop buying the games then. If other people enjoy it, let them. I complain about your denouncement on fans who enjoy whatever title they enjoy, but I already typed out a rant about that on my dA page. Oh well, done on the opus that is FFVII.

Yeah, I spent too long on this one - if you managed to read all that, much less actually understand all I typed out, good for you: you're just about as insane and hopeless as I am! Pat yourself on the back, then go do something productive for the both of us, since we all know I won't be. I'll be going back to play IX. Anyways, onto the other title I finally finished 10 years later:

This.. is definitely the black-sheep of the series. It's battle system is totally broken - pardon the technical game-speak, but I was overpowered from about my 5th hour into the game, having 2000 HP whereas any normal player would have around 400-600 by abusing the HP-Junction with refined Tents for Curagas, giving me the extra 2000 HP. Game terminology aside, the battle system in VIII is unique to be sure, but it justified my disappointment with VII and VIII as a whole: the entire customizeable blank-slates that the personalities (be them emotional or not) became as playable characters.

Yes, I understand that it gave you that customization that a lot of gamers clamor for. I can respect that. I also remember previous FF titles in which you were given set characters and locked-in skills that defined the character as much as their backstory and personality did.

I guess I'm just an ol'-fashioned type of gamer. I like being told stories in RPGs by becoming a pre-set character with the majority of their dialogue being pre-scripted and I was just there dictating when and how I did things, leaving the game's program to decide a story of which I would most likely play again and again knowing exactly how the outcome was going to be, as usually I play a game very similarly to how I did the first time, being the uncreative nitwit you either like or loathe about me. I don't mind games like Fallout 3 in which you're a blank-slate that you create from the ground-up to add your own flavour into the experience to get you more drawn-in, but then the personality of the character becomes my own. That is not ideal for me, since my own personality is boring, bland, and predictable, as I am a boring, bland, and uninteresting human being in real life. I play games to escape real life, not to imitate it by seeing myself as myself doing things. It's a cunundrum, I know, but 95% of the time I prefer to be someone else entirely or a seemingly-omnipitent diety with the power to bend all creation as I see fit. Then again I prefer other genres to God Games, so that's also a lost cause...

VII and VIII gave you characters that had defined personalities, but they both had a system in which you could heavily customize any kind of character to fill any situation you needed. I'm used to the hero being this over-powerful monster-slaying being of which the story hinged on, a healer that, you know, healed and was more likely-than-not in my case a memeber of the fairer sex, and two other characters that filled other roles I needed done, usually a magic user, a status-heavy annoyance, or the character-of-the-act that would boldly sacrifice him/herself in the name of the party. What can I say, I enjoy tradition. And what's with the first two PlayStation Fantasies to have only three playable characters? Kinda seems like a step backwards after having six previous games with a playable party of four at any given time. Minor nit-pick, I know, but it was noticeable.

Anyway, I assorted both games to my tradition: Cloud and Squall (the main, brooding protagonists) were the demons bestowed with the power of Over-Power, with Yuffie and Selfie (the preppy girls that everyone loves to hate, apparently, since their Final Fantasies involve only 'serious' characters in a series with talking puff-balls and yellow chicken/ostrich hybrids and don't really enjoy the 'takes all kinds' way of thinking) taking charge of the healing duties and status-affecting moves, while Vincent and Rinoa (the real bad-ass of VII and the lovable love-interest of VIII) picked up the slack the power-houses and magic-users left by being their game's version of a diety-hating Satan and an invincible angel respectively, which is a nice balance in retrospect. And yes, I made the other characters become as much a carbon-copy of the character they temporarily replaced, since I'm boring like that.

For the record, I never cried when Aerith died (yeah, that's right, I said it - both of them: I say Aerith instead of Aeris and I didn't tear up when the broad got her ticket to return to the Planet. I much prefered Miss Tifa Lockhart, the original and only Miss Sexy herself in gaming, as far as my book's concerned, as Cloud's love-interest - not to mention I'm pretty dead-set that they slept together (look at her; can you blame him?), Cloud enjoying her mounds of heaven for that night he would never admit to having while Tifa would embrace that night and fondly remember it as the time she one-up'd a flower girl that Cloud fell in love with after only a few weeks of knowing), Sephiroth is a terribly sexy, sexy man that is just under good-ol' insane, freaky clown-guy Kefka in terms of ultimate villany, having Sephy's plot being essencially a more-religious and slightly-more-sane verson of being a diety, albeit from a momma's boy instead of a McDonald's reject, Red XIII was that intriguing odd-ball character that was shoved aside basically after disk 1 and was only used to show the epilogue of the game and to introduce the characters to Cosmo Canyon and the old wise man architype, I still think Vincent is the only bone-fide badass of the group next to Cid, and speaking of Cid, he is the most awesome Ernest-esque, house-abusing space man I've ever grown to love.

...Yeah, sorry about the VII references being not in the VII section. But seriously: Sephiroth and Tifa are both too damn sexy for their world, it's almost criminal. I also think I almost fall into those obsessive lot who love either character, though I still would much prefer a night with Tifa than the silver-haired angelic one, but I guess whatever I say after this point will be misconscrued anyway. I'll get back to VIII now...

I don't mind the freedom of making any character fit any situation, but I missed when the roles were defined and balanced, where you had to learn how to effectively use each of the characters' strengths to balance the other party members' weaknesses. While that's what I eventually did during my gameplay sessions, I fit them according to how I think they should be suited and would most-likely do an almost-identical style of play when I play VIII again, since I'm just that kind of gamer.

Now the battle system is what ultimately makes or breaks a game for me, some saviors being the story or just overall fun I have with a game, but the latter's hard to achieve without good gameplay, but sometimes it happens. (See Custom Robo. I'm not exactly in love with the control scheme, but I had waaay too much fun with that game that I couldn't care less about how I don't remember 99% of the story or how bland the non-battle sequences played. That's the only exception I can think of right now, but believe me when fun>gameplay is a rare thing for me.) The battle system in VIII is, as I said before, broken beyond repair. I pretty much exploited the mechanics by the time I fully realized what the Junction system meant. The moment I understood the system, I got the epiphany that out of any spell that could boost your HP, why not use one that heals it? I had already seen that I could refine tents into Curagas, typically one of the best ways to heal a character, and that I had enough money to buy enough Tents to refine them into 100 Curagas, boosting my HP into the thousandths before I even met all my party members and saw the villan(ess) of the game.

Like I said, it's creative, but broken as it could be. Later on, the powers I received by upgrading and locating all the GFs (Guardian Forces, VIII's version of Summons) allowed me to buy from any shop, upgrade whatever I needed, and gave me basically free-reign over all that opposed me. Turns out nothing really gave me a challenge after I discovered, understood and exploited the refine ability to Junction what I needed from most any item I wished. The magic system was odd as well. You could 'Draw' from any enemy you faced, usually getting a magic that had something to do with the foe in question. This ability has no limit as well, which led to many hours of me just postponing battles by Drawing 100 of what I needed, leading me to become quite bored of the tedious fights of which I basically became even more amazing than anything remotely around me. In fact, I only had two, maybe three Game Overs in the entire game outside of the Superbosses, two cases of which I had forgotten to heal and/or junction accordingly, leading me to die a swift and painful death, and another time because I hadn't realized that the move Degenerator, which basically removes a combatant from battle into another dimension, leaves your party members who were unfortunate enough to be kicked out of previous battle with aforementioned-move come back into the game with 0 HP, which also led to a quick and humiliating defeat.

Yet another deviation from the series was it's overall system of leveling up. The interesting thing to me prior to my playthrough was the knowledge that the enemies level up around the same level as your characters do, leading to a game that would, in theory, leave you with a pretty linear and unique difficulty curve, that being how you decided to level up. While leveling up means stronger characters, it's utterly useless in VIII.

Allow me to explain. When you gain a level, the baddies also generally level up as well. When baddies level up, it means their stats raise to combat your recently-adjusted level. This works fine and dandy for the enemies. When you level up, it doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. Your playable characters in VIII are completely dependant on the GFs of which you assign them. The main characters level up every 1000 Exp. they each receive, which leads to the inevitable problem of Squall usually being levels that far exceed his fellow party members, with him being the character that you'll be playing as during 85% of the game. But again, this doesn't mean much. The only way to counter this is to basically kill-off higher leveled players to boost the lower ones to even the balance between the enemies and yourself. Mind, only an insane person would do this, since levels mean absolutely diddly-squat in this title.

You are not leveling up your playable cast as much as you're actually training your GFs, whose abilities you get from them. When a Guardian Force levels up, they receive the Ability Points (AP) that go towards earning an ability from them to be used by the Junctioned character. If you want a GF to have more power when summoned, you make them learn the ability to be 10% stronger when they receive the required amount of AP. If you want to have your character to become faster, you junction a GF with a J-Speed ability and make them learn it, enabling your character to junction Haste to boost their speed dramatically, for example. You are essentially battling to beef up your GFs so that in turn they make your actual playable party worth anything in battle. Squall's level is thus only regulated to determine how 'tough' the enemies are during your playthrough. However, if you've already realized how to abuse the refine abilities and realize how GFs are the only thing that make your protagonists worth two cents, your level should ultimately be irrelevant. Sure, you can use your GFs' abilities to boost, say, Squall's attack perminately by 1 every time he levels up, giving him a near-maxed-out Attack stat even without the aid of a GF, to make him a threat in his own right, but you could easily tweak your GFs to the point where, given the perfect match-up to your three playable characters, all three party members have all their stats junctionable and boosted (with the help of refine abilities to achieve any magic possible with a little bit of patience) with magic beyond whatever arbitrary definition of 'fairness' is in this title.

Once I learned I was training summons instead of characters due to a broken and easily-exploitable battle system, I turned to my last hope at enjoying this title: the story. And, like the seven roman-numeral'd titles that came before it, I enjoyed it for what it was. While IV's was redemption, VI was of an epic steam-punk Star Wars, VII was of Life and most others were of rag-band teen-somethings saving the world by saving crystals (yeah, kinda over-simplifying things a bit), VIII's was a simple love story told through that Final Fantasy presentation. It was about Squall, the anti-social jerk with abandonment issues, falling for the adorable, out-spoken and fun Riona, the angel who fell in love with her knight just about at first-sight. Squall learns to love and open himself to this girl's charms and goes to any length to save her, as one would expect. While coming off as a complete A-Hole throughout most of the title, I learned to like the guy, though I prefer Cloud. I mean, I get Squall being all anti-social to protect himself from the possibility of the pain of attachment he went through as a child, but Cloud was an initial uncaring jerk because he had a mental issue of imagining himself as this bad-ass with amazing stories and began to believe it was he himself who actually went through all those feats of awesome that were really from his best friend, seing as how Cloud never made it into SOLDIER like he boasted he would, and instead jumbled those stories with his own experiences with his imagination, guilt, and sadness basically led him to believe he really was this hero and almost lost sight of himself, while his childhood friend never had the heart to tell him, yet stuck through with him to the end, eventually helping himself piece himself together again.

Yeah, I sympathize with Cloud more than I do Squall. Cloud has the emotional baggage, sure, but Squall was just a prick to everyone, while Cloud at least let his real self somewhat show during Aerith and Tifa's escapades.

Despite all the negative I spouted about the game, I enjoyed the love story. There's something about that brooding loner that eventually opens up to that person they were meant to be with that just makes my heart go "aww..." I heard many don't like and/or can't stand VIII, but I weathered through the game for the story. Sure, I beat VIII's Superbosses Ultima and Omega Weapon (the silver beastie seen to the right), proving I "mastered" VIII's battle system and which gave me a hard initial time, but it was the simple story with all that weird jumble of drama haunting the characters that made up VIII's storyline.

I have to admit, I didn't take to VIII's story as easily as I had the previous VI, er, six. I can see how my friend's brother put the same, and I agree with him: Final Fantasy VIII is borderline Final Reality VIII. The game is the most 'realistic' a Final Fantasy can be while still retaining aspects of the Fantasy and the Sci-Fi the series was heavily approaching at that time. I don't know, it was something about the vibe it gave off. It was nice to see evenly-proportioned characters throughout the entire game for the first time, but the presentation was done so realistically it was very jarring to see at first, let alone swallow. Sure, it had monsters and magic and fantastical creatures, but there was just that tone of the real world that rubbed me the wrong way that I had to take a break from the game much more times during the first disk than I would for an entire run of the other FF titles.

Eventually, I warmed up and got into the game by the end of Disk 1, by which time the story stopped being utterly convoluted to me (which takes quite a bit for me to think it's cluttered - by that time, everyone else has already yelled, bitch'd, moaned, and done all sorts of negative comparisons before I gave my two cents worth) and started heading in a direction beyond the whole "assassinate the Sorceress, save the world" theme they had going on. The flashbacks to what I guessed correctly to be the past started making more sense and were more engaging than first thought, the plot twists starting to grab hold of me as I started 'getting' all six cast main castmembers and their relationships, and me getting used to VIII's realistic-but-still-out-there world. While I knew beforehand that I had to complete most of what I wanted before Disk 3's plunge into the finale in where they lock you completely out of the main game that actually makes sense in the title's story that completely envelops the end-game, I found myself from Disk 2 all the way to Disk 4 getting completely engrossed into it like I had the other six, aside from the major detours and preperation I endured to make sure I could be the completist that I am and prepare for the two Superbosses that determined whether or not I had mastered the game.

It's definitely not my favorite Final Fantasy - in fact, it's probably third-from-last if I were to rank the games (which I won't do just yet, since I've yet to fully finish IX, X, X-2 [because I won't play XI due to it being an MMO, a genre I don't really much care for and due to the fact it would take a heck of a lot to make me pay monthly for a game, something I'm completely against internally, and I'll count the first sequel to a numbered Fantasy my eleventh title] and XII, though the 20 hours I played of XII before starting my Final Fantasy run was so much fun, it's possibly my favorite next to VI). It's battle system is wonky, the world took a lot longer to get into than I would've liked, and it seemed almost like they were trying too hard to do everything better than what VII accomplished that they went a little bit overboard on a few parts of the title.

Despite all it's negatives, I still enjoyed it, even if it's on my Top-of-the-Bottom 3 FF games. Yes, I'll be reluctant when I wish to play it again, seeing as how I don't look forward to the hours of preperation needed to undermine the system, but I'd do it again for the story and maybe a rewatch will make me appreciate (and understand) the moments on the first two disks that made me think "what the hell is going on??" and to enjoy the complete package a little more. Or at least the story, it's second saving grace in my opinion.

What's the real gem of this title?

The music.
Oh my, yes, the lovely music.

Uematsu went for a really classical score for VIII. I enjoyed the overworld theme and the homebase theme in Balamb Garden, but it was a humble little town that got me to absolutely love and appreciate Uematsu's talent as the John Williams of Japan. It wasafter hearing Fisherman's Horizon that I had to find it, and the other tracks if I could, orchestrated. It was such a beautifully catchy tune, I had to see if I could find it, and find it I did.

Try Googling "Fisherman's Horizon Orchestrated" and see if you find anything. It'll be well-worth your effort.

Well, my Summer quest to beat the six console-only titles I have yet to finish (sans XI, which I replaced with X-2 and VII, a game I had beaten a few years prior) that are only on PlayStation and not my Game Boy Advance is well underway, with me being a third of the way complete. So far, I LOVE IX's atmosphere and blend of old and new. The references I've caught to the previous titles have made me smile and laugh and I simply adore Vivi, think Zidane is hilarious, and think Garnet's adorable. Very much looking forward to seeing how the most over-looked game aside from XI plays out.

IF you read all that, wow. You're a troooper. I know I type waaay too much, but hey, I've forgotten when normal people sleep. Well, now my arms are tired and my glasses broke - again. So, until next time!

ciao~