Final Fantasy 8 - The Impossible Follow Up To The Greatest Game Ever Made

in 1976 ivan goff and ben roberts created the smash television show charlie's angels charlie's angels is about three crime-fighting detectives who work for a private detective agency all of which receive their intel from a man named charlie in a radio box that he communicates to them with the original tv show had its ups and downs through its five-season run but like all things in due time the show got its own updated film in the year 2000 simply called charlie's angels starring lucy lou cameron diaz and drew barrymore gerard the film was a smashing critical success earning a whopping 264 million dollars at the box office gerard and the best part about that 2000 film was this moment right here gerard god damn it no you've never seen a baby have two have now i've seen lots of babies you're right yeah a little help bam right there right freaking there that's the best part of the movie not the insane action not the weird cameo by tom green not even the naked drew barrymore in that scene it's right there with those two young boys playing final fantasy 8 multiplayer and do you know why dear people at home why i love this so much i love this so much for two reasons one final fantasy viii did not have multiplayer and two i cannot believe you this is how you start episode 400. michael beardy my best friend since high school my friend that helped me start my first youtube show and channel ariane stone my friend who would go on to make incredible content on belated media stuff you may know him from like what if the star wars prequels were good and his incredible pilot for his cartoon show obituary you may also recognize him as one of the two boys in that scene who were playing final fantasy 8 multiplayer how was it what was it like was it fun can i interview you interview me about what okay what was it like playing final fantasy 8 multiplayer knowing that the game didn't have multiplayer [Music] i don't know why you invited me here hey everyone and welcome to a very special episode of the completionist our 400 to be exact 400 games completed it's pretty crazy right over the last 10 fascinating years that i've been doing this show i found that whenever i bring it up in conversation final fantasy 8 tends to be pretty divisive it seems that amongst my friends both professional and personal they all seem to say that final fantasy 8 is one of the worst final fantasies out of the bunch or even that it's one of the worst games they've ever played and truth be told as a young kid right after eating and breathing final fantasy 7 and going right into this one i agree with my friends but my friend michael davis of the warp zone insisted that this game was good it was great it was always one of those games that never got ported or brought forward all the way up to the current constant generation and that was true until final fantasy viii remastered was released just a few years ago realizing that it's been 10 years since i started this show it's been practically two decades since i have played the original final fantasy viii so i have a party hat grab a beverage sit back and relax while i passionately complete another game so that you don't have to this is episode 400. let's begin yes [Music] all glory goes to the winner oh [Music] final fantasy 8's development began during the translation phase of final fantasy vii hironobu sakaguchi often referred to as the father of final fantasy became less and less involved in the main final fantasies as time went on directing the first five final fantasies sakaguchi eventually shifted to a more executive role despite being the driving force with the franchise and by the time final fantasy vii came out while a lot of his personal stories and passions were with the team he ended up becoming a key player in the first mainstream final fantasy film final fantasy the spirits within and veteran director yoshinori kitase had already done an incredible job with final fantasy 6 and final fantasy vii continuing his role and involvement for final fantasy viii so although the usual star-studded team was here returning to work on final fantasy 8 sakaguchi's overseeing involvement role was minimized and given to shinji hashimoto who today is currently the acting brand manager of final fantasy and is an executive at square enix i feel it's important to bring all of this up for the simple fact that final fantasy 8 did very well it's got tons of positive feedback from so many people across the globe at the time of its release some even giving higher rankings than final fantasy vii but very quickly the general consensus about final fantasy viii was that there was three major problems that lots of people had one its main character squall was nowhere near as compelling a character as someone like cloud or tara from previous games two the junctioning system makes no sense and three triple triad the card game that's introduced in this game is very confusing and not as fun as everyone would have hoped now i'm not going to pretend that i am an authority figure on any of these topics nor do i think those are just the only problems people had but i do want to take the time to discuss these topics as well as dive deep into what makes final fantasy 8 wonderful what makes it just all right and what's just downright awful about it we'll get to the nitty-gritty about the aesthetics the gameplay and the designer's intent really deep dive into the combat and triple triad and of course the road of completion and what it looks like but keep in mind my journey in completing this game is different from most people who simply beat the narrative and call it a day let's start our attention on squall his character the story at large and the effectiveness of everything in between squall leonhardt is one of the more unique characters to come from the final fantasy franchise at first glance squall comes off as a young stubborn and rude but very loyal person to those around him he's what many would call annoying standoffish and oftentimes quiet with other characters in the story for this discussion i completed the remastered version of final fantasy viii and i found that a lot of these sentiments are mostly true some of it is spot on but some is kind of wrong or at least open to interpretation and i think a part of the reason why that is comes down to translation and intent and it's funny because the translation is not that far off from the original dialogue or how the overall arc is to the game during the translating process of the original final fantasy viii from japanese to english the localization team ran into a big problem the developers didn't send over any translation files with the game leaving the localization team to have to translate the entire game using a game shark now i don't think using the game shark back and forth necessarily ruined the translation by any means but as a result a lot of the dialogue in the original game for squall in particular oftentimes would get changed out for ellipses or simple throwaway words like whatever to depict squall's nature throughout the game now i don't think this is the factor that ruined the game let alone character for so many people but i do think it did contribute a little bit the english language is kind of a weird thing to interpret at times and if you need proof of that read a comment section on a video or try to understand what social media arguments are and how they unfold it gets real weird real fast i want to try and break down the plot of final fantasy 8 as clearly as i can in an attempt to showcase wall's growth and trajectory as a character and how there are moments where things connect but more often than not there are moments that simply miss this is a lot to dissect and think about so take all of what i'm about to say with as much of a grain of salt as possible grab a drink and relax because we're going in hard the opening moments of final fantasy 8 start off super cryptic we've got lots of words imagery of beaches fields and feathers and flowers intercut with two women one named renoa and the other is the sorceress witch adia this scene eventually reveals a battle between squall and one of our main antagonists cipher the two brawl in a very deadly fashion to a point where they both slash each other down the center of their faces giving each other scars this opening cutscene is super confusing with regards to setting the stage of the game considering we don't know what time or place the events occurred versus something like the infamous train heist in midgar or the snowy climb to narsh right here we see that squall has a fighting spirit being very driven to succeed and gets his revenge once he's been slashed early signs that our hero when motivated actually wants to rise to the occasion within the first few hours of the game we're introduced to the land of balaam and the balaam garden which is one of several city-like structures that act as a hub for young kids and young adults alike to be trained to battle monsters educated in many fields including magic casting and so much more there are three gardens balaam the garden that squalls from galbania and trabia the purpose of the garden is to not only educate and train but to essentially create these schools that form the young minds into elite members of a group known as seed seed is almost like a bounty hunting group for hire throughout the world and brings income and honor to their respective gardens only the best of the best make it into seed and all of the characters in the game that join our party with the exception of renoa are seed members after passing his seed exam squall is assigned to be the leader of his group managing tribute transfer student and seed hopeful selfie and stubborn fist fighting zell along with the aid of his teacher christies and their first job as seed members is to aid renoa the woman from the opening cutscene and her team with the kidnapping of a corrupt president shortly after this mission goes wrong it's revealed that there's an evil force bigger than anyone has imagined an evil sorceress witch named adea who is controlling the chaos herself so this is where squall stumbles a bit with his character development while i describe squall's introduction as someone who's motivated and focused with all the qualities of being a good leader squall actually hates being the leader he's very dismissive of his group he doesn't like being relied on squall hands down is the most powerful of the group but he hates the responsibility of being leaned on and what's even weirder is that as the story unfolds everyone just wants squall to leap regardless of his body language or disposition we live a majority of the game inside squall's head watching him grow more and more ticked off at the people around him as if no one is listening yet everyone supports him and loves him except here's my counterpoint to how weird all of this is squall is 17 years old again this is a 17 year old kid argue all you want 17 years old is too young to be going out on these deadly missions let alone being this responsible and yet he's also mean to everyone else because that's what a confused young adult behaves like to be perfectly frank i feel that a lot of young people don't really have much of a choice when it comes to their own life experiences and tragedy right you just have to kind of learn to fend for yourself and grow from them i know that i would be a very different person in my life if my mom didn't get dementia when i was 10 years old it made me stronger as a person and by proxy gave me the ability to do something as insane as this career that i have with you guys this is where i relate to squall the most as the game heavily leads into squall's past for being deserted by his sister and that sense of loss makes it so much harder for him to connect with anyone think about it 17 year old kid tons of childhood trauma tons of abandonment issues is expected to bring a team together and lead and the responsibility in the road of responsibility ahead of him is about to get more difficult throughout the journey cipher acts as a challenging rival to squall especially early on and if we are being honest cipher should have been the super antagonist the entire game cipher's cocky attitude makes him ineligible to join seed because he and his friends disobey orders on multiple occasions in fact with regards to villains i would say that almost all of the end of the four discs act as a turning point for the narrative of the group with disc one mostly focusing on adia but here lies one of final fantasy viii's biggest problems the lack of a concrete villain and the fact that when a villain finally gets established that focus constantly changes by the end of disc 1 it's clear that adia is evil i would say that final fantasy 8 strongest focus is when adia is the villain because we not only have a war breakout between all of the cities and balan garden but it becomes a war between gardens adia and the galbadia garden versus her husband sid and the garden of balaam led by squallen friends this right here is one of the game's highest points of interest and conflict one of the best scenes in the game in my eyes takes place right here watching these two schools fight each other it's really compelling that both sides think they're in the right trying to fight on their side with all of their might we're talking kids from middle school to college here fighting one another however in my eyes this is also where the narrative starts to swerve very hard and becomes very difficult to follow along especially for people who are new to the jrpg genre the group thwarts a dia but ranoa is hurt and we learned that idea was being possessed by another sorceress through time in space known as ultimacia who is now possessing renowa and within the discovery of idea being possessed we get very weird circumstantial connections so for instance all of our party members all grew up together in an orphanage selfie zell christie's squall newest team member irvine even cypher all grew up in the same orphanage under the care of a dia as their matron the reason why they can't remember any of it is because of the guardian forces or the gf's the guardian forces are eights summons you know your usual suspects ifrit shiva carbuncle apparently when students of a garden bond with the gf they forget details of their past and we find out that all of our crewmates despite them appearing that they've met for the first time in this story are all interconnected and nadiya was also the founder of garden and she was instructed to create the gardens in order to stop her own rise before she was repossessed which obviously happens and now that idea has been restored to her normal self headmaster sid of blam garden puts squall in charge i repeat the one responsible adult in this game puts the 17 year old emo kid in charge of an entire school and then some so the plot of final fantasy viii at this point is that a headmaster of an orphanage who's taking care of a bunch of orphans was possessed by an evil sorceress from the future to then become an evil sorceress themselves but isn't always possessed by the evil sorceress and is instructed by a mysterious man that she must create these schools to train educate and most importantly stop herself from achieving ultimate destruction of time and space and world domination and the orphans that she raised are the ones responsible for stopping and saving her and once they save her the main hero who literally and i repeat literally does not want to be the good guy let alone a leader of the entire school becomes the leader of an entire school at the age of 17. with me so far good because here comes the shark that's about to get jumped while possessing renault ultimacia is trying to resurrect the original sorceress adele who is locked away in space by the way and essentially wants to ruin all of time in space and destroy everything the team from there must find eleni squall's orphan sister who has the ability to share memories of the past with people and protect her from ultimacia in order to prevent them from awakening adele and causing ultimate destruction we go to space everyone we go to space and that's where i'm going to stop our plot deep dive right there because if i go any further it's only going to confuse you more and more there's so much left on the table here but it's at this specific moment in the narrative that our main themes become clear for better or worse the theme of fate and the theme of love fate becomes a prominent theme in the game as everyone's past and present is tied to their future finding out certain characters pasts and how they connect hearkens back to a lot of character growth and moments where our heroes can connect but the idea of fate and everything being tied together while a wonderful idea in theory gets muddled quite a bit this is a story that if you understand everything beat by beat brick by brick it totally does make sense and it's got that time travel connection of everything means something with squall specifically we learned that squall is in fact the mystery man that tells young adia about creating garden to stop her at the very end of the game it's clear that every breadcrumb regardless of how dumb it may appear is worthwhile but it is very hard to follow especially when this game is blending the line between high fantasy and future technology the second theme of love is one that ties directly back to our main hero squall and his path for growth and change renault who i feel like i haven't spoken enough about at this point acts as a great yin to squalls yang she's everything squall isn't full of life happy outgoing spunky quirky hopeful if i had to describe bruno in one phrase it's that she's full of heart and squall being this brooding 17 year old leader now practically headmaster finds himself going from someone who can't stand ronoa to really missing and wanting to love her it's in this theme right here that squall despite his dismissive behavior starts to show his other side his abandonment of his sister and his inability to develop a real relationship with anyone starts to mend thanks to his connection with ranoa he learns more and more about what matters to him and learns that his orphan family is his connection and that without ronoa he feels empty spoken like a true young adult listening to my chemical romance squall comes to realize that he loves renoa and is willing to do anything for her and he can't live without her so you know he must do what every young jrpg hero does to show his love go into outer space and save her while she's possessed by the extra evil sorceress ultimacia he ejects himself out of an escape pod in order to find and float with ronoa knowing that this may be their last moment together this is the strongest point of connection for these characters and just like in true dumb 17 year old boy fashion the minute they get to safety he refuses to tell her how he feels and acts as if he must command and lead again to avoid his feelings for sake man tell the girl you love her you kid jesus taking all of this into consideration do i feel that the disappointment towards squall is warranted no i think this is a character that arguably experiences real emotions and maybe changes more realistically than even cloud or tara was this journey to get there a lot more muddy and confusing than it needed to be for a 30 plus hour jrpg i believe so from a personal standpoint the group not remembering their past is a weird plot point that i can't seem to get over the idea that squall is also being put in charge of a gigantic school in the fates of hundreds of people at such a young age is also an idea that is hard for me to shake but one of the biggest things i have to commend final fantasy 8 for doing is that it does do something very successful it tries its best to break the conventions of jrpgs at this point managing to craft its own unique identity the protagonist's arc is relatable it's just very hard to keep up thanks to an ever-evolving plot without a concrete villain and it certainly didn't bode well that the first time the game came out the translation added to that character confusion for swall the buck doesn't stop here at the plot and character development this is reflected in the gameplay and presentation as well square enix's reputation at this point leading into final fantasy viii was only evolving more and more giving them the stature of one of the most impressive companies of the playstation console generation whether it was one of the main final fantasy titles or a gem no one's ever heard of like brave fencer musashi all of their games encapsulated 3d art design bombastic scores and more importantly lived and breathed originality and charm and when it came to final fantasy specifically we were a bit spoiled we were led like an animal to water to believe that every final fantasy needed to be bigger and better than the previous one visuals needed to be more realistic the music needed to be more memorable and catchy and the game just had to be final fantasy but evolved which in my opinion makes this entire conversation so fascinating because on one side we've got on fantasy 7 which is probably one of the most famous games of all time and on the other side we've got final fantasy 9 one of the most well received and loved final fantasies in the entire franchise and stuck right in the middle is the written off pushed to the side final fantasy viii i find this ironic because eight tried very hard to break outside of the norm it tried to stand out and evolve personally i think enough time has passed that the conversation has changed once again with many people having lots of nostalgia for the middle child the playstation air up and that's great for me because my nostalgia for this game was i really didn't like it and the big reason why i don't remember why i didn't like it and that's a big reason why today this conversation is happening if anything this game's lasting impression on me was that it wasn't very memorable outside of the character designs and their weapons as a young kid i remember that the original version of the game was super pretty but as time went on i replayed the game once in college in the playstation 3 and immediately was not visually excited when it comes to the original version of the game i may be in the minority here but the original can be rough on the eyes pixels and details would get lost with some character models and i've seen a lot of criticism online about how the character models in the remaster lost a lot of the charm that the original from 1999 had and i disagree here i think the remaster not only does a faithful job of updating the graphics to the visual fidelity we would want in a remaster but it's fundamentally the same game so the original experience is very much intact although looking into it there are a few fps issues between versions such as battle scenes are 15 fps in the original with overlaying battle menus being at 60fps whereas in the remaster everything is 16 fps in battle i also wish the overworld got a bit of a facelift in terms of visuals there were some changes made visually but the overworld stands out as one of those things where we kind of just have to go well we ran out of money so uh we're gonna just do what we can for this part the good old college try i know we've entered that era of modern gaming where everyone is either extremely happy that our classic games are getting more hd ports remasters and remakes or they are sick of it and just want new games all together with the rise and popularity of things like the nintendo switch and pc gaming these last several years it's evident that there are a lot of people who did not get a chance to experience the console games that many of us did so it only makes sense that companies aggressively work to get their classics in the hands of their future audiences and for a while it seems like final fantasy 8 would be forgotten in that mix but within the last several years you can enjoy almost every major final fantasy entry on some type of modern platform albeit console or pc square enix worked with the good folks over at emu and access games and i think overall the remaster is a massive success they even went ahead and updated some of the translation as well square enix also has adopted this modern sensibility of looking at their older works and realizing that gaming in the current climate has changed within most of the remasters of final fantasy square enix ensured that there are in-game toggleable almost cheat codes to help get through the game to the liking of the player turning off random encounters always having limit breaks on infinite health and instant action meter and making the game speed run at 3 times the speed are all included in the remaster and while i did use these sparingly throughout my own experience because i wanted to really feel that old original jrpg grind these tools are awesome to get newer players to play the game that they want to play more options to let people play games how they want are always a good thing and a lot of the designs in these earlier jrpgs come down to grinding for levels and resources sometimes people just want to barrel through a story as fast as possible and don't want to be bogged down by mind-numbing grinding and rng we don't often talk about this but marketing plays a huge component of the game's industry back in the day we had magazines like nintendo power and egm that really helped not only advertise to players what games were on the horizon but really made gaming feel cool those 80s and 90s magazine showcases were always my favorite but as the gaming industry grew in popularity we started to get more and more television commercials and final fantasy was no exception one of the best video game commercials of all time is the one for final fantasy 3 usa with mog the moogle it just gets me every time but one of the more remarkable things that i noticed about the marketing for the playstation era of final fantasy was that square enix was afraid the audience wasn't going to pick up what they were selling and nothing can be more true of that than looking at the big commercial for final fantasy viii with an epic movie voice guy coming this fall the most anticipated action adventure of the year a story of one man's struggle to save mankind from extermination and his quest to win the heart of the woman you love an epic so stunning your emotions will stir your heart will race and your thumbs will be really really sore final fantasy 8 coming to album here okay okay okay there's a lot to unpack here first up it's very obvious that the marketing department that worked on this commercial didn't know what kind of game final fantasy 8 was in case anyone's wondering it's a jrpg not really an action adventure game it's got turn-based combat not only platforming or hacking and slashing but it's the 90s and maybe at the time it's the same thing so i'll let it slide second they really laid on thick with the machismo appeal of this fantasy game we don't know anything about this game other than one man one world he wants to save all while trying to get with the hot chick third everything you see in this commercial is all cut scenes there is zero gameplay so you have no idea how to play the game or what it's like to play the game and finally the cherry on top there's no egregious button mashing or insane physical component required so that you'd have sore thumbs like the announcer is implying that you'll get when you played this game incredible way to market a game when a lot of this stuff isn't even all that true at least to square enix's credit they really try to bring in love being the main theme of the game with the theme song eyes on me composed by series veteran nobuo umatsu nobuo umatsu naturally is here once again to lift the spirits tug at the heartstrings and make people fall in love with the world of final fantasy with this incredible soundtrack but this soundtrack aside from the theme eyes on me the battle theme and the triple triad music didn't really resonate with me a lot of that maybe because i spent so much time in the gardens and the overworld that the music felt lost on me now it isn't bad by any means i think it just didn't really hit the mark as it usually does with me if you grabbed a bunch of fantasy soundtrack music that used similar instrumentation and mixed it with the tracks from final fantasy viii i couldn't tell you if they were from the game or not with previous entries if you played me the first few notes i could tell you right away not only what final fantasy it was from but the exact moment in the game the track was played in the end though i think music is a very subjective piece of art that people are going to have various experiences with and this is simply mine final fantasy 8 art design and inspiration comes largely from european influences from the giant textiles of the many cities to the vehicle designs to the infamous ballroom scene you can see that 8 was really trying to strike that balance between fantasy realism and sci-fi and that line in the sand is almost like a sliding bar as the game develops even with the idea of the many gardens and sorceresses kitaze was heavily inspired by the wizard of oz not only in there being a good witch and a bad witch but with the overall design aesthetic as well the city of esdar gives off big emerald city vibes ain't does a wonderful job at painting these colossal diverse and colorful areas that never feel the same from my point of view final fantasy 8 does its best to fight the tropes of most games when it comes to environmental design it tries hard to defy expectations by not giving you the usual suspects outside of a few optional biomes that are a little more expected like your classic ice area or desert area it was the goal of the final fantasy 8 team to really learn from their mistakes from final fantasy vii when it came to the visual representation of what their game stood for for starters the team really emphasized that the character model should remain consistently cohesive throughout the game with final fantasy 7 cloud in his world was filled with block people but then you had cgi rendered cutscenes where we really got a good look at cloud but there were also scenes that had the 3d block version of cloud in cut scenes and in battle we saw exactly what he was supposed to look like so it was almost like there were several different visual games being played here with eight the team immediately made the attempts to make all of the character models to be relatively close to one another from combat to cgi to exploration and i consider this a job well done when we did get cut scenes you weren't taken out of the moment when the jumps would take place my biggest personal grievances with eights world design and overall pacing is that it feels like two different game worlds were mashed together to create a mismatched rubik's cube towards the end from the moment we step into estar for the first time i love that we get this great environment that clearly is oz but that sliding bar i was talking about earlier suddenly gets cranked from fantasy to pure sci-fi for several hours that start to really pull the wind out of this game's polished sails this proverbial space shark that gets jumped takes an otherwise phenomenal world that's beautifully crafted and puts it all in this weird box that's been wrapped with the bow under the guise of this is a love story this is a love story this is a love story like a young kid being told to put their toys away the last act of final fantasy 8 feels compacted and rushed and it's really a shame because all the final areas and optional dungeons breathe creativity and could have had a huge potential for time travel lore dump that connects all of this to this european aesthetic that the whole game has been enriched in looking at final fantasy 8's design and aesthetics is a fascinating experience and a weird window peering in at the time surrounding the game it followed the sci-fi steampunk attempts of final fantasy vii while also establishing a certain level of realism mixed in with elements of fantasy and sci-fi like its time travel signature final fantasy 8 stuck out as an anomaly for better or for worse in its attempt to be itself and with its most recent remaster it brought everything it needed to up for modern sensibilities while staying true to its origins it's like a fracture in time that looks at its past and present to create its own future and whether you like it or not credit is deserved where credit is due it's a masterpiece in its own weird way i'm not a game designer by any means nor do i want to pretend that i'm an authority of any type of community or group of individuals that specialize in any journalist expertise right but at the very least i can say after completing 399 games not to mention the 112 new game plus games i've redone so far i know i've made about 80 episodes the rest are coming soon the last decade has given me a ton of perspective to know what makes a great game great a bad game bad but more importantly i've kind of established a newfound respect and trust in games i can't describe it as anything other than i am forming a individual relationship and bond with each game i complete and i know that sounds super weird but what i'm getting at is the effectiveness of a games director and team and how they execute their vision plays a big part in my understanding and appreciation of their hard work so going forward with the show i want to talk about completing games and the language that goes with that i want to take the approach of developer intention i really want to focus on celebrating developers and their efforts at conveyance and really see the developers true hearts and minds and contest and his team are the perfect crew to start this analysis with they know that final fantasy fans by nature are generally completionist oriented as they want to find every weapon and boss fight and secret and easter egg and every special move or limit break the game has to offer what i'm really getting at is later final fantasy games are designed for completionists even if there aren't any rewards at the end of the long journey and final fantasy 8 embodies that philosophy through and through if for some reason you at home watching this are unaware of what combat and final fantasy games traditionally are i want to explain to you why final fantasy 8 has become not only one of the most unique out of the entire franchise but also the most divisive and i think that that connection and understanding i have came from the fact that i completed the game oh that and the internet is really good at explaining things final fantasy 8 can be divided cleanly into several categories when it comes to completing the game you've got combat and its associated systems like leveling up and summons you've got exploration which encourages the player to wander the open world all the while progressing the story finding secret dungeons and side quests and acquiring various collectibles and triple triad one of the most infamous mini games in all of video game history combat exploration and mini games have only gotten bigger and bigger throughout final fantasy's massive history and when it comes to eight i want to describe all three of these categories as simple to play confusing to master and i see that confusion as one of the true causes as why so many people have a hard time enjoying this game original final fantasy games and their combat started with the traditional rpg battle system characters were 100 turn based on their stats so characters with better stats would start before others and the stats of the monsters and enemies would also be in that mix as well but square enix would later develop the atb system which fans know and love to this day atb stands for active time battle which essentially means there's now time bars that appear on screen that indicate to the player that the character turn is about to happen once the atb meter fails then the player has control of the menus to tell the character to do their actions traditionally speaking these actions are broken down to attack magic and summons sometimes even a special move or mechanic depending on the character and of course items and there are two types of atb meter active and waiting active implies the in-game time continues while you are menuing meaning enemies will attack when their atb is filled and you've got to move quickly in order to attack or defend waiting essentially stops time so that you don't have to stress this notion of these two modes is essentially the only difference between a normal and hard mode setting in the old days for these rpgs and even at that it's not that different or difficult to manage if you're using the normal active atb final fantasy viii's battle system is atb based you do see meters filling up in order to make your moves but there are two other battle systems that are introduced and layered into the atp system that is specifically designed for this game new battle systems layered into atb is not uncommon final fantasy 6 had the espurs where characters would equip summons and gain experience with those summons that would teach them magic permanently final fantasy vii had the materia system where a character would equip these marbles that would have magic skills summons and buffs imbued in them and when you level up the materia you can take said materia and give it to other characters final fantasy 8 systems are known as the draw system the junctioning system and the gf system which i'm kind of making up on my own because it's easier to understand that way and let me tell you the minute you control the game you will feel so overwhelmed in fact one of the worst things about final fantasy 8 is that you get tutorials that do not do a good job of explaining the system and even at that the game forces you to do examples so that you try to understand it but you'll end up just hitting the buttons and going through the motions just to get by because the tutorials themselves are not good enough you'll really learn how to excel at these systems by either doing research or putting in the time this is where i critically feel that the developers while well-intentioned struggle to solidify an identity that newcomers would adjust to according to catastro-san the team wanted players to have the ability to go crazy with these systems and now that i have a full understanding of these systems yeah i was able to do just that but it wasn't at the hands of the developers directly teaching me or designing the game that way it was at the behest of the internet and simply experimenting actions in final fantasy 8 aren't specific to any one character every character has the attack command but item magic summon all that stuff is actually integrated into the gf's themselves the summons in final fantasy viii your bahamuts your ifrits so on and so forth mythical creatures that fight for your side each character can equip any of these gf's you find in the game and every single gf has not only their own set of levels stats and abilities but they themselves have a master list of abilities that their user benefits from most of the time these abilities are things like magic items summon gf draw sometimes passive abilities like auto haste auto potion so on and so forth but there's also special abilities that are unique to each gf that empower players so for example you can get a healing move for free which heals the whole party or you can convert attack to mug so every time you hit them you try and steal an item and finally there's even permanent stat buffs that can dramatically improve your characters want to raise your character's hp give them the hp plus where every time they level they get more hp better yet just give them hp 60 plus which raises their top hp by 60 percent and that stat is the same with strength defense so on and so forth you can equip only a handful of these abilities but as you level up your gf's some can learn to equip even more of these abilities and you can teach them abilities by refining items to unlock more this part is pretty easy to understand you fight you win you earn ap ap then levels up not only the stats and levels of the gf equipped but it also takes the ap and puts it into a particular skill that you are trying to learn magic has changed pretty drastically in eight in most final fantasies you've got mp magic points these magic points are used to cast magic and when you're out of points you can't cast magic anymore in 8 this system is completely gone what you get instead is the draw system the draw system allows you to absorb spells from all enemies you fight when you draw a spell from an enemy depending on your magic and luck stats you'll get anywhere from one to ten plus stalks of said magic spell you're trying to get you can also fail depending on those stats so if you want cure for instance you'll have to fight an enemy that has the cure spell and draw from them enemies can be drawn from as much as you'd like so as long as you keep healing your team you and your party members can easily get 100 of every spell in the game rather 100 of every important spell drawing is also important because you have some bosses that have gfs on them so if you want to get that gf you'll have to draw it from them the question is for us completionists out there is it possible to acquire 100 of every spell in the game for all of your characters and the answer is yes and no you can only have so many spell slots so you can't have every spell at 100 in the game especially because of the fact that spells have different effect levels you know the drill fire fire fire aga cure cura curaga so on and so forth the best strategy is to absorb 100 stock of each level 3 spell variant and any unique spell in the game for all three of your concurrent party members which is almost possible there are some spells you can only draw from from draw points or certain bosses so it does require a lot of patience and time now why on god's green earth when i want 100 of every spell in the game well that's because of the junctioning system when i play eight i almost never cast magic and the reason why that is is because of the junctioning system earlier i spoke on how gfs can learn abilities one of the most important combinations of abilities that you need to have in all of your gf's is the ability to junction magic to each stat in the game there is enough resources items and abilities in the game to make it so that you can have your entire party equip several gf's and all those gf's can be taught the abilities to junction to every particular stat in the game junctioning allows you to assign a magic spell to a stat and the effectiveness of that buff depends on which magic spell you assign to the stat as well as how many you have of the stock that will affect it let's take hp for instance if you assign chiraga to the hp stat and you have 100 kiragas you're going to have a lot of base hp now equipped to your character if you have a spell like ultima assigned to your strength stat your characters will do a crap ton of physical damage do you see what i'm getting at completionists can fundamentally break final fantasy 8 very very early on if they decide to hoard spells and junction with certain stats and not only can you junction magic to stats that also applies to immunities you can fundamentally make it so that every character in your party takes zero fire damage zero water damage zero lightning damage you can even inflict status effects onto enemies or just be immune to most status effects or you can have immunities to sass effects like being immune to death or confusion so if you take everything that i just said right now you single-handedly can become the most powerful characters in the game from the very beginning if you're smart but here's the crazy part you don't need any gear or wearable items because this system essentially acts as its own version of getting equipment and if you think breaking the game is ultimately stupid because it makes the game too easy think again you guys still with me i know it's a lot to digest it's hard to understand at a surface level and personally i think it sucks that it's so complicated doesn't even need to be that difficult to lock down but even now as i'm explaining things and thinking about it i'm pretty sure i got things wrong after the fact examining all this kind of stuff makes you think the game is too easy especially when it comes to leveling up in this game but the truth is leveling up your characters in final fantasy 8 is actually bad from a completion standpoint you don't want to raise your character's individual levels because the game scales with you early on if you're wise enough you can get a lot of early broken weapons and some great junctioning setups to help you blast through the game but you will reach a point where your party is unbalanced in their levels squall never leaves the party but other party members do due to plot or preference and within that the game takes the average of your party's levels and assigns those averages to the enemies tldr leveling up your actual character levels is meaningless in this final fantasy and the entire time i played the game i felt like i was being pushed into a don't eat this eat that situation leveling up a usual jrpg like you normally would hell no junctioning and drawing with the gf's that is what you want to focus on and master there are weapons that have stats for each character in the game but all of the weapons are found and created by finding recipes that are spread throughout the world and resources that you'll need for said recipes in most cases the weapons are purely for damage and look but some weapons unlock more limit break limit breaks in 8 are kind of weird every character has unique mechanics that you have to learn with squalls easily being the most fun to execute but limit breaks are almost only given when your characters are low on hp you can use a spell or an item to give you an instant limit but in most situations you'll use limit breaks when things are dire and i'll be honest squall and renault's limit breaks are the most broken in the game squall naturally has a secondary critical hit if you hit it at the correct time think timed hits from mario rpg however squall's limit break is also rhythm game based which always makes for an engaging time renowas can become scary powerful in the end game because her end game limit break allows her to use unlimited magic but you can't control her so if you only give her the insanely powerful spells while healing and hasting her she will just cast spells like comet and ultima over and over and over again it's very surreal seeing her go crazy in the end game very fun stuff did the developers intend for people to break their game yes i believe so it's evident they wanted people to just go all out and have a fun time messing with the components this game has to offer i don't think they anticipated that the new systems would evolve to the point where you can simply power up from the very beginning of the game but i think they wanted people to have fun becoming powerful and enjoying the narrative along the way and with the insanely powerful team you'll have you never really have to worry about being stuck at a certain boss looking at all of this so far i have to add these mechanics from start to finish are really neat and fun but the confusing nature of how to break the game and succeed is kind of the theme i feel here in final fantasy 8. this game for lack of a better term is full of confusion with regards to what it wants its players to understand to care and to execute on framing this game's love story as its core center drive makes sense to motivate players who would otherwise get lost in the sorceress and time travel based plot creating combat systems that should be simple to understand but come off as a challenge to some players may be a fun experiment that the developers really were hoping people would take i feel that my expertise with final fantasy games has made me feel comfortable with the risks taken here and some of them they pay off but make no mistake confusion is the central feeling i felt throughout this entire journey and completing final fantasy 8 while someone cathartic and fun overstays its welcome now completion is my name and completion is my game something i feel that sometimes gets lost in the show is just what exactly i go through each and every time a game rears its ugly completion headed me so while all of this just sounds like i'm simply explaining the game it's important to understand that it all leans to the road the road of completion one that i've been on for more than 400 times at this point and yes sometimes i stop and i smell the roses but this road is insane every time and final fantasy is one of the more yellow brick roads of chaos and focus exploring has been such a staple in final fantasy that it's hard to rule it out as mindless or not well designed i mean hell it's been so popular in the series that people hated final fantasy 13 because it was a linear game that had all the open world mechanics saved for the very end and that inherently changed the approach of final fantasy xv which is open world galore eight's world while relatively large and beautiful doesn't really have all that many areas to physically visit which is kind of a shame in the beginning you're relegated to running around and using the occasional vehicle here or there but as the plot progresses we discover that the garden the physical garden can hover eventually we can get ragnarok which acts as a spaceship that can fly all over the map and while this is all very freeing again there's not that many crazy things to explore let alone side quests to do as far as our quest for completion goes we have to find all the timber maniac magazines these are spread throughout the world and finding all 12 isn't all that difficult all of which will unlock more and more about laguna a side character who's connected throughout the game and his insane journey with his friends but all of them are acquired for a trophy and it sucks because a few of them are permanently missable a certain reminder that final fantasy games are wonderful in that you don't have to feel bad for ever using a guide in fact here we go psa for me don't feel bad about using guides ever i use them often there's no shame in it as long as you're spoiler free enjoy using them one thing that completely threw me for a loop in final fantasy 8 is money and how it's earned for the first time ever in a final fantasy game i never had to worry about guilt as the minute squall becomes a seed member he's given a salary for his job and this salary makes it so that every 20 minutes or so in real time you're given some guilt you are assigned a pretty low rank but in the settings menu of the game where the tutorials are is a bunch of documentation about seed its purpose and so much more this documentation is designed so that you can take the seed quiz and level up your rank getting all the way up to s rank makes it so you receive 30 000 gil every 20 minutes or so i personally love this as it lets the player worry less about resource management should they decide to be a bookworm this makes a lot of the grind required or item hoarding and jrpgs a lot less of a worry than usual you can actually lose your rank status by simply standing around and doing nothing but you can always rank up whenever you want and at the very least it is required to get max rank at least one time for a trophy all right so every party member of the game has an ultimate weapon and if you're fighting all the enemies you come across and collect everything you can you'll naturally be able to unlock most of these by the end game i spent almost no time grinding just because i naturally had everything i needed and if i did need something i could grab it instantly after a few battles and if you're smart you can grab squall's ultimate weapon the lion heart very early on in the game it's pretty nice and adds to that whole style of destroying the game the way that you want to destroy it sorry that sounds a little violent once you unlock the ragnarok there are a few side quests and dungeons in the end game portion that well not very long are kind of convoluted and bizarre though bell lake for starters is a great side quest that makes little to no sense you know comprehending it right now i couldn't figure out exactly how to word it so instead i asked my awesome community members on my various discords and this is word for word what it was described as after throwing stones in a lake a voice tells us to go to a monkey in a forest then throw a rock at it it throws a rock with letters on it we go on a treasure hunt to get the rest of the letters then go to a desert where the rocks yell at you to get attrition all right so this next side quest i'm sure there's going to be a lot of huge lore stuff to go along with it actually you know what no there isn't you know what i'm going to go ahead and let the community members once again explain this one too you go to a beach and a ufo flies by with an easter island head then you go to a field where the same ufo flies by with a cow then you go to an island the same ufo flies by with a glyph then you go to the desert and watch the same ufo take a pyramid then you find the ufo on a plateau and blow it up then you find the alien give it lots and lots of elixirs he gives you a triple triad card in return and that's just for one of the 100 triple triad cards and a trophy more on that later spread throughout the overworld are little sectioned off chocobo forests going inside these chocobo forests leads to a mini-game where you have to carefully walk around and use a choco whistle to summon several baby chocobos if you summon the right ones in the particular areas you'll summon an actual chocobo and that will give you the ability to ride a chocobo in that area doing all of these little mini chocobo puzzles gives you a chocobo triple triad card and a trophy not very hard a little time consuming overall pretty easy alright so there are two secret dungeons that exist in final fantasy 8 that are both really wonderful each offers totally different experiences and you really feel this sense of accomplishment when you get to the end first up is the ultimate weapon dungeon now the ultimate weapon was a big super boss near the end of final fantasy vii and it makes a return here in this game it starts off as a simple game of red light green light where you have to engage in a little enemy gauntlet once you've won said gauntlet it's time to make our way down the rabbit hole flipping switches fighting really buff enemies and the spiral down and down eventually leads to an epic fight between your party and the ultimate weapon definitely one of the hardest fights in the game but by the time you get here what with having all the spells abilities near all the gf's and you've got the junctioning strategies down this fight can be pretty easy however during the actual ultimate weapon fight do not forget to draw eden the gf from it the second dungeon is kind of the tonberry dungeon where seemingly the only enemy here is tonberry there is the secret gf king tonberry in this area and requires you to fight several tonberries in a row and win but the big challenge of this area is that this dungeon is actually a dungeon for the gf odin and there's a timer that appears the minute you walk in luckily once you defeat and acquire king ton berry you can simply reset and come back challenge odin and get his gf trophy and triple triad card now the big big big big ultimate boss fight in this game is the encounter with omega weapon in the final dungeon there's a couple of switches you have to hit and it requires going back and forth between the parties once you do this you have a few seconds to start this fight and oh boy this is a very difficult fight except it would be if rinoa's limit break wasn't stupid broken you simply use an item or cast the spell that gives her limit break and watch her summon meteors for 5 minutes and you're done trophy earned and secret boss fight defeated whether you agree or not final fantasy 8 is packed the brim with content i haven't even touched on all the wonderful npcs in this world you can talk with some of the towns are really some of the most interesting places i've seen in a game and you do feel a certain level of excitement when you're getting closer and closer to the end except for the you know space and time travel stuff but with everything i just mentioned it's hard to look at final fantasy 8 from this large completionist perspective and really feel like everything is there for true interpretation did the developers succeed in telling a good story not a hundred percent do they succeed in building out an insane world that made me invested not a hundred percent did they succeed in convincing players that the combat was perfect not a hundred percent but all this effort truly makes this final fantasy stand out and for that i applaud it a lot however in my eyes what really brings the game down to a different level has got to be the card game triple triad triple mother [ __ ] triad kitase-san and his team had a big vision with an even bigger goal with regards to triple triad the intent behind the game was to solve a problem they loved the minigames from final fantasy 7 but didn't like how it took so long to get to them and those mini games were all so different that they didn't always have a lot of depth to them when it came to ain't the team wanted to create a mini game that could be played at any given moment and that the game itself felt so old that everyone in this world knew how to play it in the same vein as checkers or go fish what we ended up with was a card game that at first was easy to understand and fun to play but evolved into a crazy mess that marinates in a frustrating concoction of overcomplicated mechanics extreme rng bullsh and an unnecessary amount of time required to complete the triple triad deck i could show you how to play the game inside of final fantasy viii but i've become so obsessed with triple triad for better or for worse that i went on to etsy and i bought this fan made card deck if you want to buy the deck for yourself you can there's a link down below i always encourage supporting artists online plus i think it'll be easier for me to explain the basics with physical cards because after investing well over 30 hours i still don't know how to fully play triple triad triple triad is essentially a multi-faceted way of playing the card game war you and your opponent pick five cards from your respective decks and are presented with a 3x3 card mat randomly someone will be chosen to go first from here you or your opponent will place a card down all these cards are inspired by all the major characters every enemy every major boss in the game all of the gs and even some of the weird easter egg slash final fantasy staple characters you know would love every card has four numbers located on each side when a card is placed down anywhere on the grid the numbers on the card on any of the directions are trying to attack nearby card so if i put a card down let's say that has a value of two on the right and three on the bottom and i place that card in the corner that means my opponent needs to put a card down that has a number that's bigger than three or two if my opponent puts the card down they then take my card and own it and thus i lose it and i need to play better once a card is laid down it goes from attacking to defending so if you put a card down that has a lower value on the defending card nothing happens and in most cases the next few moves are going to be a real bad time the goal is to take over as many of the cards as you can before all nine card slots are placed and taken and whoever has the most cards by the end of the round wins within the world of final fantasy 8 there are different cities and regions that you explore and while exploring these different cities is a good time you have the ability to challenge almost any character in the game into a round of triple triad the funniest part about this is that no matter what's going on in the plot at any given moment no matter how devastating or limited time your characters have to converse or even if it's just a villain or adversary if you press square you can challenge them to triple triad imagine that same reverence in your own life hey sir said you wanted to see me uh yeah ted come on in sit down sir i'm really excited to get working on the johnson account how are you excellent ted you are fired i'm what we appreciate all you've done for this company but uh we're taking things in a new direction you mean no direction means you're fired ted but my wife just just said twins congratulations but i'm sorry that has nothing to do with your job performance you're fired please just put a down payment on the house and my mother moved back in well good she can help you with the twins and we're gonna help you get your things and get out of here i can't even transport my things i have to take the bus i sold my car guys guys guys guys guys guys look i know this is really hard for both of you okay you're losing your job you you have to fire him sucks for you both and i'm really sorry but i do have one really quick important question [Music] does anybody want to play a quick round of triple triad [Music] okay so now that you know how to play the basics of triple triad know this unfortunately this is just the beginning if triple triad was this easy then everyone would play it for just a little bit and move on naturally square enix implemented a lot of extra rules a lot of extra hard rules a lot of extra [ __ ] rules since triple triad is a literal world-renowned game the rules are bent and transformed in almost every single city in the game so the way that i just taught you how to play the game will have regional differences that are predicated on all of the other regions and how they learned how to play now there's a lot of rules that are awful these rules are bad and hard to understand to the point where i can't even explain them well so i'm just going to highlight a couple of the rules that i think are just awful let's begin with the same rule if the attacking card being placed is battling against another card that has the same value on their matching sides the attacking card then takes the defending card next up we have the plus rule which may be one of the worst rules in the game mostly because i still don't understand it the plus rule according to the final fantasy fandom wiki says the plus rule is when one card is placed and it's touching two other cards and the ranks touching the cards plus the opposing rank equal the same sum if that's the case then both cards are captured essentially math the best example i can give is that let's say you have a card in the top left corner and in the middle of the playing field if you put an attacking card down on the left side it'll be touching both the top left card and the card that's in the middle right if the number on the top side of the left middle card and the right side of it when added to the opposing cards they're touching both equal the same number the left card wins and takes both cards you still with me cause god here we go the combo rule essentially is what it sounds like if you win a card that let's say is using the same rule or the plus rule and you take the adjacent cards then those new cards you got are eligible for the same rule and the plus card again so you can combo your way and take other cards so essentially the plus rule the same rule and the combo rule can all chain off of each other meaning if you don't understand these rules at all and you enter a game with these rules on you are going to get rocked so the next question is how do i feel about all this i feel awful i feel like this is all a fever dream this is chaos maximus i only explained some of the rules because the others while they make sense will just make your stomach churn from stress and confusion and all the rules i just explained to you one at a time aren't that bad but the truth is that because you travel so much from region to region in this game you start mixing and matching rules to cross-pollinate with each other and mix with other regions so the rules that you really hate and don't want suddenly spread like a virus and it virtually makes playing triple triad a goddamn nightmare it becomes one of the most difficult and stupid things to invest your time in with final fantasy viii this is the true rng curse that exists in eight and if you plan to complete the game get ready to play triple triad more than the base game but there is hope the rng goes both ways there are in fact ways to delete rules from the regions you're playing in and you can spread the deletion of said rules if you know what you're doing and trust me deleting the rules rather than learning them was so [ __ ] worth it and here's the damned completionist truth about this i was so [ __ ] angry with the rules that i spent more time trying to delete the rules than trying to learn how to play them because they're [ __ ] it's all [ __ ] i had to play smart and by smart i mean make plenty of backup saves all the time and pay close attention to which regions i recently played in the ones i was about to play in and more importantly be ready to do some random rng manipulation to try and change the rules a lot of the abolishing of the rules in certain regions depends on random numbers such as how many times you turn down a player play a game with a character with rules win then back out and hope the region has taken your rules as gospel there's a hundred cards in the game a lot of these cards you may notice have special golden trims around the side it means that these cards are special rare cards that not only are super powerful but usually require a weird way of getting them there's even card specific quest lines like involving the queen of cards there's the elite league of balaam garden club that has you battling several members of the land garden including twisties and so much more not to mention you can turn enemies into cards that you battle on the field using the card ability from gf's so really getting cards in triple triad is a full-time [ __ ] job that no one wanted to have but the worst part about farming for these cards is that there's just a random element of chance when it comes down to getting the right card in a battle there might be an npc that has a card you need that you challenge again and again and again and again and again and you win all these times and yet the card still doesn't show up and then out of the blue the card shows up you try and win and you lose that round you start to rage you reload the game and pray to rn jesus that your luck changes and as you start getting more and more involved with tracking down certain enemies or cards the original differences start to rear their ugly head into play what's even more frustrating than all of this is that completing a full deck of triple triad gives you nothing you get a golden star in the menu and that's it no trophy no achievement no super duper special card no acknowledgement that you're truly the best in the world no certificate just a gold star the relief of the gold star makes me feel good because it feels like i conquered an insurmountable beast but to really feel the disappointment for going the extra mile was hands down one of the absolute worst things to come from final fantasy 8. for you final fantasy 14 fans i'm sure that you will try to something you completely get at this point a lot of you players have been farming for cards to improve your decks and have fun and there's even more in-depth ways to play in 14 online yet at the end of the day my feelings of triple triad are leaning towards the side of dissatisfaction frustration and of course good old luck and rng triple triad is a problem for completionists looking to get the full experience of completing this game because by the time you're done you will be burned out by playing this game alone in the beginning skill is important by the end skill almost doesn't [ __ ] matter rng takes the wheel and you'll spend hours and hours and hours playing the game to the point where your total run time of the game will be expanded because of the simple fact that the mini game has more to do than anything else in this game it's easier to get max level get all the best weapons all the spells basically do everything in the game than it is to collect every single card in triple triad and looking at all of this right the most frustrating takeaway is that the team behind the game wanted people to remember triple triad now after my experience of completing this game i think it's safe to say that i'll be one of those people who will remember hating triple triad specifically in final fantasy 8 because of all these extra rules but people will generally remember it being improved in 14 online the team knew they messed up and the team in 14 worked to improve it from game to game so in the end i don't think triple triad is a complete failure i do believe it needed a lot more time in the oven before it came out but hey no matter how dire your life situations are you can always play triple triad to just ease the pain away no no no no please please please don't turn the tv on right now just connect with me no it's the it's the episode where they eat a bunch of hot wings it's snoop dogg's on i don't care about any hot wings what do you think you don't care that i like i care i can't even eat them they give me indigestion and gaff and it's too much see now i'm talking about indigestion just by yelling at me right now between you you would just listen to me i wouldn't have guys guys guys look i know things are really hard right now you got kids you got jobs you got responsibilities a mortgage a house and your relationship's on the rocks it's really hard but i believe in you guys you're gonna get through this you guys can do this but i just have one quick important question does anybody want to play around a triple triad mean i'm down are you [ __ ] get in me looking at the character development squall and his teenage angst the themes of the game the graphical boundaries being pushed the developers intend to get players to complete the game let alone understand what they're consuming including the expansiveness of triple triad and everything else between and beyond that i discussed in this already way too lengthy of a video i think i can confidently say that i don't think i broke new ground here and i don't think that was my own intent what i wanted was for you guys to experience what my thought process is in every single video that i make how my time investment and my own completionist journey plays into all of this and in the end here are my thoughts i think final fantasy 8 is a misunderstood piece of art because of my actions of completing it i understand it way less in fact after breaking down the game as much as i did i realized that i like a lot about this game but what i like doesn't necessarily make the game good for everyone else and what i dislike may not make the game bad the story and the way that it progresses is interesting and i really enjoy it from point to point there's so much heart and care that exists between these characters there's so many wonderful moments between characters even creepy characters like irvine come off as fun and jovial but like a big budget blockbuster final fantasy 8 second act failures dramatically impact the success of the third act and thus the game as a whole the tender moments get bogged down with lots of unclear expectations and misguided story beats from esthar onwards i was immediately removed from my empathetic feeling of the plot to more of one that just wanted the guide to get the girl so we can end the story combat is fun i like the junctioning system i dig the draw system i like how important the gf's are to both of these systems and how they all combo together nicely but the explanation of how these systems work are all over the place if you know what you're doing you can break the game with ease if you're lost prepare to climb up an unrelenting hill with a boulder on your back after 65 hours of investment with 35 trophies under my belt and an unfathomable amount of card games played won or lost i feel spent like i watched the dvd box of a show i used to like lots of stuff to love but it's a marathon that i'm still unsure if i enjoyed what i can say is that my appreciation for this game has shot up to the roof for its wonderful design and beautiful ability to swoon me this game defies the expectations of what we know as a final fantasy game by truly sticking to its guns to be as memorable as possible i just don't know if that memorable experience was one that i want to remember i don't even think i was trying to expose final fantasy 8's legacy as a game that was trying to be anything more than a revolutionary step away from final fantasy vii given my status as a content creator and as a completionist i've learned a lot this last decade about myself and how i complete games and one thing is clear i just want to talk about games i want to explore and have conversations and thoughts and opinions and really just keep doing that i think there's this overwhelming pressure that some online creators feel that they have to keep evolving and keep growing and i'll continue to do so each and every week i'm in that pool of creators but the conversation in my eyes always comes down to good game good bad game bad youtuber and or journalist and or streamer and or company hate game or love game that i hate or love when really we all have to face a simple truth my dudes ratings don't [ __ ] matter let people like what they like let people hate what they hate life is about the gray area and when it comes to final fantasy 8 i am living in the gray area and as for me i'll keep completing games for all of you at home that is if you keep listening i'll be here thank you so much for being here with me on this insane journey gerard without you guys i wouldn't be here living my dreams you have no idea how much each and every piece of fan art and interaction that i've had with all of you that what it means to me i cannot thank you enough i never thought i'd ever get to this point we're celebrating 10 years in september a decade of this show of this ongoing conversation about games and i want to give a big thank you to everyone in my life the mods and all the various discords who taught me time and time again that i could handle anything a big thank you of virgil who helped me specifically get through this game and without him i don't think i would have made it out alive a big thank you to all of our patrons on both super beer brothers and the completionist who've been funding the show some almost the entire time our patreon's been here pat our main editor who has been carrying the torch longer than almost any employee has in this company our new game plus editor charlie who is new but he is whooping ass wherever he can nick our effects wizard who has worked so hard on all the crazy you guys here every week that new game the new game plus intros and the new intro is all him and he's amazing gerard the producers and my best friends michael and frazier the writers eric allen jeremy cameron my associate editor ruby our social merch and patreon team ted and megan my music team ben briggs and this wonderful cast of friends who've been composing an original dkc remix for all of you every episode of these last 100 videos my art team sean who does every thumbnail and carlos who's done literally every single title card art since day one a big thank you to josh who's invested so much time into our seo to make our channel run and giving us notes on thumbnails and feedback the research there is insane and it requires a lot a big big big thank you to my to my awesome beard brothers brett bayonne and alex fossiani you guys are my rock whether you like it or not and i'm grateful for you both my wonderful partner amanda who makes me want to be the best version of myself every day and my brother jacques who despite how much we fight we'll always be there for each other no matter what and of course a big thank you to all of you at home for without you i wouldn't be doing here i know this sounds corny but i love you all each and every one of you gerard what is it michael look i i don't mean to interrupt i don't mean to belittle any of the the well wishes that you're making and the thanks that you're and the praise and all the heapings on that you're feeling and the emotions because 400 games that's nothing to scoff at that is a huge deal and you should be very proud people are pouring their hearts out in the comments section undoubtedly about how much you have meant for them i hope so in everything that you've done and all the struggles and troubles that you've put yourself through to complete these games but i'm coming to you with a very important question are you down for a quick round of triple triad this is because that charlie's angel's been from before isn't it i have no idea what you're talking about final fantasy 8 gets my completionist rating of play it try it out see if you like it and just to be clear play it isn't bad it just means you need to see it for yourself to see if you enjoy it i've been gerard the completionist thank you for your time and here's to another 100 games to complete good night all right let's go play some triple triad so you have any stories about like drew barrymore and like being on set i mean you were what 11 yeah it was it was sixth grade for me okay um and uh like so i i do have like the very fun moment this is post like actually the shoot sure but uh i just remember when the trailer came out there was this one really cool kid in middle school austin i forget his last name yeah but he shouted across the pbis quad was like michael barody you're a movie star and i was like what the heck i didn't have the trailer and come out and let alone that like the one scene that i'm in made the trailer yeah i don't know who made the trailer yeah it's like oh we're using that in this episode it's like the moment um and and so i was just like oh god what's going on he like runs over he's like you saw drew barry more naked and i was like what's happening and then he like told another like skater friend he was like dude mikey saw this chick naked yeah and i'm like uh sure did you actually see her naked was she naked uh she was wearing a robe and she like technically flashed us but not really so you saw our boobies i've seen lots of boobies uh no so she flashed us when mcgee the director was talking to us but like the camera was still on and so like in the monitor we saw that she flashed she technically was wearing a nude suit so like oh it was a body studio yeah so like not actually but mkg got very upset but she's also the producer of the movie so what yeah like there are issues yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah there are minors on set like be careful yeah yeah yeah but uh

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 588,698

Rating: 4.9126582 out of 5

Keywords: final fantasy 8, final fantasy 8 remake, final fantasy 8 remastered, final fantasy 8 review, final fantasy 8 gameplay, gameplay, review, completionist, final fantasy, FF8, FFVIII, final fantasy VIII, final fantasy 8 recap, final fantasy 7, final fantasy 7 remake, final fantasy 8 remastered trailer, final fantasy music, game review, IGN, normal boots, projared, sony, playstation, square enix, square soft, zell, rinoa, ultimecia, sorceress edea, quistis, FF8 review, final fantasy XIV

Id: 6ZnHW50ChGc

Length: 82min 15sec (4935 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/yarbousaj]

WOW. Four HUNDRED episodes. The opening is great. And the episode is almost AN HOUR AND A HALF long. Definitely making sure my ad blocker is off. Wanna help $$$ lmao

[u/FragMeNot]

FF8 is my jam.

[u/Captainbuttsreads]

Triple Triad was one of the absolute BEST mini games in any videogame in my opinion.

I literally would spend hours and hours playing it!

[u/zanethebeard]

What a great episode, good job everyone.

[u/CharizardEgg]

Congratulations on 400 games Jirard and team!

[u/DrJojoGaming]

I tried to understand tetra Master on final fantasy 9 and I had to look it up. It was such a confusing mini game that I even made a youtube video on how it's played. It has rng as its basic mechanic I'm ff9. I thought 9 card game was just an extension of 8 but I was very wrong.