What could have been better?

This thread is more for the people that say that this game is an embarrassment to the franchise, but the people who loved it, if they have a gripe with the game can post here too. No posts of ‘Nothing. This game is perfect.’ or something to that effect.

Since the whiners — the people who dislike the game, myself included — have such a strong opinion of the game, they should step up and offer solutions to what was wrong and not just sit back and say ‘this game sucks.’ And add solutions, don’t just say what you didn’t like, all right?

All right, I’ll start.

I think that the whole ‘Fire Cavern is a prerequisite to becoming a SeeD’ is a strange plot hole. If everyone had to do it, wouldn’t everyone have Ifrit for a GF? And if they do, that would mean that there are tons of reincarnations of Ifrit, which doesn’t seem likely. I think that the Fire Cavern was an unnecessary part of the game and really didn’t need to be there in the first place. It should have never been in the game.

Understand? I sure hope so.

Originally posted by Vorn: Devourer of Worlds
I think that the whole ‘Fire Cavern is a prerequisite to becoming a SeeD’ is a strange plot hole. If everyone had to do it, wouldn’t everyone have Ifrit for a GF? And if they do, that would mean that there are tons of reincarnations of Ifrit, which doesn’t seem likely. I think that the Fire Cavern was an unnecessary part of the game and really didn’t need to be there in the first place. It should have never been in the game.

I’ve never pondered that possibility before…but you do have a point. Even though I’m one of those people who think "Ah, FFVIII is the best!" there were some loose ends to the thing. That prerequisite didn’t really make sense, you’re right.

Ah, well, I can’t really think of anything to say for this.

In a lot of ways,game play-wise,FFVIII was a prelude to FFX, if you played FFX,you now that multiple people could have Ifrit in their world,but only one could use it at a time,(supposedly, it isn’t like you couldn’t use in any other battles just when you fight him)
I think they meant the same thing on FFVIII, only didn’t focus on it, or at the least didn’t think or try to think about it…they just wanted it in the game and didn’t solidify it…..

Well the junctionong system is ok but I dont like tha battle system. You only have 4 options here and you cant wear something like rings. THe weapon upgrade system was very good. You didnt just need money but several items aswell to get what you desire. The limit break system wasimo bad, cuz it happend to me more then once that I finally got to do a limit and then just got killed. The magic system, well I didnt like it much cuz I prefer magic with mana.

The most obvious change, to me, is to have an option to turn the summon effects off. Because of the way the game was designed, I used my GFs more then my weapons, and it made building up my guys entirely too tedious. The junction system I actually like a lot, I liked to change the type of magic I used depending on the weaknesses of the guys I was fighting. Drawing magic, I didn’t mind at all either, it complimented the junction system well. I didn’t care for the upgrade of the characters weapons at all though, one of the aspects of the game I really enjoy is getting better and more powerful weapons and armor, and that fun seemed to be lost, a little. The story suited me just fine, I really don’t have any complaints there. I thought the ending was wonderful. The last little thing I would change are those awful little tutorials from Quistis. I don’t need to sit through them ever, ever, again, and I don’t think I should have to. Those are really my only major complaints, I loved that game.

well, i didnt just like the game. there is nothing about it that i can put my finger on, i just didnt like it in general. i thought the plot was really good. it was just gameplay wise, i really disliked playing it. i doubt i’l ever play it again.

Aura magic probably should have been left out of the game, or modified in some way. It made it way easier than it should have been to get limit breaks. Also, it would have been nice if they had found some way to make the card game less tedious.

Everyone probably does have Ifrit. All the summoners in FFX have him. The GFs aren’t really explained well, but in a lot of FF games, like FFIV and FFX, summons exist sort of in another dimension and can be called by more than one person.

Originally posted by Terra Branford
The last little thing I would change are those awful little tutorials from Quistis. I don’t need to sit through them ever, ever, again, and I don’t think I should have to. Those are really my only major complaints, I loved that game.

Hit the triangle button and the tutorial stops.

OK, I love FFVIII, there are only three things I would change:

1) Make the game harder! This game is way too easy. (This is my complaint about most FF games, actually.) Make spells like Ultima rarer. Make enemies stronger. And most importantly: make it more difficult to summon GFs. I think there should have been an MP system for summoning GFs, so that you won’t use more than two or three per save point. The GFs completely ruin any difficulty the game has.

2) Add subplots involving playable characters other than Squall. I mean, I’m a loner and I really love Squall because I can relate to him, but if I didn’t like Squall then I wouldn’t like FFVIII’s story. You look at other FF games and you can hate the main character but still like the story for the other characters. I can’t relate to Tidus at all (I’m fortunate to have a good relationship with my father and unfortunate to be unathletic and anti-social. I am the Anti-Tidus! :rolleyes: ) but I liked FFX’s story anyway, because if it got to a point where I couldn’t care less about Tidus, there were always other characters to focus on. A lot of the other FFVIII characters had potential to have their own parts of the storyline. Quistis struggles with depression and worries about not being a good instructor, but that part of the story is pretty much ignored and at the end you see her smiling and laughing at the party and more or less just have to assume that all her problems are resolved. In any other FF game, she would have had a subquest. Or how about Selphie with Trabia’s destruction? More could have been done with that. Or Irvine dealing with not telling the others who Edea is? See? So many things could have been more important to the story.

3) Give Fujin and Raijin bigger roles! Come on, they were my favorite characters! They weren’t in the story enough. And it isn’t like Square wouldn’t be able to find anything to add to the story about them. I mean, their best friend just joined forces with the enemy and they spend most of the game torn between helping him and trying to show him that he’s not doing the right thing. You could practically retell the entire FFVIII story from their point of view and still have a good, complicated story.

Originally posted by Fujin

1) Make the game harder! This game is way too easy. (This is my complaint about most FF games, actually.) Make spells like Ultima rarer. Make enemies stronger. And most importantly: make it more difficult to summon GFs. I think there should have been an MP system for summoning GFs, so that you won’t use more than two or three per save point. The GFs completely ruin any difficulty the game has.

you what? that was the hardest FF i ever played! the final boss took me like, 2 and a half hours 😮

you actually had to bother levelling up to win, and levelling up is just so dull.

I still don’t understand why everybody finds FF8’s Final Boss so hard. Just kick her butt with Squall’s Renzokuken and heal with the abundant healing magic and she’s history.

Besides, it doesn’t take all that long to level up in FF8 anyway, not nearly as long as some FFs.

i had the Flame sword (or wotever) for Squall. Renzokouken was shit. Rinoa had better limits. i cudnt be arsed to get the Lionheart, i just wanted to end the game.

Yeah, it takes 1000 EXP. per level, makes leveling up your characters more consistant.

The leveling up was piss easy, just go to either Island Closet to Heaven/Hell, the monsters there give you loads of EXP.
And for GF AP, Cactuar Island.

Anyway, I thought the game was alright, though it took quite a long time to actually get started, also there ‘Make Your Own Weapon’ thing was good, but not enough weapons, to make.
And more character depth, for all characters.

I have to agree it was too easy, abilities like treatment, revive, and recover, made it extreeemly easy. Also the ending boss was a sinch, I only unlocked my limits and I got to her second to last form but I dont care I loved the ending movie it was well worth the easyness, I thought it was a pleasent game.

I loved FF8 and I thought it was great, but I guess the battle and junction systems should have been a bit more complex. I thought how they had it made up made the game a bit too easy, and it would have been better if it was more challanging. Yeah, all the cure-ish spells they had made it easy as well; I agree.

But I did like the game, none the less ^_^ Twas fun to play.

Well, to me the game was pretty ruley, fun and it was really meaningful to me for some odd reason so I wanted to play it more. Does anyone get what I’m saying? Also, the junction thingie to me was really simple unlike for other people.

I liked the characters and the plot as well even though they sorta took the fast way with the twist at the end. Nevertheless yeah, I did really like the game.

It’s my fav FF game and I liked it even more than FF7 which is meant to be pretty popular. Woah… Yup, I’m very weird… 😮

I did like the feel of the game…..the Gardens reminds a little of college…and the towns,the people,the style and characters,they were all unique and interesting.

FFVIII is still my favorite Final Fantasy game, but I do get the feeling that about everything in the game was rushed except for the graphics and special effects (they were very good graphics for the PS at that time). If only Square did a better job of explaining things (It took me like whole first disc to fully figure out the junctioning system, I quickly understood junctioning GFs, but understanding the magic junctioning takes longer when it’s your first Squaresoft game (except for RadRacer 2 for Nintendo lol). But basically it would have been a much better job if they did better explanation. I think though focusing on Squall and not showing the sides of other chacters as much was part of the FFVIII formula though. Since it has a romance overtone, it would only make sense to focus on the character who is most changed by it.

I also noticed that the game would have been kinda more interesting if they played around more with the

*Spoiler*

Squall being laguna’s son. I LOVE both characters and I think it would have been cool to throw in some different things like squall actualy responding to what Kiros and ward said. I felt totaly jipped they didnt even have squall do a "…….." for a response. I mean that could have been a really cool thing if they exposed this secret in the second disk and had to have squall some how deal with everything all at once. Oh well I love character Angst but since i was deprived of my story line i might as well search for a good fan fic. *sigh* I am such a dork.

Well here goes nothing

A lot of poeple say final fantasy 8 was too hard or easy. personally I think it was easy too. But get a load of omega woepon he was hard but mortal. A secret is that he has a pattern to his attack He does them in order anyway i think he would have been a lot harder if it wasn’t for Hero drinks or holy wars.

Except he doesn’t have a pattern. Oh, sure, he has a pattern at first, but after that he just settles into random attacks. So if you’re not using Hero/Holy War, you still have a very good chance of getting your ass kicked.

i honestly think that this game could have used a lot of work. for one, it was to easy, ur magic was to powerfull, and the enemys was to weak. the only real chalage in it was omega weapon, which still wasnt that hard, (i dont use items).

the story line sucked major ass, it was nothing compared to FFVII (the best game ever made). it was just to easy.

ssj10goku
greg

The main problem with Final Fantasy VIII was it was so easy to max out your level and your stats. (Checks) My stats, on disk 1, before the Timber Mission are: Squall (Level 34), Selphie (Level 19), Zell, (Level 19.) Oh, and I fought one battle just to get the "feel" of the game and EVERYTHING levelled up. Characters, GFs, even the game (okay, that last one was a joke.)

It’s just too easy to level up, because of the constant gap between experience, unlike the normal staggered gap you get in all other FFs I’ve played. It just made it too easy, or if you’re not patient enough to level up, too frustrating.

Square tried to re-invent the wheel after Final Fantasy VII, when people wanted more of the same. The story was good in places, but kind of lost speed towards the end. There are good points in the game. Like building weapons that increase your limit skills, but not a lot.

I’ve waffled on long enough now.

About level-ups the point seems (funny as hell) to be avoiding them until you get all the fancy rare magic to juntion, also to first get all the str/vit/hp/spr/mag bonus abilities to max your chars up real good…

Um, about the storyline I just try ignore the crappiest parts of the plot and have fun with the best… I just play these games for fun anyway (and cuz I have a life to waste) 😛

And last about challenge, wtf if you want challenge then MAKE some, people who HATE butthard games and want to just have some fun (like me) can’t have fun with too challenging stuff!

The point is that you can play like: "I’m not using magic" or "I’ll keep ’em from leveling up" etc. YOU CAN ALWAYS MAKE CHALLENGE FOR YOURSELF! Simply make it harder to play. Anyway it’s harder for us funlovers dealing with games that are tough by default and it’s a fact that a TRUE challengelover makes the challenge even greater for himself and doesn’t give a damn how easily the game COULD POSSIBLY be beaten by some who don’t care about challenge…

Originally posted by The_Flaming_Amarant
you actually had to bother levelling up to win, and levelling up is just so dull.

No you didnt had to bother leveling up becouse all enemys are scaled based upon your levels. The stronge you are, the stronger your enemys.

Originally posted by Neo Xzhan
No you didnt had to bother leveling up becouse all enemys are scaled based upon your levels. The stronge you are, the stronger your enemys.

Erhm, this doesn’t go for the bosses… Although the lower your levels and at the same time the better magic junc. you have (try through cards) the more you rule 😉

Anyways the bottom line is that sooner or later without SOME levelling up and too much rushing you’re in trouble… At least by the time you get to the last boss…

Originally posted by Vorn: Devourer of Worlds

I think that the whole ‘Fire Cavern is a prerequisite to becoming a SeeD’ is a strange plot hole. If everyone had to do it, wouldn’t everyone have Ifrit for a GF? And if they do, that would mean that there are tons of reincarnations of Ifrit, which doesn’t seem likely. I think that the Fire Cavern was an unnecessary part of the game and really didn’t need to be there in the first place. It should have never been in the game.

Understand? I sure hope so.

I think that it was totally necessary. If you wouldn’t have had The prequistes you would…..

1 for one you wouldn’t have had a third GF (They could have given it to true but) Anyway without a third GF one of your men in the Field exam would be without Magic, item, draw, and what not.

2. There would be no practice you might not get the game and you owuld have to start off at a field exam (Wich by the way if you do bad you start off with a low seed rank)

3 As for the whole everyone having an ifrit- I think the prerequisite was to have three GF’s not to go to the fire cavern and have ifrit

If you ask what nedded to be changed it was heros, holy wars and all items pertianing to invinsibility. it made it way too Easy to beat Omega woepon and what not

What could be better….you mean besides everything? heh heh…jk
I actually didn’t get the Junction system until start of Disc 2. O_O
The characters need more background. Explaining away the entire cast’s pasts by connecting them with some orphanage doesn’t cut it.
And I know FF VIII’s suppossedly realistic and everything, but with magic and GFs it just doesn’t work. I would’ve liked a more FF X feel. By that I mean more non-human races. I liked the realistic feel…it worked great and everything until they brought in magic and all that. But then again, it wouldn’t be an FF without magic, would it?
The magic system….argh. Whatever happened to MP?
And finally, and most importantly, where were all the Moogles? What, they just turned into a Triple Triad Card and that’s it? ARGH!

And finally, and most importantly, where were all the Moogles? What, they just turned into a Triple Triad Card and that’s it? ARGH!
It’s in the game. It wouldn’t be a card if it weren’t. To get him, you have to play Chocobo World. Sometime’s when transfer items back into FFVIII, you’ll get a Moogle Charm. You can use this to add the MiniMog ability to one of your GFs. Use this ability in battle and Mog will appear and do his Mog dance, restoring HP to all of your GFs. It’s not that great an ability, but it looks really cool.

Well actually Mog has turned the tides when I was fighting Omega Weapon. Most of my GFs were near death and Mog healed them and so the battle went on. I think its a usefull summon.

The game was good…well…more than just good…

But I didn’t Like the story line much. It depends completely on luck. how come all the children that were raised on the orphanage brought all togother again…and there’s no concentrations on any charecter otehr than Squall…
I didn’t like the magic system either…the junction thingy wasn’t bad at all…but it kinda killed the importance of leveling up…not only that, there’s no need to upgrade the weapons since the weapons rais your strength for a few points (5- 25) while junctioning magic would boost it incredibly…so the only weapons to upgrade are only squall’s since he learns limit breaks from them…
There wasn’t much side quests and the one’s that were there weren’t THAT usefull….
I kinda liked and didn’t like the magic drawing thingy…I liked it because it supports the junction system well…but i didn’t like it because there’s no fun in using magic without MP…when I first saw the game I wondered..No MP??…
The GFs weren’t explained well in the game..and they were easy to use… Yeah in order for us to use a little less they connected it with the SeeD rank…but you still can rais it easily…
The last bad point in the game is it’s being way too easy (at least the easiest FF I ever played)…

Anything other that…I liked the game..I bet the game 5 times after all:lol

Well….enough babbling….
peace

Wow, I didn’t think that this thread would last so long.

Anyways, I think that the whole enemies level up as you do thing was kinda stupid. Sure in the other games, you could level up a bunch and beat the crap out of a tough enemy and that in this game you couldn’t. That’s what some people say, at least. But it’s not true. Well, somewhat, but it was more get better magic to junction and then beat the crap out of an tough enemy. But not only that, you could use this system to your advantage, you just have to plan in advance a little.

For example, when I fought Ultimecia (who wasn’t that easy), I had two people that were around level 45 or so, and one other person that was at level 18. As a result, Squall was at a higher level than Ultimecia (level 35, I think).

It’s a lot faster than leveling up, and just as effective. Thanks, Squaresoft, for making my gaming experience that much easier!

All right, no more ranting (for now). Maybe in another two months.

UGH, So you’re basically saying that wasting your time fighting pointless battles just to raise a variable in a game makes the game more difficult? Personally I find it mind numbing. I say, "Thanks Squaresoft for allowing me to pay more attention to the plot and gaming experience than the value that is my level."

Some people say it takes the fun and challenge out of a game. I say – Beast the crap out of Omega Weapon! MWAHAHAHAHA!

I can’t believe I missed the moogle… But I wish there were more – a LOT more. Like what FF used to have before it went all super-techno. Like in IX or something.

I can’t believe I missed the moogle
It’s okay. Pretty much everyone agrees that the Moogle sucks. And if you only the Playstation version of Final Fantasy VIII, you have to have the Pocketstation in order to get it, so it’s quite possible to miss.

Oh, and Neo Xzhan, I guess you’re right. For Omega Weapon, he can be pretty helpful.

Paraphrasing Frankenstein’s monster.

JUNCTION BAD!!!!!!
Enemies being staired to meet your level BAD!!!!

My #1 complain though was making your own weapons. Good idea but wasn’t presented well, some of the parts for later weapons are too rare.

Was a pretty good game, junction system wasn’t explained enough in the begining leaving you alot to figure out. Also I like standard RPG levels, Monster X beats you…..you level up and destroy Monster X with extreme prejudice. This game Monster X gained levels and still gave you hell. Probably why they gave you the invincibilty and aura type spells.

The downside of those were they made the game too easy. Then again most FF games are easy, but I play them for storyline not for challenge. Some of the most difficult games aren’t RPGs at all they’re old school side scrolling shooters :P. Fighting 10,000 – 1 odds gets irritating :/

I think it is very good in gameplay and the battle system is all great. But the story line does contain many big dark holes as it could have been better.