vincent's page of happy thoughts.

aaron gover's uniform cut-and-paste puncturing of idiotic anti-final fantasy viii arguments

12.31.2001» It has become apparent that no matter how much these parts of Final Fantasy VIII get debated, there are still some ~~ignorant fuckface subhuman assholes~~ odd fellows who insist on bringing up these same issues time and time again. Therefore, for my peace of mind and others, I present this point-by-point refutal of the poorly-thought-out pieces of not-wholly-coherent english I've dealt with on the subject, and now we can all reference them by linking rather than by retyping them.
Now keep in mind, this document is not meant as a guide to playing Final Fantasy VIII. While I'm going to sketch out certain details of the game system, I'm most definitely not going to walk you through each step. To do so would be to violate one of the principles I advocate most highly in Final Fantasy VIII, and one I applaud the designers for sticking to: The principle of Figure It Out For Yourself. This principle seemingly alienated a lot of players who were used to systems which laid the best paths out in front of them, however I believe that when you figure something out for yourself, the end result is more satisfying.
I'd also like to point out that while a great deal of this document (especially the sections dealing with plugging plot holes) is personal opinion, much of it is also a rock solid method for dealing with the game system. I'll leave the process of determining what is opinion and what is fact up to the readers of this document, so that if somebody emails me trying to refute an opinion I'll have new people to sign up to alt.idiots.lamers.ff8haters.

The Rules of Final Fantasy VIII.

One of the major problems many players have with Final Fantasy VIII is that the game offers two paths:

The (at first) Easy Way: The game offers you the ability to use GF's to blow past all enemies. In the first half of the game, is this an easy (albeit not quick) way to win. However, by focusing on the strength and power of your GFs, and learning only the abilities the GF's default to, by the second half of the game your characters will be severely underpowered, and progressing further will be impossible without rectifying this mistake.
The Best Way: By keeping complete control of the abilities your GFs learn, you can choose to ignore the GF-boosting abilities and instead focus on the truly important abilities: The refinement, junctioning, and command abilities.

     By focusing on the character related abilities, and not on the "dark side" of the GF abilities, one will be able to have characters who do more damage, and do so more quickly, than any GF available in the game.
     Each of the three types of abilities that I reccomend that players focus upon has an effect on how powerful your characters are at all times.
     First off, Refining abilities, such as Shiva's Ice Magic Refining and Ifrits Fire Magic Refining have the purpose of almost completely eliminating the need for drawing (except for the �ber-powerful spells like Ultima and Holy.) Using cheaply available items such as tents and worthless monster-dropped items like Fish Fins, one can create the spells you need in great numbers. A complete chart of the conversion abilities is beyond the scope of this document.
     Junction abilities allow you to put those spells to work, using them to raise stats and add elemental properties and status effects to your attack and defense. If one is having problems with fire creatures, one simply junctions ice or water to Elemental Attack, while junctioning Fire to Elemental Defense. If one is tired of being poisoned, one merely junctions bio to Status Defense. If one wants to be incredibly cheap, one just has to junction Death to status attack.
     The advantages of the Command abilities are relatively obvious: by adding new commands to the list of available ones, players' options increase tremendously, allowing greater freedom in gameplay.
     In the end, the players who dislike experimenting will be left out in the cold -- but we intelligent gamers don't need those scum, do we?

Myth #1: The Draw System is Terrible and Makes the Game Unplayable!

     The designers of Final Fantasy VIII seemed to have one guiding principle when planning the gameplay for the game: "Learn how to use the Junction and GF system or we'll punish you by boring the living hell out of you." Nowhere is that more apparant than the draw system.
     However, few people who make this argument seem to realize that there is a better way. They seem to fall into the trap that too many Final Fantasy VIII haters do, which is to look and say to themselves "It's not right out in front of me and therefore it doesn't exist!"
     Avoiding the draw system is fairly simple, and if you do it right, you'll never use drawing after the first half of Disc 1 (Except for the very few spells that cannot be attained through refinement.)
     One my wonder, how do I get magic if I don't draw? Somebody who asks that might also ask "How do I tie my shoes?" but I've insulted them enough for now, so I'll get on to the answer: Refinement.
     No, I don't mean by being polite and courteous and versed in all the manners of the day. I mean the process of learning the refining abilities from your Guardian Forces, and using those to turn that multitude of worthless items into a very useful stockpile of spells.
     For instance, if one refines fish fins at the beginning of the game, one will have much higher stats due to the 100 waters you can refine from it -- 20 waters per fish fin, by the way. You can't walk three steps at the beginning of Final Fantasy VIII without tripping over the things.

Myth #2: Summoning GF's constantly is the only way to win (and GF's take too long!)

This is untrue: If you follow the junctioning rules, GF summons become nigh-useless almost from the start. Your characters will be able to do more damage in less time just with attacks.

Myth #3: Junctioning spells never has any effect anyhow!

People who say this usually don't realize that the amount of the spell you junction really matters. Junctioning one Demi or 100 Demi's to your Strength is vastly different.

Myth #4: All those items one gets by beating monsters are useless!

Not true. Theyre the source of 99% of your refinements.

TOPIC #1

Yo!