Any game where you can take advantage of the system to the point of NO challenge sucks.

1. get the card (quistis i think) in the first hour that mods to 100 triples and junction to attack
2. mod 10 tents (also can be done right after dollet) to 100 curagas junction to life
3. leave your life at high yellow status
4. walk through the game.

as long as you dont level more than you have to the enemies stay weak, with weak enemies and high attack you'll be demolishing them.

I'd like to see someone easily walk through a game like final fantasy 4 running from all random battles and killing bosses in 2 turns.

Most people will not be doing that in their first playthrough, just like any trick in any other Final Fantasy game. I like how the option is there to overpower my characters though. If I want a challenge, I'll just play through normally. If I want to see how powerful I can make my characters, I'll experiment with the card game and refining. Seriously, if you want a challenge but still choose to overpower your characters, then there's something wrong with you.

FF8 isn't even the only FF game like that though. You can make near enough any FF game easy if you know what you're doing. You can abuse the stat system in FF2 to overpower your characters. You can abuse the Job System in FF5. You can absue Vanish/Doom among other things in FF6. You can absue Materia in FF7. You can abuse junctions in FF8. You can abuse Quina's Limit Glove and other auto-9999 attacks in FF9. You can abuse the Sphere Grid in FF10. You can obtain powerful items early in FF12 (random chests, stealing, etc). In any of the other games, you can overlevel your characters and remove the challenge (although it takes longer than some of the things you can do in other games).

So, FF 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 are all crap? >_<

This post was edited by Vio-Lewis on Jan 28 2009 06:03pm

A - Raped by Vio's logic
B - Raged due to all the support toward ff8?

Here's why Final Fantasy VIII is far superior to what you give credit:

From a game design standpoint, Final Fantasy VIII featured some of the most, if not the most, innovative gameplay systems in the Final Fantasy franchise.

The decision to leave behind the level-based attribute-growth system used in all the previous Final Fantasy (aside from Final Fantasy II, which featured an organic growth system) in favor of the Junction system was a bold decision by SQUARE and was not one met by enthusiasm from all players. Likewise, the evolution of the summons found in previous games, which were simply retooled spells, into Guardian Forces was the natural evolution for the system to take following Final Fantasy VI's Esper system and was a step forward in the franchise's design, unlike Final Fantasy VII's Materia-based summons, which were a backwards step following the innovative magic-teaching Espers of FFVI; likewise, the decision to grant Guardian Forces additional abilities that could be used modularly was an excellent design decision that put flexibility into the hands of players.

Following 7 games utilizing the same MP-driven magic system, Draw system was a breath of fresh air into the game; combined with the Junction system, players were forced to make a decision: either junction powerful spells into key attributes to augment them greatly and suffering from those attributes being lowered when said spells were used, or junction lower-end spells into attributes but be able to freely use high-end magic. Likewise, the Refine system changed the way players acquired magic and items, turning almost anything dropped by enemies into something useful at any time, given the player had the correct Refine abilities available to them; furthermore, by allowing players to customize Guardian Forces through the application of items, SQUARE gave players the ability to choose how to equip their characters.

The card game within Final Fantasy VIII was a well-designed mini-game, frustrating at times and with a difficult learning curve, but players who mastered it often found it rewarding; I wasn't one of those people, so I kept playing the card game to a minimum. However, the amount of thinking that went into balancing and goes into playing the game is incredible, considering the plethora of rules that can the transported from one region to another, making careful planning necessary for players who wish to completely master the game. Compared to the mini-games that preceded this, namely the arcade available in FFVII, the card game in FFVIII has more depth than any that came before it.

Regarding the limit breaks, while some of them (such as Zell's Dual, Selphie's Slot and Quistis's Blue Magic) were natural evolutions of abilities from previous games, new abilities were also designed (Renzokuken, Combine/Angel Wing, Shot). While the evolved limit breaks took the previously existing abilities in directions previously unexpected, like Selphie's Slot, or combined previous abilities (Dual, which combined Sabin's Blitz and Tifa's limit break slots), the new limit breaks themselves are not without merit, as most of them featured gameplay elements previously unseen in the Final Fantasy franchise.

Final Fantasy VIII's story itself was nothing to write home about, particularly in that it shared many similar elements with other games in the Final Fantasy franchise, and this is something I admit freely. However, story aside, the game shows many innovative design elements that showed SQUARE capable of stepping away from many of the things it knew to try something different with it's big-name franchise, something it would do again in Final Fantasy X; even though the game wasn't greeted with as much love as many players give Final Fantasy VII, I believe, from the perspective of game design, it was the best Final Fantasy of the franchise thus far, with Final Fantasy X coming in second. However, I say this with bias, as Final Fantasy VIII is my favorite within the franchise, and, ultimately, I think SQUARE did the right thing in Final Fantasy VIII by placing the ultimate in flexibility in the hands of the player, rather than forcing the player to play the game in a way where they were shoehorned into using specific, pre-built strategies implemented by the designers.

Furthermore, regarding your point that "Any game where you can take advantage of the system to the point of NO challenge sucks", the same can be said about ANY game. For example, using infinite combos in KOF98 with Brian, wall bouncing or host advantage in Gears of War... When the game isn't played as intended by the designer, that isn't the fault of the designer, but the fault of the player. Sure, designers should do as much as they can to perfect a system, but EVERY system will be abused, and that's how it is. Even the original SNES (and PSX port of) Final Fantasy IV has a glitch where you can duplicate any item you can hold with either hand, as well as free summoning by Rydia; just because of these glitches, which were corrected in the DS port, doesn't mean I can say "FFIV is a bad game because you can get infinite amounts of the most powerful weapon."

This post was edited by HaikenEdge on Jan 29 2009 10:03pm

OK look. first of all, im not saying all those games suck. and i will retract that i said Viii sucks, i like it, i just dont think its the BEST one. yes most games have tricks that you can use to make your chars have a large advantage. but most of them are not within the first 2 hours of the game. vanish doom trick is close to the end of final fantasy 6 before you can use it, and abusing materia and the sphere grid are possible, however they take a VERY long time to do. i personally think that FF4 is probably a better pick, other than doing extra random battles (which you actually have to fight in) there is no real way to powerhouse the game... and you actually use all your characters, not just the best one and do 1 attack and its over. zell's limit break with a good str junction can kill almost every monster in the game in 1 hit. in final fantasy 4, you actually have some fear of dying if you havn't ran in circles for hours and hours, and even then you usually need more than just 1 attack to kill. It cant be the best game if you can beat it without effort (yes I'm aware that thats just my opinion)



Way to put something intelligent into the conversation.

A - I'm fairly sure that I didn't get a chance to pick apart what he said
B - I'm surely not "raged" although I do find your comment that says nothing rather annoying...

You're entitled to your opinion and there's nothing wrong with not liking FFVIII.

It's just that there is absolutely nothing forcing you to overpower your characters. I played through FFVIII the way it was meant to be played in my first 2-3 playthroughs, and it was actually the *hardest* FF I'd ever played (even harder than IV which I had relatively few problems with). The choice is there to use Vanish/Doom in FFVI (I'm pretty sure you gain access to it well before the World of Ruin, but I could be wrong), the choice is there to get Quina to 1 HP and use Limit Glove for 9999 damage (accessible when you first head to Gizamaluke's Grotto and Burmecia, which is right near the start of the game), and so on.

Overpowering your characters in FFVIII is like wanting a challenge in D2, and then getting rushed to Act5 Hell, ubering your character to level 90, and equipping the best items. The choice is there, but it's definitely not the way the game is intended to be played.

I don't necessarily think that having an option like that makes a game bad. If it's the *only* option or if it's hard to avoid, then yeah, it can, but in FFVIII, like in D2, this certainly isn't the case. I actually think having these options open makes the games *better*. Imagine D2 with no rushing whatsoever. Imagine FFVIII's junction system restricting you rather than offering you options (well, maybe you would actually like that).

well no theres nothing "forcing" me to over power characters, but its alot more gratifying to beat a game like that when you know you had to work hard to beat it. I mean sure, i could i suppose just not learn the tricks to beating a game easily. but the games i like best are still going to be the ones that not everyone has bothered to beat because they couldn't go on the net for 5 minutes and fly through a 4 disc game in 12 hours.

I will admit tho... i really liked ff8 the first time through, i ran in circles when i got to a certain boss i couldn't beat (again i knew nothing about the game) and was very caught off guard to see that the monster too had grown stronger.

I'll add something to the mix.

Everyone will have their own "best" its a matter of opinion...and to even bother making a thread in response to my thread indicates rage.