Roar Cat Reads

Tag: Final Fantasy

  • Final Fantasy 8 – Time Compression and the Finale

    Final Fantasy 8 – Time Compression and the Finale

    Read the earlier sections of my FF8 replay:
    From Balamb to Timber
    From Galbadia to the Assassination
    From Prison to a Floating Garden
    From Fisherman’s Horizon to the Battle of the Gardens
    Rinoa is a Sorceress

    Collecting GFs

    For the first time ever, I tried to acquire all the GFs during this break before the finale, and I mostly succeeded! I leveled up on the Island Closest to Hell (Squall to 100, Rinoa and Quistis to upper 80s), then crashed through finding and acquiring Tonberry, Odin, Doomtrain, Bahamut, and Cactuar. The one that I didn’t manage to get (until drawing it from a boss in Ultimecia’s Castle) was Eden. I spent over an hour making my way through the descending levels of the Underwater Research Lab to fight Ultima Weapon. I drew Eden…and then died. It was so infuriating that I refused to try again.

    Lunatic Pandora

    • It had been awhile since I had interacted with the plot by the time I rammed into Lunatic Pandora, so I was SO HAPPY to see Raijin and Fujin, even though they were demanding that I hand over Rinoa.
    • When Squall refuses to do so, Rinoa does a little happy dance in the back, and it is so cute.
    • Biggs and Wedge are canonically gay (say I!) They quit their jobs and say, “Let’s go home and have a drink.” I love this for them.
    • When we finally find Seifer, he’s holding Ellone hostage with the help of Raijin and Fujin. But his buddies have had enough! Their storyline is really fulfilling; watching them grow from mindless cronies to doubting his path to rejecting it. Fujin even speaks in full sentences for the first time, which opens up SO MANY questions about why she was screaming single words for most of her life.

    “You’re being manipulated. You’ve lost yourself and your dream. You’re just eating out of someone’s hand. We want the old you back.”

    • Seifer is the most teenager-y of everyone, insisting he’s a revolutionary. It’s sad to see him at this point as he desperately insists, “I don’t wanna stop. I’m gonna keep running!”

    The boss fight with Seifer was incredibly confusing to me. Odin appeared, but Seifer cut the GF in half. This was alarming! But Odin’s sword flew into the sky and was caught by another being, who later appeared and said, “You gave me the fourth one. Dodge this,” and attacked Seifer. I looked this up later and found out it was Gilgamesh, apparently popping over from FFV. All of that is very cool, but SO RANDOM and mostly unexplained.

    • After being defeated, Seifer leaps to his feet very strangely, and yells, “It’s not over yet, Squall!!!” Yes, with three exclamation points. The boy is dramatic. He kidnaps Rinoa, which causes me stress because all of my other characters are horrifically under-leveled.
    • Seifer takes Rinoa to Adel, and this whole scene broke my heart. She insists this isn’t like him, and when he continues, she says, “Seifer. No more….please?” OUCH. They used to date!
    • Seifer almost gives in to Rinoa’s plea, but Squall shows up, and Seifer can’t not perform for Squall. Adel takes Rinoa and…grafts her onto her torso?? It’s incredibly creepy looking.
    • After defeating Adel, Laguna and Ellone appear. She magicks Rinoa back to her non-sorceress-controlled self, and at this point I just don’t understand the scope of Ellone’s powers at all.

    “Time compression is about to begin. ‘Love, friendship and courage.’ Show em what you got!”

    Time Compression

    This whole series of scenes is done VERY well. The group falls through a sky of memory bubbles into an ocean into a sunset into a space tunnel. It is all very cool and vaguely creepy. They wind up in the Commencement Room where Rinoa once confronted Edea (remember the good old days when the plot made sense!?), and when you try to save your game, the Save Point multiples. This more than anything gave me the willies. There was something about a game mechanic being brought into the plot of the game and twisted that hit me hardest in the “ooo, this is all wrong!” feels.

    The group is thrown into a series of fights against generic “Sorceresses.” The fight itself isn’t important. What is cool is that with each defeated sorceress, the scenery changes. We get to relive old locations in a nice sign off as we head into the finale.

    At the end of the battle montage, the group winds up at the orphanage. It seemed very much like Rinoa was not with them, which makes sense because she was scared of being left behind, but she reappears in a later scene with no explanation. Okay.

    I don’t know what’s going on. But since we’re still here, I think we still have some time to finish our job.”

    Ultimecia’s Castle

    • Full disclosure: I did not even attempt to figure out how to get through Ultimecia’s Castle on my own. I used a walkthrough; I hate wandering through places like this and having to backtrack a million times!
    • Being so leveled up meant that most of the boss fights at the end were not a problem. Getting Squall’s best sword with the Lion Heart limit break was also a game changer – it’s SO powerful.
    • The castle itself is really cool looking, and I can’t help wondering why Ultimecia went to so much trouble to design/take over such a cool space only to want to collapse all of time and space. You clearly have an appreciation for the finer things – go out and experience more of them!
    • Ultimecia herself speaks with Ks instead of Cs, like, “Kurse all SeeDs!” Is it to imply a vaguely Russian accent?

    It took me three times to defeat Ultimecia/Griever, and when it was done, time went wonky and Squall is thrown back into his past. It’s a nice moment to acknowledge his character arc, with Baby Squall thinking he’s alone and Adult Squall insisting he isn’t.

    BUT it seems as though he IS alone, wandering through a space desert until he collapses on a space island. A feather appears, and it’s Rinoa! But he can’t hold on to her memory in one of the most genuinely emotional and distressing cut scenes of the whole game. Of course, Rinoa does end up finding Squall, and she cries over him while the song that her mom wrote about his dad is playing. This is kind of weird, but I chose to see it as a hopeful message about generational experiences.

    Where did everyone end up?

    Seifer is fishing, which is very weird! But he’s with Raijin and Fujin, and he’s still an asshole, so I guess it checks out.

    Laguna visits Raine’s tombstone and flashes back to the moment when he gave her an engagement ring before revealing his own. It is HELLA romantic and sad. This game is the most romantic Final Fantasy game, prove me wrong!

    Over the credits, we get a home video recording of Selphie filming Irvine and Quistis at a school dance/celebration. Cid is there with Edea, wearing her clothes from 15 years ago for some reason. Selphie takes Irvine’s hat in the cutest teenager move of the game. Zell is eating hot dogs like an absolute maniac, shoving them in this mouth to the point of choking…c’mon dude. Get a new gimmick!

    Angelo runs by, and we see Rinoa on the balcony, pointing at the sky in the same pose as the dance where she first meets Squall. But he doesn’t seem to be here as the credits take over, and I literally yelled, “WHERE THE HELL IS SQUALL?” fearful of his having been lost to time. But no, this actually is a romantic game, and we get one last cut scene of Squall on the balcony with Rinoa as she once again points toward the sky.

    GAME OVER

  • Final Fantasy 8 – Rinoa is a Sorceress

    Final Fantasy 8 – Rinoa is a Sorceress

    Read the earlier sections of my FF8 replay:
    From Balamb to Timber
    From Galbadia to the Assassination
    From Prison to a Floating Garden
    From Fisherman’s Horizon to the Battle of the Gardens

    The Orphanage

    • When confronted at the orphanage, Cid says he ran away because it was a no-win situation for him, which is…pretty fair. I can’t imagine what it would have been like for him to see his wife possessed, taking over the world, and know that she wants you to send some teenagers to murder her.
    • Edea lays out a lot of plot exposition: She was possessed by Sorceress Ultimecia, who lives in the future. This sorceress wants Ellone and her power to transport people through time (how Ellone has this power is not explained). Edea fears that Ultimecia has abandoned her body to jump into Sorceress Adel, former evil ruler of Esthar. Ultimecia wants to compress time, seemingly for shits and giggles as far as I can tell.
    • Cid lectures Squall on how to be a good leader, and c’mon man. I was empathizing with you earlier, but this is a bit rich. Also, maybe Garden should consider choosing a leader who isn’t emotionally compromised by a sorceress.

    I’m very annoyed at everyone in this scene. They’re all like, “We care about Rinoa, but everyone else matters too!” As if they weren’t JUST giving Squall such shit about prioritizing the lives of other students over immediately running off to save Rinoa when she was hanging from a cliff, like, a couple hours ago.

    • We get another FLASHBACK to Laguna’s stint as an actor (sure, whatever!). He is a very bad actor, but hot people are allowed to be talentless. However, everyone is incredibly dumb. I cannot believe that anyone thought that huge ass dragon was Kiros.
    • Laguna sees a flying ship! Then Ellone tells Squall that she will use him a little longer, and suddenly Laguna is at the orphanage looking for Ellone, who was kidnapped by Esthar soldiers.
    • Things get very sad when Ellone reveals that she has been trying to change the past in these little flashback jaunts, but has now realized it’s impossible. She can’t change the past, which means that Ellone will always be kidnapped, Laguna will always go after her, and Raine will always die alone while he is away. Presumably after giving birth to Squall, who will always be an orphan. Depressing!

    White SeeD Ship

    • I always have to cheat to find this thing.
    • Zone and Watts are on the White SeeD ship! However, Ellone is not. She went willingly with Esthar soldiers who came to get her. Seems weird, since we just learned that she was kidnapped by them as a child!

    Great Salt Lake

    • Squall takes Rinoa from the infirmary and carries her from Fisherman’s Horizon across the bridge to the continent that was impossible to explore until now. This is a really great map expansion technique!
    • The party somehow meets Squall on the other side, and Edea is with them. I had totally forgotten that you can play with Edea as a party member!!
    • This is such a fun little place to explore – snow and undead monsters! I remember the first time I played through this, not knowing that you can use healing spells and potions to cut through undead easily. It used to be a lot scarier!
    • At the edge of a cliff, a glitching techno door reveals itself! The entrance to Esthar is a perfect sequence. It is utterly different from anything else we’ve seen.

    Esthar

    • We start with another flashback. I assume Ellone is just now providing Squall with helpful information? We get to see Laguna imprisoned in the Lunatic Pandora Laboratory. He helps a moogle, and a guy is like, “You’re nice. You should be the next leader when we rebel against Sorceress Adel!” Talk about white guys falling upward!

    Laguna saves Ellone and it is super sweet. I feel like something is missing though…how did Squall know Ellone/sis? Was he born before Ellone was kidnapped, which means Laguna left his son and never went back? Was he born after (which I assumed) and Ellone was sent to an orphanage AFTER Laguna rescued her? What is the timeline here??

    • Esthar is…fine. For being high tech, it’s pretty underwhelming.
    • At the Lunar Gate, Angelo says goodbye, which hurts my heart!
    • A party of three has to go to the moon for some reason (the plot is getting REALLY weird by this point), and Edea stays behind with Zell, who is the newest wannabe sorceress’s knight. The Galbadians have salvaged Lunatic Pandora, which appears at the city. Zell won’t let Dr. Odine tell us where it came from or what it is, which is very frustrating! We do learn that monsters just sometimes fall from the moon…all of this new plot information is dropped here at the end of the game without buildup, and it is very weird.
    • The gang races across the city to get aboard the Lunatic Pandora, but they’re magically expelled. The thing/place hovers over Tear’s Point, and Zell gives up for some reason.

    Space!

    • There are a few scenes where you get to play with gravity, and recovering the pods is a fun introduction to a new space (hah!).
    • Seem like Sorceress Adel is being kept in space. So is Ellone, who tells everyone that sending them into Laguna’s past was helpful because she saw how much she was loved. I mean, several of the first flashbacks had nothing to do with her, but okay! Then she gives us some pretty good advice: “The past doesn’t change. You do.”
    • They have somehow decided to take Rinoa, a woman possessed by a sorceress, to the place where another sorceress is held captive, and SURPRISE! A sorceress uses a sorceress to free a sorceress! Too bad no one anticipated this.

    Panicky Gentleman: Why is everything happening at once?

    • We get to see President Laguna doing his motions while in an astronaut suit! This slow reveal is done really well.
    • As they escape, Ellone sends Squall into Rinoa’s past. We get to see her demand that Irvine return to the prison for the others, ask Zell for Squall’s ring, and be possessed by Ultimecia and order Seifer to find and raise the Lunatic Pandora.
    • In one of the best sequences of the entire game, Rinoa runs out of air in her spacesuit, drifting in inky blackness. Squall tries to reach out to her, first telepathically, then physically. It makes her remember to push a button to get more oxygen (?), and Squall thanks Ellone and goes to find her. Navigating your way into her path is so simple but so moving. And then they spoon in space!!
    • Deus ex Ragnorak.

    “The space suit was in our way before. Give me a hug. A real tight one!”

    • It’s very annoying that Rinoa can’t get EXP fighting all of these propogators.
    • I will handwave away the miracle of Ragnorak successfully making contact with Esthar after 17 years because ROMANCE SCENE. Rinoa sits on Squall’s lap, and he opens up about feeling alone and pushing people away. She assures him, “Squall, you’re the one who gives me the most comfort. Comfort and happiness. And disappointment, too!” It’s so freaking adorable.
    • Rinoa knows she is a sorceress, so she thinks they can’t be together. Squall comforts her when she says she’s scared! She knows that Ultimecia wants to achieve time compression (still…why?) because Ultimecia is the only one capable of existing in such a world. I guess she just really wants to be a loner?

    Let’s Wrap Things Up

    • When Ragnorak lands, Rinoa is taken away to be imprisoned, and the rest of the gang shows up. Quistis reveals that Ellone has been kidnapped…again!! Gah.
    • Quistis reveals that she has had no character growth, because she’s still hung up on Squall and being passive aggressive about it. “You weren’t thinking about anything but Rinoa when you jumped into space, huh? I wonder if anyone would do that for me? So where’s the princess who changed you?” C’MON QUISTIS, you’re a hot teacher! You can do better than lusting after your student-brother!
    • Squall decides to save Rinoa again, and they get a dramatic CGI embrace.

    “Even if you end up as the world’s enemy, I’ll. I’ll be your knight.”

    • Back in Esthar, we finally learn that Laguna is the President and Dr. Odine explains the plan to take down Ultimecia. It’s very timely wimey and weird, but Laguna sums it up as “It’s about love, friendship, and courage.” I…don’t think it is, man.

    This whole final plot is so tacked on and ridiculous. I’m glad for the romance stuff, but these final discs are not necessary. Ending with a battle between the Gardens and against Edea would have been way more emotionally satisfying.

    Oh well, we’ve still more to go! Next up: All the weird side plots and the final confrontation!

  • Final Fantasy 8 – From Fisherman’s Horizon to the Battle of the Gardens

    Final Fantasy 8 – From Fisherman’s Horizon to the Battle of the Gardens

    Read the earlier sections of my FF8 replay:
    From Balamb to Timber
    From Galbadia to the Assassination
    From Prison to a Floating Garden

    Fisherman’s Horizon

    Rinoa is good for Squall, getting him out of his head and going for a walk around Garden. He’s good for her too, with his tendency to think things through rather than act impulsively. Video game romances rarely read as relatable to me, but Squall and Rinoa totally do! I love them.

    • The mayor of Fisherman’s Horizon lives in the middle of a giant solar panel? …Okay. If that weren’t bad enough, he’s made out to look ridiculous for wanting to talk to the Galbadian soldiers who have appeared looking for Ellone. Squall gives him a bit of credit, saying it would be great if fighting weren’t necessary, but this is a game about mercenary children. It was never going to be pacifist.
    • Zell, Selphie, and Irvine pop out of the machine that was just trying to kill Squall, Rinoa, and Quistis (from my group alignment, anyway), which is strange! Were they pranking us?? Why does no one ask why they attacked?
    • Squall is internally happy to see them, and Rinoa calls him on it. It is great!

    Squall is then named leader of the mobile sorceress-hunting Garden without his consent. A student was given control over a war school over all of the teachers. There is a lot happening right now that requires significant suspension of disbelief! However, I’ll give it a pass, because being thrust into leadership triggers all of Squall’s fears. He doesn’t want to be responsible for everyone in case he cannot protect them. He’s just a big squishy marshmallow, and I adore this game for revealing that their taciturn loner is not actually cool – he’s just scared.

    • The amateur band performance is such a fun mini-game.
    • Lesbian Irvine (this is now canon in my mind) is very invested in setting up Squall and Rinoa, and it’s so cute! Something else that is cute is Rinoa telling Squall that his friends know he’s going to take on this responsibility by himself, but that he has to remember that they are here with him.
    • It’s a new era with a mobile Garden that allows playing in a bigger world map! Xu suggests they check out Balamb, where the Galbadia Garden is…also floating. Copy cats.

    Balamb

    • Finding “the captain” is such a runaround, and I spent way too much time figuring it out. Thank goodness it turns out to be Raijin (with general Fujin)! We have to fight them again, and they are hard! Squall further reveals his inner softie by letting them go when they say they’re going to stay with Seifer because he’s their friend.
    • Selphie then brings up a storyline that feels ages ago…remember those other bombs that Galbadia set off? The ones that hit Trabia Garden? She wants to go there.

    Trabia Garden

    • Many of the students are still alive, trying to restart their lives in the crater of a school that’s left. The trauma is understated, but hit me hardest when I found the graveyard, and one of the tombstones had a jacket draped over it.
    • When Rinoa says she wishes there were a way to end this without bloodshed, Squall goes deep into inner monologue. She continues to win my heart by telling him, “If you don’t voice your feelings, I can’t understand.”

    Orphanage reveal! When I was a kid playing this game, I thought this reveal was SO COOL. They all grew up together! But forgot because their connection to Guardian Forces eats away at their memories! Whoa!

    As an adult, I cannot help fixating on how weird this is. Why would Irvine not say something before this, even accidentally? Quistis says her love for Squall was about being his big sister, which….okay. When they realize the GFs are affecting their minds, they SUPER QUICKLY agree to keep it up. Guys! You might someday forget this very conversation! This is not sustainable! And Sorceress Edea is Matron, aka their mom, but they’re soldiers so they’ll still kill her. (This revelation makes Irvine’s inability to shoot her in Galbadia make so much more sense!)

    Shumi Village

    • Also on the Northern continent, this little village is super cool. I love the weirdness of going down an elevator to a lush forest landscape with advanced technology.
    • There is a draw point that costs 5,000 Gil to use, but it’s Ultima so okay!
    • There is a statue of Laguna, and we learn that moombas (aka fire dogs) are the final form of Shumis, which is just so weird and delightful.
    • Continuing the weird theme is the scavenger hunt for stones that winds up in a prize of…seeing the elders hands! Wah wah.

    Galbadian Garden

    • It’s too easy to just find the orphanage and get some answers…instead we have to fight Galbadia, flying garden against flying garden! It actually is super cool, with some great cutscenes of flying ramp motorcycles and attacking soldiers as Seifer watches with a grin.
    • Zell decides the middle of a battle is the right time to ask for Squall’s ring, and then everyone is SO WEIRD about Squall prioritizing the safety of an entire school over Rinoa. “You’re the one that has to save her.” Um, why!? He’s kinda busy, and it’s his literal job to take care of everyone; a role that you guys all JUST SAID you would help him accomplish.
    • I just realized that Squall has a cropped leather jacket.
    • Squall DOES rescue Rinoa, though, and the mini-game of punching a soldier while floating over a battlefield was pretty cool! They then flirt over lions, and this relationship is heating up, omg omg! Squall says it’s so obvious that everyone wants them together that even he noticed.
    • We have to run, run, run all over the garden to get keys that lead us to our final Raijin and Fujin interaction. They’re done with Seifer and all the chaos he has caused.
    • Seifer continues to be very gay (no wonder I shipped Squall/Seifer as a wee one) and demands that Squall kneel before him.

    The final battle with Sorceress Edea is pretty easy, but that’s because it isn’t the final showdown like everyone thought! Instead, she regains her sanity and Rinoa gets woozy. She heals Seifer before passing out, which is very alarming! Edea asks if she succeeded in saving Ellone, which is very strange! Everything is topsy turvy, and unfortunately, it seems like “sorceress” is a possessing spirit who is now in Rinoa. Dun dun dun!!

  • Final Fantasy 8 – From Prison to a Floating Garden

    Final Fantasy 8 – From Prison to a Floating Garden

    Read the first section of my FF8 replay: From Balamb to Timber and the second section: From Galbadia to the Assassination.

    Winhill

    After the emotional intensity of the assassination – the creepy music, the endless obstacles, the successful and attempted murders – we get dropped into the cutest, most idyllic dream world scene yet. Laguna is recovering from the disaster at Esthar in the adorable village of Windhill at the home of tiny child Ellone and her mother Raine.

    • A Galbadian soldier guarding the village mentions that Esthar is a country ruled by a sorceress. They kidnap little girls, looking for a successor to Sorceress Adel. Does this mean that sorcery is genetic? But not so much that the sorceress can give birth to a magical girl?
    • Laguna’s Desperado limit break with a machine gun is hilariously over the top.
    • Kiros shows up, having apparently been separated since being thrown off a cliff. This begs a very important question: Are there no communication devices in this world? There is technology to create a mobile building but not to call long distance?
    • Julia, the singer that Laguna had a crush on, wound up marrying General Caraway. That means she is Rinoa’s mother!!
    • Laguna has the cutest relationships. Little Ellone wants her mom to marry Laguna; she’s into it, but afraid of brining it up because she doesn’t think he would be satisfied living in a quiet town like Winhill. This is such a realistic concern, and it shows FF8’s mastery of romance once again (as previously discussed re: their care creating a love triangle between Squall, Rinoa, and Seifer).

    Galbadia D-District Prison

    Zell was also dreaming, but conveniently, he was Ward working as a janitor in a prison…this prison! The gang has been arrested for their attempted assassination, and Zell, Selphie, and Quistis share a cell. They escape their cell, recover their weapons, and begin an incredibly tedious section of the game where we run up and down and all around the floors of the very boring prison, pausing to switch GFs incessantly.

    • Squall is being held separately, and Seifer is very excited to taunt and torture him. Sorceress Edea wants to know what SeeD is, as though there’s a secret behind their mercenary exterior, but neither Squall nor I know what they’re talking about.
    • Seifer is excited to know that Squall saw him in his moment of glory, asking, “How did I look?” He loves being Squall’s nemesis, and let me be honest. The fanfic writes itself for this scene.

    “This is the scene where you swear your undying hatred for me!”

    • The fire dogs are awesome, and if you didn’t hate Galbadia already, the fact that they’ve apparently enslaved this cute lil guys is more than enough to make them our enemy. Maybe Selphie too, since she freakishly suggests skinning the fire dog and wearing it as a disguise.
    • When the group rescues Squall, the fire dog squeaks, “Laguna” at him. Interesting.
    • This whole section is just terrible. I am so relieved when the group escapes and leaves the corkscrew prison behind.

    Galbadia Missile Base

    After watching missiles be launched at Trabia Garden (sorry, Selphie), I sent the chaos team (Selphie, Zell, Irvine) to the Missile Base to prevent the same thing from happening to Balamb Garden. I’m not very invested in these characters, so I did feel a little bad when they assure each other, “Squall chose us because he believes in us!” …Sure.

    They manage to mess with the launch, but can’t get out of the compound before the whole place explodes. RIP Selphie, Zell, and Irvine.

    Balamb Garden

    Squall, Rinoa, and Quistis basically teleport back to Balamb Garden, where they find the place up in arms as Garden Master NORG demands that the students find Cid.

    • Squall gives very vulnerable reasons for wanting to help save Garden…in his head. His walls are breaking down internally at least!
    • The group makes their way through a basement maze at Cid’s request, where they find secret tech that enables the Garden to…levitate. Sure.
    • Everyone, including the headmaster, wants Squall to be responsible for flying the school. The whole storyline of Squall having leadership thrust upon him is a bit weird. He is competent, but utterly standoffish and rude. But he’s the hero of this game, so everything works in his favor. I shouldn’t complain, because it brings out his vulnerabilities, and I love it!
    • Squall hates having nothing to do because he worries! Why, I also rely on being productive to avoid having to live in my own head. #relatable
    • Rinoa asks for a tour, and I appreciate that the game remembers that she has never been here. It quickly devolves into another little quest, since Garden Master NORG is still pissed. He is a being unlike anything we have seen to this point, and he yells “Fushifuru” a lot. It’s…weird.
    • NORG wants to give the sorceress Squall’s head to get her off Garden’s back. He doesn’t trust Cid because he’s married to Edea, which is fair! But Squall and co. kill him anyway.
    • Cid fills in a few more gaps, explaining that Balamb Garden was created to kill sorceresses. Edea knew she might become one, but didn’t think it would actually happen. This implies that becoming a sorceress necessarily makes you evil. But why?
    • A ship approaches the floating Garden bearing Sorceress Edea’s ninja SeeDs. This makes no sense, nor does the fact that Cid capitulates to their desire to take Ellone.
    • Yes, Ellone! The little girl from Winhill is grown up (and is the woman Squall and Quistis saved in the training center after the SeeD ball). Squall finds her in the library, and she admits that she knows Squall is being sent into the past to live Laguna’s memories. She leaves, and Squall lays on his bed in the fetal position, overwhelmed with responsibility and fear.

    “I’m not a child anymore. I have all the skills I need to survive. That’s a lie. I don’t know anything. I’m confused. I don’t want to depend on anyone. How can I do that?”

    • We get our first flashback of baby Squall missing his Sis, and it’s very sad and cute!

    That’s where we’ll end this section of my Final Fantasy 8 playthrough. Squall’s character is developing rapidly, and I love that his aloof lone wolf attitude is explicitly taken apart, revealing an inner child who is afraid of being alone with the weight of the world on his shoulders. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

  • Final Fantasy 8 – From Balamb to Timber

    Final Fantasy 8 – From Balamb to Timber

    I first played Final Fantasy 8 (FF8) when it was released in 1999 as a wee little eleven year old. I was blown away by the massive leap in graphics quality as I watched human-shaped figures walk through beautifully rendered backgrounds. Of course it looks incredibly dated now, but the remastered version goes a long way toward making it both visually appealing and nostalgic on my PS4.

    Note: These posts are not entirely spoiler-free, though I have forgotten most of the game, so honestly, there’s not a lot I could spoil if I wanted to.

    Okay, let’s go!

    • The intro still slaps! The music is ominous and thrilling and exciting, the fight between Squall and Seifer is dramatic, and Rinoa in a field feels eerie and hopeful and that fall into each other’s arms at the end – so romantic!
    • I have so much to say about Quistis, and I will later, but even here in her introduction, it just rubs me the wrong way that she makes fun of Squall in this weirdly intimate way when all we know about her is that she is his instructor.
    • A lovely little spoiler exists if you search Squall’s computer in class when it casually mentions that GFs may cause memory loss, though this isn’t proven.
    • I love that FF8 sets up the card-playing game immediately. This is my favorite mini-game from any Final Fantasy game, and I am all about collecting cards, turning monsters into cards, and saving often so that if I lose Ifrit or Diablo I can undo it!

    I think the battle system in FF8 is my favorite of all Final Fantasy games as well. I adore the system of junctioning GFs and magic to make yourself stronger. It relies so heavily on strategy as you have to balance using your powerful magic as a junction to increase your stats while also being powerful magic that you’ll want to use in battle. I love the Draw action in battles, and my strategy is always to max out on every spell immediately.

    Similarly, I love the strategy surrounding limit breaks in FF8. The fact that your strongest attacks are only available when you are at your weakest moment is dramatically appealing, but it’s also a fun fine line to walk. I have lost many a battle because I risked staying at low health to keep doing Renzokuken one turn too many and got wiped out by the T-Rexaur. So fun!

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