Yes! I played this when I was 11. I loved it. I do fee the issues he brings up are valid but for one of the first FF games I played it was the perfect difficulty.
clament, play final fantasy 8 remaster and your done. pc, switch, ps4 and sutch boom battle speed x 3, and your good to go. random battles your tiard of them? turn them off.
Rinoa: "I liked having my mom hold me. My dad too, back when we got along." Squall: "I'm not your mom." Rinoa: "No, of course not... but I can still call you Daddy right?!"
i thought the mechanics worked like they did in ff7 and obviously square was like "no, squall and rinoa are perfect together" so the whole time i was like "this is awesome, wish you were quistis though" lmao
That thing with Rinoa's dog also happens in FF6. When I played, Shadow's dog Interceptor would occasionally run into enemies and OHKO them. And by occasionally, I mean every other damn battle! XD
Yeah, but the difference there (and why I'm ok with that and not VIII), is Interceptor actually runs to the enemy and attacks it, while in FFVIII Rinoa literally launches her dog like a missile.
It happened often, at least in the first half. Once you got to the World of Ruin, it did seem to happen less often, but that was likely because enemies actually have to target Shadow with physical attacks to get Interceptor to counter, and in the WoR, enemies tend to use magic more often than physical.
Rinoa has two types of Angelo abilities: the automatic ones that have a chance of happening in battle under certain circumstances, like Angelo Rush (a random counterattack that may happen every time Rinoa takes damage, similar to Interceptor's attacks in VI), and the ones she uses as Limit Breaks, like Angelo Cannon. Actually, another throwback to VI: when Squall and Rinoa are inside the Ragnarok, Rinoa can't use her Angelo abilities because Angelo is not there with them, just like Shadow doesn't have Interceptor when he joins your party at the Floating Continent.
"Luck" has nothing to do with how many of any spell you get when you Draw. It's all in your MAG stat. The higher your MAG, the more you can Draw at a time. I don't know the math, but the system checks your stat vs the target's to determine if you're going to stock 1-3 or 7-9. Just prioritize everyone's MAG when Junctioning and it saves you quite a bit of time, and it'll only give you low numbers when Drawing from bosses.
I still unironically enjoy this game, and that's not just nostalgia talking. I remember the first time I saw it by, similarly, my cousin playing it, and I remember nights staying over with friends where we powered through parts of the game. One of my friends misread the names and insisted on calling Rinoa "Rhino." So that made the scene at the start of disc 2 where the guards are asking where she is rather... unique. It was one of the main reasons why I asked for a PS1, only getting a video store's copy of 7 later. Years and years later, an import purchase of Squall's necklace was one of the first things I would ever buy off of Amazon. (and for, like, ten bucks or something too.) However, through either a forgotten mishap of my younger years or a factory fluke, my fourth disc had a scratch on it that forbade the game from loading the screen past the area where the superboss spawns, forcing me to rent another copy just to be able to finally beat the game. One of many reasons I gladly paid for the game a second time on my PS3. Still don't like that the fourth disc locks you out of the rest of the world map, though. It's one of the only games that I allow to take up multiple slots on my memory card for as a result. One for the endgame, and the other to just mess around in the overworld. Overall though, I feel this game really shaped my tastes in art and media. The ballad of the Lion and Angel acted as a sort of gateway to my enjoyment of the more laid-back slice-of-life stories. (aaaand generally being shipper trash) Not in lieu of other kinds of stories of course, but I don't think i'd have come to like other games and shows that would further cultivate myself and my identity were it not for this game. Persona, Harvest Moon, Fruits Basket, K-On... yeah, one of those ain't like the other, but again, that's not meant to write anything else off at all.
lets see, cinemassacre? Nah. Somecallmejohnny? Not in the mood. Brainscratch, supergamingbros? Not right now. Whats this? A new Clement final fantasy upload? HOOK IT TO MY VEINS!!!
This game feels like a 2 season anime, where the big bad of the first season turns out to be working for an even bigger bad that was never once explained.
It’s like a really bad soap opera in my opinion. I hate soap operas for pretty much every reason i hate Final Fantasy 8. They’re almost never written well, are boring and slow, take the audience for idiots, the romances are typically never believable, and the characters aren’t particularly interesting with absolutely asine plot twists that come out of nowhere with no real thought or substance behind them. Final Fantasy 8 was a dire mistake in my opinion. It isn’t even saved by its gameplay, which is beyond atrocious. I’ve never understood how anyone could say with a straight face 8 is actually a good game. I think they’re either lying, really like bad games, have bad taste, are blinded almost solely by nostalgia or aren’t right in the head. I consider any of the Legend Of Heroes games what 8 should’ve been if the developers knew what to do when making this turd of a game.
@@Gamingnstuff131 Final fantasy VIII is demential. Soap operas are dumb. There is a thin difference. Usually dementiality is used in comedy, not in works that are presented as dramatic, but as in the warnings on the movies we don't watch on the websites we don't consult... Final Fantasy means: "In case the title, the trailer, and the cover didn't suggest that... we don't give a wooden cent about the story being coherent or the motives being plausible or predictable, we refuse to keep it simple, with the wrath of Momma Theresa. Oh, another thing, actually there will be a grain of coherence: in our work, Ninjas, secret agent, moles and swindlers in general, can do their job, though we feel like following the Rex Stout's rule*." *I think the name is made up. Actually i don't know if it has a proper name in literature. it can be stated like: In almost every mystery novel, in the set of suspects and witnesses and people able to provide cogent schedules and whatnot, there is a character way more despondent, suspiciously ambiguous, often needlessly outrageous than any other. That person is never the culprit.
@@Gamingnstuff131You’re complaining about a semi-convoluted Shounen type story that has a better soundtrack than your argument. You’re a douche for insulting people that like FF8, behind their backs. If you can’t wrap your head around people enjoying a simple ass love story, that has a few decent twists that aren’t the best, sure… but they aren’t the worst. It’s not 13. Stop trying to give FF8 fans CBT level insults, when you outright have something definitively worse.
This has probably been the most interesting and well-put-together video in this series so far, and actually made me want to revisit this game to sort out my feelings on it... which is not something I've wanted to do for a very long time. Well, maybe I will. I have the Steam version, which I believe even has the chocobo Pocket Station minigame include. Just gotta patch in a music mod to replace those dull midi files with the original PS1 soundtrack and it's probably the best way to experience the game these days. One complaint I wish you'd mentioned, though, is how little things about the world are fleshed out. There's virtually no specific history to anything, even less so than Final Fantasy VII which at least gave you enough of a sense of things that you could fill in the gaping blanks its lore left in the world. But take, for example, NORG's race, the Shumi. They live clustered together in one village, you learn nothing about them, and apparently the Moomba are just... Shumi who transformed into dumb little animal people because... whyyyyyyyy? You also missed mentioning the Phoenix summon, which is called forth by using one of the game's rare Phoenix Pinion items and joins Odin and Gilgamesh as a random summon thereafter. It can, on very rare occasions, appear when you experience a party wipe, blasting the enemy with fire and reviving your party. But you have to manually summon him at least once to trigger it. Ironically, if memory serves, obtaining the Phoenix Pinion, or at least one of them, requires visiting the Shumi Village.
On a serious note though, I also feel compelled to give the game another shot. It was gifted to me from a dear friend a long while back, and it is the first final fantasy game I ever played. Sadly, my memory card at the time was destroyed (long story), and I never finished it (made it to near the end of disk 3). TIME TO JUNCTION THE SH*T OUTTA STUFF!!!!!
I love this game I beat diablos gravity is awesome I have a physical copy of 8 and PsOne classics of 8 and 9 I can't wait and Clement I'm jelous of u Ultima weapon on disc one I'll start a new game and beat diablos as early as possible I'm not a wimp I'll prove it
I hope Clement is at least able to enjoy it more than he expects. I've actually been irregularly returning to it and yeesh does it need to be shorter. Palumporum gets old fast.
Im playing FF13 right now, im at 54 hours, 12th chapter, holy fuck is this game LONG. And it feels about hundred hours longer considering how repetitive it is. And i feel like that even though i LIKE it. I cant imagine what its like if you hate it.
Here's a good compromise though. Do enough damage the first time you fight it and you'll get the AP for defeating it, then just avoid it from there on out. You'll get the AP for it, and you'll see the cutscene.
Every single time that I play this game I get new things, new hints and new theories. Is such a weird, complete and bizarre game with all the time travel and magic stuff. Is one of my all time favs.
I like to think everyone has their own Final Fantasy VIII. A title they know is a mixed bag that not everyone enjoys, and even you have your criticisms toward how things were executed, but you still hold near and dear and would gladly return to or keep up with. For me, that's RoosterTeeth's RWBY. It's a hot mess, but I love it. And Sonic, too, but that's a whole other story that you're still covering.
In my case its not a game but a character. Morgana from Persona 5. I know this character has some unpleseant flaws. I myself could do a decently long rant of his nonsensical temper tantrum. There are good understandable reasons to not like this character. But I love this little fellow alot. He is the best companion I ever had in a videogame, my favorite Video game character and my second favorite animal mascoot character putting him even above the likes of Stich and Toothless and only surpassed by Nanachi. Despite his flaws I really love this little fellow.
@@notafbiagent473 Reg and Nanachi are my 2 favorite characters in fiction. Riko is atleast in the top 15. Overall Made in Abyss has an amazing cast of characters.
I have a lot of those personally, there's something special about the paradoxical perfect imperfection about such things that appeals to me. If I had to name one though it would be The Last Remnant, it's a completionists worst nightmare even by RPG standards and has performance issues and a much heavier reliance on RNG than most other games and for me at least it's kinda developed into a weird love hate relationship maybe it's nostalgia because it was one of the earlier RPGs I played as I was really getting into the series that makes me like it more than anything else and the hate part of the relationship is it's sort of become my White Whale that I promised myself to eventually 100% complete in its entirety before I kick the bucket. I do genuinely love the sensation of commanding an entire army and how pretty much every sidequest NPC can join your party and still feel unique and distinct as characters even if they aren't all created equal in terms of usefulness those are aspects of it that I absolutely unironically love, Baulson is best boi btw!
I woke up, saw this on my recommended, and watched it while eating breakfast. I agree with every point in this video. FF8 is indeed a weird game that the community either loves, or hates. Me and my group of friends share the same mentality of "This game is fun to play and break". While the plotholes are indeed jarring and some plot details are completely missable, I can still confidently say that this is my favorite FF game, and recommend it with warning. Subbed ♡
I haven't l played this personally, but I've watched 2 full play throughs by different people, 1 blind, and 1 fully routed. And I got to say that the "balance" of the game probably took into account the assumption that you would take most of the game to figure out how the mechanics work and not abuse them until the end.
Your final thoughts about Final Fantasy 8 are the exact same as my thoughts of the game. FF8 was my first and my favorite I enjoyed every minute of your video and thank you for putting up these type of videos.
Clement has done what Spoony could not: a review of FF8 that is funny, fun to watch, acknowledges both the good and bad, and it's not a biased pile of toxic sludge.
Not to mention very misinformative. If you look at his FF8, 10, and 13 reviews, some of his editing with the game footage of games was suspicious and tried to make the games look worse than they actually were instead of just showing actual bad stuff. P.S. sorry for the late reply.
@@StarforceOnAir What kind of editing with his footage did he do? How did he make the games look worse than they were? I'd like a few specific examples, please.
8 was my first Final Fantasy. It’s the game that actually got me into RPG’s. 8 always holds a special place for me, and is my 4th favorite in the series with 9 being my favorite. I haven’t gotten bored yet in a many pkaythroughs I’ve done of the game.
Drawing magic not a matter of Luck. The effectiveness of Draw depends on the user's Magic stat and the spell itself (the more powerful that spell is, the harder it is to Draw; Draw can even fail if your Magic stat isn't high enough).
@Gameslayer 9000 FFVIII was my first FF and unlike some others (*coughFFVcough*) I actually finished it pretty throughly. So yeah I had no personal problems with the drawing system either.
Yeah, if you want to optimise drawing early, your best approach is to draw once successfully in your first fight, junction that spell to your magic stat, and then as you draw that spell in the next fight, your draw rate will increase. On the other hand, there is some random variation in how many spells you'll draw with the same person drawing the same spell from the same enemy without changing your Magic stat, so there is a small amount of luck, though possibly no Luck, involved.
The ONE thing about this game that I will absolutely love is this: The story and characters. I love Squall's development of opening up, and finding love with Rinoa. It was just really precious. If I were to ever replay this game, it would be for that reason alone.
I’d suggest that you don’t. The story is terrible and the romance isn’t believable. It’s like a trashy teenage romance movie that’s really boring. Play any of the Lengend Of Heroes saga games, in particular the Trails Of Cold Steel games instead. I consider them what 8 could’ve and should’ve been if the developers didn’t have their heads up their asses.
1:13:49 No, it's there. It's the only game to utilize the PocketStation outside Japan, where the PocketStation itself never left. 1:22:06 I believe the real reason you can't go back is because they ran out of disc space to hold all of those assets (towns, the NPCs, everything used during fights, basically A LOT of stuff) plus the huge ending.
FF VIII is my 3rd. F.G.O.A.T. and my favorite FF. It is, for me, the most fun to play by a WIDE margin. It does have problems, but this is one of my most replayed games ever purely because of how fun it is to play.
I feel like the reason the ending was emotional to me personally was because I found Ultimecia to be so difficult, so it was like the game was really making me work for that good ending. (Also one of the many reasons I don't subscribe to the 'Squall is dead theory')
I have always found that this is a game that people enjoy proportionately to how much they enjoy learning and exploiting the junction system and card game.
I think Ultimecia, being a descendant of Rinoa and Squall or maybe even just somebody who inherits the ring makes more sense given the reason she need to time compress in the first place is because she doesn't exist in the present to kill. Plus it'd be kind of weird if she could possess herself from the past even more weird given she almost killed Rinoa while he was possessing Adel. It begs the question wouldn't getting a game over there actually result in the world being saved. Given the fact that that doesn't happen I choose to believe they didn't intend on implying she's Rinoa.
Yeah, but as Linkara would say, the fan theories about all that stuff are just that - FAN THEORIES. Not what the game tells you, which is NOTHING! As far as the game is concerned, she just comes out of nowhere with no explanation.
She doesn't come out of nowhere. She's been a constant presence since Edea was introduced early in the story. But even out of that context she's said to come from the future which means she's in someway connected to the past. He origins are a bunch of loose threads but those threads are all information that seem to be leading somewhere but never yeild any definitive answer. That's more than nothing. In fact most of these theories are just the next logical step based on the info given. Either way Ultimecia doesn't really need to be explained to be impactful. An antagonist can be anything from a person to a force of nature. Final Fantasy 8 is a story that focuses so heavily struggles and development of it's main character, so as long as the antagonist creates interesting conflicts for the protagonist then that's all that really matters.
Yet you only hear about her in the last act of the game after the plethora of convoluted plot points, many of which go nowhere (like NORG) and often feel like the writers honestly didn't know what to do with the characters.
As I said, if you ignore the story and the stupidity of the characters (seriously, their plan was literally to let Ultimecia compress time and have everyone just think really positively that everything would turn out ok), the game is almost presentable.
From what I've read, Ultimecia doesn't "have" the Griever GF when the fight happens. Rather, she draws it from Squall the same way you draw Magic/GF's from enemies. it's basically just a GF manifesting in the image of Griever since it's a very iconic creature/image to Squall
From an artistic standpoint, this is hands-down, my favorite game in the seies. I think this game looks amazing (PS1 limitations aside). It's the first game in the series that truly took me and my imagination to another world that didn't remind me of anything I'd ever seen before in any medium, let alone in the real world, before or since, and it really added those elements of high fantasy that I'd always wanted to experience in a Final Fantasy game. The soundtrack is nothing short of glorious. Seriously, Liberi Fatali, the opening track of the game (once you begin a new game, that is) is so amazing that it was featured in the 2004 Summer Olympics. I love the character designs, the creature designs, the architecture and town designs, the vehicle designs; everything has such an organic look to it, and yet it's all so futuristic and technological as well.
I do have to admit that compared to a lot of the designs later down the line, many of the character designs are surprisingly restrained and relatively grounded. The big exception is Ultimecia, but that's one questionable design among a lot of pretty strong ones.
The Ragnarok is the fuckin' best (air)ship we've got in a Final Fantasy ever! FF7 is my favorite FF of all times by far, but this thing is much cooler than even the highwind in her final form!
Great video, but I don't remember ever grinding out draws from enemies - the draw points around the game let you get squall and chums to 9999 damage, and the difficulty seems about right without grinding because of the way enemies scale tightly to your level. I think if players are trying to mindlessly grind to level 99 (something they were maybe trying to dissuade), then maxing out junctions stats becomes more important as a result.
@@TARDISES Still you want to have an Effect Draw Character, because you need those sexy GFs! Those summon monsters need to be drawn from the bosses of these games, you need those bastards for a majority of shit in this game!
I could have forgiven the orphanage plot twist if it was explained that ALL the kids from Balamb Garden were from Edea's orphanage, and she used them as a means of creating her own child army. I mean, we know that a lot of adults died during the Sorceress War about 20 years prior, so it makes sense why there are so many kids without parents in FFVIII's world. So why not make the Garden an extension of the oprhanage? Why not show that Edea's morals might not have always been great (even before she was posessed by Ultimecia), because she was more interested in training kids to fight than actually looking after them. That would have made so much more sense to me.
Sue 99 But...that is what they did isn't it? Where did you think the guys with an orphanage full of kids got the kids to build their child mercenary army? If not the orphanage and kids they already had? That seemed like a big part of the orphanage reveal to me, I never considered that this wasn't exactly what happened. That's always been the impression I got from that storyline.
No, it doesn't fit since it is said that Selphie originally is from Trabia garden. Or do you mean that all the kids from all the gardens come from the same orphanage? Them it would still be a really big coincidence.
alright clement, here's a little something us FFXIV players picked up for the gunblade, the gunbreaker job basically explains that the ammo is used for explosive rounds when the trigger is pulled doing more damage than normal, in other words, it's made to break guns, hence gunbreaker. so yeah, there's the real reason for the trigger on a gunblade, it's a really big and sharp boom stick, and in FFXIV, the job has allot of fans, i should know, i'm one of em.
No argument there. It remains THE most memorable opening of the whole franchise to this day, if not one of the most memorable openings in all of gaming, and rightfully so!
Late I know, awesome vid, but a few errors: 1. Ellone is NOT Squall's sister, Raine took her in and hid after her parents were killed during the Esthar/Galbadia war, where Laguna served and got hurt and was found by Raine and was nursed back to health and met and came to love them both dearly. When Ellone was kidnapped by Esthar he went after her, and while he was gone Raine died birthing Squall and he was brought to the orphanage where Laguna had already left Ellone to keep her out of the clutches of Adele. The children grew up together, and Ellone was a bigger sister to all of them, but grew closest to Squall and her being sent with the white SeeD ship to stay hidden from Adel caused his abandonment issues to compound. All of this is stated in the narrative. 2. Ragnarok was one of the ships lost after being used to transport Adel into space, and it's not too far fetched it floted near the airstation. Sure, bit of deus ex going on, but it was in no way random it was there. Again, in the narrative. 3. You CAN visit shops and play TT after time compression via GF abilities and the CC. Sure, both involves side quests, but you're strongly encouraged by the game to finish both, many would want to collect all the GFs, and the CC is hinted at all over Balamb Garden. As such they both reward the player to go the extra mile. The CC also have all the rare cards, so you can refine them and win them back, hence encouraging you to use them as resources to increase your spells instead of only drawing magic. 3. The flasbacks are Ellone 'junctioning' Squall and co onto Laguna and company, and hence both our characters and GFs they have junctioned get exp/ap. Odine explaines how Ellone's powers work in Esthar, and it's impossible to miss. And she needs to know whoever she sends back, hence the orphanage. Sure, the kids all being at the there is again deus ex, but it's not too far fetched as there was a war going on, orphaning a lot of children. The most unbelievable factor to me is that they seemed to be the only kids there, and the contrivance to bring exactly Sephie and Irvine into it, the other 4 are explained in the narrative, they were all brought to Balamb by Cid after their adoptions didn't work out, not stated, but not hard to deduce since he and Edea were responsible for them. It is very sudden, sure, and not foreshadowed enough, but it isn't completely out of the realm of possibilities. Yes, this was my first FF, and I love it, can you tell? All in all, I love the vid, but I just thought I'd clarify a few things :) Ok, into IX, can't wait!
This is amazing. YES I’ve always said the Robin Williams shout regarding CID! FF8 is my all time favourite and always will be, I was 12 when I first played this, almost 20 years ago and I’m still reading fanfics on these guys! Major nerd for FF8 and proud of it! The characters were the most relatable to me! Love this vid, never forget this game!
Yes it does. And I think a prequel would be sick too. "Final Fantasy VIII: The Sorceress Wars", giving us the events of Laguna, Kiros, and Ward's journey to find Ellone and take down Adel.
I remember another youtuber came up with a theory on why Squall's and Rinoa's romance didn't make much sense in some ways so they theorized or told a theory that the little joke hypnotizing routine Rinoa does before they dance could have actually worked in a small degree. Because Rinoa has the qualifications to be a sorceress, she could have unintentionally made Squall fall in love with her through magic from this point in the story as the feelings intensify over the course of the game. I always loved the theories of FF8
I absolutely loved FF8. I beat the game with a whole bunch of my friends watching. All of us were high on mushrooms. The ending scenes where pockets of time were compressed and warped had us mesmerized lol. Ultimacia's final theme had us pumped as well. Plus, Quistis is the bestest of the Final Fantasy girls. 😍
I have yet to play this game, but I’ve made it a point to play and beat FFVIII this year. Great video, Clement! You reassured my want to play FFVIII. I like weird games and this game is definitely strange.
biggest plottwist: Squall is Lagunas Son. Rinoas Julias daughter. Laguna and Julia couldnt get together but loved each other. Their love is fulfilled through Squall and Rinoa and to top that, they express their feelings to eyes on me, a song Julia wrote about Laguna. This was the perfect moment for this song.
another great retrospective, extremely insightful, you covert every part of these games, i can't wait for final fantasy IX, my favorite, keep the great work
VIII is probably my favourite in the series alongside IV, simply due to multiple things. The soundtrack, the story and its characters, the setting and its graphics are the best things about these games. The gameplay of VIII is, to say the least, easy and repetitive. But I cannot help but love everything else about the game, especially Squall (who is my favourite protagonist of the whole franchise) and the piece of music playing at Balamb Garden.
The story is a hot mess of random ideas thrown together while the main characters misconstrue their own dialogue in a vain attempt to pretend it's all supposed to make sense.
Except their attempt to explain things in the game ends up contradicting other things they had already explained previously (such as the thing about GFs stealing peoples' memories; mentioned once then never again, and the ending contradicts that anyway).
Hehheh, I see...well they had nothing else going on for them and Laguna is naturally dumb, so of course he would come up with the idea to strive on through with the power of autism and friendship, it was a game made in the 90's, so them relying on optimism like that in a cheesy fashion feels natural, though not everyone is fond of this.
Actually i dont know if its a issue of the translation or what but what Ultimecia does is pulling a Ghost Busters making Squall pick the shape of the destroyer, his greatest fear. It forms into a GF with a connection to Squall himself because the shape was chosen by him through Ultimecia.
I remember when the game came out in 1999. I didn’t own a PS so I wasn’t in the know. But I had friends how loved FF7 and we’re very hyped. They counting down the days, it finally came out and it was a resounding thud. I remember that was the feeling at launch.
Kept us waiting huh? Glad to see more of these. As of this game I'm mixed about it. Of course, I'm excited for the next one, FF9 one of my favorites aside from 4 and 6.
While it's not clear early on why Laguna and friends have access to your exact GFs and magics, it becomes clear later that they're literally accessing them through the party members - that Ellone is Junctioning the party to Laguna, Kiros and Ward. I think it's Kiros who explains in one of the optional dialogues in Esthar that they had what they called "fairies" sometimes and when they had them, they had fantastic powers, though it could be some other time.
Squall's inner monologues in the Dissidia games are what make me liek the character. because unliek in FF8 where it's mostly really pessimistic depressing stuff, it's jsut him being snarky and thinking how dumb everyone's acting
Final Fantasy VIII was one of my first Final Fantasy games along with VII. It's also the game I replayed the most, the soundtrack is amazing, Squall's my favourite character in the series and while I feel that his love for Rinoa came out of nowhere and that his friends were complete assholes whenever it came to his feelings towards her, I still liked the supporting cast most of the time. Easely one of my favourite games to just play through, while obviously not being the one I consider to be the best Final Fantasy, that spot still belongs to Final Fantasy IX.
Agree. FF8 has many good things, shamefully overshadowed by major flaws. Opinion depend on if you can go around its weirdness and design issues. Because when it is good then it is really good. Also do you know theory regard Ultimacia?
A correction: you don't have to be a SeeD to have GFs. Pretty much everyone in Balamb Garden fights with GF Junctions (Squall already has Quezacotl and Shiva before becoming a SeeD). For all practical purposes, being a SeeD means you can stay in Garden after the age of 20 (non-SeeDs are released when they become 20) and get paid to do missions.
Makes me wonder just how many different GFs there could have been if the developers felt like it; or if GFs exist like Pokemon in the world of ff8, where there're multiple copies of the same ones
These FF videos remind me of another channel I love called The Geek Critique. I can listen to you guys talk about video games forever. The analysis, jokes, real life experience bits, I just love it. Cheers Clement
Probably as long as the hallway. Make no mistake about it. I do enjoy playing FFXIII. I enjoy playing FFVIII and FFX, despite my issues with the games. But that doesn't mean I won't acknowledge their flaws.
Malik Reeves if someone can spend over 4 hours unraveling the star wars prequels, then unraveling the ff13 trilogy doesn't seem out of the realm of possibilities.
You don’t know how much I love this game! I love it so much 2nd after FF6! The story, the characters, the environments, the GF, drawing and refining magic, equipping unique command skills. I love how different this game tried to be from others in the series (FF2 was also different). Triple Triad is amazing except for when you accidentally spread around unwanted rules then it’s a hassle to get rid of certain rules. Squall is my spirit character I love him so much, I can always relate to him. Zell is such a cool rocking dude with a unique limit break mechanic I really like and I wish I had a close friend just like him. Selphie is my favorite girl, I was shocked her name is the same term as taking a picture of yourself and in 1999 too! I love how strong and intimidating she acts in times of confrontation. I love how the Garden itself is able to float and move around as a way of transportation and driving your own rental car was cool too, and omg the Ragnarok is the best Airship in all of Final Fantasy capable of space travel with a kickass theme song. Overall I love the whole Soundtrack of the game, Eyes on Me and the Ending which always gets me because (more spoilers) Squall smiles at Rinoa in the end cutscene🙂☺️☺️ And it’s something that he hardly does in the game.
This game's mechanic of constantly pressing a button to boost an attack, has to this day, led me to believe that pressing any particular key or button would boost the attack out of habit.
Clement, I dunno if you know this but you can actually still play Triple Triad on disc 4. The Lunar Base space pod that Piet escaped in is on the world map on disc 4 where you'll find the Queen of Cards. She plays any of the 5 rare cards that are involved with her sidequest if you missed them before time compression happens (Kiros, Irvine, Chubby Chocobo, Doomtrain and Phoenix). You can also play against the Card Club members who are onboard the Ragnarok if you completed the CC sidequest. Each member by then would have learned different card rules from various regions all over the world except Galbadia for some reason. They will also play any GF or Player card that you don't have in your inventory, regardless of whether they were missed or modified (i.e. if you didn't get the Seifer card or if you refined it at some point, one of the CC members will play that card and you'll be able to obtain it again).
I am in the same boat as you are. I like FF8, but there are some absolutely dumb shit in it that I really do not like. But the atmosphere, music, locations and side content are so strong, it makes up for the flaws, and there's just some indescribable quality that appeals to me. But I have to disagree with you in regards to headmaster Cid's appearance. He does not look like Robin Williams. He's the spitting image of Bill Gates ;)
Cid Kramer was easily the worst Cid. A candy ass who does practically nothing cool or important the whole game and just buggers off toward the end to be with Edea who was his enemy most of the game and for years before and just abandons the Garden for some teenagers to run it.
The Ragnarok scene still gets me 20 years later!....the song was great. I loved this game, yes compared to other entries it was easy but it was such a fun game to play. As for the final stage of Ultimica, Quistis' White Wind is far better than bothering with Mega Elixirs
So far out of all the FF games I’ve played (7,8,9&10), this is definitely my least favorite. I see what Clement meant in how the game is weirdly compelling. The game was interesting to me upon beginning it, but then the repetitiveness just got to me and I was soon bored. I didn’t end up caring for the characters, I just constantly wanted to get a move on in an already slow paced game, and I gave up before I even finished disc 2. I wanted to like this game, but I just couldn’t. It’s a shame, but I’m glad I at least gave it a shot.
Yeah. I agree. I know FF2 & FF13 are far worst than FF8. But I never played them nor I never will. But FF8 is my least favorite I've played so far and it is the weakest of the PS1 Final Fantasy games. Doesn't make the game awful and there are few things I liked about the game; like the updated cutscenes & presentation and the OST kicks butt. But there are many design choices that felt really rushed and unpolished.
I love Squall and Rinoa, they're some of my favorite characters in FF and overall in video games. I absolutely love its story despite its flaws and Squall and Rinoa make the game amazing for me, I just wish there was more time with them! And honestly I like the junction system! I still used magic when I wanted and was ok and just refined more when needed!
The story caught me so hard as a teenager, went for an epic quest to find my own Rinoa back then. Well I still kinda am on that quest as women are certainly different irl than portrayed by Japanese introverts *but oh well* , FF8 is finally getting a remaster!
So happy you made this. I adore this game. As a kid the story blew my little mind. From the second the characters start puzzling together their memory loss and what contributed to it, I was enthralled. Oh and ... GUNBLADES?! How sick is that?! Impractical and ridiculous but still the coolest weapon ever. That's right! Step off Cloud. Ok, now to subscribe and finish your video.
I'm happy gunblades exist because when discussing them on youtube someone sent me a wikipedia article about them and I noticed something called RWBY. The rest is history. GFs are necessary? TFW no GF...
When i was younger, read 6 years old i didnt understand the draw system, now i do and......well its not perfect and It may be slow and grindy....but it is innovative and it is a way to give the summons more relevancy than being tactical attack nukes and meat shields, because you forgot to mention in the video that the summons have to charge an action bar before they attack and their HP shields their summoner until they attack and they can die and become unusable until you revive them....it was a way to make them feel part of the party.
This game was by far... the most disappointing game I've ever played in my life. For those of you who love this game, can you tell me what it is you loved about it, other than the presentation? I really am interested to hear
Not my favorite Final Fantasy, but definitely the most nostalgic for me. FF8 was my first Final Fantasy and I did everything I could possibly do in that game, card games and all. Tempted to buy FF8 on Steam if only for that Chocobo World mini-game missing from the PSX version.
broski, that intro gave me goosebumps right before you said that it gave you goosebumps. That freaking piano note and timpani roll at the end. Daaaaaaaaaaaaamn
Me: "Wow, how much longer can these reviews get?"
Clement: "Hold my maple syrup."
Marcosatsu yep
Can’t wait for FFIX, let’s see how long they can get.
Oh because your Canadian!
I love the long reviews
I very much did not expect to see you in this comment section haha.
I think everyone who played VIII at a young age and enjoyed their experience fantasized about living in that world and going to Balamb Garden.
Yes! I played this when I was 11. I loved it. I do fee the issues he brings up are valid but for one of the first FF games I played it was the perfect difficulty.
when i hurd that scene that she begins to shoot the spider i sed....
squall!!! every body get down!!!!!
clament, play final fantasy 8 remaster and your done.
pc, switch, ps4 and sutch
boom battle speed x 3, and your good to go.
random battles your tiard of them? turn them off.
I'm glad you mentioned the Robin Williams cameo
Rinoa: "I liked having my mom hold me. My dad too, back when we got along."
Squall: "I'm not your mom."
Rinoa: "No, of course not... but I can still call you Daddy right?!"
Is that a real line?
Ah Squall... Such a smooth talker.
Squall: Whatever...
Squall:.....no
i thought the mechanics worked like they did in ff7 and obviously square was like "no, squall and rinoa are perfect together"
so the whole time i was like "this is awesome, wish you were quistis though" lmao
That thing with Rinoa's dog also happens in FF6. When I played, Shadow's dog Interceptor would occasionally run into enemies and OHKO them. And by occasionally, I mean every other damn battle! XD
Yeah, but the difference there (and why I'm ok with that and not VIII), is Interceptor actually runs to the enemy and attacks it, while in FFVIII Rinoa literally launches her dog like a missile.
I don't remember Shadow's dog showing up that often but then again its been 2 decades since I played it so what do I remember? XD
It happened often, at least in the first half. Once you got to the World of Ruin, it did seem to happen less often, but that was likely because enemies actually have to target Shadow with physical attacks to get Interceptor to counter, and in the WoR, enemies tend to use magic more often than physical.
Rinoa has two types of Angelo abilities: the automatic ones that have a chance of happening in battle under certain circumstances, like Angelo Rush (a random counterattack that may happen every time Rinoa takes damage, similar to Interceptor's attacks in VI), and the ones she uses as Limit Breaks, like Angelo Cannon.
Actually, another throwback to VI: when Squall and Rinoa are inside the Ragnarok, Rinoa can't use her Angelo abilities because Angelo is not there with them, just like Shadow doesn't have Interceptor when he joins your party at the Floating Continent.
You had to have played it when it first came out to understand the magic of it. Playing it now wouldn't do it justice. 90s masterpiece
"Luck" has nothing to do with how many of any spell you get when you Draw. It's all in your MAG stat. The higher your MAG, the more you can Draw at a time. I don't know the math, but the system checks your stat vs the target's to determine if you're going to stock 1-3 or 7-9. Just prioritize everyone's MAG when Junctioning and it saves you quite a bit of time, and it'll only give you low numbers when Drawing from bosses.
Kara99tg good to know
That's still dumb
I still unironically enjoy this game, and that's not just nostalgia talking. I remember the first time I saw it by, similarly, my cousin playing it, and I remember nights staying over with friends where we powered through parts of the game. One of my friends misread the names and insisted on calling Rinoa "Rhino." So that made the scene at the start of disc 2 where the guards are asking where she is rather... unique. It was one of the main reasons why I asked for a PS1, only getting a video store's copy of 7 later. Years and years later, an import purchase of Squall's necklace was one of the first things I would ever buy off of Amazon. (and for, like, ten bucks or something too.)
However, through either a forgotten mishap of my younger years or a factory fluke, my fourth disc had a scratch on it that forbade the game from loading the screen past the area where the superboss spawns, forcing me to rent another copy just to be able to finally beat the game. One of many reasons I gladly paid for the game a second time on my PS3. Still don't like that the fourth disc locks you out of the rest of the world map, though. It's one of the only games that I allow to take up multiple slots on my memory card for as a result. One for the endgame, and the other to just mess around in the overworld.
Overall though, I feel this game really shaped my tastes in art and media. The ballad of the Lion and Angel acted as a sort of gateway to my enjoyment of the more laid-back slice-of-life stories. (aaaand generally being shipper trash) Not in lieu of other kinds of stories of course, but I don't think i'd have come to like other games and shows that would further cultivate myself and my identity were it not for this game. Persona, Harvest Moon, Fruits Basket, K-On... yeah, one of those ain't like the other, but again, that's not meant to write anything else off at all.
for me it froze right at the dance scene.
I love FF8 dearly. I bought the necklace too. Took weeks to arrive. 🐾
lets see, cinemassacre? Nah. Somecallmejohnny? Not in the mood. Brainscratch, supergamingbros? Not right now.
Whats this? A new Clement final fantasy upload?
HOOK IT TO MY VEINS!!!
This game feels like a 2 season anime, where the big bad of the first season turns out to be working for an even bigger bad that was never once explained.
It’s like a really bad soap opera in my opinion. I hate soap operas for pretty much every reason i hate Final Fantasy 8. They’re almost never written well, are boring and slow, take the audience for idiots, the romances are typically never believable, and the characters aren’t particularly interesting with absolutely asine plot twists that come out of nowhere with no real thought or substance behind them. Final Fantasy 8 was a dire mistake in my opinion. It isn’t even saved by its gameplay, which is beyond atrocious. I’ve never understood how anyone could say with a straight face 8 is actually a good game. I think they’re either lying, really like bad games, have bad taste, are blinded almost solely by nostalgia or aren’t right in the head. I consider any of the Legend Of Heroes games what 8 should’ve been if the developers knew what to do when making this turd of a game.
@@Gamingnstuff131 filtered
@@Gamingnstuff131 Final fantasy VIII is demential. Soap operas are dumb. There is a thin difference.
Usually dementiality is used in comedy, not in works that are presented as dramatic, but as in the warnings on the movies we don't watch on the websites we don't consult... Final Fantasy means: "In case the title, the trailer, and the cover didn't suggest that... we don't give a wooden cent about the story being coherent or the motives being plausible or predictable, we refuse to keep it simple, with the wrath of Momma Theresa. Oh, another thing, actually there will be a grain of coherence: in our work, Ninjas, secret agent, moles and swindlers in general, can do their job, though we feel like following the Rex Stout's rule*."
*I think the name is made up. Actually i don't know if it has a proper name in literature. it can be stated like:
In almost every mystery novel, in the set of suspects and witnesses and people able to provide cogent schedules and whatnot, there is a character way more despondent, suspiciously ambiguous, often needlessly outrageous than any other. That person is never the culprit.
@@Gamingnstuff131You’re complaining about a semi-convoluted Shounen type story that has a better soundtrack than your argument.
You’re a douche for insulting people that like FF8, behind their backs.
If you can’t wrap your head around people enjoying a simple ass love story, that has a few decent twists that aren’t the best, sure… but they aren’t the worst.
It’s not 13.
Stop trying to give FF8 fans CBT level insults, when you outright have something definitively worse.
kulluukululluluullu I ì ki hi@@j.2512
This has probably been the most interesting and well-put-together video in this series so far, and actually made me want to revisit this game to sort out my feelings on it... which is not something I've wanted to do for a very long time. Well, maybe I will. I have the Steam version, which I believe even has the chocobo Pocket Station minigame include. Just gotta patch in a music mod to replace those dull midi files with the original PS1 soundtrack and it's probably the best way to experience the game these days.
One complaint I wish you'd mentioned, though, is how little things about the world are fleshed out. There's virtually no specific history to anything, even less so than Final Fantasy VII which at least gave you enough of a sense of things that you could fill in the gaping blanks its lore left in the world. But take, for example, NORG's race, the Shumi. They live clustered together in one village, you learn nothing about them, and apparently the Moomba are just... Shumi who transformed into dumb little animal people because... whyyyyyyyy?
You also missed mentioning the Phoenix summon, which is called forth by using one of the game's rare Phoenix Pinion items and joins Odin and Gilgamesh as a random summon thereafter. It can, on very rare occasions, appear when you experience a party wipe, blasting the enemy with fire and reviving your party. But you have to manually summon him at least once to trigger it. Ironically, if memory serves, obtaining the Phoenix Pinion, or at least one of them, requires visiting the Shumi Village.
The One True Nobody! Oh hey, it’s that one guy from brainscratch!
On a serious note though, I also feel compelled to give the game another shot. It was gifted to me from a dear friend a long while back, and it is the first final fantasy game I ever played. Sadly, my memory card at the time was destroyed (long story), and I never finished it (made it to near the end of disk 3). TIME TO JUNCTION THE SH*T OUTTA STUFF!!!!!
Love your videos Lewis
Did they not fix the midi music a long time ago? Could have swore they did...
I love this game I beat diablos gravity is awesome I have a physical copy of 8 and PsOne classics of 8 and 9 I can't wait and Clement I'm jelous of u Ultima weapon on disc one I'll start a new game and beat diablos as early as possible I'm not a wimp I'll prove it
This was the time when GF was not associated to girlfriend and Selphie doesn't mean self photo shot.
Man these vids deserve more views than they get they are amazing
I can only imagine the amount of rants to come, once we get to Final Fantasy 13.
Team Shaolin Star I will stick to Terra and Celes thank you.
Officer Zack If he does manage to cover the mechanics really well
I hope Clement is at least able to enjoy it more than he expects.
I've actually been irregularly returning to it and yeesh does it need to be shorter. Palumporum gets old fast.
Im playing FF13 right now, im at 54 hours, 12th chapter, holy fuck is this game LONG. And it feels about hundred hours longer considering how repetitive it is.
And i feel like that even though i LIKE it. I cant imagine what its like if you hate it.
Well, y'all no longer have to imagine
The only sad thing about killing X-ATM092 (the spider robot) yourself: you don't get that awesome cutscene where Quistis guns it down. :(
DarkEinherjar yep
It's pretty odd that a game would give you an opportunity to skip an FMV like that. You can even hide in the bar to avoid the FMV too
Wait, you can kill the spider robot?!
Jimmy-The-Hedgehog you have to knock it down like 5 times in one fight and then it’ll stop repairing itself, then you just kill it
Here's a good compromise though. Do enough damage the first time you fight it and you'll get the AP for defeating it, then just avoid it from there on out. You'll get the AP for it, and you'll see the cutscene.
Every single time that I play this game I get new things, new hints and new theories. Is such a weird, complete and bizarre game with all the time travel and magic stuff. Is one of my all time favs.
I like to think everyone has their own Final Fantasy VIII. A title they know is a mixed bag that not everyone enjoys, and even you have your criticisms toward how things were executed, but you still hold near and dear and would gladly return to or keep up with. For me, that's RoosterTeeth's RWBY. It's a hot mess, but I love it.
And Sonic, too, but that's a whole other story that you're still covering.
Jacob Tucker I have like 5 of those, many people hate me for that.
In my case its not a game but a character. Morgana from Persona 5. I know this character has some unpleseant flaws. I myself could do a decently long rant of his nonsensical temper tantrum. There are good understandable reasons to not like this character.
But I love this little fellow alot. He is the best companion I ever had in a videogame, my favorite Video game character and my second favorite animal mascoot character putting him even above the likes of Stich and Toothless and only surpassed by Nanachi.
Despite his flaws I really love this little fellow.
@@sofaris576 Nobody can beat Nanachi
@@notafbiagent473 Reg and Nanachi are my 2 favorite characters in fiction. Riko is atleast in the top 15. Overall Made in Abyss has an amazing cast of characters.
I have a lot of those personally, there's something special about the paradoxical perfect imperfection about such things that appeals to me. If I had to name one though it would be The Last Remnant, it's a completionists worst nightmare even by RPG standards and has performance issues and a much heavier reliance on RNG than most other games and for me at least it's kinda developed into a weird love hate relationship maybe it's nostalgia because it was one of the earlier RPGs I played as I was really getting into the series that makes me like it more than anything else and the hate part of the relationship is it's sort of become my White Whale that I promised myself to eventually 100% complete in its entirety before I kick the bucket. I do genuinely love the sensation of commanding an entire army and how pretty much every sidequest NPC can join your party and still feel unique and distinct as characters even if they aren't all created equal in terms of usefulness those are aspects of it that I absolutely unironically love, Baulson is best boi btw!
I woke up, saw this on my recommended, and watched it while eating breakfast. I agree with every point in this video. FF8 is indeed a weird game that the community either loves, or hates. Me and my group of friends share the same mentality of "This game is fun to play and break". While the plotholes are indeed jarring and some plot details are completely missable, I can still confidently say that this is my favorite FF game, and recommend it with warning. Subbed ♡
You take an hour and a half to eat breakfast?!
I haven't l played this personally, but I've watched 2 full play throughs by different people, 1 blind, and 1 fully routed. And I got to say that the "balance" of the game probably took into account the assumption that you would take most of the game to figure out how the mechanics work and not abuse them until the end.
Your final thoughts about Final Fantasy 8 are the exact same as my thoughts of the game. FF8 was my first and my favorite I enjoyed every minute of your video and thank you for putting up these type of videos.
I found the game to be very mixed. Some parts I love and some parts I hate
It's not one of the best Final Fantasy games. Not even in the top 5. But it's also not the worst. Just an middle road Final Fantasy game let's say.
Clement has done what Spoony could not: a review of FF8 that is funny, fun to watch, acknowledges both the good and bad, and it's not a biased pile of toxic sludge.
Joe Kuru In some ways, I am glad Spooney is a failure
Anime is Trash What makes you say that?
Not to mention very misinformative. If you look at his FF8, 10, and 13 reviews, some of his editing with the game footage of games was suspicious and tried to make the games look worse than they actually were instead of just showing actual bad stuff.
P.S. sorry for the late reply.
RIP Spoony F him
@@StarforceOnAir What kind of editing with his footage did he do? How did he make the games look worse than they were? I'd like a few specific examples, please.
Balamb garden theme reminds me of lonely Saturday afternoons.
Reminds me of school. School sucked back in my early life.
8 was my first Final Fantasy. It’s the game that actually got me into RPG’s. 8 always holds a special place for me, and is my 4th favorite in the series with 9 being my favorite. I haven’t gotten bored yet in a many pkaythroughs I’ve done of the game.
Drawing magic not a matter of Luck. The effectiveness of Draw depends on the user's Magic stat and the spell itself (the more powerful that spell is, the harder it is to Draw; Draw can even fail if your Magic stat isn't high enough).
DarkEinherjar interesting
@@namingisdifficult408 A lot of people never learn this and thus get the same idea Clement and just make it harder on themselves.
@Gameslayer 9000 FFVIII was my first FF and unlike some others (*coughFFVcough*) I actually finished it pretty throughly. So yeah I had no personal problems with the drawing system either.
Yeah, if you want to optimise drawing early, your best approach is to draw once successfully in your first fight, junction that spell to your magic stat, and then as you draw that spell in the next fight, your draw rate will increase.
On the other hand, there is some random variation in how many spells you'll draw with the same person drawing the same spell from the same enemy without changing your Magic stat, so there is a small amount of luck, though possibly no Luck, involved.
Mr Clement, I come back to this video every once in a while, its so much fun, best 93min on ff8
I love these videos I can't wait for 9 that was my favorite when I was younger keep it up Clement
My second favorite Final Fantasy Setting
The whole radio punk about it is amazing
"I am NOT A BOY!" "I AM A MAN!" (punch!)
TheHeroOfTomorrow I'm so glad I wasn't the only one thinking that
Whatever!!!!!!!!!
TheHeroOfTomorrow Ah I got what you did it's nice to know someone else watches his channel.
TheHeroOfTomorrow Wow. People still use that dead meme.
Guypersonmanthing3 Uh, last time I checked AT4W was still running, so...yeah, not dead yet. :P
The ONE thing about this game that I will absolutely love is this: The story and characters. I love Squall's development of opening up, and finding love with Rinoa. It was just really precious. If I were to ever replay this game, it would be for that reason alone.
I’d suggest that you don’t. The story is terrible and the romance isn’t believable. It’s like a trashy teenage romance movie that’s really boring. Play any of the Lengend Of Heroes saga games, in particular the Trails Of Cold Steel games instead. I consider them what 8 could’ve and should’ve been if the developers didn’t have their heads up their asses.
Really well done, clement. This one feels professional, accurate, and well-delivered. Keep it going, great content
1:13:49 No, it's there. It's the only game to utilize the PocketStation outside Japan, where the PocketStation itself never left.
1:22:06 I believe the real reason you can't go back is because they ran out of disc space to hold all of those assets (towns, the NPCs, everything used during fights, basically A LOT of stuff) plus the huge ending.
FF VIII is my 3rd. F.G.O.A.T. and my favorite FF. It is, for me, the most fun to play by a WIDE margin. It does have problems, but this is one of my most replayed games ever purely because of how fun it is to play.
This game has one of the most epic and emotional endings ive seen in my life
I feel like the reason the ending was emotional to me personally was because I found Ultimecia to be so difficult, so it was like the game was really making me work for that good ending.
(Also one of the many reasons I don't subscribe to the 'Squall is dead theory')
Probably one of the most confusing I’ve ever seen.
I have always found that this is a game that people enjoy proportionately to how much they enjoy learning and exploiting the junction system and card game.
I think Ultimecia, being a descendant of Rinoa and Squall or maybe even just somebody who inherits the ring makes more sense given the reason she need to time compress in the first place is because she doesn't exist in the present to kill. Plus it'd be kind of weird if she could possess herself from the past even more weird given she almost killed Rinoa while he was possessing Adel. It begs the question wouldn't getting a game over there actually result in the world being saved. Given the fact that that doesn't happen I choose to believe they didn't intend on implying she's Rinoa.
Yeah, but as Linkara would say, the fan theories about all that stuff are just that - FAN THEORIES. Not what the game tells you, which is NOTHING! As far as the game is concerned, she just comes out of nowhere with no explanation.
She doesn't come out of nowhere. She's been a constant presence since Edea was introduced early in the story. But even out of that context she's said to come from the future which means she's in someway connected to the past. He origins are a bunch of loose threads but those threads are all information that seem to be leading somewhere but never yeild any definitive answer. That's more than nothing. In fact most of these theories are just the next logical step based on the info given.
Either way Ultimecia doesn't really need to be explained to be impactful. An antagonist can be anything from a person to a force of nature. Final Fantasy 8 is a story that focuses so heavily struggles and development of it's main character, so as long as the antagonist creates interesting conflicts for the protagonist then that's all that really matters.
Yet you only hear about her in the last act of the game after the plethora of convoluted plot points, many of which go nowhere (like NORG) and often feel like the writers honestly didn't know what to do with the characters.
As I said, if you ignore the story and the stupidity of the characters (seriously, their plan was literally to let Ultimecia compress time and have everyone just think really positively that everything would turn out ok), the game is almost presentable.
From what I've read, Ultimecia doesn't "have" the Griever GF when the fight happens. Rather, she draws it from Squall the same way you draw Magic/GF's from enemies. it's basically just a GF manifesting in the image of Griever since it's a very iconic creature/image to Squall
These Final Fantasy retrospectives you're making are amazing! They couldn't be long enough. Keep at it. You have a big fan here.
Ending the video with the victory theme was a really nice touch.
From an artistic standpoint, this is hands-down, my favorite game in the seies. I think this game looks amazing (PS1 limitations aside). It's the first game in the series that truly took me and my imagination to another world that didn't remind me of anything I'd ever seen before in any medium, let alone in the real world, before or since, and it really added those elements of high fantasy that I'd always wanted to experience in a Final Fantasy game. The soundtrack is nothing short of glorious. Seriously, Liberi Fatali, the opening track of the game (once you begin a new game, that is) is so amazing that it was featured in the 2004 Summer Olympics. I love the character designs, the creature designs, the architecture and town designs, the vehicle designs; everything has such an organic look to it, and yet it's all so futuristic and technological as well.
I do have to admit that compared to a lot of the designs later down the line, many of the character designs are surprisingly restrained and relatively grounded. The big exception is Ultimecia, but that's one questionable design among a lot of pretty strong ones.
I think Balamb Garden makes an extremely strong visual and aural first impression. The character animations are VERY expressive too!
Some people have a hard time admitting that FFVII actually looks quite...horrible, most of the time. For today's standards at least.
The Ragnarok is the fuckin' best (air)ship we've got in a Final Fantasy ever! FF7 is my favorite FF of all times by far, but this thing is much cooler than even the highwind in her final form!
Glad that you're feeling better Clement I can't wait for the let's play of Twinsanity and your redo of the mega man games
Great video, but I don't remember ever grinding out draws from enemies - the draw points around the game let you get squall and chums to 9999 damage, and the difficulty seems about right without grinding because of the way enemies scale tightly to your level. I think if players are trying to mindlessly grind to level 99 (something they were maybe trying to dissuade), then maxing out junctions stats becomes more important as a result.
@@TARDISES
Still you want to have an Effect Draw Character, because you need those sexy GFs! Those summon monsters need to be drawn from the bosses of these games, you need those bastards for a majority of shit in this game!
10:15 - Yes, that's our villain for the game, Seifer: the man with the insults of a seven-year-old. No wonder he's never passed the SeeD exam.
That was undeniable proof that we totally owned you lamers!
I could have forgiven the orphanage plot twist if it was explained that ALL the kids from Balamb Garden were from Edea's orphanage, and she used them as a means of creating her own child army. I mean, we know that a lot of adults died during the Sorceress War about 20 years prior, so it makes sense why there are so many kids without parents in FFVIII's world. So why not make the Garden an extension of the oprhanage? Why not show that Edea's morals might not have always been great (even before she was posessed by Ultimecia), because she was more interested in training kids to fight than actually looking after them. That would have made so much more sense to me.
Sue 99 But...that is what they did isn't it? Where did you think the guys with an orphanage full of kids got the kids to build their child mercenary army? If not the orphanage and kids they already had? That seemed like a big part of the orphanage reveal to me, I never considered that this wasn't exactly what happened. That's always been the impression I got from that storyline.
No, it doesn't fit since it is said that Selphie originally is from Trabia garden. Or do you mean that all the kids from all the gardens come from the same orphanage? Them it would still be a really big coincidence.
alright clement, here's a little something us FFXIV players picked up for the gunblade, the gunbreaker job basically explains that the ammo is used for explosive rounds when the trigger is pulled doing more damage than normal, in other words, it's made to break guns, hence gunbreaker. so yeah, there's the real reason for the trigger on a gunblade, it's a really big and sharp boom stick, and in FFXIV, the job has allot of fans, i should know, i'm one of em.
Love it or hate it, you have to admit, this game has the most kickass opening of the entire series.
Very true
No argument there. It remains THE most memorable opening of the whole franchise to this day, if not one of the most memorable openings in all of gaming, and rightfully so!
Yes but it’s many issues become apparent fairly fast. The boring characters, the bland aesthetic, horrible story and bad gameplay innovations.
@@jaretco6423 I bought it on iTunes. Much more enjoyable to listen to than playing this trainwreck.
Late I know, awesome vid, but a few errors:
1. Ellone is NOT Squall's sister, Raine took her in and hid after her parents were killed during the Esthar/Galbadia war, where Laguna served and got hurt and was found by Raine and was nursed back to health and met and came to love them both dearly. When Ellone was kidnapped by Esthar he went after her, and while he was gone Raine died birthing Squall and he was brought to the orphanage where Laguna had already left Ellone to keep her out of the clutches of Adele. The children grew up together, and Ellone was a bigger sister to all of them, but grew closest to Squall and her being sent with the white SeeD ship to stay hidden from Adel caused his abandonment issues to compound. All of this is stated in the narrative.
2. Ragnarok was one of the ships lost after being used to transport Adel into space, and it's not too far fetched it floted near the airstation. Sure, bit of deus ex going on, but it was in no way random it was there. Again, in the narrative.
3. You CAN visit shops and play TT after time compression via GF abilities and the CC. Sure, both involves side quests, but you're strongly encouraged by the game to finish both, many would want to collect all the GFs, and the CC is hinted at all over Balamb Garden. As such they both reward the player to go the extra mile. The CC also have all the rare cards, so you can refine them and win them back, hence encouraging you to use them as resources to increase your spells instead of only drawing magic.
3. The flasbacks are Ellone 'junctioning' Squall and co onto Laguna and company, and hence both our characters and GFs they have junctioned get exp/ap. Odine explaines how Ellone's powers work in Esthar, and it's impossible to miss. And she needs to know whoever she sends back, hence the orphanage. Sure, the kids all being at the there is again deus ex, but it's not too far fetched as there was a war going on, orphaning a lot of children. The most unbelievable factor to me is that they seemed to be the only kids there, and the contrivance to bring exactly Sephie and Irvine into it, the other 4 are explained in the narrative, they were all brought to Balamb by Cid after their adoptions didn't work out, not stated, but not hard to deduce since he and Edea were responsible for them. It is very sudden, sure, and not foreshadowed enough, but it isn't completely out of the realm of possibilities.
Yes, this was my first FF, and I love it, can you tell?
All in all, I love the vid, but I just thought I'd clarify a few things :) Ok, into IX, can't wait!
Well, you're a positive person, so it makes sense you kinda like it. Wish I could be like that. Squall reminds me of Shadow.
This is amazing. YES I’ve always said the Robin Williams shout regarding CID! FF8 is my all time favourite and always will be, I was 12 when I first played this, almost 20 years ago and I’m still reading fanfics on these guys! Major nerd for FF8 and proud of it! The characters were the most relatable to me! Love this vid, never forget this game!
this needs a remake like 7
Yes it does. And I think a prequel would be sick too. "Final Fantasy VIII: The Sorceress Wars", giving us the events of Laguna, Kiros, and Ward's journey to find Ellone and take down Adel.
This series is such a treat! Keep being amazing!
Esthar is basically MCU Wakanda minus the Africans, spears, and Vibranium.
I love this video mann! Binge watching all them videos.
5:20 - It is a really good cutscene. It's almost more like a trailer than an introduction to the story.
I remember another youtuber came up with a theory on why Squall's and Rinoa's romance didn't make much sense in some ways so they theorized or told a theory that the little joke hypnotizing routine Rinoa does before they dance could have actually worked in a small degree. Because Rinoa has the qualifications to be a sorceress, she could have unintentionally made Squall fall in love with her through magic from this point in the story as the feelings intensify over the course of the game. I always loved the theories of FF8
That's actually funny as shit
8 was my fave. Squall is the ishh 🤙
Holy shiit its finally here! Been waitin on this one for a long time! These vids are the best!
I absolutely loved FF8. I beat the game with a whole bunch of my friends watching. All of us were high on mushrooms. The ending scenes where pockets of time were compressed and warped had us mesmerized lol. Ultimacia's final theme had us pumped as well. Plus, Quistis is the bestest of the Final Fantasy girls. 😍
First time I played this, I saw Laguna being Squall's dad coming from the first flashback.
I have yet to play this game, but I’ve made it a point to play and beat FFVIII this year. Great video, Clement! You reassured my want to play FFVIII. I like weird games and this game is definitely strange.
I personally really like the scene where they get promoted ahead of Seifer and he still is man enough to applaud them
I actually like that scene too.
biggest plottwist: Squall is Lagunas Son. Rinoas Julias daughter. Laguna and Julia couldnt get together but loved each other. Their love is fulfilled through Squall and Rinoa and to top that, they express their feelings to eyes on me, a song Julia wrote about Laguna.
This was the perfect moment for this song.
3:30 - He's not joking. This is an acid trip of a game if there ever was one.
More like a slog without the QOL features. It’s a fine enough so bad it’s good game with the QOL features.
@@Gamingnstuff131 I was talking more about the storyline with this comment than the actual gameplay though.
1:18:30 the legend makes his return
another great retrospective, extremely insightful, you covert every part of these games, i can't wait for final fantasy IX, my favorite, keep the great work
at long last, really interested to hear more about this divisive game
Well written, edited, and paced! I thoroughly enjoyed this!
VIII is probably my favourite in the series alongside IV, simply due to multiple things. The soundtrack, the story and its characters, the setting and its graphics are the best things about these games. The gameplay of VIII is, to say the least, easy and repetitive. But I cannot help but love everything else about the game, especially Squall (who is my favourite protagonist of the whole franchise) and the piece of music playing at Balamb Garden.
The story is a hot mess of random ideas thrown together while the main characters misconstrue their own dialogue in a vain attempt to pretend it's all supposed to make sense.
Except their attempt to explain things in the game ends up contradicting other things they had already explained previously (such as the thing about GFs stealing peoples' memories; mentioned once then never again, and the ending contradicts that anyway).
As I've said before, with FFVIII you pretty much have to ignore the story and characters to get a game that's almost presentable.
How does the ending contradict that?
Hehheh, I see...well they had nothing else going on for them and Laguna is naturally dumb, so of course he would come up with the idea to strive on through with the power of autism and friendship, it was a game made in the 90's, so them relying on optimism like that in a cheesy fashion feels natural, though not everyone is fond of this.
Actually i dont know if its a issue of the translation or what but what Ultimecia does is pulling a Ghost Busters making Squall pick the shape of the destroyer, his greatest fear.
It forms into a GF with a connection to Squall himself because the shape was chosen by him through Ultimecia.
I love 8, but 9 is my overall favorite JUST for the music. And Vivi. VIVI FOREVER!
I remember when the game came out in 1999. I didn’t own a PS so I wasn’t in the know. But I had friends how loved FF7 and we’re very hyped. They counting down the days, it finally came out and it was a resounding thud. I remember that was the feeling at launch.
2:29 oh so this is basically the Sonic Adventure 2 of the FF series?
Multi Tails Power More like Sonic Unleashed
William White both games in a way
More like the Super Mario Sunshine of Final Fantasy.
Came back to watch this again because of it's getting a remaster
Kept us waiting huh? Glad to see more of these. As of this game I'm mixed about it. Of course, I'm excited for the next one, FF9 one of my favorites aside from 4 and 6.
While it's not clear early on why Laguna and friends have access to your exact GFs and magics, it becomes clear later that they're literally accessing them through the party members - that Ellone is Junctioning the party to Laguna, Kiros and Ward. I think it's Kiros who explains in one of the optional dialogues in Esthar that they had what they called "fairies" sometimes and when they had them, they had fantastic powers, though it could be some other time.
Squall's inner monologues in the Dissidia games are what make me liek the character. because unliek in FF8 where it's mostly really pessimistic depressing stuff, it's jsut him being snarky and thinking how dumb everyone's acting
His character development from edgy loner in 8 to snarky introvert in Dissidia is fun as hell
The enemies levels scale to your party average
Final Fantasy VIII was one of my first Final Fantasy games along with VII. It's also the game I replayed the most, the soundtrack is amazing, Squall's my favourite character in the series and while I feel that his love for Rinoa came out of nowhere and that his friends were complete assholes whenever it came to his feelings towards her, I still liked the supporting cast most of the time. Easely one of my favourite games to just play through, while obviously not being the one I consider to be the best Final Fantasy, that spot still belongs to Final Fantasy IX.
Agree. FF8 has many good things, shamefully overshadowed by major flaws. Opinion depend on if you can go around its weirdness and design issues. Because when it is good then it is really good. Also do you know theory regard Ultimacia?
Excellent video Clement! Been waiting for this one for a while and it was absolutely worth the wait! Can't wait for the future Final Fantasy reviews.
A correction: you don't have to be a SeeD to have GFs. Pretty much everyone in Balamb Garden fights with GF Junctions (Squall already has Quezacotl and Shiva before becoming a SeeD). For all practical purposes, being a SeeD means you can stay in Garden after the age of 20 (non-SeeDs are released when they become 20) and get paid to do missions.
Makes me wonder just how many different GFs there could have been if the developers felt like it; or if GFs exist like Pokemon in the world of ff8, where there're multiple copies of the same ones
These FF videos remind me of another channel I love called The Geek Critique. I can listen to you guys talk about video games forever. The analysis, jokes, real life experience bits, I just love it. Cheers Clement
Now I'm wondering how long the FF13 video will be...
Malik Reeves The real question is if he’ll talk about just the first game or all three games in that trilogy. There’s A LOT to unravel with that mess.
Can you even unravel that mess of a trilogy?
At the very least I know that Clement thinks 13-2 is better than the first one. No idea what he thought about Lightning Returns, though.
Probably as long as the hallway. Make no mistake about it. I do enjoy playing FFXIII. I enjoy playing FFVIII and FFX, despite my issues with the games. But that doesn't mean I won't acknowledge their flaws.
Malik Reeves if someone can spend over 4 hours unraveling the star wars prequels, then unraveling the ff13 trilogy doesn't seem out of the realm of possibilities.
Great video dude, keep em coming.
You don’t know how much I love this game! I love it so much 2nd after FF6!
The story, the characters, the environments, the GF, drawing and refining magic, equipping unique command skills. I love how different this game tried to be from others in the series (FF2 was also different). Triple Triad is amazing except for when you accidentally spread around unwanted rules then it’s a hassle to get rid of certain rules. Squall is my spirit character I love him so much, I can always relate to him. Zell is such a cool rocking dude with a unique limit break mechanic I really like and I wish I had a close friend just like him. Selphie is my favorite girl, I was shocked her name is the same term as taking a picture of yourself and in 1999 too! I love how strong and intimidating she acts in times of confrontation. I love how the Garden itself is able to float and move around as a way of transportation and driving your own rental car was cool too, and omg the Ragnarok is the best Airship in all of Final Fantasy capable of space travel with a kickass theme song. Overall I love the whole Soundtrack of the game, Eyes on Me and the Ending which always gets me because (more spoilers)
Squall smiles at Rinoa in the end cutscene🙂☺️☺️
And it’s something that he hardly does in the game.
Your love for this game is so pure, it made me smile. Rock on!
This game's mechanic of constantly pressing a button to boost an attack, has to this day, led me to believe that pressing any particular key or button would boost the attack out of habit.
Clement, I dunno if you know this but you can actually still play Triple Triad on disc 4. The Lunar Base space pod that Piet escaped in is on the world map on disc 4 where you'll find the Queen of Cards. She plays any of the 5 rare cards that are involved with her sidequest if you missed them before time compression happens (Kiros, Irvine, Chubby Chocobo, Doomtrain and Phoenix). You can also play against the Card Club members who are onboard the Ragnarok if you completed the CC sidequest. Each member by then would have learned different card rules from various regions all over the world except Galbadia for some reason. They will also play any GF or Player card that you don't have in your inventory, regardless of whether they were missed or modified (i.e. if you didn't get the Seifer card or if you refined it at some point, one of the CC members will play that card and you'll be able to obtain it again).
When you played the gardens theme I just closed my eyes and felt the hell out of that.
I am in the same boat as you are. I like FF8, but there are some absolutely dumb shit in it that I really do not like.
But the atmosphere, music, locations and side content are so strong, it makes up for the flaws, and there's just some indescribable quality that appeals to me.
But I have to disagree with you in regards to headmaster Cid's appearance. He does not look like Robin Williams. He's the spitting image of Bill Gates ;)
Cid Kramer was easily the worst Cid. A candy ass who does practically nothing cool or important the whole game and just buggers off toward the end to be with Edea who was his enemy most of the game and for years before and just abandons the Garden for some teenagers to run it.
The Ragnarok scene still gets me 20 years later!....the song was great. I loved this game, yes compared to other entries it was easy but it was such a fun game to play.
As for the final stage of Ultimica, Quistis' White Wind is far better than bothering with Mega Elixirs
So far out of all the FF games I’ve played (7,8,9&10), this is definitely my least favorite. I see what Clement meant in how the game is weirdly compelling. The game was interesting to me upon beginning it, but then the repetitiveness just got to me and I was soon bored. I didn’t end up caring for the characters, I just constantly wanted to get a move on in an already slow paced game, and I gave up before I even finished disc 2. I wanted to like this game, but I just couldn’t. It’s a shame, but I’m glad I at least gave it a shot.
Your experience is very similar to mine. I wanted to like this game so much, but I just couldn't
Yeah. I agree. I know FF2 & FF13 are far worst than FF8. But I never played them nor I never will. But FF8 is my least favorite I've played so far and it is the weakest of the PS1 Final Fantasy games. Doesn't make the game awful and there are few things I liked about the game; like the updated cutscenes & presentation and the OST kicks butt. But there are many design choices that felt really rushed and unpolished.
I love Squall and Rinoa, they're some of my favorite characters in FF and overall in video games. I absolutely love its story despite its flaws and Squall and Rinoa make the game amazing for me, I just wish there was more time with them!
And honestly I like the junction system! I still used magic when I wanted and was ok and just refined more when needed!
The story caught me so hard as a teenager, went for an epic quest to find my own Rinoa back then.
Well I still kinda am on that quest as women are certainly different irl than portrayed by Japanese introverts *but oh well* , FF8 is finally getting a remaster!
So happy you made this. I adore this game. As a kid the story blew my little mind. From the second the characters start puzzling together their memory loss and what contributed to it, I was enthralled. Oh and ... GUNBLADES?! How sick is that?! Impractical and ridiculous but still the coolest weapon ever. That's right! Step off Cloud.
Ok, now to subscribe and finish your video.
I'm happy gunblades exist because when discussing them on youtube someone sent me a wikipedia article about them and I noticed something called RWBY. The rest is history.
GFs are necessary? TFW no GF...
I thought yours was a spot-on retrospective. You just convinced me to finally play through it again, and i havent played it since 1999
When i was younger, read 6 years old i didnt understand the draw system, now i do and......well its not perfect and It may be slow and grindy....but it is innovative and it is a way to give the summons more relevancy than being tactical attack nukes and meat shields, because you forgot to mention in the video that the summons have to charge an action bar before they attack and their HP shields their summoner until they attack and they can die and become unusable until you revive them....it was a way to make them feel part of the party.
This game was by far... the most disappointing game I've ever played in my life. For those of you who love this game, can you tell me what it is you loved about it, other than the presentation? I really am interested to hear
The music is fantastic. But I agree the game is disappointing.
Not my favorite Final Fantasy, but definitely the most nostalgic for me. FF8 was my first Final Fantasy and I did everything I could possibly do in that game, card games and all. Tempted to buy FF8 on Steam if only for that Chocobo World mini-game missing from the PSX version.
Warning, it's SUPER broken if you just leave your PC on overnight.
Enjoy the Lv 100 goodies.
broski, that intro gave me goosebumps right before you said that it gave you goosebumps. That freaking piano note and timpani roll at the end. Daaaaaaaaaaaaamn
See you guys in 2019 for Clement Remembers Final Fantasy! (IX)
Xenonuke LOLOLOLOLOL XD
Xenonuke Actually, at this rate, X
Currently binging these videos and you have the best laugh! Awesome videos and I agree with almost all of your opinions