[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Draw a lot of magic and junction it all to your stats and you're pretty much good to go. There are probably "dirtier" ways to break it too but the Junction system itself is wildly imbalanced for the majority of the game.
_________________
Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Talbain]

There's an Aura-Draw at the beginning of the game that you can use to effectively break the game in the first fifteen minutes if I recall correctly. It maxes your stats if you get Aura up to 100.
_________________

[Vikram Ray]

I was thinking more of the method involving learning Card and Card Mod early on, playing Triple Triad a lot and then getting uber-stats right quick. Anyone know? The idea is to never use GFs and play Triple Triad a whole bunch.

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Well I know that past a certain point you can get a type of ability that converts cards into magic, which with rare cards will produce extremely high-level/high-yield spells that can buff up your characters stupendously. But I thought this was a GF ability, and couldn't be acquired until some ways into the game.

Disclaimer: I haven't played the game in over two years and don't remember a lot of it very well.
_________________
Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Talbain]

I don't remember anything about the Triple Triad System, other than that I spent a lot of time getting all the character cards. FF8 was kind of a wash for me; I remember relatively little of it aside from falling asleep to Fisherman's Horizon on sleepy weekends (and I suppose how easy it is to break, maybe because there were so many guides on how to break the game on GameFAQs at the time). I miss those times every now and again.
_________________

[mauve]

yeah i can't even suffer through ff8 to powergame the thing, it really is that bad.

i remember that i just got heal mod and lazily bought enough tents to give myself a zillion HP so i can just spam limit breaks until about disc 3
_________________
twit

[kitroebuck]

Ya'll are talking about my game again. The most efficient way is to immediately learn Card and Card Mod from Quetzacotl (I think that's how they spell it) and Ice Mod from Shiva. Just fight fish on the beach until you get them. The fish drop fins, five of which can be modded to 100 Waters, which can be junctioned to strength right away. Beat Ifrit in the fire cave and get his card. Use Ifrit's card to get Quistis' card from a guy in the cafeteria. Between those two cards it should be easy to beat anyone you play, at least until the rules change. Run around playing cards whenever you feel like it. You can get Zell's card from his mom, and Seifer's from Cid after the Dollet mission. Keep your five strongest cards and mod all the rest. This should keep you well stocked with magic. You'll never have to spend time drawing.

From there, it's a matter of preference. If you use the Card ability on all the enemies, you will be able to build yourself up with magic without gaining experience. Since the enemies' levels scale with you, the rest of the game should be pretty trivial. Alternately, you can do what mauve did: junction Curaga (modded from tents) to your HP, take enough damage so you're in a state of permanent crisis, and Renzokuken the hell out of everything. The fights will still be trivial, but the enemies will level up, and higher level enemies have better drops and better magic to draw.

If you do want to draw, by the way, be sure to junction something good to your magic stat. Higher magic lets you draw more at once.

So that's a couple of ways to break the game. I don't really agree with the term "break", though. All these exploits are part of the system; figuring them out IS the game. I don't think they make the game broken, just easy. The clue that they're in there by intention is that the second form of the final boss has an attack that does ALL the damage (9999 to all party members.) The only ways to survive it involve some pretty wacky behavior that wouldn't occur to you if you were playing the game like, well, any other final fantasy.

Come to think of it, I don't really think any game is "broken." Play to win guys.

[tiburon]

[Vikram Ray]

heck yeah to all that kitroebuck.

[Gironika]

re FF8-breaking:
iirc, the HP of enemies/bosses are calculated according to the HP of Squally?
So, if you want to make sure it'll stay easy, you'd kill him before big points are distributed, and refrain from pushing his HP-stat w/ GFs.
_________________

[Talbain]

I remember that you can do the same thing with Aura but I remember that Aura allows you to simply spam your limit break, making the game both trivial and not requiring a lot of time to perform (the strategy was to spam triangle which switched between your characters until one of them got Limit Break). Didn't know about the level scaling thing though, that's interesting.

kitroebuck, I do think it's very possible to break a game. Making a game trivially easy by some combination of mechanics is a metaphorical break. The more literal ones are typically performed by speedrunners though. Metroid Prime 2 and its copious out of bounds tricks versus Gimmick! and its interesting star jumping mechanics. One is a literal break and the other is metaphorical. You're correct in them both typically being really difficult to perform/figure out in real-time though.
_________________

[Swimmy]

The black guy who walks in the hallway between the main area and the library has the Blitz card. Mod this card into Dynamo stones. Use Thunder Magic Refine to mode those into 20 Thundagas. Get 5 of these to get 100 Thundagas. Junction these to your elemental attack. Hit the X-ATM092 for 2000 HP a pop. lol your way through the rest of the game.

RNG manipulation to farm Rosetta stones at the beginning of Disc 2 is where the real brokenness is at though. Rosetta stones teach GF-abilityx4.
_________________

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

In fairness to FF8, there are a couple optional side quests right at the end of disc 4 that actually have (some) challenge even if you've broken the rest of the game

But yeah sorry kit, if there's a thing you can do in-game, without having to use glitches or exploits or anything, that totally devastates any semblance of balance or challenge to the point that the game's challenges and mechanics (other than the one that lets you win everything) are rendered, as Talbain says, trivial, that game is broken. Symphony of the Night is absurdly breakable too.

Most FF games let you break them at the end, but that's usually as a reward for progressing through the rest of the game and mastering its growth system(s). VIII is the only one that's so broken you can game it practically the whole way through.
_________________
Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[kitroebuck]

Yeah, I was overstating it a bit. I'm sure some games can be broken. It's just that, in the case of FF8 and a lot of other games I've heard described as broken, what we're talking about is high-level play. Just because getting deep into the game's systems makes the combat trivial doesn't mean there's no depth. You're still making meaningful choices, you're just making them outside of combat. It's like playing on the executive level. If you set it up right, the details take care of themselves.

Anyway, on topic, FF8 did this nice thing with dialogue where you could just overhear conversations from people you pass by. Funnily, this allows you to more effectively roleplay Squall, since he's not going to actually go up and talk to those people.

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

It took me almost no time on my first proper playthrough to break FF8's systems to the point of robbing it of all challenge. It really isn't some advanced stat-juking trick you learn from playing the game multiple times, it's an imbalance woven into the very fundamentals of the game system.

That said, for as many things as I dislike about FF8, I will say that Squall is actually one of the more interesting and well-written FF protagonists, and Seifer is one of the more interesting antiheroes. Unfortunately all the other characters (with the possible exception of Laguna) are horribly one-dimensional, which is particularly bad in Rinoa's case since she's supposed to carry the most dramatic weight of the plot next to the aforementioned characters (all the other party members the game all but admits are interchangeable pretty faces). The theory that Ultimecia is Rinoa from the future is such an improvement on both characters in the game as-is that it's no wonder fans want it so badly to be true.

Even Seifer eventually gets semi-forgotten by the game after it's introduced so convoluted BS plot threads that it no longer knows what to do with him other than pull him back out for a boss fight once per disc. And Squall falls flat in the end by the simple fact that so much of his development is dependent on a character as flat as Rinoa (also the fact that after the game's infamous Muppet Babies reveal his abandonment issues just look kinda silly).
_________________
Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[mauve]

so much of squall's character revolves around rinoa in ridiculously contrived ways it's really hard to take them seriously. (squall disc1/2 is a different person than he is in disc3/4. goes from "meh, whatever, saving the dumbass girl again" to "I AM MADLY IN LOVE" almost instantly)

would have been much better if the entire game was just laguna's band tromping around being stupid the whole time
_________________
twit

[kitroebuck]

I... don't disagree. Except for Selphie. Selphie is interesting. If only for the scene at the missile base when, having been locked in with the missiles about to strike, she resigns herself to death and wonders if Squall is going to take over the Garden Festival for her, and then she's like "who am I kidding?" That's cute.

Rinoa is pretty bad, yeah, but Quistis. I don't get Quistis at all.

[Talbain]

[LandRoverAttack]

you can also get squall's final weapon (and thus his best limit break) on disc 1
_________________

[Swimmy]

You can get everyone's final weapon but Irvine's on disc 1, although yes, Squall's is the only one worth getting.
_________________

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

[Talbain]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

I suppose if you're referring to things like dumbed-down versions of Rei and Asuka's characters showing up in other media without any understanding of what made those specific characters compelling and subversive and reduced only to their viewer wish-fulfillment fantasy aspects then yeah, I can agree with you. Though I dunno if it's fair to hold Evangelion responsible for that any moreso than to hold Hayao Miyazaki responsible for kicking off the moe phenomenon with his films' heroines.
_________________
Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Talbain]

It's not really just that, though it's also exactly that sort of reductive creativity. Still, the similarities FF8 shares are obviously not just Evangelion, but in the same way that no movie steals from just one movie, no videogame steals from just one pop culture piece either. Still, it's glorified in a way that has a lot of people following its mantra even if they misplace its values. FF8 just seems to take what it sees as the foam from those ideas and coalesces them into what I would generously call faceless stereotypes.
_________________

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Like I said, I literally think FF8's characters were designed to look cool first, and had personality traits (a term I use very loosely here) half-assedly grafted on after the fact. That's in contrast to many older games, where the character outlines came first and the designs followed. I'd be curious to see some early versions of VIII's designs to test this theory.

Also keep in mind that FF7 was at least as colossal a driving force in the video game world as Eva was for anime and Japanese pop culture in general, and VIII unquestionably owes way more to the former than the latter. Not that VII wasn't likely itself inspired by Eva, but the connection seems clearer in that case than in VIII's.
_________________
Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Talbain]

[mauve]

iirc they said straight up they decided to go for a school days setting because they thought it was popular at the time. no joke.

i'm not sure they had much of a plan beyond that.
_________________
twit

[Rud31]

Thus the path of post FF7 Square was born.
_________________
My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Ratoslov]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

There are a bunch of JRPGs (e.g. Final Fantasy Tactics) that are pretty explicit about the lethality of your party's methods, but I guess I can't think of any that really depict an opponent defeated in battle as graphically dying. The closest that comes to mind is Shin Megami Tensei IV, which features a variety of different and lovingly detailed defeat animations for enemy sprites based on the type of weapon or special attack used to take them down - defeat them with a gun move, for example, and the sprite bursts full of bloody bullet holes; defeat them with a fire spell, and they char to a crisp; defeat them with a wind spell, and they visibly blow away; defeat them with a needle-based attack, and they bulge and explode in a shower of blood; you get the idea.

[Talbain]

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

Even Kane & Lynch I can only get so immersed in due to the fact that the violence, despite being uncommonly frenetic and visually ugly, is still unmistakably "gamey" in its portrayal (a couple of guys slaughtering literally hundreds of police, mobsters, etc.) and execution (regenerating health, snap-to cover, and other familiar gamey mechanics).

…responding to this caused me to get into an extended rant about my personal feelings on violence, which is kind of a broad topic, but ended up getting personal and unrelated to video games enough that I felt like it was getting out of place for this thread so I posted it on my blog instead.

Anyway, the important part is that you guys are just making me bummed I can't play Moon :(
_________________
Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Talbain]

[mauve]

Actually violent death animations for humans are fairly rare in Japanese stuff on the whole as it's a fast track to a more adult rating, and even where it absolutely makes sense that they should exist, they won't because of it.

J-PSN has an 18+ section these days, and it's all violent games.

As far as Moon goes, I can't see it getting translated anytime soon, so grind JP and watch a playthrough if you really want to.
_________________
twit

[Gironika]

[fauxedit]
today i'm feeling kinda exhausted, so instead of doing what I often do (not saying/posting anything, writing it up later, forgetting about what I wanted to say) i still want to throw some thoughts out there to come back to some later on:

# look at the release-schedule (never seen half the titles there before tbh!) pre-FF2, pre-FF7, pre- and post-Y2K. fyi: SQEX list, post merger.

There has been a lack of non-FF/RPG-titles after FF2, and they churned out RPGs like madmen. Then they tried the waters with a huge numbers of titles, be it published or self-developed, with some quirky games (Einhänder, iS, Racing Lagoon) for RPG-square. And is it just me, or did they tone down the craziness a bit after Y2K? The odd ones are still around (Driving Emo Type-S, eh?), and maybe it is because the internet made tracking information easier™ (or SQEX credited the real companies doing their games better?), but their output seems to shift more towards publishing games.

# thinking about ff1-7, and then FF8, it really feels like someone wanted to test how far they can push the envelope. It's so out-of-tune with the whole FF-idea, that it's kinda interesting what made them do it this way. 9 <really> was a throwback to former glory™ that would mark the end of an era (for square, that is). Afterwards, it seems that they kinda lost the feeling/the staff/the hope to do a "proper" FF. I always like to point out that the last game that felt like a proper FF to me was Lost Odyssey, and that had (only?) two key FF-staff members on its payroll.

# i had something to say about their other series (Mana/Chrono/Saga), their action-rpg forays (Threads of Fate, Musashi, KH, Code Age Commanders) but i forgot what it was about

# wonderful quirky games every now and then: Rad Racer, Front Mission, Einhander, Ehrgeiz, Wrestling, iS, nanashi no game, dissidia, TWEWY … you always wonder how they managed to pass the QC/clearance, but somehow they did, and seem(?) to never sell well.

# Eidos deal was the best deal ever™, considering what they've put out the last few years on X360/PS3. FF-aside, of course.
_________________

[Felix]

I'm finding this thread really weird because it isn't at all consistent with the respects in which I'm content to give PSX-era Square (but definitely not PS2-era square) a pass so I don't have much to add but I'm enjoying it nonetheless

[Talbain]

Gironika, near as I can tell the reason a game doesn't sell well typically has more to do with marketing than the quality of the game (and the games that don't sell well in Square's repertoire are typically marketed poorly or not at all--they are not a central part of Square's marketing strategy). Dark Souls is a bit of a rare breed with regards to its cult success. Or maybe it's not? It's somewhat hard to tell with games that get ported to PC and find a lot of success there post-console (particularly JP games, as relatively few of them get ported compared to releases from other countries).
_________________

[mauve]

I don't think Dark Souls would have done as well if it just came out of nowhere. Having Demon's Souls beforehand, and the legacy of King's Field before that, was a pretty big deal.

Which, to me, says that if you seriously want to build a franchise, stick with it for the long haul, marketing and all, instead of hoping to strike gold on your first outing.
_________________
twit

[Ni Go Zero Ichi]

All of Square's games prior to the PS1 era were internally developed, after which they started publishing games from third-party devs with increasing frequency as they got bigger and bigger, until now they're big enough to buy smaller devs (which at this point is most of them).

Sakaguchi left the company around 2002/2003 I believe, and I'm convinced you can trace a direct slide in their creativity after that point. Even the very last games put out during his tenure - Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy XI and FF Tactics Advance, I believe - still felt recognizably like Square titles, whatever their faults. It was only after that point that Final Fantasy started to turn increasingly to self-caricature, and the output of original IPs versus FF and KH spinoffs started to dwindle. Their more creative or risky games moved onto the DS and PSP, since those platforms could still be developed for with only moderate budgets and team sizes, while the main development teams notoriously demonstrated their inability to make sense of development for HD consoles.

Also Dissidia must have sold alright considering it got a sequel - and since the whole game is one hugely elaborate exercise in pandering to FF fans, that isn't especially surprising. I'm pretty sure that some powerful people at Square (i.e. Nomura) are at least aware of TWEwY's widespread fan adoration, if not blockbuster commercial success, but as was pointed out above goodwill toward a standalone game can help create a successful franchise in the future. Bravely Default is proving that too, being as far as I know Square's first highly successful original IP in some time, outperforming their expectations both domestically and overseas (despite not even carrying the FF branding) such that they're already eagerly talking about a sequel.
_________________
Just another savage day on Planet Earth.

[Rud31]

[Rud31]

Also for violence in JRPGs Type Zero is going to blow y'alls fucking minds.
_________________
My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS