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« on: 2010-06-03 20:26:22 »
I know this Board is mostly dedicated to FF7. But it's often overlooked sequel brought many things to the FF franchise as well. Like its predecessor it brought to the gaming world, a touching story, hours of engaging gameplay, and lovable characters. However, FF8 also brings stunning graphics that made FF7 look extremely pixelated and blocky. With realistic looking characters, graphics that had not been seen before, and a soundtrack to rival FF7's, one would expect FF8 to be a worthy sequel. Unfortunately the reason FF8 is often overlooked is what I believe to be a pretty huge flaw.
As many of you know FF8 has always had a rather controversial battle system. Many people (myself included) find that the battle system to be a bit of a letdown from FF7. When I first opened FF8, I saw the beautiful opening the FMV, the duel between Squall and Seifer and I remember thinking to myself "wow." I ended up playing the game, and I found it to be an amazing experience (my all-time favourite FF), though not without faults. The fault with FF8 was that the battle system didn't really encourage customization. It wasn't as open ended as FF7; playing through FF8 I know I constantly thought, man where the hell is my all materia or damn it's time to draw 100 meteors. FF8 is a beautiful game, I greatly enjoyed the story and the FMV's and the introduction of the realistic art style to the FF series but I did find the following faults with the game that had potential to really ruin the experience.
1. The fact that Enemies leveled with you. This might not sound bad, but as they level they only gain more abilities so in the end they end up stronger than you as you level (making it advantageous to NOT level). So most people simply just refuse to level their characters and comboed with Diablos enc-none they practically stayed low level for the entire game. It felt kind of like it went against the rule of RPG's for a party to defeat Ultimecia at level 7.
2. The junction system. There was no customization aspect to junctioning stats; rather it was draw 100 of a spell and then put it in your attack stat. I liked the Status Effects and Elemental Attacks part a bit more because there was no clear "best spell."
3. Triple Triads effect on the strength of your characters. Basically right after you beat Ifrit you load up on 100 tornados through TT and cardmod. Then you continue to pretty much kill all enemies in 1 hit for the remainder of disc 1.
4. The limited quantity of abilities in the game. Deathblow, Morph, Mime, Coin, Enemy Skill, Throw, Manipulate, Steal As Well, All, 2x cut, etc etc, were all taken out. This left FF8 to be very nonstrategic with pretty much everyone doing the exact same thing for all their characters.
5. The draw system. Tediously boring. Removable overpowered equivalent to sources in FF7. The draw system basically worked like this, draw 100 of a spell, then proceed to never use them again so you don't lose stat bonuses.
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So my idea would be to rework the battle system a bit.
1. Instead of having the monsters level up with you, use a standard RPG 1-100 level monsters. (In order to make difficulty adjustable, as opposed to running around as level 7 and having a picnic throughout the game)
2. Change the rewards of Triple Triad.
3. Replace the AP system on GF, with maybe like a sphere grid thing. Perhaps something that looks like FF10's sphere system, but make it so that you only start off with access to several spheres. Then as you go outward make it so that all the spheres are blank; sort of like empty materia slots. As you go outward you can learn different skills, such as the ones that are missing from FF7, such as 2x cut or mime. However only certain GF's can learn certain abilities. While maintaining the screen where you select which abilities/boosts you want from you GF's.
4. Instead of drawing, magic is learned from GF's. MP system should be added or perhaps no system; permit magic casting without limit but instead gradually weaken if used consecutively.
5. Removal of the junction system. To remedy the low stats caused by this (characters have extremely low base stats because they are expected to junction) base stat growth should be increased.
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I know this would probably be a huge project, but I really loved FF8, and I feel it doesn't receive the love it deserves. Often overshadowed because of its slightly lacking battle system, FF8 could be much much better if the battle system were to undergo an overhaul. I don't expect anyone to do this, it's merely an idea and a plea to rework one of the underappreciated FF's of the series. I know you guys are already overworked, and do not have much time to spare, but if you have the time, I really would love to see a reworked FF8.
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