Final Fantasy VIII Retrospective - Why all the hate?

Final Fantasy 7 was finished it instantly became my favorite game of all time it was so good I had to buy a second copy of the game well not because I was bougie because somebody took a pen to disc one and absolutely ruined it and that was the original artwork one I had to get a Platinum version of the game later on but the benefit of getting this Final Fantasy 7 Platinum version was that it came with the opening video of Final Fantasy 8 I put in that little demo and I watched the first shot

of the beach I was like okay what are we expecting here and then the music kicked in the orchestral the operatic singing oh my word I had no idea what was going on but my jaw dropped I was first of all shocked where's Cloud where is he where's where's bar where's Tifa where's ath oh well no she's in the water we know where she is But where's everyone else now at the time I didn't realize that every time you have a final fantasy it's a whole new world I had no idea remember I was coming

into at this Final Fantasy 7 is my first game so I had no ideas of the one before now after the success of seven you thought they would have just made a 72 or keep it in the same world but for what some people didn't know all I didn't know was that Final Fantasy 8 was already in development during ff7 Translation period here in the west and this kind of reminded me of when the West got Pokémon red and blue because we were all so excited about it like Yay look at this game but gold

and silver just hit in Japan so we were way behind the eight ball now as I said the developers could have made a safe game but they didn't and and they decided to make what sometime is referred to as the Black Sheep it definitely stands out don't get Me wrong it's plots it's characters mechanics and that mini game no no no no too early stop that stop that but today we are going to be talking about that black sheep Final Fantasy 8 the middle game in the PlayStation Trilogy one which had the biggest uphill battle

I've ever seen in gaming it was a battle which a lot of people thought it had no chance to do but it gave it its Best Shot I've completed this game many times and I know a lot of other people have And there have been a lot of other discussions about the law and about how the game Mechanics Work and is this actually a good game so I'm going to do my own little Deep dive and I want you to come join with me now I should say if you are liking this please give a

comment like And subscribe it really helps get the channel out there right let's jump in shall we now as I said the main thing going against it was that you were going against Final Fantasy 7 and This is Final Fantasy 8 how are you going to topple one of the best if not the best game of all time in my opinion it is and if it's not shut up shut up like there's so much to talk about like where do we start so as I said earlier when I first put that disc in I watched

the beach scene and it kicked off my jaw dropped like I wasn't lying that opening sequence was absolutely beautiful Square showed once again they were the king of Fmvs and this opening FMV set the game in motion like we basically got to see some of the characters we got to see the bad guy in a DI we got to see renoa but it also then led to the Epic sword fight between our antagonist and our protagonist Squall and Cipher and it and events that was going to be coming our way it was abs absolutely incredible

like ff7 did look good don't get me wrong but when you look back at it now those fmvs were very stiff look At the way Barrett walks you could add like the tuba noise in family go profano fany eight models look so fluid and I suppose it really helped that they Ed motion caption to do this and even the characters models in game got an overall redesign gone with the Lego people from Final Fantasy 7 to realistic models to help the characters feel more lifelike and I think although it was a bit of a shock

I think this was probably the best idea because it helps The characters feel more grounded in the environments that they were unlike Final Fantasy 7 where you just had these really gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds with just these Lego people sitting there whereas Final Fantasy 8 kind of makes sense and they really do fit in with a sense of scale having these realistic models also helped convey situations to the story like that real emotion can come out and going back to Final Fantasy 7 you couldn't really Convey the emotion because these are people without noses or mouths

so how did you do that but in final f8 you could really tell by their body movements although there wasn't their facial expressions but you can really tell the emotion that was going on between them Additionally the character models were also so good they were used in battle as well as out again unlike seven which had Lego people and then the realistic models the game was such a Huge stepup graphic ly when you consider the short gap between Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8 at the time it set the standard for how good games

can look the dance scene was absolutely beautiful and mesmerizing as well oh that was the other video that was on that disc as well before anyone shouts at me in the UK yeah that was there I know now Graphics today they they do look dated of course they look dated I'm not silly but at the time they were really good But there's always one scene I look at it now which makes me laugh which is where renoa says to Squall at the dance but you're the prettiest guy in here this just kind of reminds me

now of this pre-rendered backgrounds were used again like in Final Fantasy 7 and again they work so so well the backgrounds look so beautiful and they EXP dress so much again they could have gone to 3D but I don't think they should have done that and sticking with these Pre-rendered backgrounds was definitely the best idea as I said with Final Fantasy 7's pre-rendered backgrounds they were used in such a way that you could actually use the fmvs and merge them into it or merge them out of it it was very very clever now this game

itself should be noted it's huge remember Final Fantasy 7 had three discs and we all lost on mind this thing has four I know nine did as well but four discs we knew we were in for a good time With how many discs we were getting could you imagine this is on the N64 it crippled Nintendo they the console would just blow up wouldn't have a clue and yes like Final Fantasy 7 there was a TV adver Final Fantasy 8 and did it convey what it was meant to be doing no here it is coming

this fall the most anticipated action adventure of the year a story of one man's struggle to save Mankind from extermination and his quest to win the heart of the woman he loves an epic so Stunning your emotions will stir your heart will race and your thumbs will be really really sore Final Fantasy 8 coming to a home here near you great absolutely faral it's ridiculous well they're probably thinking Final Fantasy 7 one work so who cares if we just do the same Final Fantasy 8 fits money at the end of the day we'll win now

I've talked a lot about the graphics to begin with I think it's probably time we set the stage set the Stage of who our main players are you play as Squall leonart a resident of the futuristic city called Gardens they're in training to become a member of seed which is like the gardens version of the military mercenary he starts the game in bed after having his face slashed by Cipher his rival slash antagonist we saw this in the opening video like he's got a really cool scar in the game that that looks really good but

I kept thinking imagine that in real life like I've Always thought I think that scar would look cool on me but I know if I had a scar like that like a slash across the face it's going to look like when tin and Lannister had one it ain't going to look good I don't think you can get a scar that looks that pretty it's just not happening it's not you're then visited by your teacher Quist if I've pronounced this wrong shout at me in the comments this is how I pronounced it in my head so

she's your teacher and she's Only 18 and you're 17 what what I don't think that's how Education Works does it fine she takes you to class after you've suffered this horrific face injury and you know don't worry about it it's fine just jog on and you start the tutorials oh my God the tutorials there are so many tutorials that you don't don't even fight your first battle for 25 Minutes the [ __ ] who thought that was a good idea Final Fantasy 7 you do it within 20 seconds that's ridiculous but as you realize they

probably need to because there's so much going on in this game you probably do need those tutorials and let's get into these battles shall we battles once again are three members of your team against the enemies you can attack use magic item and draw previously magic was relied on MP well Not this time now you draw Magic from your enemies it's a cute idea and you can draw points from across the world as I said it's a cute idea at first but then you realize you're going to be drawing a lot and I mean a

lot the draw system is actually the only way you can get certain summons including siren carbuncle and Eden if you miss these opportunities you need to wait a long time time to get the chance to get them again and you'll find later that you Need to be drawing a 100 of each magic spell I'll get into that why I know it's going to be all over the place this so this is become a bit of a grind there's also limited about how many spells you can actually have so ultimately you've got to keep the best

spells while making sure you get rid of the rubbish ones now let's talk about the next system shall we the GF the summons so GF stands for Guardian forces and as always they're one of the highlights of the game after Final Fantasy 7 puts so much of an emphasis on the animation of summons Final Fantasy 8 went one step further now each character has the ability to quit GFS they kind of go into their brain I think that's how it's said and they can use them in battle at the beginning of the game you're going

to be using them a lot well I did I used them very heavily and when you can summon them and you can summon them as much as you want it it begins a cutscene now This cutscene is not skippable it's not a problem at the beginning but it is later on when you try and summer Eden and Eden's animation is over a minute it's only 2 minutes long it's outrageous especially when you can do that every single turn but the reason why they're not skippable is because if you press select you actually get a little

number counter start pressing square and that number counter goes up the higher the number goes the more Damage you're going to do but when a little hand comes over and little Xbox goes over it you need to stop pressing Square Square because if you press square once when it's in full view your number goes back down to its original value which means its original attack so ideally you want to try and get the best score you can to do the most damage now in the game There are 16 GFS some of them are four some

of them are drawn and some of them you can make with a recipe List apparently you can make a train you can make a train through ingredients I don't know how that works but it it does it does you can also get seven GFS that come in randomly or use an item the item ones I wasn't sure about but some of them will just pop in and come say hello but of a pro tip do not get Odin before dis 4 get him at DIS four he's a badass and you're going to cry I'll we'll

go into this later I swear to God do not get Odin before disc 4 I warn you now to talk about some of the GFS you've got iift Shiva bahamar who are kind of Main Stays but then you've got someons who make their only appearance which you've got quic Cottle Doom train and Cerberus some of them you get to fight as I mentioned epft the brothers Diablo Cerberus and bahamat and these fights are tough and two of them you don't even have to do but then you're not going to get them and you don't want

that do you Because we're all completionists except we don't scam people for money but yeah we're completionist in the sense we want to get them all along with using a big attack H GF has abilities which you can attach to your character and these can be mastered through AP which you obtain in battle these skills can be used in battle such as recover revive counter or they give you stat boost such as HP increase strength increase you even gain the increased ability slot to eventually Have four abilities so you could have recover revive a HP

increase and a strength increase but also because of the system it means you can mix and match all these GF abilities and this allows for so much expression in the game which I think is great case in point zel was my healer he had recover and revive and it was all part of my strategy which I'll get to later but zel's meant to be that little Bruiser but all he ever did in the game was heal People he had no other objective apart from healing it's ridiculous and fighting the GFS was absolutely amazing thing to

do because I hadn't done that before this is all brand new and actually it's part of the story it's part of your seed test and apparently Accord to Quist it's your makeup test so she takes you as part of your makeup test to a cave to go fight EFT in literal hell first of all who approved this Test and at the time when I was 17 I was doing my a levels not fighting fire demons where's his parents permission slip oh oh oh yeah we'll get to that and I think kids need to stop moaning

about doing these School tests sitting in in an exam room for 3 hours doing in something on a bit of paper it's less taxing and fighting a fire demon ridiculous also what was the main test Chris says that's your makeup test What did you have to do for the main one how many people died it's ridiculous I just sometimes you have to look at health and safety and go it's a bit much here I'm kind of with it and go maybe someone should have stepped in and gone you know what probably not the safest thing

to do and I don't care if any of you think want it's a video game shut up shut up but the other reason and the Main reason that you want to have a GF equipped is the ability to Junction magic okay junctioning here we go I'm absolutely dreading this when you Junction a gf2 you one of the nine stats light up so that could be your strength your HP your magic ability Etc and then what you can do is you can Junction magic to that stat for example add Fire magic to your HP and it

makes your HP go up this is why you need to draw a 100 of them because the more magic you have There the higher the stat some spells will do different stat growths depending on what it is for example The Cure spell does more for your HP growth than fire does but this system also kind of has a bad side like if I'm got 100 cures and that's affecting my health Say by 50% and it's taking me to 4,000 Health if I use one cure then my maximum HP goes down so people got to the

stage where they didn't want to use any magic because that's going to affect their Stats and I was one of them but this system creates two things one a play Fruit was I've just mentioned you're too scared to use magic you just refuse and you'll just use attack and GFS for the whole game or two a way to break the game and I mean break the game the more GFS you have Junction to you the more of the stats light up where you can put magic to increase your stats some GFS actually gain ability to

light up a particular Stats it's a bit of trial and error but your main objective is to try and get all three characters to have all nine stats lit up and then all just fill them with really strong magic and then you broken the game like your stats become absolutely insane and the game just becomes a breeze the ability to break this game becomes so early I think the developers did not expect you to break the game this early like I think they expect you to break it but not as early As you could and

I'll go into that along with increased stats you also gain the ability to gain resistances such as sleep so you could add the Sleep magic to your defense stat to give you a bit of resistance in case anyone tries to put you to sleep however the same can also be said if you put it to your attack and then you can use it to put your enemies is asleep this method of using sleep to either your weapon or your defense gets taught to you early on In the training Garden Quist warns you about the T-Rex

or who needs to be put to sleep okay I'll watch out for the T-Rex or oh my God it's a [ __ ] T-Rex this is the beginning of the game There's an actual Tyrannosaurus Rex walking around in a garden just chilling out who the [ __ ] F approved this it didn't work in Jurassic Park as anyone here can just walk in have a nice stroll in the forest and Bang You're met by a T-Rex and this thing has 10,000 HP which Is insane like this is the problem you put it to sleep which

is great but then qutis goes and whips it don't wake it up if it's asleep run away you might as well do a Steve from South Park I'll just stick my thumb up it's but hole you may as well just do that absolutely ridiculous well the question is why would you risk it well there's two reasons one just to be a badass because you could say you beat a T-Rex straight away but two for dino bones again we'll get into that after some time you'll eventually learn about the ability to turn enemies into items and

cards no no no not now you can also turn items into magic so dino bones can be turned into Quake which is great for Your vitality there's a card of zel which you can actually turn into the GF ability strength plus 60 so at this point everything's become a bit of a joke but did the developers plan this to Happen I think they knew this was going to happen but maybe not to this extent I think they did want the player just to have fun and enjoy the story but maybe not to break the game

this early so I think this is kind of a second playthrough sort of thing so the first time when you play The Story You're trying to work out how to play it learn the mechanics but by the time you want to play it a second time you know exactly what you're doing you know how To break the game and do it like a lowlevel run sort of thing but it's your choice to do this like this is with any game you could do if you want to try and break it you can you want an

example look at Final Fantasy 2 so Final Fantasy 2 is often considered that one where if you want to increase your strength well the more you actually use your sword or use a weapon you increase your strength the more you get hit the more that your health increases the more you use magic The more your magic increases well if you want to sit there for hours on end at the beginning of the game and just hit yourself and heal hit yourself and heal hit yourself and heal well you'll gain loads of strength and loads of

HP and loads of magic you could do that if you want and try try and break the game but that's your choice if that's how you want to enjoy it then crack on I'm not going to tell you what's good or bad just your preference and Final Fantasy 8 Is exactly the same preference here now in most RPGs if you have a problem well if you want to get over the hill you just grind that's how you do it everyone loves a good grind get to the exact level you want you have the stats you

need and you'll beat the boss oh wait not with Final Fantasy 8 yes not with final fantas this does not work because the enemies scale with your level what the [ __ ] I can't remember this [ __ ] being in the guide book does anybody did Anybody get told this is it in there could somebody comment that on that for me yeah gring doesn't help at all no you actually need to learn the junction system and do it really well this is why you may see like level one runs of Final Fantasy 8 and

it can be done because yes the enemies just stay at level one and you have to rely on the J Junction system so there's one last thing I want to talk about the junction system and I actually mentioned this on the Retro Wars podcast episode 104 so the director of Final Fantasy 8 came out and said if they actually had the chance to remake Final Fantasy 8 he said he want to look at the junction system he came out and said I think you may remember we had the junction system in Final Fantasy 8 and

the thing about that system was the enemy leveled up in line with what the player's level was and obviously you had to then use the junction system and how you customized that to to overcome the Challenge there and I think this is a very difficult system for some people to get into depending on player skills sometimes they just didn't work out the best way of doing things so I'd want to return to that and really rework the battle system on Final Fantasy 8 and make it something that the level of difficulty and approachability for some

fans was a lot better balanced so I think that's the thing I'd look at most if I was going to be remaking it but What do you guys think do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing personally I don't want them to change it I figured out how to do it so when I did my second play through it was like woohoo this is going to be great fun but others I can understand were a bit hesitant about it and it might have scared them off so maybe he should have the options

for both leave both systems in and you can make that decision now okay that's out the way let's go into The characters now unlike seven we had a party of nine you only have six here and I was already like Boo Boo yes I was one of those it was early on guilty of more characters mean a better game then that's not necessarily the case I know so let's look at our main character Squall he is the main character and honestly everyone just calls him Moody like I previously called him a crybaby in the Final

Fantasy 7 video which had people up in arms I know in reality he Has a lot of attachment issues having not been raised by his birth family but we're going to get to that don't worry he really doesn't like to let other people in he wants them out he he wants wants to stay by himself but that's just his body's defenses of protecting himself from further pain see whilst online personality me says he's just a baby real life me knows a little bit about trauma squall's natural pathways are built to say there is no one

there For you so there's nobody around and you're going to cry a lot so to protect yourself you just don't let others in to begin with solves that problem out doesn't it now this can be retrained but it takes a lot of repeative exposure for these new Pathways to be made this is why at the start of the story Squall is quite hesitant to attach to anyone he really doesn't give a [ __ ] especially to renoa even though it's in his face he just doesn't want anything to do with it But as the story

progresses and progresses and he gets repeative experience that people want to be his friends and people want to love him he starts to let his barriers break down because his body and mind are starting to realize they can be trusted then there is the leader ship elements he has made The Reluctant team leader of seed to the defunct leader of the group to the leader of the garden at the age of 17 s [ __ ] that is way too young for The level of leadership to be put on him 17 like what was I

doing at 17 nothing good nothing I could probably mention on YouTube but like that he doesn't want it he's a leader and many people sometimes find themselves in this position like I have like others look to you to lead and you're like I don't want to do it but [ __ ] if I don't do it who the hell's going to do it and then once you're in that position well it's up to you either you crumble or you rise and In squall's case he rises again and again and again and I point out once

more he's able to lead a city at the age of 17 17 people I wasn't even driving then now squs weapon H it's a gun blade it sounds like a cool idea to have a gun and a sword that sounds really cool but oh my God is the idea stupid in practice like I don't understand how that works trying to fire the thing surely it' be like having a shotgun like I did I held a shotgun in one hand for my stag doing crack out and oh my my arm was shaking so imagine what it's

like trying to be do a sword yeah that's just asking for trouble it really is now Quist is next and I should say if I butcher some of these names that's that's my mind leave me alone shut up you can correct me otherwise she's your teacher she's an older teacher with a whip hang on what sort of game is this so uh can I help you no but maybe I can Help you m I need an adult I am an adult she's the one who introduces you to all the tutorials thanks so she sends you

to defeat a fire demon for homework to go on your class field trip to then fight a death spider robot what the what the [ __ ] that makes oh my God cistus why no you shouldn't be in charge of anybody she is also that no no no stop it we'll get stop it down boy we'll get to that qutis comes across as a logical character Thinking of the smart Solutions she realizes during the story she actually does love Squall but then comes the terms of it is it's actually more of a brotherly love than

a romantic love our next character is zel see zel will react quite quickly because his buttons get pushed dramatically and when your buttons get pushed and your mind flips well you either going to act in three ways fight flight or freeze so for zel he acts with fight and will literally Try and kick the ass of anybody who winds him up mainly Cipher now the problem is he was a fighter but he's never going to be as good as Tifa I don't know what it is that makes Tifa better as a fighter than zel honestly

I've been trying to think about these for years and years I just can't think of the distinguish all factors that make it the the thing with Tifa against zel I I'm never going to work this out put in the comments if you wonder why now he Loves hot dogs but he always seems to miss the opportunity to have it so it's a bit of a running joke so I do like that he calls himself Cipher's rival even though Cipher doesn't really give a [ __ ] makes me laugh his limit break he can use button

combos similar to a fighting game and this also reminded me of Sabin in Final Fantasy 6 the funny thing was in my playthrough he was a White Mage which is weird but that's just how the strategy dictated it yeah It is weird but yeah shut up he's my White Mage selfie the ninja turtle is next and she was met on the school class field trip she's from another garden and she's armed with nunchuks although don't tell me the UK like that cuz they didn't like nunchuks at the time thanks Germany that's all their fault Ninja

Turtles hero Turtles all that Shenanigans she's very ditsy and also extremely light-hearted but even in terrible situations She'll always be positive she Also is able to fly the Ragnarok which is the ship you get in the game oh okay she can just do that I dropped her pretty quickly though I like miserable characters and Moody well zel's just hyperactive and sine is just far too nice the next character renoa the heroin now unlike aith and Final Fantasy 7 I like renoa I did from the start she doesn't take any of squall's [ __ ] and

is the leader of the forestals it's very clear from the beginning she has Feelings for squall and can see past his loner Persona she also likes to get kidnapped all right are you basing yourself off Princess Peach obviously you are and her limit breaks she starts off using her dog as a cannon holy [ __ ] she puts her dog on her arm and uses it as a fuking cannon that is that is some animal abuse right there like I put my own dog Pat I've tried it with him look just doesn't work However later

on with story stuff she becomes broken like the most broken character in Final Fantasy or either jrpg history or just Gaming Full Stop I will fight to the death over that okay I could probably talk about my strategy now it's probably the best thing isn't it so as her limit breaks she becomes a sorceress spoiler but you know you're going to be getting spoilers here and when it's her turn she will use any magic in her inventory randomly and also With increased damage whilst not using any of the stock now what I would do is

put Auto haste protect and all that pava on it and only Junction one spell meteor and then use the spell Meltdown by another character now what this would do is make the enemy take more damage I then use the item Aura on renoa to get hel liet break and once it's ready use angel wing which is the name and then go get a beer because every few seconds she's going to be using meteor which at The time was doing 6K for each meteor and multiple landed and then really the rest of it was just letting

the rest of the team heal her that's what zel was for heal heal heal it made even the Final Bosses wimps she even bitched the weapons in the game who we'll go into later it is absolutely horrifying about how much damage she racks up so quickly I thought I was being really unique because I came up with this by myself but I found out online that yeah it it Wasn't a new strategy I wasn't a god other people had done it shut up I try my best and it also should be noted that with the

three characters they appraised for not making him sexualized like I wouldn't have any problem if they did because again it's art and that's what the artist wants that's what the artist wants to do but they kept all the three characters the female characters designs modest and fair enough I okay with that the final character is Irvine he's a Cocky Cowboy the ladies man yeah he's got a gun so I hate him I just I can't resonate with gun characters I never have been it's like with Vincent I I like Vincent but the fact he's got

a gun like me no his bravado however is all for show I can't tell you much about him because I barely use him it's his bench material 101 this is my retrospective like if you love him you do your own thing on him you make your own video about why I love Irvine well I'm not going to do that because I don't love Irvine all right now you've got to have side characters as well side characters make a game and there's going to be four we're going to talk about the first one is cipher he's

your rival and sadly he doesn't get more of a role in the story like I wish he does he just wants to be center stage and believes he's actually better than he is he's loud Brash but in reality lacks Direction and purpose like he just Wishes to be the Knight and will chase anything to do it so if anyone gives him that potential chance to be my night and Sh armor he'll take it I love his design though I think he's got got a great design he's just superb and as well he's got a similar

scar to squall because Squall slashed him as well as him slashing Squall then this Headmaster Sid yes this is from Final Fantasy 7 Sid to this and for the moment I wanted to cry he's in charge of the baham garden that You live in and we're going to talk more about Sid as the story progresses the big bad of the game well I use big badge in air quotes here is the Sorceress adaa right from the off boom she's the bad guy you see it in the opening videos and she has a great design think

she oozes power and class and Beauty she comes across as strong and battling her is just genuinely fun and it's really a character I don't want to mess with and she's in some of the box art I genuinely Think she's a fantastic character but I'll go into more spoiler territory shortly finally there's Elena a key character who you spot now and again through the story I'm not going to say anything now but yeah she's pretty centr to everything she really is one of think she is the most important character in the whole game you introduce

you to her early in the story but you have no idea what she's even doing for quite a while and as I've been talking about the plot It's probably now time to talk about it now I'm going to do a recap of this now I never did this with seven just because I felt seven was just such a convoluted mess but with Final Fantasy 8 you've got to to tell the whole story you've got to go through the plot so I'm not going to go through it bit by bit there might be bits I miss

out so don't kill me and again if you want to do your own version of this come at me bro go for it seed have been recruited to help Timber gain Their independence from the galbadia Republic by stealing their president before that all the group are knocked out oh God this stuff yes the dream sequences what a way to confuse the player you find yourself playing as lagona Ward and Kiros and it's interesting as you're playing the other side of this war you realize you're playing in the past and at first you trying to work

out how the hell does this fit into the story there's a bar Scene between lagona and Julia who's a singer there and you're like what the fudge is going on but their story evolves and it's clear they have feelings for each other but this is a tale about love that wasn't meant to be as lagona has an accident so he's not able to be with Julia it's probably for the best though because Julia goes on on to beon Reno's mom and Laguna was saved by a lady called rain after his accident their story evolves and

the relationship Grows now going back to the main story The Mission with the owls goes tits up and after more stupidity Cipher tries to storm the studio to take the galbadian president hostage that that's a great plan what did he think was going to happen he thought he was going to be the king of all to do that sorcerer Sadia then turns up saves the president and takes Cipher away yeah so he's in trouble then the galbadian garden hirees Squall in the gang to kill a DEA the Gang are then joined by their final party

member Irvine the Sharpshooter but actually when it comes to taking the shot he panics saying he's never actually done it before but once he gets the balls to actually do it she blocks the shot Squall and his gang have to attack ad head on but Cipher is now her Knight and he loves this idea after beating Cipher and taking on a deer the plan fails and Squall has his shoulder pierced with an ice bear finally all This time in Final Fantasy I actually want to see some people get some proper damage dealt to them and

an ice spear to the shoulder is a way to do it because everyone always seems to take all these magic attacks like they're absolutely nothing a bit later on the galbadian garden gets a little bit pissed off and sends missiles to the Trabia garden and the baham gardens now at this point the team decid to split into two and I really really struggled at this section And I had no idea how the game mechanics worked when it came to they level up with you so I was in big trouble I did do it but it

wasn't exactly fun Squall goes back to baham Garden and this scene is awesome scene the other Garden coming in oh yeah the gardens can fly should we just say this how the hell with the gardens flying are people not just like being fling around to their death sorry back to the main thing school ends up having a punch out with a guy on a zip Wire which is quite funny but as this is going on you can see the other students from both the gardens fighting each other in the background that's amazing that's that's one

of the best scenes in the whole game but then hang on the run now a bit okay so renoa at this point has got herself into all sorts of strife and she's hanging on for dear life while squall's trying to save her but it should be added she is hanging on there for absolutely Ages like how is she doing that don't come at me with video game logic there's no way I could hang like that for so long I don't even rock climbers can do that after Squall saves the two run across the battlefield and

I love this scene because it's so brutal there's an explosion there people are using real spells at this point some guy gets whacked off a bike like this would have been absolutely brutal in the sense of these are kids who are trained to Kill so that it's going to be a scene from like Battle Royale or The Hunger Games whichever one you want to go with but then the next scene this really annoyed me a little bit renoa she plays all flirty with Squall and like ooh yeah I've got your ring and hang on go

back a step people have just been dying I think squall's probably really traumatized you should be traumatized but no no this is the time to have a little flirt now you find out the ring is Called gever we all know this is important for later on but you get the chance to name it so I want to hear in the comments if you had the chance to name the ring again or the GF griver what would you call it the stupider the better at the end of this event you actually find out that Headmaster Sid

and sorcerer OFA are actually married you find out the garden's true purpose is to fight a dear the crew then go to draer which has been absolutely wrecked Saline's in devastated because all her friends are probably dead but then we see the basketball court scene oh yes this part of the game hold on here we go Irvine reveals everyone but renoa used to live at an orphanage and they were cared for by the sorcerer illa even Cipher was there but only he remembers it everyone has forgotten due to their use of GFS except Irvine because

he never used them this revelation from Irvine flips the story completely so They actually all know each other sorceress AET cared for them all and now they've got this memory loss well that's pretty convenient now it should be said the garden staff do hint at this at the beginning of the game like ignore the rumors what GFS can do for you there's nothing wrong with them it's all good the thing is why do they all forget the same thing like do the GFS have a little conference to themselves and go right let's all focus on

the past let's all Focus on that orphanage image that'll be fine we'll just remove that from their mind don't worry about any other thing like their ability to walk or anything like that no no just take away their childhood and that's what we'll do a bit fishy to me also it should be noted sine rocks up and she's got no GFS so what was she using why is her memory so bad this game needs to explain things to me the group decides to go after sorcerer deer again and and this time they fight Cipher and

adaia and win but then adaia admits she is possessed by another sorceress called timia she's a sorceress from the future who wants to go back in time to cast the time compression spell for [ __ ] sake so what Adia wasn't the bad guy and now we've got time bollocks we already had time bollocks with the dreams and now we got even more time bollocks Ultima apparently can't go back far enough so she need alone's power oh Yes that girl who can send people back in time yeah yeah she can send people back in time

so she needs her power because she can do it a little bit further oh yeah and now Reno is collapsed into a coma this is great isn't it so skall finds later on through usual jrpg Madness that there's a hidden city which is connected to a moon base oh my God we're going mental the moon apparently holds another sorcerer was called Adele who is sealed away and Ultima is after her power it's going to get worse you then find out most of the planet's monsters came from the Moon which get transported through a process called

the Luna cry what the [ __ ] has the plot become also how do the monsters live on both how do they live on the moon and then how do they live on earth I don't think the physiology works that way but we're going to ignore that Squall then goes to sa NOA from inside the moon so He's at the Moon we've gone to the moon and then he saves her in a space suit because she's about to drift out into space and Oxygen's going to run out then the crew find there's a spaceship called

the Ragnarok just floating around and then renoa becomes a sorceress like what the [ __ ] is going on like what point did the writers go right get the wacky backy out let's watch some Star Trek and we'll just see what happens like everyone was just like Blown away at this point like what is this story become and this is why I say you've got to explain the plot of Final Fantasy 8 because it's just Madness it's just crazy Squall decides to give Rau up he gets her back because he loves her great we've done

that Squall then meets the president of this Hidden City and it's laguana laguana apparently took over Adele and sealed her away Laguna then explains the past where alone went to ad's orphanage with Rain's new baby after rain passed away I wonder who the baby could be Laguna confesses he didn't know this happened or that rain had a baby because he was off trying to sort out the Adele stuff and after a conversation with alone she wants to send squore back in time so she can change the past to keep her family together it's all about

family now before we carry on a little bit more do you remember I said do not get Odin on dis 3 or before dis 4 well the reason is That because on dis three you have your final battle with Cipher Odin appears because he wants to try and take out Cipher in one and Cipher's just like one hit K like what the [ __ ] he has literally just killed the GF in one but Odin's blade is caught by a hand and this becomes Gilgamesh he similar to Odin but he's just not as good okay

ready for things to get nutty again alone then uses es her power and they end up Deciding to send the Hulk crew to go fight Ultima into the future yeah we're going into the future to ultima's Castle after going through which I think is an absolutely incredible final area you get to timia oh my God this boss now she randomly picks three members of your crew to fight her and they might not be your strongest which is a bit of a pain in the ass you need to KO them as quick as you can after

a bit they're destroyed and lost to time and then the other Party member comes in however if you're trying to get Rena in and she's the last one in it can be a bit tedious and then the second phase of the fight Alisha region a squall's mind to make the GF grieva come back to life imagine if you'd called the GF grave a penis H I'm going to summon a penis just imagine it you and it comes up on the screen instead of griev penis I know I'm immature I don't care ultima's thirdd form is

where she merges with the penis I I mean grieva and you fight her once more once you beat her again she becomes her ultimate form and you're fighting through time and space and to be honest it actually looks pretty cool because there's so much going on in the background once this is done and she's beaten it's time for the ending everyone attempts to get back to their own timeline Squall and timia actually go back to the orphanage when Squall was a child and you witness meisha pass her Powers to a deia now before that happens

Squall tells a deia about the garden and seeds he's actually setting up his own destiny like it's a weird time Loop sort of thing well it is for timisha and it turns out that Sid and adaa planned everything squall's Destiny the orphans being trained everything and this is why Squall has to become the big boss Sid probably didn't want to put a 17-year-old in charge of the garden but he knows it has to happen because if it Doesn't happen it's not going to fulfill what happens later on that is some big mind [ __ ]

right there like imagine if Sid had spilled it all in the first few minutes of the game that would have been hilarious so these are the GFS also there's going to be a sorceress and there's time travel stuff and you're going to be the king and yeah don't worry about all this it's going to happen Destiny squall's mind would just go just explode Squall attempts to go Back to his normal time and he starts to get to the point when he can't remember renoa renoa is able to turn a flower petal into a feather because

she's a sorcerous to go find him however he does find it but he's too weak she ends up bringing him back though and then's the ending all of it's all wrapped up Adia is back to normal zel is oh I love zel and it ends with renoa and Squall sharing a kiss and that's it what an adventure if you'd guess that was going To be the story from the start you'd be lying you'd be absolutely lying like I don't mind the story but I know a lot of people dislike it like it's not one of

the most straightforward plots but it's a jrpg like what is standard let's be honest they're always crazy we always know that now aside from all the time travel and space stuff this is actually a story about love the love Squall has for an hour and how Squall has to learn to let people in and Then fight for it for Sid and a DEA knowing that you have to create a mercenary group with the kids you've raised to kill your wife a love dashed by circumstances for lagona and Rain where circumstances produces love for alone the

love of family and wanting them to be back together for quistis who realizes her love for squal is more like a big sister and velle hot dogs now I told talked about the trauma Squall went through earlier but I believe there's More to it now this actually applies to all those in the orphanage who forgot their past now one of the things I do is when I train people in real life I take you as a person now real life me talks to people about attachment and Trauma and we're going to use this as a

bit of an example I want to think about you as a person all right think about your name your family your culture your history your time as a child your religion how did you get to this how did you have These experiences now most of you can answer those questions and if you can't you can ask the loved ones you have or your friends for your answers and this makes up your identity but what if you didn't know any of those answers or in most cases you can't remember your past and you can't actually go

find out like who gave you your name who's your family who raised you it Leaves you with so many unanswered questions and you may never really know who you truly are like I joked in the Final Fantasy 7 video that squall's a big baby but real life me knows that's not true before the internet starts going after me Cloud did go through his own set of trauma but he was a bit different like he couldn't remember his past but his trauma was different to squall and the rest of the group because he was tested on

there was and there was Multiple personalities conflicted with each other like I actually think the writers did a good job on squall's character throughout the game and I really hope that its meaning is not forgotten now let's get the serious stuff out the way and have some fun shall we now money that's yeah we're going straight to the money normally you get money by defeating your enemies and this always made no sense to me like how do animals have money even less sense in Final Fantasy 8's case as the enemies come from the Moon like

how are they going to have money so this time we're getting a salary based on on our Rank and you get paid in increments this rank can go up or down depending on how you do in battle or or you can do the tests and go straight to the top rank shut up I had a guide and I'm using it shut up shut up it was an interesting way of doing it and it makes sense for the world that You're in like I'm in a job I'm doing a job that's how it works now let's

look at some of the side quests every game has them they can extend the game and give you potentially good rewards and weapons Etc and I'm going to cover just a few of them well first there's a UFO because of course there is like we're doing time travel space like what's a UFO you just D that into the mix shall we then there's the deep sea Research Center I love this place it's hidden on A tiny little island you rock up and a voice says do one that's Bahar okay you've got to fight him and

I'm fighting it it's like this is so much fun after beating Bahamut you venture down and you fight Ultimate Weapon one of the super bosses and be prepared if you want to get the final GF you've got to fight it it looks scary as anything and as if you've noticed it's got Cloud's Ultimate Weapon the thing is this isn't even the game's biggest threat no that's the Final super boss Omega weapon this is accessed by ringing a bell in timia Castle running back to the church Hall and a mega weapon is just standing there in

the Church Holy fudge to say how powerful it is now this is off the Wikipedia Ultimate Weapon at level 65 has 278,000 900 Health however Omega weapon at level 60 has 725,000 HP so nearly three times as much and five levels down yeah this is going To be a monster it also has level five death which is fun so if you've got multiples of five in your team your levels you're in trouble it has a move called light pillar which does 9999 which is instant death to one of your characters it has a gravity move

which can do 75% of the whole team's HP and finally it's got a move called terab Break which deals out 16 hits doing 4,000 damage each so how do you beat this thing well you use my strategy I Mentioned earlier with Rena and the Sorcerers and you go have a cup of tea and also Mega Elixir and also heroes but when you're asking how did I get these things just just yes yes yes this wait we'll get on to that and I did beat this thing and it was great because it's like I finally done

it I finished Final Fantasy 8 and it's like the challenge is over it's all completely done now one of the things that really annoyed me a little bit is when you get to dis 4 all The town cities are walled off now this could be various reasons which people could confirm maybe it's something to do with dis space but story-wise it's protecting the town from the time compression because we can do that we've got the technology to protect towns from shut up it's just ridiculous okay weapons remember I mentioned that earlier about the gun blade

and how it's absolutely stupid well let's just go a little bit into that normally you pick Up and buy weapon upgrades and you dump the previous one that's not how it works in final fantas 8 like everyone loves their weapon so much you never been it you just upgrade it yes you upgrade it with items that you find and you get the recipes through catalogs you end up getting your items from enemies or from cards no stop that we're not ready yet calm down in fact you can actually get squall's best weapon by the first

disc again I don't think they're applying for That to happen but you can like I do think the gun blade is stupid but I do think squall's Ultimate Weapon the lhart is beautiful stupid can be beautiful and to tell you what's not stupid the music like I was never missing this I told you before when I saw that first FMV hit my jaw hit the ground and when the music came in I was just this is incredible and I got chills actual chills nosu did an amazing job once again and the battle music's incredible and

Fisherman's Horizon is still one of my favorite songs to date like seriously listen to the distant world's version of Fisherman's Horizon it's just brilliant Final Fantasy 8 also had the first two tracks with vocals on them being being eyes on me and Liberati fatali and the soundtrack is absolutely Ace so let me know in the comments what was your favorite song from the soundtrack okay are you ready now let's talk about triple Triad well you're all happy now Aren't you now Final Fantasy 7 had so many mini gamess where Final Fantasy 8 just said nope

we just want one and they made a card game which anyone can play like the whole bloody world knows it just press square and at any time you can fight someone for a jewel even when the world is in Terror even when Reno is going to die want to play cards it's just awesome like imagine it was a real War World War I World War II like the British and the Germans are Fighting each other hang on hang on want to play cards it'd be awesome now the game is played on a 3X3 grid you

each have five cards each and the person who goes first is determined at the beginning by a flip of a coin and depending if who goes first it actually could change your strategy each card has four numbers from one to a with a counting as 10 each number represents a side of a card either the top right bottom or left when A card is played next to the cards of an opposing color their values on the side of the cards that touch are compared and whichever ends up being lower gets flipped once the game is

over the Victor will usually win one or more cards from their opponents that's a basic way of explaining how this works and as I said when you win you get the chance to take a card but if you lose they're going to take your best card so be prepared the game's difficulty amps up though Whenever you go to new areas because you learn new rules this could be Elemental where you start adding Pokémon s mechanics it could be plus where some things have like a plus two onto it it could be same there are so

many different rules that I'm not going go into it however these rules can be daunting and they stack on top of each other but for me this is great because I love maths and I love strategy like you can abolish all these rules but I just Can't remember how to do it there's a lot of cards you can collect around the world summons bosses even the main characters of cards but you really got to hunt to find them well why are the cards so important yes I've been hinting this for a while will you get

an ability to turn Cards into items and this is massive and the reason why this is so important is that some of these items can be used for battles or parts from your weapons even abilities for GFS now I did mention that I had 100 Mega Elixir for the Omega weapon battle that's because I got rid of the Bahamut card and Laguna's card can be transformed into a 100 Heroes and hero one of them makes you invincible you godamn need invincibility when You Face a mega weapon there's actually a quest you can play when You

Face a card group now these are some of the best players the garden has you hunt round and battle them until eventually you get challenged By the master who is the king and this is cistus like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa hang on you've got high level cards in your hand we could use them right now to save the world you stuck up [ __ ] ridiculous also side note the triple Triad music absolutely slaps it always reminds me of the scene in Family Guy where Brian was at an award show for

certain activities and they were Discussing the best music imagine if you were using the triple Triad music like it' give you a good Rhythm think about it fellas think about it ladies it's got a rhythm to it after the game's release it came out to big success it caught positive reviews Outlets complemented its Graphics its cut scenes and the music were standouts however the plot and the drawing system were criticized and by August 2019 the game had sold 9.6 million copies on all Platforms the Final Fantasy 8 crew will some of them have appeared again

in the Kingdom Hearts series that being Squall sine Cipher fujin and rajin there's also the de cidia games and Squall and Ultima appear on them and Laguna comes in much later on and no I'm not discussing the mobile version the game got a complete remaster recently which adds a fast forward option all our RPG should have a fast forward option do I think in the future We're going to get like a Final Fantasy 7 remake treatment no I don't think we ever will I think it's more likely going to be Final Fantasy 6 or Final

Fantasy 9 and the final thing I want to talk about is the Legacy like its Legacy isn't positive and its reason is probably because this Final Fantasy 7 like how would you top that Final Fantasy 7 was considered one of the most influential if not one of the best games of all time so it always meant that Final Fantasy Ace always started with a huge handicap that other games didn't have you want a comparison look at Ocarina time Majora's Mask see same thing the plot twist often also gets mocked as does the edge Lord that

is Squall but as we've said this isn't fair and the draw system yeah I think you just need to understand it and practice with it and eventually it all kind of makes sense most people point to Triple Triad being the best thing which is kind of true but that shouldn't be The only thing we talk about it also didn't help that Final Fantasy 9 came out strong and it would have had the opposite start that Final Fantasy 8 did so Final Fantasy 8 has always been seen as the black sheep of the PS1 era however

as discussed this game does have a lot of positives even if it has taken me and I'll be honest a long of time to get here is it my favorite no should you play it absolutely it's Squall a crybaby no he isn't Final Fantasy 8 is a Beautiful yet messy experience where the team tried something different but at the same time I have to thank them it's a game I'm never going to forget it's a game with many layers and it's a game that everybody should experience at least one time in their life and as

I just mentioned I don't think we're going to get the Remake treatment so if you want to play this game go play the remastered version and I swear you'll be in for a good time and that's it that's The end of my retrospective on Final Fantasy 8 if you have enjoyed this thank you very much and please leave a like and a comment it really helps with the YouTube algorithm and to also let you know if you want more of retro Wars we do a podcast where every week me and a friend will talk about

the video games we used to play back when we were kids until then I hope you all have a lovely day and I'll be back again with another video soon take care of yourselves Bye-bye