480 Reviews Final Fantasy VIII! (MAJOR SPOILERS!)

greetings people to zai 480 volts and welcome back to another episode of 480 reviews today we're going to be taking a look at one of the most polarizing titles of the final fantasy series final fantasy viii at one point this game probably was the most polarizing at least until 12 or 13 years ago when final fantasy xiii was released it seems like most people have made peace with this game but i can still pull up online threads to this day almost 22 years after the game's initial release on the so

ny playstation in 1999 praising it and calling it the best ff title in the series and can scroll down a few comments and find people who think it's the absolute worst what does 480 think honestly the footage seen here was my fourth or fifth time playing through the game and i'm kind of sad it's over so yeah i mostly like this game it definitely has its fair share of problems though let's start with the story as usual if you don't want stuff spoiled have a look through the chapters in the descrip

tion to skip to gameplay and stuff the story focuses on a group of teenage militants belonging to an outfit known as seed in the world of final fantasy viii live powerful and dangerous sorceresses and seed's primary goal is to wipe out said sorceresses seed candidates begin their training at a very young age at a special military school called balum garden although it should be noted that there are other gardens around the world like albania garden which trains its students to join the galbadian

military seed students train using the assistance of powerful godlike entities known as guardian forces or gf's even though this game creates quite the high school atmosphere when you see students talking about their gf's they're not actually referring to their girlfriends the game follows a group of seeds under the leadership of a boy named squall on a mission to assist a resistance faction in the small galbadian run town of timber the faction known as the timber owls is not exactly what you'd

call an organized resistance group basically just two teenage boys named zone and watts who are too incapable of doing anything and a teenage girl named noah who seems to think that if she just really believes and tries hard enough the big bad galbanian army will go away with the assistance of a few seeds problem is she came to garden and personally spoke with headmaster sid who permanently signed squall and his comrades to assist timber's revolution so unfortunately her concerns are now our co

ncerns during the mission an attack is made on the life of the president of galbadia by a student from balumgarden named cipher the attack is threatened by a powerful sorceress who seduces cypher into submission squall's team which consists of a boy named zell and a girl named selfie is joined by questus a seed and former instructor from garden the four seeds along with renault make their way to galbadia garden to meet with the headmaster and discuss the next move headmaster martine informs him

that president delwing of galbadia is in league with this mysterious sorceress whose name is idia martine assigns the team with assassinating the sorceress apparently this test was conceived and planned by martine sid from balumgarden and general carraway from the presidential city of galvadia since this is a joint operation of both gardens martine assigns one of galbadia garden's recent graduates a young sniper named irvine to assist the team the now six piece team meets with general caraway wh

o outlines the mission president delling is scheduled to name his new ambassador sorceress idia the assassination will take place during this event during the ceremony idia kills president delling and assumes total control over galbadia at her side is cipher from balum garden during her own misguided attempt to capture the sorceress without any bloodshed where noah is captured by idia in fact the whole mission goes bad and the entire team is captured and imprisoned by the galbadian military whil

e being interrogated if not tortured by cipher squall learns that sorcerous idia plans to launch missiles at balum and travia gardens destroying them both squall and his friends managed to break out of prison as the first wave of missiles is launched towards trabia garden the seed split in the two teams with squall heading back to balumgarden to warn them of the inevitable danger while selfie formerly a student at rabia garden heads toward the launching site in hopes of sabotaging or slowing dow

n the missiles squall's team arrives to find balumgarden in disarray with the faculty staff violently searching for sid who despite being the headmaster of seed is not the actual owner of balum garden the faculty staff are demanding that all students declare allegiance to the garden master norg and attack any students who do otherwise squall locates it and informs him of the missile launch sid tells squall to go to the basement level of the campus as any defense mechanism would surely be install

ed in that location as it turns out the garden is mobile and capable of hovering along smooth terrain and water the garden begins to aimlessly drift narrowly avoiding the missiles squall is then summoned by norg himself who is revealed to be a member of a strange race of creatures known as shumi not only does nord reveal to the team that the sorceress is the wife of headmaster sid but the order to assassinate the sorceress was unofficial and had nothing to do with balumgarden norgan martine had

long suspected that idiot would try to gain control over all gardens so they planned to assassinate her then sid without any coordination from norg sent the seeds to carry out the mission and martine used it as an opportunity to frame norg since the mission has failed norg seeks to offer the galbadians the heads of either sid or the seeds as a means to disdain the garden from any attempt on the sources his life squall is then forced to fight and kill norg in self-defense afterwards squall confro

nts sid who confirms that idia is his wife he married her knowing full well that she was a sorceress and they were happy for many years but then one day idiot changed without any explanation sid used garden as a training ground for seeds recognizing how dangerous edia had become on two separate occasions towards the beginning of the game squall encounters a mysterious young woman in different parts of the garden once by himself and once with questus although neither one of them recognized the gi

rl she seems to recognize them and calls them by name also throughout this whole adventure squall and his comrades would occasionally see visions of a trio of the albanian soldiers named kiros ward and laguna these were not visions in the sense that squall and his friends would observe these guys actions but rather they would see everything through their eyes and the soldiers seem to be aware of it to a certain degree while various members of squall's team see through the eyes of kiros and ward

squall always sees through the eyes of laguna eventually the garden is intercepted by a small ship of teenagers claiming to be seeds they are currently in search of someone named elon squall recognizes the name as someone from the laguna visions in one of these visions laguna had settled to a small run downtown called windhill and elon was an orphan little girl in this town a woman named rayne took care of alone like a mother while laguna became an uncle to her sua locates the mysterious girl in

the garden who is revealed to be alone she informs [ __ ] that the visions are her doing she has the power to send the consciousness of someone she knows back in time to someone else she knows since she is all grown up at this point even slightly older than squall the events of the visions were obviously from the past a past that didn't turn out the way elon had wanted and was trying to change but to no avail she has also been hiding here at the garden the whole time sid confirms as saying that

the sorceress is hunting her for some reason elon returns to the siege ship meanwhile the garden crashes into a nearby seaport called fisherman's horizon or fh where selfie's team reunites with the rest of the seeds once repairs on the garden are complete and the seeds have learned how to control the garden sid announces that they will now set out in search of the sorceress and turns all leadership of seed over to squall at the request of selfie seed visits trabia garden which has been decimate

d by the missiles here irvine reveals to the team that he remembers growing up with every one of them save for renault in an orphanage squall questus zell selfie irvine even cipher and alone irvine suggests that prolonged usage of gfs has the side effect of repressing earlier memories since irvine hadn't been using gs before he joined the team he still remembers those days he references the woman who ran the orphanage the matron who took care of the children at first squall and his friends fondl

y recall matron remembering her as basically their mother then with growing horror as they recall her face they realized that she is in fact sorcerous idiot irvine reveals that he was aware of this fact all along and was waiting for the right moment to inform the team he says he wants to be sure that everyone knows this before going into battle against the sorceress the team despite not knowing why their matron has apparently turned evil decides to continue with their mission to eliminate the th

reat that is the sorceress balumgarden sets out in search of the sorceress but is quickly intercepted by galbadia garden which now under the command of cipher in the galbadian army has also discovered the secret to its own mobility the two guardians clash in a fierce battle not only pitting seas against albanian soldiers but students against students the seeds on their squalls command invade galvadia garden believing idia to be here the team stands before cypher the self-proclaimed sorceress's k

night and ultimately idiot herself after the battle cipher escapes idia suddenly appears to come to her senses recognizing squall and his friends as the children she used to take care of while ronoa suddenly and unexplainably becomes comatose back at the orphanage idiot reveals to the team that she had been possessed by an evil sorceress named altamisha from the distant future alto misha is apparently trying to create a dimension in which past present and future are compressed into one this is k

nown as time compression she needs alone's mysterious power to do so and since she lives several generations ahead of alone's time she has been using idiot's body as a means to exist in this time idea fears two things one that ultamisha will re-establish control over her or two that she will somehow be able to control the body of the previous sorceress adele adele who ruled the city of esthar for many years had mysteriously disappeared without a trace along with esthar 17 years ago adele had bee

n presumed dead however this was never confirmed one thing is certain adele was both powerful and ruthless and if altamesha could somehow control her the results would be disastrous squall completely obsessed with reviving renault sets off in search of the seed ship hoping that alone can send his consciousness into renault at an earlier point so he can prevent whatever has happened to her squall finds the seed ship but alone is gone as it turns out they were pursued by galbanian soldiers and the

n intercepted by esthurian soldiers and alone willingly went with the historians squall and his friends set out in search of any trace of esthar it turns out that the city has been holographically camouflaged for the past 17 years idiot tags along with the team hoping that as thars advanced technology as well as the research of a scientist named dr odin can provide a means of removing her sorceress powers all together making her useless to altemisha dr odin sends both renault and squall to a fac

ility in outer space this installation holds the still living body of sorceress adele in containment squall reunites with elon and asks for her help she sorrowfully tells squall that she doesn't know renault and can only send the consciousness of someone she knows into the past of someone else she knows meanwhile ronoa comes to life and leaves the medbay violently resisting anyone who tries to stop her she dons a spacesuit leaves the station and heads directly for adele alone fears the worst tha

t ranoa is somehow being controlled by altamisha who is trying to break the seals on adele during this time a swarm of monsters dropped from the moon onto the earth squall dons a spacesuit and sets out after ronoa who deactivates the seals on adele with the help of the lone's power squall is able to reach renault's consciousness the two drift aimlessly in space while the workers in the station along with alone evacuate to the earth squall sees an abandoned space ship to drift and boards it with

renault who is now fully conscious squall contacts the estherian airspace control who guide the ship the ragnarok back to earth renault reveals to squall that she has become a sorceress since the battle with idia the historian army has come to the same conclusion and demanded squall hand her over ronoa willingly surrenders to esthar not wanting to endanger the world meanwhile squall's friends arrived at the ragnarok after being examined by dr odin idia learned that her powers had completely left

her squall realizes that she had inadvertently passed them on to ronoa allowing altamisha to control her after quistis berates squall for letting renault go squall retreats are from the historians and the team plans their next move now with the ragnarok at their disposal returning to esthar they meet the president who is revealed to be laguna he informs him that alone has been captured by the galbadians he and dr odin have devised a plan to stop altemisha once and for all the plan involves defe

ating adele for good so that the only available sorceress is through noah altomisha will then possess renault and use elon's power to achieve total time compression at this point squall's team will be able to exist in altmeisha's time where they can defeat her in person once and for all squall's team does just that but not before having one final battle with cypher who is willingly following ultimisha the team stands before altumisha and defeats her saving the world and restoring past present an

d future back to normal right off the bat i can tell you one thing i don't like about this game story is how it tries to be almost borderline realistic or sci-fi at best this was kind of a thing in ff7 but it was easier to swallow that time it's hard to really explain but concepts like the gf taking up residence in our brains and affecting our memories would be great for a sci-fi game but don't seem quite fitting for a final fantasy title i mean when your airship is a futuristic looking spaceshi

p you get the idea of course i see nothing wrong with setting a final fantasy game in the future but well there's a way to do it and i don't think this was it look at it this way guardian forces what are they where do they come from what is responsible for their existence or sorceresses what gives them their power what about alone's mysterious power what causes that the game offers no explanation to any of this now if you took all of these concepts and threw them into a game like final fantasy 4

or 5 i wouldn't require an explanation i'd say it's just ff magic no big deal but with this game's atmosphere such things almost demand an in-game explanation i mean heck in final fantasy 4 we used a magic crystal to go to the moon where we walked across the surface with no fear of not having oxygen or any of that realism but in this game we actually need spacesuits and stuff also i hate to say this but final fantasy games are no place for time travel again i'm not suggesting that this is somet

hing that needs to be avoided in fantasy worlds and having played games like chrono trigger and chrono cross or even life is strange i know that square enix is more than capable of making a good time travel story but it just doesn't seem to work in ff titles while this one makes a bit more sense than say ff1 it still gets a bit too convoluted for its own good i'm also not a huge fan of mushy gushy love stories and this one really centers around that but i guess i can't blame square they were jus

t doing what sells for some reason people actually like this stuff so yeah if anyone wonders why i'm not a huge fan it's simply because it's been done to death at this point it's okay every now and then but writers nowadays act like this is the only story they're capable of telling plus i don't think squall and renault's relationship works all that well even though i'm not a huge fan of the overused amnesia plot device i think this one was actually done on an okay level on one hand it's the most

extreme example i mean literally all but two of our playable characters forgot a bunch of stuff yet i do like that the game doesn't really suggest this until they start remembering stuff like we knew from the get-go that galif and terra had amnesia and we wondered what secrets they knew but in this game we don't ever consider it until irvine says hey remember all this and then we're like wait how did we forget that also on one hand it seems to come out of freaking nowhere but on the other hand

the game drops a very subtle hint at the very beginning when squall examines his computer terminal which includes a disclaimer stating that prolonged usage of gfs can cause memory loss i will say however real-life medical amnesia doesn't really work the way video games make it work let's talk about playable characters now one of my favorite aspects of ff7 was how every character felt real and unique well almost everyone when something works really well one time the logical thing to do is try it

a second time right so that means our characters in this game must be unique and original just like an ff7 right wrong here's a brief summary of our characters squall's moody quistis is moody zell's hyper selfie's happy-go-lucky renault starry-eyed intervene likes girls that's basically it with a few exceptions everyone has basically been assigned one personality trait that defines them and they're incapable of acting any other way there are really only two that i think were done well the first

is squall he actually has a lot of depth in him at first he comes across as a moody uncaring dude like cloud but as the story unfolds he shows a surprising amount of depth i'm gonna be honest a lot of people criticize squall by saying he's uncaring unfeeling or emo and i actually really like him i just recently saw a meme making fun of ff protagonists like cloud squalls adon and titus it showed these guys visiting a shrink and talking about their problems like cloud saying he sometimes hears voi

ces zidane wondering why the heck he has a tail tit is saying he doesn't feel real and squall saying he sometimes cuts himself of course i immediately jumped to his defense and commented on the post like the keyboard warrior that i claim to hate so much saying that squall never once cut himself in this game the poster of the meme jokingly assured me that he did look i get it that the post was not being serious but humor has to have some amount of realism in it to be funny otherwise you're just s

aying meaningless things like this quistus likes to stand on her head and cluck like a chicken ha ha funny right no of course not because that has no relevance to quistus at all that's just a collection of words with her name in it now saying something like when a student talks in class quistis hits them with their whip would be a bit funnier as it has relevance you know that she's an instructor and when you see her in battle for the first time with her trusty whip you think whoa better not act

up in her class huh the joke about squall reveals that the individual making the joke has no actual understanding of skull's character he's not emo he's not unemotional he's not even really an angsty teenager it's really quite simple you're ready for this this is the depth of squall's character brace yourselves he's an introvert that's it i know shut the game off right now and introvert what has the world come to there's a scene where squall pours his heart out to an unconscious renault as somet

hing he never would have dared to do if she were awake and this pretty much serves as the hey this is why squall is the way he is moment but i had picked up on it much earlier why because when a character speaks out loud in this game you see a great opaque box containing the text but when a character is silently thinking to themselves you see a black translucent box with the text encased in parentheses and you will see these boxes around squall throughout the whole game signifying that he spends

most of his time thinking instead of talking out loud the mark of a true introvert every little thing he observes he makes a mental reference to in some small way for instance when quistis totally cuts cipher down he tells his friends to mark her down in the list squall of course wonders what this list is if you've played rpgs before you no doubt tensed up here thinking that this list must be of the utmost importance the key to world domination itself later on seifer tells squad that he's on hi

s tough nut to crack list which is really nothing that significant so why did the game bother to show squall wondering about it because the game shows you everything that goes on in squall's head i typically hear three main complaints about squall the first being that he's rude or uncaring or incapable of feeling if you're someone who makes this complaint about squall is probably because you don't understand him i'm going to assume that you're an extrovert nothing necessarily wrong with that and

i'm not saying that in a condescending way like you're somehow wrong from everybody else not at all you're just well it's different for you you like socializing with people you like being around people you don't like being alone you can engage in things like small talk nothing wrong with that more power to you you have a hard time understanding how introverts think because it's so opposite to what you are just as we have a hard time understanding you and yes i speak as a class a introvert oh yo

u might think that i'm outgoing because i ramble on like a fool in my videos but the truth is the thing that makes that easy for me is that no one is around me and my microphone if i were in a room filled with people it would be a whole lot harder i could do it but it would take a lot of time for me to warm up to everyone and have to be on a subject i'm really passionate about like video games oh if you start talking to an introvert about something they love you might find it next to impossible

to get them to shut up and if you somehow manage to work your way into said introverts heart and they decide that you are their friend you'd better be prepared to be their friend for the rest of your life because we don't let our precious few friends get away from us i've read studies on introvertism is that even a word the squiggly red lines on my screen suggest that it isn't a word you know what i'm officially certifying it as a word with all the rights and privileges thereof and they usually

say something like it's not that introverts don't like people it's just that it's more taxing on them to be around people and they need time to be by themselves to recharge i don't know that that's entirely accurate it may be for some introverts but in my case i really just don't feel the need to be around people i just get annoyed by things like small talk make your conversations meaningful and worthwhile i don't know that's just me as part of the same complaint i've heard people say that they

have a hard time swallowing this whole squall is supposed to be the leader thing well you're not alone squall doesn't get it either i heard someone once say that a leader should communicate his true feelings to his followers and encourage them and such that may be true in most situations but seen as a military outfit they do things differently or at least that's the impression i've always gotten i grew up watching star trek and being there for the crew and encouraging them and telling them how p

roud you are is not the job of the captain it is the job of the first officer that's the person who is in a high position of authority yet is still one of you to a degree the captain however is held to the very highest of pedestals you don't socialize with a captain you don't ask about the personal feelings you simply do what they tell you that's the mentality of squall quistis may be someone he grew up with but once she became an instructor he looked at her with a totally different perspective

she was the instructor he was the student their relationship was strictly professional at least to him i swear everyone seems to forget that this is a military outfit except for squall he's the only one who remains focused on his mission at least until renault goes into a coma then he becomes just as mentally unstable as everyone else look at it this way selfie gets caught up in things like being in a band and planning the garden festival while squall focuses on its mission zell gets carried awa

y and wants to run into action guns blazing and then opens up his big mouth and says the wrong thing at the wrong time while squall thinks his actions and words through carefully even quistis who's had more field experience than everyone else has that moment where she tells ronoa very bluntly that the best thing she can do is stay out of our way where professionals we know what we're doing and then krista starts thinking with her feelings and decides to leave her post and apologize to ranoa this

triggers a sequence of events that almost results in quistus's team not being where they were supposed to be at the appointed time squall never would have made that mistake another complaint i've been hearing recently is that squall is too trusting that he believes every word out of syd's mouth and blindly obeys i guess i can kind of see where this is going but you have to remember that squall has lived most of his life at garden has been trained and conditioned to follow orders we could almost

assume that sid is some sort of father figure to squall i'm gonna be honest here the reason why i like squall so much is that he reminds me so dang much of myself his introvertism is not caused by one thing but rather a combination of several things one of them is the fear of getting close to someone who then disappears completely out of his life at the orphanage elon was like a big sister to him and then suddenly she was gone so squall is afraid to let himself get close to people fearing that

one day they'll suddenly be gone and he'll be alone again oh man when i was a teen to be fair my family has always been there for me but since i was a kid i can remember making friends with other kids in the neighborhood who eventually moved away also every year around christmas time we'd go visit my dad's family who all lived in a different state my aunts uncles and cousins didn't necessarily live across the street and i'd usually only get to see them once a year and then it'd be over in a few

hours and i'd be feeling borderline depressed and then that scene where squall pours his heart out to renault that he worries too much about what other people think about him and that he hates that about himself and it's just easier if everyone sees him as an introverted guy oh man when i've played this game for the first time i felt like the writers had somehow gotten a peek into my heart i do love how dense squall is when it comes to women and that's saying a lot coming from me a girl could pr

actically throw herself at skull and he'd have no clue exhibit a quistus asks him to meet her at the secret area where students quote unquote talk after curfew and squall asks if they're going there to round up students who are violating curfew bruh exhibit b after squall saves from manoa from vicious monsters she clings to him and says over and over again i was scared i was scared and he's like uh aren't you a resistance fighter you should be prepared for this stuff bruh exhibit c after boardin

g the ragnarok and removing their spacesuits renault stands there with open arms when skull cluelessly looks at her she asks him for a real tight hug she needs to know that she's alive and he's like uh we need to figure out how to get back to earth bruh and my all-time favorite exhibit d aboard the ragnarok where noah curls up and squall's arms and when he tells her she needs to go back to her seat she bakes him for just a few more minutes she likes it like this and he thinks you'd be safer in y

our seat the only valid complaint i hear about squall is how his attitude towards renault completely changes on a dime all throughout the game he sees her as his client the person he has to protect because his contract says so if he feels anything towards her it's annoyance she's constantly nagging him constantly flirting with him and he doesn't have time for any of that then she becomes comatose and all of a sudden he freaks out and can't concentrate on anything he becomes obsessed with her he

starts wishing to hear her voice to see her smile all of this would be okay if it wasn't for the fact that it comes out of freaking nowhere look i get that the game was obviously going for the whole thing where he doesn't like her at first but gradually warms up to her and it could have been done too but there needs to be some indication of it now i know what you're thinking 480 i want to be just like you when i grow up or i mean a 480 isn't this just part of his introverted nature maybe he did

start liking her but just didn't show him well need i remind you that we've been given the privilege of seeing inside squall's thoughts this entire game and not once did he ever think of her as anything other than an annoyance worst of all once he risks his life to save her and she wakes up and starts flirting with him again he acts like he doesn't care or doesn't know oh well the rest of the characters aren't that deep zell is basically mr hyperpants he's okay but not that great irvine likes gi

rls specifically he likes selfie although he does occasionally flirt with renault from time to time he also kind of has that angsty teenage nobody understands me attitude at times the only thing about him i find particularly interesting is when the moment to assassinate the sorceress comes and he's tasked with the job of firing the shot at this point he breaks down and loses his nerve he claims that it's because he can't take the pressure and that he usually chokes right before a mission and it

is understandable you're literally shooting with the intention of killing someone and the game never really tells you directly but consider this irvine is the only one out of the orphanage group who remembers anything from back then which means he knows who idia is no wonder he didn't want to kill her no wonder he choked right before the big moment renault is my least favorite of the game she's just way too clingy and needy for my taste a lot of times she just comes across as being in the way se

ems like she clashes with squall a lot at first gets very frustrated with him at times i'm guessing she subconsciously assigned him as the one and gets frustrated when he doesn't measure up to her expectations i also hate how literally everyone in the game acts like there is some unbreakable bond between the two that they're bound together by destiny during the battle between gardens where noah finds herself in a sticky situation and everyone is like schwall you need to go save her it needs to b

e you why why squall he's supposed to be leading the garden his post is at the command center what can he do that y'all can't thankfully once where noah learns that she's become a sorceress she becomes much easier to sympathize with recognizing that she is now a potential threat and not wanting to endanger her friends i don't rightly know what to make of quistus in some ways she's very similar to squall but there are times when she's a bit more clingy like ronoa it's like she can't quite make up

her mind who she wants to be the only other playable character i actually really like is selfie yes she's another overview stereotype but she's at least a good stereotype she's our bouncy cheerful bubbly girl of the game i like her for two reasons one she's insufferably adorable two she's got a bit of a dark twisted side to her that we don't really see in any of the other girls like her in other ff titles she's a little on the crazy side moments after chanting love and peace she suggests that w

e find the president's train and blow it to smithereens with a rocket launcher or when trying to figure out how to escape from prison she suggests skinning the strange creature that brings them food and using its height as camouflage and when everyone stares at her like she's out of her flipping mind she claims she's just kidding and zell thinks to himself doesn't sound like you are basically she's one of the cutest happiest most energetic girls you ever meet but don't piss her off as she actual

ly knows how to use nunchucks if i have any complaints about her characters that she seems to forget that this is a military outfit more so than anyone else as much as i don't like ranoa i'll at least cut her some slack in the military operations because she's not a seed she didn't grow up in this stuff selfie on the other hand i think gets a little too caught up in things like the garden festival on the other hand i gotta give her some props when the time comes she's right there true to the end

visiting the remains of travia garden is probably the hardest moment for her she spent most of her life here and a scene in shambles like this has got to be painful yet all she does is simply be there for her friends let's talk about some of the other characters idia is almost to this game what gobes is to ff4 although she's not nearly as intimidating for boating as golbas i do find her easier to sympathize with and connect to however the problem with goldbus is by the time you learn that he wa

s being controlled the game was almost over and we weren't given any time to think of him as a good guy we also don't get the chance to see what kind of person he was or would have been before he was controlled oh sure we know he's cecil's brother but that's all at least with idia we know that before she was controlled she was a very kind and loving woman taking care of orphans ironically the whole concept of seed was her idea as a sorceress she understood just how dangerous her powers could be

so she conceived seed as a means of ensuring some sort of defense against evil sorceresses interestingly enough there is a scene later on in the game where she explains that she once saw a dying sorceress at the orphanage fearing for her children's safety she absorbed its power she recounted that moment as the beginning of her painful story as it turns out after ultimisha is defeated and time begins to uncompress squall finds himself warped back to the orphanage with a dying ultimisha idia absor

bs her powers just like she said she had thus explaining how otomish's consciousness was able to possess her so it's a predestination paradox i'm gonna be honest the whole the future creates the past trope was cool the first few times i encountered it but at this point it's overdone the idea for seed wouldn't be executed until after edius succumbs to ultimish's control that's where sid comes in who would rent out the garden from norg as a training facility like a few other sids of past ff titles

this one is a good guy with good intentions that set and motion things out of control things that would end up trapping him let's talk about laguna kirosa and ward these guys started out as galbanian soldiers during the sorceress war when sorcerer's adele ruled the city of esdar while on the run from hesterian soldiers laguna was separated from his unit and badly injured he was found by a woman named reign from a small country town called windhill where laguna would spend the next few years eve

ntually he would reunite with kyros in war but would not return to the galbadian army during his time in wind hill he would form a very special bond with elon a little girl whom reign was looking after dr odin must have been aware of vel's power as he would order estherian soldiers to kidnap her laguna went off in search of her along with kiros and warren the trio ended up being captured and imprisoned by a star they were able to break out with the assistance of a small rebellion seeking to over

throw the sorceries ultimately laguna and his friends managed to capture adele save l and ended up becoming the new leaders of esthar although the game never outright says so in as many words it is implied that laguna is in fact squall's biological father with reign being his mother what's so interesting is that laguna almost ended up with renault's mother while in the galbanian army he would often spend his spare hours in a bar watching a beautiful woman named julian play the piano one day he a

ctually worked up the courage to go and talk to her and she seemed to be quite interested in him however his duties took him away and she ended up marrying general carraway whom we know to be renaulta's dad they say that in every group of friends there's that one guy that's the dumb one in the case of laguna kirosa war there's no question about it easily laguna if he is in fact the father of squall he is definitely the polar opposite of his son squall keeps to himself while laguna comes across a

s a schmoozer squall thinks his words through carefully while laguna basically blurts out whatever comes into his mind swal keeps personal life private from everything else while laguna doesn't know how to talk about anything other than himself squall is methodical meticulous and mathematical while laguna is free-spirited spontaneous and almost poetic albeit in the clumsiest of ways honestly cures and ward don't really have that much in the way of personality other than the ways they have to put

up with laguna's antics as for alone after she was captured by estherian soldiers laguna spent a significant amount of time and energy trying to find her as a result he was not present when reign gave birth to whom we can assume to be squall nor was he present when she died of course he regretted this deeply and never really forgave himself l feeling somewhat responsible sent the minds of squall and his friends into laguna curios and ward hoping that she could change the past there are a lot of

npcs walking around balum garden that don't really contribute to a whole lot but just their mere presence is a constant making the garden feel like a family community people like the little runner boy who wants to get into shape so he can be a seed someday you'll see him constantly running around the first floor of the campus or the good morning girls as i call them two girls that almost unwaveringly walk up to the billboard and greet you with a friendly morning as well as offer some idol yet f

riendly chatter or the girl with the pigtail a member of the library committee she has a crush on zel but is too shy to confront him there's a whole little side quest you can do with her and her friends which rewards you with a little item or zoo an experienced field seed and friend of questus she almost takes up the role of second in command when squall takes the seed field exam he is one of four students who passed two of them being zeal and selfie the remaining student a boy named nida later

becomes the pilot of garden once the team figures out how to move it around i like how during the inauguration ceremony sid almost breaks the fourth wall referencing the fact that nida is not a main playable character by whispering him do your best even if you don't stand out i also like that quistis has her own fan club at garden and it doesn't just consist of thirsty boys although there are a few of them but some girls as well i assume since quistis is so much younger than the other instructor

s barely a year older than squall these students still kind of see her as one of them now for antagonists nordic feels kind of forced or last minute in my opinion don't much care for him you can actually visit the shumi village where he's from and meet his people there are actually a friendly bunch albeit a little out in left field like in previous titles we've got a bigs and wedge here this time they're galbanian soldiers he'll fight them a couple of times in the game they serve mostly as comic

al relief towards the end of the game they finally get so fed up with their jobs that they quit and we never see them again fujin and regin are cypher's best friends at first their students at garden but when cipher goes rogue they follow him you'll fight them a couple of times in the game it's not that they necessarily have any quarrel with squall and his friends if anything they're not comfortable with having to fight against their former fellow students but they want to be loyal to cipher in

the end they do leave him not because their loyalty runs out but because they can clearly see that he is being used and manipulated and they want things back to the way they were as for personality regen tends to talk a lot and bungle around a lot while fujin is quite intimidating she often barks in one word phrases and constantly beats up on regin for his incompetence towards the end though she drops the tough girl act and has a very real and heartfelt dialogue with cipher as for cipher he grew

up in the orphanage with squall and friends and became a student at garden something of a bully he enjoyed picking on kids like squall and zell he becomes frustrated with the fact that he has failed the seed exam several times while squall zell selfie and nita pass on the first try he becomes even more frustrated when squall's team is sent to assist the timber owls especially since he already had a previous relationship with renault when he takes matters into his own hands and tries to assassin

ate president delling the sorceress appeals to his fantasies and convinces him to join her the thing is cipher is a romantic now i don't mean that in the context that most of you are probably thinking i mean he's a dreamer he's got big ideas and big ambitions he's the type that wants to go out in a blaze of glory and have his name written down in history books or his face immortalized on tapestries he lives for the thrill of recognition and accolades and so he takes on the role of the sorceress'

s knight again something of a polar opposite of squall who never seeks a position of leadership or grandeur and in fact just wants to do his job and now for the big bad chick herself ultimisha well okay here's the thing if idiya is the goldbiz of this game then that naturally makes ultimisha the zamus of this game on one hand she's much easier to accept his main villain than zemus because of how early her name is dropped a huge problem for zamas at least from my perspective was that by the time

we learned of him the game was almost over and i'd simply gotten used to the idea that gobez was the bad dude in this game we learned about ultimisha maybe 5 8 of the way through the story so i have sufficient time to assign her in my mind as main villain and while i typically frown on villains sitting on their butts and just waiting for us to take them down this is one of the few times in which it actually made sense as she technically cannot exist in our time yet what i really don't like about

her and unfortunately this is a big enough deal to really drag her down along with her handicap of not really having any personality whatsoever to being what i consider one of the worst ffv villains is that her plan doesn't really make sense like okay she wants to compress time basically take past present and future and sort of smush them all together into one big mess um okay like what are you gonna do with that what's your reason for wanting this the game does a really good job telling you wh

at she wants to do but never once does it explain why she wants to do it at least zemus motivation made sense kefka just wanted to destroy everything because he was sick in the head and even sephiroth's reasons made sense there's a scene where dr odin basically says you're probably wondering why alti wants to compress time huh and i'm like yes i am very much wondering that please enlighten me and he's like there could be any number of reasons but it doesn't really make any difference let's just

try and stop her in other words the writers came up with this crazy idea that could work if better explained but never thought to include a motivation look i get it the writers were probably on something when they came up with this as they probably are when they come up with a lot of stuff but was there no point in which anyone at all was lucid enough to say uh guys why exactly is she doing this again the only hint at a reason the game gives us the same time compression would be a dimension that

only the sorceress could live in but that's still not sufficient motivation you might as well just say she wants to destroy all existence like every other fm villain i do like this game's ending it doesn't resolve things as thoroughly as say ff4 or five or maybe not even six but it's still a huge improvement over seven's ending we see life in the garden returning to normal city and india are happily reunited alone meeting up with laguna and for all you romance lovers out there yes we see squall

and or noah get it on although i will say that's like the only time we ever see squall smile didn't think his face muscles were capable of that to be honest probably my favorite part of the ending is seeing cipher and fh with fujin and rajin there's some classic humor between fujian and regin and seeing cypher just start laughing at his friend's antics is so refreshing like he's on the path to getting his life back together that speaks way more to me than anything squall and manoa managed to co

njure up overall the story is pretty solid most of the time but it's not nearly as entrancing to me as ff6 or seven let's move on to the gameplay if you've played an ff game before take everything you've ever learned from it and throw it out the window you won't be needing it here this game is quite a departure from the previous epic title so much so that i would easily consider it to be the black sheep of the series even though some would argue that that title falls to ff2 the game's biggest gi

mmick is going to take me a while to explain but before i do i would like to take the time to talk about some other gimmicks that are not connected to the main one but are still different from what we're used to for starters there are no treasure chests in this game at all come to think of it there aren't a whole lot of dungeon cave type areas most of what you explore are other towns also money is handled quite a bit differently than usual you may notice at the beginning of the game that you don

't actually get money after battles like you wouldn't any other rpg the story reason to this is that squall is technically not a professional seat at the beginning of the game but rather a student pretty early into the story you will take a field exam as squall this is technically not a pass fail test at least not in terms of gameplay the story tells it as such i mean cipher fails the exam so obviously it can be failed but the game doesn't let you fail if that makes any sense in order to progres

s with the plot the story requires that squall pass the exam on his first try so no matter what you do you are passing this test and becoming a seed although it should be noted that how well or poor you perform on the test determines what rank level you achieve the highest i've ever passed was a level 8. once a seed you can now start earning money but not from battles you still will not receive money from winning battles instead you receive money after walking so many steps that's right seeds li

terally get paid to walk around the higher your seed rank the more money you receive now i know what you're thinking 480 you're the greatest youtuber ever er i mean 480 can you just walk around infinitely in circles to max out your money technically yes but if you screw around and waste a lot of time your seed rank will drop one level even spending a lot of time on side quests can negatively impact your rank while progressing with the main story missions will work towards increasing your rank yo

u can also go into the pause menu at any given time and level up your rank by answering seed questionnaires i didn't bother doing this because money isn't really that much of an issue in this game weapons are handled in a similar way to ff7 in which every character has a specific weapon type that only they can wear although i will say that i love squall's gunblade literally a sword with a gun trigger you can even pull the trigger as he strikes an enemy for a critical hit what's different about w

eapons this time around is the fact that you don't switch them out for newer weapons like you would in most other rpgs in this game you upgrade your weapons by using spare parts you pick up from enemies or by other methods even with all the necessary parts you'll have to pay a junk shop to upgrade your weapon for you throughout the game you'll occasionally pick up different magazines one of which is called weapons monthly the latest issues have the latest and greatest weapon options advertised o

nce you read an issue you can upgrade to those weapons at any junk shop provided you add the required parts i'm going to tell you this now upgrading your weapons is not at all crucial to the game you can literally keep your weapons in their initial stage throughout the entire game upgrading them just slightly increases their efficiency for this run i kept everyone with their initial weapons until i collected the final issue of the weapons magazine well technically it's the first issue but it's t

he last one you'll pick up and then i upgraded everyone with the latest and greatest weapons but again it doesn't really change much in the long run if you don't want to deal with it you really don't have to as for armor well there is none in this game that's right there is no armor in this game that's kind of odd but on the other hand it's one less thing i have to keep track of so yeah there are also no rows in battle which means that there are no pine sir or side attacks back attacks still exi

st but now seem rather pointless as they're the same thing as being surprised returning from ff7 are limit breaks although they're handled quite a bit differently this time around to trigger a limit break you need to get that character's hp in the critical levels then when their turn comes up a right pointing arrow should appear next to the fight command holding down the right d-pad button brings up the limit command from which your character can perform their limit break if your character's hp

is in the chronicles but the right arrow didn't appear just keep cycling through turns it'll pop up eventually unlike ff7 the limit command is not a one-turn thing you can have one character use it and then turn right around ahead and use it again as many turns as the right arrow appears once you heal that character up the right arrow will most likely go away although it should be noted that it is technically possible to trigger the limit arrow while your hp is at a safe level it's just extremel

y unlikely as for what limit breaks actually do it simply depends on the character squalls hells and irving's limit breaks are all timed squall runs up to an enemy and starts slashing away like crazy and you can press the r1 button at the right time to pull the trigger zell's lets you input button combinations to pull off punches and kicks you can learn new combos by reading the combat king magazine scattered throughout the game and her veins lets you fire special ammo at enemies ammo you actual

ly have to collect or refine from other items as for the girls rana has a few moves in conjunction with her dog angelo and quistis can use blue magic she learns blue magic when you give her very special items at the pause menu items you also have to refine or collect selfies is easily the most abusive a slot machine pops up and allows you to cast a random spell if you don't like the spell that pops up simply press do over until you get the one you like if you're like me press it until full cure

pops up and you can heal your whole party at no cost like ff7 you can have up to three characters in a single party as usual there are a few times in which the plot gives you one or two but if everyone is available you cannot have any more or less than three squall is a constant most of the time but there are quite a few plot specific instances in which someone else takes the lead you can switch your party members out on the world map or at a save point catching chocobos this time requires you t

o go into a chocobo force and play a mini game then once you've caught the chocobo you will need to have her dig out some treasure for you once you've done this she'll be in this forest at all times waiting for you otherwise you'll have to play the catching minigame each time you enter this particular forest about halfway through the game the garden becomes a means of transportation you can traverse almost the entire world map with this but there are a few areas that are still unreachable not to

mention traveling around in the garden can be kind of tedious once you get your airship or i mean spaceship you can traverse the entire world with ease in fact once you get the spaceship you can pull up the world map move your cursor to a point of interest select it and the spaceship will fly automatically to that point as with any ff title there is a fair amount of side quests to undertake and yes some of them can be quite tedious however a good bit of them really give you crappy rewards that

are not at all worth it so i say screw em some of them are useful though and i will say that both ultima and omega weapons return from previous ff titles ultima taking his most powerful and challenging form yet which is still not terribly hard and omega being much easier to deal with than an ffi but he will still buy you if you're not careful okay i think that's all i can squeeze into this review without talking about the big main gimmick so without further ado let's talk about the junction syst

em i mentioned in the story that seeds harness the power of god-like entities called guardian forces or gf's a lot of these guys come in the form of summons or espers that we've known from previous titles like ifrit shiva siren carbuncle leviathan and bahamut plus many new gf's too when you receive a gf you can go into the menu and assign it to a character of your choice this is known as junctioning gf's come with their own unique stats and attributes which when junctioned are transferred to tha

t particular character each gf has their own set of abilities that you can assign to that character you might notice that when you go into battle you have only one available command by default the fight command no magic no summon not even the item command these are all commands that you have to assign from junction gfs every gf comes with the following commands magic draw gf and item item is self-explanatory magic of course lets you use the magic that you have but here's the thing this game also

has no mp you collect spells and store them into a special inventory as you would an item each character can carry up to 100 of any one spell if squall has 8 blizzards 3 waters and 22 cures he can cast blizzard eight times water three times and cure 22 times as for collecting magic there are a few ways to do this throughout different areas of the game you'll see pink swirly haze thingies on the ground these are called draw points you'll find these everywhere in caves villages even a few invisib

le ones on the world map a draw point contains a specific magic spell and when you examine it you stock up on that particular spell although your character has to have the draw command assigned in order to draw from a draw point also how much of that spell you draw is somewhat randomized from a measly 1 to as high as 19 if not higher the number depends on how powerful the spell is and how high that character's magic stat is once you draw from a draw point it is spent and undrawable for some time

the exact amount of time seems to be randomized as well enemies in battle carry different spells as well and with the draw command assign you can draw magic from them during the battle when you draw magic from an enemy not only can you stock it to your inventory but you can also cast it right then and there i'm going to tell you now this is how you are going to be stocking up on the majority of your magic draw points are cool but not very efficient the best way to get magic sadly is to draw fro

m your enemies while they proceed to beat the crap out of you okay to be fair their turns seem to take forever to come up and sometimes they have healing spells on them so if your hp gets too low you can draw cast a nice cure spell to make you feel better something to note there are quite a few bosses that carry certain gifs that you'll acquire by drawing them like you would a magic spell this is the only way to get these particular gfs so don't miss it now i know what you're thinking 480 your v

oice is like a wave of peace and tranquility that soothes away my worries and anxieties er i mean 480 why bother going to so much trouble to get magic i think i'll just stick to physical attacks well you can do that if you like but magic goes much deeper than simply having something to throw at your enemies or heal your team with certain gf's have different stat slots like hp strength magic spirit vitality hit percentage speed and evasion that directly affect the corresponding stats of whichever

character is wearing the gf obviously the higher the numbers the better those stats will be for that character you can actually take a character's magic spells and junction them to one of those stat slots this will boost the numbers of that stat you can only junction one spell type per slot but it will take every one of those spells that the character has how high the numbers are increased depends on a few variables 1 the more spells of a single type the better if squall junctions 100 fires to

the hp stat slot his max hp will be higher than it would if he only junction 15 fires two the more powerful the spell the higher the numbers 100 furagas will produce higher numbers than 100 fires and three the closer the relation between the spell type in the stat slot the higher the numbers a hundred ferragos may not increase the max hp that much but what about 100 kiragas or what about putting those hundred furagas into something like strength keep in mind the gf has to have these stat slots i

n order for you to junction magic to them if [ __ ] wears a gf that has the hp magic and spirit stat slots he can only junction magic to those particular stats if you wanted the junction magic to other stats you'll need to junction another gf thankfully characters can junction multiple gfs at a time so you can just keep adding gf's until you get every single slot you want a lot of them also have status defense slash attack slots or elemental defense slash attack slots junctioning magic to which

affects your attack or defense for instance junction 100 sleep spells to status attack and you have a pretty good chance of inflicting sleep with a physical attack junction 100 sleeps to status defense and you're protected from sleep junction 100 blizzagas to elemental attack and your physical attacks will be ice based junction those hundred blizzagas to elemental defense and you'll be immune to anything ice elemental the best spell in the game as far as junction purposes is easily the ultima sp

ell giving you the highest set of numbers on whatever slot you junction it to and although i usually junction it to strength so my physical attacks become insanely powerful i do think it gives you the most bang for your buck when you junction it to elemental defense because it makes your character immune to literally every element and trust me that's more than a little useful in the final area keep in mind that at literally any point you can pause the game and exchange magic with other character

s whether they be in your party or not you can also perform what is called a junction exchange between characters where one character exchanges all of their gf's with whatever abilities you have assigned as well as whichever magic you junction with another character this is useful when the story makes you switch out between party members which does happen quite a bit as for the gf command this simply summons the gf as you would any other summon but since we don't have mp this time around you can

summon them as much as you want to keep things balanced and fair when you choose to summon a gf a meter appears in place of the atb bar steadily decreasing and the gf will not appear until that meter has run out during that time the character can't do a thing so basically it takes a while to summon a gf also while the meter is decreasing i believe any attacks directed at that character will affect the gf yeah your gf's can actually die in this game and you need to take care of them like you wou

ld a normal character to be honest i don't really summon gfs that much i prefer the junction powerful magic to my characters and just wail away as for abilities each gf comes with a pretty diverse selection some already learned and others not to learn an ability for a gf simply go into the battle menu select the gf whose ability you want to learn locate set ability and select it with the cursor you'll receive ability points or ap at the end of battles which will go towards learning the selected

ability each gf can only one learn ability at a time and you'll have to actually junction that gf to a character in order for it to receive ap abilities can include commands like recover treatment and revive or attributes like hp plus 80 which when assigned will raise that character's max hp by 80 abilities also include stat slots again some gf's already know these things while others have to take time to learn them also some abilities are not available to learn until you've learned some other a

bility that serves as a prerequisite you can also give gf special items that learn them new abilities on the spot you can buy some of these items at pet shops or refine them from other items which is another thing we should discuss most gf's come with abilities that allow you to refine magic or items from existing items for instance ifrit being the gin of fire has an ability called fire magic refine with which you can take a number of special items and make fire magic spells out of them which yo

u can give to your characters shiva has ice magic refined queso cotto has thunder magic refine and so on these abilities do have to be learned however you can use this to your advantage pretty darn early in the game for instance siren is the gf you can get during the seed field exam you can learn the life magic refinability from her using this you can turn one tent into ten kiragas by 30 tents and you can make 100 kiragas for three of your characters the only object here is money i'm gonna be ho

nest here in my not so humble opinion people who complain about the junction system simply don't know how to use it i'm not knocking anyone or trying to insult your intelligence honestly the game doesn't really explain things very well outside of text tutorials which let's be honest who doesn't skip these thankfully the internet exists with all sorts of guides and walkthroughs do yourself a favor and study the junction system i'm telling you now if you learn its ins and outs it becomes insanely

rewarding and game breaking which is helpful considering the enemies in this game level up as you do whenever i hear a newcomer to this game ask for tips and advice the level scaling is one of the first things people mention i've been hearing a few complaints recently about this gimmick but honestly i don't mind it it's a non-issue to me because i know how to manipulate the junction system and break the game making my characters insanely powerful regardless of my levels not only that but if you

want to do a no-level run of this game you can absolutely and easily the world map is filled with linear pathways leading from one area to another almost every major location is connected by these pathways while you're walking on these pathways you don't get into random battles so you have the option to control your battles unfortunately there's not a whole lot you can do about this in caves and dungeons but as early as squall's team departing for timber on their first mission you can acquire th

e gf diablos who comes with an ability you can learn called encounter half which as the name suggests cuts the number of random battles in half not only that but once you've learned it you can start learning another ability called encounter none which when assigned negates all random encounters both of these abilities do require large amounts of ap to learn so until then you can simply run from any random battles you don't want to deal with now i know what you're thinking 480 can you please stop

making lame jokes about what you think we're thinking you don't actually know what we're thinking and you're making yourself sound like an imbecile the joke was funny the first time but enough is enough already you're probably right but let's pretend that what you really were thinking was 480 what about boss battles or other forced encounters you have to fight diablos to get them as a gf and you have to win battles to get enough ap to learn encounter none how about this boss battles gf battles

and other forced encounters do not reward you with experience points they still give you ap so you can still learn these abilities but only the battles that you don't have to fight give you experience the game goes out of its way to make sure that you really don't need to gain any levels if you don't want to all that being said if you are planning to do a no-level run in this game you should stay away from getting the toneberry and odin gf's the only way to get the toneberry gf is to defeat the

toneberry king and he only appears in the central ruins after you've defeated somewhere around 19 to 22 regular tone barriers which do give you xp as for rhoden he's not a normal gf you can't actually junction him but in fact after you've defeated and acquired him he will randomly appear at the beginning of a normal battle and insta-kill the enemies if he decides to show up there's literally nothing you can do you won't be able to run from the battle in time and you'll be forced with unwanted xp

so you really don't want to take the chance unless you already have encounter none interestingly enough if you don't acquire odin by the time you face cipher and lunatic pandora he'll pop up after you've damaged cypher enough and end the battle after which you'll be stuck with him anyway if you did get him earlier you'll lose him in the same battle and he'll be replaced with the one and only gilgamesh that's right the man the myth the legend himself beginning his trend of appearing in different

ff titles interestingly enough he has a line where he asks about the dimensional interval which helps to support the theory that there has only ever been one gilgamesh traveling between the dimensions of the ff universe in this game he appears whenever he wants sometimes in the middle of a battle and performs one of four moves one of which being an insta kill move so keep that in mind now i personally like to fight random battles and level up my characters why because low level enemies drop lit

tle in the way of items and their spells are typically low level like cures thunders shells scans and the likes but as you level up and subsequently the enemies do as well they start dropping better items and in greater quantities and their spells start increasing to things like curas thundaras regens or reflex to kiraga's thundagas quakes bios etc basically higher level enemies are more worth your while in the long run you can even further exploit this with the toneberry gf who comes with the l

evel up and level down commands with which you can change the levels of enemies mid-battle i'll put it to you like this by the time i got to the final boss squall was in his 50s with everyone else being in their 20s or 30s and i didn't have a whole lot of trouble then again i had the most powerful spells junction like ultima meteor flare and the likes so again the key to making this game your slave is not to level up like crazy nor to avoid leveling up but simply to master the junction system i'

m telling you you would not believe how insanely overpowered you can get early on in this game let's talk about another big gimmick of this game triple triad at the beginning of the game a random student hands you a bunch of playing cards he says that someone gave them to him but it's not really his thing he informs you that you can challenge people to a card game by walking up to them and pressing the square button the card game is called triple triad basically you and your opponent play with f

ive card hands each on a nine space board when all nine spaces have been filled the game ends in whoever's hand has more cards wins each card has four numbers one on top one on bottom and one on right and one on the left when two cards are placed next to each other the numbers determine the outcome if my opponent places a card right above mine and his bottom number is greater than my top number my card will be flipped and will now belong to him if his bottom number is less than my top number not

hing happens if i place a card to his cards a median left and my right number is greater than his left number i'll flip his card around and so on flipping cards does not allow you to use them at least not during this particular match but it will determine who has more cards at the end of the match if i flipped one of his cards in a match he now only has four cards while i have six making me the winner also once i flip one of his cards he still has the opportunity to flip it back provided he has

cards with sufficient numbers if the match ends with both of your cards at 5 cards it's an obvious draw when you win a match you get to take some of his cards which ones and how many depend on the trading rule in place in your current region before you begin a match you can see what trading rule is in place one means that if you win the match you can take one of his cards any one of them whether he played it or not difference means that the number of cards you choose is derived from the differen

ce between the number of cards in your finishing hands for example if i win the match with 6 cards to his 4 i get to take 2 of his cards because 6 minus 4 is 2. if i've got seven and he has three i get to take four of his cards and if i finish with eight to his two i just automatically get all of his cards because the difference would be six and our starting hands are only five same deal if i had nine and he had one although that rarely happens all means that when you win a match you'll get all

of his cards please keep in mind that when losing a match he gets your cards based on the same rules also note that when you win a match with one of these card rules you keep your starting hand cards regardless of whether or not they were flipped so if he flips one of your cards that doesn't mean you've lost it unless you lose the match altogether in which case he may choose that card he may not now if the trading rule is direct that's a different story when you finish a match with direct you on

ly get to take his cards that you have flipped subsequently you'll lose any cards that he flipped so when you play with direct winning and losing don't really mean anything in the long run before i get too deep into this let's talk about the cards themselves most of them are based on enemies you fight the cards included in your starter pack that the kid gives you are pretty weak meaning they have low numbers as you play against different people you'll encounter higher numbers the key to winning

triple triad is not based so much on your skill nor is it based on luck but rather what kind of cards you have your goal is to play each match with the highest set of numbers there are a few students walking around balum garden that have somewhat weak cards but can play a few okay ones every now and then so you can build up your collection do note that not everyone is a card player so if you walk up to someone and press the square button and they don't say anything about cards well they don't pl

ay a good way to get some decent cards early on is using the card ability that you can learn from the quesado gf this allows you to turn enemies into cards although you do have to get their hp low enough for it to work most enemies and bosses are known as common cards meaning that you can have multiple amounts of those cards and you can get them from various people walking around the world triple triad is not limited to balum garden oh no every single region in the world contains multiple people

who will play cards with you if you but ask there are also rare cards in the world they are the only ones of their kind and usually found through very specific methods every single gf has its own card as well as every playable character and a few non-playable characters even when noah's dog angelo whose card you can win from watts and timber in most cases the character cards are held by people that have some sort of connection to that character you can win zel's card from his adopted mom renaul

t's card from her dad questions his card from a thirsty fanboy selfies card from her best friend in trayvia garden laguna's card from it alone and edius card from idia herself then some of them don't really make sense like winning cipher scarred from the headmaster sid or irvine's card from the mayor's wife in fh rare cards are almost always going to have really good numbers on them oh and you can win squall's card from laguna further suggesting that laguna is his dad there's even a card for big

gs and wedges one for fujin and rajin although these are common cards keep in mind that if someone has a particular card you need they may not always play it at first if they don't just keep playing them over and over again until they put it in their hand as for gf cards you typically get these after you've acquired that gf but there are some instances where you'll need to look elsewhere get on the internet game facts has a 20 year old walkthrough that goes into great detail about the ins and ou

ts of triple triad as well as where you can find each card let's talk about the different rules of triple triad this game is played all around the world so you can't really expect it to be played the same way in every single area there are many different rules by which you can play the game and they're scattered throughout the different regions for instance by default you can choose which of your cards you want to put in your hand before a match begins but if the random rule is in place the game

does it for you not cool especially if you have a large and diverse collection by default you don't know what kind of cards your opponent has until they place them on the board but with the open rule in place you can see your opponent's hand thus allowing you to plan your moves more carefully there are many different rules to play with and most of them can be hard to deal with at least for me but i guess that means i suck at them sometimes when you challenge someone to a game they'll say someth

ing along the lines of oh you know some rules that we don't use let's play a game with your region's rules and ours this is known as mixing rules here's how it works let's say i play a game at a certain location say balum which has the open rule now let's say i leave balum and go someplace else say timber which has the same rule for a time i will be carrying as it were balum's rules not everyone is a rule mixer and most people will be content to just play cards with timber's rule of same but a f

ew specific people will want to mix rules if i say yes we'll play a game with both balum's rule of open and timber's rule of same after you've played a game with mixed rules there is a chance that the rules of the current region will change slightly in this case balance rule of open may spread throughout timber making it a new permanent rule and if the region you're playing in has more than one rule all but one of them can be abolished a region always has to have at least one rule at all times y

ou'll get a notification telling you exactly what has happened it is also possible that nothing will happen eventually the rule mixer will stop asking you to mix rules and just start playing with that region's rules all of this is based on random number generators so if you're trying to abolish or spread a certain rule in a certain region you should perform a hard save before challenging the rule mixer so that if the outcome is not what you want you can reload and try again you also don't have t

o finish a match to change the rules around you can accept to play and then quit as soon as the card game screen loads also if you don't want to mix rules but need to play someone who is a rule mixer because maybe they have a particular card you want just keep challenging and refusing to play until they quit asking to mix rules as for the trading rules those remain stagnant throughout regions although they have a pretty wide area of coverage there is only one person who can change the trading ru

les and she is found near the beginning of the game in the town of balum she is a beautiful lady called the queen of cards she travels the world and monitors the different card playing rules she plays with whatever trading rules she wants and can influence the trading rule of that location if you play her in balum and she plays using direct there's a good chance that all of balum will begin using direct if you're trying to spread a specific trading rule just keep challenging her and quitting unt

il she uses the one you want but keep in mind that it doesn't always take so after you've beaten her be sure to challenge somebody else nearby and make sure they're using the desired trading rule as for which ones are best stay away from direct and all i shouldn't have to explain why direct is too risky but you're probably wondering why i advise staying away from all since it seems like the best outcome you winning every card from your opponent's hand well sometimes that rule has a tendency to s

pontaneously switch to direct with no warning basically everyone will be playing with all and then all of a sudden it will be direct and the only way to change it to something else is to play the queen again until she plays with the rule you want difference is my preferred trading rule although it can occasionally switch to one without warning this is somewhat annoying but one is still a safe rule albeit a little tedious you might think having earned the title of queen of cards she is one of the

best players in the game nothing could be further from the truth she is not hard to beat in the slightest in fact it's rather difficult to lose to her if you're at all competent believe it or not you do want to lose to her from time to time if you lose a rare card to her she informs you that she's grown bored of this area and she's going to go visit some other place after that she won't play you again and once you leave and come back she'll have left already there are several areas she likes to

visit and if you go to those areas you can use her to influence the trading rules there's also a side quest you can undertake with her one of the places she likes to visit is the town of dalet which happens to be her hometown where her family lives as it turns out her father is a famous painter and card maker in fact he's responsible for making most of the cards in the game there are some very specific cards you can lose to her which she will show to her dad and he will be inspired to make new

cards from them which you can win from other players around the world for example you can win the mini mod card from the little runner boy in balum garden if you lose this to the queen she'll show it to her dad who will in turn make the kiros card which you can then win from someone in delhi city not only that but the queen will give the mini mog card to her son whom you can challenge to try and win back while in dalet the queen will not only tell you what card her dad made from the one you lost

as well as tell you the region in which you can find it but she'll also tell you the next card she's looking for in any other location she won't say so this does make it difficult to know which card she's looking for but that's why i got invented the internet the thing that makes this side quest tricky is where the queen decides to go when you lose these cards many of the places are inaccessible until you've acquired a better means of transportation like the garden for this reason it's best to

hard save before losing the card to her and reload until she finally goes somewhere you can reach try to make sure she always goes to the wet because she can't show the card to her dad or give it to her son until she swings by her hometown if you lose one of these cards to her while she's already in dalet it doesn't matter where she goes next as she'll show the card to her dad and give it to her son on her way out however for the sake of efficiency and management it's just easier to have her go

back and forth between dalet and balum but don't forget to make sure that she played with your desired trading rule and then don't forget to make sure that everyone else is still using it if that's not the case well reload and try again yes this does get tedious along with many other aspects about triple triad which then begs the question is it even worth it well here's the thing i mentioned quizzicolo's card ability what i didn't tell you is that once you've learned it a new ability is availabl

e to learn called card modify or card mod this ability allows you to take a card or number of cards and make items from them the items range in value from raw materials like screws which are used to upgrade weapons or refine other items to magic items that can be refined into spells to blue magic items that you can give to quistis and to very rare items that you can use to teach your gf's new abilities for instance modding zell's card gives you three hyper wrists which you can give to three gf's

of your choosing and this will teach them the ability strength plus sixty percent keep in mind zell's card is obtainable very early in the game so you can already make yourself ridiculously overpowered you can get all sorts of really cool stuff from modding cards most of which is pretty useless by itself but using your other refining abilities on these items can net you some really awesome rewards for this reason i highly recommend learning card in card mod as soon as possible and making use of

the card game even if the rewards were not that great i'd still play the heck out of triple try just because i love it so much my only complaint about it is the different rules and trying to change said rules other than that it's really solid during this run i spent a lot and i mean a lot of time playing cards some may not be able to get into it but i sure did one final thing about the cards there is an official card club at balum garden you learn this from a student you'll often see hanging ar

ound the billboard in the front hall he tells you that this club comprises the top card players at garden the best of the best after you've won 15 matches at garden you can actually challenge the club members themselves some of them are the most unlikely people the student who tells you about them describes them as a bunch of card maniacs as if he finds the whole thing silly well ironically he's jack the first member you'll face club is just a random student who walks around the first floor from

time to time when the seeds escape from galvadia prison you'll see a few random dudes with whom you can play cards and one of them tells you that he's actually from garden later on you can find him in the garden training center he's the joker diamond happens to be a duet our friendly good morning girls who like to hang around the billboard remember the kid who gave us our starter pack of cards and told us about the time consuming monster that is triple triad in the first place he told us that h

e doesn't like to play that we shouldn't bother challenging him but as is the case with most rpgs when someone tells you not to do something you must do the very thing they have told you not to do as it turns out he's spayed early on in the game you can find zoo hanging around outside the library if you challenge her she'll tell you that she used to play cards back in the day but hasn't for some time now don't believe her she's heart the second best player in the club after you've beaten her nid

a says that he was surprised to learn she was a card player and she warns him that this is supposed to be a secret after which quistis casually remarks that she was already aware of this now how would questus know this because she is the only other person to ever defeat zoo the top card player at garden the king herself yeah who would have guessed that the king of the card club is a girl not to mention one of our main playable characters oh and you can win the gilgamesh card from her let's talk

about altamesh's castle which happens to be my favorite final area in any ff title i played when you first enter you lose the ability to do just about anything other than use the fight command you can't use items magic limit breaks you can't resurrect fallen characters you can't use commands like level up or down recover treatment you can't summon gf's you can't even use save points the castle is filled with bosses and each time you defeat one you are prompted to unseal an ability of your choosi

ng some of these bosses are mandatory while others are optional and if you don't get them all you won't have all of your abilities available for the final boss also upon entering you are prompted to form two teams and you'll be switching between the two quite a bit not unlike kevco's tower from ff6 the final boss isn't terribly challenging but does feel longer than it needs to be the game randomly selects three characters for battle so you may want to have everyone more or less equally junctione

d or just kill them off one by one and make no attempt to revive them after a few turns they'll be absorbed at the time and replaced with someone else just make sure at least one character is standing at all times or it's game over the graphics are simply phenomenal for its time the backgrounds and terrains don't really look any different from those of ff7 but the character models are a huge improvement our characters actually look more like real people and not like disproportionate plush dolls

they actually have recognizable features such as noses mouths ears and each hand has four distinct fingers and a thumb my only complaint is that the characters look a bit too tall and skinny but i'm just glad that they actually look like people this time the animations are smooth as well and most everything looks fluid some of my favorites include the seed salute zell's awkward walk that looks like his backysaur and of course selfie collapsing into the fetal position and even though we don't hav

e clouds iconic shrugging in this game we have something just as good if not better squall's face palms our teammates no longer fuse with our lead character and instead tag along after us as they did in chrono trigger i also love how ultima weapons well weapon is literally cloud's ultimate weapon from ff7 if there's one visual aesthetic i'm not too sure about it's adele's design you know how ff titles tend to feature girly looking pretty boys let's go all the way to the opposite side of the same

spectrum and say hello to the eight-foot giant that is adele complete with a muscular chest and everything and of course the best thing about the graphics are the fmv cutscenes which looks simply gorgeous the characters look more detailed than ever here and the animations are clean and smooth the sword fight during the intro zell's somersaults the activation of the communications tower the dance between squall and renault the lizard gargoyle coming to life renault's gorgeously long dark hair fl

ying in the wind it's all great not only that but there are many scenes that transition between in-game and fmv graphics admittedly the contrast between the two does look pretty jarring but the transitions are pretty seamless all things considered obviously these graphics don't hold a candle to what we have nowadays but for back then this was pretty flippant amazing once again our music was composed by our resident genius nobuomatsu on the production side this game soundtrack is quite an improve

ment over that of ff7s it's clear that everything is synthesized but the tones sound more real more natural even some of the more orchestral tracks like the overture that were obviously recorded on synthesizer sound almost convincing and there are a few tracks that feature a real honest-to-goodness orchestra not to mention the two main themes that feature live vocals on the composition side however if i'm going to be terribly honest this soundtrack pales when compared to the likes of 5 6 and 7.

maybe it's just me but i feel like some of these tracks don't really go anywhere plus a lot of traditions from previous titles have dropped here like the world map theme which is nice and intelligent but doesn't have any correlation to the main themes like every title since ff4 has had there's also an apparent lack of character themes you may have noted some of the music i use when talking about the different characters i just chose what i felt best suited them let's go through some of these tra

cks the overture replaces the classic prelude theme kind of odd but i will forgive it because this theme is so flippant good kinda reminds me of the steamship theme from ff5 which as you may remember is one of my favorites in the entire franchise the opening features the iconic and beloved liberi fatali or however the heck it's supposed to be pronounced this track features a live orchestra and choir vocals many of the motifs from this piece are used for the sorceress let me also say that this tr

ack is an absolute banger the music that plays throughout balum garden is quite lovely and there are several different renditions of it the dungeon cave music is quite similar to that of previous titles the standard town music breezy which seems to be a favorite of many is quite peaceful and relaxing fh's theme is another favorite of many including myself another banger to note is the music that plays during the seed field exam i also love the music that plays during the train mission for being

an underwhelming antagonist in my opinion norg has a deliciously foreboding theme with nothing but pipe organ goodness the let's theme is catchy and although i kind of wish the space station had its own theme using the less theme does kind of fit especially if you've watched 2001 a space odyssey as thor's theme is intriguing and fits the atmosphere the sorceress theme is fitting for her whether it be used for altamisha or idia during her possession the main love theme between squall and renault

is called eyes on me which according to this game's story was written by julia there are several different versions of it the main one being a pop ballad featuring chinese vocalist fei wong i'm gonna be honest i don't much care for it i know a lot of people love it but it's too flowery and cheesy for me the music that plays during triple triad is so catchy and almost never gets old for me i say almost because i did start to grow a little tired of it during this run but i played so much of triple

trident heard this theme so much this game has one of my favorite chocobo themes in the franchise not sure if it's my absolute favorite but it's up there the standard battle music is epic and kind of reminiscent of ff7 or at least of me the boss battle theme is just as rocking as ever like ff7 the victory fanfare has the classic intro jingle but then goes into a completely different theme the music that plays during the fights with idia is cold and foreboding in that scene where she stabs him w

ith a spike of ice there is a separate battle theme for laguna called the man with the machine gun it's awesome enough said altamesh's castle oh ultimish's castle how i love this track the final boss themes are spread out throughout the different phases my only complaints are that the legendary beast only plays for a few seconds which is really a shame considering how freaking epic it is maybe i'm a lion little on the nose there isn't a bad theme per se it's just a bit on the underwhelming side

the final phase the extreme is one of my favorites in the series and the credits music features an orchestrated version of eyes on me as well as the classic ff theme in one of its most dramatic and cinematic forms yet overall this is still a wonderful soundtrack and features some of my very favorite tunes especially liberi fatale i just don't think the soundtrack is up to par with some of the previous titles but hey that's just me overall this game has been somewhat well received however some ha

ve apparently complained that it feels too different from other ff titles i can kind of understand what you're getting at the ff formula changes with each game but usually these changes feel natural and only build on what was introduced ff3 feels like a natural change from ff1 4 feels like a different take on one five feels like a natural change from three six feels like a combination between four and five seven feels like a natural change from six and then there's this game which completely tur

ns everything on its head but here's the thing this game had a lot riding against it because no matter what square did whether they played it safe or took risks this game was the follow-up to ff7 which is one of the most critically acclaimed rpgs in history now i'm not saying this game was doomed to fail no matter what but it certainly wasn't going to measure up to the standard set by that game so why not simply throw those standards out the window and make new ones i'm a firm believer that ther

e are some instances in which the only way to know if an idea is bad is to try it and see how it works out so why not do that with a game you know isn't going to be as successful as the previous one i don't know if that was square's mentality or not but that's the way i look at it and even though every aspect about this game has its rough spots i still think it's a fine rpg that definitely deserves a chance and i can definitely say i prefer this game over the first three so there you go anyhow i

hope you enjoyed this review if you did please be sure to check out some of my other reviews maybe check out some of my music as well or subscribe to the channel otherwise have a fantastic rest of your day peaces [Music] wow you