Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

She kinda does Row lol. She's good lookin too though. Idk about the other chicks, since I haven't watched in awhile, but Alison Hayslip (totally jacked that up), was good lookin as well. Damn gamer girls on TV, gotta be good lookin and *** :P

Morgan is pretty but like.. sometimes her face.. it just looks weird. :/

8 when I first played it helped satiate my lust for large scale, lush, colorful, vast and grandiose RPGs after having tasted FF for the first time in #7, and it did a grand job at that; and to a degree, still does.

However, in retrospect with my age and changes in taste came a few critical responses to things within the game. But to save you guys from lengthy banter, I'll just go with a pro/con system like Ina.

Liked
-Story up until the 3rd disc or so. (The final antagonist seemed too sudden and unexplained, and with their alleged motive making close to no sense whatsoever. Perhaps if more time and focus were spent on the origins of Ultimecia and legitimizing her hatred for SeeD, along with how they function and what direct purpose they serve, I would have liked it better. But the first 2 discs gave the story a great direction and was paced quite well.)

-Junction (This system was very neat in that you could essentially customize your character's attributes and heavily emphasize roles into whichever character you wanted was very intuitive however, I'll get into why this didn't pan out so great in the cons)

-World (After having already taken in the robust, dark and industrial atmosphere of FF7, despite having diverse geology with its forests, mountain ranges, snowy ranges, etc. FF8's futuristic approach helped really bring out the light and color of the world around very nicely. Even the smallest of towns were interesting and full of character, especially the slowly decaying and unique Fisherman's Horizon. Also, despite how out of the blue Esthar was, it was a welcome addition to have a city so vibrant and futuristic, despite being rather limited in it's exploration and function. It was also charming to have each region and crevice of the world uniquely named, giving it the sense of authenticity it much needed. Bet you didn't know the southern tip of the island where you meet Matron was named after the actual "Cape of Good Hope" in South Africa.)

Dislikes

-Characters (Spoilering this one cause it goes on quite a bit.)

-Drawing magic (Ugh, I can't even begin to describe how irritating it was having to suck out units of magic from monsters. The concept of having magic be units of a consumable nature is pretty dubious, and only added insult to injury in making your quantity a significant factor of your junction system. Not to mention having it be a method for something as predominant as summons to the franchise, is just a big no no for me. It was also rather disappointing to have the summons tucked away with little to no lore as these passive "GF"s that mysteriously or rather allegedly deteriorate your memory. The whole thing was just wrapped up and passed as a poor excuse for some logical fallacies within the story, without any lore or background whatsoever.)

-Story (Perhaps I need to give this game a 3rd or 4th run to readjust my position on this, but everything seemed to progress on such a great level. The story had good direction, was interesting from the start, and didn't drag on needlessly, while simultaneously granting the freedom to the open world at the player's leisure. However, it was around the start of the 3rd disc that the justification for all the conflict you've undergone was pulled out of the hat like a rabbit. These deus ex machina explanations (or there lack of), is a huge pet peeve of mine, and sadly it seems to be a common trend in FF games, especially near the very end of things. Necron/Exdeath anyone? I was disappointed FF8 took this route. I would have much rather had a tangible antagonist we can actually grow to hate more and more and analyze their behavior and motives, and thus adding more legitimacy and development for the main characters.)

All in all, it was a great game, and a high ranking FF title. Certainly one of the better ones with all that is out now. However, there are some things I cannot give it a pass for, and why it remains on the relatively lower end of my list of favorite FFs, which only helps shed light on my distaste for more recent titles.

One of my favorite FF tracks

NO ONE CARES DRACBEAR.

Jk, I care.

The main difference was, even in FF4 and 5, you had an antagonist to shed some of your attention and focus on, even if they ended up being puppets for something bigger lying in background. The concept for this is okay, but often times when the curtain is pulled and the true antagonist is revealed, it's extremely anti-climatic. Square probably expected us to gasp in surprise, but in reality it was more like "oh... okay" to us.
For 8 it was constantly kept obscure and in the distance. Even when Edea was supposedly your main bad guy was given the pass relatively early, leaving everything you did to obscurity, which left me confused and somewhat unmotivated near the end of the game.
Even with looming threats like the Lunatic Pandora just made me feel like I was being distracted from the main struggle or purpose of what I should have been doing.

ALWAYS SO MEAN TO ME ;;

Deal with it.

To be fair Ultimicia is there through the whole game... any time you see Edea on disk 1 and 2 that is Ultimicia not Edea, same with possesed Rinoa on disk 3. While I'll agree they left her motives maybe a bit to open to interpritation (I'm pritty much sold on the Rinoa = Ultimicia theory personally) it bugs me when people say she was never there untill the end of the game.

I dismissed that theory when I first saw it because it would only add further insult to injury and alienate anyone that's played the game or had remote interest in it. Sure it may have some legitimacy or logical match ups to the things that have happened, but I already had a hard time swallowing FFX with the whole Bobby Ewing thing; I don't need another one.

Well, you don't find out that Edea was Ultimecia's puppet until much later in the game, and by then time you find out, it made everything that had Edea as the focal point of conflict seem anti-climatic, as it had already happened, but is just a different face now.

*wanders in*

/ties to a chair

/records

I like where this is going

Huh... I had a dream like this last night...

Go on...

Were we there?

Well, I'm gonna go make myself some lunch. Catch you all later~

Lately everyone is always angry in linkshell, what's wrong with people?

As soon as Spath entered, ***got real...

A few of you were. Though not exactly in the same area at the time...

I'm not sure if I wanna do that...

Everything. :O

Yea... I feel bad now. I'm just gonna go over to another thread or something.

/ties Spath up

The dream has become a reality!

So wait.. who tired you up? >.> Leon? or..

frustration...

in conclusion...

HULK SMASH!