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Final Fantasy VIII Classic Jobs Part IV
Aug. 11th, 2024 12:04 pmI played the next few parts of my run of Final Fantasy VIII limited to one knight, thief, white mage, and black mage in the party on August 7th and 9th. We were starting from the Tomb of the Unknown King. There were a couple of new enemies here, including Blobra and Armadodo that made me think travelling without offensive magic may be an issue going forward. Not that they were hard or anything, but physical attacks didn't stack up well.
Until after this area we're forced into being thief, white mage, black mage anyway. Right now Squall is the thief, Irvine is the white mage, and Rinoa is the black mage.
There were no exciting new spells to draw here until the boss fights, though.
Between Sacred and Minotaur we were able to collect a bunch of Protect, Shell, and Double, where double is usable by all of thief, white mage, and black mage. I wish I spent more time drawing these against Sacred on his own, because the fight against the Brothers together was actually very tough. I had trouble keeping my characters up, and then when I needed to move into a recovery pattern the Float spell that I had cast on the Brothers would wear off and they themselves would heal. These guys always regenerate unless they're floating, which is quite a neat mechanic, actually. This may have been the first actual tough fight for me so far.
Keep in mind that I've got no Str-J for anyone, so my regular attack damage is terrible. I decided I should eliminate one enemy. I chose Sacred; I didn't remember whether beating one brother ended the fight or not and I figured he was the easier one. Rinoa even threw out a couple of Blizzagas that we had drawn inside Timber Maniacs.
While taking out Sacred was pretty easy, Minotaur was really able to keep with pressure up, especially with his nasty little hit-all physical attack. I wasn't able to draw too many of his great spells, but we did win.
We gained Brothers as a GF - plus their excellent cards - and with that we were able to use a knight for the first time.
As I left I added Selphie to the party as a knight. Knights have access to the Absorb command representing Blood Swords, which is mostly irrelevant because it's terrible. She has access to a few elemental spells (strictly for junction purposes) that Kiros drew earlier. The Brothers GF comes with Vit-J and Spr-J learned and has to learn HP-J and Str-J, so it will be a while before the knight actually stands out much.
I also finally learned Mug for our thief, which I had prioritized because stealing is what thieves do. This is a bit weird because Diablos' abilities are so expensive; we only have two ability slots, and we aren't benefitting from Enc-Half (let alone Enc-None) and we won't for a while.
For now we'll travel without a black mage on the team, which I did mostly because Quezacotl, Shiva and Ifrit had been around forever.
We travelled back to Deling City, grabbing a few low-level spells for Selphie the knight along the way. We got all set up for our exciting assassination mission.
Then came one of the game's first really weirdly contrived, stupid plot points where Quistis is sad so she leaves the Arc de Triomphe to apologize to Rinoa instead of doing the most important task of her life, and both Zell and Selphie follow her for absolutely no reason. How easily they could've avoided the terrible, terrible sewer walk.
Squall and Irvine fought some lizard friends without any particular issue.
From the Iguions (sp?) we were able to get our second white mage GF, Carbuncle. Carbuncle provides a couple of extra junctions to the party's white mage. Carbuncle also brings the Recover command, which is pretty cool.
Back in the sewer, Quistis was a thief, Selphie was a knight, and Zell was a white mage. Most fights here were mercifully quick, but Grand Mantises can tank. I got limit breaks with Zell and, doing 20 or so moves for 50 damage each took ages and still didn't kill it. Eventually I just learned I should keep Quistis weak and use Degenerator on them. It seemed a bit cheesy to me but this area is really annoying so I am not bothered.
I thought I missed the Weapons Monthly down here so I accidentally did a whole extra loop of the sewers anyway. And I still missed the Weapons Monthly. Augh. I'll come back later... with Enc-None.
Then - before the next terrible, terrible part of this game - there was a brief interlude of cool parts.
Squall vs. Seifer was no issue at all.
Squall was a knight, Irvine was a white mage, and Rinoa was a black mage. Mostly though we just chucked dogs at her - or at least that's how I remember it.
There was nothing particularly special about this fight as I remember it. Then we sort of died-ish?
On to Disc 2.
We did a Laguna sequence. It happens that Laguna is a knight and Kiros is a white mage. The only enemies here were Caterchipillars and Bite Bugs, so we drew lots of Fire and Thunder for Laguna and then used Mid Mag-RF to grow those into Fira and Thundara. Brothers also unlocked Str-J, so I was finally able to deal reasonable damage.
Kiros also drew a few things, like Slow. Every so often he'd go crazy and completely slaughter a bug with Blood Pain.
Okay, now it's time for the incredible design decision of making people walking up and down staircases on identical looking screens. This was really popular in Final Fantasy 5, 6 and 7 so I can see why they wanted to revisit it. But this time, some genius game designer made it take nearly 60 seconds per floor, each with multiple random encounters.
Selphie says, "What do we do? Just stay here? We'll get tortured for sure!" and she has no idea how right she is.
Biggs and Wedge are fun at least. They had a ton of great spells for us, like Protect, Shell, Reflect, Haste, and Regen. We happened to have Quistis as a thief (who benefits from Haste), Zell as a knight (who benefits from Protect, Shell and Reflect) and Selphie as a white mage (who benefits from all of these) so it was a very profitable-feeling battle. They are also exceptionally non-threatening, with attacks like a Fire spell for 9 damage. And that was before I silenced and slowed them both.
Everything else here sucked. I have a couple more pictures but nobody cares. In the worst area in the game they made much of the backtracking impossible, and it's one of very few areas with missable items of consequence. What a freakin' master class in game design. Stupid. I am sure I did miss a magazine or something here.
For the pseudo-boss fight at the end I had Quistis at low HP so I just accelerated things by using Electrocute again and again.
Another reason I hate this area: the "climb across while this thing sinks part".
I swear I thought I died here. And you can instantly game over out-of-battle here, forcing you to go back into the awful prison and do a large part of it again! I've done it before. In my younger days, I once forgot once whether you were supposed to hold left or hold right to move to safety, held left, and you get an out-of-battle game over.
Anyway, I held right, moving toward the blinking green light... and then there's no indication that you actually escaped. I was already starting to get mad but it turns out I lived. Somehow.
On to the part with the two different parties, including the missile base. I picked Squall, Quistis and Zell to go to Balamb Garden because they are Balamb people, leaving Rinoa with Selphie and Irvine. I forgot about some of the little interlude scenes here.
Next up will be the Galbadian Missile base with Selphie, Irvine and Rinoa. I think I'll want a white mage and a black mage for that tank boss.
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Until after this area we're forced into being thief, white mage, black mage anyway. Right now Squall is the thief, Irvine is the white mage, and Rinoa is the black mage.
There were no exciting new spells to draw here until the boss fights, though.
Between Sacred and Minotaur we were able to collect a bunch of Protect, Shell, and Double, where double is usable by all of thief, white mage, and black mage. I wish I spent more time drawing these against Sacred on his own, because the fight against the Brothers together was actually very tough. I had trouble keeping my characters up, and then when I needed to move into a recovery pattern the Float spell that I had cast on the Brothers would wear off and they themselves would heal. These guys always regenerate unless they're floating, which is quite a neat mechanic, actually. This may have been the first actual tough fight for me so far.
Keep in mind that I've got no Str-J for anyone, so my regular attack damage is terrible. I decided I should eliminate one enemy. I chose Sacred; I didn't remember whether beating one brother ended the fight or not and I figured he was the easier one. Rinoa even threw out a couple of Blizzagas that we had drawn inside Timber Maniacs.
While taking out Sacred was pretty easy, Minotaur was really able to keep with pressure up, especially with his nasty little hit-all physical attack. I wasn't able to draw too many of his great spells, but we did win.
We gained Brothers as a GF - plus their excellent cards - and with that we were able to use a knight for the first time.
As I left I added Selphie to the party as a knight. Knights have access to the Absorb command representing Blood Swords, which is mostly irrelevant because it's terrible. She has access to a few elemental spells (strictly for junction purposes) that Kiros drew earlier. The Brothers GF comes with Vit-J and Spr-J learned and has to learn HP-J and Str-J, so it will be a while before the knight actually stands out much.
I also finally learned Mug for our thief, which I had prioritized because stealing is what thieves do. This is a bit weird because Diablos' abilities are so expensive; we only have two ability slots, and we aren't benefitting from Enc-Half (let alone Enc-None) and we won't for a while.
For now we'll travel without a black mage on the team, which I did mostly because Quezacotl, Shiva and Ifrit had been around forever.
We travelled back to Deling City, grabbing a few low-level spells for Selphie the knight along the way. We got all set up for our exciting assassination mission.
Then came one of the game's first really weirdly contrived, stupid plot points where Quistis is sad so she leaves the Arc de Triomphe to apologize to Rinoa instead of doing the most important task of her life, and both Zell and Selphie follow her for absolutely no reason. How easily they could've avoided the terrible, terrible sewer walk.
Squall and Irvine fought some lizard friends without any particular issue.
From the Iguions (sp?) we were able to get our second white mage GF, Carbuncle. Carbuncle provides a couple of extra junctions to the party's white mage. Carbuncle also brings the Recover command, which is pretty cool.
Back in the sewer, Quistis was a thief, Selphie was a knight, and Zell was a white mage. Most fights here were mercifully quick, but Grand Mantises can tank. I got limit breaks with Zell and, doing 20 or so moves for 50 damage each took ages and still didn't kill it. Eventually I just learned I should keep Quistis weak and use Degenerator on them. It seemed a bit cheesy to me but this area is really annoying so I am not bothered.
I thought I missed the Weapons Monthly down here so I accidentally did a whole extra loop of the sewers anyway. And I still missed the Weapons Monthly. Augh. I'll come back later... with Enc-None.
Then - before the next terrible, terrible part of this game - there was a brief interlude of cool parts.
Squall vs. Seifer was no issue at all.
Squall was a knight, Irvine was a white mage, and Rinoa was a black mage. Mostly though we just chucked dogs at her - or at least that's how I remember it.
There was nothing particularly special about this fight as I remember it. Then we sort of died-ish?
On to Disc 2.
We did a Laguna sequence. It happens that Laguna is a knight and Kiros is a white mage. The only enemies here were Caterchipillars and Bite Bugs, so we drew lots of Fire and Thunder for Laguna and then used Mid Mag-RF to grow those into Fira and Thundara. Brothers also unlocked Str-J, so I was finally able to deal reasonable damage.
Kiros also drew a few things, like Slow. Every so often he'd go crazy and completely slaughter a bug with Blood Pain.
Okay, now it's time for the incredible design decision of making people walking up and down staircases on identical looking screens. This was really popular in Final Fantasy 5, 6 and 7 so I can see why they wanted to revisit it. But this time, some genius game designer made it take nearly 60 seconds per floor, each with multiple random encounters.
Selphie says, "What do we do? Just stay here? We'll get tortured for sure!" and she has no idea how right she is.
Biggs and Wedge are fun at least. They had a ton of great spells for us, like Protect, Shell, Reflect, Haste, and Regen. We happened to have Quistis as a thief (who benefits from Haste), Zell as a knight (who benefits from Protect, Shell and Reflect) and Selphie as a white mage (who benefits from all of these) so it was a very profitable-feeling battle. They are also exceptionally non-threatening, with attacks like a Fire spell for 9 damage. And that was before I silenced and slowed them both.
Everything else here sucked. I have a couple more pictures but nobody cares. In the worst area in the game they made much of the backtracking impossible, and it's one of very few areas with missable items of consequence. What a freakin' master class in game design. Stupid. I am sure I did miss a magazine or something here.
For the pseudo-boss fight at the end I had Quistis at low HP so I just accelerated things by using Electrocute again and again.
Another reason I hate this area: the "climb across while this thing sinks part".
I swear I thought I died here. And you can instantly game over out-of-battle here, forcing you to go back into the awful prison and do a large part of it again! I've done it before. In my younger days, I once forgot once whether you were supposed to hold left or hold right to move to safety, held left, and you get an out-of-battle game over.
Anyway, I held right, moving toward the blinking green light... and then there's no indication that you actually escaped. I was already starting to get mad but it turns out I lived. Somehow.
On to the part with the two different parties, including the missile base. I picked Squall, Quistis and Zell to go to Balamb Garden because they are Balamb people, leaving Rinoa with Selphie and Irvine. I forgot about some of the little interlude scenes here.
Next up will be the Galbadian Missile base with Selphie, Irvine and Rinoa. I think I'll want a white mage and a black mage for that tank boss.
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