freshfeeling (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
freshfeeling) wrote2024-08-06 10:01 am
freshfeeling) wrote2024-08-06 10:01 am
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Final Fantasy VIII Classic Jobs Part II
This post summarizes what I did playing this game for a few hours at several different points on August 5, 2024. We're continuing after last time from exiting Balamb Town after the Dollet Mission, but before the graduation ceremony. There ended up being a lot of encounters on the way back, but nothing remarkable.
I did the graduation party and... sadly, it seems like several of my screenshots failed entirely. I very intentionally took a screenshot of the "You're the best looking guy here." line, but I don't seem to have it. I still dislike this game but once again I've got to acknowledge the quality of individual setpieces is pretty outstanding.
While Squall was on his own, I had him set up as a black mage, and when I met up with Quistis I gave her the white mage junction loadout that Zell had been using. In the training center, literally the only normal enemy we encountered at all was Grats - a whole lot of Grats. I ended up getting 100 stocks of Sleep for Squall and 100 stocks of Silence for Quistis, both of which are actually pretty fantastic for stats. I dawdled a little hoping to run into a T-Rexaur, but it didn't happen. Around the time I re-joined Quistis I card-modded a few cards, mostly from the default deck, to get access to Acid, Ultra Waves, and Degenerator.
I also seem to have lost all of my screenshots of the Granaldo + Raldo battle. It was a bit of a long one. I took out two of the Raldos and allowed some time to stock a few Shells and Protects but I didn't get anywhere close to 100 of those. The enemies thus far still do pretty pathetic damage all around so there wasn't a whole lot of danger. Eventually, Quistis' HP did get low enough to get limit breaks every so often so I experimented with some blue magic as I finished it off.
We started our first official SeeD mission and got the Magic Lamp. Beating Diablos was going to effectively "unlock" our third job of thief so it was important to do that immediately. Reflecting on how low the damage was against Granaldo and considering Diablos uses mostly gravity-based attacks, I thought it might be easy. This ended up being an accurate prediction... except that it took ages. I even attempted the "armageddon fist" technique with Zell - admitting I may be a bit rusty at it - and it took like four of those to win.
From this point, I mostly kept Squall as a thief, Selphie as the black mage, and Zell as the white mage. We do not have access to very much thief-sanctioned magic, though: basically a stack of Scan and a little bit of Double from Elvoret. At least we have commands. Diablos is going to start by learning Mug, which will take quite a while. We went to Balamb Town to take the train.
Here, I found my very first shop in the entire game! Very exciting. I spent almost all of my money, figuring I may need some healing items and that Tents convert easily to Curaga to give my white mage an absurd stat boost. How convenient that they put the train station right next to the first shop I found.
... Oh.
So I was out of money, and I didn't want to sell back the items I just purchased (and partly consumed). I decided to have a wander and wait for my next paycheck. I also did the SeeD exams to boost my rank. Around this point, Quezacotl learned Mid Mag-RF so I converted Cures to Curas and did similar with my basic elemental spells. Consequently I found myself in a loop of drawing buttloads of low-level magic and converting them to higher-level spells. This took quite a while and probably left the mages a bit overpowered despite their constraints.
I also played quite a few card games. With my Ifrit and Diablos cards I was able to thwart Zell's mom in cards repeatedly and got quite a few good higher-level cards. I wasn't able to use them for anything really, but that's okay. I remember her having the Zell card but perhaps there's some reason she doesn't carry it early in the game. I understand that SeeD pay is based on walking distance so playing cards didn't speed anything up anyway.
Walking around the world map fighting and waiting for money felt like it took ages. I fought a T-Rexaur and I was still surprised by how long it took - it was very easy though, since it's incredibly slow and I was able to blind it.
Eventually we got our money.
Then we had a dream.
I forgot how quickly the team ends up in the very cool train heist mission. Again, I generally find this game to be a bad one, both narratively and in setting, but it's got some excellent individual settings and subplots. This train part is fantastic. Why is there not some famous game that's entirely comprised of train heists? Everything about this part is awesome.
Here are a bunch of arbitrary screenshots of this excellent segment that don't relate to my variant play at all:
After this, Squall says something like, "I'd better check my GFs". I seem to have taken this very literally because I checked that Squall was properly set up - and he was, as a black mage - and then proceeded. I had figured it was unimportant which character had the GFs and spells from Laguna's team and that I'd just keep going. Well, guess what?! I totally didn't check Zell or Selphie and they were unequipped. I had to fight Gerogero with only Squall outfitted.
The first part was simple enough.
But the second part was tough. I was able to draw Berserk so I put both Selphie and Zell, who had no abilities, in Berserk status.
This turned out to probably be a mistake for a few reasons, such as their measly berserk attacks only doing about 50 damage and it took away their access to limit breaks which almost certainly would've come into play. I decided to end the fight quickly using Squall's high-powered stocked Fira spells. This was annoying too, since Squall was affected by slow status and even got silenced once. But it was fine.
From here, we explored Timber - a city that looks great but its geography still confuses me - and fought a lot of soldiers there. As we did, I kept on stocking Cure with Zell and low-level elemental spells with Selphie and then using Mid Mag-RF to upgrade them. The mages are getting powerful and the thief still has very little going for it. I saved behind Timber Maniacs.
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I did the graduation party and... sadly, it seems like several of my screenshots failed entirely. I very intentionally took a screenshot of the "You're the best looking guy here." line, but I don't seem to have it. I still dislike this game but once again I've got to acknowledge the quality of individual setpieces is pretty outstanding.
While Squall was on his own, I had him set up as a black mage, and when I met up with Quistis I gave her the white mage junction loadout that Zell had been using. In the training center, literally the only normal enemy we encountered at all was Grats - a whole lot of Grats. I ended up getting 100 stocks of Sleep for Squall and 100 stocks of Silence for Quistis, both of which are actually pretty fantastic for stats. I dawdled a little hoping to run into a T-Rexaur, but it didn't happen. Around the time I re-joined Quistis I card-modded a few cards, mostly from the default deck, to get access to Acid, Ultra Waves, and Degenerator.
I also seem to have lost all of my screenshots of the Granaldo + Raldo battle. It was a bit of a long one. I took out two of the Raldos and allowed some time to stock a few Shells and Protects but I didn't get anywhere close to 100 of those. The enemies thus far still do pretty pathetic damage all around so there wasn't a whole lot of danger. Eventually, Quistis' HP did get low enough to get limit breaks every so often so I experimented with some blue magic as I finished it off.We started our first official SeeD mission and got the Magic Lamp. Beating Diablos was going to effectively "unlock" our third job of thief so it was important to do that immediately. Reflecting on how low the damage was against Granaldo and considering Diablos uses mostly gravity-based attacks, I thought it might be easy. This ended up being an accurate prediction... except that it took ages. I even attempted the "armageddon fist" technique with Zell - admitting I may be a bit rusty at it - and it took like four of those to win.From this point, I mostly kept Squall as a thief, Selphie as the black mage, and Zell as the white mage. We do not have access to very much thief-sanctioned magic, though: basically a stack of Scan and a little bit of Double from Elvoret. At least we have commands. Diablos is going to start by learning Mug, which will take quite a while. We went to Balamb Town to take the train.
Here, I found my very first shop in the entire game! Very exciting. I spent almost all of my money, figuring I may need some healing items and that Tents convert easily to Curaga to give my white mage an absurd stat boost. How convenient that they put the train station right next to the first shop I found.
... Oh.
So I was out of money, and I didn't want to sell back the items I just purchased (and partly consumed). I decided to have a wander and wait for my next paycheck. I also did the SeeD exams to boost my rank. Around this point, Quezacotl learned Mid Mag-RF so I converted Cures to Curas and did similar with my basic elemental spells. Consequently I found myself in a loop of drawing buttloads of low-level magic and converting them to higher-level spells. This took quite a while and probably left the mages a bit overpowered despite their constraints.
I also played quite a few card games. With my Ifrit and Diablos cards I was able to thwart Zell's mom in cards repeatedly and got quite a few good higher-level cards. I wasn't able to use them for anything really, but that's okay. I remember her having the Zell card but perhaps there's some reason she doesn't carry it early in the game. I understand that SeeD pay is based on walking distance so playing cards didn't speed anything up anyway.
Walking around the world map fighting and waiting for money felt like it took ages. I fought a T-Rexaur and I was still surprised by how long it took - it was very easy though, since it's incredibly slow and I was able to blind it.
Eventually we got our money.
Then we had a dream.
I forgot how quickly the team ends up in the very cool train heist mission. Again, I generally find this game to be a bad one, both narratively and in setting, but it's got some excellent individual settings and subplots. This train part is fantastic. Why is there not some famous game that's entirely comprised of train heists? Everything about this part is awesome.
Here are a bunch of arbitrary screenshots of this excellent segment that don't relate to my variant play at all:
After this, Squall says something like, "I'd better check my GFs". I seem to have taken this very literally because I checked that Squall was properly set up - and he was, as a black mage - and then proceeded. I had figured it was unimportant which character had the GFs and spells from Laguna's team and that I'd just keep going. Well, guess what?! I totally didn't check Zell or Selphie and they were unequipped. I had to fight Gerogero with only Squall outfitted.
The first part was simple enough.
But the second part was tough. I was able to draw Berserk so I put both Selphie and Zell, who had no abilities, in Berserk status.
This turned out to probably be a mistake for a few reasons, such as their measly berserk attacks only doing about 50 damage and it took away their access to limit breaks which almost certainly would've come into play. I decided to end the fight quickly using Squall's high-powered stocked Fira spells. This was annoying too, since Squall was affected by slow status and even got silenced once. But it was fine.
From here, we explored Timber - a city that looks great but its geography still confuses me - and fought a lot of soldiers there. As we did, I kept on stocking Cure with Zell and low-level elemental spells with Selphie and then using Mid Mag-RF to upgrade them. The mages are getting powerful and the thief still has very little going for it. I saved behind Timber Maniacs.
< Previous | Index | Next >