Final Fantasy VIII Classic Jobs Part V
Aug. 14th, 2024 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingOn roughly August 12th and over August 13th, I did nearly the entire split party segment of Disc 2. Time to review our job setups. I haven't shown this much but I think it tells the story a bit to give you a sense of how distinct the jobs' statistics are.
Rinoa is currently our white mage.
Irvine is currently our knight.
I started with Selphie as our black mage and then eventually decided I would rather have a thief, in part because Diablos is still learning abilities.
I wandered into the base. It took some random wandering to figure out where I was supposed to go. Amidst this wandering I learned a new Angelo ability which I found pretty funny, since it suggests Rinoa is still walking her dog while dressed up as a Galbadian soldier in the enemy base.
Enemies here were easy. I put off fighting enemies using dialogue options for a fairly long time but that didn't last super long. These fights, including the commander, made for good opportunities to ensure my thief had 100 stocks of status-inflicting spells.
Even without Move-Find I stumbled on a Full-Life draw point here, and even got to use it twice. Full-Life makes for a very nice Elem Def-J junction.
Eventually we fought the tank guy - I'm not really going to remember all of the weird, alphanumeric enemy names. I drew from it a little bit too. No special strategy; I'm mostly keeping my spells stocked instead of casting them besides extreme cases, which means battles feel "safe" but lengthy. Angelo helped toward the end.
Then I guess Rinoa, Selphie and Irvine all died. Except that when Squall's squad opened up the menu, I can see that Rinoa, Selphie and Irvine all still have HP. Spoiler alert.
This part is funny because you rejoin Squall and his team at Balamb Garden. I don't think I had done this before, but you can actually just leave even though things are pretty frantic there. I thought it was funny so I wandered around Balamb Town a bit, and even remodeled some weapons using the brand new issue of Weapons Monthly the other group won at the Missile Base. This included remodeling the dead folks' weapons.
Squall got his Cutting Trigger which will enable Fated Circle for him, too.
We wandered around the Garden fighting enemies and collecting some minor goodies. The T-Rexaurs here are 10 AP a pop, which is nice! Between drops and steals I got enough Dino Bones to give 100 Quake spells to my black mage.
In future encounters, I used Micro Missiles and/or Degenerator to speed things up. It was interesting fighting Granaldo again - I forgot that happens - but it was very, very easy. The toughest fight was actually the scripted fight with a Grendel, which kept breathing lightning at me. Squall beat it with Renzokuken.
Oil's well that ends well. We did the whole MD level thing and that was fun. We got a few draws of Meltdown for our black mage from Bombs. It's an interesting dungeon, actually, maybe one of this game's better ones. The boss fight wasn't too tough. We defeated one Oilboyle quickly.
With Quistis' low HP, I was curious whether Degenerator could work on a legit boss like this. It turns out it does.
Immediately after this with the bounty of AP that a boss fight can bring, I noticed that I was within 5 AP of a couple of abilities. I decided right here to do a couple of random fights. In the process, I ran into my first Tri-Face - they are pretty strong and I didn't expect them here. How about this draw list?:
Now I didn't stall here for a full 100 stock of each of these, but I did stay for a while! Its attacks proved quite dangerous, especially its Poison Breath. That necessitated ending the fight quickly. I think I got 100 Pain and 60ish Flares. I managed to affect it with Stop once or twice, and that helped. It was a bit hectic for this point in the game but those spells are a real asset.
With that fight, I learned both Enc-Half for Diablos and Defend for Brothers. I expect Defend will actually be pretty useful for knights, especially compared to the Absorb command. Eventually it'll synergize with Cover, too.
It turns out that Enc-None is not available to me because of the way I originally configured my GFs. I won't have it until Bahamut.
Next was some drifting about...
...and then NORG, which includes the very natural-sounding line, "THAT-PATHETIC-MARRIED-COUPLE?". This is always how I refer to the married couples that I know who are pathetic.
We fought NORG and I kept hitting the orbs when they were yellow. We stocked a few spells as well as Leviathan.
Leviathan is maybe the first time I'll truly miss the GF command for summoning in this game. Similar to how Neo Bahamut is one of my fondest memories of Final Fantasy VII, I remember those early promo clips of the FF8 demo and summoning Leviathan, where it generates a large stone ramp to better contain a tsunami. It's weird but I still recall the way it blew my teenage mind back then. I didn't hate this game when it was new, and I don't hate all of it now.
Leviathan is a white mage GF that doesn't really do very much for us, practically. Eventually we may need to field (or at least prepare for) more than one character of our different classes.
I also took the downtime wandering the stalled-out Garden as an opportunity to play some cards.
Eventually we crashed into Fisherman's Horizon, where I saved before proceeding to the mayor's house.
I ought to address how this variant play is proceeding in terms of the actual concept: honestly, surprisingly well. The thief is stealing, speed and an item command, with no strong offensive stats. The black mage is a bit of a glass cannon, who can expend a resource to deal high damage. The white mage utterly lacks defense - other than ubiquitous status defense - but can expend resources for excellent support. The knight has high physical attack and great defenses.
Without a knight's brawn or a black mage's spells, battles are much lengthier. Without enough defense based on the knight's vitality or the white mage's spells, they can be precarious. The thief offers little but improves profit.
The classes are all playing exactly the way they should and it's actually interesting and even fun most of the time.
Furthermore, unlike some of the other "Classic Jobs" playthroughs I've done, it's a particularly novel way to play this game. If this were normal, my characters would very much be sharing in these capabilities and be able to plow through everything... but here, besides possibly a touch of Degenerator abuse, it's not like that.
Honestly? This is entirely a better game.
I don't think I've felt that way about most of my other playthroughs.
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Rinoa is currently our white mage.
Irvine is currently our knight.
I started with Selphie as our black mage and then eventually decided I would rather have a thief, in part because Diablos is still learning abilities.
I wandered into the base. It took some random wandering to figure out where I was supposed to go. Amidst this wandering I learned a new Angelo ability which I found pretty funny, since it suggests Rinoa is still walking her dog while dressed up as a Galbadian soldier in the enemy base.
Enemies here were easy. I put off fighting enemies using dialogue options for a fairly long time but that didn't last super long. These fights, including the commander, made for good opportunities to ensure my thief had 100 stocks of status-inflicting spells.
Even without Move-Find I stumbled on a Full-Life draw point here, and even got to use it twice. Full-Life makes for a very nice Elem Def-J junction.
Eventually we fought the tank guy - I'm not really going to remember all of the weird, alphanumeric enemy names. I drew from it a little bit too. No special strategy; I'm mostly keeping my spells stocked instead of casting them besides extreme cases, which means battles feel "safe" but lengthy. Angelo helped toward the end.
Then I guess Rinoa, Selphie and Irvine all died. Except that when Squall's squad opened up the menu, I can see that Rinoa, Selphie and Irvine all still have HP. Spoiler alert.
This part is funny because you rejoin Squall and his team at Balamb Garden. I don't think I had done this before, but you can actually just leave even though things are pretty frantic there. I thought it was funny so I wandered around Balamb Town a bit, and even remodeled some weapons using the brand new issue of Weapons Monthly the other group won at the Missile Base. This included remodeling the dead folks' weapons.
Squall got his Cutting Trigger which will enable Fated Circle for him, too.
We wandered around the Garden fighting enemies and collecting some minor goodies. The T-Rexaurs here are 10 AP a pop, which is nice! Between drops and steals I got enough Dino Bones to give 100 Quake spells to my black mage.
In future encounters, I used Micro Missiles and/or Degenerator to speed things up. It was interesting fighting Granaldo again - I forgot that happens - but it was very, very easy. The toughest fight was actually the scripted fight with a Grendel, which kept breathing lightning at me. Squall beat it with Renzokuken.
Oil's well that ends well. We did the whole MD level thing and that was fun. We got a few draws of Meltdown for our black mage from Bombs. It's an interesting dungeon, actually, maybe one of this game's better ones. The boss fight wasn't too tough. We defeated one Oilboyle quickly.
With Quistis' low HP, I was curious whether Degenerator could work on a legit boss like this. It turns out it does.
Immediately after this with the bounty of AP that a boss fight can bring, I noticed that I was within 5 AP of a couple of abilities. I decided right here to do a couple of random fights. In the process, I ran into my first Tri-Face - they are pretty strong and I didn't expect them here. How about this draw list?:
Now I didn't stall here for a full 100 stock of each of these, but I did stay for a while! Its attacks proved quite dangerous, especially its Poison Breath. That necessitated ending the fight quickly. I think I got 100 Pain and 60ish Flares. I managed to affect it with Stop once or twice, and that helped. It was a bit hectic for this point in the game but those spells are a real asset.
With that fight, I learned both Enc-Half for Diablos and Defend for Brothers. I expect Defend will actually be pretty useful for knights, especially compared to the Absorb command. Eventually it'll synergize with Cover, too.
It turns out that Enc-None is not available to me because of the way I originally configured my GFs. I won't have it until Bahamut.
Next was some drifting about...
...and then NORG, which includes the very natural-sounding line, "THAT-PATHETIC-MARRIED-COUPLE?". This is always how I refer to the married couples that I know who are pathetic.
We fought NORG and I kept hitting the orbs when they were yellow. We stocked a few spells as well as Leviathan.
Leviathan is maybe the first time I'll truly miss the GF command for summoning in this game. Similar to how Neo Bahamut is one of my fondest memories of Final Fantasy VII, I remember those early promo clips of the FF8 demo and summoning Leviathan, where it generates a large stone ramp to better contain a tsunami. It's weird but I still recall the way it blew my teenage mind back then. I didn't hate this game when it was new, and I don't hate all of it now.
Leviathan is a white mage GF that doesn't really do very much for us, practically. Eventually we may need to field (or at least prepare for) more than one character of our different classes.
I also took the downtime wandering the stalled-out Garden as an opportunity to play some cards.
Eventually we crashed into Fisherman's Horizon, where I saved before proceeding to the mayor's house.
I ought to address how this variant play is proceeding in terms of the actual concept: honestly, surprisingly well. The thief is stealing, speed and an item command, with no strong offensive stats. The black mage is a bit of a glass cannon, who can expend a resource to deal high damage. The white mage utterly lacks defense - other than ubiquitous status defense - but can expend resources for excellent support. The knight has high physical attack and great defenses.
Without a knight's brawn or a black mage's spells, battles are much lengthier. Without enough defense based on the knight's vitality or the white mage's spells, they can be precarious. The thief offers little but improves profit.
The classes are all playing exactly the way they should and it's actually interesting and even fun most of the time.
Furthermore, unlike some of the other "Classic Jobs" playthroughs I've done, it's a particularly novel way to play this game. If this were normal, my characters would very much be sharing in these capabilities and be able to plow through everything... but here, besides possibly a touch of Degenerator abuse, it's not like that.
Honestly? This is entirely a better game.
I don't think I've felt that way about most of my other playthroughs.
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