The problem with 8 (outside of the broken story after Disc 1) is that you can basically over power yourself very early on. Levels are pointless outside of different monster drops, and it actually hurts you to lvl up on disc one. You can exploit the card system pretty hard, which will open up very high end magic that you can use to junction to make Squall (only person I actually really max out, no one else ((*Maybe* Quistis) is worth a damn). End of Disc 1, with card game work and planning, Squall will have his Ultimate Weapon, be hitting for 4-5k, and have 4kish HP. You can then just put him in constant "yellow" mode, and just Lionheart (or whatever his limit break like attack is) on everything. And since you will still be low lvled, the random monsters/bosses you encounter are a complete joke compared to what you are. No reason to ever even try to lvl, it actually hurts you to lvl up.
So if you exploit the card game hard, get the main character's ultimate weapon, and spend a lot of time basically making yourself overpowered within disk 1 - the game becomes pointless? Sounds like just about every other RPG, if you choose to play like that.
LOLOLOLOLOL. Yeah, the marsh cave sucks... Man, now I feel the itch to fire up my NES and play some FF1.
But with 8 you really don't. After the first maybe hour of the game (once you become SeeD or whatever they called it), if you just take 2 or so hours you are now OPed, from a mini-game the designers wanted you to play. It's a broken design flaw that is easily abused. Yes of course you can avoid it entirely, but then you are missing out on a fun part of the game. If they didn't make the rewards from Cards so high, it wouldn't be nearly as bad. But still, fixing the Card Game still wouldn't save FF8, I have a hard time finishing Disc 2 whenever I try to replay it.
Monsters and Bosses leveled with you (Monsters at least, fairly sure Bosses did too. Someone can correct me on that one), and the biggest thing that changed as monsters lvled were what they dropped. Keeping yourself low lvled while Junctioning powerful magic made it trivial fighting monsters. But most people would have Diablos "Enc-Non" ability by the end of Disc 1, so you would really just end up choosing your battles.
True, except that in FF8 it takes almost zero work to Overpower yourself. The first time I played it as a kid, not knowing exactly what I was doing, I ended up completely OPing myself by random without realizing it.
Goddamn Marsh Cave. And then you had this fucker trying to Rub you.
Dude, taking 2 hours to do something IS purposely overpowering yourself instead of just playing the game. Christ. No matter what, you have to purposely do it. This is YOUR fault, not the game's fault. You cannot accidentally overpower yourself in FF8. Stop blaming the game for your actions.
FF8 really does have two sides to that coin, though. It is -very- easy to be underpowered for a large portion of the game thanks to early junction missteps. It is largely on the player, imo, but understanding that you need to junction the high HP shit first and -then- the high damage stuff in order to be OP takes a bit of playing to figure out. Even so, yeah, if you are exploiting the card/transmute system and then complaining about difficulty, I have no sympathy for you.
Except the Card game is something the designers wanted you to play. Playing it is playing the game. The problem with the card system is the rewards you get from it can be way above what you actually are supposed to have at that point in the game. It's not like in FF7 were I have to intentionally go out of my way to get Beta from the snake in the swamp, use that to 1 shot the high end enemies you get in Junon if you pull the alarm near the tunnel, and rake in tons of EXP lvling everyone to God like status 6 hours into the game. It's a bloody mini-game, were the rewards are way to good for the small amount of effort you put into it. But yes, you can completely ignore the card game to make FF8 'slightly' harder, but then you are missing out on a fun part of the game. If the rewards were less, then it wouldn't be a problem.
