The Silent Protagonist – Final Fantasy VIII

Hey and welcome back to the Silent Protagonist, my little corner of Ready Up where I tend to get over excited, use ‘awesome’ a lot and gush about RPGs – mostly of the Japanese variety. At the end of my last blog, I said I’d look at Final Fantasy VIII, I also said that it’s one of my favourite titles in the series, I’ll not tell you which one is my favourite, but I’ll tell you which one it’s not. It’s not Final Fantasy VII – not by a long shot. I think I missed the bandwagon on that one.

There’s something oddly refreshing about a main character that isn’t always optimistic in the face of danger.

Final Fantasy VIII follows Squall, who’s studying and training at Balamb Garden, an academy for elite mercenaries known as SeeDs. Originally a quiet and reserved character, he develops into a… well, in fact, he pretty much remains the same. He gets a bit chattier, but he’s pretty angsty throughout the game, something I actually quite like. There’s something oddly refreshing about a main character that isn’t always optimistic in the face of danger. However, when he meets Rinoa – my favourite character from the game – he slowly starts to open up a bit.

His weapon of choice is the Gunblade, which grants a critical hit every time should you press R1 as he strikes the enemy. His limit break is the Renzokuken – a series of slashes that may be followed up by a random secondary limit break.

Rinoa, on the other hand, is a chirpy, optimistic individual that attacks with a pinwheel, and her limit break uses her pet dog, Angelo, who not only (very) occasionally finds items such as potions and phoenix downs, but he can pick an enemy up, do a series of somersaults then land on them. If he’s given a treat he can make the party invincible for a short while. Where do I get a dog like that?

In the previous titles, you either bought magic, learnt it through leveling, or by pairing up with an esper and gaining experience. In this title, by equipping summons, known as Guardian Forces, or GFs, you can set commands to each character, ranging from Magic, Items, Summoning (via the GF command) and the command Draw, which allows your characters to absorb spells from enemies. It was an interesting and new tactic, but it gets pretty boring trying to get 100 of every spell, especially when you can get a random quantity of the spell ranging from a fail to draw, to a max of ten units.

The amount of spells in your magic inventory not only influences how many of that particular spell you can cast, but they can also affect your stats. By setting GFs to your characters, they gain experience, levels, and new abilities. Among these new abilities, you can Junction magic to your stats. For example, Ifrit has the ability Junction Attack, which enables the player to attach a spell to the attack value and thus increase the damage potential. The more of the spell you have in your inventory, the stronger the stat boost. For example, junctioning ten Fires from your magic inventory, would not increase the stat bonus as much as having one hundred in your inventory. Also, by equipping stronger spells, expect an exponential increase in stat bonuses.

As for the storyline, it’s pretty much the same as every other Final Fantasy, in that you start off on a little adventure and by a string of unfortunate incidents it becomes an epic quest. And the guy gets the girl at the very end. Surprise. Surprise.

As well as being one of my favourite Final Fantasies I also think this is probably the easiest. In every other game in the franchise, there is a limitation to how often you can use your special attacks. In VII, you had to wait until you were damaged enough to use your limits, the same goes for the Trance status in IX, and the overlimits were a one shot use in X. In order to use the limits in VIII, all you need to do is lose some health. By having less than half of your max health, and mashing the triangle button you can get access to your limits, pretty much constantly. Remember in my wordy paragraph about Junctioning magic back there? If you Junction 100 Curaga to your HP, you can access your limits from as little as 3000HP. It’s not until much later on in the game that you need to be a bit careful about that tactic. Occasionally a boss may take a chunk out of your health, but by and large you’ll be pretty much unstoppable.

Well, that’s really all there is. I like it. HP-Junction curaga, mash triangle a lot, beat game. Easy.

Anyway, next time on The Silent Protagonist, I’ll be yapping about Final Fantasy IX – the first game I ever played!

… To be continued…