Final Fantasy 8 Was For PC? o.O

[Aaron C-T]

Okay so I'm googling for reference images of manga/anime styles so I can try to make another head model that's actually decent this time around. So I get tired of that, and google Final Fantasy 8, as Square Enix always has awesome faces, which always seem, imo, somewhat-anime inspired. Not really that surprising. But I came across this. I'm wondering if any of you have played it, and if it's decent. Although.. both FF7 and FF8 being on the PC makes me wonder why they haven't done this recently. So yea.. is the game any good? And does it look decent for a game that old?

[Asuma]

Well, with today's graphics, FF8 graphics plain out sucks. I say get it if you want.

[Aaron C-T]

Are there any other Final Fantasy's for PC that I don't know about. ...KH? xD

[Pheonix Gamma]

9 was on PC I think...

from first hand experience, FF7PC>FF7 PS1

from my friend's first hand experience, FF8PC<FF8 PS1

[DiabloHedgehog]

FF7's pc port was terrible and buggy, no idea on 8's.

[Kain]

Only FF7 and FF8 were ported to PC. FF9+ weren't (except FFXI, of course). That was back when lots of ultra-popular playstation games got ported to the PC, I think. As for the quality, I don't know, but FF7's port always blue-screened me every 30 minutes.

[Terid Kane]

I have FF8 for PC, and it's pretty good. Apart from the midi music, everything else is superior to the PSX version (The music is also great in the pc version, nonetheless). However, there's a major letdown...

If you have one of the newer Geforce cards (Geforce 6 series or better) you won't be able to play it in hardware mode, wich has the better quality models, billinear filtering for the backgrounds, etc. You'll only be able to play in software rendering mode, witch I can safelly tell you, It's not pretty.

You can't use these cards, because the test for '8-bit palletized textures' will always fail, thus you will get lots of black filled spaces and horrible grid-lines.

Final Fantasy 7 has the same problem, but Square released a patch that fixes this problem in it. They didn't even bother to do the same for FF8, because it's not as famous as FF7 is.

If you have an ATI video card, check the Quimm.com forums for the tut on how to make FF8 look the best way possible (MUCH better than the PS1, with filtering, AA, better music...).

Having to play it in software mode doesn't bother me that much. I don't know if you'll like it though...

Edit: Kain, you might want to consider downloading the 1.02 patch for FF7. It fixes lots of graphics issues, on both Nvidia and non-Nvidia cards. Also, check the forums I mentioned before for crashing-to-dekstop fixes and other miscelaneous stuff.

Edit 2: http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php

If you take every tweaks and enhancements from there, your FF7 will be almost a 100% bugfree. You'll have to search for every fix through the posts though.

[Gamerdude]

I've played the original FF8 for PSX and the PC version. I prefer the PSX version. I think the midi music doesn't do the original score the justice it deserves...but that's just me. I thought it looked better on PSX as well...probably because I had to use software rendering =/.

[shadowgoten]

Scatta, FF8 used to be nicknamed the "Final Fantasy Movie". The game was more cutscenes than anything else...they were AMAZING cutscenes...the story was kinda wierd. Then you get to the bastard child of a battle system they cooked up for this game...the magic system and the summon system.

Whenever I play the game I end up summoning EVERY TURN...just because you can beat anyone with just summons, all my characters hit for very ____ty ammounts but my Summons would destroy. The reason you could keep summoning is because they axed mana in FF8...YES YOU HEARD ME NO MANA. Instead you "draw" magic from enemies...magic is like items...and you can put the magic you draw to your stats to boost them (only good thing out of the whole magic system in the game). So if you want to cure, have fun drawing tons and tons of cures from enemies until you're properly stocked up.

As for the summons...since you have no mana...you pick the summon and the Guardian force (what they call the summons) HP appears over your HP and you wait for his gauge to reach full. During that time you can get attacked and if it's HP is depleted before being summoned they die. The only cool thing about GF's was that you could level them up and learn abilities and whoever has a particular GF equipped gets those abilities.

As for limit breaks, instead of having that really cool limit gauge, you get to use limits whenever your HP is in critical range (I think like 5%). So once you get a really good limit break all you end up doing is keeping your characters below critical and just keep rotating through the characters until their limit breaks pop up for huge damage.

Now FF7 for PC...that's hawt. And yes I have both games for PSX and PC...even though I bash I've done my share of playing ;D.

[Kain]

The drawing/juctioning system's a bitch, but if you know what to do and when, you can make your characters 10 times as strong as the summons (until, that is, you get GFs like Eden; but who wants to waste 10 minutes for a single attack?). But the battle system is very restricting and the summoning aspect of the GF system rather lame, even if they have some very cool GFs.

[Eraysor]

I love the magic drawing system. Made a nice change from having MP for everything.

[Kain]

Spending 30 minutes per spell drawing magic from a monster only to be unable to use it cause your stats depend on having it in full wasn't exactly my cup of tea. Nor was being completely inable to use the really cool spells cause they were either one-time draws or increadibly hard/long to get.

There were good things about the draw system, though. The being able to cast spells from the own moster's energy without wasting MP or spell counts was certainly very cool. All in all, it was pretty cool, but way too limited based on the way the spells were suplied.

[Gamerdude]

Scatta, FF8 used to be nicknamed the "Final Fantasy Movie". The game was more cutscenes than anything else...they were AMAZING cutscenes...the story was kinda wierd. Then you get to the bastard child of a battle system they cooked up for this game...the magic system and the summon system.

Whenever I play the game I end up summoning EVERY TURN...just because you can beat anyone with just summons, all my characters hit for very ____ty ammounts but my Summons would destroy. The reason you could keep summoning is because they axed mana in FF8...YES YOU HEARD ME NO MANA. Instead you "draw" magic from enemies...magic is like items...and you can put the magic you draw to your stats to boost them (only good thing out of the whole magic system in the game). So if you want to cure, have fun drawing tons and tons of cures from enemies until you're properly stocked up.

As for the summons...since you have no mana...you pick the summon and the Guardian force (what they call the summons) HP appears over your HP and you wait for his gauge to reach full. During that time you can get attacked and if it's HP is depleted before being summoned they die. The only cool thing about GF's was that you could level them up and learn abilities and whoever has a particular GF equipped gets those abilities.

As for limit breaks, instead of having that really cool limit gauge, you get to use limits whenever your HP is in critical range (I think like 5%). So once you get a really good limit break all you end up doing is keeping your characters below critical and just keep rotating through the characters until their limit breaks pop up for huge damage.

Now FF7 for PC...that's hawt. And yes I have both games for PSX and PC...even though I bash I've done my share of playing ;D.

Final Fantasy 8 is my favorite PSX game. I loved how there was no mana, one less thing for me to worry about. The summons were cool, I rarely used them though. I had Squall at level 100 and I stocked a bunch of Auras which I used to get me limit breaks all the time (with Lionheart of course :3). Can you say 9999 damage times 18 =D! I loved it, it gave me such a sense of pwnage.

[FredrikTheEvil]

GD, I agree! I love FF8. The junction system is pure awesomeness. I can go from Lv1-100 in 2 days without a problem. I play FF8 alot. Over and over. Its so fun to beat yourself int time spent to get to Level 100. But, I always have my stats maxed at around lv 65, so from there on I dont feel that much of a difference

[Aaron C-T]

I've always preferred real time anyway. For me turn based always takes too long.

"FF8 used to be nicknamed the 'Final Fantasy Movie'. The game was more cutscenes than anything else...they were AMAZING cutscenes...the story was kinda wierd."

No problem with me. When I play RPGs I mainly look for story anyway. The whole reason I want to play this is because while googling I came across one of those stupid things where people take loads of cutscenes and go "omb i put music over it. now it's a music video lawl" and got interested.

[FredrikTheEvil]

I'll give you a advice. Ignore the RPC's, focus mainly on Squall. He can become incredibly strong very fast, and then he owns everything with one hit

Then you dont need anyone else, so wasting time on them is pointless

[Perfect Chaos Zero]

Og's right about Squall. Also, FF8 is insanely easy. Way....way too easy. Simply power level a bit and figure out how to use the junction system to your advantage. Once you do that, all you need is an ass load of aura spells drawn and you've won the game. =D

(FF9 is way, way better, than FF8.)

[Aaron C-T]

I always thought Final Fantasy 9 looked.. not cool. xD Meh I'll have to get the game now.

[Terid Kane]

Perfect Chaos Zero: If you just go through the storyline, using the best spells, of course it's going to be easy. Did you even tried to get the other GFs? Eden, Jumbo Cactuar, Tomberry King, Doomtrain? I understand getting then would be useless, because the characters can be stronger. But it's nice to get a perfect game, nevertheless. Beating Ultima Weapon was extremely hard, no matter what my stats were, what magics I had, and in what level I was. And that really added to the challenge :]

Also, FF7 was way easier.

I never played FF9, but I'll give it a shot, since you said it's better.

shadowgoten: How was the FF8 story weird? I think it made more sense than the story of FF7 (I'm not saying it's better though).

All in all, I think it's worth getting FF8. Scatta, if you can get the Psx version anywhere, use it with the ePSXe emulator. That way it will look better than the PC version, since you will be able to use AA, texture filtering, high-res textures and full screen filters. I don't know if it's 100% compatible though...

[shadowgoten]

shadowgoten: How was the FF8 story weird? I think it made more sense than the story of FF7 (I'm not saying it's better though).

When I say it's wierd I'm mainly thinking about some of the plot twists they threw in there...like the story does a complete slap you in face action about halfway through and you're like . It's not necessarily a bad thing, I really did enjoy the storyline either way.

As for the junctioning system, as I said in my mini rant up there, the junctioning system was pretty much the only good thing that came out of drawing magic.

And all the GF's had really cool cutscenes.

I always thought Final Fantasy 9 looked.. not cool. xD Meh I'll have to get the game now.

Well, 9 is a great FF game, it's pretty much Squeenix's attempt to go back to the midieval fantasy era and try to do something with that. There were some systems I thought were really cool in that game, such as you learn ALL your abilities from equipping weapons, armor, and accessories, and gaining AP to permanently keep those abilities. The trance system (the equivelant to limit breaks) was pretty neat, as each person had something completely different from the others. The storyline was pretty good in that one as well.

For me though, the best game still stands at 7. I'm not looking at it from a graphical standpoint, because quite honestly if you played it back when it was released that was the best you were gonna get. But the battle system along with the materia system were just all awesome. The whole materia system meant you could put your favorite characters on your team and set them up as whatever the hell you wanted...you want barret to heal...then go ahead and they did a damn good job of it regardless .

But every person has their own opinion on how they like certain things so don't let my opinions sway you. I just like to rant on why I personally like them and not like them.

Honestly if I were you I'd just play through em all...I mean you've got the whole summer.

[Pheonix Gamma]

should I bother torrenting FF8 (psx or PC)? I'm curious as to how it plays...FF9 too...

[shadowgoten]

should I bother torrenting FF8 (psx or PC)? I'm curious as to how it plays...FF9 too...

I think every Final Fantasy deserves to be at least played once (except for X-2 and XI) they've all got something you might like.

[Pheonix Gamma]

wellm someone told me 9 was the best, though I know it sold rather poorly, and my friend never shut up about 8, thought I hear the combat is kooky.

[Eraysor]

7 is by far the best FF game I've played out of 7, 8, 9, 10 and 10-2. 9 Is the worst by quite a margin. It's just not cool.

[Pheonix Gamma]

I disliked 7, though I played it on an ancient PC. I still have the disks, and I'm thinking of reinstalling since I never got past disk 1 (I have reason to believe disk 3 might be screwed up, so I'll have to wait and see about that (FF8 is torrenting right now and it's taking enough time as it is)

pointless Off topic thingy: ordered my Wacom intuos 6x8 for $272 (they sell for $350. Yay!)

Back on topic: FF3 ftw, but I never beat it @_@

The only FF I've ever beat was FF1 (the remake on GBA, which is actually easier) and I got stuck in FF2 cause it royally sucks on monkey testicles. I bought FF4Adv, but returned it cause it had a wierd pace to it. Uninstalled FF7 cause I was bored. I'm stuck on FFX cause I can't beat the Gravija Sin battle (I think I need to level up a LOT) Got stuck at the battle on the snowy mountain in FF6 (the one where everyone is split in teams and you fight all the soldiers, then Kefka. Except my party in my save state has no MP and no healing items, and they've all died, so they all have 1HP and 0MP and Kefka basically rapes everyone over and over. I deleted the rom :X)