Final Fantasy 8 Remaster Fixes One Of Its Funniest Memes

@Barighm: I would say that FFVII had a major flaw in its combat system, but most people oversee it because it is usually the first jrpg they experienced, and therefore considered it to be the "base" and "proper" way to design such a game. That flaw was that combat could turn from an exasperating turtle-slow experience into autoattack insta-win by simply switching 1 or 2 materias.

FFVIII took the modularity of the materia system and got it up to 11. Which of course allowed experienced players to take advantage of it on their 2nd, 3rd etc runs, and have a team at lvl9 with 3000hp, 100str etc (end game stats for a proper 1st time run-through) just after fighting the 1st boss of the game.

I think FFIX had the best combat of the 3 PS era games, because each character had a defined playstyle and couldn't become a killing machine that could solo the entire game by just putting on some materia or junctioning some magic.

@Barighm: what are the serious objective flaws?

yes imo ffvii pretty much redefined jrpg and still is about the best grandfather of them (yes there are great great grandfathers too). i still love playing around with the materias.

but still, whether it comes to visual, audio, story or world placement i did enjoy viii more. the bit with space and alienlaser seemingly fucking up the world were better than anything in vii. the combat is a bit unique in that its a bit weird but in its own terms its good

@Fernin-Ker: His Face

@silv3rst0rm: I liked it too. But I can see why people may hate it. If you forgot to draw certain spells that only certain enemies had for instance you had no chance of beating Omega, and so you had to start a new game and do it over again.

I thought 7, while being more simple, was more accessible. That's why it's the playstation era FF everyone thinks about first.

@silv3rst0rm: Draw was a great concept. The issue was that way too many people liked the idea of being overpowered or couldn't resist themselves from drawing 100 of every spell so they considered the game too grindy. Discounting the fact that you could easily play through the game only drawing from the normal random encounters you fought. Even to this day I see people saying they hate it because the card game was required because they can't resist getting super powerful spells early on through it.

Overall I liked the game. The summon boost concept was decent, but IMO it wasn't a concept that was fun for the number of times you used it. It got old quick.

@silv3rst0rm: I wouldn't call mashing a single button in a red-light/green-light manner a great challenge, but it was a decent break from the norm. The concept of boosting your summons was a good one, but the execution was lazy. I wonder if a randomized sequence of button presses would have been more fitting, along with maybe having the prompts mid-screen which would have been a huge improvement over being forced to stare at the bottom corner of your screen while the summon animation was shunted off into your peripheral vision.

@richardwakeling: Sorry, Richard. I guess sometimes I get worn down by the state of things. Having been around for most of home gaming as we know it, it boggles my mind how far we've come with games and yet we've grown so cynical towards them. I used to get Nintendo Power and Sega Visions and almost everything was met with enthusiasm and a palpable excitement for things to come. I'm sure a lot of this just comes with getting older and I know there's tons of love to be found in the gaming community, but I guess that looking glass just keeps getting dirtier. I had to stop reading Kotaku stuff a couple years ago because I felt like every game had to be met with some checklist of possible offenses or guilt, so I guess I still get gun-shy sometimes, my apologies.

Plus FF VIII is my favorite of the series, so I have to defend it, of course!