Meowskvich whines about Final Fantasy 8

[Jason]

I like the level scaling. FF9 and Tactics both did it also and it worked really well there. The problem with it in Tactics was that only the random battle enemies were influenced by your level not the story battles. However if you wanted to avoid a lot of random battles, or used the job grinding method instead of level grinding method it wasn't too bad.

Why is it bad that people that don't participate in battles don't level up? That's not how it worked in 6... or 7 that I recall... or 9. That's just extra EXP going to characters you'll probably never use. In FF8, for example, I never use Zell. Just don't like him. It makes no difference to me that he's level 12 or level 52 because I never use him. Now I know that's a point you made, Meow, but if you end up with a 3 person party with two members at level 44 and one at level 14 the enemies will be based around your average level. Is it a problem with FF6 that you have to do those multi party dungeons and maybe have to take someone you don't like *cough Setzer cough*, and they haven't leveled up because you don't take em anywhere? It would, to me, make sense that someone hanging out on the airship for 30 hours isn't going to be as good at killing things as someone that you've have to use a few phoenix downs on cause they're always in the party.

Of course everything is tied to Squall. He's the main character. Everything in FF7 is all Cloud centered in someway. Even when he's in his little mini-depression-coma you still have to drag his ass all over town in his wheel chair and listen to his wheeze. Only later on can you drop him from your party, but there aren't a lot of good options to replace him with... Sure there are options, but most of em just fall short.

So... FF8 gets a black mark for not giving you all the "essential abilities"? FF7 lets you attack and item unless you want to use material which requires you to get equipment and take a hit to your stats to use it. You wanna use magic? Sure, but here's a 5% penalty to your HP for each spell you equip.

As for taking the trade off for Magic or Items... Items are made mostly useless with Magic anyway... and most Magic can be made useless with Items. I mean... that's almost like saying "FF Tactics is kinda bad cause if you wanna be good at items, you need a Chemist which means they can't be that great at hitting things with sticks." You have multiple people in your party, they don't all have to be cookie cutters of the same skill set. That's a staple in just about every Final Fantasy game though. Once you start getting good White or Effect magic, you never really need to deal with items again unless they're to save MP for later bigger things.

And speaking of that... that's an issue I have with FF3, 5, 6, 7 and 8. You can, with some work, end up having a full party of the exact same character if you do it right. That is what takes away from the variety of the gameplay more than anything. FF1, 2, 4 and FF9 did it right.

And really quickly before I end up my two cents here... FF7 was a bit of a runaway hit. We need to keep that in mind. SquareSoft knew it was gonna be hot... but how hot they had no idea. They needed a follow up and they needed it quick. So FF8 came out relatively soon after FF7 did... but FF7 came out on a brand new system with brand new software and hardware to try and learn. FF8 was being worked on at a time when the limitations of the PS1 were being explored a little more deeply... if you're gonna compare the games you have to take that into account too.

FF8 wasn't perfect... it had it's flaws... but they are (I think) way smaller and more of annoyances than they are problems. FF7 (again to me) was both flawed and annoying. I'd play 8 over 7 any day of the week.