#arz plays viii;

[miyukihoshizora]

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #Final Fantasy VIII

[miyukihoshizora]

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #final fantasy viii

[miyukihoshizora]

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #Final Fantasy VIII

[miyukihoshizora]

Fascinated by the in-universe implications here.

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #Final Fantasy VIII

[miyukihoshizora]

POV: You're a random encounter and I left Quistis's HP low on purpose.

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #Final Fantasy VIII

[miyukihoshizora]

I am so easily amused

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #Final Fantasy VIII

[miyukihoshizora]

THIS GAME IS NOT REAL.

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #Final Fantasy VIII

[miyukihoshizora]

I hope Squall ends up finding out Laguna is his father and then tells Rinoa about how his dad briefly dated her mom and she could react like "haha we were almost siblings" and he'd immediately respond "Don't say that".

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #Final Fantasy VIII

[miyukihoshizora]

I didn't think she would be the terrorist leader who hired us. I appreciate this game's bold story direction of "what if Barret was a manic pixie dream girl".

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii;

[miyukihoshizora]

Random tweets from my session last night.

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii;

[miyukihoshizora]

That's the most romantic line in the game AND THAT MORON SAID IT IN HIS HEAD.

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #Final Fantasy VIII

[miyukihoshizora]

Great these two dingdongs got brainwashed too.

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii;

[miyukihoshizora]

I cannot liveblog VIII until I'm unsuspended from twitter because I have no other way of transfering my screenshots from my switch to a computer. But BOY do I have things to say about Rinoa already.

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #She's like if Aerith smoked weed #More weed I mean

[miyukihoshizora]

So! FFVIII! Finished it yesterday, loved most of the last stretch! And it totally comes appart the second you think about it too hard!

First what I liked:

Squall and Rinoa, obviously. Their dynamic and respective growths mirroring each other. One who shuts off the world and one who forces herself to seem like this dizzy social butterfly, both because they are terrified of being hated. Their friendship very organically evolve into a romance and the best scenes in the game like the space rescue are always between these two.

Quistis was also the teammate I felt got to do the most. Started off as a mentor, before realizing the mantle of leader was not for her and learning to put her full trust into something other than her instincts. She also had the emotional intelligence to dodge a love triangle when she felt that shit arrive lmao.

The game is also full of really cool setpieces in general. The space rescue, the Gardens themselves, the Lunatic Pandora... And of course, Ultimecia's castle! I absolutely loved the whole dream sequence at the end, how it communicated without words on all of Squall's fears and how Rinoa became the reason he learned to enjoy his life. How he clung to her image like a lifeline even if the time distortion + GF poisoning tried to take it away from him (as it did with Ultimecia if you subscribe to the U=R theory). Like god damn, this was strong stuff.

Speaking of! I'm actually shocked Ultimecia being Rinoa is just a fan theory Square went out of their way to debunk because it seemed so obvious to me from the get go and I wasn't even aware of the theory until I looked into it. I find it weird they decided to just say no to the whole thing instead of keeping it ambiguous, as the game does, because thematically, this makes it a really powerful story, and Ultimecia a much more sympathetic baddie. Like damn, you can do so much with Griever being all she has left of her knight, while her refusal to let go of it twisting her memories to the point she can no longer recognize him when he comes to her from the past, as she wanted. Respectfully gonna kill the author on this one.

Now for the less good stuff... The orphanage plot twist, obviously. Doctor Odine's whole deal. The Norg stuff. I imagine the fact this plot is held together by duct tape is like, the popular opinion at this point. The best parts of this game kind of mostly work in a vacuum.

Also, well... Zell, Irvine and Selphie don't really have any arc to speak of as far as I can tell. Which is a bit disappointing, compared to VII, I wish they all got to do a lot more. They are still my babies but I really didn't care for them as much as I did the other three, and that Is a problem in a seried that lives or die by how much you engage with its characters.

Oh and bro, Seifer. I jokingly compared him to Draco Malfoy and just like Draco they totally half assed his part in the plot. He had strong momentum as a rival character in Disc 1, but the fact Rinoa stops having feeling for him the second he does his heel turn, and that he just wanted to be Ultimecia's knight, regardless of whether it was Edea or Rinoa, TWO WOMEN HE LOVED, is completely ridiculous. He also got a total anticlimax with the most heavy-handed Gilgamesh cameo, and then Fujin and Raijin (the best part of this stupid plot thread) just redeem him off screen where he goes back to Balamb and never gets any comeuppance for actively trying to destroy the world, like, what the hell even was that.

Oh yeah also the gameplay system is jank and I only started having fun with it when I broke it.

That about sums up my thoughts. I'm really happy of my experience with this game, and to finally be done with the Playstation era!~

My X replay is next, and then I'll probably hop straight onto XV.

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii;

[miyukihoshizora]

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii;

[miyukihoshizora]

I clown on this game's writing a lot but Squall is such a sweet, earnest portrayal of a depressed teen. I'm starting to wish I played this game at the right age.

#puri gaming; #arz plays viii; #If anything it's a good character study piece to the point the actual fantasy stuff is Meh in comparison