Losing It

I’m going to take a break from describing the development of the plot so far, because frankly I’m having trouble remembering what’s happened so far. Other FF games have had their share of bad design and stupid ideas, but none have been as downright boring as this one. The anchor that drags the whole experience down is the battles. You fight so often in FF games, it’s not surprise they can make or break the title, and VIII is just broken. Even with the configurable speeds maxed, battles move like frozen molasses. It’s not even just the drawing either. Everything takes too long. The battle animations are slow, the GFs are infamously slow, even battle intros and conclusions are slow. The battle commands I have available so far don’t help. Besides the standard Attack, Magic, GF and Draw, I have Card and Doom. Card is card, I don’t have any complaints about it. Doom, however, generally has the effect of making battles take even longer, assuming you wait for the Doom clock to run out and actually kill the enemy.

I’m genuinely surprised at how much the lack of any equipment has detracted from the game. I’m supposed to be able to upgrade weapons, but that hasn’t happened yet, 15 or so hours in. Collecting and equipping items is fun. Why eliminate it? You don’t collect money either, it just shows up in your inventory periodically as “salary”. Given these shifts, what does the game really want you to focus on? Drawing, Junctioning and Triple Triad, it seems. Oh and the story. But even that has been borderline. Seifer’s supposed death at the hands of the Galbadians finally jarred me out of my semi-stupor by actually being interesting.

The main thrusts of the story (the Squall/Seifer/Rinoa triangle, the relationship between Deling and the Sorceress, Laguna) are not holding my attention. What about, the Lunar Cry? What is up with that? How about these GFs, let’s learn more about them. Even the broadcast interference is more interesting than the Forest Owls or Laguna’s crush on a piano player. I honestly have trouble playing more than an hour or two at a time without falling asleep.

I’ve been told things pick up at the end of disc 1. I’ve also been told by a few people that they never finished the game. Part of writing this blog is to make sure that doesn’t happen to me. I wish the game wasn’t working so hard to make sure it does.