With the president abduction being a failure, Rinoa decided they should take over the TV transmission the Galbadians are planning and use it to broadcast Timber’s proclamation of independence. It took the group some time to get access to the tower, but when they finally did; their plans were forced to change. The president’s speech was broadcasted and he announced peace negotiations between the nations, being led by Galbdadia’s new ambassador, a sorceress.

Now, from what I understand, sorceresses are extremely powerful women, born to be conduits for some outside power I don’t fully comprehend yet. They have existed in the past and they usually aimed to rule nations, or even the whole world. Their rule would always be a dark time, full of dark magic, sacrifices, etc.. All in all, it was very obvious Galbadia is using the sorceress as a fear factor, to force the other countries into peace terms they wouldn’t accept otherwise.

Anyway, as this speech was happening, Seifer suddenly barged in, following by Quistis trying to stop him. He took hold of the president and tried to pull him out of the room, threatening his life. As they entered another room, the sorceress suddenly appeared and took Seifer with her. The group managed to get there in person, but it was too late.

With no order and nowhere to go, since they were wanted now, they decided to follow protocol, meaning they need to report to the nearest Garden. This would be Galbadia Garden, so that’s where I went next. Some resistance members helped me avoid Galbadian troops and then I got to a train in the direction of the Garden.

Galbadina Garden seems much less friendly than Balamb.

Timber had random encounters, but sadly, I had to run away from most of them, since they were against soldiers, meaning I couldn’t turn them into cards. Some of the battles were forced, though, so I managed to get a level or two, but nothing major.

When I boarded of the train, I was supposed to go through a forest to reach the Garden. This is where another dream sequence with Laguna happened. This time, they were in a mine infested with Esthar soldiers. From what I understand, Galbadia was at war with Esthar two decades ago and back then, Esthar was run by a sorceress. They did some running around, being their usual useless selves, and then they got ambushed by a bunch of soldiers, getting severely injured and being forced to jump off a cliff.

The group woke up and I could go to the garden now. Before that, I decided to finally train for a bit, using Card to get some AP without gaining levels and learning some item creation abilities that way. I used these to get a bunch of higher level spells and then junctioned them to my characters. Doing all this finally got me to above 1000 health on two of my characters. The third didn’t have HP junction yet, but would get it soon enough.

I entered the garden and reported to the headmaster. The group was also told that Seifer was captured by Galbadians, tried and executed soon after. On the way out, Squall met Raijin and Fujin who wouldn’t accept Seifer was dead and decided to go look for him. They brought new orders for Squall, though.

The group now needs to assassinate the sorceress, so they were joined by a sniper, Irvine, a new playable character. This one is a bit over the top, but all in all, one of the more stable individuals, by Square’s standards. I left the garden and trained some more, but soon I decided to just go to Deling City for the assassination.

Timber, all though named after the woods it used to be surrounded by, is an area revolving around trains. The base of the resistance group, for instance, is a train. The contact took the group there and I was told to go wake up “the princess”. She was in one of the rooms at the back and it turned out it was Rinoa, the girl Squall met at the party. She was actually there to recruit a team personally.

With her awake, the plan was explained. The Galbadian president is going for a train ride, so the resistance plans to abduct him, with some clever use of their base and track switching. For this, the president’s guards needed to be avoided and some codes needed to be entered in order to override the car couplings.

I love the train design of Final Fantasy VIII

In any case, the train part was done and I went to the president. It turns out he’s a fake, and a zombie at that, or at least his second form was. After drawing some Berserk and Zombie spells from him, I did what I do with all undead enemies in this series – killed him with one shot, by using a Phoenix Down on him. Back in VII, the undead boss was Gi Natak. Phoenix Downs also worked on him, but X-Potions were much more reliable.Even though it was all supposed to be really simple, I managed to fail once at the second uncoupling. At the second attempt, I managed with a lot of time to spare, but the failure probably affected my SeeD rank. SeeD rank? Well, this is the way you get money in this game. Your rank grows if you complete objectives fast enough or by solving tests in the menu. It drops if you take too long or fail at stuff. The higher the rank, the higher your salary, which you periodically get. Since the enemies don’t drop money, this is pretty much the only way to get Gil in this game.

The boss was dead and the mission was over. We got back to Timber, where the second part began. The Galbadian forces were preparing for a transmission via the Timber TV tower and we needed to get there.

Before this this, which I decided to do in my next session, I took some time at a save point to solve all the SeeD exams up to level 10. This is the highest I could go at my current character level.

The group was back at the Garden and, since the last mission was basically the final exam required to become a SeeD, the results were in soon. Squall, Zell and Selphie, as well as one other guy passed, while Seifer was disqualified for being a douche and making the team go to the tower. After the graduation, the group got back down to the second floor and fully expected for Seifer to be there and cause trouble, but he actually just applauded them along with everyone else.

With that out of the way, it was time for a party. This is where we meet the next character of the game, Rinoa. She pulls Squall to the dance floor, even though he sucks and somehow manages to turn him into an expert over the course of just one song. We don’t get her name here yet, though.

Quistis then approaches Squall and makes him go to some romantic spot at the training area. There, she says she won’t be an instructor anymore, so they’re both just SeeD now. Squall is his usual self, so they return, but on the way back, rescue a girl from some monsters. I have already seen the girl at the start, when Squall wakes up at the infirmary. Here, she refers to Squall and Quistis as if she knows them, calling Quistis “Quistie”. When she’s rescued, her bodyguards arrive and take her away before the I could talk to her. The game makes it very clear she’s somehow important.

The training center of Balamb Garden 

I’m not sure if you know this, but if you want to be the strongest you can in Final Fantasy VIII, you need to do things counter intuitively. Leveling your characters means the monsters will level to, and they get a bigger boost with leveling than you do. Basically, you should only start leveling after your Guardian Forces learn the passive abilities which add stat bonuses on level up. This only happens later in the game, so you need to avoid battles as much as you can until you get to that point, or at least until you get the Card ability.

The Card ability turns an enemy into a card, which makes you not gain any experience after the battle, but you still get the AP. This is basically the most desirable scenario, since you continue to learn new abilities, while not making your enemies stronger.

Dollet was an issue with this, though, as will many parts of the game be, since you often get into forced battles. There are ways around this to, but you get to the point of diminishing returns eventually, so I wont be doing that. For now, I just run away from battles I can run away from and that’s about it.

The Main Square of Dollet

There are several forced battles against soldiers in Dollet, so the party did gain a level or two. Their job was to get to the central square and wait for incoming soldiers, but nothing was happening for a while. Eventually, a bunch of soldiers charged through the square towards a local communications tower, so Seifer took the team there, all the while being the douche he is.

Once near the tower, he charged alone and Selphie caught up with the party, so she replaced him as part of the team. At the top of the tower were two Galbadian soldiers, Biggs and Wedge, the recurring characters of this franchise. They are easy enough to deal with, but get replaced mid battle with another monster. This is the one you can draw the new GF, Siren from.

Once the battle was over, I junctioned Siren to Squall and started going back, with a 30 minute limit to do so. Ont he way back, the party gets attacked and chased by a robot. The idea is, you damage him enough int he battle to force him into recovery mode and then run away. Apparently, it’s also possible to kill him with high damaging attacks during recovery, but none of the spells or attacks I had available could do it. I guess I needed to grind some more or something.

I never managed or even really tried to beat the X-ATM092, though I know it’s possible.

In any case, once you reach the shore, Quistis handles the robot with the ships rail gun (or whatever kind of gun it is). Once I got back to Balamb, Seifer was his usual asshole, so he took the car and ditched the rest of the group, making them walk back home. I got back to the point where I was just about to enter the garden and saved my game. I have a horrible headache, so I’ll do more some other time.

Right now, my plan is to get as many spells to junction as possible and get my party overpowered. That wont be happening until I get “Card” on at least one of my characters, so I’m able to acquire AP without acquiring EXP. I’m getting there, but it will take another boss or two.

With me accidentally completing the previous game, I really felt no urge to continue grinding there and spend too much time building up characters. I love the system of VII, but not enough to spend time I could spend playing something else that can be just as good. This is the reason I decided to start on my next game.

VIII was another game I played back when I was a kid, around 12 or 13, I believe. It was also another game I was forced to play in German. At this point, though, my German was getting better, so I understood most of it, or at least so I remember. We’ll see.

The jump in quality for both the FMV sequences and the game is huge.

I wrote about VII from a role playing perspective, but I decided to go for more of a power gaming style on this one. I’ll still go through the story, but I’ll also write more about what I’ve been doing and how I’ll be playing. The role playing thing, in retrospect, was really hard to write and wasted to much of my time. This way, I won’t have to think too much about style and focus on content.

The game starts at the Balamb Garden, which is a military school of a sort, though highly inspired by Japanese high schools. The main character, Squall, wakes up at the infirmary after being injured in training by another student, Seifer. Seifer is not the central bad guy, but the game really does make you dislike and even hate him. He’s simply an asshole, for the most part.

Squall comes off as a bit of an ass to, but more because he’s constantly trying to act cool and lets guys like Seifer get to him. All in all, I’d say he’s one of the more positive main protagonists in Final Fantasy. Also typical, he grows as a person throughout the game, just like Cloud did.

His instructor is Quistis. She’s one of the younger instructors so the rest of the staff underestimates her. She also seems to like Squall, for some reason. She visits him at the infirmary to inform him his field test is today, at the nearby Fire Caverns, so that’s his next destination.

This game uses the GF (Guardian Force) junction system. I prefer the materia system in VII, but I like the junction system almost just as much. Basically, you get summons, which are called guardian forces in this game and you bind them to your characters. This allows you to cast magic, summon them, make them learn new abilities which you can use, etc. It also allows you to draw magic from your enemies and “junction” it to your stats to increase your power. The stronger the magic is, the stronger the effect. Due to the drawing system, where you can draw a certain number of “casts” of a magic from an enemy, or from a spot in the game world, there are no magic points. The various spells are more like items in this game.

You start out with two GFs, Shiva and Quetzacoatl. Shiva is typical of a Final Fantasy game, but Quetzacoatl was new here, I believe. It’s basically a replacement for Ramuh, so it’s thunder based. You start the game with these two, but you need to “collect” them by accessing the terminal at Squalls sitting spot in the classroom.

Ifrit has been one of my favorite summons throughout the franchise.

As soon as I joined up with Quistis, I junctioned Shiva on Squall and Quetzacoatl on her. I then entered a couple of random battles on the world map and drawn the maximum amount of spell I could from the enemies. This allowed me to maximize the current stats I could junction to, Magic on Squall and Spirit on Shiva. It also gave me a nice supply of spells for later.

At the fire caves, I picked a 10 minute time limit because I was familiar with the cave and remembered it’s short. The time limit is ticking only until you defeat Ifrit at the end of the caves, so there’s plenty of time to go back outside once that is done. Ifrit was easy to beat with Shiva and I especially like how he recognizes me using her. It really reinforces the idea that Summons in this game aren’t just a game element, but an actual part of the story.

Beating him allowed me to use him as a GF, which I immediately junctioned to Squall. This allowed me to also junction spells to his Strength stat, so he did three times as much damage to enemies as he did when he was entering the cave. Ifrit also allows to junction to the elemental attack attribute, so I got as much of the Blizzard spell from an enemy in the cave as I could. This further increases the damage against fire enemies, thanks to my attacks now having an ice affinity. Of course, I can switch magics around when necessary, so I can change my affinity at will.

With this part done, next up was the first real mission. Apparently, the world is at war and the bad guy is Galbadia. Their soldiers are attacking the town of Dollet and SeeD assistance was requested. The group to go there consists of Squall, Zell and Seifer. Quistis and a bunch of other people will be there to, but the three I mentioned will be my party. The group used a car to get to the nearby town and boarded a ship there to Dollet. Once I arrived there, I saved my game and was done for now.

Since I now have three guys in the group, I had to decide what to bind on Zell. I decided to keep Ifrit on Squall for damage and give Zell Shiva. Quistis, who will be replacing Seifer soon, will be sticking with Quetzacoatl. The GFs have this thing called affinity, which increases as they are junctioned to the same character, so picking one and sticking to it is a good idea. Higher affinity means you get to summon them much faster. Since there will be plenty of mechanical enemies soon, I decided to bind Thunder to my elemental attack on Squall.

In the next session, I will be clearing Dollet and getting a new GF, If I remember correctly – Siren.