Jan 22, 2024

Reached the point of no return with FF8

 All that's left is defeat Seifer, Adel and enter Disc 4. The perks from remaster mode reduced a shit ton of grinding... mainly draw kind of grind. You blow through the story super fast and most of it is meh.

OK, so you're a brooding emo cadet of a Super Mercenary Force, one of the two most prodigious students who use the rarest weapon of all, because it's hard to wield. The other is a douche who sounds like Will Friedle. You are forced to interact with an incompetent teacher who thinks she has the hots for you, a little gremlin girl who acts like an energetic 5 year old and can suddenly say the most deranged and psychotic things out of the blue, then there's the loud mouth who sucks ass and is obsessed with hot dogs... (yakisoba bread in japan IIRC)... FUCK YOU CHICKEN-WUSS!!
You take your test and pass it despite Ron Stopable's self-sabotage. At the party for passing the exam, some creepy girl, tries to use you to meet principal discount Robin Williams. Fuck Rinoa, Squall should've ended up with the psycho Gremolin... instead the game forces Rinoa on you. We get stuck in a permanent contract with Rinoa and her incompetent terrorist organization until Timber gains its independence (unresolved loose thread). During the story, we also see the seemingly unrelated adventures of Annoying wuss Laguna and his inability to talk to girls, yet every woman falls for him. First is Rinoa's mom, who wrote a worldwide hit song about how thirsty she was for Laguna. Then it's Raine, who gave birth to Emo and fucking killed herself.

Rinoa looks far more like Laguna than Squall does... Nope! Not gonna go through the fan theories... squall is dead, ultimecia is rinoa... zell and seifer are gay and have the hots for squall... squall and rinoa are half siblings... none of that shit.

Back to the main rant. We end up in a plot to assassinate a sorceress that came out the left field. We get a sniper in the form of Gay Cowboy Lestat, who tries to fuck everything that moves, but suddenly has always been in love with Selphie... the dude is all talk and has nothing to back himself up. Look, I loathe chicken-wuss, because he fucked us over at Timber, but if there's a Final Fantasy 8 character that I hate almost as much as I hate Laguna, then Irvine Kinneas is that man.

He chokes at the whole having to kill his Mom thing with a sniper rifle, but He's totally OK to have his stepbrother and some random chick attempt to kill his Mom with melee weapons. Then after his stepsiblings get imprisoned, he ditches them to take random chick back to her parents. It literally takes Random chick to beat the shit out of him to have him rescue his stepsiblings. Only to much later drop the bomb that he had always known then and that they had to kill their Mom. He literally withheld information that compromised the mission and abandoned his "family" at their time of need. Fuck you, Irvine! Fuck you with a Jumbo Cactuar! And no, this has nothing to do with his out the left field crush on the train loving sociopath Gremolin... 

So, Irvine is forced to rescue Squall and friends from prison as Galbadia bombs the Gardens. Selphie's original Garden was destroyed. Showing off the aftermath of war fought with child soldiers. So the party splits and ends up half infiltrating an enemy fortress and the other half returning to Balamb Garden and find a Civil War going on between students defending Discount Robin Williams and students defending the guy funding Garden, NORG, who came out the left field too! We end the civil war and now the Garden is a Mobile Fortress. We crash at Fisherman's Horizon, a hippie Mechanic town. They hate us cause we are soldiers. We fight some Galbadian forces and now the hippies tolerate us enough for Irvine to orchestrate a concert to get into Selphie's pants and help Rinoa get some emo dick. Rinoa was the girlfriend of Plays with Squirrels and now wants some Squall dick. It's super forced and then the game turns into Everyone we must make Squall and Rinoa do the Horizontal Mambo. 

There's  a literal warzone between the now movable Balamb and Galbadia Gardens, but the team is more interested in getting Squall's ring so Zell can make a knock-off for Rinoa. Then Rinoa falls into a coma because Edea passed Ultimecia's power to Rinoa now Squall suddenly cares about Rinoa. The whole war thing... it literally becomes the Squall/Seifer/Rinoa triangle... Squall becomes leader of SeeD, while Seifer becomes the leader of Galbadia. 
But Squall abandons all responsibility and carries comatose Rinoa all the way to the hidden city of Esthar to get help. Then the Esthar folks shoot Squall and Rinoa to space... 

There Ultimecia releases Adel and Rinoa...

So Squall saves her and they play Among Us as the impostor duo killing color matching crewmates aboard the Ragnarok. When they return to Earth, Esthar folks capture her, you rescue her and then we go to Edea's orphanage to get a reference to the intro. Then Squall meets his deadbeat dad, despite not knowing that Laguna is his father. We end up using Ellone's power to compress time, fight ultimecia, discover that Edea got Ultimecia's power in the past and that a time traveling Squall created Garden and SeeD. 

It's obvious that a ton of Laguna stuff was cut out. Apparently the original plan for the game involved More Laguna and a 17 years ago world map... Now this is something that a FF8 Remake should fix. Not adding Kingdumb Farts bullshit pseudosequel that tries to retcon the original.

The story and world make no sense.
SeeD is a global mercenary organization, right?
But here's the deal: There are 3 Gardens:
Balamb, Trabia, and Galbadia. 
Now let's count TOWNS and CITIES. Places like Tomb of the Unknown King, Centra Ruins, Missile Base, or the Abandoned Orphanage don't count.

Balamb
Dollet
Timber
Deiling City
Winhill
Fisherman's Horizon 
Esthar
Shumi village

8 towns/settlements:
Balamb has its own Garden
Galbadia has its own Garden and army
Timber is under Galbadian occupation 
Dollet
Winhill is baseically a flower village
FH is a Mechanic Hippie Commune
Esthar is isolated and has its own army
Shumi Village is isolated.

How the fuck can SeeD prosper in such an empty world? 
For such a "futuristic" Final Fantasy settlements feel far too sparse... why would there be a Trabia Garden if Trabia has fucking nothing? 

How the fuck does Edea's orphanage even worked!? It's in the middle of butt fucking nowhere! 

Hopefully revisiting IX is a better experience...

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