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Final Fantasy VIII Remastered |OT| You're The Best Looking Remaster Here
- Thread starter Wazzy
- Start date
Finished this last night, got the platinum. Gonna buy it again on Switch just so I can play Triple Triad whenever I feel like it lmao.
This game is great. It has its problems with the plot and the characters but I love it to bits anyway.
This game is great. It has its problems with the plot and the characters but I love it to bits anyway.
I have, this is still terrible. $20 for a couple of updated character models and calling it remaster, while leaving the background a blurry filtered mess. My ass is remastered. No proper analog control and frame rate issues in cutscene is just icing on the cake.
Even without the models this was going to be a 20ish dollar release anyway, just like most of the other FF ports (though some were a few bucks cheaper). Not like they charged 40-60 like they did with X and 12.
It probably should have had an "upgrade for a few bucks" option on PC, but for the price + work, it's mostly in line with their other rereleases.
OP
OP
Triple Triad cards are updated
Boosters
Ps1 soundtrack
Updated UI
Character models including most NPCs AND boss/GF models are updated plus monsters are cleaned up
Portability option and on newer consoles
The game has issues but your post is ignoring basically everything over controls and backgrounds(which were updated just not enough) which aren't game breaking issues. Plus the game is only $20 while Steam version that was utter shit was $17.
Or get the original version which is cheaper, and you can mod it for an overall better experience. This is a low effort "remaster", FFVIII deserves more.
OP
OP
How long did it take you for 1000 kill? It's my only trophy left other than finishing the game. I'm assuming it's like 30 mins-1 hour with x3 speed? Especially taking into account kills from prior to starting the trophy.
Yeah I was only saying why it wasn't 'easy' to have things match the performance of the PS1 game. And that's ultimately the answer to your question too, it would have been too hard to up the frame rate (and I imagine animations are tied to frame rate which would complicate things further). These are old as fuck games, so even things that appear simple, actually mean a fundamental redesign of the game. For a $20 release it's just not practical. In fact a recent interview suggests this game was going to be a straight port, and st the last minute they pivoted and decided to update models.
That said, I wish this had been a $40 release instead, but they'd gone all out. Upped frame rates, new backgrounds, widescreen etc
I skipped a fair bit of random battles throughout the game so it took a couple hours of 3x grinding at the end to get. Not terribly long but it was annoying for me because I forgot to get the Battle Record upgrade so I had no idea how many enemies I'd killed.
Does carding enemies count as killing them for the kill 1000 enemies trophy?
That's probably the one that'll take the longest to do since I tend to turn off random encounters. Though I know carding Tonberries doesn't count as killing them for Tonberry King so I may just make a separate save to do that.
Quistis sacrifices utility for raw damage output, but when grinding stuff on the Islands closest to Heaven/Hell, her Degenerator is a godsend, since it lacks a random element and murders those annoying ruby dragons in one shot.
Rinoa, aside from her Invincible Moon and Wishing Star limits also has her "Meteor Wing" build, if you want to get really quirky, which involves taking all offensive spells aside from Meteor off of her, giving her high speed and auto-haste and then let it rip with her Angel Wing limit break. Especially if you've Meltdowned the opponent beforehand, taking the delay of player input out of the equation makes the enemies die a quick death of a thousand flaming pebbles.
why am i being killed with boosters on?
looks like if an attack does more than my max hp, i will die regardless. is that what is happening?
looks like if an attack does more than my max hp, i will die regardless. is that what is happening?
The boosters don't grant you invincibility. You can still die.
This makes no sense.
The original PC version is a disaster. (and it's the reason for the things you're complaining about)
You can't mod the ps1 version.
Play this Remaster on Pc with Reshade and it will look better than the original PC version does. As for mods, they'll carry over eventually too. So your point is moot.
Anyone stanning the original PC version over the remaster is a fucking moron. That piece of shit port is a goddamn mess.
Fix the 4:3 and the 30 fps and I'm in. Until then I've already asked for a refund
It is ridiculous to call this a "remaster" comparing it to other remasters out there. I can achieve more than this with mods, for free, and this version is 8 dollars more expensive than the regular one just because it has prettier models (that doesn't fit with the CGIs anymore) and blurrier backgrounds.
It's a joke. I'm sorry if there are people trying to justify blindly their purchase, but this is a really bad job.
Is your only issue that it's called 'Remastered'? Don't get me wrong I agree. But really this is a port, priced the same as the 7 and 9 ports, but with some actual effort in. As an enhanced port I think it's great. As a remaster, not so much.
My issue is exactly that. It's the same as before but with, yeah, "a little effort". I wouldn't be mad if they gave the choice to "update" my current ff8 copy for less than the full price.
There's always the mobile app, and even more Triple Triad in FFXIV :D
Heart goes out to you man. Should have been a free (or discounted) upgrade.
Agreed. It's nice to have it on switch but a discount for previous owners on steam is the least they could've done.
Square no longer had the source code for Final Fantasy 8. Nothing about this was "low effort".
People are way too fucking hung up on the word Remastered
It means some visual improvements. Hell there's plenty of Remastered games where it's just the resolution that's bumped up, not even the new models that VIII has. It's more or less interchangeable with enhanced port, and has been for ages.
It means some visual improvements. Hell there's plenty of Remastered games where it's just the resolution that's bumped up, not even the new models that VIII has. It's more or less interchangeable with enhanced port, and has been for ages.
As an off topic for a moment. Has the lost source claim been confirmed for FF8? For the longest time everyone was saying that about FF9 up until it was rereleased. Then when they didn't launch FF8 along with the others it started more widely believed that 8 was lost.
Is there any official from SE on this or is it just an unconfirmed rumor?
Is there any official from SE on this or is it just an unconfirmed rumor?
it was not a port, just the old PC version re-released on PC
anyway i think this hits the middle ground of a remaster well, tuching up the backgrounds also can be very dangerous because it is easy to lose small details that way.
They did touch up the backrounds and lost detail ANYWAY.
I am using a sharpening filter + crt and film grain to reconstruct the image. So it looks good on PC with reshade.
The console version is abysmal though. IX was also atrocious on console.
I'd really love to play FF VIII for the story and characters, but the battle and leveling system with Junctions, Drawing, the GF system and turning monsters into cards into materials into spells etc. sounds overly complicated. Can you also play VIII like every other FF til X (minus II), or is a lot of reading guides required to enjoy the game? The ability system in IX was a lot more intuitive and easy to understand, but playing VIII sounds more like work from what I've read so far.
Aside from Drawing, which you have to do to get magic since it acts like an item, everything else you can just ignore and play normally. Even the junction system has an auto feature for people who dont want to deal with it.
It depends on what you mean by "playing like every other FF til X". The Junctions are part of the game. You can't ignore them because without junctioning spells (preferably a full stock of 100, which you'll need to accumulate either through drawing or refining them from items) to your stats, you'll eventually end up getting clobbered. You can't level-grind your way past trouble spots because monsters level up alongside you and their stat gains are higher than yours so unless you use the junctioning system to compensate, the monsters will eventually outmatch you.
There's auto-junctioning if you don't want to think too hard about what spells to tie to what stats.
To be honest, the system isn't THAT complicated once you get to play around with it a bit. The most important thing to know ahead of time is what bosses have Guardian Forces for you to draw, because if you miss them you won't be able to make use of them until the very final dungeon. Either that or simply make sure you always have at least one party member with the draw command.
So the game is easy enough that you don't have to optimise your stats? I feared that you can seriously mess up your stats by junctioning wrong (or however that works). As far as I understand, you should ideally not use magic and avoid level grinding? So should you rather flee from enemies instead of fighting them? Rather unusual that you get punished for leveling ^^'
You only gain stats from Junctioning, you can't really screw it up. I would just auto junction for DEF if you really don't understand. The worst you can do is like junction Fire to your Elemental attack and then Fire enemies will absorb your attacks. Just like any elemental weapon.
You don't have to flee from enemies - you can just turn encounters off to be fair - just don't go out of your way to grind.
You don't be even need to draw, the game tosses magic stones and other refineable items at you like candy and you can purchase everything else you need.
That said, keeping draw on one character so you can get the GFs from bosses is still a good idea.
Haven't left Balamb yet but I'm halfway to 20 Elnoyle, I have every rare card available and have learned all the core GF abilities without gaining a point of EXP.
Just like the old days, only 3x faster.
Just like the old days, only 3x faster.
Question: how hard is it to get through this game without looking up all the best ways to break shit? Like, just playing through it and experimenting and trying to figure out the systems myself? It all seems slightly intimidating and like you can fuck yourself over later in the game if you aren't doing it right.
OP
OP
It's really not bad and the game is fairly easy to break without checking.
The only thing to watch out for is leveling. Obviously its okay to gain experience but you shouldn't be trying to level since enemies scale to party.
It's fine. Like said above just use the "auto junctioning" feature and it will do most of the job for you.
And if you are ever frustrated you press R3 and you are instantly getting your health back in this remaster.
User warned: ‘lazy devs’ rhetoric
That's a bad argument. The new character models is the only real effort that's been put into this (again, I think they look amazing but the discrepancy between these and the lack of effort put into touching up the rest of the game is jarring). The backgrounds look worse than in the original steam release. Then there's the FPS issues, lack of rumble and analogue control. Square Enix had lost the source code for KH yet managed to create a lovely HD remaster using simple reverse engineering. The fact that they couldn't even be bothered to use AI upscaling, but decided an ugly blur filter was the way to go is baffling and honestly lazy. No one could possibly argue that this is as good as these backgrounds could ever look when not only the AI upscaled versions look significantly better but so does the untouched low res source material.
Examples of actual effort being put into remastering games under similar circumstances include what Capcom did with RE0 and Onimusha.
This is worth it for the beautiful new models that they made, I don't think people remember what they quite used to look like.
I took a screenshot from the new remaster on PS4, the modded old PC version (to showcase the best it could be. There is an ESRGAN upscale mod for background, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad, they are still working on it and the characters retextured), and the vanilla old PC version to compare:
Hopefully the transition of mods from the original PC release to this one will be smooth and worthwhile. Most of the gameplay issues, outside of the music bug, we already a part of the original PC release and probably won't be able to be fixed. I hope they can be. Just imagine how insanely beautiful this can be with an upscale mod, even higher resolution character textures, etc.
Frankly I think this helpfully illustrates that AI background upscaling isn't a fire and forget magic bullet. I wouldn't be surprised if DotEmu experimented with it, sent a few of the resulting upscales to S-E HQ and they were told to forget it.
Also, respect to hard working modders but the fan-made character model retextures are good illustration on how you can fixate on individual details to the detriment of the artistic whole. The sharp, visually busy textures of the fan retexture mod fill the goal of "HD textures" but in context make the models look worse and unnaturalistic. You'll notice the supervised-by-the-original-staff Remaster's new model textures are much more detailed but still deliberately include softness and ambiguity in order to "sell" the model as a character.
(It would have been great if it had been made like those Cifaldi-produced re-releases of Megaman. Those were meant to be the 'Criterion Collection' of videogame library rereleases and not only tried to make the games look as good as they authentically could but also respected and displayed its importance and history. Can you imagine if this Remaster allowed you to swipe right or left on the touchpad to swap between bilinear upscaled, precise original pixel art, and AI upscaled backgrounds for the player's taste (and to compare?). That said, thinking about it this morning, I actually realized that you could characterize this remaster as pretty much better in every way from the original...if you played the original on a standard playstation controller and not the dual shock. The in-battle menu framerate isn't really a deal breaker.)
Also is playing Triple Triad mandatory? I hear you 'need' to play it to get OP cards for materials(?) which you need to synthesize weapons like the Lionheart. One of the things I liked to most about Tetra Masters is that you could outright ignore it completely. Seems different here and TT sounds like a hassle with different (and randomly changing?) rule sets.
All in all, FFVIII sounds like a game that needs to be played with an extensive guide book. But if the veterans say you can play it without delving deep into all of its systems, that's relieving. (Hopefully there is no absurd difficulty spike at the end of the game like Ozma in IX...)
All in all, FFVIII sounds like a game that needs to be played with an extensive guide book. But if the veterans say you can play it without delving deep into all of its systems, that's relieving. (Hopefully there is no absurd difficulty spike at the end of the game like Ozma in IX...)