Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

10 hours into FF8 now and I'm still loving the junction system. I've now created three versions and what's nice is that you can just transfer them to other characters if certain ones aren't available, which is really cool. I've read online that levels basically don't matter in this game, what matters is the junction systems you have. It's a very refreshing take on the FF formula, I haven't been this engrossed with a gameplay system in an FF game since FF5 with its in-depth job system. It's also really fun to explore new environments, find new enemies, discover which spells they have, absorb them, and finding out if a spell boosts one of your stats more than the other one that you previously had. For example, I just discovered that the Zombie spell gives you a massive boost in HP, which I had no idea that it would. The pacing of the story is also great so far, I haven't felt like I've been stuck in a place for too long.

One thing about FF8 that's annoying me is just how often you switch characters. I'm not even kidding, towards the end of disc 1, I was switching between three groups of characters with only a few minutes of playtime with each group. It's also annoying because I have to constantly switch junctions and this wouldn't be a problem if the character's HP adjusted accordingly but it doesn't. So each time I switch junction, I need to also heal that character to full health. So if I do this and then switch back to the previous group after just a few minutes, then I just wasted healing. Sometimes you don't even fight any enemies with the new group. If the character just got full health automatically, then it would make switching junctions so much more seamless.

I think I could eventually avoid switching junctions when I've acquired enough summons for my party members that I don't need to switch all the time. But that's under the circumstance that I've unlocked all abilities of each summon. Otherwise I would miss out on precious ability points by not having them equipped all the time.