I was laughing the whole time. Oh boy....this is nearly a 90 minute episode....*reclines back* By the way, Hi Norm!

I wholeheartedly agree! Song arranged...by...GRANT KIRKHOPE?!?!

I thought it was almost a belated april fools joke.

eterwill They are working together on Big Bad Bosses 2 after all.

If only you put in that amount of work. Or videos for that natter,instead of just taking patreon money and putting out fukcall,you too could be flooding ppl

Love your music! Keep up your great work!

✊

I specifically scrolled down to the comments to see if you were here and you were. Yes, man. ✊

One of my fav games in the series

Hype! ✊

Fisherman's horizons music

My first one was FFVII. PS1 FF games were truly something special

First for me as well...I loved and spent a whole lot of time playing it several times through...the thing I remember the most is when I finally figured out that regional rules meant different communities had different "house rules". At first I figured out how to clean out everyone at the garden and thought I had figured the whole game out, only to drop my best GF to the very next player (Artisan maybe?)...I remember just staring at the TV, enraged and completely dumbfounded, I was like 'Did they just cheat? They didn't win that shit! Wtf?' Bewildered and angry, I just reloaded my checkpoint and avoided the card game entirely like I had fell for a 3 card Monte game with a street dealer and swore off gambling entirely lol I loved the junction system and the interactive trigger prompt inside the turn based game, the animation graphics were really great for me at that time after playing mostly on N64 before this, especially the summon animations. I always found the negative reviews of it confusing, because I don't remember having difficulty figuring anything other than the card game out. I don't view becoming OP and blasting the enemies away with ease as a negative at all. Grinding and investing time in Junctioning, collecting GFs, and leveling up is all meant to make combat easier. I wouldn't appreciate doing all that tedious stuff if the resulting effects merely meant I could remain competitive going forward in the storyline. After 20 hours of turn based gameplay and seeing the all the cutscreens over and over and over, battles start to become going through the motions and hoping that the first attack or two cleared the fight so I didn't have to see yet another animation again...

Samo, love it ❤❤❤

WHAT??!! I've played this game a million times and I'm just now learning this.

@@MrDiplomatSwag yes this is true. which is why it makes the eyes on me song even sadder ... it was indeed the last time they ever laid eyes on each other, as it said on the song.

Dig? I though it couldn't be more obvious. Laguna, Kiros and Raine talk about Julia marrying general Caraway, Rinoa's dad (which we've spent a lot of time with during last mision so it's hard to miss), and Squall is obviously Laguna's son, Kiros pretty much spells it out loud.

So, it's odd that people don't understand the relationship, but they have to dig deep to understand them? Ok.

One of my favorite things. I actually picked up on that the first time I played it when I was a teenager.

I was wondering what Charlie's Angels had to do with Final Fantasy 8 lol.

Yeah if anything that's Final Fantasy X-2 shtick

It's because they played ff8 in the movie

Same reaction.

LMAOOO I did the same exact same thing

How does it feel being put into the Spotlight like this?

Was Drew Barrymore Really Nekked Ya Mean? LOL

I too wish you all the best. Hope you reach that mythical 500!

And an Ari & Stone plug. Good times.

So...what *was* it like acting in that scene knowing FF8 wasn't multiplayer?

True.

And drawing those spells for half an hour.

Now try to explain how exactly this works in the game world. Like HOW do you store these spells in your body? Why does a tent create magic? This system is so meta, it makes ZERO sense, in the game world.

I agree, but I also agree with this guy that the ingame tutorials were not well-written at all.

I almost shut the video off when he failed to recognize its glory

@@LLFoolJ That and him saying triple triad is confusing and not fun actually did make me shut the video off

i came bere to write the same 😂

@@tylervanness9584 yes!! Triple triad was class, I spent many hours on it alone, thoroughly enjoyed it! Card games done right. 👌

I mean, Uematsu could make a compelling soundtrack for pretty much anything.

Your proud of someone playing video games and begging for money .......

@@Solarclypse You sound amazingly bitter, dude. The guy plays video games for a living, but also reviews them on his internet show he hosts. He's doing a great job at it, hence the congratulatory post from the original poster.

Holy shit I didn't expect to see Riverdude here That's awesome

The game had a lot of appeal to adults and the cool factor. In FF your team mates are often a bunch of weirdos but not in this game LOL

@@boeingnz u trying to tell tell me punchy punchy dude bro jump rope kid and dommy teacher isn't weird

the FMV of the ragnarok was the coolest thing I had ever seen and I literally fell in love with quistis, my 2nd waifu! XD

ya got me, half sleeve of FF8 art.

@@DruNature and the first?

"Familiar face" was simply because the two operating the crane were brothers that look similar.

@@eldoh3388 But this wouldn't explain why the first one is called "Familiar Face", before Squall has met the second. And the game makes it a point of showing that Squall isn't satisfied with that as the explanation ("Was it him...? Hmm...") Moreover, the second guy at the bottom of the crane only mentions one brother that looks like him, yet you go on to meet a third "Familiar Face" right afterward, close by. The NPC thinks that Squall only recognizes his face because they had just met, outside the Garden's entrance, and strangely forgets so quickly. But no other NPCs that Squall meets throughout the game are known as "Familiar Face". Their faces being familiar is highlighted for us and dwelled upon by Squall, to foreshadow the amnesia plot point.

@@Vic2point0 sorry, the 3 of them are all brothers, missed out the third guy. Apart from that, though, the game doesn't really go into any further detail on it. Invoking Poe's law, it could really simply be that the siblings are identical to each other. The whole GFs causing amnesia part was already given a sufficiently large significance in the forgetting of childhood memories and friends. I doubt they would be adding a small, unexplained hint in the game without any callback or payoff.

@@eldoh3388 Well then there's much left unexplained, as I outlined in my last comment. I consider it foreshadowing because that makes sense of all the facts I highlighted there.

So you were the 2nd choice?

@@Wisekuma Joke didn't land. Maybe try again?

Nice

True love there!

Awwwww ♥ Always been my plan, just haven't gotten there yet.

Hey keep up the great content Bonsai Pop.

I’m going to your channel after this!

Cool to see Bonsai pop here! Love your content and I’m a proud patron.

I nearly maxed Ifrits boost once. I probably would have succeeded but I was overzealous and reset the counter. My buttonmashing was legendary. I don't even think turbo buttons could max out ifrits boost because of the short animation

@@Hadmin I just remember the first time I actually used Eden's summon (with Boost, obviously) and how absolutely terrified I was of accidentally resetting the counter. Like... by that point, Eden's power had been well-established for me, and I was just hoping not to screw it up. Thing was, I neglected practicing on _other_ GFs until that point, sooo of course I screwed it up _several_ times. I'd like to say I got better, but that'd be lying... ugh.

Also that part of the game in Balamb Garden's basement where you have to turn a crank or something.

In the end, spamming limit breaks with aura was way better anyways.

@@InertiaEffect it is, but that wasn't the point in this discussion. it was button mashing, not the best viable strategies.

One of the reasons I don't understand why he says the music isn't that good.

Laguna is the ff8 protaganist we deserve, but not the one we need right now

Wait, I know you

Gerad

500 will be even cooler

Hey look it’s Nate!

Agree on Tetramaster

I felt the same way about Triple Triad playing it now as when I played blitzball in FFX (my 1st game in the series) as a kid, which that it makes absolutely no sense to me lol. I honestly think all of those mini games was Square lowkey using us as beta-tests for upcoming full versions of any of those mini games that never panned out

@@youngrootv triple triad is used in this game, ff 14, and is literally its own standalone downloadable game. Creatures of aether is a popular card game that literally stole the triple triad formula and added tiny spins, and make it competitive. Like, how doesn’t it make sense? If your number bigger than theirs you take card. THATS THE WHOLE GAME

@riplix20 Likely they mean the regional rule variations. Especially Same-Plus.

They are all broken. Quistis has degenerate, selphie has The End, Irvine has a slow bullet that ignores def.

@@yt-dm8ns quistis + shockwave pulsar, Irvine + armor shot and meltdown... yeah. truth be told though, you’ll likely meet your own end waiting to pop selphie’s.

Zell's is still the most powerful. Also, the infinite combo he has is called the Armageddon fists

Zell is the most reliable way to take out Omega Weapon.

@@forcelightningcable9639 open the playstation lid and keep scrolling until it comes along haha!

Honestly it's mostly just the Same and Plus rules that get confusing. It's otherwise pretty straightforward

Those are easy compared to the extra rules FFXIV added. Chaos/Order are the name of my decks

@@metalucipherable Although in ffxiv you don't have to worry about rule spread

Except skylanders came out afterwards so it must have copied triple triad from ff8

@@JackgarPrime it was same wall i never could get, same/plus was easy to get but the AI was a cheating bastard with "just" the right cards....

Eden was the only GF I could manually boost to max at 255. Didn't have a turbo controller back in 1999, so pushed a vibrating back massager on the Square button - also helped on the torture scene in Metal Gear Solid :)

Dang....

Im surprised ppl missed that plot...

@@WickedLoPlays The plot is wicked if you look hard enough. Child soldiers, mind control, memory wiping super soldier enhancers, orphans being made into the most powerful weapons in the world, and a lonely defensive and confused boy leading the fight against a universe ending calamity!

@@thesurvivorssanctuary6561 the Plot can Def Be rationalize in different ways but why tell me about a plot i clearly know and understand? You @is confusing me right now..shouldnt that comment be for someone who doesnt understand?besides the plot of irvine which is what i was replying to nicolas about is a different standpoint then the entire games Plot itself. It shocks me even when it was revealed and confirmed in the game the reasoning behind irvines actions and ppl stiill didnt know or understand..

I got that, what I hated was that at no point did he even mention anything about it. I feel like Irvine would be like "Wow, it's messed up that we have to kill our nanny."

"Shit, i can't live without Rinoa! But i can't live without playing some cards right now either, so welp" *-Draws hand*

I bought a turbo button controller for this game...

@@Mizer1822 So did I.

Damn straight

My best friend got a blister from it.

I still have a extra gear for button mashing, that i developed playing this game

I think there are moments in the soundtrack that are very memorable. Obviously Liberi Fatali is memorable, the man with the machine gun, find your way, the landing, under her control, the stage is set, ami, fisherman’s horizon, and the oath. All of these are very memorable. I think the main thing is ff 8’s ost is very thematic. There are a lot of songs that borrow from other songs. That may not make as many individual songs stand out as much as certain other games like 6 or 7, but there are certain melodies that come up a lot and those melodies are very memorable.

I'd say that FF8 got the best battle themes overall of the series - the "exploration" tracks, minus some, may indeed be less memorable than, say, FF9 soudntrack

@@khaotil_dub 6 is my favorite battle theme 10 maybe my second. 7’s got probably my favorite boss theme though.

Honestly, I agree with Jirard. outside of a few excellent tracks, I'm not a big fan of this soundtrack either.

Didn't Uematsu once call VIII his greatest work?

I literally bought a third party turbo controller for that, and Legend of Dragoon with the items. Never used it for anything else, not even as a 3rd or 4th player when I finally got the multitap. Those controllers were trash but turbo was worth it for an around 10-12 year old kid who was otherwise crap at the game. Still couldn't beat it until I also got a gameshark and gave myself max everything, and even then I basically cheesed the last boss by having as many characters with kamikaze as possible just blow her up, it was a lot of fun beating the game while not having any idea how to actually play it at the time.

I was looking for this comment but I was surprised I had to scroll down quite far to find this

Boost was frustrating especially when it started over.

@@Holy_Wraith and that, folks, is why you DON’T use a turbo controller for boost. I actually found the best boost method is to rub the edge of the square button back and forth as fast as you can with generally tiny motions. So much quicker than actually tapping the button normally.

Lol. I didn't see this comment until I made my own. My method for boost was to tense my arm so that my whole arm would vibrate and my thumb would tap the button at super speed. To be honest, I think that over time this created a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders. Worth it for the extra damage, though! :P

He’ll make 400 videos of him complaining about his income before that happens

Episode 300 doesn't even feel that long ago

I genuinely would love to give you a like, but I wouldn't want to ruin the perfect number you have there.

Don't anyone dare give this comment more likes. As it stands, it's NICE.

Ahhhh simpler times...ya miss it sometimes...

yes. i remember those days.

Reminds me of trying to get tonberry king with my mom, running around killing them everywhere just to find out you have to sit in a room and kill 20 of the little fish bastards. We hadn’t killed Odin yet so it was uh,,, difficult

Same. Not only graphics wise, but they tried something new. I played ff8 before 7. I'm playing the android version . If you click the joysticks it either x3 speed on the game and God mode pretty much lol kids today

Because anime is always depicting things realistic.

@@Tatokat as apposed to final fantasy?

@@prawnk1ng No. As opposed to real life. It makes sense for a 17 year old kid to not be comfortable with that much responsibility.

@@Tatokat mooooot point. you ttry to justify thing from fiction with reality. DOES NOT COMPUTE

@@MikePhantom But that is exactly what Jirard pointed out. That it makes sense from a realistic standpoint. Not from a anime standpoint nor from a game standpoint. Also, maybe you haven't noticed yet, but the best characters are usually the ones that are realistic. The ones who behave the way you would in a situation. Because you are more likely to associate yourself with someone who isn't "perfect". Therefore, fictional stories are often trying to make their characters believable and realistic.

yes

Yep, Liberi Fatali... that intro was love at first sight. Also Eyes on Me and it's variants, just awesome.

and lets not forget the man with the machine gun... lagunas battle theme is just awesome.

@@btothekfromg5973 and THE LANDING

Heck, even the field music like Blue Fields is among the best

What, Triple Triad?

It s The Reiwa Period Right ?

Are you questioning the power of his beard?

Wahahaha I tried doing that vs Marlboro....death has happened .... just not on who I wanted.

And this is why I junction 100 Pain to someone's StAtk.

I remember kid me using a notebook to spreadsheet the optimal distribution of stats for each character to try to max every stat on everyone.

I had this setup trying to climb Odin's tower only to run into a Forbidden (a skeleton warrior), suddenly Squall did no damage .

100 confuse will solve all your death problems.

Yeah I was super surprised he said the general consensus was that triple triad was bad when I’ve always heard even from the largest ff8 haters that the card game is amazing. Idk about you but excluding random (that rule can burn in the hottest fires of hell) I actually liked playing with the same or plus rules. It does make the cards wayyy harder but I’ve always viewed it as a final evolution from the original simple version you start the game with

Love a bit of Triple Triad, forgot half the tricky rules but it's damn fun building ur deck and squashing them with your Teammate cards later!

@@jacobbillups4715 if triple triad was bad it wouldn’t exist on mobile devices as a playable game in 2022 lmao. Also the game “ creatures of aether “ is literally triple triad with some new rules, and the equivalent of a “ hero power “ from games like hearthstone

I got stuck in multiple playtroughs in the end of disc 3. Last week I finally completed the game after 23 years 😂

FF8 had a really fun world to just explore with a lot of crazy secrets like these two islands or the jumbo cactuar.

Good lord, all the status effects on the island closest to heaven. I loathed that island, but still spent plenty of time on it.

@@Killtacboy I always had Quistis with the degenerator spell and initiative equipped in my party on these two islands. She always went first and degenerator kills every monster on the islands. Usually only took like a couple of hours to max all party members to level 100.

I must have spent an eternity on those two islands, drawing aura, regen, meteor, ultima etc and grinding until all of my characters were lvl100. It was my first and only play through. When Omega Weapon cast lvl5 death I nearly threw up. I also had no idea that monsters scaled to your level at the time. This game is a messy masterpiece of unbridled creativity. Time to play it again methinks.

And farming cursed spikes or whatever it was called for Quistis to learn the same move as Griever for 99,999 damage. Also the Tonberry was so annoying to get

I was also 5 when the game came out and I never had trouble with the junction/draw system. Sure, it takes a bit of time to draw 300 of a spell (100 per party member), but when you do it's super easy to make them OP, which I find fun. I don't care what people say, VIII is awesome.

@@TheLadyLiddell yeah and even then, you dont even have to sit there and draw all the time, there is LITERALLY an entire system drawn around it which is the ability refine system, whether you play cards, mug enemies or just use dropped items, you can easily get 100 magic without it being tedious... but yeah, some people man 😂

@@chimpmonk right? I didn't really know much about the refine system as a kid, but when the remaster came out on Switch and I got to experience it again as an adult I realized just how OP it was.

Nah Squall was just a straight up dick. I remember Cloud being stand offish but Squall was on another atmosphere. I finished the game and watched the most stupid love story in FF series.

@@RaMraM-zm1el Not only that, the people around Squall are toxic. Forcing a relationship that he obviously doesnt show any interest in, making him a leader when he barely shows any inspirational qualities, etc etc.

I think most people who hate it was because it was alittle over their heads at the time. FF7 was a fair more simplistic story.

For real, the extreme is the best FF song ever made

Its the best soundtrack, best story, best gameplay

Yeah it's up there with XIV as the best ost in the series

He didnt even mention Man With A Machine Gun by name.

Maybe I'm a Lion.

I had been playing since the first on on NES, and 4, 6, and 7, probably 5 via emulation by that point, and lots of other JRPGS before playing 8, and it blew me away with how utterly inventive and unique it was in every single facet of its design, from the freedom of junctioning, to the SEED rank giving your money if you took the time to look through the menus and find the test, to the enemies leveling with you so that the old "I did every sidequest because I love this game so much, but now the final boss is a pushover" issue was impossible (unless you deliberately don't level like a pussy lol.. seriously the way you played, just normally leveling, is the best way to play the game.. I don't understand why people always say they never level their characters... just because it's there doesn't mean you have to play the game in the most exploited way possible, it's just an organic way for the player to choose their own difficulty level... so everyone playing low level is basically playing the game on easy mode and thinking they are gamer gods while also being bored because the game isn't interesting with zero challenge... I honestly think that "keep everyone low level" advice does a ton of harm to the experience people have with 8, because it can be extremely fun and challenging all the way through if you allow the enemies to level up and get all their moves etc... I think it's just sad that Jirard and so many other people have this weird almost religious/law-oriented perspective on external Achievements/Trophies/whatnot, that they see that as the measure of completing a game... when a game like 8 you can tick all those technical boxes without really seeing the whole of what the game has to offer, ie playing at a high level in general), and the characters didn't just look like normal humans, they were written as complex, fallible individuals who struggle with internal doubts and such... that was also revolutionary for a JRPG, especially a mainline Final Fantasy game. I loved playing as Squall because for the first time in a game I was truly relating to the protagonist the way one does with a character in a book that resonates with one's own life experience. I think a big part of it is cultural differences, the expectations for a "relatable" character are completely different, Japanese like protagonists who are introverted, thoughtful, don't always say what they mean because the emotional burden is too great, etc... whereas America is... America hasn't really evolved beyond external capitalistic forces being primary motivations for people, and is obsessed with masculinity to a pathological degree, so all those personality traits of Squall (and a lot of the other characters too, they are all well written) that were super human and relatable to me, were viewed from the American cultural lens as negative things the average young male doesn't want to associate themselves with, or even admit they have those feelings and moments of emotional weakness... and it just becomes this retarded bandwagon led by the people with the least emotional depth and appreciation of art who see something easy to make fun of from an American perspective leading the zeitgeist, people who haven't even played the game or any other JRPG but 7 or who always saw the kids who played RPGs as wimps and bullied them in earlier years, their voices are the loudest, and everyone who can't think for themselves piles on, and the well is so poisoned that it's hard for people who like the game to just talk about it in good faith. I've seen this phenomenon so many times in my life (TLJ is another great example of it, but there are so many) that I now become interested whenever there's something that has this big public loud negative reaction to it, because there might be something really beautiful there... as when mediocre people come in contact with something great and beautiful that they can't enjoy, their reaction is especially violent.

@@jedgrahek1426 I strongly agree with every single thing you just said here, god damn that is so spot on. The kind of people who think playing through the whole thing low level are kinda like people who play through games with chests but worse because they take it as how the game is supposed to be played since you don't need a GameShark to do it. They literally think they're better for playing it that way. It's kind of like people who think speedrunning is the only way to play a gsme, just ignore all of the art to it and see how fast you can beat it and how meticulous you can tweek. I mean, it's not a big deal to Speedrun, buy I imagine these FF8 low levelers are like an elitist version of that. I just don't get it tbh. Last thing, what is TLJ? Lastly, down to the toxic attitude a lot of these basic dudes have and how they have this intense aversion to even just admitting to being emotional beings, I agree with all of that too. They have to have this facade of "I'm a man, I only think with logic bro what you talking about?" as if they aren't capable of feeling. I hate it so much.

8 wasn't my first. I played it after 3, 7, 9, 10 and 13. I loved it, imo the best 3 games in the franchise are 8, 9 and 10.

I’ve played just about every FF game up to 12, and I thought this game was fine. There was a story point that was a little stupid in my opinion, but otherwise was great.

@@jedgrahek1426 dude. put your entire comment in paragraphs. its difficult to read it like this.

Jirard will never let me live it down. XD

@@belatedmedia "Can I interview you?"

People don't seem to appreciate the more realistic fantasy of FF8. And an actual theme song with actual singing.

@@boeingnz Even my 50 year old roommate has heard of ff8, but that’s only because eyes on me actually topped music charts when it came out. This games sappy love song about being a dreamer topped music charts in Japan and was known globally. To be fair to 7 though there were choirs for one winged angel variations, and maybe one in the back for final jenova.

Viii and Ix had the best ost to me

@@Gogeta166 Booya and Heel Drop until the end of time. At least until you say, "Okay, that's enough."

@@Gogeta166 Also, The End is a bit of a pain to bring out. Zell's Armageddon fists is guaranteed win

(10 secs) Punch Rush, Booya, Punch Rush, Booya, ..... (1sec left) Heel kick, Roundhouse, Punch Rush, My Final Heaven.

@@Gogeta166 While true, understanding the crisis system and Selphie's slot sets can make The End far quicker without being much more unreliable. When you start her limit break, it will pick a set of spells, and there's only 16 sets. If you don't immediately roll 2x Ultima, Wall, Full-Cure, Rapture, 3x Triple, or The End, then you're on the wrong set and just need to close and reopen Slots to try again. Doing this repeatedly is very fast if you get good at it. But yes, it's still RNG at the end of the day

My favorite people you can challenge to a card game: Adea after committing attempted genocide against two schools People under siege by a foreign army. In several locations. An actual corpse on the moon where you leave Renoa with doctors. This one kills me every time.

Same here

It wasn't my first but its still my favorite and the music was awesome. Any of you folks get the Lionheart early on Disc One? Its possible without cheating or game shark. It made game easier. I even ported a Sony Pocketstation to find a Ribbon and Headmaster Cid card.

He advocates for using guides, and most guides would tell you not to use damaging GFs at almost any point in the game. And with intelligent use of junctions and menu abilities, that's not without reason. Another thing to remember is that not everyone at the time of the commercials airing had the PS1 controllers with thumbsticks, I remember having slightly sore thumbs at the end of the Dollet mission as described by the commercial, though not to the extent it implies.

@@Kaftan I'm not an idiot...I'm talking about button tapping to boost summons, nothing to do with control sticks.

@@Kaftan what