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We're back, and we aren't anywhere near the Garden at all! That's because we have business in Balamb Town. Not a lot there besides some shops, an inn, and more NPCs, but it's important we come here for a minute.
Another Draw Point is just inside. The amount of magic you get out of them is random, though I've heard you have a high chance of getting a lot out of them if your MAG stat is high. In this case I got the maximum number of Thunders, however, so maybe that isn't true? Ah well, Draw Points aren't useful unless a rare spell is in them anyways.
What we're here for is this NPC, the Queen of Cards, because it's time to play Triple Triad. You can challenge just about any NPC to Triple Triad (often in increasingly bizzarre situations as we'll soon learn) but the Queen here is special. She starts in Balamb, but can move from region to region. If you plan to invest time into Triple Triad, it's worth playing her one time.
Now, I happen to like this mini-game, but I'll say this right now: Triple Triad can SMASH the difficulty, BUT, farming cards through the game can be extremely tedious depending on what you're trying to get out of it. It'd be silly to not mention Triple Triad in a guide to breaking FF8, but just know that time and luck will be a requirement in abusing it. For now, let's learn how the game works.
Each player selects 5 cards in their inventory to play with. When it's your turn, you place one of your cards into the 3x3 grid. When you play a card, its four values are compared to that of the cards adjacent to it, and if yours are higher, you capture the opponent's card. For example, this card has a 1 on its right side, and my Bomb card has a 3 on its left side.
If I play the Bomb card there, the enemy card is flipped and I've captured it since 3 is higher than 1. The game is over when the whole grid is filled, and whoever has more cards on their side is the winner. These are simple but effective rules, and I really like the game - it's a little basic but there's depth to it. Enough depth, in fact, for Triple Triad to resurface as a mini-game in FF14, an MMO, but sadly Triple Triad can't wreck the game balance there.
Unfortunately that particular game didn't go so well. It can be hard to really start playing Triple Triad in FF8 because you start with crap cards. Turning enemies from the Fire Cavern into cards helps, because they produce some of the best ones. Oh, and be VERY careful while you're playing.
Triple Triad might be a fun mini-game, but two things ruin it for a lot of people. First, the winner gets to take the loser's cards that they were using (insert "gambling is good for you children" joke) meaning that EVERYTHING you actually use is at stake. Hope you weren't too attached to that rare Ifrit card, because one mistake can cost you it for good!
The second annoyance is that the rules of Triple Triad can vary depending on which region of the world you're playing in, which is actually a nice detail to add. Unfortunately, nearly all of the "House Rules", while exciting to some, are on the whole detrimental to your ability to farm. Like that crappy "Random" rule, which forces you to pick your cards from your entire inventory at random. You can also influence the rules each region uses, and there's actually some RNG manipulation strategies for that, but most of your play should be in Balamb's region since they have rules ideal for card farming.
So let's head back to the Garden and get farming. Nobody's ever really documented what opponents can use what cards, which means to get common cards you want, you'll need a little luck. Everyone knows where to find one-of-a-kind rare cards, however, and collecting those is nice for building a decent hand to play with.
Triple Triad strategy mainly involves capturing cards while making sure you aren't leaving yourself vulnerable to capture, and being able to see your opponent's cards is a huge help since it lets you see their attack options. It's unfortunate that FF mini-games basically don't get better than this - FF9 has a worse card game involving lots of RNG, and FFX has a sports mini-game with lots of confusing stats. Don't ask me about X-2, I stayed away from mini-games there.
Now, it was important to play against the Queen of Cards because of something called the Trade Rule, which governs what your reward is. It's normally "One", meaning winner takes one of the loser's cards. But the Queen was playing with "Diff" meaning the winner takes a number of cards equal to the margin of victory. This is great, because the Queen's Trade Rule instantly spreads to the whole region. Under the Diff rule, you always win two or more cards (when you win that is) making farming a LOT easier.
The other potential Trade Rules are "All" which means winner snags the loser's entire hand (which you can do under Diff if you're good anyways) and "Direct" which is AWFUL. Under Direct, it doesn't matter if you win or lose, you ONLY leave the table with the cards you captured. You could win the game but still lose a rare card if it was captured. To hell with that!
So after all those words about card games you might wonder why I'm even playing it. To learn the reason behind that we need to grind a teensy bit more AP.
Because Quezacotl can learn the Card Mod ability, which allows you to turn cards into items. OH YES. See, this is one of the reasons to actually like FF8: You can turn enemies into cards, play a mini-game with those cards, and turn the cards you collect into helpful items. Both forms of gameplay feed into each other rather elegantly. Now if only FF8 weren't broken beyond belief because of it!
Here's just a small sample. Quistis is actually the game's Blue Mage, meaning she learns enemy skills. Only she learns them through ITEMS instead of getting hit with the spell or consuming or absorbing the enemy or whatever. She can learn a good chunk of her Blue Magic on Disc 1, because Triple Triad opponents frequently carry cards of enemies you're not supposed to meet yet!
Ah, but the best card to get has got to be the Abyss Worm. We don't see those until Disc 2. Getting five of them is good, getting ten is REALLY good, and getting fifteen...well, that's more time than I'd like to spend. The NPCs just weren't throwing out the Abyss Worms that often, unfortunately. I got five of them, and I also got five Blitz cards for reasons that will become clear.
As for the rare cards, this kid runs around the main hall of the Garden and has a MiniMog card for some reason. This is also used for a stupid sidequest where you challenge the Queen of Cards, intentionally lose specific rare cards to her, then a new rare card gets unlocked somewhere - naturally you have to track it down to win it, then track down the card you initially lost because this quest is FUN.
Spend the most time on the two dudes on the right here. The guy on the left uses Abyss Worms and whatnot. The guy on the right has...
...cards depicting...Biggs, Wedge, and QUISTIS?!
Okay, if you can turn enemies into cards, how can there be cards of these guys?! If they're just photographs, then that raises even MORE questions because you can still turn the cards into items! Quistis's card actually makes the most broken items ever. It's a shame you can apparently only get one copy, even if you lose the card or turn it into items. Unless I'm completely wrong about that.
Oh, and he also used this. Elnoyle is a card that'll be important if you want to get the best weapon in the game on Disc 1. It's a stupidly tedious task, though, because you need TWENTY of it. Naturally, I went ahead and did it. If you wanted to get the best weapon for EVERY character, you'd need EIGHTY, and, well. There's a limit to how far I'm willing to go.
I mean, there's a lot more you can do here with time. You can actually get 100 Flare spells right here, right now by farming FIFTY Ruby Dragon cards. The enemies in the Fire Cavern have a 1 in 16 chance to give a Krysta card instead of a regular card. (Krysta is an endgame boss by the way.) Ten Krystas makes 100 Holy spells. All of these spells have amazing effects when junctioned, naturally.
At the very least, you should get the Quistis card simply because it's not hard and you can only get one of it anyhow.
So, what are all the items I'm getting right now? The Abyss Worms can be turned into Windmill items. Quezacotl can refine these into 100 Tornado spells. The Blitz cards give Dynamo Stones, and those refine into 100 Thundagas.
Tornado is an EPIC junction for your Strength, giving +48 to the stat. It's also a great offensive spell, but you can't draw it at this point, so I prefer to keep it as a junction.
As for the Thundagas, Ifrit also lets you junction magic to your elemental offense. With the Thundagas junctioned there, any enemy weak to Thunder is going to take double damage. Betcha know what kind of boss is showing up soon now, huh?
Anyhow we need to get changed, because it's exam time. You need to be VERY careful because the exam is technically ongoing the instant you put the uniform on which apparently has a listening device in it. So they can dock you points for talking to NPCs when it's not necessary, refusing commands, and other stupid shit you can get penalized for.
Worst of all...the uniform looks terrible.
Quistis announces that the exam will consist of twelve entrants being sent off to ARMED CONFLICT. In an actual mission with a contract and everything. We're divided into four squads, and our squadmate will be...
...Zell Dincht. Ooh. Nice tattoo. I just love the cutscene that introduces him, because his hand movements seem to sync up PERFECTLY with the music from an old Mentos commercial. No really.
Oh GOD, and our captain is that jerk who gave Squall a scar in the intro.
We get our briefing from the headmaster, who is this game's Cid.
Seifer is thankfully only a temporary party member. If I had to go through the whole game with him nearby I'd probably break FFX instead.
We get a mission briefing. We are to liberate the town of Dollet from the nefarious Galbadian army. They must be wussies, or else cadets wouldn't be sent in to do the job. (They are in fact wussies.)
Oh yeah, this is pretty sick: If you talk to ANYONE here you get penalized. Why?! It's not like not talking makes the boat faster! Also don't try to disobey Seifer either. Look, I know you want to scar him good, but you'll have to be patient.
We make landfall on the beach. MISSION START!
These blue soldiers are the Galbadians. Let's see how they handle a hit from my Tornado-powered Gunblade.
WOW. And that's with me missing the timing on the Gunblade trigger, you can actually do like 600 damage!
Seifer also knows about timed hits and can do extra damage with R1, but I never junctioned him. I forgot to mention that even though Quistis is no longer in the active party, you can still exchange GFs and magic with her so you don't lose anything permanently. Seifer's only a temporary party member so I don't know if you lose his magic, but I do know of a trick you can do with him.
We've already established that leveling is bad, because monster levels are based on the party average. However, Seifer is only temporary, so if he gains EXP, who cares? If Squall and Zell are KO'd, only Seifer earns any EXP at all, so if you power level Seifer up to Level 50 or so while they're down, your GFs gain levels while the main party doesn't AND, some enemies later on will have a high enough level to drop better items than before. When Seifer leaves, the party average drops back down, with no real drawback.
Aside from the time spent leveling. Not the greatest trick in the world. There aren't even any convenient save points, either.
The right side of this screen has the last enemy. Don't go down the left side or you're penalized for wandering off. Even though you were told to scout for enemies.
Well, mercenaries are the dogs of war, right?
Seifer decides to ignore orders and chase the enemy to a Comm Tower some distance away. I see how he managed to fail this exam twenty-seven times prior.
How Seifer could possibly give anyone confidence is beyond me.
Especially since he demands to be given the bonus EXP for finishing off an enemy. I have a better idea.
No EXP for anyone at all! Hooray!
At this point he leaves, and we're joined by our fourth main character, Selphie. She's armed with - get this - a JUMPROPE. I'm not kidding.
Selphie jumps down the cliff, but guess what? Doing that is worth a penalty even though it's faster. What, are you penalizing me for getting the uniform dirty?! It's probably covered in blood as is!
Ah, so there's Biggs and Wedge. They mention a monster flying around but pay it no mind. Talk about tempting fate.
We get in a fight with them, but we don't kill them.
The monster takes care of that instead!
I dunno what's up with that thing, but I do know you really want the Draw command equipped even if you haven't been using it lately.
For whatever reason, there are monsters and enemies you can Draw more GFs from. If you miss them, then they only become available again in the final dungeon (in the US version anyways!) I don't get this, did the monster eat the GF or something? Is the monster also junctioning it? Like what the heck?
Elvoret has some tough attacks, but it makes a crucial error by knocking Squall into yellow HP.
FF8's Limit Breaks are probably the most broken, embarrassing attacks in the entirety of Final Fantasy, moreso even than FF9's crappy Trance system. In FF8, Limit Breaks are offered at random when HP is low instead of requiring a certain amount of damage to be taken. If you've just gotten back up after being revived with a Phoenix Down, that ALWAYS puts you in yellow HP.
The embarrassing part? If you hit circle to cancel that character's turn, then when it comes back to that character, they have ANOTHER chance to get a Limit Break, meaning you can mash circle until a Limit Break comes up. Turn after turn after stupid turn. You can spam the Limit Breaks. I don't know about you, but this might be worse coding than the "cancelled command glitch" in FF2.
Anyhow, Squall's Limit Break is Renzokuken, which does 4 to 8 hits (depending on how badly the party needs help, that's another mechanic) that can all be powered up with timed R1 presses, and then has a chance to follow it up with a finisher. The finishers Squall has available depend on his current weapon.
He didn't use one here, but Elvoret goes down anyways because 2400 damage a turn is kind of hard to beat. We'll go over the new GF later.
Selphie announces that we have orders to pull out for now, which means we have 30 minutes to get back to the ship. The faster you return, the better your grade, but I doubt you can make it back in FIVE MINUTES for top marks. I don't think they expect a perfect score to be even possible, but the various objectives are completely at odds with each other as you'll see.
Oh, and you better get used to the Galbadians pulling this kind of shit, activating some kind of robot or self-destruct when you thought they were dead.
In this case, it's a robot spider, and it has a few quircks to it.
To start, you're not meant to kill it, you have to take off a fifth of its HP, which knocks it down, then start running away. It will then chase you throughout Dollet, and the process repeats itself about four times...normally, anyways. That first escape is required, and it's the only escape you're not penalized for.
You can, in fact, trash this fucker permanently. It only has about 6000 HP depending on levels, and a single Renzokuken is gonna hit for 3200 at most with my setup, more if a finisher happens - the robot is weak to Thunder, after all. I mostly keep Squall in yellow HP the entire time for that, though I didn't purchase many Phoenix Downs, so if he's KO'd too much in my position, I have to just run.
Thing is, taking it down to zero HP isn't enough, it just takes off one of its "Lives". It has to lose ALL of its lives in a single fight to be trashed for good. Doing this is worth a big bonus to your grade, and will net you one of four rare items that aren't that great now, but you know, might as well do it.
So, to help with that, let's check out our other party members' Limit Breaks!
Selphie's is a slot machine of sorts that randomly selects a magic spell, and a number of times to cast it. The spell doesn't have to be in her inventory, but this is the only magic-based Limit Break so far, so I prefer to make Selphie into a mage as far as junctions go.
The stupid part is you can continue to re-roll until something fantastic comes up, like a triple Curaga, or even worse, Selphie has an exclusive, rare attack called "The End" that can come up, that ends the fight in a victory instantly. Thing is, you can essentially pause time by opening the disc cover. This makes it impossible for any actions on either side to resolve, during which you have all the time in the world to continue re-rolling until The End appears. You can't do that on emulator or the PC versions, of course.
Zell's Limit Break, however, is MONSTROUS. It starts a timer, from 4 to 12 seconds long, during which you can punch in Street Fighter-esque commands to perform as many attacks as you can before time runs out. The only drawback at the moment is that the move animations are long, and we're kind of on the clock!
Also, when a command is entered, the timer pauses during the move animation, meaning you know the precise moment when the timer is going to start again. Why not, then, always enter the most basic commands requiring only two buttons, and can be entered in less than 0.5 seconds? Zell can learn more commands later, but who cares, as long as you can push right then left quickly, you're gold.
So! With one life down, we.......run away!
What's that? Why run after taking a life away when we have to take all his lives in one fight?
AHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yes, for some messed-up reason, taking his HP down to zero once makes the game give the FIFTY AP for killing him off EVEN IF YOU RUN AWAY. You can re-encounter him and collect 50 AP for taking off a life as much as you want - as long as you have enough time to make it back to the ship, of course! I didn't trash the robot permanently in my playthrough, but I did rack up enough AP to collect LOTS of GF abilities.
Okay fine, even if you do this, onlny four GFs benefit and you have to make time to adjust their abilities so you learn what you want, but still!
This bridge is the best place to repeat the encounter a lot, but I actually think you're locked out of the menu, so this is best used to get the 150 AP abilities out of the way here and now.
As for the rest of the mission, don't hide in the Cafe while the robot passes by, and make sure to get the dog on this screen to run away before the robot runs him over. You get penalized if you don't. Oh sure, talking to Wedge to make sure he's still alive is worth a penalty but you sure as shit better save the dog...
The scene where Squall jumps on the boat always amuses me, from his running animation to the freeze-frame here.
Quistis then trashes the robot. Good thing I softened it up for her.
There's a ton of cutscenes and stuff after that, so I'll see you when that's all overwith! Next time: A deal with the devil!