Why not just learn other ways to draw magic?

Why not just learn other ways to draw magic?

Hard as it is to believe, this is by far the most efficient way to get the awful spells.

There are several spell draw points located throughout the landscape, but they take hours to replenish after use and are pretty stingy anyway.

Then there is the transforming of items into spells by using your GF, which must be painstakingly taught these abilities through endless grinding (Cactuar ease the strain…). Actually getting the decent items requires more grinding.

Great work Noah, may you complete your legacy.

Why not just ignore spells? Not having played any FF games, I don’t know how crucial spells are. But I would imagine not drawing would make this game less excruciating, if harder.

Why not just ignore spells? Not having played any FF games, I don’t know how crucial spells are. But I would imagine not drawing would make this game less excruciating, if harder.

Jacob, you need magic in this game, I can’t stress it enough.

You see, in Final Fantasy 8, your enemies level up WITH YOU, cool right? WRONG.

The problem with this is, they are, of course, stronger. So, the only way to get better is to not level up but junction magic to your stats. Of course, you don’t need 100 of ever spell in the game, and there are easier ways to get many spells(triple triad, and then using the ability to transform cards into magic items, and then changing magic items into spells).

That being said, it’s a lot more easier if you just don’t level up and stick to level one, how? Thanks to Seifer Almasy, in the town you invade at the beginning, kill off Squall and Zell, and start using Seifer, the two don’t get exp(and since Seifer leaves, he won’t level up the enemies for long) and through this tactic you can gain tons of AP for Ifrit/Quez/Shiva, and thus you can get the abilities you need to turn enemies into cards, change said cards into items/spells, etc.

So while Mikey is wrong with the magic, he does bring up a good point that this does suck, and while I did love FF8 to death, the junction system was a pain in the ass…if only they did it better.

I was actually curious with the draw system, that I played FF8 on an emulator. The only efficient way to get a bunch of draws was to speed up the battle in the options menu.

I was actually curious with the draw system, that I played FF8 on an emulator. The only efficient way to get a bunch of draws was to speed up the battle in the options menu.

I do agree that the draw system is rather strange. There is no magical item or piece of technology that allows the protagonists to draw magic. So it could be implied that they have some sort of telepathic ability that allows them to do so, and attach said spells to their attributes and use them in battle. Though this never really is explained within the plot of the game.

In FF7 it made sense that you used the materia attached to your characters weapons and armor to use spells and abilities. It even explained within the plot of the game what materia is and how it gives people these abilities.

You can turn on cursor memory in the config and just hold down the button.

You can turn on cursor memory in the config and just hold down the button.

So you’re whining about grinding essentially?

Damn, I can’t stand that I had to grind AP for Materia in FF VII!

Damn, I can’t stand that I had to grind AP for abilities in FF IX!

Shit, why do I have grind Sphere levels AND find specific spheres in FF X? GGRRRRR!

Same old argument. It’s all tedious and drawing magic was tedious too. If anything, FF VIII was far less of a level grind compared to the others *because* the enemies leveled up with you. Let’s not forget the plethora of magic refine abilities that somehow got overlooked (?) like Mid-Mag RF, High-Mag RF, Life Mag RF, Wind Mag RF, Ice Mag RF etc etc etc that allowed you to stock tons of spells from a handful of items. Shit, you could buy some tents and have 300 Curagas in the blink of an eye, enough for your entire fighting party. You also never need more than 3 or 4 characters with stocked magic since you can swap/trade stocks easily.

So what’s with the whiny BS when you have quite a few of those abilities wide open to you almost from the start (and they don’t take very long to learn)? You obviously got fixated on a gameplay mechanic to the point of tunnel vision and didn’t even look for a way around it. Some drawing is necessary but not all that much….

Here is the failure of the argument though, Skye. The Sphere grid, Equipment ability, and Materia systems were all intuitive. That is, You gained the necessary objects through regular battle/shop actions that most would take in a JRPG, rather than designating an entire battle mechanic and sub-menu micromanagement to them. I love FFVIII, but you have to admit, it was far less tedious to just:

-Use the spheres enemies dropped in battle on the sphere grid in X to permanently improve stats and learn abilities

-Equip the weapon and select the skill/ability you want to learn in IX

-Buy the materia and equip it to a character to advance it

than it was to draw in battle, refine, card mod and then refine, draw from the field, and then have to junction to improve stats and cause added effects. It defeats the entire purpose of having spells in the first place, as you never end up casting magic because it is better to junction it. Any game mechanic that makes another mechanic pointless is bad design, and that’s what the junction mechanic does to the spell mechanic. It is pointless. It is like if you had the choice of using EITHER a weapon, OR learning the ability it contains in FFIX (ok, they sort of did that in VI with ragnarok, but that is livable as a one time choice, not a mechanic to design your entire game on).

Here is the failure of the argument though, Skye. The Sphere grid, Equipment ability, and Materia systems were all intuitive. That is, You gained the necessary objects through regular battle/shop actions that most would take in a JRPG, rather than designating an entire battle mechanic and sub-menu micromanagement to them. I love FFVIII, but you have to admit, it was far less tedious to just:

-Use the spheres enemies dropped in battle on the sphere grid in X to permanently improve stats and learn abilities

-Equip the weapon and select the skill/ability you want to learn in IX

-Buy the materia and equip it to a character to advance it

than it was to draw in battle, refine, card mod and then refine, draw from the field, and then have to junction to improve stats and cause added effects. It defeats the entire purpose of having spells in the first place, as you never end up casting magic because it is better to junction it. Any game mechanic that makes another mechanic pointless is bad design, and that’s what the junction mechanic does to the spell mechanic. It is pointless. It is like if you had the choice of using EITHER a weapon, OR learning the ability it contains in FFIX (ok, they sort of did that in VI with ragnarok, but that is livable as a one time choice, not a mechanic to design your entire game on).

I find drawing spells one of the easiest things to do in FFIII, and I’m not even around for it.

In the configuration you can set the cursor to memory, so it remembers the last move that you did with each character. Do a draw once with each, set a heavy book on the x-button, and go have some lunch. Come back, whoop all done.

If you level up properly, not even the big monsters will give you trouble when you do this. There are always monsters who can’t hurt you much who have good spells.

Course….as far as I know, no monsters have the ultima spells….the only way I remember getting enough of them was constantly running around to the draw points around the world map..THAT took forever.

Why not just switch your controls to memory? If you go into configuration, you can get the game to memorize what your last move was. That makes drawing easier.

Either that, of you can just kill monsters or play cards and create spells that way. Currently watching your card game review bit while writing this, and the card game is actually addictive. P.S. I hate the direct trading rule too.

Why not just switch your controls to memory? If you go into configuration, you can get the game to memorize what your last move was. That makes drawing easier.

Either that, of you can just kill monsters or play cards and create spells that way. Currently watching your card game review bit while writing this, and the card game is actually addictive. P.S. I hate the direct trading rule too.

I’m so glad my parents were ignorant enough about video games at the time to never consider buying this for me.

Although I liked FF8, I have to agree that the draw/junction system is pretty terrible. It’s boring, it’s complicated, and actually casting spells really is pretty much useless, especially since the GFs all do more damage, and for free.

Oddly enough, sitting through the GF summons never really bothered me, not even the dreaded Eden summon, which must be at least a minute long, and doesn’t make any sense at all…

Although I liked FF8, I have to agree that the draw/junction system is pretty terrible. It’s boring, it’s complicated, and actually casting spells really is pretty much useless, especially since the GFs all do more damage, and for free.

Oddly enough, sitting through the GF summons never really bothered me, not even the dreaded Eden summon, which must be at least a minute long, and doesn’t make any sense at all…

Hey you guys, you know what’s the problem with the whole memory thing?
You’d have to entertain yourself somehow while playing a game because it’s too boring. That’s not fun, that’s just pointless work.
Of course, I’m biased, because I can’t stand turn-based combat anyway, so the drawing just makes it worse. But again, it’s just unnecessary.
Anyway, I love the beginning of this part. “PAIN.”

To be honest I never bothered drawing magic or doing a lot of refining, I did play triple triad so I just pick and chose which spells to pump out but then I enjoyed the card game. Not sure why I liked triple triad, it was teeth grindingly hard sometimes but , I completed the game at level 48 without bothering to grind anything, I personally think that FF8′s biggest weakness is it is way too easy. I liked the junction system but I agree that drawing magic was to tedious, and well, rather unneeded.

To be honest I never bothered drawing magic or doing a lot of refining, I did play triple triad so I just pick and chose which spells to pump out but then I enjoyed the card game. Not sure why I liked triple triad, it was teeth grindingly hard sometimes but , I completed the game at level 48 without bothering to grind anything, I personally think that FF8′s biggest weakness is it is way too easy. I liked the junction system but I agree that drawing magic was to tedious, and well, rather unneeded.

Hm, sorry but the points made in this episode are far from right. First of all, if you set the controls to “memory” in the configuration menu, you can actually just mash the buttons and do something else in the meantime (though it is true that it does work very well against strong opponents).
Second, you don’t HAVE to steal from enemies to get magic spells. Actually, I almost never steal any magic from the enemies, and I am still loaded with spells. There are magic sources (or however they’re called in English) from which you can get spells. They’re pink, they’re big, they glow, they are animated, you can’t miss them.

And last but not least, why do you even bother stealing that many spells in one sitting?! I mean, it’s not like you’re going to use 100 Fire spells on one enemy, and it’s not like you’re going to die in 3 seconds if your stats aren’t at their highest right from the start.

I don’t want to be an ass, but with all the respect I have for you, Spoony, it isn’t necessary to do any of this, so if you find stealing magic from enemies boring, well, you really have no-one to blame but yourself for doing it, as the game doesn’t force or even require you to do it.

The first video did make some good point, but in this one, I really have the feeling you created your own problem.

this is just dumb all kinds of grinding and whatsoever is same sh1t… ofc its boring but the good thing about this ff is that you only need to do it once and your done >_>

this is just dumb all kinds of grinding and whatsoever is same sh1t… ofc its boring but the good thing about this ff is that you only need to do it once and your done >_>

Yay for worthiness. And pray for a button that lets you skip cutscenes.

I don’t know how I watched this whole thing. I was having flash backs to playing FFVIII (terrible flash backs) and yet somehow I couldn’t stop watching. OH MY GOD DRAWING MAGIC IS BORING. And while it may not be the only option, it is certainly the primary option; the one the game expects you to use and is mainly set up for. My solution was to be really lazy about it and only fill up a handful of spells (also I’d draw a few from each monster instead of finding just one and drawing everything from it).

I don’t know how I watched this whole thing. I was having flash backs to playing FFVIII (terrible flash backs) and yet somehow I couldn’t stop watching. OH MY GOD DRAWING MAGIC IS BORING. And while it may not be the only option, it is certainly the primary option; the one the game expects you to use and is mainly set up for. My solution was to be really lazy about it and only fill up a handful of spells (also I’d draw a few from each monster instead of finding just one and drawing everything from it).

yeah the drawing is a torture but you can change the options to save the last command assigned to a character,i did that taped the button and watched tv in the meantime.the drawing is why i whenever i try to play again i quit cuz it takes me an hour or two to get to the second mission and later you have to repeat! fuckin shit!

uh

your the only guy i know who bothers to draw every single spell from the enemy…

you dont have to draw ever single spell, and its not like your fucked if you dont draw alot….

im not even really a fanboy, and i see the retardness that is part 2 of this review.

uh

your the only guy i know who bothers to draw every single spell from the enemy…

you dont have to draw ever single spell, and its not like your fucked if you dont draw alot….

im not even really a fanboy, and i see the retardness that is part 2 of this review.

If you’re leveling or drawing magic, you’re doing it wrong.

Also, I forgot this earlier. You can set the cursor to “memory,” then you can hold down the X button then go watch porn or something on tv.

Also, I forgot this earlier. You can set the cursor to “memory,” then you can hold down the X button then go watch porn or something on tv.

Wow that sucked… glad i never played FF8 :D

The gunblade isn’t practical, but it sounds really badass in theory. If the game had been better, you would have accepted the lack of realism

The gunblade isn’t practical, but it sounds really badass in theory. If the game had been better, you would have accepted the lack of realism

Ah memories, when I could have been learning a new language or travelling the world…instead sat watching my character get their ass handed to them whilst I stole magic. Fun. This made my day, thank you for stealing my life FF8.

Spoony, I will be honest with you man… I spent 0 hours drawing magic =S I’m serious, I finished the game barely ever drawing magic… I don’t really remember how I did this but I did it, I haven’t played this in a long time so , I really don’t remember, but I would remember if I spent hours drawing magic xD

Spoony, I will be honest with you man… I spent 0 hours drawing magic =S I’m serious, I finished the game barely ever drawing magic… I don’t really remember how I did this but I did it, I haven’t played this in a long time so , I really don’t remember, but I would remember if I spent hours drawing magic xD

Erm, Spoony, I don’t know if you noticed, but you said Final Fantasy 2 around 1 minute, wich is funny because the stats system in final fantasy 2 is pretty messed up too, like if I remember, you have to be hit to increase you’re def and HP or something like that… WTF is that. It just seems random at time O_O The ****ing stat system is why I didn’t get into both final fantasy 2 AND 8.

Also, yeah, Drawing magic takes ****ing forever.

Tips to make drawing easier:

1: Set your cursor to memory (as mentioned), it’ll keep drawing from the same spell.

2: Increase the battle speed. Even at the very beginning it will only take two or three seconds uninterrupted for the battle meter to fill up (outside during enemy attack animations, which stick even if set to active).

3: If on an emulator, something on your Fast Forward key.

4: Tape/put a rubberband around your selecting button, one click and you can do other things to avoid it.

5: (especially later in the game): Have a real high magic stat, otherwise you’ll be doing piddly draw amounts instead of getting 9′s on every draw and spending twice as long you should.

I can generally draw 100 magic for 3 characters in about 3-5 minutes on this set-up.

Tips to make drawing easier:

1: Set your cursor to memory (as mentioned), it’ll keep drawing from the same spell.

2: Increase the battle speed. Even at the very beginning it will only take two or three seconds uninterrupted for the battle meter to fill up (outside during enemy attack animations, which stick even if set to active).

3: If on an emulator, something on your Fast Forward key.

4: Tape/put a rubberband around your selecting button, one click and you can do other things to avoid it.

5: (especially later in the game): Have a real high magic stat, otherwise you’ll be doing piddly draw amounts instead of getting 9′s on every draw and spending twice as long you should.

I can generally draw 100 magic for 3 characters in about 3-5 minutes on this set-up.

Well though I won’t bother to say my personal feelings on FF8; I’ll just say this.

The Draw System (Assuming you can figure out the memory cursor) is actually more efficient than leveling an individual magic skill, when you take into account that to grind for AP you’d need to find individual battles. Whereas here you just get to a decent level, and just leave the game alone for a bit.

And for any of those that say leaving it alone doing this is bullshit… Welcome to the land of RPGs. I assume you hail from the land of FPS? I mean you grind… and this game levels quite quickly compared to following games. Also you ever tried leveling up your spells and abilities in FF7? (Without an emulator hack) It’s called much more massive pain than this; at least here you can get all your characters the good spells.

But wtv… no one will ever read this, and if they do they’ll just rip on it, just felt i needed to say it.
And yes I am a FF fan.

Oh that being said, you are funnier than most web critics. And please insult the “Magic Bucket” from Crystal Chronicles if you’re ever bored… that was a fucking horrible mechanic, for a horrible game.

Oh that being said, you are funnier than most web critics. And please insult the “Magic Bucket” from Crystal Chronicles if you’re ever bored… that was a fucking horrible mechanic, for a horrible game.

Incidentally the graphics don’t really seem that bad and the score is still decent, I’m convinced I could actually play through this game again, despite the incomprehensible plot and other silliness. Its almost worth it for Bahamut/Doomtrain GF overkill sequence of wonders, but I suppose the game is pretty damn easy as well, so I’d eventually get bored. Beat Rush/Heel Drop and its all over.

Review FFX, Breath of Fire V DRAGON QUARTER, Final Fantasy Tactics, Mario Hotel, And Any ZELDA title. I wanna see some more popular review from you noah, please, your FFVIII review was spot-on.

Review FFX, Breath of Fire V DRAGON QUARTER, Final Fantasy Tactics, Mario Hotel, And Any ZELDA title. I wanna see some more popular review from you noah, please, your FFVIII review was spot-on.

I seem to remember…NOT spending this long doing this. I played this game a lot when I was younger.

I can’t remember I did it, but I did the whole power leveling thing, mainly just beating shit up.

Drawing isn’t the only way to gain magic. As I’m sure I’d have the exact same complaint.

I’ve never played FF8 but this looks horribly boring. I can’t believe Squaresoft would make a game like that since Chrono Trigger and Mario RPG are two of my favorite games and they’re nothing like FF8.

I’ve never played FF8 but this looks horribly boring. I can’t believe Squaresoft would make a game like that since Chrono Trigger and Mario RPG are two of my favorite games and they’re nothing like FF8.

what i cannnot believe is that some people are actually trying to defend this. This was just a waste of fucking time! And no, the rest of the game was not worth sitting through all this magic gathering. Final fantasy 8…. jesus, im embarrased to even call this game a part of the FF series. Its an embarrasment to the whole series.

I can understand people defending this. It’s true that, once you get the mechanics down, gaining magic is signficiantly easier and faster than sitting here drawing from enemeis.

Issue: getting the mechanics down.

FF8 is one of the least intuitive systems I have ever seen in an RPG. I understand now, in retrospect, having looked at massive walkthroughs out of a long-smoldering fury of memory at the stupid things I would have to do to get any amount of power in this game. I needed to see if it was possible to play this game without wanting to kill yourself at intervals. Apparently, once you begin learning how to refine items and cards and scan for hidden draw points and so forth, everything begins massively easier. I can only assume that at some point it becomes something vaguely resembling fun. I myself could not get to the point where the game was anything more than a chore.

I can understand people defending this. It’s true that, once you get the mechanics down, gaining magic is signficiantly easier and faster than sitting here drawing from enemeis.

Issue: getting the mechanics down.

FF8 is one of the least intuitive systems I have ever seen in an RPG. I understand now, in retrospect, having looked at massive walkthroughs out of a long-smoldering fury of memory at the stupid things I would have to do to get any amount of power in this game. I needed to see if it was possible to play this game without wanting to kill yourself at intervals. Apparently, once you begin learning how to refine items and cards and scan for hidden draw points and so forth, everything begins massively easier. I can only assume that at some point it becomes something vaguely resembling fun. I myself could not get to the point where the game was anything more than a chore.

Every single person who suggests “setting the cursor to memory and then going and doing something else” seems, to me, to be forgetting something very basic.

Final Fantasy VIII is supposed to be a GAME. Something you enjoy playing. If you have to ever go amuse yourself doing something else while playing, the programmers have failed on the absolute most basic level. I played this game, though for the life of me I cannot remember how far I got. I think to just after you get to fly the Garden around, but I won’t swear to that, and given the choice between drawing, and having to play that damned card game, I’ll pick playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.

Ya, way to go, spoony, noah, or whatever your fans call you.
Really, I liked your comments on alone in the dark with NC and all. Decided to give your own videos a try.
Jesus, FF8 can be considered crap. Really, I see no problem on that. It is pretty different from the rest of the series, plot revolves around some love story, unmemorable characters and all. Really, I do understand people don’t liking it.
But. Your points make absolutelly no sense!
Seriously! Why would anyone need 100 scans? Why would you ignore tutorials that show you how to draw magic efficiently? Why would you completely ignore the billions of other ways to get magic?
An over-complicated system? God. I was 13 years old on it’s release, barelly knew my way around the english language, and I could understand everything. How complicated it is, one asks?
Er… you have a Cure spell. Pretty deffensive. And you have a Fire spell, which is offensive. You have two attributes, Strenght and HP. Guess which one goes where? How obvious is it? And then, you have Life spell, which does more or less the same as Cure, but more effectivelly (since it actually brings back the dead and all). So you would guess that it increases your HP more than cure, right? Right! And now that you have stocked up some life spells – by refining an item that took you a handful of seconds to buy (wait, did you say that you need GF to shop? Well, for those that didn’t play the game, that’s a simple lie, there are shops everywhere) – you decide to junction more Life spells to your HP. It should increase your HP even more, right? Right!
Seriously, it is just TOO INTUITIVE. While a -bit-. and i mean JUST A BIT different on the beggining, once you get it down – 15 seconds on the tutorial (which you could skip if you didn’t want to read, way to test all the buttons btw) – it is completely logical. Not only logical, it actually drew me a lot into the game at the time, because it kinda challenged me to experiment. Progressing a bit, you find a Protect spell. That should increase your Vitality attribute quite a bit, since the efect of the spell is decrease physical damage. Right? Right! Same for Shell increasing Spirit a lot as well. Haste for speed. How simple is that?
And as for conplaining about the spells increasing and decreasing your attributes, am I the only one that realised that they did exactly that on Final Fantasy 7? Saying that “on ff7 it is ok, because it’s supposed to be less realistic” is far from a good excuse. No, really. FAR. Why do chunks of cristalized knowledged attached to a sword make you less strong and more inteligent? How does that work? Final fantasy never tried to explain those details. It’s final fantasy, not Star Trek.
Love how people play the game on the least expected way they can come up with and blame the programmers. Really, anybody tried to just play the game? Level your characters as they go, learn one GF skill at a time, drawing spells as you need them? Seriously! It’s not like you need 100 of every spell. It’s not practical, it’s not supposed to be practical, never intended to be.
Say, you need like 12 or 15 blizzards AT MOST to kill Ifrit. And maybe… 1 scan? Well, say you can’t scan him once and memorize more or less how much HP he has by subtracting the ammount of damage you’ve been dealing. Get yourself 10 scans. that’s 2, 3 attempts of drawing. Takes what, a minute of preparation? Or don’t prepare at all. Just charge at Ifrit, heads-on. Even though for every rpg player that would be the most boring scenario ever, you can do it. And it’s going to be an easy fight.
Also love your circular logic when you mention that there are other ways to obtain magic. “This game is horrible because it takes forever to draw magic. I know that there are other ways of drawing magic, but I don’t even care because this game is horrible. Because it takes forever to draw magic.” Really, is that it? Was that the best you could think about? You see, circular logic might be applied to fool somebody, or maybe you use it without realising it, but it must be long. Or maybe intentionally confusing, if you’re trying to fool somebody. But, a logic circle that has 3 “knots”? How easy to spot that is? It doesn’t even sound you’re trying to be convincing. Just made you sound like you’re desperate to prove a point that you’re not even so sure why you came up with.
But that’s ok, man. Really. I do respect your work. Specially you, you know, dealing with whatever made you not being able to understand a system that a 13 year old kid that barelly spoke the language at the time could easily figure out.
And no, I didn’t bother watching the rest of your videos. Two parts were more than enough to see that it is rubbish.
For those that didn’t notice, I wrote this comment totally on a “reviewer tone”. Offensive as they usually are, crude as they usually are. Not sure if comments are usually deleted on this website, but I hope not.
Anyway, sorry for the massive ammount of sarcasm. Didn’t mean to be more offensive than you were to whoever made the game. The difference here being that, being able to accomplish it or not, at least I actually tried to point out where I think you failed, instead of creating problems in your video that weren’t there and blaming you.
Good luck on your videos, hope that some criticism improve them.

Ya, way to go, spoony, noah, or whatever your fans call you.
Really, I liked your comments on alone in the dark with NC and all. Decided to give your own videos a try.
Jesus, FF8 can be considered crap. Really, I see no problem on that. It is pretty different from the rest of the series, plot revolves around some love story, unmemorable characters and all. Really, I do understand people don’t liking it.
But. Your points make absolutelly no sense!
Seriously! Why would anyone need 100 scans? Why would you ignore tutorials that show you how to draw magic efficiently? Why would you completely ignore the billions of other ways to get magic?
An over-complicated system? God. I was 13 years old on it’s release, barelly knew my way around the english language, and I could understand everything. How complicated it is, one asks?
Er… you have a Cure spell. Pretty deffensive. And you have a Fire spell, which is offensive. You have two attributes, Strenght and HP. Guess which one goes where? How obvious is it? And then, you have Life spell, which does more or less the same as Cure, but more effectivelly (since it actually brings back the dead and all). So you would guess that it increases your HP more than cure, right? Right! And now that you have stocked up some life spells – by refining an item that took you a handful of seconds to buy (wait, did you say that you need GF to shop? Well, for those that didn’t play the game, that’s a simple lie, there are shops everywhere) – you decide to junction more Life spells to your HP. It should increase your HP even more, right? Right!
Seriously, it is just TOO INTUITIVE. While a -bit-. and i mean JUST A BIT different on the beggining, once you get it down – 15 seconds on the tutorial (which you could skip if you didn’t want to read, way to test all the buttons btw) – it is completely logical. Not only logical, it actually drew me a lot into the game at the time, because it kinda challenged me to experiment. Progressing a bit, you find a Protect spell. That should increase your Vitality attribute quite a bit, since the efect of the spell is decrease physical damage. Right? Right! Same for Shell increasing Spirit a lot as well. Haste for speed. How simple is that?
And as for conplaining about the spells increasing and decreasing your attributes, am I the only one that realised that they did exactly that on Final Fantasy 7? Saying that “on ff7 it is ok, because it’s supposed to be less realistic” is far from a good excuse. No, really. FAR. Why do chunks of cristalized knowledged attached to a sword make you less strong and more inteligent? How does that work? Final fantasy never tried to explain those details. It’s final fantasy, not Star Trek.
Love how people play the game on the least expected way they can come up with and blame the programmers. Really, anybody tried to just play the game? Level your characters as they go, learn one GF skill at a time, drawing spells as you need them? Seriously! It’s not like you need 100 of every spell. It’s not practical, it’s not supposed to be practical, never intended to be.
Say, you need like 12 or 15 blizzards AT MOST to kill Ifrit. And maybe… 1 scan? Well, say you can’t scan him once and memorize more or less how much HP he has by subtracting the ammount of damage you’ve been dealing. Get yourself 10 scans. that’s 2, 3 attempts of drawing. Takes what, a minute of preparation? Or don’t prepare at all. Just charge at Ifrit, heads-on. Even though for every rpg player that would be the most boring scenario ever, you can do it. And it’s going to be an easy fight.
Also love your circular logic when you mention that there are other ways to obtain magic. “This game is horrible because it takes forever to draw magic. I know that there are other ways of drawing magic, but I don’t even care because this game is horrible. Because it takes forever to draw magic.” Really, is that it? Was that the best you could think about? You see, circular logic might be applied to fool somebody, or maybe you use it without realising it, but it must be long. Or maybe intentionally confusing, if you’re trying to fool somebody. But, a logic circle that has 3 “knots”? How easy to spot that is? It doesn’t even sound you’re trying to be convincing. Just made you sound like you’re desperate to prove a point that you’re not even so sure why you came up with.
But that’s ok, man. Really. I do respect your work. Specially you, you know, dealing with whatever made you not being able to understand a system that a 13 year old kid that barelly spoke the language at the time could easily figure out.
And no, I didn’t bother watching the rest of your videos. Two parts were more than enough to see that it is rubbish.
For those that didn’t notice, I wrote this comment totally on a “reviewer tone”. Offensive as they usually are, crude as they usually are. Not sure if comments are usually deleted on this website, but I hope not.
Anyway, sorry for the massive ammount of sarcasm. Didn’t mean to be more offensive than you were to whoever made the game. The difference here being that, being able to accomplish it or not, at least I actually tried to point out where I think you failed, instead of creating problems in your video that weren’t there and blaming you.
Good luck on your videos, hope that some criticism improve them.

Bruno, if you had bothered to watch the subsequent videos, you would find that he -does- utilize other tactics later on. This does not make any of the other aspects of the game any better. He might have dedicated a video to the scan system (on request, no less, as he explicitly states at the beginning of the video) but the rest of the game is not made any better my a slightly faster and honestly not at all intuitive manner of gaining magic.

You may have figured it out, and I grant you that, but I personally had limited patience with the system, could not stand to play the card game that is so crucial to gaining the best magics easily, and never found the battle system itself to be remotely enjoyable even after I gave up scanning the creatures and just played the game. It’s not an enjoyable experience from the battle system to the story, and even if you can break the game and make it so much easier to accumulate magic from the get-go, there’s really no merit to it.

Spoony, I have a comment about drawing magic that, oddly enough, isn’t a mentioning of a different way to draw magic. Who’d of thunk? Anyways, if you think that drawing magic is bullshit and busy work, I have a few games you should play that will teach you the definition of that fucking term.

Digimon World Data Squad: I’m a Digimon fan. I’m fine with any insult or jokes you have about that. But, as a Digimon fan, this is a game that I like, but I despise it all the same, if that even makes sense. Digivolution is an aspect of the game that is so much fucking memorization, I need excel spreadsheets open for this bullshit! I get to keep track of fun requirements such as how many steps I’ve taken, how much money I have spent, how much money I currently have, the highest amount of damage I’ve done in one attack, the total damage I have ever given, the total damage I have recieved, how many treasure chests I’ve opened, and that’s only fucking HALF of them.

Wild ARMs series: FUCK THE PUZZLE BOSSES! FUCK THEM TO HELL! I love those games, BUT FUCKING WHY?!

Dark Cloud 2: One of my favorite games ever made on the PS2, but there are a couple flaws that are essentially micromanaging bullshit. First one, and this is the worst one, Monster Transformation. IT’S FUCKING BROKEN! I’m serious, they are underpowered, and it takes way too much fucking exp to make them useful. It doesn’t help that to get some medals, you need to use the fuckers. It takes somewhere in the line of about half a BILLION exp to go to level 99, which is max, because of the pattern of levels (100 exp, 100 exp, 200 exp, 400 exp, 800, 1600, 3200, you get the idea). The only thing they are good for is getting gems and “monster drops”, which are good for strengthening up your weapons (give me a sec, I’m bitching about that next), but the monster drops take more points to put in your weapon than they are worth, and are fucking underpowered as much as the monsters. And you need to reach level 76 to get the gems, but the broken level-up system kills ANY momentum you had at about level 30.
Secondly, leveling up weapons. See, the game works this way with its weapon upgrades: You kill monsters with that weapon, their exp is put into the weapon. After a certain amount is obtained (using the same pattern as the monster level up, but each weapon has its own “base”, or starting exp necessary for the next level), the weapon levels up, and obtains “synthesis points” this allows you to take whatever the fuck item you want, break it down (called “spectrumizing), and then taking that broken down item, and putting it in your weapon to increase its power, or other abilities, like fire, ice, thunder, wind, or other abilities like smash, holy, beast (as in furred animals) destruction, or scale destruction (dragons, fish, snakes, etc.). When you give it a certain amount of each element it requests (it’ll tell you this by flashing red when you choose it in the “build up” section of the weapon menu. The interface is a lot simpler than it sounds, I swear.), you can take that weapon, and upgrade it into a new, stronger weapon, and the cycle continues, with the level counter reseting to the base count for every upgrade. Now, this is an interesting concept with the upgrading up weapons and such, but I cannot count how many times I have consulted a guide just to find out how far I need to raise a certain aspect of my weapon, or which weapons it fucking upgrades to. See, the game only tells you what you need to increase to get a new weapon, it won’t tell you what that new weapon is or how much further you have to go before you can upgrade the weapon. So, I’m sitting on my ass, pausing the game every level up, to see what the fuck I need to get to the next weapon I want, because, if your upgrading swords, one sword can become 3 different ones, each with different necessities to get it to there. And, a lot of times, especially in the later levels, it will ask for a ability that you have not fucking touched, and require a retarded amount for that level (don’t even ask me how you quantify “thunder”. Fuck if I know). I’m talking an amount that will take you 7 levels just to get enough synth points to pull HALF of that fucking thing. I’m talking points in the game where I had a weapon that wanted to start me from 0 in an element, and pull it to 1 HUNDRED FUCKING 50! FUCK! YOU! And granted, you can take that same fucking weapon, make or buy another one of the same, and build that shit up to synth into the one you are leveling up, but that doesn’t change the fact that that is FUCKING BUSY WORK! I shouldn’t have to replay the same level 5 fucking times to get enough experience to level up two of the SAME FUCKING WEAPON!

Anyway, that was a lot longer than I wanted it to be, and I hope you put that in perspective, and, if you ever get the balls to see the pain that some of these games have brought with fucking busy work, I wish you luck, because at least you CAN engage yourself with something else in FF VIII if you’re drawing magic. With these three, if you aren’t paying attention, you’re fucked.

Spoony, I have a comment about drawing magic that, oddly enough, isn’t a mentioning of a different way to draw magic. Who’d of thunk? Anyways, if you think that drawing magic is bullshit and busy work, I have a few games you should play that will teach you the definition of that fucking term.

Digimon World Data Squad: I’m a Digimon fan. I’m fine with any insult or jokes you have about that. But, as a Digimon fan, this is a game that I like, but I despise it all the same, if that even makes sense. Digivolution is an aspect of the game that is so much fucking memorization, I need excel spreadsheets open for this bullshit! I get to keep track of fun requirements such as how many steps I’ve taken, how much money I have spent, how much money I currently have, the highest amount of damage I’ve done in one attack, the total damage I have ever given, the total damage I have recieved, how many treasure chests I’ve opened, and that’s only fucking HALF of them.

Wild ARMs series: FUCK THE PUZZLE BOSSES! FUCK THEM TO HELL! I love those games, BUT FUCKING WHY?!

Dark Cloud 2: One of my favorite games ever made on the PS2, but there are a couple flaws that are essentially micromanaging bullshit. First one, and this is the worst one, Monster Transformation. IT’S FUCKING BROKEN! I’m serious, they are underpowered, and it takes way too much fucking exp to make them useful. It doesn’t help that to get some medals, you need to use the fuckers. It takes somewhere in the line of about half a BILLION exp to go to level 99, which is max, because of the pattern of levels (100 exp, 100 exp, 200 exp, 400 exp, 800, 1600, 3200, you get the idea). The only thing they are good for is getting gems and “monster drops”, which are good for strengthening up your weapons (give me a sec, I’m bitching about that next), but the monster drops take more points to put in your weapon than they are worth, and are fucking underpowered as much as the monsters. And you need to reach level 76 to get the gems, but the broken level-up system kills ANY momentum you had at about level 30.
Secondly, leveling up weapons. See, the game works this way with its weapon upgrades: You kill monsters with that weapon, their exp is put into the weapon. After a certain amount is obtained (using the same pattern as the monster level up, but each weapon has its own “base”, or starting exp necessary for the next level), the weapon levels up, and obtains “synthesis points” this allows you to take whatever the fuck item you want, break it down (called “spectrumizing), and then taking that broken down item, and putting it in your weapon to increase its power, or other abilities, like fire, ice, thunder, wind, or other abilities like smash, holy, beast (as in furred animals) destruction, or scale destruction (dragons, fish, snakes, etc.). When you give it a certain amount of each element it requests (it’ll tell you this by flashing red when you choose it in the “build up” section of the weapon menu. The interface is a lot simpler than it sounds, I swear.), you can take that weapon, and upgrade it into a new, stronger weapon, and the cycle continues, with the level counter reseting to the base count for every upgrade. Now, this is an interesting concept with the upgrading up weapons and such, but I cannot count how many times I have consulted a guide just to find out how far I need to raise a certain aspect of my weapon, or which weapons it fucking upgrades to. See, the game only tells you what you need to increase to get a new weapon, it won’t tell you what that new weapon is or how much further you have to go before you can upgrade the weapon. So, I’m sitting on my ass, pausing the game every level up, to see what the fuck I need to get to the next weapon I want, because, if your upgrading swords, one sword can become 3 different ones, each with different necessities to get it to there. And, a lot of times, especially in the later levels, it will ask for a ability that you have not fucking touched, and require a retarded amount for that level (don’t even ask me how you quantify “thunder”. Fuck if I know). I’m talking an amount that will take you 7 levels just to get enough synth points to pull HALF of that fucking thing. I’m talking points in the game where I had a weapon that wanted to start me from 0 in an element, and pull it to 1 HUNDRED FUCKING 50! FUCK! YOU! And granted, you can take that same fucking weapon, make or buy another one of the same, and build that shit up to synth into the one you are leveling up, but that doesn’t change the fact that that is FUCKING BUSY WORK! I shouldn’t have to replay the same level 5 fucking times to get enough experience to level up two of the SAME FUCKING WEAPON!

Anyway, that was a lot longer than I wanted it to be, and I hope you put that in perspective, and, if you ever get the balls to see the pain that some of these games have brought with fucking busy work, I wish you luck, because at least you CAN engage yourself with something else in FF VIII if you’re drawing magic. With these three, if you aren’t paying attention, you’re fucked.

i havent played ff8 since like 1998… untill recently…
via memory, i remembered how painful and time consuming DRAW was, but figured the “TWO HOURS!” that spoony referred to was a slight exageration… but nope, its actually dead on..
you immedately leave the garden on your way to fight ifrit, so i figured on the way i should gain some levels and spells before i proceed…
to gain all 4 spells available from random encounters on the worldmap for both squall and questis (sp?), it took me no more, no less, than two hours to stock to 100%.
I dont know if i’m using the right logic, but i’m not letting ANY spell go. Boss fight or not, if the enemy has a spell available i dont have FULLY STOCKED i’m going to sit there and draw till i do, using the enemy’s CURE spell to stay alive w/o depleating my own… i’m now SIX HOURS into the game and just became a real life seeD… what prolly should be 2 hours into the game. Boss fights sometimes take over a half hour due to draw… i shouldnt haveto spend THAT MUCH time on this shit… but w/e its my first playthrough in ten years (give or take) so hopefully things improve… i’m still chanting FINAL FANTASY SEVEN so far…

Wow. i remember this game. I also seem to remember kinda liking it….sorta. Wow were you drawing magic the hard way. I remember that I set up a boost controller and left it for a few hours to get my magic (had to move the draw command to the top spot to do so. Then all you need is a small weight to hold down the desired button and you’re good to go….so long as you remember to silence and…err something, your enemy to make them have no attacks.

Now that I think about it, why did I ever even find the game fun? Wow…well thanks for the awesome video.

Wow. i remember this game. I also seem to remember kinda liking it….sorta. Wow were you drawing magic the hard way. I remember that I set up a boost controller and left it for a few hours to get my magic (had to move the draw command to the top spot to do so. Then all you need is a small weight to hold down the desired button and you’re good to go….so long as you remember to silence and…err something, your enemy to make them have no attacks.

Now that I think about it, why did I ever even find the game fun? Wow…well thanks for the awesome video.

I don’t mind that you hate FF8. I mind that you’re attacking us fans, and calling us stupid. That’s not fair.

To everyone who says to set the cursor to memory and just put a weight on the X button:

I will not do such a thing because when I buy a game, I want to EFFFING PLAY THE GAME! I think the AVGN put it best:

“Making me put a wrench on my controller for five hours? What kind of game does that?”

What was wrong with just “finding” spells like in FF VII? Why not just put in a mana bar instead? Come to think of it, this whole drawing problem may have been fixed if you could only draw more than eight freaking ”fires”.

To everyone who says to set the cursor to memory and just put a weight on the X button:

I will not do such a thing because when I buy a game, I want to EFFFING PLAY THE GAME! I think the AVGN put it best:

“Making me put a wrench on my controller for five hours? What kind of game does that?”

What was wrong with just “finding” spells like in FF VII? Why not just put in a mana bar instead? Come to think of it, this whole drawing problem may have been fixed if you could only draw more than eight freaking ”fires”.

LOL that review is as jaded and tunnel visioned as christian evangelicals view on homosexuality. Seriously, this whole 9 minute review picks the only aspect of the game that would be difficult to a half retarded, marker-huffing monkey. I bet you also dont like water for its serious lack of mountain dew flavoring. “whine whine whine i have to spend 5 minutes preparing an inventory whine whine whine” so you dont have a problem with how ALL the RPG's require you to grind the same pathetic monsters to to level up to the same level as the next boss? you are no yahtzee… just give up and go drink some water.

Sorry to see you suffeering man, but i guess thats the idea of the entertainment, you should start programming games, you have experience on what not to make and the collage education.

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/3987/castisr…
It was right there the whole time, Spoony. You can use the spells by pressing this.
Didnt you noticed?

Yeah, the draw system got old quicky. Like after the first battle. Then again I wasn't crazy enough to get my full quota of spells from the first fights.

I have this urge to give you a hug now.

I've watched this video quite a few times. I really don't get why people bother giving even more advice on how to better gather magic. The bottom line in terms of Final Fantasy is excellent music and art, with terrible design and simplistic coding as their base. If you look at the various FF games throughout the years you really just see a string of nested tables and a mostly swiped system from tabletop roleplaying that doesn't even bother to learn from the mistakes of the system they penned from.

The “epic” stories are pretty much hit or miss, most of the characters are forgettable or obnoxious as shit, and the frequent adjustments Square makes to their static formula have only helped to solidify their position as one of the laziest companies in terms of innovative gameplay. The spell system from FF is directly penned from D&D, FF2's experience system per stat is universally derided as terrible, and FF8 has enough holes to prove that they never learn to listen to their critics.

I had a point but it has temporarily escaped my mind.

I've always found that JRPGs are unique in one feature, i actually enjoy grinding in them. For some demented reason i ENJOY levelling my spells in Disgaea or drawing magic in final fantasy 8, i ENJOY endlessly complex and insane stats.

Perhaps its just that some people don't have the right mindset to play final fantasy 8, but its my favorite final fantasy.

Also my first playthrough of final fantasy 8 was when i was a kid, so screw drawing i went through the entire game with almost no magic. After i first summoned ifrit it took me 30 battles to work out how i did it again. It may actually have been the first RPG i ever played…

Edit: I hate grinding in MMO's though. Good god i hate it so.

The Great Wall? Seriously? You're comparing FFVIII to the Great fucking Wall?

I'll commend you on one point in your horrifically drafted metaphor, though: the entire fucking draw system is having that perfectly good leg stuck in a cast. This was one of the five parts of the game I hated with a passion, and I really liked this game. Hell, I even liked the fucking trading card mini-game, but that's because I was really good at it. Drawing, however.. hell the magic system in general. Yes, you could get really awesome stats if over the course of grinding for levels and components (which if you knew where to go wasn't all that bad) you got enough spells to link only the best to everything. However, considering all that goes OUT THE FUCKING WINDOW unless you grind EVERY FUCKING SPELL in the ENTIRE FUCKING GAME, EVER, exactly like Spoony bitches about, and it does this the MOMENT the final boss battle starts. That fucker steals your spells, and you and your entire team turn into worthless wet kittens, pretty much wasting every effort you made in the whole game.

Because of this, and because I don't have the massive amounts of masochistic patience to grind my ass off with spell collecting (even though I do enjoy the tactics and micromanagement of the leveling process otherwise, but that's mostly because I have control issues), I have never finished this game. I have started it several times. I've even gotten through a few disks more than once because it gets pretty fun once you get past the fucking intro, which I think is about half of the first disk before the plot finally makes itself known and starts feeling like a story with some direction instead of perpetual “Look at me! I'm ESTABLISHING THINGS!”, but I've never EVER finished it.

Thankfully, there is Spoony, and he will go through that godawful pain so I don't have to.

Thank you, Spoony.

Yeah it can tedious but it does get a lot easier and the amount of drawing you have to do from mobs drops considerably when you progress in the game. This is due to triple triad, yes that slightly irritating but oddly addictive mini game. With triple triad and after learning card mob you tend to mod cards into magic spells and linked with the other refine abilities you mod items into magic. I guess this game is very 'guide book' based because most of the time the extra perks in this game aren't even mentioned. But yes having to get 100 of each 'NEEDED' spell can become a bore but it only takes about 7-10 minutes max to get 300 (100 for each) of that spell… providing you have auto haste which you can get early in the game.

I love your reviews hence my being here but the transcendent pain is easily avoidable.

hey final fantasy 7 wuz kool but u can't screw it up just in one next game. COME ON! :P i had seven for the PS1

There is really no need to draw more than a couple of spells once in a while, in the fights that you have to do anyway.

You could theoretically level up to level 100 on balamb if you would spend enough time and you wouldnt do that.
So why bother with getting 100 of each spell? The game is not difficult for a very long time and the first spells become obsolete very soon. You can easily get through most of the game without ever grinding / farming at all.
Also, if u really want to draw a lot, dont do it while you have only 1 character as it is a lot faster with a full group.

Also, if you wanted to level up the most efficient, for example because you want to defeat omega weapon later, you should try to not level up at all before getting all the +stat abilitys of the later GFs which have your characters get additional statpoints on levelups.

This complete review, while admittedly very funny and entertaining, is full of cheap lies and deceit and completely wrongs final fantasy 8.
The game has a lot of flaws but having to draw a lot is not one of them because you don’t have to.

Actually I’ve always played the FF’s so that my characters can crush everything including the secret bosses and in some cases you did have to do this in FF8 to get your characters with the best stat boosts. The basic complaint is that it’s fucking pointless and annoying, and who can honestly argue that.

you can change the menu settings so that its in memory mode, instead of revert, Which I always do for every ff game, it means you CAN just mash a button and go off to do something else, I usually watch star trek or something.

I really like this rant, good job ^^

Also I didn’t need to prove my worthiness, I already did my time!

Drawing…Sucks. I say screw it. Your Summons, No. Sorry. Your GF’s eventually give you the ability to turn items that you STOCKPILE into magic. And eventually magic into other magic. So…Yeah…Dumb concept has been defeated by a dumber concept. :D

EDIT: is it more fun than grinding a BILLION battles to max out your materia -.-

geh

Are you gender biased, Guy? I mean seriously… not every gamer is a “fanboy.”

It occurs to me I have that same controller.

did you notice that he said “The review is officially over for final fantasy 2″ and not “final fantasy 8″. he TOTALLY mis-spoke.  Watch it from the 1:00 mark upto the 1:04 mark.

I have to laugh about people going on about the other methods of getting magic outside of drawing it from monsters. Doing that other crap isn’t exactly a picnic either!!!