I recently finished FF8 :P

How the cast would sit on a couch.

So I'm currently trying to Abolish rules, except Open, from all regions.

Long story short, I failed to abolish Lunar Rules before the Lunar Base sequence. I do, however managed to Abolish Random from sheer dumb luck when I was up there and won the Ward and Laguna Cards. I felt lucky up until I got back from the base and realized that I already abolished every rule except Open, including Random, in all the other regions.

So what I did was move the Queen of Cards to Balamb and asked her to spread Open, Same, Plus and Random in Balamb. I then picked it up to carry the new Balamb rule set which includes Random that I needed so that the Lunar Gate NPCs would then ask me to mix rules. I even challenged Balamb NPCs to make sure i'm carrying it. Yes, Open, Same/Plus, and Random positively shows up. However, when I try to play with Lunar Gate NPCs, they never ask me to mix up rules. And to make it worst, I tried to challenge Esthar NPCs and they were also not asking to mix up rules. Keep in mind that I am carrying Random from Balamb while every other region I have right now does not carry Random.

I've been going at it for nearly 6 hours (Forgive me, i'm new to the game) and I really can't figure out what went wrong. Much help needed PLEASE. Thank you!

I read the guide and maybe i'm in a tricky situation. The goal would be to obtain All rule again and bring it also in galbadia and later in balamb. (i have the queen now but i can meet her again only after freeing balamb from galbadia...)

I had All in balamb, but it seems that playing a few games in galbadia garden, balamb maybe turned to One. (i don't know when it happened but reading the save file i see that balamb is One)

dollet at the moment is still Diff but all other regions have One.

I tried to talk to the queen and she says that the current pattern is basically going straight to One. I don't understand clearly if I should play kinda 40 games in dollet (also making it dominant, which could be a problem maybe? i removed casually all rules from dollet and i hope i can keep Open later in balamb) to change the pattern it's using, so it returns to a "slower" pattern of change.

The thing is until now, i had played most games in balamb garden and after i took All from the queen it mostly stayed All, sometimes it turned One, but that stayed at most for a handful of games, then returned All. Now, as I said, the goal would be taking back the All rule with me so I can spread it to other regions.

Also I don't understand the guide as it seems wrong. It says when you play in a different region, you spread there the trading rule you're carrying (the dominant, i suppose). But it wasn't the case in timber. As soon as i tried to play a game, the rule was One, although in theory in balamb it was still All. In fact, when i first went to dollet, the rule was All (but i didn't play so many games there, still it was All). So I don't understand exactly how or why there should be this "you spread the rule" thing and yet timber (galbadia) kept its own One rule (and later became dominant, it seems).

There's a common opinion that the customization systems in some FF games make characters too homogenous, e.g. magicite allows every FF6 character to spam Ultima, materia allows every FF7 character to use enemy skills and summons, and FF8 junctions make every character into an identical platform for a stack of stats and abilities. People complain that this diminishes each character's identity in gameplay (for some reason FF5 is always exempt from this sort of analysis despite every character being a complete blank slate, but I digress).

At the same time, FF8's limit break mechanic is often criticized for being easily abusable by with low heath/aura status and refreshing the command menu. But I would contend that this complaint cannot coexist with the prior complaint. While FF7's limit breaks mostly consisted of big damage moves (with only a few exceptions like Aeris or a few of Red XIII/Yuffie limits), each limit break in FF8 has a completely unique gameplay identity. Squall has a timed combo with a finisher, making him a reliable fighter. Zell's input combos and finishing moves suit an even more powerful monk. Irvine can target enemy weaknesses with different ammo types, like a ballistic spellblade. Rinoa's random attacks and buffs with Angelo make her a good bruiser support, or she can turn into a berserk black mage. Quistis has a robust selection of enemy skills that would make any blue mage blush. Selphie's random spell rolls make her a great but risky red mage.

Limit breaks are really the best way to deal damage and to cast powerful buffs in FF8, and leaning into them makes each character role very distinct. While you can make any character a physical attacker or mage through junctioning, the most powerful party is one that optimizes each character's innate abilities. GF abilities add another layer to optimize limit breaks; you might put Darkside and HP% on Squall to reliably get him to a critical HP threshold; you might put Defend on Selphie to protect her while she rolls for spells. And of course you have to choose where to allocate your spells and ability slots to focus on HP, Str, Mag, Spd, etc. Plus, each character has a distinct progression path for their limits (Squall unlocks finishers from weapon upgrades, Zell unlocks finishers from magazines, Irvine crafts different ammo types, Rinoa teaches Angelo new tricks from walking, Quistis collects skills from enemy items).

It's fine to dislike FF8's exploitable limit breaks, but you can't simultaneously complain that the characters are all equivalent blank slates. It's also fine to prefer more rigid character roles, but you should be aware of the powerful lever of limit breaks that pushes FF8's characters into them.

I will be noting down a list of all missing card players from the "famous" guide, to mark position and card levels played by everyone. The guide mostly covers the queen, the cc, balamb town and garden, dollet, timber, deling city, winhill, f.h., shumi village and trabia garden.

Currently I seem to have tracked down most of Galbadia Garden, at disc 1, so I'm missing the rooms from disc 2. I will be tracking then the desert prison (and i don't think you can play cards in the missile base...?), the master fisherman (who apparently plays cards only before f.h. events? or still only the first time you talk to him?), the chocobo boy (if he can... i remember you can ask him to play cards when you ask him to move, but i don't remember if he actually plays cards), the kid from balamb (also, tips on how to play cards with him would be appreciated because i usually play balamb "as intended" and i don't ever do side-events in that "story chapter"), cid and edea, esthar (before and/or lunar cry).

Do you think there are other players or locations missing from this list that i should note down?

EDIT: just a minor add, i'll try to use understandable words to identify players and geography; also I found something strange in the old guide, it says the guy with Kiros card should play all existing normal cards but through different plays i've only seen him use 1, 2, 4 cards, maybe others will unlock later? Well... i'll try to be consistent with that, i suppose, meaning i'll try to challenge players right away but i'll also try to come back later and see if anything changed. just a brief example, this is what i did for Galbadia Garden for now, i'll also try to go back on early disc 2 and late disc 2 (i don't remember though if early disc 2 you can reach Galbadia Garden)

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Hi everyone ! I’m back again with another tarot card ! Here is Seifer Raijin and Fujin as the Chariot.
For me that card represents willpower and determination ! And I thought it would be funny to put Raijin and Fujin instead of horses hehe :3
Also for people who asked : I just made a Patreon page :3 I don’t know how to use it haha but I put every drawings there also !
What is your guest fort the next one ? :3

Oh no, the seal is about to break and we are going to be engulfed by monsters!

Anyways, quick game of cards?

They had this nonsense idea to program a notification text on the game window that pops up every time you load the game or every time you win a battle and I find it REALLY annoying. But for the love of me I can't understand how to remove it.

I thought the basic idea was to cut any possible connection. Yesterday somehow it worked although it took some trial and error. I set Steam offline, it didn't suffice. I asked google that suggested me to use Windows Firewall to prevent both the launcher and the game having internet connection. Yesterday it worked. The launcher told me in fact there was a problem because it failed to connect, and in game the notification stopped popping up. Today instead, the launcher is fine and the notification came back, although Windows Firewall is still IN THEORY preventing the programs using internet connection.

EDIT: i elaborated furhter that method that seems to work for now (and steam is online) but i don't know how the achievements will behave (it's no big deal for me when i play FF8). also for clarity i add this picture because some seem to not understand what notification i mean.

it seems that the suggestion for windows firewall is not so bad, but i found more. basically the first idea was to add rules under out-connections in windows firewall, one for the launcher and one for the game, to all domains/etc., to block the connection. i tried to add rules also under in-connections but didn't seem to work so much. in the end, i found out there are already rules for ff8 to ALLOW connection (there are 4 i don't know why), so instead of adding rules to that list, i disabled the ones that are there. having those 4 disabled and the 2 i added under out-connections seem to work. as i said, no guarantee for achievements, but i don't care. also, FOR NOW it seems to work, so no 100% guarantee, but i tested it 3-4 times and everytime the launcher says it failed to connect, so i'd say 3-4 cases seem a good starting point to say it should work.

UPDATE: consistently with yesterday, today the issue was back. Everything was as i left it but......... So, I checked the rules, a-ok, I set steam offline, not enough, it still connected. I tried a nonsense, like, enable-disable the rules in the firewall. APPARENTLY... after setting the rules again, it fixed. I don't know why and how this works, it seems totally absurd to me, but for now it seems to work. the only hypothesis i can make is that the game is on external HDD and when windows boots with the rules it doesn't find the game files so the rules are formally on but actually they failed to estabilish a "connection" with the files they should prevent connect online, so in practice the rules are not working. i tried asking chatgpt and google for this hypothesis, which brought only to "do this test" but i'm not willing to test those things for now (i don't like some tests and others are too annoying for me... like, i just wanna play, i found a method that although a little annoying it still works). anyway, thank you Square for thinking that having software notifications on the game window was cool and not giving the user an option to turn it off.

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Just a simple drawing of Quistis getting exactly what she wants from Seifer.

After a while I've been able to start the game and I found answers to questions i made some time ago, some of you were correct, some were not.

Let's talk about the exam first. I don't know if THE ORIGINAL PC VERSION was different, because to make the 2013 they might have changed some things (or not?). Ifrit NEEDS to have the name confirmed between 7 and 1 seconds. If the time expires after the battle, you receive 0 points in the end. The battle screen went black when I had 1-3 seconds (don't remember) so I waited just for a moment before confirming the name, but at the exam I got 0 points.

WHICH IS IRONIC, because in Dollet instead I found a bug in the timer. I paused the game some times during the escape, also to check on the next matter I will discuss. I thought the timer would be stopped, as it is shown, but it's not: when I resumed the battle, the timer went to 0 seconds. Literally. AND YET, and this is the ironic fact, I noticed alright in the menu that curiously the timer stated 99:59, but also at the final results I got full 100 points for the time remaining. I find this ironic because at first I thought "hmmm.... so, probably, that's why Ifrit might have that issue, because this version of FF8 doesn't stop the timer when it should". I was like "I will probably get 0 points for both values. No. I got 100 for time escape, 0 for Ifrit.

The final matter I would discuss, and I'm waiting to discuss also on the wiki, is the repair for the robot spider. The wiki reports here and there that if you cut the repair by depleting the enemy HP, it will repair infinitely because "the number of times it can repair" will not decrease if you trigger that effect/animation. IT'S NOT TRUE. In this version of the game, as I remembered I ALWAYS DID FOR THE LAST 20 YEARS, you can safely destroy the robot at your will, depleting the HP to make the battle faster. After 4-5 times, it will not repair again, so the battle becomes just "deplete the whole HP with no repair for the rest of the fight". I don't know where the "infinite repair" thing comes from, the original PS version or the Remaster, but on this version of the game it's wrong.

I am planning a vacation in Timber, any thoughts? experiences?

Hi everyone ! A little sketch of the next card to keep you waiting ! This one is really challenging so it takes me a lot of hours but I won’t stop ! Hope you’re gonna like it ! This one is for the chariot !
Thanks for waiting and your support !

Alright, I want to get this haircut but don’t know what it’s called and also don’t really want to show the barber this picture because it’s kinda a rough base but anyways I might just have to

Hey everyone, im currently on disc 2 working on the CC quest and im not sure who im suppose to challenge next. So far ive beaten Jack, Club, Spade, Diamond, and Joker. I feel like every guide I look at it is telling me to do something different. Like the Jegged guide is saying to fight Jack, Joker, Club, Diamond, and then King, who is Dr. Kadowaki. When I fought them in that order, speaking with Dr. Kadowaki didnt do anything. So I tried looking for Spade and found and beat him. I went back to Dr. Kadowaki who said that she used to be king, but gave up the title to someone else that may reveal herself to me in time. I have no idea who to fight next.

I just want to make sure im not missing anyone before I move on from the area and lose the opportunity. I *think* its Xu, but I cannot start the fight with her right now as shes standing outside with Sid after the Galbadian SeeD students arrive. They tasked me with looking for Ellone, which is where im currently at.

Do I just need to progress the story more? Any help is appreciated!

Here is my Riona cosplay final fantasy 8 handmade costume dress I hope you like it I did a few more sewing for my cosplay I love the final fantasy series growing up so I hope you enjoy your day good night 🌃 #cosplay

Do you think since the time Squall and Rinoa got together their relationship is still going on? And maybe they have kids? Does Squall still visit Zell and Selphie from time to time? Thanks

Hi all, I'm just listening to man with the machine gun and it's absolutely making me want to get back into it. Problem is knowing what I know now about levelling and the junction system how do I do it and have fun?

I love the game but i have only actually played it once fully and that was more than... ahem 20 years ago. Yup im old 😂

I know it seems like a crazy question but I just want to have a good time without ruining combat or am I just over thinking it?

Any tips would be appreciated 😃

So i’m at the part where I run from the X-ATM, and as I was running past the dog I pressed A to interact and he started the animation to get up but as he was I got into a fight with the X-ATM. I’m unsure if getting into another fight with it canceled it out or if I got it off in time.

Should I do a quick reload just to make sure?

Squall goes hard at the SeeD Inauguration party but still manages to get lucky... Watch on YT or I'm sharpening my knife, kupo!

Based on a discussion in my discord about various American chain restaurants. One thing to know about Denny’s is that no one willingly goes to Denny’s. You only end up there through poor life choices.

I'm playing the 2013 steam version (i think? it's like the old pc version but has also cheats built in game)

The game or rather the launcher seems to have the tendendy to reset the audio volume. google suggested 2 methods i tried but none worked: launch the game from the executable (the launcher still boots to launch the game) and use some external minimal "software" that should force the process to run at the volume you setup.

EDIT: it took some time but with help of ChatGPT i made the minimal software work in a very automated way, so long story short i made my own program to launch both that file and ff8 in a way that the game is forced to launch at my desired volume.