Ok, I was screwed with the magic system, but it was actually more complex than that: magic spells could be linked ('junctioned') to your characters' statistics, meaning that you could make your characters stronger by basically 'equipping' them with more and/or stronger spells. It's a lot complicated to explain in a few sentences, so just know that this caused the 'draw syndrome' in a lot of Final Fantasy VIII players, i. e. a player would spend hours upon hours battling random enemies just to draw spells from them and get more powerful; additionally, they wouldn't dare to cast 'junctioned' spells unless necessary, because that would mean having to draw more to get as powerful as before. It's not really mandatory in the game, but I'm pretty sure it was the norm back then: after all, when you play an RPG you tend to make your characters stronger as fast as possible.
That may be a bit extreme gameplay strategy, but I know for certain that I only cast Ultima once (a very powerful spell and quite rare) in my first playthrough just to see how it looked, in order to keep 100 of them junctioned. I don't remember right now, but I think that spell couldn't be drawn from enemies (not regular ones anyway), only from rare 'draw points' which would recharge after a long while (while you can draw spells from enemies endlessly).
In short, to me magic spells were little more than equipment. After all, I found that casting spells were only useful earlier on, when you can exploit enemy weaknesses to certain magic to end battles faster, because in the beginning other alternatives just aren't viable:
- attacking with your weapon doesn't really deal much damage, even if you junction spells to your strength attribute; moreover, you can't enable junctions to all your attributes from the start for all your characters, you need additional Guardian Forces which are found later in the game
- using items for healing is feasible, but they cost money, and you get that periodically (not from battles like in the previous FF) or by selling other items, so why not use healing spells, which are free? Attack items aren't an option either (do they exist? I don't remember)
- summoning Guardian Forces, magical beasts which generally attack all enemies at once with magic, may be useful, and that doesn't consume anything, but initially they take a very long time to summon (spells are cast instantly) and you only start with 2 of them (3 shortly after the start), so you probably won't be using them regularly
- getting low on health to unlock your 'Limit Break', a sort of powerful near-death technique, is a nice option to your regular attack, but the initial ones aren't very powerful, having low health is risky, and the animation lasts longer (boring...)
Oh, regarding the last point, did I mention that battle animations are incredibly slow? Sure, even Final Fantasy VII had its share of slow battles, but this one is even worse! Most regular attacks and spells are quite slow, the initial loading for each battle is long, and enemies always have a dying animation, but the worst offenders are surely Guardian Force summoning sequences; FFVII had very long ones as well, to be fair (I feel they were slightly shorter on average though). But overall FFVIII felt way slower: I blame the designers for trying to convey a more scenic and realistic look to the game, which a lot of players appreciated, but not I.
This is getting too long, see you next post!
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