Insane Difficulty: Final Fantasy VIII Class Challenge - Insane Difficulty

So, I started playing FFVIII recently, and I was trying to think of ways to spice the game up a bit. I think I might have found it.

This challenge aims to refresh the admittedly stale battle experience of Final Fantasy VIII with a few measures, but mainly a class system. I'll go over these in a minute, but first let's get some of the rules out of the way.


Magic Quantity

If you don't want to sit there and draw (let's be honest: who the fuck does?), feel free to grab a Draw 100 code or something from somewhere and use it. It's what I do, because fuck that noise.


Card Mod

Card Mod is allowed, however excessive Card Modding is, of course, banned. I shouldn't need to outline the specific boundary, as it's pretty basic, but if I need to, I will.


High-Level Magic

High-level magics have been distributed among the six classes.

The high-level magics are as follows:

• Holy
  
• Full-Life
  
• Flare
  
• Aura
  
• Pain
  
• Meltdown
  
• Meteor
  
• Ultima

Junction

High-level magic is banned for Junction. The reasons for this should be obvious.

All magic has been distributed to each character regarding what they can use. However, any character can junction any magic outside of that list with the exception of high-level magic.


Ban List

Items


Limit Breaks


Magic



Characters

Squall



Selphie



Rinoa



Quistis



Zell



Irvine




Anything not listed, including Mug, is a wild card. Wild cards can be used in just about any circumstance, on any person. If you have a question or concern about something listed, or a wild card, feel free to ask.

This list is subject to change, as I'm not quite sure how some of this will mesh with mid-late game.

Edit: Added a few banned items. How in the fuck I forgot those is beyond me.

This post has been edited by Advent: 09 February 2014 - 11:38 PM

In other words: Don't grind for everything.

Stann, on 08 February 2014 - 05:08 PM, said:

Not quite. This way, not everyone are carbon copies of each other in battle, sans their limit breaks. >.>

You didn't ban triple or limit breaks, meaning that you can still just plow through the game with Squall one-hitting half the bosses with Renzo.

Foyboy, on 09 February 2014 - 08:00 AM, said:

Yeah I did.

Triple is banned for in battle. Limit breaks are not, but it's been a long time since I've played (I'm only up to Timber now) and I'm aware Triple might break some stuff. If it does, I'll just ban it.

Triple is useless in battle for the most part. Its use is for junctioning to strength in the beginning of the game and LOL-1shotting everything with a Renzo.

The males' (Squall, Zell, Irvine) all have limits that do more than 1 hit. Selphie has The End which people only like to one shot bosses, but the rest of her slots are fairly ok.
In vanilla, I always had my hp ~10% of max to get my limits all the time and blaze through battles. Well, only the battles where I feel I don't need to draw thousands of magic.

I think a more interesting (And less arbitrary) challenge would be to just disallow stocking magic. The only way you could cast magic is through a consumable item, or drawn from the enemies you're fighting. You wouldn't be able to boost your stats to max and items would be incredibly useful.

You would probably need to add a few extra rules just to keep everything kosher, but it seems okay.

Foyboy, on 09 February 2014 - 08:09 PM, said:

Yeah, I was kind of unsure about that to be honest. I'll put it in there.

Flying_Poodle, on 09 February 2014 - 09:33 PM, said:

The End is in the Ban List.

Regarding the males, I was wondering about some kind of str restriction, but I dunno.

Stann, on 09 February 2014 - 09:45 PM, said:

It seems okay until you realize that the only items that act as castable magic are the higher-level stuff: Aura, Death, Holy, Flare, Meteor, Ultima.

This was something I thought up kind of off the cuff because I thought it would be interesting. I'm not opposed to suggestions, though.

FF8 is sort of too broken to make challenging with restrictions, without just banning everything and making it not fun. Just play Landonray's mod if you want a challenging FF8 experience.

Foyboy, on 09 February 2014 - 08:09 PM, said:

Wat. Have you ever junctioned Triple on Eva (though Tornado is better in vanilla) or in Spd? Triple in Spd is god-tier.

Also, Triple Meteors with 255 Magic = 30000 ish damage, not too shabby. And of course Full Life*3, Curaga*3, Meltdown*3, freaking Aura*3. Triple casting is broken, it's just not as broken as Lionheart.

Hart-Hunt, on 10 February 2014 - 08:52 AM, said:

In-battle, he said.

Advent, on 10 February 2014 - 09:02 AM, said:

"Its use is for junctioning to strength in the beginning of the game [...]"

What am I missing?

Hart-Hunt, on 10 February 2014 - 09:13 AM, said:

I guess you're right.

Hart-Hunt, on 10 February 2014 - 09:13 AM, said:

What's wrong with this statement, exactly? If you want to play the game efficiently, you will card mod triples, card mod a str+60%, mod some tents in curagas (total time about 30 minutes), then proceed to 1-hit nearly every boss in the game. Why would you ever bother grinding out meteors? When would you ever need to triple cast full life or meltdown or even Curaga for that matter?

Foyboy, on 10 February 2014 - 06:21 AM, said:

Challenging and decent are two very different things. I'm not a big fan of Requiem. Card modding is supposedly encouraged, and it breaks the difficulty over your knee.

Foyboy, on 10 February 2014 - 11:18 AM, said:

Well, for starters, given that this thread is regarding the challenge in and of itself, this is what's wrong with that statement.



Edit: And Str +60% is banned on everyone. It has been from the beginning.

This post has been edited by Advent: 10 February 2014 - 11:54 AM

I was talking about in a regular game, since that's what Hart was referencing.

Also, maybe your definition of excessive is different from mine, but modding a single card doesn't seem excessive to me.

Either way, enjoy your challenge.

Foyboy, on 10 February 2014 - 08:02 PM, said:

Excessive I define as giving you a very clear advantage that you should not have.

FF8 is far too breakable even if you impair yourself.
The only challenging version I played is the hardmode where enemies have like 3x dmg and you hit for half, but even then it gets easy.

Zero -> Zell -> Duel -> BOOYA HEEL KICK BOOYA HEEL KICK BOOYA HEEL KICK BOOYA HEEL KICK BOOYA HEEL KICK BOOYA HEEL KICK BOOYA HEEL KICK BOOYA HEEL KICK BOOYA HEEL KICK
Omega weapon dead.

Even if you junction and draw NO magic this game is still entirely beatable (Ultimecia will be a pain unless you use holy wars, which should obviously be banned in any challenge playthrough; everything else is very reasonable). Guaranteed limits on low HP is a stupid busted mechanic.

LandonRay's hack makes it so you can actually use the game mechanics and still have a decent challenge, although most of disc 3-4 besides Ultimecia gets a bit easy and repetitive.