Draw early, Draw often
The only way your characters will increase in power is through drawing more powerful magic. If you don't take the time to draw from your enemies, you'll find yourself hopelessly outclassed. The number of "uses" per Draw is determined by both the strength and rarity of the spell, as well as the Drawing character's magic power. If you have to, find a weak enemy and Draw repeatedly from him - he won't run out. It's no cheesier than fighting Ogres and Creeps for hours on end to buy silver armor, now is it?

Draw from bosses
Bosses, especially early in the game, often have spells you've never seen before. Draw from them to learn the new magic. Also, many bosses have rare Guardian Forces that must be Drawn out of them. If you kill them without Drawing, you will miss the Guardian Force (and feel really lame when your friends start talking about how cooool Alexander is, and how they can't believe the Pandemonium summon! And you didn't get either).

Magic Junction
Without upgradable armor, and with barely upgradable weapons, this is the only real way to improve your statistics. And boy, do they improve. The more powerful the spell - and the more uses a character has Drawn - the greater the added effect. Two examples: A character with 891 total HP had her HP statistic junctioned to 100 uses of Cure 2. Her HP jumped to more than 5,000; more dramatically, her status immediately became critical! When another character had his Agility statistic junctioned to 100 uses of Haste, he could take three turns to another party member's one! Dramatic shifts in power are caused by Junctioning Magic. Do not overlook the importance of this ability!

Special abilities give you the edge
In Final Fantasy VIII, enemies are always at the same level you are. It's impossible to find "weak" enemies to beat up on for easy level gains. As in Final Fantasy V and Tactics, the winning edge comes not from sheer statistical superiority, but from more strategic ability matching. "Power+40 percent" will drive your point home with a vengeance. "Auto Reflect" gets your party preemptively prepared for those tough magic opponents. "Reduce Encounter Rate" is a Godsend for weakened parties deep within a dungeon. Our current favorite ability is "Double Magic, Single Cost." The only thing more painful than Ultima would have to be Ultima - squared.

Call on your Guardian Forces
For better or worse, Final Fantasy VIII is heavily skewed in favor of the Guardian Forces. Don't summon them, and you will lose. Summon them, and you stand a decent chance of success. The extra damage they do more than offsets the time spent summoning them. The enemies' power is designed to withstand the GFs, though, so they still won't be pushovers. Even though you'll be calling your GFs often, you'll still find yourself dying quite a bit; Final Fantasy VIII is hard compared to recent titles in the series.

Always Junction every GF all the time
One-, two-, or three-person party - it doesn't matter. Always keep every GF Junctioned to a character. Otherwise, they're just sitting in your inventory, dooting around, probably playing the Card Battle game with each other, wondering why they're not earning experience. If you got it, baby, flaunt it! Make sure GFs are always out on the battle field, increasing their levels and abilities.

Don't let your GFs fight alone
Most attack GFs have a "Support" ability (called "Ouen" in Japanese). It costs only ten AP to learn. LEARN IT IMMEDIATELY. Now, when you summon your GF in battle, press "Select" as the casting begins. See that meter in the bottom right-hand corner? It starts at 75; press the "Square" key rapidly to increase the number. When the red X appears, stop! Pressing it now returns the counter to 75. When the red X disappears, resume pressing "Square" like there's no tomorrow. The higher the number, the more powerful the attack. My personal record is pumping an attack up to 216 (from 75). There is a difference. In close battles, a "normal" vs. a "pumped up" attack can mean the difference between life and death.

Card Battle
Sure, it may seem like a cheesy minigame, but it's fun ...too fun. You'll soon find that what begins as an innocuous pastime soon swells into something more important than the story itself; yeah yeah fate of the world blah blah blah you've got to get those Character Cards! And later in the game, when you discover that rare and powerful Cards are required to be "morphed" into items necessary to upgrade your weapons to a reasonably high level ... well, you'll feel really stupid if you haven't been keeping up with the Joneses. Everyone in Final Fantasy VIII's world loves the game. So should you.

We would like quality, well-written reviews which would be shown here on Final Fantasy: Worlds Apart, but also editorials comparing, for example, the latest installment with past masterpieces and other such interesting topics; was the game enormously over-hyped? Has it exceeded your expectations?

Please send your material, or sort out a review, editorial etc, here.

The eighth sequel in the series has brought a fair amount of changes and some borrowing from older games (Final Fantasy 6 springs to mind). With 'special attacks' (like FF7's limit breaks), for example, some characters you have to hit a few button combinations to get the effect, like Sabin from FF6.

The first thing that stands out is that there is no armor... at all. Defence is entirely based on the character, and their technique and skill. Along with that, as previously reported, each character only has one weapon, which is upgraded in special shops, with money. Gil is not 'won' from the defeated foe, instead members of the SeeD are given a wage, paid at a set time, and the amount paid is defined by their 'SeeD rank level'; The higher the rank, the better the pay.

Each character's level is separated by one thousand experience points, and the amount of points gained from a victory always stays the same, even if they are different enemies. This is because the enemies go up in levels like the characters.

Despite early complaints about the Draw system, the problems with the system from the demo have been fixed. People are beginning to see what a good idea it is. In the light of previous reports of their being no Treasure boxes in Final Fantasy 8, there are, containing goods such as potions.

The music in the game is being touted by Final Fantasy fans as being better than Final Fantasy 7's, but still not as atmospheric as Final Fantasy 6's. There are many tunes that are immediately recognisable from early games in the series, kept in to remind you that it's still Final Fantasy.

The ultimate judgement on Final Fantasy 8 will be held until the game is out on western shelves, but you can be sure that a review on the Japanese version will be here soon from dedicated fans.

First impressions are good; Famitsu, Japan's largest gaming publication, rated the game at a 37 out of 40 (Sonic Adventure got 38 and Zelda 64, 40). This is a very high score by the notoriously harsh Famitsu reviewers, and is about the same as what Final Fantasy 7 got on its Japanese debut. One reviewer (within Famitsu) gave the game a perfect 10 out of 10, while three others gave 9s. The review praises the game's story, Junction System, FMV sequences and other things like the Card Battle, while comment is laid on the Guardian Forces being too strong in battle, making them unbalanced.

Of course, you have to buy the parts for your customization from shops charmingly named 'Junk Shops', which litter the world; the quality of the add-on depends on how much you spend.

Rinoa's weapon before (left) and after (right). It has changed from a circle shape to a spiky sort of shape.

Sadly, it has brought many bad points with the package; people had feuds, which got far too heated over what was essentially, just a game. But the main question on many people's lips; Do we know too much information about this game? We already know much more about Final Fantasy 8 than we did when Final Fantasy 7was 9 days from release in Japan, back in 1996. Indeed, many of us hadn't even heard of 'Final Fantasy' until the emphatic launch in the west. The success of Final Fantasy 7 was the seed for all the hype we are seeing (perhaps the biggest hype yet seen for a game, on the 'net at least...).

Summary of the weeks events

The Alterations to the Demo

Look familiar? Yes, that's right, it's the Demo we saw so much coverage of. You may notice, in comparing these two shots, that Rinoa has been removed and replaced by Selphie. This is to change the Demo's story line (well, if there was one), ready for the final release. Just to show off the resources that Square have, changing text wasn't good enough, they also changed the CGI intro to the demo!

In addition, all three characters (Squall, Zell, and Selphie) are dressed in SeeD military garb, and the group's teacher, Kistis, replaces the man operating the boat's machine gun. The casual clothes Squall and Zell are seen wearing in the original demo will appear later in the game when formal uniforms are no longer needed. Dialogue, as well, will be changed in the final version to reflect the differences.

So, what happened to Rinoa? The mission to Dollet's shores visible above occurs early in the game. Squall first embarks on a mission to a volcano in order to graduate to the elite Garden "SeeD" ranking. After obtaining the formal SeeD outfits, the group heads off on a second mission to the Dollet Dukedom, as seen in the demo. It isn't until after the Dollet Dukedom mission that formal ball for SeeD graduates takes place. It's at this ball that Squall first meets, and dances with the mysterious Rinoa before parting ways. The two later meet when Squall and his companions are dispatched to Timber, Rinoa's hometown.

Rinoa's Limit Break
When Rinoa uses this Combine (A special attack, rather like Limit Breaks from Final Fantasy 7), her pet dog 'Sant Angelo di Roma' appears and he attacks with 'Angelo cannon' (like Sabin from Final Fantasy 6, methinks). Rinoa once found this cute dog Angelo at a pet shop and purchased him, despite knowing it would upset her parents. Seifer's special attack is 'Shimatsuken', or 'Disposing Blade'.

Balamb Garden Network
Rather like in the beginners hall in Final Fantasy 7, there is one in Final Fantasy 8, only it's called 'Balamb Garden Network'. In here, you can get lots of information about the Garden itself, or the Junction System etc. Click here to view an image of the main page.

The Sound Track
Gaming music is a huge industry in Japan, and can be a great little side earner for games companies; a game wouldn't be complete without a soundtrack to accompany it, Capcom even have their own music label. Final Fantasy 8 is no exception. Final Fantasy 7's soundtrack reached number 3 in the pop charts (pretty unimaginable in the west).

Arriving on February 24th, a single entitled "Final Fantasy VII's Ending Song", "Eyes on Me", sung by Faye Wong (who Square hired for $1,000,000 dollars) will retail at 971 yen ($8).

If the past is anything to go by, there will be an arranged album of all the Final Fantasy 8 tunes (and probably downloadable here soon after ;-)

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