Final Fantasy VIII

Emulator Notes

This is where I am parking the emulator-specific machinery so the main walkthrough can stay a little more in-world.

When I first wrote this walkthrough, it was the same year the game came out. I was very excited about the game, and there wasn’t really much in the way of awesome walkthrough sites. As a result, I built a section of my website to host this walkthrough. I’ve since played the game through several times. For whatever reason (I suspect licensing issues around the songs), it seems that the Playstation store doesn’t have this game in the PS3 or PS4 store. As a result, I have to play it emulated now. Since I own three copies of the discs, I’m pretty sure that’s legit.

So… If you’re also playing the game emulated, you may be taking advantage of emulator save states. I’ve been researching at what point in the code the system decides if an enemy you’ve used the “Card” skill on is a common or rare card. For example, when you’re in the fire cave toward the beginning of the game, you can attack a bomb and get it almost dead. You can then create an emulator save, after which you can use the card action. You’ll almost always get a Bomb Card, but on very rare occasions you’ll get a Krysta card.

I’ve noticed that this isn’t exactly as easy as it sounds. Most of the time, just restoring and trying Card again won’t work. From my experimentation, I’ve found I have to use the circle button to switch to another character, then try Card again. Sometimes it appears I have to wait for the enemy to attack again. This makes a bit of sense. If the game calculates luck at the beginning of each round (think rolling ), it’s possible just loading and trying again wouldn’t be helpful. Other times, I can try dozens of times before the enemy attacks again, and eventually it totally works.

I’ll keep experimenting, and if I find anything more out, I’ll let you know. In the mean time, if any of you have insight into this from your own experimentation, please use the contact link on this site to get a hold of me and let me know!

Rare Card RNG Nudge

If you are trying to Card an enemy into its rare card, save-state once the enemy is cardable, then try Card. If you get the common card, reload, have the party skip turns or cycle to another character, and try again. The random number appears to reroll around character turns, so simply restoring and pressing the same button again may just repeat the same result. This is especially handy for nonsense like Elastoid into Ultima Weapon Card. Whee.

Card Rule RNG

If you’re playing on an emulator, it’s quite a bit easier to abolish rules from various areas. For example, Trabia has the annoying . If you simply save your game outside the city (choose save from the menu - don’t use the emulator here), then go into the city and play cards with anyone, they’ll offer to play with any rules you know from another region. Just use the emulator quick save before offering to play. After agreeing to play with combined rules, you can quit from the Rules screen. Most of the time either a new rule will spread here, or an existing rule will be eliminated. If a rule spreads, simply load your quick save, then card-talk the same person, but decline to play immediately. Then quick save again, and repeat until either the rule you want eliminated goes away, or they stop offering to play with combined rules. If they stop offering to play with combined rules, you have two choices. Either reload your quicksave and find someone else to play with (then repeat the steps above as needed), or alternatively you can simply hard-reset the emulator and start the game over, then restore the save game outside the city and try again. Eventually you’ll be able to nuke the rule you want. For the few areas where this isn’t convenient, I’ll offer suggestions that don’t rely on the emulator in the appropriate spots. If you’re trying to abolish the in Trabia at the end of Disk 3, here’s a tip if the Esthar president is on the Ragnarok - you can play against him first, if you need to learn new rules, then go play into trabia. You can do this over and over, if needed to eliminate various rules.

Hardware Helpers

If the repetitive menu work is the real boss fight, the Automation page links to my Raspberry Pi HID helper project for this task. The short version: it pretends to be a keyboard and does the repeated inputs so your hands do not have to eat the whole grind.

Card Games - Getting the Card you Want From an Opponent

If you are playing against an opponent in order to get a specific card, you can save state on the screen where you’re agreeing to play. Then select Yes and see what they play. If they’re not playing with the card you want, reload state and press up and down to cause a reloaded state. Select yes and look again. Repeat until they play with the card you want, then unless you believe you can’t ever lose, save in a different state so you don’t accidentally miss the card.