Publisher: Square 
Developer: Square
Release Date: 10/27/1999
Date Played: 1/20/2017-12/23/2017
Region: Germany
Time Played: 45 hours
What’d you think?: Oh hot damn, we did it. Plenty has been said about FF8 already, but beating this game in German, a language I don’t speak, was pretty interesting. I was able to ignore the story, for better or worse, and focus on the mechanics of junctioning magic. Since I was already familiar with the game, it wasn’t a huge struggle to figure out and remember what spells were called, and junctioning is pretty broken, so you can get powerful quickly. Not being able to save and reload meant I didn’t play any Triple Triad (after losing my first couple matches), so getting some of the spells was a little more involved than it otherwise would’ve been, but it was mostly smooth sailing. We did have a full party wipe at one point, thanks to a surprise Malboro encounter, but luckily we bothered with the Shumi Village sidequest, and got that 1/8 chance for a save. We also nearly died again when Zell, who had 100 Death (Tod) spells junctioned to Status-Attack, got Confused and punched Squall and Quistis to death. But we didn’t die. We got all the GFs. We sang Eyes on Me. We beat the damn game. The triumph of this project, about a year and 100-so games in.
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8OIYTfquVfd5lMEo6q_FBoDwYiskMq8A
