^Well, I intent to play on my computer for the most part so I don't care if I just download it. As long as I can play it on my computer anything is good for me. I think downloads are only for PS3 and PSP though.
I really liked eidolons in FFIX though. I was really hooked with those. Only thing I disliked was that using them to their full potential took some time to say the least. Gathering all those pesky stones took too long. I gathered most of them except the leviathan one, gathering 400 ores just for that actually bored me. I stopped caring for vivi halfway through the game though. I liked the fact that he had a variety of attacks but as the game advanced even the supposedly high level spells lost purpose. Doomsday was good but setting everything so that characters don't die from it was too troublesome. In the end I could easily replace vivi with garnet(seriously, all elemental advantages and decent healing along with arc). I did like combining auto repel with vivi's spells though, I was doing 9999 damage by disc two lol (the combination loses purpose when other characters can do that kind of damage without the hassle). Steiner was always in my team too, climhazzard and shock just pawned. I never really did have a team which I preferred over others(I just disliked vivi lol). It is a bit of a pain to have learn spells but I did find her to be useful mid game. The awkward but varied number of spells is useful. I used mighty guard rather often too, one of the best spells in the game IMO. I stopped using her when I started to focus on getting 9999 damage on all attacks though, I never went through the trouble of getting all the frogs for frog drop. In my mid game I hated freya. Her spells are rather useless in the mid game and jump did nothing. I only really started using her for her best attack which always does 9999 after killing enough dragons. The only redeeming feature I found in zidane was that I always managed to get the good weapons for him very early. In that sense, even his normal attack was ok. Thievery was epic once I got it to the magic number though. I liked amarant, his abilities were always useful and I recall one of them did generally get 9999 damage but for some reason I could never get fit him into my party...
Ok, I have been playing final fantasy 8 for a while and I get the impression I am doing something HORRIBLY wrong. I was watching a video of a fight against norg and I noticed significant differences between my characters and those in the video. Most significant, the characters in the game had between 3 and 4 more hp than mine. The squall I have has around 1200 hp while in the video he had around 4000.... Also the attack command. Squall in video could cause damage of over 400 regularly while the one I use barely reaches 120. Zell could do up to 700 with a critical and I barely do 200. In the video the guy could actually do something without the guardian forces while in turn I can't do crap without them for the most part. I honestly have pulled through my battles thanks to those lol. I get the impression I am not using the junction system all that well. I also barely find any use for the magics, summons work THAT much better....
One of the things which I don't like about characters in FFXIII is that I don't see any distinction between them. Limit breaks are different but is that that important? I actually avoid being that low in hp during battle so I never really get to use them. Every character can have any summon and use any magic in the most indiscriminate way. Am I missing something? Even though limit breaks are drastically different between characters, they don't seem important enough for me to consider choosing a character over another. I know these things are balanced out so that the main thing to consider is subjective but as much as I try I see no difference between zelphie, squall, zell, irvine, and so on. Junction some stuff and they are all clones with the exact same abilities. Seriously, should I give that much consideration to the limit breaks? Quite frankly, the only thought I have given to character selection is on which I get the best compatibility for guardian spirits and thus the most damage.
Magic is another thing. Do I need it? I am halfway through game two and I have yet to have any strategic need of it. Summons have done an overwhelmingly superior job so far. It's not like I have not tried bio, firaga, thundaga and a number of other crap. I have yet to tried ultima (which I just acquired) but unless I invariably get 5000 damage out of it I see no reason for it to be more relevant than summons. Spells take less time than summons to perform but in turn summons deal enough damage for them to actually save time in the long run.
Maybe I got too used to final fantasy IX though? When I played that game I actually gave a lot of thought about which party to use. Each character had actual unique abilities and traits I could exploit in specific battles. I even recall times when the unanimously hated quina proved to be extremely useful at least.
Seriously, what am I missing here? Why is it that a game which is supposed to involve actual strategy from players seem to have characters with no virtual difference and can be tanked through with the same spells? It's not like I have over trained for fights considering that if I level up enemies also do. Why is it that the attack command seems terminally useless, limit breaks serve no purpose whatsoever and there seems to be no difference between characters other than the model? WHAT AM I MISSING?