Can You Beat Final Fantasy 8 Without Junctioning? 

Longest video I ever made! Please join the Discord server if you have any more challenge run ideas for us: discord.com/invite/fUzdCvYgrF

I love the idea of the crisis level. Should've taken it to the extreme. "And then Zell found out that his shoelaces were open, so his crisis level increased." "Selphie had a nightmare last night, so her crisis level increased." "Rinoa accidentally put on two different socks, so her crisis level increased." "Irvine didn't have time to wash his hair this morning, so his crisis level increased." "Squall woke up happy and he caught himself smiling in the mirror, so his crisis level increased."

I love how, ironically, this is one of the few runs that makes the Final Boss harder to defeat than the Superbosses.

Funny how Raijin went from "I'm not gonna hit a woman" to just becoming a mad man by the time they meet him again in Pandora

Fair play for only resorting to The End when all other avenues were exhausted

Love that every character gets their own chance to be useful in this run!

If you hold square down as you walk into the Centra Ruins, it skips the puzzle and warps you directly to Odin's chamber.

When you beat the game without junctioning because you were too young to understand it.

I expected this to be a boring cheese-fest involving getting attack to hit for 9999 every time. Instead I got a gripping journey involving complex maths, specific movement patterns prior to a boss fight and a bizarre RNG manipulation to trigger a very rare spell - amazing work!

I've seen people fail seemingly far easier challenge runs and thought this was doomed from the start. I'm amazed that a) it's possible and b) you managed to achieve it; then you did the super bosses as well. I'm in awe. The biggest congratulations to you and thanks for uploading!

Knowing absolutely nothing about Final Fantasy, I still am shocked at the pre-planning this must have taken, much less the patience and execution. The RNG manipulation strategy at the end, including the step count, is nothing short of genius. This may, in that way, be your best video yet!

I love that there's an option that's just 'I win' and it actually works on bosses. Far too many games have those super moves or win button type things or situations that just remove enemies from combat, but bosses just null it, or the game mechanics prevent it for reasons, with one I remember being particularly grating was FFTA's enemy only law ribbons that prevent those units from being insta killed/despawned by the judge if they break the law. Given the in story thing of how they're all being made by a corrupt judge and handed to people that paid for it, it seems incredibly weird that they're so common and on many people who really should not have them, including enemies that have 0 connection or reason to get a law breaker ribbon like Babus Very neat run, and interesting to see how much you can do in the game even without using some of its primary mechanics

“The mayor tries to take things into his own hands…” I spat out my coffee. Well done sir

Raijin: Won't attack a female The female in question: Berating him with toxic aliments and drowning him with water

I am a huge FF8 fan, but I never knew that Zell could use unread combinations from the start before collecting them!

Great job, well done! I love how much time and research clearly went into making this video. You continue to be the Gold Standard for challenge running. Looking forward to whatever you decide to play next!

Dang. That's quite a video to be teased with, five minutes before bedtime on TECHNICALLY a Tuesday. Shine on, you crazy diamond. Always thought FF8 was underrated, but cannot imagine a more tortures challenge run for it!

Ff8 will always be my favourite. The one I grew up with. Can't say I understood junctioning when I was that young though. Looking forward to watching this run.

I usually very rarely comment on YT Videos, but the stuff you guys put up here is simply amazing. I'm literally lost for words. This channel deserves all the recognition it can get.

fun fact, as a 7 year old i fell in love with the turn based attack system and killing monsters. used birthday money to buy it, and just wanted to kill monsters so i wasnt interested in the dialog and wanted to get strait into the training ground i watched people killing monsters in. i didnt know how to progress past putting on the seed uniform, i had squall level 58 before i even done the seed exam. didnt know how to junction untill it told you before saving ellone. never thought to junction any gfs to anyone other than squall untill i was stuck on the oilboyles for what seemed like eternity, in reality it was about 3 and a half weeks of failure.

I play most RPGs blind without any knowledge of how the mechanics works on a technical level, so it was fascinating to see how someone with intricate knowledge of these systems could beat a game like this whilst not making use of probably its most fundamental mechanic. I admire your dedication and perseverance in making this all come together.

I appreciate very much that you included bits outside of the challenge itself, like showing some extra items and tips. I've played and finished FF8 a few times, but there are still a few things I've learned.

"Rinoa cares about Squall afterall" - 20:29 - That line was so halarious 😂

I played FF8 and beat it for the first time recently. My main party was Squall, Rinoa, and Quistis, and I defeated every main boss and hidden boss (where I could use them as my party) with them. When I came to Omega weapon though, he just crushed me. It was then I learned that Selphie had The End (I knew, but hadn't really thought about it before). Doing some research, I realized that the fact I didn't use her (and so she was only lvl 24) meant I could access The End. I spent at least 8 hours attempting to beat him, including clicking past the End 3 separate times, before I finally got The End and selected it to defeat him. Selphie is truly massively OP. lol. I have no idea why you would ever try a run like the one you did in this video, but I respect you doing so and enjoyed watching it happen. Congrats!

When I was a kid I always wondered if you could do this, I wanted to, but it was impossible for me. The idea came mainly because junctioning is part of the story if I remember correctly, junctioning GF's price is losing memories. I wanted to get to the scene where that happens and see if anything changed because the characters shouldn't have lost their memories that way lol

For the exactly zero people who asked: Renzokuken is a combination of two words. Renzoku, meaning 'a things that continues or repeats, or to be repeated or continuous' and Ken meaning 'sword.' Also for those people: Quistis Trepe is _officially_ pronounced 'Kwisstiss Tsreep,' (like tsunami. I don't know why, but that's how it was written and it doesn't even make sense in japanese) and Seifer is 'Sigh-fer'. Squall is literally the english word squall, as in the video, meaning a windstorm. (Squall's associated element is wind, and Seifer's is fire. I don't know the others' for certain, but they have them even if they don't matter). Selphie is as one expects, identical to the new english word selfy (though it wasn't a word when this game was made) as in the video. Rinoa is as in the video. Zell is as in the video. Irvine Kineas is 'Er-vine Kin-E-Ahss' Edea is 'E-day-ah' Iguion is a combination of Iguana and Lion, and are pronounced likewise 'ig-why-on'. Deling, in spite of what most people would assume, is pronounced 'Dell-ing'. Galbadia is 'Gahl-bah-dee-ah' The space vessel Ragnarok is numbered '6' because 'Ragnarok' and 'Laguna 6' are both 'ra gu na ro ku' in japanese. The ships are all named after Laguna, basically. Biggs and Wedge are as always, a reference to Star Wars (yes that is actually true in spite of being a Japanese game.) And that's for the most part, all of the names I typically see people questioning or arguing over. All pronunciations and meanings are based on the original japanese phonetic text.

Did not know that the first Edea fight could be skipped if Squall is just dead. Learn something new every day.

Well that was absolutely the craziest run of FFVIII I've ever seen. Well done

What a fantastic video chief. That Ultimecia fight was easily the most entertaining and gripping boss fight I've ever seen. Absolutely inspiring.

There is no way I don't "do over" The End limit break pressing it that fast. Well done.

Love the shoutout to Kaivel! A few years back I streamed a playthrough of the FF8 Requiem Mod, and midway through he started hopping in on the streams and helping out a lot with coming up with strategies for the bosses; he especially helped with Ultimecia, teaching me the same step count manipulation you talked about here. Very kind and helpful guy, awesome to see props to him! Great vid my dude 👍

This run would've been so much easier on ps1, you just had to open the cd case and you could just span do over until you found The End. The fact that you did it without that is just insane. Awesome video

Just started watching, but I wanted to say that it made me very happy that FF 8 is still getting recognition. It is my most favourite entry as well as my first game I played in my life. I also attempted this no-GF junctioning run about a year ago. I made it to Ultimecia but then I got stuck on Griever one-shotting me with Shockwave Pulsar. After about fifty retries, I put the challenge to rest indefinitely. Well then... off to watching the rest of the video. I'm already rooting for you. :)

FFVIII is and always will be my personal favorite from the series, it was the first game i played at 5 years old and ive revisted it many, many times over the years. Always glad to see the new and creative ways people find to play and complete the game. I cant even begin to imagine just how long this had to take, but kudos to you for sticking it out, was a great watch.

Incredible video from start to finish mate. Every single one of these is a banger but the amount of effort put into this one especially is just crazy. Really interesting to learn about mechanics that I never really delved into playing casually and enjoyed watching you solve the puzzle of each fight, really fun to watch and look forward to more FF challenges!

I love how every character has a specific mean in the run Zell: Gravity attacker Selphie: Magic attacker and one shotter Rinoa: Invincibile buff Irvine: Debuffer Quistis: Oneshot mobs, debuffs, magic attacker, Gravity Squall: phy dps and long time animation It's obv that zell and irvine are the less relevant but Quistis at the start can't do all that roles and in some parts of the game having 2 magic attackers or two gravity users it's good and still, both zell and irvine got their times to shine The most importants one are Rinoa, Selphie and Squall (absurb that long animations Squall limit break are one of the secret to clear the final boss) An Incredible run and i am really happy that a crazy one like this can be done here, in my fav game

This is my favorite game. I play it once per year. I did not know this is possible. Kudos.

I had no idea you could input Zell' s Limit Breaks without getting the magazines first.

Holy moly, that video length. Welp, that's my dinner time entertainment sorted for the next week 😁 Love classic FF, love your brand of insane determination, can't wait to watch!

Nowadays I like to watch these kind of videos for an RPG game: One long video from start to finish, WITH commentary in the background, bonus point for interesting challenges; instead of 100+ parts, 1-hour each Let's Play series. But kinda hard to find in via search box so thank algorithm god I found those, including yours! Also FF8 is my first FF games and number 1 FF series!

I didn't know what to expect when I first started watching this video. By the end, I loved it! This is a unique way to tackle a game. I can't wait to see more from the channel 🤙

You're a madman! I can't imagine the amount of patience you have. Such an amazing accomplishment!

You're prob the best challenge runner out there, and my favorite one for sure. From the concept, to the passion and effort you put, to your great commentary. I just hope the algorithm appreciate your work as much this time, best of lucks man

This is seriously the most insane ff8 challenge run I've seen mad props! I have watched this a couple times now and everytime it amazes me that u were able to do this.

I didnt play ff8 officially until a couple years ago due to the battle system/junction. Once I got it down i loved it. I got the lionheart (2nd best wep) before leaving that first area on the map. Great music Edit woah the pronounciation of the first summon first time hearing it as something other than "if uhr it" or "if uh rit"

I'm thrilled to see this! Your Final Fantasy IX video was why I subscribed, and I'm really loving this one so far (still watching) =D I enjoy all of your content, but I personally find it a lot more interesting to see you tackle challenges which must be overcome within the game's standard mechanics, rather than with speed-run tricks or glitches. And RPGs are great for that!

I love watching this. It's a refreshing change from all the speedruns that I watch. Occasionally, I love to watch torture runs.

Finally finished with this one. This is actually the only big name FF game I've never played but you got me interested in checking it out now! Definitely gonna play a bit more casually though. Good run and thank you for the hard work! While I didn't attend any of the streams, I did get frequent discord notifications so I have an idea of just how much work went into this masterpiece!!

And this is why Selphie is the strongest FF character in existence

oh look, the way i tried to play as a kid because i didnt understand the junctioning system!

This is my favorite game of all time, I've beaten it many times, but I never would have imagined that winning with nothing but the attack command was possible. Thank you for all the MANY hours you undoubtedly sank into this challenge just to entertain us. What a cool accomplishment!

Finally got a chance to watch this one - it is an insane achievement, and you did a good job explaining and showing it off! There was a surprising amount of strategy for a playthrough that can only ever use the "Attack" command.

You're an absolute legend for this! That's some serious dedication!

FF8 is my favorite FF game and one of my favorite games of all time, so you can imagine my excitement when I saw this video pop up. From the title alone, my experience with the game told me that Limit Breaks would be the star of the show. I seem to have remembered hearing that enemies scaled with Squall's level specifically rather than the average level of the party, but trying to look that up now seems to confirm I was wrong. Regardless, I could see this run going one of three ways. 1) High-damage Limit Breaks to get through bosses as quickly as possible (Squall, Zell, and Irvine would be my choice for this strategy). 2) Versatile Limit Breaks to access effects you wouldn't have otherwise (Quistis and Selphie have those, maybe Rinoa but she's RNG-dependent if I remember). 3) Cheese it with The End. Now that I've finished watching, I'm kinda glad that it involved all three of my supposed strategies. Sure, there are parts where the party is split up and you have to work with what you have, but I think it would have been a lot less interesting if you did the same tactic for every boss throughout the video. This turned out to be a fascinating project, I'm thoroughly impressed with the results and it reminded me of a few things I had forgotten about (like how much damage Quistis can do with Blue Magic). I still stress that the Junction system isn't that complicated and if I could manage it as a kid then anyone else can do it too, but that's an essay of a comment for another video :P

I had never really ventured into FF8 at all prior to this video, but despite what little I'd seen of it I had a great time watching. A lot of the game mechanics really surprised me in how complex and unique they were, I can definitely see why people like this game now. Props for making such a well structured and edited video. (I'm a FF5 guy myself, just can't help but love the complex job system, surprisingly well written characters, and absurdly hard superbosses)

Your commitment to these challenges is amazing. Commentary and humour are top notch. Thanks for the entertainment!

Fantastic content. Thank you and keep up the good work!

This was so fun! Except Angelo during Ultamecia, what in the world dog... Still, this has quickly become the channel i most hope to see notifications from!

I absolutely love your channel. Such amazing production value, charismatic personality and CRAZY challenges! Keep up the amazing work.

ultimecia's greatest gambit was making rinoa learn angelo strike while puppeting her in space

This is amazing, the planning needed to pull off all of this is simply amazing.

This is insanity at full force a healthy respect for quite a feat, never thought such a thing was possible.

FF8 is well and truly my favorite game in the series, and was the first one I ever played, and it's so gratifying to hear someone pronounce Seifer and Quistis the way I do! Your enjoyment of the game super came through in this video, and I found myself completely captivated for the entire duration even though I'd only meant to watch a few minutes to see if I wanted to queue it up for later. Thanks so much for making this video, I love seeing people enjoy my favorite game that seems so maligned by a lotta FF fans!

Wow. That was extremely impressive. I enjoyed watching this video a lot. You have put so much work into this project. I have so much respect for you. That must have been exhausting and frustrating and yet extremely satisfying in the end.

What a run. I never thought this was possible. Excellent run sir!

Nitaj12 Here from the stream, it was very fun

Wow i cannot express how much i appreciate this fascinating vid, the editing was incredible and there was never a dull moment. I beat this game for the first time a few days ago, as I failed to fully understand the junctioning system as a kid. It's now become possibly my favourite FF game that I've played. Super weird and unique levelling system. If i did not see this video with my own eyes I would've expected this challenge to be absolutely impossible. Thank you for the good times!

Very nice video man! I'm a fan of FFVIII and it was a really fun ride you took us on!

It feels like The End is making up for the horrible nightmare that is Cait Sith's slots and it forcing you to die unless certain conditions are met.

this is amazing, if only I knew how intricate this game was when i was a kid

This was absolutely great. I was 100% sure this would be impossible given that some enemies use devastating magic when defeated.

Amazing video I am in awe of the effort you put into these

I'm a huge FF8 fan and this was an amazing run!

I've never played this game. I still found this video interesting to watch and watched it through to the end. I see you've got a video on FF9 that I am about to go check out. Appreciate the work that was put into this.

Congratz man! That was an awesome run!

I'm not a fan of Final Fantasy VIII , but this run was very entertaining and exciting to watch , great job

From the start my response was "Yes but with great difficulty"

I recently played through FF8 for the first time, and I feel like I can appreciate this run a lot more than I did watching it the first time (although it was fun both times ^^) Thank you for your fun videos, and taking us alongside you on your journey :)

Loved the commentary. I learned a few things from you, even after beating this game a couple times.

I remember playing this when it came out in the 90s and using do over to try get aura. I was going quite fast and the end came up. I'd never seen it before and accidentally skipped past it. I never saw it after and thought I imagined it.

The real challenge was coming up with all those creative pronunciations 😂 Great video x

Always a pleasure when I see a new video of yours pop up!

Man I loved this game on my teenage years great memories hey how dare you not get squall final weapon

The best FF ever made. Great job!

FFVlll got me into RPG's back in the early 2000s and now seeing how much of dedication people has put into it is amazing, thanks for taking the time of breaking the game like this and showcasing to people, truly magestic!

Wow, I've beaten this game several times over and I did not know you could input all Duel commands immediately. With Weapons Monthly, I assume that's intentional, but I'm not so sure here. Great video by the way. I've been watching (FF) challenge runs for over a decade and it's great to see them finally reaching this level of production quality and widespread appeal!

About the gauntlet of eshtar soldiers in the second laguna dream: by solving the puzzles in the zone you can literally avoid all of them save for the last two.

You should try the Freelancer only challenge in FFV. I don't imagine it will be as much of a struggle as this. I made it to the final dungeon but couldn't overcome the last few bosses but it was really fun.

Just thought I'd correct a few of your pronounciations. Ultimecia is pronounced Ul-ti-me-sha. Seifer is pronounced Sai-fer.

This was a rad video, man. Great job!

I love how many ways there are to play this game. Great work!

0:38 Max level in FF8 is 100? Bro that's so cursed somehow

I love FF8 so much, it's my favorite in the series and one of my GOATs. Awesome idea for a challenge run, and great commentary!

2023 and I still discover new stuff about this game, is amazing, great video!

So when I first played this as a 9-year-old back in '99 I 100% did not follow or understand the Junction system at all so I ignored it (junctioning magic to stats that is). As a result I mainly made it through the game by spamming GF summons for every boss and a lot of normal enemy encounters. I made it to the start of disc 4 until the fight with Adel stopped me as I couldn't summon without killing Rinoa and wasn't good enough to beat the boss normally. Flash forward to my late teens when I replayed FF8 actually following the junction system and I breezed through it without issue.

Skipping over The End at 1:00:27 hurt my soul. It's so easy for that to happen and it is tragic every time.

Don't find any words, very well accomplished! Congrats! 🎉

Excellent work! The RNG manipulation and consulting of the tables near the end of the run was insane.

Wow that run was insane

I thought I knew everything about the game, but I've never heard about how to finish the battle against Edea in CD1 faster 😲