Getting back to my FF8 grind.
I hit 130 hours of game time on this.
1.8 Million Gil.
Nearly at 100 Energy Crystals to convert into 1,000 Pulse Ammo for Irvine, with some leftover room in the back for Squall's Lionheart.
Haven't even been to the Fire Cave to get Ifrit yet.
It's not AS BAD as the FF7 grind I did for Vincent's Damage Overflow Glitch.
THAT was bad.
Like longer grind than the entire Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series level of bad.
That one almost broke me, it really did.
As soon as you get Vincent, basically you have to start killing everything with him.
All the way through max levels.
All the way through every frikkin side quest.
All the way through maxing out everyone's stats.
All the way through mastering every materia.
All the way through mastering 8 Knights of the Round for Barret's Damage Overflow Glitch.
All the way through mastering 8 Counter (blue) and 8 Mime materia for Limit Break Loops.
All the way through to the end of the game.
And then an additional 200 Hours of just killing things with just Vincent in a specific room in the game.
That last part? That's the part that made it bad.
Mind you, this was me doing it with the hustle on about getting it done.
All in all, that playthrough took me roughly...400 - 500 hours, give or take.
Which is a long playthrough for that game, but if you roll back the 200 hours, puts me at 200 - 300 hours instead. Not bad for a completionist sweep run of the game.
Doing it in a way so that I didn't really have to backtrack later as much to save time.
Thankfully I mostly know FF7 like the back of my hand.
The Card Mod thing in FF8, yeah it's taking me a long time as well, probably will take me around the same time, but at least it's at the beginning of the game rather than at the end of the game.
So at least I'll have a backup of an OP (overpowered) playthrough set up and ready for anytime I want to replay the game later at the end for just the story.
I also did do that with FF7.
I have a backup save with all characters (including Aerith) at level 99 just before the Temple of the Ancients near the end of the first disc.
So if I ever want to go back and casually play through for the story, I can do so by skipping nearly 1/3rd of the game and having OP (overpowered) characters.
"You could just use the Character Booster"
Yeah yeah, I know, but I first did this on the original PSX, so I wasn't thinking about the Character Booster options, I never use those.
All this grinding, makes me wanna do the 90s kid thing and go buy myself a pair of Soaps.
Do Soaps even exist anymore?
When I was a kid those shoes were awesome.
I got sidetracked and checked.
Nope, not really.
Found a vintage pair of used Soap shoes online for $400.
I ain't paying $400 for some used shoes, bro.
Not happening.
I'll stick to not having a life and doing these retro game grinds instead.
![Thomas]](https://cdn.imagearchive.com/alonelylife/data/avatars/s/14/14186.jpg?1631136400){kind=avatar}
