My favorite Final Fantasy mini-game

• July 6, 2011
• James Skemp
• gaming

I've had Final Fantasy VIII for many years, but have never finished it. In fact, I've never gotten through the first disc.

However, having recently started it up once again, after picking up an electronic copy on the PSN (I still have the original, but this is the only legit way to play it on my PSP), I have to say that Final Fantasy VIII contains my favorite mini-game of the series, and perhaps one of my top favorites of all.

Triple Triad is a card game in which you go up against one other player. You each start with five cards from your collection. Depending upon the active rules you may see your opponents cards (and vice versa) or not.

Basically you each take turns laying down a single card on a three-by-three grid. Each card has a set of four numbers, for each side, and possibly an element type (which I've never gotten far enough to use). The objective is to have more cards than your opponent, where you take cards by laying a card next to one of theirs that beats the corresponding number.

It's not in English, but this video on YouTube shows one game.

And of course there's the addicting music.

Maybe it's because I've played this part at least 3 or 4 times, but there's nothing like the first time you go up against this particular player and win the Quistis card. My deck usually seems to be Ifrit, Caterchipillar, and the rest Bomb, until you get either Quistis or Wedge, Biggs, or Iron Giant. Once you have one or two of those last three you can easily win every game against this particular player, and provides some nice downtime if you don't want to move on to the next mission quite yet.

• playstation
• playstation portable