Final Fantasy VIII Card Battle rules revealed

[01.30.99] » FF VIII takes the "mini" out of "mini-game".

   Mini-games -- love them or hate them, they're here to stay, and they just keep getting bigger. With fewer than two weeks to go until the FF VIII is released, Square has revealed more about the Card Battle mini-game, including its fairly complicated rules.

Note the four numbers at the top center.

   If you haven't been following the story, the Card Battle game is a popular card game in the FF VIII world. You collect cards from various places and use them to challenge townspeople to a game. Most of the cards are based on monsters from the game, including Final Fantasy mainstays such as Bombs and Ahrimans (the red flying eyeball things). Each card also features four numbers arranged in a diamond pattern, which are used to determine the card's strength.

   The players take turns placing cards on a 3x3 grid. When two cards are placed next to each other, you compare the values of the touching sides -- for example, if card A was to the left of card B, then you would compare number on the right for card A, and the number on the left for card B. Whichever player has the card with the highest number then takes control of both cards, and play continues.

   Normally, you can only take control of one card per turn. However, you can take more if the sums of each set of opposing values are all 10 (say, a 5 vs. 5 on one side and a 7 vs. 3 on the other), or if the values are all ties (such as 6 vs. 6 on one side and 2 vs. 2 on the other). Play continues until all 9 squares on the board have been filled, at which point the player with the most cards wins.

   With hundreds of different cards to collect, Card Battle should keep players occupied for quite a while. And to think that's just one of the games...