For the record. With the 3X speed, the card game for refinement is now totally worth it. Also, the 3X speed appears to have zero effect on card rule degrade, so you can get away with triple the actions with the Open-All rule.
The Trepe Fan #1 drops an Elnoyle card about every 1.5 minutes instead of every 4 or 5 (you need 20 to craft into the parts for the Lionheart). Plus you get a lot of Behemoth and Ruby Dragon cards in the process (getting the “All” rule from Balamb Garden) meaning you can get Lionheart + Flare junction relatively easy (if you enjoy just God-moding through the story like I do. It still takes a fair bit of work and is really not required, I mostly just wanted to finally do a low-level card based power-up game, but always found it too time consuming each time I attempted it.
I have about 4 hours into this game, so far and have not left Balamb Garden for more than a few minutes...... Taking my time!
Also, I’ll note the FF8 remaster is far prettier than the FF7 or 9 remasters. I think that while 8 was better looking than FF7 to begin with, due to the much higher details there ended up being a lot more room for improvement, although it wasn’t quite as obvious. Also, the improved graphics don’t pop-out that awkward way FF7’s improves models do (particularly in the darker Midgar segments).
