Final Fantasy VIII

weaker than the other ps1 final fantasy titles, but shines in comparison to modern jrpgs with anime writing

The black sheep of the PS1 Final Fantasy trilogy, but since it's still part of the legendary trilogy it's not a bad game, just that there is a lot of things wrong with it and majority of it involves the in-game mechanics.

The junction system is the biggest new mechanic introduced in 8 and the entire game revolves around it. Basically it's a replacement for armor/weapons as you equip your GFs aka summons which open certain slots for your stats which you can then "junction" magic into, which increases said stats (depending on the strength of the magic), and additionally can be used for giving your weapon elemental properties and a chance to hit certain status effect and yourself a resistance to status effects and elemental magic - all of that in one single mechanic, but here comes the first of the many problems; your stats increasement from magic is proportional to how much of the junctioned magic you have in stock with max being 100; the difference between junctioning e.g. 50 of certain magic and all 100 of it is massive so you always want to junction full 100.

And how do you get magic? There are some draw points around the world but mostly you get it by drawing it from enemies - which is why every time you encounter a new drawable magic from an enemy, the first thing you want to do is draw 100 of it with all 3 party members since it likely makes your party stronger, which is an arduous process since you can draw between 1 to maximum of 9 magic at one time from an enemy. Additionally you can extract magic from items with GF abilities which is useful for example getting Curaga early through Tents. Because your magic is tied to your stats you don't really actually want to use magic in this game outside of restorative magic (and Meltdown in the end-game) since it makes you weaker as you want to have full 100 of magic juntioned at all times. If you want to deal elemental damage, the summons are the way to go instead.

If that's not enough to make the mechanics of the game sound silly, then lets talk about leveling up. Normally in RPGs you want to level up to make your characters stronger, but in Final Fantasy 8 it is actually optimal to stay as low-leveled as you can since the devs thought of a rule of making the enemies level up along with you so every single enemy and boss in the game range from level 1 to whatever their cap, with them being weaker the lower the level, and since you don't get experience from defeating bosses it is fairly easy task to stay low-leveled. While your stats do increase upon leveling up, it's actually nothing compared to the boost you get when properly junctioning magic, which is why staying low-leveled is so good. Leveling up in this game itself is a bit dumb since you get a new level every 1000 experience points, and this never changes so leveling up feels a bit arbitrary. With this system you level up slow in the beginning, while in the end-game you almost get a level after every battle, which is like huh? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?

One interesting part about the game is the SeeD rank you can increase by taking "tests" or performing well on missions and other parts of the game which increases your "salary" you get on constant intervals while playing the game, which is the only way to gain money outside of selling items, but because of the mechanics mentioned above you actually don't do jack shit with this money for there are no weapons or armor to buy, which is another way of feeling progression in JRPGs that FF8 lacks. You can upgrade your weapons but this is not where the money goes either as it's a mere cheap fee since upgrading your weapon relies on gathering resources through defeating certain enemies, which is another annoyance to add to the list in this game.

So with all of these weird decisions by devs surely the story at least is good? But unfortunately that is an another miss. The beginning of the game feels alright since you graduate from your "school" to join its mercenary squad and go on missions and shyt which is cool and all and quite unique to JRPGs, but then it suddenly turns into what is most fairly described as simply a mess. Additionally the romantic bits feel forced when during the entire game the MC shows no interest on others but then suddenly out of nowhere decides that he, in fact, does like that one bytch... HUH? It was easier to relate to Laguna's and Raine's bit on the outro than the actual romantic interest that is the focus of the latter part of the game.

With all of that said you would think I would hate this game, but it has some enjoyable bits to it and abusing the junction system to turn your party into absolute units can be fun. Just majority of the game is mediocrity.

Absolutely horrible game. I can’t think of anything about it to recommend playing it. Not even as a so bad it’s good affair. Horrible and broken storyline on par with something on MST3K, boring characters, boring protagonist who is a royal emo dick for most of the game, crappy soap opera theatrics, dull aesthetic, idiotic gameplay mechanics that are worthless and entirely tedious and add to how insufferable this abortion of a game is, mediocre soundtrack bar a few tracks, ugly enemy design, boring dialogue, nauseating romance aspect, trash side quests. Being between good entries doesn’t automatically make 8 good by default.

I'm one of those people who thinks Final Fantasy 7 is comfortably the best entry in the series, and for a while, Final Fantasy 8 captures a similar magic in its compelling, evocative fantasy world scored with Nobuo Uematsu's music. If you overlook the somewhat confounding combat/RPG mechanics, for my money the first disc and a half is about as good as Final Fantasy ever got. But there's a distinct point where the game's narrative starts to turn into complete and utter nonsense and it never really recovers. The baroque, lengthy, and unskippable summon animations are a bit much as well.

Final Fantasy's mainline entries always seemed to provide a source of valuable JRPG ideas, to the point where even their failed experiments were at least compelling on paper. Final Fantasy VIII was one of several testaments to the latter scenario. This work deviates from its brethren greatly, boasting an oddly relaxed atmosphere with modern environment designs and a subdued - but just as memorable soundtrack. Its battle mechanics followed suit, employing SMRPG's timed attacks and marked by a fixation on summons. What underwhelms is the overarching Junction system, which strangely evoked the creative but misused ideas from their NES trilogy. Foregoing traditional level-dependent stat growth, it relied on absorbing spells from enemies and assigning them to stats instead, but the repetition required spoils what is arguably their most fascinating approach to RPG systems yet. Junctions were almost Star Ocean-like in that aspect, namely regarding the latter's skills mechanic; a potentially rewarding goal in theory but diluted by the amount of necessary grind. The characters are generic and the story is a confusing mess, but the harrowing end sequence almost makes up for it.

Ah ff8... Truly the 'Yeezus' of Final Fantasy. And much like Yeezus, people still cant decide whether its insanely genius, or simply insane.

Much like Yeezus, this game was a sequel to an incredibly commercially and critically succesfull work, both being among the most iconic pieces of art in their genre to ever be released. And much like Yeezus, the artist told their fans to go fuck themselves and released an expiremental work that divided fans and critics alike, and is still controversial years later.

FF8 is a very weird game in many ways, its gameplay is weird, its story is weird, its world is weird, and even many of the cutscenes are weird- with the second to last one looking like it fits more in a Death Grips video then a Final Fantasy game. Let's get into the weirdness.

Gameplay-

Following the universal acclaim and-dare i say- perfection(!) of the Materia System of 7, they decided to make the ballsy move to completely ball it up and throw it in the trash for a system completely new and foreign to the series and, honestly, the genre. There are still not many games- if there are any- that play quite like FF8. And to that i say thank god because the gameplay here is absolutely fucking horrendous. In most JRPGs you defeat enemies, gain levels, and use those levels in skill points. Not in FF8. Here you are punished for defeating enemies, as enemies scale with your current level, though to a higher degree then you, meaning you are paradoxically actually stronger-relative to your opponents- when you are weaker, which is fucking stupid. Gone is a "MP" system, instead you acquire spells by equipping the "Draw" ability. Which- for some reason- is mapped in the menu as a core Ability for each of your party members, meaning if you want to draw something out of battle you must unequip your ability to use items, spells, or GFs, which is mindbendingly fucking stupid. Ill be honest, i did not understand the Junction System. Despite spending most of the first 2 hours(!) vomiting tutorials at me, the game did an exceptionally poor job explaining it, so i mostly told the Junction system to fuck off, assuming the game wouldnt require me to go out of my way to use it, and i could play the game using my wits and basic abilites, which worked until i was softlocked at the third-to-last battle of the game, leaving me unable to progress. Fucking fantastic. I do like the additions of GFs, however, but every other change is for the worse, leaving FF8 to be one of the least satisfying jrpgs i have ever played, gameplay wise.


Characters-

FF8's characters, much like everything else about it, are similarly controversial and hotly debated. Main character Squall is borderline iconic, though not as much as Cloud, though for every 3 fans of Squall, there are 2 people who want to do things to him that would make Ted Bundy blush, and i cant blame them. For the first good half- or maybe longer- of the game, Squall is an absolutely insufferable borderline autist (and i mean that in the literal social disability sense, not youtube comment insult sense) antisocial pompous brooding unfriendly full-of-himself jackass that thinks hes too cool to have emotions. While he goes through a fantastic arc and improves himself over the game, first impressions are important and Squall leaves a horrible one. The rest of the cast is shockingly forgettable, and none of them besides Squall and kind-of-Rinoa( the main girl- will talk about her later) go through anything resembling an arc. Selphie is a ambigiously happy-go-lucky bubbly girl who likes trains and her home country/garden. Thats kind of it. Zell is an ambigiously happy-go-lucky subpar shonen protagonist who loves fighting and speaks his mind, is hotblooded but means well, etc. Thats kind of it. Quistis is a 'Milf' character despite being the same age as everyone else. Shes the 'mature' one, with glasses! Wow! Stunning. Irvine is the only other one other then the main pairing where it seems like they gave a shit, and even then his character has 0 progression. Hes a horndog with a heart of gold who means well, but his penis and goober-brain get in his way more often then not. Even the antagonists are remarkably poor- Edea and Seifer are incredibly overhyped early in the game and end up being boring, lame, and borderline pointless, and Ultimecia is not even a character. She has 3 lines of dialogue and then you fight her. Whoopee. That leaves Rinoa- the main girl, and the most ignored FinalFantasy girl probably ever. Theres just nothing to her, they did a great job writing a realistic teenage girl but thats all she is. She doesent have any flair, shes just pubescent and relatively normal. Shes not strong like Tifa, not cute like Aerith, doesent go through an arc like Dagger, isnt 'innocent' like Yuna, shes just kind of there. Shes 'kind of' tough (leading a revolutionary group), 'kind of' spoiled (saying things like 'Meany!' and overrelying on Squall for companionship, much to his chagrin that eventually turns into appreciation), shes 'kind of' a lot of things but nothing defines her, leading to a mass case of fan apathy surrounding her. Which is a shame because of the best scenes in FF history (Yes- the entirety of FF!) are absolutely heartmeltingly adorable scenes between her and Squall that i absolutely love (though they express their feelings extremely late into the game- leaving the player feeling unsatisfied and wanting more) At the end of the day shes like a great bowl of oatmeal. You wont remember it, but you definitely enjoyed eating it... though you would have enjoyed something more substantial more.

Story-
FF8's story is another weird one, very layered and complicated. I wont reveal much here or talk about it much sicne i feel its best experienced knowing little, but i thought the story was satisfying, albeit a bit rushed with the whole Dream-World aspect, and i didnt give a shit about Laguna or his arc at all. There were also many dropped plotpoints- Laguna's original crush and the weird 'Garden Rebellion' that is never brought up again- for example, leading the story to feel a bit more messy then im used to with Final Fantasy. The ending cutscene was notably horrible, leaving me unsatisfied and playing with comically unsutiable high-octane music that contrasted badly with the serene epilogue that was playing



Overall this is a good, albeit very frustrating, game. I wish they gave Rinoa and Squall's relationship more time to breathe and didnt implement the absolutely terrible Junction system, but oh well. Id still recommend picking this up for 25-30 bucks. Its strangeness makes it a different, unique, experience if anything.

high 5 or low 6 out of ten