A lot of people give Final Fantasy VIII a bad rep. Mainly because it followed Final Fantasy VII, which as most of us may know, and or think was the greatest of the series. Therefore 8 had some very large shoes to fill, so of course by comparison it may “suck” in some peoples eyes. What you need to do, is think of each Final Fantasy as a game on its own. Forget the previous ones, don’t compared it to its predecessors.
I’ll break the aspects of the game down into separate sections as I go along.
The Story:
I’m skipping a lot, because quite frankly I don’t want to write out the entire story of FFVIII…
The story starts off as Squall training to become a SeeD member, which is the elite rank you can achieve in your “Garden“. Immediately find out that you have an arch-enemy, Seifer. Both of you are trying to reach the status of SeeD. Seifer fails by breaking his orders during the SeeD test mission, and leaves the Garden feeling betrayed. The plot then takes its usual twists, and turns. The end of Disc one is absolutely amazing. Seifer ends up becoming the Sorceresses bodyguard. The Sorceress is the leader of Garbaldia, the “bad guys” so to say. You battle it out with Seifer ,and the Sorceress. Squall almost gets killed.
The 2nd disc was also great, even more so than the 1st. The cut scenes when you’re battling Garbaldia Gardens near the end of disc 2 is just “wow”. The plot thickens immensely in the 2nd disc. You learn more about all the main characters. Over all its very good. Probably the best parts of the game are during the 2nd disc.
3rd Disc. Now sadly, the story honestly feels like it runs out fuel around this disc. It starts to get cheesy. You find out that the Sorceress was actually possessed by a more powerful sorceress know as Sorceress Ultimecia. She was once a very powerful leader in the past, but was locked away in stasis. Then sent in space.. Yeah… Oh yes all the monsters throughout the world also come from the moon. Well anyway it turns out there is this advanced race on the planet hidden away from the rest of the world. They’re capable of space travel. I don’t know, I just personally found it all “Forced”. But there are some very emotional moments during this period. Here’s possibly the most emotional part of disc 3.
Rinoa ends up getting stuck in space after being used by the Sorceress. Just watching this video doesn’t really do the part justice though. You have to play through the game, and know the characters. You feel some what attached to them, the grow on you..
Now once you’ve completed Disc 3, all time compresses. The music for when this originally happens is great too.
Onto Disc 4. Well Disc 4 isn’t exactly long, you can’t go to any of the cities anymore. They’re all surrounded by barriers. The 4th disc is mainly composed of Ultimecia’s castle. It’s not small dungeon though. It takes a good chunk of time to get through all the little puzzles and the many bosses. Including the optional Omega Weapon boss. Who’s very hard to say the least. The only way I could ever beat him was by “carding” my Bahamut Card to get 100 Mega Elixirs. Which I really hated doing because I’m one of those people who likes to collect EVERY SINGLE ITEM.
God this guy was a bitch to beat…
Anyway, you beat Ultimecia. End of the game.
Now overall, I’d say the story is really good up until the middle of Disc 3, its when things start to become a bit of a stretch. Like I said before, it feels forced. Like they completed FF8, then realized they only had half a game. So they added “Filler”. Either way, I still liked the story.
The Main Characters:
All the Characters were pretty well done I’d say. Especially Seifer one of the main antagonists of the game. A lot of people complain that Squall comes off as “emo”. I really don’t see how. He just seems like a miserable character at first, who doesn’t really want to be where he is. Yet he has no desire to be anywhere. Haha I guess he does sound emo. But he becomes a good leader eventually through out the game. The love story behind him and Rinoa adds a lot of depth to him as well.
The heroes were all fun to play, other than Rinoa. She was the most boring one out them. I also liked how you were able to use Seifer and Sorceress Eda at a few points through out the game as well. They didn’t have any guest heroes in part 7. I kind of missed that, since FF6 was my favorite game until 7 came along. Which had guest heroes as well.
The limit breaks on some the characters were better than others. Zell was by far the most fun to use. You could chain together combos. However I found doing the same 2 moves over, and over again produced the best results.
The Mechanics & Game Play:
I actually liked the mechanics of this game more so than any other Final Fantasy. Monsters leveled up with you. Some people liked not leveling their guys because of this system. I actually always leveled up my guys to 100. Most people don’t notice, or use their Guardian force abilities. Some come with +XXX Stat at level up bonus’. So once you get all your guardian forces, you level all your guys up to 100. Make sure to equip them with +Str/Vit/Spirit bonus’. 255 Strength on Irvine is deadly with his “Quick Shot” ammo. Especially if you have a turbo controller, but some would call that cheating haha. I never had a turbo controller, but I always wanted to try it out. With the right set up, at level 100 monsters are actually easier to beat, then if you don’t level up.
With the junctioning system you can also easily brush aside monsters and bosses. You can usually max out the evasion on your party, they rarely get hit by melee attacks if at all. You can also junction certain spells to your weapons, for elemental damage, and negative status effects. It really added more to the game. It’s part of the reason why I love Final Fantasy 8 so much. It almost feels like you’re customizing your heroes. The only down side to the junction system was “drawing” spells from monsters. It becomes very tedious and annoying. Especially early on in the game, when you want to get powerful spells. You can convert say for example 5 fire spells into 1 fira. Then you can even further convert 5 fira spells into 1 firaga. So it really takes time if you’re that dedicated. Which I was…
They also had a neat little mini-game. You could obtain “cards” and play random people from all over the world. You could win/lose cards. Final Fantasy IX had this same game, but it was more complex which I think really sucked to be honest. The one in Final Fantasy VIII was plain and simple. But very fun to play. Obtaining some of the rarer cards was extremely difficult sometimes. With out losing your own cards. The hardest card for me to get was always the “Alexandra” card. You had to play with the random rule. So you couldn’t pick your best cards. Some other cards were fairly tedious to get. You had to lose X card to Y person, then play another person to get X + Z card from. Sometimes there was even more steps involved.
The biggest flaw of this game I found, was the Aura spell. It grants you random limit break usage without being in the critical health range. So all you do is cast it on Squall once you’ve got Lionheart, and keep skipping your turn until “Limit” pops up. Cast your limit. Do MASSIVE damage. Win. I tried to avoid doing this, because it’s just cheap, and makes the game a breeze. Considering you can kill the end boss in two limit breaks with Squall.
The Graphics:
For the time Final Fantasy 8 had break through graphics. Even though its very “pixely”, the real time spells and guardian force summons looked amazing. The video cut scenes were astonishing. I really don’t think any game out there could compete with the videos at the time. The graphics were just top notch. There really isn’t much else to say about them.
Youtubes quality gives these clips no justice…
The Conclusion:
Final Fantasy VIII is an awesome game. I don’t like all the negativity people give it. It feels like people play it and their like “HEY THIS ISN’T FINAL FANTASY VII PART 2, THIS SUCKS!” *turn off game*. It kind of annoys me haha.
Some parts may be tedious, but come one all Final Fantasy’s have their tedious parts. Most people will never understand just how tedious Final Fantasy VIII really can be though.
Just give the game a chance!
I really recommend anyone who hasn’t played this game to try it out. If you play it all the way through and learn the deeper mechanics behind it. You won’t be disappointed.
Even though I give this game a bad rap, I actually do own it.
I've played it through two times now, and it never even occured to me to compare to FF VII (so I didn't). And yet, I still just don't like this game. The story was bad, the combat system was atrocious, graphics mean nothing to me, and the music was not on the same level as any other final fantasy ever. It's just a bad game!
It was mediocore at best. The most annoying thing about FF8 was that the storyline was heavily lacking. The character development between characters (especially squall and rinoa, I just didnt see how their romance started) was not there. The fighting system was kind of rigged, meaning if you get good limit break or use summoning, easy battles for you.
Positive aspects of this game...I liked the setting and it had good music..thats about it. I played FF7,8,9,10, and 12, I'd have to say I enjoyed 7 and 9 the most
didn't really like it to be honest and i don't really see any reason to recommend this game to anyone. we have so much better stuff around these days, and if you want an older game, then why FF8 over any other classic?
but the music is awesome, one of my favorites of the FF series, still listening to the piano versions sometimes
I felt like the main problem in this game was dialogue and characters. Seifer was the biggest disappointment; he was so lame and just a stereotypical high school show off. I wish they had made them deeper....and yeah the first half of the game was great but it began to become truly ridiculous towards the end.
the triple triad was the best sidegame ever though!
Note: Tactics >> VII in terms of storyline and characters
That's the real flaw, not Aura. :p (and you can just sit at low health and skip turns too)
Of course you don't have to abuse that, but the tedious drawing system [snip].
This is the main reason I don't like the game. I mean, I played through all of it, and many parts were interesting and in the very least playable, but OMG junctions/drawing and limit breaks were so retarded. Because of them, combat's probably the worst I've seen in a turn-based (includes ATB-based) RPG since the 8-bit era, and that's a huge show-stopper. Oh, and the fact that enemies level up with you doesn't help either, because this means the game is too easy no matter your level.
Also, you spend a lot of time in FF8 just running around towns having to talk to people. The towns really aren't that interesting, and there's no skill or real interaction involved moving your character around other than seeing some text pop up. Either the locations or dialogue could be more interesting, or they should just have less of it--it just gets tiresome as it is.
I'm going to take a pass on the plot, as the plot does a good enough job representing itself, whether positively or negatively. At least the Laguna stuff was cool.
I was completely guided by my brother when I first played this game, so I was terribly spoiled and I had no idea what the game was about even after I finished it. I like 9 the most (this is where I got my nickname) then 8 and 7, but that's because there's still many secrets I haven't found in those games, so I think 7, 8 and 9 are all great games and they're what made FF "FF".
I loved this game. The plot was truly sublime. The mechanics worked well (except for lvl 5 death when you were all lvl 100), the junctioning was pretty original and intuitive. Sure it could get boring if you insisted on drawing all your magic from shit but if you did you're a tard. Siren + life magic refine + 10 tents = 100 curagas. Junction that to life the moment you're back from Dollet and the game is won. I liked the characters a lot, I found the game very intuitive and interesting and the cut scenes were fantastic.
I only have played 7 and 9, I'll play this one some day. But personally the best of them all I think is number 6, damn that game was fun, and Kefka! he has got to be the best villain ever.
On October 06 2008 01:17 Ender wrote: the triple triad was the best sidegame ever though!
You have to of forogtten about chocobo hot n cold in FF9. That game was the BOMB. We used to have competitions to see who could get the highest scores.
As for FF8, I never really liked any of the characters which kinda hurt the game for me a bit. Also the combat system was really bad. You either spammed limit breaks or spammed summons (which cost nothing and protect ure character from damage). The magic was a load of junk, especially seeing as u had to basically farm for magic. Also, things moved very slowly in FF8, walking was very slow, the vehicles were very slow etc.
Also there were a few level designs which made u think that the developers got really bored and wanted you to waste some time + Show Spoiler +
Like the 20 story prison that made u walk around an entire loop to get to the next set of stairs OVER AND OVER again.
I wish people would credit their dislike of 7, 8, or 9 to their own personal tastes rather than pure inadequacies in the games themselves. I loved 7, liked 8, and didn't like 9... but I assume that's more stylistic incompatibilities with my RPG preferences than anything else. BTW I maintain that I'm one of the only people who didn't claim to 'like' or 'hate' FF8 lol.
Ok, I was really enjoying this game and the awesome cutscenes until that part with the orphans and shit? that's when i realized the storyline was written by a toddler and I decided it probably wasn't worth it to keep playing. After a while, I realized this applied to ALL final fantasy games, in fact, ALL or ANYTHING popular coming out of Japan short of Miyazaki. I realized that the people who lapped up this kind of shit were the same people who had no confidence and no social skills and no grounding in reality. So I moved on. Still, to this day I don't think I've seen better ingame cinematics.
The story of this game, as well as the atmosphere were probably the best in any game i've ever seen until the entire ultimecia bullshit.
The gameplay was easily the most flexible of any of the FF games; no being forced to wear a shitty item to learn skills, no being forced to sit around gathering 'experience' for materia, no being forced to do ridiculously faggoty sidequests for ultimate weapons. Junctioning allowed you to do whatever, whenever. If you WANTED to farm up 100 firagas before getting a single level, you could. If you wanted to play the game without any farming, you could. You could do anything, and that's the fun part.
I agree with this review completely. I really loved the story for the first half of the game, I loved playing as an elite mercenary team. But yeah, it got kinda ridiculous at the end (all FF games do, but this one especially...) and Lionheart was super imbalanced. I remember that basically all my other characters did was keep squall alive so he could own everything, he was doing at least 10 times as much damage as everyone else in any battle even without lionheart.
i thought 8 was better than 7, the storyline was amazing imo, how laguna's story intertwined with squalls, the end was realllly gay though (after rinoa becomes the sorceress) and disk 4 was like 2 hours long lol it was one of those games that made me feel sorry that i finished it the bad things were how squals limit break raped the shit out of everyone elses
the laguna thing really sold me though, laguna is like the perfect foil to squall he was energetic, wanting to meet people, had a machine gun squall was emo, depressed, used a blade + Show Spoiler +
but squall is his son fun fact: squall, raine (wife of laguna), and laguna are all "watery" names
On October 06 2008 01:41 ahrara_ wrote: Ok, I was really enjoying this game and the awesome cutscenes until that part with the orphans and shit? that's when i realized the storyline was written by a toddler and I decided it probably wasn't worth it to keep playing. After a while, I realized this applied to ALL final fantasy games, in fact, ALL or ANYTHING popular coming out of Japan short of Miyazaki. I realized that the people who lapped up this kind of shit were the same people who had no confidence and no social skills and no grounding in reality. So I moved on. Still, to this day I don't think I've seen better ingame cinematics.
EPT![[image loading]](http://snuffleupagush.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/final_fantasy_8-10resized.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.ffcompendium.com/EspMon/omegaweapon8-b2.jpg)
