So here I am at the end of Final Fantasy VIII after 44 hours and two previous attempts to finish the game.  After all that, was this game worth almost two whole days of my life?  Here’s my review.  The Presentation and Gameplay sections should be safe to read if you haven’t finished FF8 while the Story section spoils the whole dang thing.  Beware!

Presentation

After the well-received Final Fantasy 7, all eyes were on Squaresoft as they were preparing to release their follow-up.  What would it be like?  And could it top the visual feast that was FF7?  I remember watching the television ads for Final Fantasy 8 and being wowed by the characters I was seeing.  Of course I knew it was a computer animated movie that I was watching but it was still impressive.  I think a lot of people bought Final Fantasy VIII because they wanted to see something spectacular coming out of their little grey Sony box.

And they weren’t disappointed - Final Fantasy 8 is a gorgeous game.  Blah, blah, pixellated characters, blah, blah, prerendered cutscenes, blah, blah, doesn’t age gracefully and so on.  Well bite me because Final Fantasy 8 was and still remains a visually stunning game.

I have to admire the developers for taking a risk (I will be coming back to this idea frequently).  Final Fantasy 7 featured very stylized, anime-inspired characters.  They gave the game a certain look, a visual consistency even with the big heads and the low-polygon bodies and the lack of noses.  That became the look of Final Fantasy for most people.  FF8 chucked all that and gave us realistic looking characters with (well almost) normal clothes, believable movements and a much more “mature” look.  When I first saw Squall laying on the bed in the infirmary I thought “He looks real.  How’d they do that?”

Now the truth is I much prefer unique, stylized characters.  I didn’t mind Cloud’s spiky hair and Zidane’s tail was alright by me.  Looking back, I think the PS1 did a better job representing those sorts of characters than the realistic chaps populating Final Fantasy 8.  While it lost some of the traditional fantasy trappings, the technical skill involved in creating FF8’s characters is undeniable.

The backgrounds are also, once again, simply gorgeous.  Obviously they are low-rez by today’s standards but I remember what it was like when these games were released and they were beautiful.  I’m impressed at the amount of work that went into creating each screen in the game.

Final Fantasy 7 set the bar high with its CG cutscenes and everyone expected amazing things on FF8’s four CD’s.  The opening cutscene as Squall and Seifer face each other with swords and feathers and grass and Rinoa and the beach was marvelous.  Another high point is the dance between Squall and Rinoa which was lovely, overflowing with warmth and perfectly set up the contrasting lead characters.  Now I have to say that the ending cutscenes were jarring and unpleasant to watch.  Maybe they weren’t explained well by the story, but they seemed to drag on and on and had definitely lost the “wow” factor by that point.

My main criticism of the visuals in Final Fantasy 8 is that Square has created a gorgeous world that seems somewhat generic and bland.  The steampunk-meets-fantasy worlds of FF6 and FF7 were immediately appealing and made me want to learn more.  FF8 presents a standard sci-fi world that was uninspiring to me.

However, I really can’t criticize Nobuo Uematsu’s musical score.  Maybe FF8 didn’t have quite the same number of memorable songs as its predecessors but they also didn’t have Liberi Fatali - a stunning song, made more so by the fact that it sounded nothing like other Final Fantasy music.  As always, I grew tired of some of the repetitiousness of the music and Balamb Garden’s theme song was a particular culprit.  I actually liked Laguna’s battle theme more than Squall’s and Eyes on Me was okay the first time I heard it but once was enough.  But on the whole this is another superior production from Uematsu-san.

Final Fantasy VIII gets an 8 out of 10 for presentation.

Story

Most good stories have both a compelling protagonist and antagonist, someone to identify with as he or she struggles against obstacles.  Like most console RPG’s, you don’t get to choose your protagonist, you’re stuck with Squall for better or worse.  A lot of people didn’t like Squall’s whiny “dark” nature and were quickly turned off from the game.  I sympathize with them as he is a big butthead for most of the game but I really didn’t mind him.  I knew he’d redeem himself and eventually he did.  Along the way Square took an interesting approach with Squall by showing us his thoughts.  Most of the time in console RPG’s we don’t get an insight into what characters are thinking.  Instead we get the infamous “…” response.  I can’t say that knowing Squall’s whiny “dark” thoughts made a huge difference in the game but it was an interesting change for Square.

His progression in the game came mostly from his growing romance with Rinoa.  While Squall is brooding and dark, Rinoa is all smiles and lightness.  it was amusing to watch them interact and to see her gradually work her way into his heart.  They don’t really answer the question of why she would find this asshole so attractive so we’ll have to leave that question for her therapist to answer.

The supporting cast is good but doesn’t really stand out.  Selphie is the typically cute but silly female with the short dress.  Zell pumps his fists in the air and acts brash.  Irvine mostly disappeared into the woodwork and Quistis seemed like she might have had a lot of depth to her character but they never really took her there.  I wish she’d had a more clearly defined love triangle with Squall and Rinoa.  It would have been nice had there been a stronger focus on an ensemble cast as Squall just wasn’t charismatic enough to carry the game.  Cloud wasn’t either but Barett, Tifa and Aeris more than made up for it.

What about an evil villain?  There was definitely no Kefka in the background of most scenes cackling maniacally.  Edea made a respectable baddie for the first part of the game and the scene where they tried to assassinate her was a lot of fun.  But eventually we realize she’s just a tool of the evil Ultimecia who is mostly faceless and nonthreatening until the end of the game.  Seifer had the potential to be an excellent counterpart to Squall but he disappeared quickly and when he did return he was relegated to The Big Bad’s Sidekick.  Instead of being held together by a nefarious villain, FF8 emphasizes a more personal story involving Squall, Rinoa and their friends.

And the backstory with Laguna?  It was an interesting diversion but ultimately felt distracting from the main plot.  Without any clear connection between the two until much later, Squall & co.’s story completely lost momentum whenever Laguna made an appearance.  While all the loose threads with Laguna’s group eventually came together, the whole side-story felt unnecessary and should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Ultimately, Final Fantasy VIII had a merely average story that lacked the depth and breadth of other games in the series.  I appreciate what the developers were trying to do and a change from the norm is always welcome but it just didn’t work very well.  The game suffered from trying to make the story both big and small at the same time.  A good game could be made from a focus on Squall’s story, his background, his inner demons and his relationship with Rinoa and his companions.  Another good game could be made from the story of a group of students fighting the evil plans of a time-travelling sorceress.  Trying to do both, the game succeeded at neither.

Final Fantasy VIII’s story gets a 5 out of 10.

Gameplay

The gameplay in FF8 is an odd mixture of awesome and frustrating.  Once again, the developers decided to break from the traditional and do something different.  And they definitely did something very different.

Honestly, at first blush (and second… ) the Guardian Force system was practically impenetrable.  Part of that were the tutorials which threw out a massive amount of text and stats without really showing how to use them.  But the biggest part was the nature of the beast - the GF system is completely different from what came before.  The closest to it was FF5’s job system but it was nowhere near this complex.  I think another reason why I was so bewildered by it was that I typically hadn’t paid attention to character statistics in Final Fantasy games either before or after FF8.  I could complete the game and never really needed to know what Edgar’s strength statistic was.  Not so in FF8 where stats become very important and junctioning GFs are the way to increase them.

And now that I understand the system, it all seems very easy and sensible but I think a lot of gamers spent an hour with the game, got confused and gave up like I did.  I’m glad I stuck with it though as building my GF army and my characters became quite addictive for me.  I’d spend a lot of time avoiding battles and changing enemies into cards to avoid obtaining experience points.  Why?  Because the levels of monsters and bosses scale with you.  If you are low-level then pretty much all the monsters are as well.  And if you grind for experience and spend a lot of time levelling your characters you can easily find yourself facing nearly-impossible bosses later in the game, particularly if you haven’t mastered junctioning and improved your stats.  So, much like Oblivion, I tried to keep my levels as low as possible.  I made it through 80-90% of the game under level 25 and only got up to level 32 shortly before the last dungeon.  It’s an strange gameplay mechanic and I really wish the developer’s decision to level enemies along with you was made very clear from the start of the game so you could plan accordingly.  I wouldn’t have known until later in the game if I hadn’t read about it elsewhere.

Another odd design decision is that your stats are increased by junctioning magic to them.  Magic spells become a commodity in this game which is completely different from any other game I’ve played.  If you want a high HP statistic, you’ll need to junction Cure magic (or Cura, or Curaga… ) to your HP.  The more you junction the higher your HP gets.  But what if you need to cure yourself after a battle?  Then you’re taking away from your junctioned pool of magic and your stat decreases accordingly.  The end result is the system punishes you for using magic and encourages you to hoard spells like precious gold.  I grew so used to not relying on magic that even in the last couple of battles I had a difficult time forcing myself to cast those Ultima spells I’d squirreled away.

Instead I used GF attacks a lot, particularly the awesome Cactaur once I figured out where he was hiding.  The problem with GF attacks is that there’s no way to skip or shorten the summoning animations.  Some of them take the better part of a minute while others (like Cactaur) were blessedly short which meant I used them a lot.

What all this means is that if you don’t really understand the game’s mechanics you can easily paint yourself into a corner where you are high level but have poor stats and the monsters and bosses are wiping the floor with you.  Or you can deliberately keep your levels low, maximize your stats and the game becomes a cakewalk.  At the end of the game Squall was routinely doing 2,000 to 3,000 damage with basic physical attacks.  One Renzokuken limit break was enough to wipe out some bosses.  It seems odd that you are basically encouraged to “break” the game and punished for playing it traditionally.

I liked that FF7’s minigame-happy trend didn’t carry over to FF8 but the minigames that we did have were irritating.  I never want to go through Squall’s mid-air fighting game again.  And, as I mentioned before, the last dungeon sucked.  It was unnecessarily punishing and filled with somewhat obscure puzzles and boss battle after boss battle.  I can’t think of another dungeon I hated more. 

Final Fantasy’s gameplay truly had a split personality, alternating between fantastic and irritating.  I’d love to see the GF/Junctioning system make another appearance in a more polished game but I’m not sure we’ll see that happen.

Final Fantasy VIII’s gameplay gets a 6 out of 10.

Conclusion

FF8 is known as the black sheep of the franchise but there are also very zealous fans out there.  Now that I’m finished with the game I can certainly see why.  There’s a lot to like in this game but there are equally frustrating and questionable design decisions.  Kudos to Squaresoft for not resting on their FF7-colored laurels and trying to break the mold.  While they succeeded in creating a unique game, it’s difficult to overlook its shortcomings.

Final score: 6.3 out of 10.

Yes it does suck.  Sucks badly in fact.  But Paul, why does it suck?

Once you enter the final dungeon, the game cancels out pretty much every command except for attack.  You can’t save, use items, resurrect dead party members, draw or summon GF’s.  And you have to fight a string of about eight bosses.  After you defeat a boss you get to choose one option that had been cancelled out at the start of the dungeon.  So I chose GF so I could spam Cactaur.  I love that little green dude and he does 4,000 damage and arrives really quickly.

But Quistis died during the next battle.  I can’t use a Phoenix Down to bring her back, I can’t cast Life as magic is out and I can’t go back to a recent save as I haven’t been able to save in the castle.  Without her, I died in the next boss battle so I had to start over at the beginning of the castle.

So I fight the first boss all over again not letting Quistis die this time.  I’d really like to be able to save but I also want to use Draw and all the other options.  But if I chose to recover the Save ability then I’m sorta gimping myself for the next battle as I can’t cast Magic or Draw new magic or use items or…  You get the idea.

It sucks badly.  It basically guarantees that you have to repeat the dungeon several times, re-fighting the same bosses over again and hoping you haven’t chosen your skill setup poorly.  If so, you’ll be starting all over with the dungeon again.

Man this game is puzzling.  On the one hand there is a really interesting character development and battle system.  I wrote about this before but if I let myself, I could spend most of my time fiddling with characters, increasing their levels and stats and min/maxing to my heart’s content.  But I’m not sure I’d really enjoy it, ya know?  That sort of thing only carries me so far.

On the other hand, there’s the story and the characters.  I’m nearing the end of disc 3 so I’m guessing I’m less than 10 hours from the end of the game and my desire to finish the game is fading.  Last night I watched an overblown, long, drawn-out scene where Rinoa was floating through space, thinking to herself.  Then Squall arrives to save the day and it continues to drag on and on.  I was hoping for an asteroid to collide with them after about 5 minutes.

And it’s not really Squall that I don’t like.  Sure he’s a big penis-head but he’s manageable.  It’s the ensemble of characters that don’t work for me.  It’s the setting that seems very generic and without soul.  I can’t help but compare FF8 with both FF7 and FF9 and its shortcomings are getting more and more noticeable.

I’ll finish the game and I’ll write a review when I’m done.  But it’s starting to get a bit tedious for me.

So I’ve taken the time to really try to understand the GF/Junction system and I’m starting to like it a lot.  The tutorials don’t help all that much as they seem pretty basic and I was wanting some details.  So after some internet searching I came upon this thread at GAF which outlines some of the more advanced “basics” of the game.  I liked what I read so I’m going to quote it here in case that thread goes “poof” someday.  My thanks to Himuro from GAF for a very clear and helpful explanation.

The first thing one must know about understanding Final Fantasy VIII is that, that first and foremost, enemies level up as you do. Now, usually this would not be much of a problem, but in Final Fantasy VIII, enemy stats grow rapidly as they level up, adding new attacks to their repertoire, and even changing what items they drop. In comparison, your stats tend to not increase greatly. This is because levels do not mean much in FFVIII.

Now, in order to maximize stats in FFVIII, you must unlearn every thing you have been taught in RPG school: the lower the level, the better; Magic in battle tends to mean jack squat, instead, you use abilities and skills to get the most out of battle. Now, the fun thing about Final Fantasy VIII is its versatility; you can make the game much more challenging by leveling up, not upping your stats with GF abilities, you can make party members that concentrate on individual traits, or make them all the same. You will find yourself getting weaker while the enemies continue to get stronger: beat Ultimecia with a level 100 party without GF stat upgrades and all that fancy stuff, I dare you.

Final Fantasy VIII is a very versatile rpg, which allows a lot of customization and players can choose their own specific play styles, these are not required but I truly feel that they make the game a lot more enjoyable. I didn’t like Final Fantasy VIII the first time I played it, but a few years ago I gave it another shot and played it with more experience under my belt and began to fully appreciate what Square had did here: one of the best character customization systems ever. It became my favorite Final Fantasy after that, and one of my top 5 games ever.

How to get the most out of Final Fantasy VIII:

1. Levels do not mean much at all. The lower the level, the easier time you will have. The higher the level, the harder time you will have.

2. Junctions are crucial.

3. Drawing is not the only way to obtain magic. It is best to draw all you can from new enemies whenever they show up, and then convert those weak spells you got into higher level magic, thusly creating more powerful junctions. That, and converting monsters into cards for powerful magic, or items into magic can take you far.

I’ll use an example. At the beginning of the game, you can make your HP sooo high. Simply go to Balamb and buy tons of Tents, and turn them into Curagas. Heal magic works EXTREMELY well on HP. Antidotes, on the other hand, can be turned into Bio’s. Bio is a good early game magic for junctioning as well. Look into it. Experimentations is what makes FFVIII so fun.

4. In order to make drawing less tedious, you must have a good magic stat.

5. Using magic to attack is almost meaningless in Final Fantasy VIII, but I’m not going to stop you from using it. Me? I don’t use it because I need as much magic as possible for junctions.

6. GF abilities. This is REALLY important. The first thing you should always learn is boost. This allows you to boost your GFs and make their attacks more powerful. Simply hold select and mash on Square when necessary.

After that, you should definitely go for the elemental atk-j, elemental def-j, str-j, vit-j, mag-j. Elemental defense-J and attack-j allow you to guard against certain elementals, or attack with certain elementals. Obviously, the higher the stat, the more powerful the ability works. This is handy when fighting against certain enemies, for example, the giant Mecha Spider at the beginning of the game, it’s good to equip Thunder to your characters Elemental-ATK since it is weak against it. Strength-J allows you to customize your strength stat, likewise with Magic-J and Vitality-J allow you to customize those specific stats.

After that, concentrate on Magic-RF abilities. Abilities such as T Mag-RF, L Mag-RF, Mid Mag-RF, I-Mag RF;etc. These allow you to turn things into spells. With this, you can do crazy stuff like turn Tents into Curagas.

At the beginning of the game, the best place for AP is the Balamb coast, where you can fight the flying goldfish guys. They give 2 AP a fight, and are extremely weak. You can cover many GF abilities fighting them, in no time.

7. Specific GF abilities you can should concentrate on ASAP at the beginning of the game. We’ll concentrate on more powerful GFs later on while you guys are actually playing.

Diablos:

MUG - steal from enemies while giving them damage.

Enc-half - Decreases encounter rate to HALF the normal rate.

Enc-none - Decreases random encounters to zero. For players like me who like to speed run FFIVII, this is one of the first abilities you should get. Whenever you get to a new area, turn it off so you can update your magic from enemies through drawing and card’ing them.

Quetzacotl: Card - turn enemies into cards, for those of you doing a low level game, you earn no EXP.

Card Mod - turns cards you earn into items.

Ifrit:

Str+20% - increases str stat 20%
Str+40% - increases str stat 40%

8. Power gaming. Now, the key to getting the most out of power gaming FFVIII is the low levels. You will notice that some GFs have abilities that increase your stats by 1 point when you level up, which is STACKED ON TOP OF YOUR REGULAR LEVEL UP BOOSTS. To take advantage of this, you only learn such abilities at a low level. Let’s say my level 10 Squall equips a Strength bonus ability. When I ever decide to level him up, he will gain 90 extra points in str. That is how you maximize stat potential in FFVIII. Junctions can only do so much. Doing this not only allows you to stand toe to toe with the foes you face, it also frees up your GF command abilities, allowing you equip more interesting abilities like Devour, Mad-Rush;etc. instead of wasting space with puny abilities like Str+20%, Str+40%, HP+20%;etc.

Now, how do you stay at a low level the entire game? Many ways:

1. Running away - the most simplistic measure, but also the most boring.
2. Turning enemies into cards - This is the way I go. You not only gain zero XP, you also benefit from gaining a card of the enemy in question, which equates to more magic.
3. Break - Casting break petrifies enemies, which ends the battle immediately when all enemies are petrified. In order to take advantage of this trick, though, you have to cast it at the beginning of a fight. You earn any xp for whatever actions you did you against the enemy, this is why it’s crucial to cast at the beginning of a fight.
4. Enc-None - The best way to not level up is not fight at all!

It would be boring if you did this stuff the entire game, it entirely depends on your playstyle. I won’t stop folks from leveling up in the game, but at least take into consideration that there’s 1. More ways to obtain magic than drawing, 2. FFVIII is a very versatile game, and you can make it as hard or as easy as you want.

So that’s my game-plan for now.  And I have to say that working on my GF’s abilities makes the random fighting very useful.  The ability to level up GF’s and increase their range of abilities and, in turn, make my own characters more powerful scratches a very addictive itch for me.  It makes me want to keep playing for just a few more AP.

I’ve put in about 5 or 6 hours and have just finished hijacking the President’s train only to discover that he was a fake President and an easy-to-defeat boss.  I’m kicking serious butt early on in this game.

Third time’s a charm, right?

I’ve started and given up on Final Fantasy VIII twice now. Why? And why am I going to try to play it again?

I loved Final Fantasy 7 (dispensing with the roman numerals here before it gets confusing) right off the bat. It had interesting characters and a cool setting and a story that interested me. And it looked great at the time. When I heard that FF8 was coming I was excited. The day I bought it, I raced home and shoved it in my PlayStation and an hour later I was bewildered.

While Cloud was annoying at times, Squall was downright rude and unlikable. The characters were teenage students, not resistance fighters. And the Guardian Force and Junction system were completely impenetrable to me. In retrospect, I was unprepared for how different it was compared to FF7. And I resisted FF8 and really didn’t give it a chance. I tried it again a year or so later and had a similar problem and shelved the game.

Yet I kept reading about FF8 and what a great game it was. Articles like this (link) made me think that maybe I was missing something after all:

It can be a bit overwhelming, which is why a lot of gamers initially ignored the system in favor of spamming the summon beasts, each of which were accompanied by overly long, drawn out cinemas. As such, there’s a strange divide – if you fully understand the ins and outs of the system, you can totally break the game; but if you don’t, it becomes obnoxiously difficult.

Still, those who like to micromanage stats and completely beef up the characters — potentially the same kind that would find Final Fantasy V to be paradise — can feel right at home with Junctioning. So ignore the sloppy romance and the trashy love ballad that goes along with it — this is what Final Fantasy VIII should be known for.

So I’m going to give it another go. It’s been long enough since I first played through FF7 and I think I can keep my expectations more neutral now. Plus I’m a lot more seasoned in the RPG genre now so I don’t think I’ll have to be afraid to Junction anymore.