Final Fantasy VIII Review

 Beaten 2020
  I first played Final Fantasy 8 the Christmas it came out. I was riding high off of my immense enjoyment of my first ever RPG--FFVII--and I think I was expecting something too much like that. While I enjoyed the game to some extent, I was overall off-put by it, and struggled so much with the game that I used GameShark codes to cheat my way to the end credits.

Fast forward many years to 2020, where I decided to pick it up again and vowed to beat it without cheat codes. And after much pleading from two of my good friends that I give this game a genuine try.

I put about 60 hours into the game. I did every side quest, other than defeating the last Weapon in the end castle area. It was a great game, although I still don't know if I completely like the draw system. Thankfully, this is remedied by the ability to synthesize magic from items instead of drawing it from enemies. The junction system is probably one of the most strategic ever made in FF history so far, and has a lot of nuance and complexity to it and was really great.

I appreciate it as a love story that is very well executed. It also has a very engrossing world and the different things that characters in its populated areas will say depending on where you are in the story is very immersive. Squall and co. are also distinctive, memorable characters. The writing is superb. The game does a wonderful job of a teenage coming of age story with romance as the main catalyst of maturing. Squall communicating with thoughts much of the time (well, I thought that was good, and really helped develop the character).

The story is really good. I liked the use of a sorceress as the main villain. It's definitely one of the most memorable FFs. There are some interesting twists and turns to the story. I appreciate that it wasn't just riding off of FF 7's success, but thoroughly was doing its own thing.

I have mixed feelings about the side quests. The side quest to get Odin has you exploring the ruins of an ancient civilization which was very interesting and intriguing. The Deep Sea Research center was brutally difficult yet enjoyable; it made me go back to the drawing board, and really get better at the junction system of 8. The Queen of Cards side quest can go fuck itself, though. This is probably my least favorite side quest ever. It was archaic and enigmatic. There were times where I was unsure who had the card I needed to win. There were times it took many, many hours to get the card I needed. There were times I had to manipulate the archaic RNG of the game so that I would even have the card rules which would allow me to have a chance to win. It was the most pain in the ass I had ever dealt with for side questing. This is not to say it was without enjoyment, just that there was a lot of extraneous garbage that ruined much of the fun of playing Triple Triad. The side quest to get the alien card was rather obtuse and without a strategy guide would have been really quite a pain. It was pretty fuck it off and enjoyable with a guide, though.

I like that there's leveling scaling in the game, but I despise how the game doesn't explain its own mechanics very well. I would say across the board, the tutorials for the game are lacking--especially given the complexity of everything. If I had known it wasn't worth it to level up, then I would have avoided that a lot more. If the game could have made it more obvious that this was so, I wouldn't've cared so much. A bit of a fumble with that and explaining its other systems, in my opinion.

I really enjoyed the traveling across time, to back when Laguna was up to his hijinks and how each character was connected to characters of the past through the power of the sorceress. It was fun and intriguing to learn of the nuance of Laguna and Squall's relationship and connection even after the connection between them from the past world to the present world. Zell is still a very memorable monk-ish fighter character to me--full of spunk and fighter's zeal. Rinoa is a memorable character. Quistis is a favorite. Selphie is cute but I thought forgettable. Irvine is a bit of a narcissistic playboy; but all the characters, even though given such little development, are given spades of character and seem to grow along with Squall, and are complex and well-developed. Having said that I would have liked to see more exposition about other characters, yet at the same time this is how the relationship of Squall and Rinoa is given such breadth and depth.

Most of all, I liked that FF8 tried to be a very different FF. It tried so many new things, and instead of being your rote FF it took big risks and chances and sought to remake the typical JRPG mold. It was also very successful at this, and in a very memorable way. This all makes for a really great game that I feel doesn't get enough credit. I was sad to be done with the game, yet relieved. Relieved to say I survived the arduous Queen of Cards sidequest. Happy to have finished up to then unfinished business with FF 8. Glad to have fully experienced this game when I was older and more mature. As I feel that was part of what I missed. The game really asks you to become a teen again, and grow up as Squall does--and does this well!

9/10