A video game published by Square for the Sony PlayStation console in 1999.
Text by NiGHTS108
Oh Final Fantasy VIII. Ohhhhh Final Fantasy VIII… Right here we find ourselves back at that awkward middle child game for FF games, where the differences with the previous aren’t really about adapting the formula to a new generation, this time it’s about trying new things and seeing what worked and didn’t work, and OH BOY does FF8 try new things. I think I’ve said this for the last two games now, but I mean it when I say FF8 is probably the most different game so far in regards to its general theme, tone, and even its gameplay. Honestly this makes discussing FF8 kind of fascinating, among this series that’s known for every entry being completely separate. One way this is most identifiable is in its music. Last time we talked about how FF6 was the grand finale for classic Final Fantasy music, and how FF7 was a big step into a new, electric direction but still had those classical sensibilities. Now here’s where we truly finish that step towards the modern age. (Well, 1999, but you get my point.) This game has a very distinctive voice to its music, a very certain flavour that it hits. The music here is so different it even removes the iconic prelude medley seen at the start of every game! (Though it is in the game over song, for some reason, and we will be seeing the prelude in every future game.) Balamb Garden is great, so is Man With The Machine Gun, Liberi Fatali is an amazing opening song and leitmotif used throughout the whole game, honestly I could go on. FF8’s music is incredible. It has such a unique zippy style to it yet still manages to live up to this series’ proud musical legacy and then some. Like seriously, you could talk me into this being the best soundtrack in the series. That’s how much I admire it. Though, speaking of Liberi Fatali, uh, this game looks really good. Like, REALLY good. Last time I discussed how FF7 looked great but certainly hadn’t aged amazingly in the visual department. FF8 certainly tightened things up however. This game had a massive budget for 1999, naturally after FF7 was such a slam dunk, Square would be interested in something to best what had been done before, and that easily shines brightest in this regard. It looks better from a general technical perspective for one thing, gone are the days of our good friend Super Mario 64 Cloud, the models are now entirely consistent between battles and the overworld, much less of that jarring shift I talked about last time, but these more advanced graphics are most apparent in the FMVs. FMVs were a pretty minor part of FF7 all things considered, of course there’s the opening, ending, and Aerith’s death which everyone knows, but otherwise they were used sparingly. Whole other story in FF8. There’s a LOT more of them for one thing, this game takes place across four separate discs compared to FF7’s three, and most of the game isn’t just on the first disc this time, so I think that should give you a good general idea. They look… better! I guess! Okay still they don’t look excellent but if you can detach yourself from the old Pixar movie visuals I think they’re really well done. They’re very cinematic, often just doing some cool looking tricks, like the time compression at the end of the game, or just generally being really cinematic, like the intro cutscene which kind of blows FF7’s already amazing one out of the water. What impresses me most here is sometimes they’ll even be interactive and you can move around on them, granted with the in-game models clashing with the more blurry backgrounds it kind of looks like an awkward green screen effect, but it’s really neat. Even if it’s a small thing like just being able to run around as the camera does something awesome, it still makes the game feel really cinematic. I heard someone say on Twitter the other day that FF8 is the prettiest game ever made relative to the time it was released, and honestly they had a point, they were working with a massive budget after 7’s insane success and it really showed here. Up until now though, nothing I’ve said really matters all that much. The true value of games isn’t just how they sound and look, it’s time to analyse how FF8 holds up just as a Final Fantasy game, so here we go. The story… starts good? The intro is kind of funny, like I love it and all, 11/10 cinematics and music, but they really go out of their way to be all like “Now don’t worry this game WILL HAVE action don’t leave immediately” because this game’s opening act is a little slow. I’m gonna be honest, things don’t start really picking up until the end of disc 1, though that’s less of a criticism and more of just an observation. The first part of this game is pretty good! Not amazing, not as good as FF7’s first 6 hours or so, but good. It’s very slight, you’re spending a lot of time at this military school setting, Balamb Garden which I guess sounds intimidating but it’s less about the “military” part and more about the “school” part. For all intensive purposes, it’s a high school that happens to be about fighting. The atmosphere is relaxed and chill. Honestly unlike anything we’ve seen so far for Final Fantasy, even compared to Midgar’s dark and damp depths. One thing I like about this change is there’s not really many traditional dungeons in this game so to speak. There’s a lot of scheming, planning and heists, which I suppose is a side effect of the military school thing, but my point is what would be typical dungeons where you move from point A to point B with random encounters are usually much more involved now. The gang has to intercept a train carriage with their own so they can interrogate a president, they have to trap a car underneath an arch so someone else can assassinate someone inside, they have to disguise themselves as soldiers and negotiate their way through a military base to sabotage and prevent a missile launch. A lot of these are not only just really fun, but also more relevant to the plot and generally very cinematic. I’ll admit this early part of the story is maybe a little too slow paced for its own good, like there’s this whole mission with stopping an army from invading a town pretty early on, and it’s basically an extensive 30 minute mission just for a pretty minor plot point later. It also honestly isn’t as fun or interesting as some of the later ones, it’s kind of just a very linear dungeon with a long explanation and dialogue in between. Like, guys, we already had the tutorial with Squall fighting Ifrit with Quistis, let's get a move on. Honestly though we have much bigger fish to fry in regards to FF8’s story. We’ll get there. The villain’s pretty great! Or… what seems like the villain initially at first… Sorceress Edea is wonderful. She doesn’t really make a huge impact until a mission in Timber, where it seems like Seifer, the rival to our hero Squall, is killed for interrupting an announcement from the president in the name of Balamb Garden and SeeD. As soon as Edea’s on screen for the first time and those choir notes from the opening start playing, you know shit’s about to go down. The problem is, well, she’s not actually the villain. Much later on from here, there’s a really interesting plot point where the party members all remember they grew up together in the same orphanage raised by Edea (Which they happened to forget about because Guardian Forces (the gimmick of the game) make you forget things. This is a plot point that comes up once and is never relevant again.) I quite like this on paper because it recontextualizes the sniper shot Irvine takes on Edea earlier which he hesitates to do. At that point Irvine hadn’t been using Guardian Forces as much as the other characters, so he’d have remembered Edea’s love and kindness, and would have struggled with being the man who killed her. The problem is they… kind of really fumble this plot point. No, Edea’s not the real villain, instead she was POSSESSED by a SORCERESS from the FUTURE called ULTIMECIA, because REASONS. Like I thought they were going in the direction of “We have to look past our memories and feelings for the greater good of the world”, or whatever, but what this plot point ends up resulting in is the characters being all like “Oh wow that’s a pretty weird coincidence!” This is the start of what I like to call in FF8’s story “stupid bullshit”. I said the story was a little slow at first, but by the end it’s just way, way too fast… They end up just dumping a ton of insane nonsense on you. Things really start to fall apart once we get to the third act. Up until that point this is mostly still a story about political conflict and Squall’s time with SeeD. Edea is mostly absent from the second act, instead it being more about dealing with the consequences of Balamb Garden’s failed assassination attempt on her. Then everyone gets selective amnesia for whatever reason, and they explain some stuff about Ultimecia possessing Edea or whatever. From here, the whole cast finds a massive distractingly cartoony looking hi-tech city, everyone goes into space to get rid of this other sorceress Ultimecia wants to possess who’s just up there for some reason, there’s time travel, like holy shit remember when this game was about some loser high school student just trying to do the right thing? I honestly don’t know what happened to the last third of this game. It results in some confusing plot of one of the main party inheriting Edea’s sorceress powers, so they can send her back in time so Ultimecia will possess her and her castle will be in the present? Or something like that? I don’t know. What starts as tonally more of a relatable and down to earth Final Fantasy game unfortunately just goes completely off the rails by the end. Like just looking at the first two discs I think it would make way more sense if they just stuck to Edea being the villain and didn’t completely retcon the pretty big twist like 30 minutes after revealing it, but no, I suppose. The worst thing about FF8’s plot is that it does work in isolation, I can just turn off my brain and enjoy the immediate happenings of the story, but when it all connects it just makes for an awkward, tonally dissonant mess. Ultimecia herself just feels like the bleeding heart of everything I don’t like about FF8’s plot. You see her in this game, like, twice. Once in a flashback, and then the final boss. It’s genuinely like Ultimecia was playing the game with us, said “nah we’re not gonna do that”, and wrote the rest of the story with her as the big bad villain, and what frustrates me is I CAN see this plot really working out. Edea had so, SO much potential, and then they just threw it away on some overcomplicated nonsensical plot and a boring evil for evil’s sake villain. God. I like the running joke with the hot dogs though. Additionally I don’t think the characters are… great, I’m just gonna say that now. Squall… bothers me. I don’t mean to be negative right off the bat here, but I feel like he’s what FF7 haters think people only like Cloud for. Like they really used “Edgy late 90’s high school student” as the prompt for this guy. What annoys me about Squall is it just feels like he’s actively resentful of being the “hero” of this adventure. He barely takes any initiative. The characters always just have to tell him what to do, “Squall, go reassure the students”, “Squall, head up to the top floor of the prison”, I honestly don’t know why Headmaster Cid put this guy in charge of piloting the garden, because especially the first half of this game just feels like a group effort from every character dragging this annoying emo high school student who doesn’t want to be there through the plot. There’s truly nothing that drags more though than what FF8 tries to call “romance”. If you know anything about this game, it’s probably that Squall and Rinoa are “a thing”. It’s on the logo, and the intro makes it pretty damn evident it’s a big part of this game, but like… it’s so stilted. I think that’s a good way to describe it. I’m gonna be real, especially through the earlier parts of this game, this romance is insufferable, genuinely. Like okay sure, Squall does have something resembling an arc I guess but his interactions with Rinoa are just so painful early on. Like he goes beyond just being oblivious, pretty much in every interaction Squall just ends up upsetting Rinoa with how completely careless he is, it’s just miserable, like at a certain point I’m screaming at him, dude, get the hint, she’s into you. I guess it gets a little better at the end of the second disc, when two different gardens engage in a full on battle. Squall’s good here in general to be honest, he goes out of his way to actually act of his own accord, and saves Rinoa’s life at the end, which was a very shocking moment for me because I was under the impression he didn’t care about anyone ever. Then we get to bizarre disc 3 world, Rinoa falls into a coma and now SUDDENLY, like a switch being flipped, Squall is just SO UPSET, saying he would do anything just to see her again, like okay sure I get you don’t appreciate something until it’s gone, and a thing with Squall in general is he has a problem with expressing his emotions to others, that might have been what they’re going for, sure, but like it’s just too fast. I feel like I’ve missed multiple scenes of character development here because we went from “having the basic human decency to save her life” to “completely enamoured with her” REALLY quickly. From here he's… on and off. Like in the stupid strange space mission, Squall, for some reason, risks his own life in the VACUUM OF SPACE to save Rinoa. It works, because this is FF8’s nonsense plot and if something needs to happen for what it demands then it will, then they’re alone together on this spaceship they, like, happened to find after it was missing for 17 years, and Squall’s just dismissive of her again! They get back down to the planet where Rinoa is instantly detained due to being a risk of being possessed by Ultimecia due to being a sorceress, and Squall, in his infinite wisdom, chooses to just… let the girl he saved from the vacuum of space go without any objections, for some reason. At least the other party members say what we’re all thinking, beat some sense into him and they get her back, but like, geez man. I get that this can all be explained with three words, “he’s a teenager”, but, from someone about the same age as Squall, I don’t think that has to mean he doesn’t make sense, and that’s quite the flimsy explanation mind you. Speaking of other party members though, it’s a good thing they’re here because after Squall annoyed me, I can’t wait to get into these guys! Is what I would be saying if they weren’t also bad! I’m sorry. FF8’s party members are just… shallow. There’s a reason I went on for so long without talking about the characters themselves in much detail, mainly because Squall bothers me and nobody else is very interesting. Okay I guess Rinoa is, like, fine. She’s pretty much the only majorly plot relevant one anyway. Even then I don’t love her. I feel bad when she gets upset with Squall but that’s less because I love her character or anything and more because Squall’s being a dick. Like honestly I couldn’t even really tell you much about her personality. She… likes dogs. She only noticed Squall at the dance during the first act because he was the “best looking guy” there. She’s just generally patient and forgiving of Squall, for some reason. Not like any of the other characters are bursting with flavour though. Zell is energetic and likes hot dogs. (Which is completely unironically a hilarious running joke.) Quistis is patient and had feelings for Squall at some point though this is never relevant to her non-existent character. Selphie is Selphie. Irvine. The one core issue with these characters is they don’t even really have reasons for doing the things they do. They’re just cardboard cutouts of things that vaguely look like Final Fantasy party members. Let's compare to some of the previous entries for a moment, FF6 gave most of its party members good backstories, some of them remained absent, notably the characters who were clearly just there to make the game more fun like Umaro, Mog and Gogo, but most of them at least have some backstory and/or personal reason for taking down Kefka. Locke had his whole arc of accepting the death of a loved one after doing whatever he could to bring her back. Setzer had his backstory with losing one of the few people he could truly bond with. Some received more focus than others certainly, but like they still feel like people to me with lives of their own. FF7 ramped things up, I’d honestly say this game has the best supporting cast ever, every party member manages to be at least somewhat relevant to the overall plot, which can also tie into their backstory or character arc, and even the two optional party members had their own side quests. Even the more ridiculous characters like Red XIII or Cait Sith find a way to be relevant, through Cosmo Canyon and Reeve’s character arc of conspiring against Shinra respectively. FF8 by comparison doesn’t have this. I don’t feel like I actually know anything about anyone besides the one retconned plot point of them all going to the same orphanage. Like they kind of shot themselves in the foot by making them all about the same age and all affiliated with SeeD, then shot themselves in the other foot by having the plot point of them all being at Edea’s orphanage, and then shot themselves in the head by immediately forgetting about that 30 minutes later which means there’s ultimately just no reason for the characters to be as dry and one-note as they are, and like the thing is even they show potential! Rinoa has this whole thing about being concerned she’s not as good of a fighter as the rest of the party and falls behind during combat, honestly I like the idea of giving Rinoa an arc about defending herself and standing for what she believes in, and this could even tie into her relationship with Squall as she would admire how stoic and direct he is, but this doesn’t really go anywhere besides one conversation and then it’s never brought up again. This applies to a few characters, I mentioned earlier Quistis had feelings for Squall at some point and also Selphie literally had her entire old garden destroyed recently in a battle, it would have been so easy to give these two further development about their past and how their prior experiences pushes them forward, but alas, ‘tis but a fool’s dream, That said though, before we move on, I’d like to give an honourable mention to my favourite character, and he’s not even a party member, that being Laguna. He’s honestly a way better protagonist than Squall is, funny, charming, sweet, full of life and energy. If we could get another game set in this universe, I’d love for it to be a Crisis Core-esque prequel all about Laguna, though even he ends up being kinda butchered by the plot. This girl with MYSTERIOUS TIME TRAVEL POWERS called Ellone ends up being pretty relevant later on, but neither her or Laguna feel like they have much of an impact when they really should. Speaking of impact, over 3000 words in, we're finally talking about FF8’s gameplay. (Was that a good transition? I hope so I’m tired.) FF8’s gameplay definitely shares quite a few similarities with FF7’s, less in the specific mechanics and more in the general format of battle. We’ve still only got 3 party members fighting instead of 4, jobs in general are completely gone once again, every character plays largely the same, limit breaks are back, etc. I mentioned Guardian Forces earlier, and they’re the main gimmick of this game and work with what the game calls “Junctions”. You equip a Guardian Force (of which you find gradually throughout the course of the game and take the form of the iconic summons of the series) and from there you can “Junction” spells you find onto specific stats to improve them, with different GFs having different abilities, like more stats you can junction to, extra commands, more general stat buffs, etc. Naturally, it’s pretty easy to compare this to the last game’s Materia system, as both have a firm grasp over almost every mechanic in their respective games, and it’s a nifty piece of work! Junctioning stuff can be pretty fun, especially later in the game when you have tons of slots open and can really mix and match stuff. It’s not entirely dependent on your GF though, (Which is what the game calls Guardian Forces for short so it’s what I’ll also be calling them.) as not only is some magic more effective on certain slots than others, i.e, your cure spell would boost HP more than strength, haste would be good on speed, etc, but also the AMOUNT of magic you have is also a big factor. That’s right. For the first time since FF3, FF8 actually completely removes the traditional MP system seen throughout the rest of the series, as spells in this game function much more as single use items you can get by various means, primarily “drawing” them from enemies. 1 spell will give you a pretty meek buff, 20 would be way better, and 100 would be ideal. As I said, this is a system that especially gets good later on… but unfortunately I do have my issues with it. I’ll start with my most minor complaints. This wasn’t really a massive deal for me in FF7, but with the removal of classes, again, it makes everyone feel very similar. FF7 at least partially got around this because 1. Early on before everyone is super strong, stat differences do at least partially matter. 2. Materia is dependent on your equipment, and sometimes they’ll have more or less slots which could influence your decision as weapons can only be equipped by specific characters. 3. FF7 had limit breaks, which certainly made every character feel unique in that regard. Of course characters aren’t specialised nearly as much as something like FF6, but the homogenous characters only really start to be a problem at the very end when everyone is just ultra beefed up and can do anything pretty much. Unfortunately in FF8… 1. Junctions are a system that rely on your stats so everyone starts even more similar than they do in FF7. 2. Anyone can equip any amount of GFs. A lot of the time characters won’t be accessible and you can just swap their GFs and spells over and be done with it. 3. Limit breaks are… simultaneously more and less emphasised. Like okay they are pretty different from each other this time and do go further out of their way to show each character’s “personality” by generally playing pretty different, but I think they feel underutilised because for some reason there’s not even a bar to show how full the limit break is, and additionally they can only be used when that character has a low amount of health… and you’re probably not going to be staying on a low amount of health very much in this game because duh. They don’t really explain how limit breaks work very well. They’re kinda just a thing that happens randomly with not much rhyme or reason. Between all of these reasons… there’s just not really variety between the characters. Not even equipment is really that important anymore. First, you don’t even equip it, you “remodel” your weapons into newer ones with random materials you find throughout the world and they raise your base attack and hit percent by a tiny amount, and that’s it. No armour at all, and it’s not even like it’s massively important or anything. The difference between Squall’s first and last weapons is only about an increase of 15 strength, which will end up being absolutely demolished by whatever you have in your strength junction by the end of the game. They attempt to add in reasons to use other characters for certain situations but saying it’s too little too late is putting it lightly. There’s the weapons for one thing which only really feel like a flimsy excuse to make characters seem more unique than they are, also there’s this “compatibility” system with GFs that does… something? Every character has unique compatibility with GFs, and this is a stat that does something. I genuinely didn’t notice a difference. It’s never relevant unless you for some reason choose to actively engage with it, which I don’t know why you’d want to since 1. It’s a dog eat dog system where whatever you do nice for one GF will probably worsen your relationship with another one or several, so there’s not much motive to interact with it unless you want to specifically… NOT use certain GFs for some reason… and 2. It’s not even like the actions you take over the course of the game will really have a massive impact unless you specifically try to change it so even it’s kind of just a pointless feature that makes the game more meaninglessly complicated. Have I mentioned that a guide is very much useful in this game? I mean I get something of an edge because I chose to play every game up to this point but either way there’s just stuff you’re supposed to know if you want to have the best stats. Like no new player would ever think “Oh yeah go to the beach at the start of the game because you can draw water which is the best spell to junction at this point”. That leads me to my next point. Drawing is… dumb. It’s dumb. No other way of slicing it. The way you get magic in this game, for some unknown reason, is sitting your ass down in front of an enemy and getting as much magic as you possibly can, which usually takes a damn while as you only get 9 at most per turn, and like you’ll want 100 of a spell too, because otherwise like what’s the point, right? And this isn’t like FF5 where magic is a shared pool either, don’t be ridiculous, magic of course is relegated to one per person, so you’ll have to actually grind out 300 of a spell when you actually find a new one! How fun! Oh and don’t get me started on inventory management in this game. Yes, spells have inventory management. I genuinely don’t get the point of this, you can only hold 32 different spells for some reason, which means you’ll probably want to use your other party members as extra space, and EVEN THEN it’s a hassle because you’re not sure what spells you might want later and what might be useful. It’s a mess. I guess the cat’s out of the bag now, just like the story it’s all downhill from here. Like the thing is it’s not like you need to grind all the time, it’s just the game will be way harder than it should be. You either embrace taking like a good 5 to 10 minutes at least every 20 or so to draw everything you might not even need because it isn’t better than anything you currently have on, or you just brute force your way straight to the end. What’s so completely bizarre about this is the game doesn’t even seem to really be built around the idea of being super super strong, because they implemented a countermeasure. For some reason, this game actively proportions enemy strength to your level. Like this is such a strange choice to me, levelling up actively makes the game MORE DIFFICULT later on. Let’s just go over this. The easiest way to play the game is to get a fuck ton of junctions and never level up. The hardest way to play the game is to get a fuck ton of levels and never junction. Are you seeing the issue here. To me the fundamental flaw of Final Fantasy VIII’s gameplay is the Junction system has such a ridiculously tight grasp over the entire game that combat just completely lacks weight and crunch. The whole thing with enemies proportional to your level feels like their way of admitting junctions got out of their control. Also it wouldn’t be an FF8 review if I didn’t at least mention Triple Triad, uhhh I didn’t play a ton of it but like I don’t see it as an alternative to drawing. Like okay you can get cards and refine them into materials which you can use for spells and weapons you’re not supposed to have until way later… but… is that not just… making the problem worse since even if I’m not drawing all the time I’m still getting way stronger than I should be making combat just feel even more lightweight. This further emphasises how you basically need a guide. Like I fully expect most people would just ignore Triple Triad, maybe play it a few times but just decide it’s ultimately not worth it, because it’s not like you KNOW what cards refine into what until you have them, OR who even has those cards since you can challenge like every NPC in the game! This applies to drawing too, like this game actively discourages using one of the most fun aspects of any Final Fantasy game, magic, casually, especially if it’s junctioned, because you’re not sure where to exactly get more of it if you need it since it’s not like you’d remember what enemy you got it from and it’s not like there’s an easier way to get spells like from a shop or a bestiary or whatever to help you keep track, and if you’re just using spells that AREN’T junctioned and you don’t care, well there’s a good chance those are completely outdated and useless by then so ultimately for most of the game you’re just gonna be spamming that physical attack button. Oh yeah you know how some enemies drop materials which can be used by GFs to refine into items or spells or can be used to upgrade weapons? ALSO only enemy drops! Fun! Look. I don’t hate FF8’s gameplay in the moment, but as I mentioned earlier the Junction system has such a ridiculous grasp over every aspect of this game it just makes combat at large just feel hollow and artificial, for lack of a better term. God I struggled with FF8. I think you can tell if you’ve read all the way down here. Although this is by FAR my longest review ever written, I’m kind of upset with it. I really didn’t want to be so harsh towards FF8 because I mean it when I say I didn’t hate this game. It’s one of the most unique games in the series, and given this one had impossible standards to live up to I have a lot of admiration for the idea of trying something brand new with the series. I completely see why so many fell in love with it to the point of it being almost something of a cult classic, the greater focus on romance, a more down to earth take on Final Fantasy, I love all that stuff. FF8 upsets me because I do see a really good game inside it, it’s ambitions are just so wild and all over the place it’s one I just feel at war with all the time. If you’re a fan of this game, and somehow passed through all this nonsense, then seriously more power to you. Sorry for the way larger review this time, it just comes with the territory of these later games. I wanted to love FF8, I really did, but to me it never quite hits the potential that’s always just out of reach. FF8 is like a doctor’s appointment. Thinking about it is way more painful than just doing it.