Final Fantasy VIII

aka: FF8, FFVIII, Finalnaja Fantazija 8, Zui Zhong Huanxiang 8
Moby ID: 1149
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Description official descriptions

Squall Leonhart is a young man in training to become of member of SeeD - a mercenary organization and the goal of all young students in Balamb Garden. Squall is not a particularly friendly guy and has troubles with his fellow students and teachers. On the eve of his graduation hostilities break out between the city-states of Galbadia and Dollet. As their final test, Squall and three other students are sent on a mission to assist in the fight against Galbadia. In the process they discover that there are other characters pulling strings from behind the stage, and eventually uncover a mystery that involves two decades of secrets hidden both from the world and from themselves.

Final Fantasy VIII is set in a "retro" environment reminiscent in some ways of the 1960's, with a few sci-fi and plenty of supernatural elements mixed in. The basic system resembles those of its predecessors: the player navigates a party of characters over a world map, accessing various locations and fighting randomly appearing enemies in turn-based combat of the series' trademark ATB (active time battle) variety. However, character development system has been re-designed.

Player-controlled characters in the game have no defined character classes. They can be customized by equipping magic spells, which can be "drawn" from enemies in battles. When used in combat, spells act like expendable items; there are no MP (magic points) in the game. When equipped, they act like armor, raising or lowering character parameters, including resistances to various kinds of magic (elemental, status-changing, etc.).

Monster summons (called Guardian Forces in the game) play a very important role in the customization process. They can be "junctioned" to to the characters, acquire ability points (AP) earned from battles along with experience, learn and "teach" characters new abilities, and can also be summoned in battles. Each character can also execute unique powerful attacks or support actions when his or her hit points are low. Many of these attacks require the player to press specific buttons at the right moment to increase their power.

New weapons are constructed by collecting materials and bringing them to a blacksmith. The player does not acquire money from random enemies, but instead receives paychecks over time based on the player character's SeeD rank. This rank increases when the characters defeat enemies in battles without summoning Guardian Forces; when the player takes SeeD tests within the game; or, occasionally, when the player chooses a correspondent action or decision for the protagonist during some of the missions. Payments are regular and are calculated by the amount of steps the characters make.

Visually, the game resembles its predecessor, featuring 3D graphics for battles and world map exploration, and pre-rendered backgrounds for individual locations. The game's 3D character models are realistically proportioned (as opposed to the "super-deformed" character graphics of the previous game), and the influence of anime art is less noticeable.

Like the previous installment, Final Fantasy VIII features several mini-games, the most prominent of which is the card game Triple Triad. Cards can be won in matches or acquired through side quests or by transforming enemy monsters. Many characters in the game can be challenged to a game of Triple Triad, so it is always possible to take a break from saving the world to play cards with the locals.

Spellings

  • Финальная Фантазия 8 - Russian spelling
  • ファイナルファンタジーVIII - Japanese spelling
  • 太空戰士 8 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 最终幻想8 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (PlayStation version)

113 People (107 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

Executive Producer
Director
Music
Main Programmer
Battle System Designer
Character Design / Battle Visual Director
Art Director
Scenario Writer
Image Ilustration
Movie Director
Movie Character Director
Character Modeling Director
Real-Time Polygon Director
Battle Effect Director
Motion Director
Card Game Director / Battle Camera Director
Lead Field Designer
Event Script Programmer
Battle Programmer
Event Director
Map Director
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 71 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 354 ratings with 26 reviews)

All hype and all show, but at the expense of story and gameplay.

The Good
Squaresoft heard its fans after the success of its previous offering, Final Fantasy VII. "More!" they cried. And more they received. What we have in Final Fantasy VIII is every ounce of graphical glory the programmers could force out of the PlayStation, improving upon the powerful combination of pre-rendered graphics and full-motion video that made #7 so popular. Gone are the blocky characters, replaced with more realistic figures who really do stand at full height, with fully textured clothing, too. Unfortunately, it seems many gamers are unable to see past the superficiality of this game. I'll get to that in a bit.

There is, gladly enough, one really good saving factor to this game that I think might even be more fun than the actual game -- and that's Triple Triad, the card-collecting sub-game that permeates the game world. You collect monster cards, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and then you challenge townspeople and extras standing around to play with you, and if you win you could win their cards (and if you lose, say goodbye to your own). There's so much strategy involved, and just when you think you've got it figured out the game tosses in another rule. Just collecting these cards, playing people to track down the rare cards, and the richness of gameplay this affords could very easily keep you from actually playing the game for hours.

The Bad
Unfortunately, Squaresoft bowed too much to peer pressure -- or fan pressure, as the case may be. Final Fantasy VIII is about twenty steps too far in the wrong direction, striving to be a bigger and badder version of Final Fantasy VII with more technology (both in programming and in the game environment) but lacking, unfortunately, in story and gameplay. We'll take a look at what Squaresoft thought they could do with #8 from what they learned in #7, and what went wrong.

Let's start with the Guardian Force/Junction system, which is how characters gain skills and abilities. See, in Final Fantasy VII, characters could equip summon spells that allows them to summon monsters in battle to do massive amounts of crucial damage. That, and give them some truly amazing animated visuals, and those summons easily became one of the major selling points of the game, gracing all sorts of marketing devices and magazine previews everywhere. So in Final Fantasy VIII Squaresoft figured these summoned monsters, now given the name "Guardian Force," could become the basis of the skill system, and characters would now be forced to depend upon the GF's for most of their attack power. In #7, summoning was limited to a maximum of five times per battle. In #8, you summoned as many times as you liked.

The result of this catastrophic decision was that every difficult monster had to be given huge gob-loads of hit points, since it was very easy to up your GF's attack power to a maximum of 9999 damage per hit (and sometimes they would even perform multiple hits). To prevent every monster from dying immediately at the hands of the powerful GF's Squaresoft had to make some regular monsters have as much as 100,000 to 150,000 hit points! But that's not all -- GF animations became even more over-the-top, increasing not only its "coolness factor" but also the length of time it took to play out, which made even regular battles a gigantic half-hour borefest of watching your powerful GF do the exact same thing fifty times in a row. This is not my idea of fun.

There are, as well, plenty of minor gripes to make: The characters, themselves, are largely identical in ability -- Final Fantasy used to be about specialization of characters (some of them forced) but here, you could use the same three characters for the entire game, just change the GF's around depending on which ability you'd like to use, and you'll never even have to look at the other characters if you don't want to ever again. There's a lack of equipment -- you only choose weapons, and even those are limited to four choices throughout the entire game, kind of like a simplified Equipment for Dummies, which further focuses your character's development on GFs alone. Then there's the Limit system -- a way for each character to perform superpowerful attacks when they're near death -- while it's well-meaning, you could still trick the game into letting you have a nearly unlimited amount of Limits just be never healing yourself, which again forces monsters to have insane amounts of HP just to stay alive. And one must also ask the question, why does a world so technologically advanced only have about three major cities in it?

Not to mention that halfway into the game there's an improbable plot twist -- I won't give it away here -- that can only be explained by tossing in the copout "Oh, GF's have a side effect of causing memory loss." Durrr....

Granted, Final Fantasy VIII could easily stand on its own and be a great game, but the point is, it's can't. See the words "Final Fantasy" in the title? There are years of prequels to live up to and by that comparison Final Fantasy VIII has failed. Unfortunately, this is a case when Squaresoft tried to give too much of what the fans wanted, and ignored all sorts of game design sensibilities altogether. While it's great that they made the effort, I'm afraid I can't really respect the end product.

The Bottom Line
If all you want in a game is that it "looks cool," then Final Fantasy VIII is for you. Otherwise, try games seven or nine for the PlayStation instead. Although they're more cartoony, they're also more fun, better balanced, and represent what Final Fantasy is really all about.

PlayStation · by SAGA_ (953) · 2002

The fantasy to start with and it didn't disappoint

The Good
It surely have revolutionize the game standard and expectation to match the fantastic storyline. The setting is what i loved the most, then the clip's graphic, battling system, character development and summoning. You may find that i have quite a low expectation, but it was the first and best game i ever played at that time, it was a work of a flawless piece of art.

The Bad
Although i am not a good critic, the fourth disc rather confuse and disappoint me. i say the game is getting a bit too serious for that the plots and events in the previous discs did not have enough information to sustain it. Or rather, there is too many events in the third disc as compare to the first.

The Bottom Line
It's the fantasy that leave people wondering.

PlayStation · by Mike Wazoski (7) · 2005

J-RPG's have a place in the PC platform

The Good
Final Fantasy 8 is one of the very few J-RPG's ever to hit the PC platform, and it happens to be one of the best RPG's overall to hit the PC. Although I have played PC games like Diablo and Baldur's Gate, this gave me the best RPG experience ever. Final Fantasy 7 was also great, but it can't compare to the greatness of Final Fantasy 8. The Storyline, the game's plot (an unusual time-travel story) is about some sorceress in the distant future who wants to "compress time", as in there is no future, there is no past, simply she wants to control time itself, and its up to the game's protagonists to stop her. There is also a very touching romantic subplot to the game. Every J-RPG I have played has a breathtaking storyline, and this is no exception. Great graphics, the game was the first of the series to use realistic character models (which I enjoyed very much), and the background blended well with them. This was also the only game in the series to feature an all-human playable character cast.

Cinematics, they are gorgeous to look at, console-style cinematics to the PC at their best. Original game play, I found the Junctioning thing fun to play around with, one can consider several combinations or strategies that best fit you're particular character, and even though the MP thing was gone (the only J-RPG game of it's kind) I found using a particular spell 99 times a huge advantage. The drawback about the no MP thing is one has to gather particular magic spells from several monsters and locations, lots of traveling and exploring. Fortunately, that's what I like about the game, traveling and exploring. Outstanding music score, every J-RPG like a Final Fantasy has a great music score regardless. Final Fantasy 8 is obviously the best Final Fantasy title ever to hit the PC platform. I only wish that more J-RPG's like this would come to the PC. An absolutely wonderful game!

The Bad
One of the downsides of this game is the exiting part. I have to press ALT+F4 to exit the game. I found that earning money depends on your SEED rank, not killing random enemies, which takes a long while to gather. Money after all is the key to any J-RPG game. The Gameplay can be quite confusing at first, but once you get over it, you're in for the thrill of a lifetime.

The Bottom Line
This is the game that will convince people that J-RPG's have a place in the PC platform. I still don't understand why the PC has very little games like this, I feel games like Final Fantasy 8 have shown they can make smooth transition to another platform, especially to the PC.

Windows · by John Franco (161) · 2009

[ View all 26 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Game with downloadable sounds soundbank MerlynKing Oct 24, 2016
A question-spoilers! GAMEBOY COLOR! (1990) Apr 24, 2011
OMG!!! TEH DEVIL!!! The Fabulous King (1332) Jul 24, 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The PS1 version of Final Famtasy VIII appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Development

  • During production of the game, there were plans to originally call the Rinoa character "Lenore".
  • Parasite Eve was the 'testing ground' for the cinematic graphics used in FFVIII.

Innovations

As of 2013, Final Fantasy VIII is the first and the only Final Fantasy game where the playable characters don't equip any armor.

Music

The music in this game was originally composed and recorded as Dolby Digital 5.1, then "dumbed down" to normal stereo for the actual release. The original DD 5.1 score was rumored to be the one to be used in a PlayStation 2 re-release.

Ratings

When it was first released as a demo, it was rated M for strong language but was later toned down to a T rating.

References

  • Some names of the Guardian Forces (monsters you can summon in Final Fantasy VIII) are taken from mythologies of different nations. Quetzalcoatl is one of the main gods in the mythology of Central America's Indians; Shiva is God in Hinduism (he appears as a feminine incarnation in the game, although he is normally regarded as male); Diabolos is Greek for "devil"; Cerberus is a three-headed dog which guards the gates of Hades in Greek mythology; Siren is a beautiful and dangerous demi-goddess, also from the Greek mythology; Leviathan is Hebrew for "whale", this word is used to describe the sea monster that swallowed the prophet Jonas in Old Testament.
  • The game's most poweful GF is called Eden. This is actually the name of the paradise, "Garden of Eden" (Hebrew "Gan Eden"), from where Adam and Eve were expelled, according to the first book of Moses from the Old Testament. Why is the most powerful GF a garden? Because the universities where the heroes of the game study and train are called gardens. It is logical the most powerful garden is also the most powerful weapon.
  • In Esthar there is a shop called Cloud's Shop, a reference to Final Fantasy VII.
  • You can spot UFOs during battles in four areas of the world. The sightings are used in the 'Pupu card' sidequest, and can only be seen from the second disk onwards.

References to the game

  • In the 2004 Olympics, one of the American synchronized swimming teams chose to use a piece of music from Final Fantasy VIII as their background music . They used the song Liberi Fatali, the game's main theme
  • The game is featured in the movie Charlie's Angels. It's the game the two kids are playing in the scene where Drew Barrymore drops naked from Knox's house. Interestingly enough both kids seem to be playing it at the same time, apparently nobody figured to tell the production team that the game was single-player only.

Summonings

When the game came out, the #1 complaint everyone had was that there was no way of skipping the summoning animations - which were essential for making it through the early stages of the game. The creators claimed this was entirely intentional, and that it was somehow vital to the plot that the players be forced to sit through the same minute-long animations hundreds of times. They never changed it in FFVIII (even the later PC adaptation) but oddly, all subsequent Final Fantasy games with summonings include the option to shorten the animation...

Tech demo

The ballroom dance scene was used as the basis for a PlayStation 2 tech demo, showing that the PS2 was powerful enough to render the scene in real-time.

Version differences

  • The PC version includes a mini-game called Chocobo World. Previously, this was only available with the Japanese PSX version through the Dex Drive.
  • Seifer and Zell, two important characters of Final Fantasy VIII, were renamed to Cifer and Xell, respectively, in the German version, probably because the original names are common German family names and might have possibly offended their innocent bearers.
  • Disc 3 of the Windows version (US release) has a hidden audio track. It contains the song Eyes On Me, sung by Faye Wong. This song was released in Japan as a CD single and was part of the original soundtrack.

  • The original Playstation release included a Chocobo World minigame which required access to a PocketStation, a console that was only released in Japan. Gamers in other territories could only access that by importing a PocketStation from Japan. This was the only way to access some rare items in the game.

Information also contributed by Alan Chan, Foxhack, j. jones, NightKid32, Rey Mysterio, Tiago Jacques, YID YANG, WizardX and Zovni

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Related Sites +

  • FF-Fan
    A fansite that offers all kinds of information on the entire Final Fantasy franchise, including walkthroughs, game media, discussion boards and fan art.
  • FF8 Hints
    Final Fantasy VIII hints and solutions
  • Final Fantasy Extreme
    Site that contains movies, wallpaper, codes, guides, walkthroughs, and general information on the Final Fantasy series.
  • GameFaqs Files
    Comprehensive links to numerous Final Fantasy VIII files on GameFaqs
  • OC ReMix Game Profile
    Fan remixes of music from Final Fantasy VIII.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1149
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Matthew Bailey.

PSP, PlayStation 3 added by Charly2.0. PS Vita added by GTramp. PlayStation added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: MAT, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Silverblade, DarkDante, DreinIX, —-, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Thomas Thompson, Lain Crowley, Rik Hideto, FatherJack, 64er.

Game added March 26, 2000. Last modified November 24, 2024.