Final Fantasy VIII: Remastered

The Good
Final Fantasy VIII tones down the fantasy elements from its predecessors and has an almost contemporary setting. This is a welcome breath of fresh air and gives the developers the opportunity to include some interesting new elements. It also complements the graphic design which, compared to Final Fantasy VII, is much more coherent and appealing.

The story starts off grounded in reality, but spirals off into absurd territory fast. With the exception of a very stupid twist around the middle, I thought this escalation was very enjoyable and I was always eager to see how it continues. The teenage drama is a bit tedious at times and the characters are bland (the little character development they have is mostly concentrated towards the end of the game), but the love story was sweet.

The Bad
The game's big drawback are the character mechanics. In theory, they should work well: the player doesn't need to grind because enemies scale with the party level and stats are upgraded by assigning spells to character attributes. The summons learn useful abilities, which should make leveling up worth it nevertheless. In reality, however, it falls flat on its face: as soon as all useful abilities are learned, fighting becomes redundant - and if you ever played any Final Fantasy, you'll know that combat is the main occupation. In order to get important spells, the player has to spend a lot of boring time drawing over and over again or alternatively abuse the crafting system. It would have been much better if spells could be simply bought from shops with all the useless money the player swims in after ten hours.

The amount of mini games was vastly reduced compared to FFVII and the first mandatory one the player encounters is actually decent, but it's all downhill from there. Especially a later mini-game featuring a dragon is one of the worst things I ever encountered in an otherwise good game. Towards the middle of the game, when the player can explore the world with a ship-like vehicle, it lacks direction and the player has to (almost) blindly search for the trigger to continue the story. This wouldn't be as bad if the ship wouldn't move with a snail's pace and the ocean wasn't walled off in the middle, which means the player has to move the long way around to reach another continent.

The Bottom Line
I would have loved to simply write "Whatever" as my one-line summary, because this should be the game's trademark line, but it is too good for it. Despite my failings to write anything substantial in the positive section of this review, I enjoyed it all the way through. It is a huge step up from its dreadful predecessor.

I'd like to end this review with a service announcement: don't listen to the internet. When you search for tips how to utilize the junctioning system, you will be told to avoid leveling up at all costs (or the enemies will become too hard) and how to use the crafting system in a very specific way. That's all powergaming bullshit. I played the game leveling up normally without using the crafting system and I was completely fine.