Final Fantasy VIII

The Good
The story is very engaging, and each of the characters are very well developed...

Although many people didn't like this, I though the draw system (basically what it is is you can't learn magic, but you have to draw it from enemies) was good as it added a whole new layer of strategy...so did the GF junctioning system (Junctioning GF's to characers to make them stronger)...

The triple triad card game was pretty cool too...

Excellent sound track...

The Bad
There is no quit option and the saved game worked in slots?!? You can tell by the way the menu is set up that it is ported directly from the console w/o any modifications...no mouse support...any developer who creates a game without a quit option or mouse support should be severely smacked upside the head...

The game speed was slooooooooooow...even with text speed turned up high, sometimes it gets so boring you feel like falling asleep...

Did they ever think about giving you an option to turn the GF intros off??? after watching Shiva break out of an icicle for the millionth time, I felt like smashing the computer screen...

The Bottom Line
Real good storyline, except you can't help but feel that it is spoiled because of the crappy, cheap console like presentation...I mean come on, slots for saved games??? As a Final Fantasy fan, I wanted to gut myself...But if you can overlook its faults, this game is definitely worth buying...

The Good
First off...anyone who watches the intro to this game will be hooked.

The combination of the groundbreaking (for 1999) cgi effects and Nobuo Uematsu's intense score creates a cinematic experience that was unmatched in it's day. Even today, with 6 years of hardware and software evolution, few games can match the passion, excitement and mystery inherent in the INTRO of this game.

When the game actually begins, you are thrust into the role of Squall Lionhart, one of the most complex characters ever to appear in a video game. Squall is training to become a mercenary at an elite academy, and the story is centered on him and the group of soldiers that he leads. Squall is a pretty deep guy, with the type of complex personality that is more common in novels than in video games. On the surface he is a pretty uncaring dude, but as the game progresses you find out that most of his affect is due to a pretty crummy childhood (i.e. the boy has some abandonment issues to say the least.)

In fact the characterization inherent in this game is actually, for me, one of the best features of this game. Unlike FF-7 (or 5, or 3, or 1...what is it with these odd numbered FF games....) the characters in this game have real motivations, fears, etc. they are not interchangeable cardboard cut-outs. To put it simply, each character in the game has a reason to be the way they are, and the game delves into each character's psyche enough to make them all three dimensional characters. This is truly a character driven game, which is a bit of a departure from games like FF-7.

Another great feature of this game is the Junction system. This tends to be a "love it or leave it" feature of the game, and as a veteran of EVERY Final Fantasy game (except XI) I would have to say it lives up the expectations of fans of the series. The system if flexible, and powerful, without ever being too munchkin-y. It also tends to be the type of system that is really re-playable, since you can drastically alter stat progression and power levels for your characters when you know how to really use the system. Granted, some people will not like the junction system at first glance (I have a buddy who's a FF fanatic who WILL NOT play this game because of it) but I assure that when you spend some time with it you will find that it is one of the most flexible systems within the FF family of games.

Another feature that I really like is the fact that money is not as important in this game as in most RPGs, and monsters don't drop gil when they die. Money is normally only gained through your paycheck from SEED (the mercenary company your team works for.) Personally I feel that this adds a bit of needed realism to the standard RPG formula, I know that complaining about realism in a game populated with man-eating, magic-using monsters is kinda silly, but it's one of those RPG-isms that tends to bug me. (I mean where do these monsters get all their cash....stealing lunch money from school kids?) Instead, money is only used for things that tend to be "extras", like healing items, and car rentals.

Another great feature of this game is the Triple Triad card game. Your character can play this game against NPCs and build up a collection of rare cards that can be modded into rare items. If you delve into Triple Triad, you will find yourself ahead of the curve quite often in this game, as you will have access to spells and weapons that you would normally have to wait to get.

In closing I would have to say, this is a BIG game, bigger than FF-7. That being said though, it tends to be a bit more quaint than 7 in it's general scale, most of the conflict early in the game revolves around inter-city disputes, as opposed to the constant "save the world" vibe of 7. This scale helps center the story on the characters, as opposed to the world, which makes it all the more identifiable.

The Bad
I'm a pretty big fan of this game, so it's fairly hard for me to find points to criticize, but here goes.

I would have to say that the complexities of the junction system is something that took more than one play through to really learn. As this is about a 40 hour game, playing through once just to learn the ins and outs of the junction system is an investment of time that some people just will not make. While I like the system, I would have to say that more documentation on it from Square would have been nice. Granted, now you can just grab a FAQ and learn it, but still, a couple of extra pages in the manual or a better tutorial would have been nice.

Another feature that I do not really like it the in-game tutorial system. On your first playthrough it's essential, as it explains processes that are not examined in the game manual. On your second and subsequent playthroughs it can be a bit of a time waster, I really think it would have been nice it Square would give you the option of turning the tutorials off.

I guess the last thing I will mention is that, on my first playthrough, the lack of armor and the weapon modification system kinda bothered me. Granted once I learned the system better (i.e. your Strength stat determines how much damage you do with physical attacks; Vitality reduces physical damage like armor) I never had a problem again, but it's worth mentioning.

The Bottom Line
An essential part of the Final Fantasy series of games. If you haven't played it you should.

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.