RPG Diary

Final Fantasy VIII

Final Fantasy VIII is a game I had never played before and I had very little knowledge about it. Despite being released during Square's "golden era", it seems to be less popular than the other games released during that time. With that context, I was very excited to play this game.

Title	Final Fantasy VIII
Year	1999
System	PSX
Developer	Square
Publisher	Square

Unfortunately, I felt this game started off on the wrong foot immediately. The opening FMV is a confusing blur that blends a proper prologue scene (the duel) with teasers of FMVs from later in the game (everything else). The game itself then begins with little up-front explanation of what is going on or anyone's motivations. This made me start losing interest very early on. (Who is Galbadia? Are they "evil"? Should I even care?)

Things continue to be only loosely explained as the game progresses. Some plot lines are just dropped without resolution and several plot twists felt absurd. A quick list of the main things that bothered me: Seifer's irrelevence, Squall's impalement, NORG, Squall in charge of Balamb Garden, the forgotten memories, and Squall's abrupt obsession with Rinoa. As a whole, the plot felt disorganized and rushed. Overall, I think I enjoyed the Laguna sub-story more than the main story itself.

Final Fantasy VIII has several experimental mechanics. Instead of MP or spell charges, spells are a consumable item held by a character. However, these consumables are not bought, they must be either "drawn" (stolen) from enemies in combat or acquired by dismantling playing cards. Instead of conventional equipment, these spells can be "junctioned" (equipped) to character's stats to raise them. The effectiveness of the junction scales with the quantity of the spell held, which discourages actually casting them. While these are interesting concepts, they made combat extremely tedious to me: if the enemy has a new spell, then I spent 10-15 minutes drawing it until the party was maxed out, otherwise everyone just used "Attack".

Most enemies in this game are leveled to match your party level. Overall, this did not seem to have much an impact on my playthrough, but the final boss(es) were notably challenging. (I was overleveled since I completed everything.) Since there's not much reward for leveling up and combat is tedious, by end game I was frequently using the "Enc-None" ability to disable random battles.

Sadly, the Triple Triad minigame is probably what I enjoyed most about this game. This card game can be played with most NPCs, so it's always available. There are a variety of different rules that can modify the game, and I still don't fully understand what all of them do! However, it also allows you to really break the game early since by dismantling certain cards into late game magic (which can then be junctioned!). I generally tried to avoid acquiring magic early this way to preserve some challenge.

After completing a game, I add it to my overall enjoyment ranking which orders the games I've completed from those I most enjoyed to those I least enjoyed. I was thoroughly disappointed with this game and may have abandoned it if I wasn't committed to playing the entire series. The plot is a mess, but I'd probably prefer playing this again over Final Fantasy II.