Final Fantasy VIII

Squaresoft - 1999 - PC/PS1

(On my Top 10 Game Soundtracks list)

See Also My Top 10 Final Fantasy Games List

Part of why I think this game gets so much hate, even from me, is that it came on the heels of Final Fantasy 7, of of the best selling and most well loved RPGs of all time. Final Fantasy 7 had a brilliant and customizable battle system, an engaging story with interesting characters and an awesome soundtrack. Final Fantasy 8 has... an awesome soundtrack, at least. To be fair, the story is pretty interesting all the way through the end of disc 1, but then things get so weird and hard to follow and major plot points are added and removed on a whim, as though the game has ADD and can't decide on what kind of story it wants to tell you. But the battle system is...oh god it's a total trainwreck.

So one of the many flaws of this game's battle system is its "junction" system. In FF8, magic spells are treated as a consumable item. Kind of a weird choice, but I don't have a problem with that necessarily. What I DO have a problem with is that spells are a consumable item AND the game allows you to "junction" them to your character to improve their stats. The better the spell, the more the stat increase. If you follow this chain of logic, you'll realize that if you have a high level spell junctioned to your character and you cast that spell, your character's stats will actually decrease. So then what's the point of casting magic? There is none in a normal playthrough, especially when you consider that your summon monsters, called GFs in this game, can be called upon to essentially cast any magic spells you'd want anyway, provided you don't mind watching a 45 second cutscene of the GF appearing EVERY FREAKIN' TIME. There's lots of odd decisions like this that slow the battles down in FF8 and make them tedious. Even the way you get magic is a chore. You can "draw" spells from an enemy, but depending on a few factors the game doesn't really explain, you'll only typically get around 3-6 spells per draw. Which means you have to sit in a battle and farm draw for quite a long time if you want to get up to the maximum of 100. But really the most broken thing about this game is when you discover you can manipulate limit breaks. Your character's chance of limit breaks are actually random in this game, another odd choice. The less health you have, the higher the chance of the limit break. But if you cycle your turn order, you can keep re-rolling the calculation that determines your limit break, essentially letting you limit break whenever you want. Totally. Broken.

Now that I'm done ranting about the battle system, on to the story (mild spoilers in this paragraph). It really does seem like it's gonna go somewhere for the first, maybe quarter or third of the game. But then we hit a point after disc 1 where the narrative has an identity crisis and starts grasping at different ideas and concepts and inserts them randomly into the story which results in a totally insane mish-mash of disconnected themes and gaping plot holes. I know Final Fantasy is a universe where characters get shot, sliced and burned in every battle, but the first huge narrative red flag is when one of the main characters is freakin' impaled through the heart with a giant icicle during a cutscene... and then is totally okay in the next scene. Like the game barely even acknowledges that it took place. Come on Final Fantasy 8! If you're not gonna take your story seriously then I can't either. 

The artwork and music are the huge redeeming factors of this game. FF8 features some of the most gorgeous hand-drawn backdrops in any RPG I've seen. And this might be controversial, but I think FF8 is Uematsu's best work. At the very least it's my favorite of his work. The relaxing "Breezy", the entrancing "Find Your Way", the mysterious "Under Her Control" and the nostalgic "Fisherman's Horizon" highlight the soundtrack. And of course "Man With the Machine Gun" does its best to keep the mindlessly tedious and broken battles from being too much of a nuisance.

Summary

This is far from the best Final Fantasy, and misses the mark on battle system design and storytelling. At best it's an average-ish RPG with a trippy story, some awesome music and inspiring artwork. Still there is something sort of intangibly alluring about playing this game. I must admit I've replayed this trainwreck at least 3 times now.